Ep #106: Selling Intangibles

Hey, coaches. We wanted to do something special through the month of January in the honor of launching our brand new 2K for 2K Process and our brand-new member portal. So, we asked our students to record a video of how they made their money back inside 2K so that you can learn from them and see what’s possible to sign your first client, make your first 2K.

So, listen for their advice and their words of wisdom at the end of each episode this January and start really seeing that possibility for yourself.

Welcome to the Make Money as a Life Coach® podcast, where sales expert and master coach Stacey Boehman teaches you how to make your first 2K, 20K, and 200K using her proven formula.

Hey coaches, welcome to episode 106. I feel like it’s been forever since I talked to you. How are you? What is happening? I feel like I have to catch you up really quickly before we dive into today’s episode. So, I’m recording this the day before New Year’s Eve, so December 30^th. So, you’re going to get this next week.

And first of all, did you have an amazing Christmas? We had a great Christmas. And when I say Christmas, I mean Christmas season. We shopped really early. We took a trip to Aspen for a week with some friends and our dogs. So, we were really on top of – we got Christmas lights put on our house for the first time ever, which felt like a dream.

I remember, as a kid, going around and looking at all the other houses that had Christmas lights and all the fancy Christmas lights. And we actually got them this year, which was so fun, so beautiful. So, we did that. We got that done early.

We shopped early. We wrapped gifts early. We got our tree. We do two trees. I like the fancy, beautiful, ornate tree that goes in our living room. And Neil likes to do his own real tree with funky designs in our basement.

So, we did the trees and we did the gifts and then we were pretty much done very early on. And we have spent the whole Christmas season watching all the Christmas movies. And can I just tell y’all, I watched Elf for the first time ever. What is even happening? Why have I not seen that movie?

Probably because Neil and I love Home Alone. I grew up at the age where home Alone was like the thing. I got the Talkboy for Christmas one year. It was the number one gift I wanted. I feel like everyone has a Christmas story about the number one gift they wanted when they were a kid. Mine was that Talkboy.

So, I grew up in the Home Alone era. We’re Home Alone people. And I’m also a huge Christmas story person. I need to watch it at least six times every Christmas. And I love the Family Stone. It’s probably my all-time favorite. Like, Sarah Jessica Parker and those ticks come on. So great.

So, we decided this year, we were going to venture out. I watched, I think, Miracle on 34^th Street for the first time ever, Nightmare Before Christmas, watched that for the first time, watched Elf for the first time. Elf is like my new favorite Christmas movie. Like, it’s the best ever. I feel like I’m very late to the party, but it’s so funny.

So, we watched a ton of movies in our movie room. And then, to top it off, my amazing fiancé – this is literally the best gift ever. It’s just so thoughtful and if you had given me 5000 guesses, I wouldn’t have been able to guess that this is what he got me for Christmas. Are you ready? This is very thoughtful because he doesn’t even like movies.

We have this movie room that I’m obsessed with, because I grew up watching movies as a kid and I was an actor and I was a theatre major, so I really love entertainment like that and I love having a movie room. It’s so cozy and it feels just like family time. Anyways, I love to make popcorn and go watch movies in the movie room.

Neil bought me – are you ready – the best home projector that you can buy on the market. Apparently, it’s this Sony 4K thing that has to be professionally installed. I didn’t even know that we had a bad projector. He was like, “Yeah, it buffers all the time, the screen’s not clear.” And I’m like, “I just thought that was home movie theatres.” And I was still impressed with it.

My assistant introduced me to this hashtag, this idea, it’s like you know what you know – I don’t know what the hashtag is, it’s just the letters. But she introduced me to this this idea and I’m like, “You know what you know.” I did not know, or you don’t know what you don’t know. I did not know that there were better projectors and that there was a better movie experience to be had.

And he got me an Apple TV, a 4K Apple Tv to match. So, everything that’s recorded in 4K, if you’re an Ozark fan, apparently Ozark is recorded in 4K, the screens and the experience will be phenomenal. No idea that even existed. It was extraordinarily expensive and I cannot believe that my frugal fiancé got that for me. Crazy.

Anyways, so we had an amazing Christmas. And two days before Christmas – I’m going to do an entire podcast episode on this, but probably not until March because I have all of January and February’s podcasts already lined up for the last several months, so we’re going to go ahead with that content. But we bought a new car. And not just any car. An Audi RS7. It’s like a racing car combined with a luxury A7 sedan. It’s out of this world, bright red.

I officially have – I call it my winter car. We did not get rid of my convertible. I still like to be speed racer I that thing in the warm weather. But I wanted a car that wasn’t a convertible for when it’s not warm out. So, we got the fanciest and most best amazing car ever. So, I’m going to do a whole podcast and tell you about six lessons that I learned from buying this car, unexpectedly two days before Christmas. So, I’ll tell you that story on another podcast.

I also want to tell you that we have a lot of amazing things coming up on the podcast. So, we just released a brand-new member portal. It is stunning and beautiful. If you have not listened to Creating Big Things 2.0, make sure you listen to that. I tell you all about it. All of our clients are going through the content just like in a frenzy, loving every second of it.

So, what I wanted to do for January is introduce new concepts and ideas that I’m teaching in this new content that I released with the new member portal. So, I’m teaching brand new ideas and new ways of explaining the same stuff but in a way that I think might be super-tangible and make sense.

So, we’re going to do that all through the month of January. We have a really fun surprise for the month of February. And then in March, you’ll hear about the new car. So, we’ve got a lot of amazing things happening on the podcast. This year in general I’m so excited about the podcast. I’m also going to be featuring my $2 Million students and their work and what they’re doing in their businesses and what they teach. So, we’ll be featuring that.

We’re going to do a lot more money podcasts. I already have those planned out. We’re going to do an interview with my CFO, Mark, talk about money management mindset. Seriously, this year on the podcast is going to be incredible. And then we have so many amazing success stories from 200K that I just can’t get them out fast enough. You have to hear about Laura Schwartzbach who had a stroke and then went on to create a 200K business. I think she’s getting close to 200K. She’s like 150K or 175K or something like that.

And she just has an incredible story about her stroke and about dealing with her health and also trying to build her business and managing her mind through not being able to overwork. And you’re going to hear from Kristen Boss, who made like I don’t even know, I feel like millions it was millions of dollars, but I think it was like 600K. But it just feels so ridiculous. It was like 500K or 600K, but in her first year as a coach. It’s insane, the growth that she’s having.

I have a lot of amazing clients and a lot of amazing stories to tell you. So, I just wanted to spend – I know that was a little bit of time. I just wanted to spend some time telling you about what I’ve been up to. I also went to Aspen, flew my dogs private, which was a whole experience. Bear tried to leave the plane in the middle of the flight. I had to, like, get up in the middle of the aisle and grab him, like, “Listen, dude, the only way out is down and it’s not good. You have to stay in the plane.”

So I had to pull him and drag him all the way back to the plane. I’m like, what is this crazy dude doing? So, he does not fly very well, apparently. But he’s so good in the car. And Bella is so bad in the car; so bad. She hates being in the car. And she was fine flying. It was the weirdest thing.

But we took the dogs to Aspen. It snowed buckets We skied. It was the time of my life. And we took two of our best friends and had so much fun. Okay, I just had to catch you up. It’s a lot that has happened since I recorded the podcast. You’ll hear more about some of these things as we go on. But let’s dive into today’s episode, nine minutes in. We had to do that catchup, don’t you think? I feel like sometimes you have to have that.

Okay, so today, we’re going to talk about selling intangibles. And this is going to be a pretty – I don’t want to say hefty topic, but what I have planned to talk about I know is going to take me a while. So, it’s going to be a longer episode today. But it’s so important and I’m going to tell y’all a lot about my experience pitching and how I developed my sales process that I teach coaches and how I’ve developed what I teach my students.

So, in the new portal, I launched a new module in the marketing modules called selling intangibles. And so, I want to tell you about what selling intangibles are and what selling tangibles are. So, there’s tangibles and intangibles. I’m going to tell you about both of them.

So, first, the number one thing that is the hardest part of becoming a life coach and an entrepreneur – I need you to hear this – is signing that first client. Here’s what happens. You have no idea where to meet people and how to connect with clients.

I used to personally imagine there was some kind of physical place the clients were and I just had no idea where that place was. It’s like everybody else knows where this place is where you go to get the clients. But I don’t.

And it really felt like trying to grab a client from thin air. And I really think that that is what we’re doing to some degree. You are starting at nothing and creating something.

So, when I was pitching, I had to learn to sell to live audiences and deal with human element of not being able to control the other person. You have an audience of people and they’re all going to do all the things that people do in crowds, and then you have to sell to them and kind of wrangle them.

But I still had people coming to my show and I still had a place where there were clients. So, it felt like a step ahead of starting your own business. So, this part even freaked me out, the sales expert, because I had never had to go get the clients.

But here is what I think is very interesting. Even when I was given the place with the clients, I still didn’t always make money. So, this was my first interaction with the idea that there were tangible things in the world and intangible things in the world. And that one of them mattered more than the other.

And they actually taught us this concept in pitching. So, it’s so fascinating, way before I found coaching, I knew about the idea that your mindset and your energy influenced selling and that there were intangible things that influenced the outcome of everything that you do.

So, here’s how it went. You would get the script. You memorized it work for work. And I really mean that, word for word. Then you showed up at a training in a hotel conference room and you learned the handling. So, like, what you were doing with your hands while you talked. It’s very clever wording, handling, for what you do with your hands while you talk.

And then you learned the seven fundamentals, which was their sales process. And then you started putting all thar together in front of your trainer and the other trainees.

So, I just have to take a moment actually here and go off topic for a second and tell you, without a doubt, that life has meaning and that things happen and they have significance. If I didn’t have the trainer I had the week that I trained to become a pitch artist in Atlanta, I wouldn’t be here with you teaching sales. I can tell you that 100%.

I was in one of what they called the Christmas Classes, but hired to help during the holiday hoopla. We made most of our income as pitch artists from October through December. So, it was a crazy time of year.

So, because this was like a holiday group, a Christmas group, they sent their best trainer from LA, an actor called Todd Kimsey. And I will try not to get emotional here. Todd was such a huge part of my life. He was one of my greatest mentors to this day and I really believe why I am who I am today is because of him. And so, I get emotional because he passed away of cancer a few years ago. But he made such an impression on my life. I’m telling you, everything I learned about sales, the foundation of it came from Todd.

So, Todd was – he came in from LA. He was one of the international trainers. And we were told this guy was the best. And he showed up and he was cocky. I mean, he knew he was good. And he was a military guy, so he was very authoritative and he didn’t take shit from anyone. He was this muscular guy. You might even know him. He played the communist on Seinfeld. So, if you’re a Seinfeld fan, you know the episode with the communist. Todd Kimsey played the communist.

And he commanded the show. He had a whole way of doing his handling that was different than the company and very Todd-like. And I’m a great student, so all of my handling, all the motions I did during the show looked exactly like his. So identical they used to call me mini-Todd. They’d be like, “I can tell that’s a Todd show.”

And it’s really comical because I’m 5”3 barely, and 130 pounds with a really small frame. And he’s this big guy and he was older. I think I was 24 when I started pitching. So, to see me command the stage like he did, it was something. I grew kind of larger than life onstage because Todd was so much larger than life. And I was so intimidated by him.

I mean, I did everything he said. I worked harder than anyone in my class because I did not want to disappoint him. I just loved him so much. So, first of all, I have to say, if you’re ever scared of your coach or intimidated by your coach, sometimes that’s a good thing. It makes you work harder and show up differently than if you’re not.

So, he took me under his wing and he trained me again actually six months later to become a trainer and he insisted that he was the one to do it. he just, for whatever reason, him and I, it feels like the unlikeliest of pairs bonded so deeply. And it was just like when the student is ready, the teacher appears. I’m sure it was a joy for him to be able to mold me in such a way and be such a mentor to me and for me to be so engrossed in learning from him. He didn’t have that relationship, I feel like, with anyone else in the company and I never, ever had that relationship with anybody else in the industry.

He was totally OCD, so when I became a trainer, I was totally OCD. Everything had to go in the very specific place that Todd said. And so, everyone knew to look out for both of us and we didn’t take shit from anyone, including store managers, which is where I learned to get my way on the sales floor. All of this from Todd.

Anyways, I just had to take a moment and honor him. I seriously would not be here teaching you sales today without him having lived and your teachers and your mentors, the first ones that teach you that foundational stuff, that stays with you forever. So, where was I?

So, we would put it all together. The scripts, you literally said the words in cadences and at very specific times to match the movement and the timing of your hands. It was insane.

So then, you get to the source, you learn all of that in a hotel room. And then you get to the store and you’re given a stage and free gifts and products, and again, the script of exactly what to say on even the announcement and how to say it, like what tone, how fast to say it to get people to your show. You’re given everything, even the people, the potential buyers.

And yet still, some people could sell and some people could not, for the life of them. I trained many of them. I could go up and sell 20. And then another trainee could go up and sell two. So, they taught us about selling tangibles and intangibles.

So, selling tangibles were the things that you were doing, that you were saying, the setup you had, the product you were selling, where you were selling, and to whom you were selling. Is that the proper English, to whom? To who? It doesn’t matter.

Anyways, all of that was selling tangibles, the things that you can see, that you can feel, things that are physical in the world. I would even say the sales process, the steps are tangibles. But how you deliver those steps, the energy behind your words, the presence you had onstage, the way you delivered that announcement, the way that you, with your energy, captured up to 100 people’s attention at a time and zeroed it in on exactly what you were doing and saying, that was intangible, and the single most important thing you got right.

And this is where I first realized that selling is a mind game. Now, listen, most of y’all know that. You’re coaches. But you forget it when it comes to finding clients. You think there are different rules with that.

But I tell you to meet people, tell them you’re a life coach, and make offers to help them, that this is the tangible thing you need to do. But where the clients get signed, that’s all in the intangibles of how you are thinking and feeling and commanding the moment.

Even to me, it still seems crazy that the impact of how you feel and your connection to the present moment, that impact that it has on other people. Like, I still think, “This is so crazy how it works.” I could make an announcement in a busy Walmart and say, you know, “Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention please? In less than two minutes from right now…” and no one would come.

Or, I could say, “Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention please? In less than two minutes from right now…” and have so many people running to the stage that the manager, many managers would complain that I was creating a safety hazard for customers in the store.

I remember one store in Seattle. I’m going to give you an example of this. When I was training to become a trainer and no one was buying. And it was supposed to be the hottest market in our company, the Seattle market, in like the hottest new chain.

So, for those of you that are from the Northwest, it was called Fred Myer. No one had been pitching products in those stores and we got the contract, whatever you call it, and our people went out there and they were just blowing it up.

And every time that I got up there and pitched in this Fred Myer – I think I was pitching a Mr. Sticky, a lifetime guaranteed lint roller. And every time I would get up there and I would get to the part where they were supposed to raise their hands and buy, they would just look at each other and walk off.

And remember, I’m really good at this point. I’m so good, I’m getting promoted to be a trainer. So, I call a trainer that’s actually out of Canada. I’d never called him before. I don’t know what made me call him. I call him and I told him what’s going on and he said, “Let me hear your you want ones.” I’m going to tell you what those are.

So, at the end, here’s what we would do to get people to raise their hands. We would say, “For those of you in this show that let me know right now, you want one there, you want one, you want one too…” that’s how we would say it. And it would excite people to raise their hands. And so, he’s listening to me.

He’s like, “Let me hear the last part of your show. Start here and keep going until I tell you to stop.” And so, I did it and he stopped me and he said, “I don’t believe you.” He said, “I don’t believe that you’re actually seeing people raise their hand and saying, you want one, as a response to them wanting one. It sounds phony. Like, people weren’t raising their hands.”

And here’s the truth; they weren’t. But most always, they weren’t. So, the level of belief and certainty in your voice when you said those words determined if the people felt comfortable to agree with you and would in fact become the ones raising their hands. Your belief would match their belief and they would raise their hands.

And it wasn’t something that you could be phony about. You couldn’t do it like a tactic, which is what a lot of people would do. They would think of it as like a tactic to get people to raise their hand, versus a mutual understanding, “I know that you want one and I know you want to tell me you want one and I’m going to make you comfortable to do it.”

You had to believe, truly, that people wanted to buy through the entire show and believe that people were going to buy right then and there in that moment. And if you had doubts or you were on autopilot and not connected to that moment, giving it all of your presence, believing in those people, the audience felt that.

If you had any bias against them, they didn’t behave the way you wanted, they seemed unfriendly to you, you didn’t think they had any money, you prejudged them at all in any way, they didn’t buy it. They didn’t buy you. They didn’t buy the product.

If you had any emotional baggage from previous shows of no one buying in the previous show, of having a terrible day in that store the day before, if any fails carried with you, they would carry you into that same exact result the next show.

It’s just like relationships. If you take baggage from one relationship into the next, you’re going to end up with the exact same relationship. So, I would have some rough days where I would sell zero and then carry that with me because I didn’t have coaching at the time, so I didn’t know how to change my thoughts about a circumstance or a result.

And so, I would sell zero again, and it would snowball. That’s how we, as coaches, fall into purgatories, because we just let that baggage from the past failure keep creating new baggage in the future to have more baggage about. And you can do that even when you’re advanced and skilled and have had a success before.

Look at Tiger Woods. Golf is a total head game. It’s all about the intangibles. The world found out who he was and I shook him and he couldn’t play after that for years. I don’t think he’s still truly recovered. I don’t watch a lot of golf, but Neil does. But I always talk about that. You can tell it messed with his head.

And that’s an advanced person. So, imagine if you have no success before you to believe that this is just a bump or a purgatory, right? Like when you’re new and you’re training. We lost so many people pitching because they couldn’t hack it in the training period. They couldn’t handle the failure. They couldn’t handle all the zeros and they couldn’t see past that. We’re going to talk about how that applies to you in a little bit. It comes up with coaches a lot.

So, anyways, back to the story, he said my you want ones weren’t believable. So I worked on them. I really worked on connecting to the moment, to that feeling of imagining them buying until I really felt it. And I said the words to him, and he said, “Okay, go do that exact thing for them.” So, the next show, I did.

I got to the part and I imagined them really putting their hands in the air and that my saying those words, those you want ones, were a reaction to them raising their hand, instead of an action to get them to raise their hands, “You want one. You want one. You want one too.” And five hands flew in the air. And then one of them said, “I want five.” And then another one said, “Me too.”

We had this offer where you could buy five and get one free. So, I would sell Christmas gifts all year long. I’d be like, “Listen, I know it’s July.” I think it was July at the time, “Christmas will be around the corner. We have a promotion. If you buy five, you get one free. So, you want to start thinking about all of the people who could use this lint roller.” I didn’t say it exactly like that.

But then more people started raising their hands. I ended up doing five, all five of those first ladies who raised their hands, all five of them did buy five get one frees. I had sold seven sets all day. I sold 32 lint roller sets in just one show. 32. I had sold seven all day. I’d been there for like five hours. 32 sets in just one show.

The difference in doing something to get someone to do something versus doing something in response to someone wanting something. Writing a Facebook post to try to get someone to sign up for a consult versus writing a post because you know someone is waiting to hear from you want wants to hear from you and wants to get on a consult with you and wants to work with you.

That is the power of selling intangibles, the energy behind the language you use, your body language, your energy, the level of belief when you market, sell, and engage with other humans. It’s not just part of it. it’s not just sort of influential. It’s the game. It’s the only thing.

And here’s what I want to say. You have to have the intangible belief and the feeling that comes with it that is certain and calm. That is the best place to sell from; certainty and calm.

So, there is a part of the show that we used to do called bag-ups. Literally, bag up the product, take it to the register. I guess we were like carnies that created these concepts. But we used to call it the bag-up, where we would just keep repeating how much it was, where they got it. So, we’d be like, you pick it up here with me, you pay for it at the register, and we’d be handing out packages at the same time and mixing in, “Oh, you want one over there, and you want one, you want one there in the back too, you want one too?” And then we’d keep saying, “Okay, for $39.99…” and we would just keep doing that. And it would create this buying frenzy.

I call it the FOMO effect. Like, I don’t want to be left out, mixed with total pack mentality comfort of it’s okay to buy this because everybody else is too. Those were very powerful elements when it came to selling live shows. I think he same is true for selling webinars.

So, I used to do that bag-up, that moment where I’m repeating what they get and where they get it and how they get it and how much it is and what comes with it, mixed with you want ones, passing them out at the same time. I used to do those with such calm and certainty that it would come off matter of fact. And I want you to think about that.

Is your belief a matter of fact? I would say it like it was a fact that everyone was buying. That is the feeling of it’s done, that you’ve heard me talking about, having done energy. Like, of course, everyone buys this product. I don’t even need to be excited about it because it’s just so factual. It’s just what happens. Everybody buys this product because it’s so amazing.

“And you want one back there and you want one, you want one too? Again, the package is $39.99, you pick it up here with me, you pay for it at the register. Stop and think if you need gifts.” It’s thar energy of this is just what happens. I sell product like this all day every day.

Think about it right now. Does clients coming feel like it’s just happening, it’s just what is happening, you’re reporting the news, clients come to me, I just sell coaching. Does clients buying feel like it’s just what’s happening and your response and how you say things and do things are just the effect of that happening?

Not what you’re saying, how you say things and how you do things are to try to get someone to buy, trying to get someone to take action. It feels so different. I’m going to say and do this thing to get you to do something versus I’m going to say and do this thing as an effect of what you want, of just the fact that there is desire there to buy and it’s happening. So different.

Now, listen, this is very important. The certainty and the calm and the matter-of-fact energy, you have to have that, even when people aren’t giving you anything. I remember one show – I actually signed a coaching client from this show. So, I was still pitching and building my business.

I was in a grocery store selling slicers and I was doing a show and the people in the store were not giving me anything. The more I tried to get them to raise their hand in agreement, the more I tried to get them to participate during the show – because we had buy-ins throughout the show where we would be like, “Who here’s every tried to cut a tomato with a dull knife?” And we’d raise our hand and shake our head, yes, and get people to do it too.

And the more comfortable with that’s how they were going to tell us they were going to buy at the end was throw their hand in the air. And so, we would have these little buy-ins and they didn’t want to do any of the buy-ins. They were not having it.

And the more I tried to get them to participate during the show and buy in, the more they shut down and resisted it. So, I learned through failure, show after show from that store, from experience, that I had to stop asking them for participation. It wasn’t working for them.

So, I just assumed their participation. So, instead of – what was the line? “Who here has ever tried to cut a ripe tomato with a dull knife?” I would hold one up in each hand. Instead of asking them and trying to get them to raise their hand, I would say, “You know, I know we’ve all tried to cut tomatoes with a dull knife,” and then moved on. I would just say, “Oh, we’ve all been through this.”

And what happened is that the moment I stopped trying to get them to participate and trying to get them to engage, they started buying. So, I got to this one show and this business owner, the client that I signed is standing right on the side of my show. So, she’s in the show but she’s on the side. And she’s watching it all go down.

And she’s seeing not one person in that show raise their hand ever, or participate with me at all. It felt like a stare off. Who was going to be the strongest energy at the end? Who would win? Unimpressed audience or confident sales lady?

And at the end, I looked them all in the eye and I delivered those you want ones. Like, I had had an individual conversation with each one of them about wanting one, and we had already decided individually, together, intimately, one on one. And all of their hands went up.

And my client was so intrigued by how I had done that, that she hired me. She told me, “I literally can’t believe they bought. I felt sorry for you the whole time. I just knew no one was going to buy from you. So, when they all threw their hands in the air I was like, what just happened? I missed something.”

So, that, coaches, is the art of mastering selling intangibles, being able to produce them without evidence and maintain them even if the evidence points to the contrary. How many of you have given up on your goals mid-month when it doesn’t look like you’re going to make it? How many of you have checked out on consults after judging the client or they’ve told you they can’t afford it? How many of you are trying to get people to afford it, trying to get people to take interest, trying to get them to engage in a certain way on a consult or on social media?

I want you to think of selling like simply a presentation of your mind. I’m going to say that again. I want you to think of selling simply like a presentation of your mind, a presentation of your words, your actions, your vibe, on a daily basis is just presenting what’s happening in your inner world. And if it’s genuine and authentic, people will buy.

Remember, it can’t be a tactic. You can’t be saying you want ones energetically, you want to engage with this post, you want to sign up for a consult, you want one too, you want one over there, you can’t be doing that to get them to do it. You have to be coming from the energy of you know they already want to read your post or your email, they already want to engage with you, and of course they’re engaging with you, they always engage with you. And, of course, they’re going to sign up for a consult. They’ve been wanting to sign up for a consult for months. This is the time it’s going to tip them over.

If it’s pretend, to try to get people to buy, they’re not going to buy. If your inner world feels like making money is a matter of fact, me marketing my business is a matter of fact that I will make money, it will be.

I remember, I used to tell Neil, “I’m going to get on this call and sign a client. I’ll be back in an hour.” Just like it’s done. It doesn’t even matter what they’re going to say on the consult, I already know, I’m signing them. Matter of fact. I’m going to make a million dollars, matter of fact. Like, I say it like it is factual. It’s just a matter of reporting the news.

If you’re thinking and feeling like I probably won’t make six figures, I’m so nervous on this consult, I’m probably not going to sign them, those aren’t part of the reasons people don’t buy or they didn’t buy. It’s all of the reason they didn’t buy. They don’t not buy because they don’t have the money and they have to check their budget and they don’t have time. Those are where coaches always want to go in their mind with what went wrong. It wasn’t the right client. It wasn’t the right price. It was their fault. They had issues that I couldn’t overcome which is why they didn’t buy.

No, it wasn’t matter of fact in your belief. The intangibles, what was in your mind presented in the conversation and negatively affected it. Or just didn’t positively affect it enough to help them get over all of their – I do this, I sell this, I can’t think of the work. Oh – objections. That’s amazing. I’m like, “Wait a minute, this is something I teach every day. What’s the word for that?” Their objections.

Your intangibles have to so positively affect them that all of the objection that all clients have and will have that you have to expect will be easier to overcome because they’re so positive in the experience they had with you.

Okay, so let’s swing back around to the beginning of this conversation. When I said finding clients felt like they were coming from thin air, that it’s the single hardest thing you to will do is getting that first client, and really those first few clients, getting the momentum of clients.

I also find this when people are trying to scale to a million, this happens. But just at all times in your business really. Intangibles don’t just affect the people in front of you. They also affect the momentum of clients. They affect the quality and the quantity of all of your interactions with other humans. Quality and quantity. So, how many people you meet and how those meetings go.

This is why I have dedicated my entire coaching career to teaching coaches – okay, not my entire coaching career. That was very dramatic. Most of my most successful parts of my coaching career – to make the most out of those meetings, to help you make the most out of those meetings.

Because in the beginning, you will be meeting far less people than you do when your business is established and you’re making money and you have the experience of having coached lots of people and then all of those, that track record of success starts really building momentum for you.

In the beginning, you may only have one or two consults a month, if that. You’ll have to learn as you go how to get creative and get in front of more people in a way that makes sense for you in your business, so the quality of those interactions matter.

But how you increase your selling intangibles and your matter-of-fact belief is not by sitting around believing that you’re a 100K earner when you’re not. Working to believe new things is a huge part of it. I don’t want to diminish that. It is a huge part of it.

But there’s also this other piece that I think is super-genius the way that I teach kind of creating new beliefs in 2K for 2K. So here is what will help develop you positive selling intangibles, is looking at what skills, if I developed them, would make it easier for me to believe I’m going to sign a client.

If you have skills that would lend you signing a client, it will be easier for you, like the more you develop those skills, the more you will able to believe that you’re signing a client versus if you just sit around doing nothing and developing no skills, it will be much harder to believe a client is just going to come from thin air.

But the more that you engage with actually developing skills and practicing and gaining experience and failing, the less it’s going to feel like it comes from thin air. You’re going to be like, “No, no, no it’s come from all the experience I’ve put in, all of the hours of sheer blood, sweat, and tears that I have put in and hustle to get me here. It didn’t come from thin air. I know exactly where it came from. All that effort and failure.”

So, the two most obvious skills as you develop them that will make it easier for you to believe that you can sign a client and have positive intangibles behind you are marketing and selling. So, then, now that you know the skills you need to develop, you think about what supporting thoughts or knowledge will help me get out there and practice marketing and selling to gain experience, which will lead to proficiency, which will lead to confidence, which will lead to signing more clients through more positive selling intangibles.

It’s like, practice, fail, experience, proficiency, positive intangibles radiating out of you as the foundation for who you are as a coach. So, the more I talk to people, the more comfortable I would get talking to people, the better I’ll get at explaining things, the more I will sell, the better I will get at selling.

So, you have to find thoughts that make you motivated to go out and try and to keep going and to do that process. And then what story, what thoughts will you tell yourself when you fail at that process, of developing your skill of marketing and selling, of going out there and talking to people and practicing talking to people and saying things different ways and not having an impact at all and learning from experience and figuring out how to meet more people to do the same thing over and over. What story will you tell yourself as you’re going through that process?

So, you have marketing and selling that are the skills that you can develop to sign a client, and then you come up with thoughts that allow you to feel excited or committed. I used to love to feel like a warrior, tough, to go out there and out myself out there in front of people and interact with them and fail and get better through experience, which is the only way you get better.
And then, the final piece of this is within marketing and selling, there are ways that you can get information from your brain to boost your confidence.

So, if you look at marketing – this is how I guide people in 2K. When you look at marketing, the thing you’re doing is telling people what a coach is, how we work with clients, and why it’s valuable to them, right? And to be able to say it in 100 ways like it’s second nature to hundreds of different people of all different backgrounds and lifestyles.

And then, within selling when you’re on a consult, to be able to break down what they tell you, the information they give you, break it down as a really clear problem that has a really clear solution, and explain to them a very clear process of bridging that gap. And then explaining to them what the impact will be of that result in their life and show them what’s in the way of them going for it and how to overcome it and be able to do that with anyone, with any story, with any problem, with any objections that come up in the way.

The more you’re able to do that – we literally practice this in 2K, even before you ever get on the phone with someone, you’re going to break down what they problem is, what their solution is, what your process is. You’re going to do it in a bunch of different ways. We literally give you an exercise to walk you through it in such a simple way. You walk yourself through it first, then you practice walking make believe clients through it, then you’re going to get people finally on the phone and you’re going to practice with them. This is the work you do all day every day inside 2K for 2K.

We have an entire workbook in every module that helps you get this information from your brain, you answer it in your words, and yes, a lot of people poll the community to find out what their answers are too and help build their bag of information and bag of experience and bag of ways of saying things. And you’ll do that until you know it so deeply that it comes second nature to you.

After this becomes second nature, explaining your product, how and why it works, its value, after that becomes second nature, then – pay attention here. Don’t zone out. Sometimes we zone out when it’s hard, when we’re learning things that are hard for our brain to understand, so stay with me.

After you learn how to explain your product, how and why it works and its value to the person in front of you or people in front of you and that becomes second nature, then you get to focus on your belief and presence in the moment and to focus on other people and their beliefs in the moment.

Your brain becomes clearer and more powerful when you have positive selling tangibles on your side, literally when your brain is positive, it’s 33% more effective. There is a study out of Harvard about it. Shaun Acker, I think.

So, when you aren’t thinking about the words you’re going to say or how you’re going to respond or what if this person doesn’t buy or I’ve got to make money, then you can start thinking about, what is this person missing to buy? What do they need to buy? What’s happening for them in their brain right now? Why are they having this experience? How could I impact them in this exact moment? What do they need from me right now?

This is how I sold the crowd who refused to participate. I wasn’t thinking about me. I knew the words. I knew the handling. I knew the sales process. I was focused on reading them and adjusting my energy to match theirs so that we could connect.

I had the capacity to notice that they didn’t want to raise their hands and participate because I wasn’t in my head presenting all of my doubts and negative emotion to them. Why you struggle to get clients is because you struggle with your capacity to focus on other people, to focus on the sales process, to focus on the coaching. When you learn this art, you can literally sell anything to anyone. Any offer. You learn that the offer doesn’t even matter. I could sell any of our products, all 10 of them, doesn’t matter.

What I’m doing is going in and getting present to focus on the people and sell them an amazing offer. This is the same thing we do as coaches. We focus on others and get present to see things they don’t see. Selling is coaching and coaching is selling.

So here’s why I see coaches taking longer than they need to make money. They focus on tangibles, circumstances. They get what I call business in a box syndrome. That could be a whole podcast in itself. Meaning if I had a niche and I had my pricing figured out and I had an actual program or a product to run them through and offer them, and I had a website and I knew my one sentence to tell them exactly what I do in one sentence, very clear, and I had business cards and a certification, then I could sell.

But then they go get all those things, they spend all of their time getting all of those things and they still don’t make money. And then when they get that and they still don’t make the money, they’re like, oh, actually there’s a right offer and there’s a right price and there’s right people and there’s a right way to say it, and now that’s what I have to find.

I have to keep adjusting those things until I land on the right formula where the clients are finally going to just start buying. And so that’s what I have to find and that’s what I have to spend my time on instead of there is a way to be, a way to feel, and none of the other stuff is as important. It really doesn’t even matter.

And here’s how we know. Remember, there were times I went in as the best sales agent in the industry, sold a product. I had sold thousands of times and everything was working with negative selling intangibles in my mind and not made money. People can smell the desperation to be liked or for them to honor your authority. When you need for them to play along, to buy, to fulfill you in any way.

To make your show go right, your consult go the way it’s supposed to go. Sometimes people in 2K, they’re like, I wasn’t able to do the five steps exactly the way that we were supposed to do it because this person kept doing this, this, and this. Of course, they’re human beings, they never act the way they’re supposed to act. It’s the real world. It’s the real simulation here. So if you need them to do anything, they’re going to smell it. They’re going to feel it. It’s going to turn them off.

So to recap simply, there is the thing and then the life, the energy behind the thing. The selling tangible is the thing, the life behind the thing is the intangible. Selling tangibles are just circumstances. Selling intangibles are presentations of the circumstance based on your belief in it and yourself and your connection to the person.

Positive spelling intangibles allow you to connect and have space to focus on others. Negative selling intangibles don’t allow you to connect and have space for others. In 2K, we really break that down. The most common negative selling intangibles, while we also build positive ones so that you can bring confident belief to the table, but you can also create it through experience and practice with the product and your offer. We do so many exercises in 2K to direct your brain this way.

You’ll write out 20 different ways to explain what a coach is and then go practice saying all of them. You can create positive intangibles by having a tangible sales process that you can follow, so that you can do the same thing every single time and never change that. So once you get that down, your brain is freed up to focus on your clients.

There’s a billion sales processes out there. Really, it just matters that you commit to one so that you never have to think about it again, so that you can focus on your client. Listen, I will say though, I do feel like my sales process is built so strongly on the foundation of understanding selling intangibles for the salesperson and the client, and knowing what has to happen to make that connection happen and that sale happen.

That’s the best type of process that’s really built on a deep understanding of the psychology of selling. So once I had the seven fundamentals down, my process is a five-step process. In pitching they taught us a seven fundamental process with doing live shows. And once I had those seven fundamentals down, and the script and the motions, and I had practiced doing that with real life people, once all of that was working like a machine, then I got really good at selling.

I had all that energy freed up to focus on turning the client from skeptical to sold. So a lot of you stop because you think the experience of just learning the words of what to say and learning how to do a consult in front of real people or on a call with a real person feels so bad, your failure tolerance is so little that you make the learning process mean something about you and how you can’t do it and your future capabilities of success.

You think the first person that you get on the phone with should be a yes, that you shouldn’t have to do 20 no’s on consults before yes’s. But do you know how many zero shows I did in my pitching career? Not just while I was learning. Even after I was the best, a lot, okay? Thousands probably. I don’t even know, but a lot.

I had entire days, I had entire weeks. There were sometimes stores where I was like, listen, I’ve had five days, I haven’t sold shit, I got to close this town and get out of here. Even if it’s me, me isn’t changing. Got to go. I had a lot of bad days. But especially when I was learning.

Okay, I meant that to be the end, but actually, I’ll tell you one more story. So if you have time, I’ll tell you one more story. I got headhunted by another pitching company when I was at the top of my game, five years in. The best. This company had pulled over a ton of our people because my first company was known for their training programs and having the best agents in the entire industry.

There were like, tons of different pitching companies with different chains and different products. But ours was known, my original company was known as the best at training. And so everyone they pulled over to this new company, everyone they pulled over told the CEO, you’ve got to get Stacey. You want to make money, you got to get Stacey.

So by the time we talked, I was a legend to him. He was like, who is this Stacey that everybody keeps telling me I have to have? And he was pretty much willing to do anything to get me.

So I went to Florida and I met the owner of the company and they wined and dined me, and they offered me a much bigger position. Like an actual management training position. And then I went to Chicago to train and see if I liked the environment and I could handle Walmart.

I was very upfront with them that I didn’t know if I could be in Walmart eight hours a day. So I threw up some shows in a Chicago Walmart and sold some of their product. And then I officially joined their company and I trained and stayed in Chicago for a couple weeks and trained, and then they sent me back to Kentucky.

I get back to Kentucky and I do so bad, I did so bad that they had to send another trainer to retrain me again. And I mean, here I was, this legend of a salesperson in the pitching industry with so much hype, just bombing in Walmart in Kentucky. Bombing. It was bad. My head was a mess trying to learn their way of doing things.

I mean, it was bad. They literally pulled someone out of the field, flew them down to me to train me again for two weeks. They had never done that before. I did so bad. They gave the free gift at the end of the show, so you could tell people they’re getting a free gift, but then you would have to watch the entire show to get the free gift.

And so you had to really sell people to stay. I was used to giving the free gift at the beginning and then whoever wanted to stay after, it was groovy. But I had delivered my promise from the announcement. And they had these rinky dink booths. I mean, rinky dink. Have you heard that term? Rinky dink booths. They were just folding tables with orange cloths over them.

And they did their ending so different and I’m used to doing the same process for five years. Giving the gift out at the beginning, having this huge beautiful stage with lights and cameras, and it literally looked like an actual QVC production. And I was bombing.

I was like, this is not working, no one’s going to buy this stuff. I pretty much bombed I will say every new product I learned for at least two weeks. To get it proficient enough to pay attention to the audience in front of me and focus on them instead of what I’m supposed to say and do.

And so that would happen – that was common. At least two weeks to understand something and getting it. But this specific scenario was two solid months of me not getting it. And the CEO was probably like, this girl’s the best? What’s happening here?

So I’m telling you this story because you have to make it past the not getting the words and the things you’re supposed to do and the process itself, you have to make it past that to the part where you get it. Where you get the sales process. You get what you’re supposed to be saying and doing on the phone. You understand how you’re supposed to be coaching the client, how to overcome objections.

Then once you get it and you understand how it’s supposed to flow and it makes sense, then you get to go to work at actually being better at selling and coaching and being present for the client. Nothing has gone wrong while this is happening. When you’re in the learning process, your intangibles will automatically be thrown off, even if you’re amazing. It’s a given.

This is also why we have joked about this in 200K this year, that so many of my students that are making 500K and 600K and a million have learned to sell programs, like, low-priced programs for the first time ever. They’re used to selling high-end coaching and they’re bombing at it because they’re selling something different. They haven’t figured out the rhythm yet.

They haven’t figured out the rhythm enough to pay attention to their people engaging with that product, in that sales process. But nothing has gone wrong. It took me an entire year to learn how to sell a 2K product, having come from selling $40,000 coaching packages.

Took me a year to figure out how to sell a $2000 one because it was a completely different thing, to go from one-one-one coaching to group. I’m going from one-on-one to group to a program. Completely different. You will bomb in the beginning because your selling intangibles will be thrown off because you don’t know what you’re doing.

But also, I want to say this; while you are learning, you will also fuck up the entire sales process and do a terrible job. But if you’re in service and connected to the person, they will still buy if your positive intangibles are there.

Okay, do you have time for one more story? I have another good one. We can full circle it all the way around to Mr. Todd Kimsey. Ready? If you have time, stick around. I seriously never thought I would live this down. I might have even told you this story before.

But when I was training, we were selling – for the very first time in Atlanta, 24-years-old, we’re selling mops in a BJ’s Membership in Atlanta, Georgia. And I go up to do my first show, and remember, I was fully memorized. I knew my handling better than anyone in the training group. I had practiced 1000 times before I went up in front of an audience.

And I go up to this first show, it’s Christmas time, remember, and there’s a huge crowd. And in my mind – I’m 24, there’s 30 eyeballs just staring at me while I’m in the middle of a retail chain during a busy shopping hour and I’m standing on this booth looking down at all of them.

And I get up there and lose all of the saliva in my mouth. All of it gone. Todd made fun of me about this for years. I never lived it down. He would smack his lips together like that and try and swallow real hard. I don’t know if you can hear that, but swallow really hard and make fun of me all of the time. Any time he was around me he would smack his lips together and make fun of me.

So apparently, I did that though the entire show. I probably had white shit on the side of my mouth. You know when you get really dehydrated? Imagine doing a 20-minute show and your mouth is so dry you can’t even swallow. He had to leave the show he was laughing so hard at me.

But here’s what happened. I couldn’t swallow and I had to keep trying to wet my mouth but nothing was happening. But here’s what happened. I was connected, I was present, even though I was scared and I had positive selling intangibles. My energy affected the crowd.

They expected newbies to sell zero on the first show. Your goal was just to survive and not die from fear. I’m not joking. They’d be like, that’s your only goal is to get up there and not die and not run away. They literally had people that would run from the show. They had one girl that got up there and she looked at the crowd and she acted like she pressed an elevator button and then slowly just let her legs collapse until she was hiding behind the booth, like she had gone down an elevator.

People freaked out on these experiences. So my first show, dry mouth and all, I sold 14. The average was to sell five. Five mops. If you could sell five mops, that was what they wanted seasoned agents to do at least per show. I sold 14. My selling was sloppy as hell, I had no saliva in my mouth, but my service was on point.

So keep that in mind. People still make money their first consult out of the game. You can still make money even if you mess all of the process up. You can still make money if you fumble everything around. It just matters what’s happening in your mind and how you’re feeling when you’re there.

Okay, the end, y’all. First podcast of the year. I really hope you enjoy and if you want to master this and this made sense for you, or it didn’t and you’re like, I really need to learn this, join 2K for 2K. We literally walk you through all five of the steps, every module. There’s like, 40 modules now that I added the new step.

Every single one, every worksheet gets you to this point. Gets you through focusing on other people and influence it, influence them and create comfort for them to be able to get help and to buy. The new site, the new modules, the new workbook, everything is fabulous. We’d love to have you. Alright, I’ll see you next week.

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Sterling: Hi, I’m Sterling Jay. I’m a life coach and I help Catholic moms to launch and grow business. And this is my 2K story. So, I am not a credentialed coach. I discovered life coaching and I thought, “That sounds like the most fantastic job in the world.” And I signed up for 2K for 2K because I really believed that Stacey could help me sell coaching.

And it probably took me a week to get through everything. Probably only two or three days to watch everything. But then I went through the workbooks a few times and I had a little bit more money drama in my mind than I thought. So, I had to do some work to shift those beliefs.

And then, a week later, I sent out an email to my email list and I said, “I am a life coach.” And I asked if anybody wanted to get on the phone with me. And I had three people say yes. And all three of them were nos. And then the fourth person that popped on was a yes.

And my package was $2000 for 12 sessions.  So, I made my money back 11 days after I signed up. So, a little under two weeks, I made my money back. And then, at the end of a month, so a month after I signed up, I had had 13 discovery calls and three people had said yes. So that month I made $6000. And I am still inside of two months. I gave myself two months to make $10,000.

I decided that if I was going to invest in this program, I didn’t just want to make my money back. I wanted to make $10,000 within two months. I have made $8000. I have one week to go and I’m very confident that I will get one more client and I will have made $10,000 in the two months after signing up for 2K for 2K.

So, here are the three things I just want to share with coaches either who have signed up or who are thinking about signing up. One is you don’t need to have drama about what your price is. Stacey just made me believe that I could set the price and that if I believed in the price, my clients would believe in the price.

And since I paid $2000 for 2K, I was like, that sounds like a good number. I’m going to be a $2000 coach. And I just decided that, that I believed that it was worth it. And so, when I talked to them about it, they believed it was worth it.

And I also believed that all of my clients would pay in full. It just never entered my mind because of what Stacey taught me that I had to take payments. So, I just decided from the beginning, no certification, that’s who I was going to be.

The second thing that I would say is that you need to love discovery calls. Because selling is coaching and coaching is selling. And so, I think before Stacey I thought, “Well, I need to be good enough at sales so that I can get to do coaching.”

And she really made me believe that if I wanted to be a master coach, I want to be so good at coaching, I had to be so good at sales because sales is coaching and coaching is selling. And that really blew my mind and it made me think about that process so differently. And now, it’s my favorite part.

And I go into my calls either believing that the hour I’m going to spend with someone is going to be one of the most powerful hours of their life, even if they don’t choose to work with me. And I just think about them the entire time. Like, if this is the only hour, what can I give them?

And then, I also am wondering, is this one of my 10 clients? Because I just believe that I’m going to be a fully booked coach with 10 clients. And so, when I hop on a call, I just wonder, is she one of my 10?

But it completely removes the pressure off the call so it’s just fun. And my clients and the people who do discovery calls with me can just feel that energy. And I love it. And I’m just so grateful to Stacey for teaching me that the sales process could be like that.

And the last thing I want to share is that you can just decide how much money you want to get back from making this investment. And then, you can just do it.

So, I just decided that I was going to put in two and I was going to get out 10 and I was going to be this story and it was going to be fantastic. And that’s exactly what happened.

So, some of you, I think, are deciding whether to invest and you’re like, “Okay, but if I put $2000 in, I really want to make $2000 back,” shoot higher if that’s what you need. Decide you’re going to put in two and you’re going to get 10 back, and then it’s done.

And if you believe that, that’s exactly what’s going to happen. And if you do the work that Stacey says, you’re going to have exactly the results that she says. And it’s amazing.

So, I love 2K. It made me a better coach. It made me better at sales. And now I know, those things are the same thing. You should sign up. It’s wonderful.

Hey, if you’re ready to make money as a life coach, I want to invite you to join my 2k for 2k program where you’re going to make your first $2,000 the hardest part using my simple 5 step formula for getting consults and closing new clients. Just head over to www.staceyboehman.com/2kfor2k. We’ll see you inside.