Sales Shaming (Selling in a Crisis Part 8)

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 another bonus daily podcast on selling in a crisis. Today we’re going to talk about sales shaming. There’s been some of that going on. I’m hearing reports of my students getting direct messages, getting comments from friends and family, comments on their Facebook posts. If you’re not getting these, fantastic, but if you are this episode is for you.

Some of the comments that have been coming back to me that I’m hearing about are comments like, “Now isn’t the time for selling. Come on, really? You’re going to sell in a pandemic? Are you sure?” Another one is, “You’re taking advantage of people,” or you having the thought, “I’m taking advantage of people if I sell during a crisis.” Or the thought that help should be free. “You know if you really want to help right now you should just be offering your services for free.”

Here’s what I want to offer, no matter what flavor of those statements or other statements that you are thinking, shame is an action that someone else takes and you get to decide what you want to think about it. That’s number one. It’s an action someone else takes, you get to decide how you want to think about it.

Shame is also an action you take against yourself. Okay? So, if any of those versions of the sentences I just gave you, “Now isn’t the time for selling,” and, “You’re taking advantage of people,” and, “You should just be giving thing away for free,” whether that’s you shaming yourself or someone else taking the action of shaming either way you get to decide if you want to adopt somebody else’s thinking or you want to keep thinking what you are thinking.

So, whatever anyone else thinks and says to you, the thought that pops in your head is an optional sentence. When you think, “Oh, they’re right.” That, too, is an optional thought to think. So, that’s really the first step when dealing with shame around selling, but really they’re just thoughts that you’ve never questioned, that you continue to think, or that you adopt from someone else and you agree that they’re right, but just know that if it feels bad it’s the indicator to maybe look at it and decide if you want to think differently about it you don’t have to take on somebody else’s shame.

That’s their action, but you don’t have to take that on as your thought and you don’t have to continue to think thoughts that make you feel shameful. So, that’s the first thing when it comes to sales shaming. Here is what I do when this happens. When someone else says something to me and I feel, I call it “triggered,” when I feel triggered here is what I do. I use the opinions that trigger me to get really clear on what I stand for and what I believe and what I want to believe and then I go teach that to other people.

So, I have some questions that I use to help explore a trigger that I might have based on someone else’s action, right? They don’t make me feel anything, no one else’s action can ever make you feel a certain way, but if you already have that belief inside of you or that fear inside of you it will create shame inside of you. That’s what I mean by the trigger. Something someone has done has triggered an emotion inside of me that was already there. It was just their action becomes my circumstance and I react to it, but only because I already have that belief and that fear inside of me.

So, one of the questions that I ask myself is, “Who are my clients? Who are the people that I’m trying to reach when I’m marketing?” Because the people who shame you for selling, those are not your people. They’re not your people. I want you to remember, it’s impossible to find your people who want your offer without finding the people who don’t. You’re going to find those people while you’re also finding people who do want what you have to offer.

So, when someone doesn’t want what I have to offer and has an opinion about what I have to offer I want to remind myself of who I’m really looking for. Who are my clients? So, we probably still actually have this Facebook running of a photo of me and a couple of other of my colleagues on a private plane, we were on our way to our final master coach training session and our coach let us fly in a private plane with her. It was just the most luxurious, fun experience.

So, we took a photo and my ads person thought it would just be a great idea to put that out there and that it would be really inspiring. That’s what our thought was, it would be really inspiring. I thought, “I agree.” We see men in private planes all the time, we don’t ever see women in private planes. Let’s put that out there that women can build wealth. I’m really into that idea and that concept. But it’s gotten a lot of hate. A lot of shaming has happened.

A lot of people have decided to take the action of shaming on that ad. So, I actually used this to teach my students on this idea of getting really clear on what you stand for and what you believe for and then teaching that. So, I actually sent an email out and posted this on Instagram. I talked about me running this ad and that it gets a lot of hate.

Here’s what I said to my students. “Why does it get a lot of hate? Because of people’s thoughts about money. Here’s what one person had to say. ‘It amazes me that anyone on the Internet can just sign up to be a life coach, beauty coach, health coach, financial coach, and have absolutely zero background. People need to proceed with caution. I give you kudos to what you’ve accomplished, but I would think a life coach would promote living a life of peace, contentment, integrity, and of course, responsible financial security. So, how is it reeling women in promoting materialistic wealth a positive?’”

So, then I went on to tell my audience that the following was my response and I’m going to read it to you, but this response fired me up and made my love my clients fiercely, and reconfirmed for me who I am in the world unapologetically. So, I said, “Here is your thought process. Materialistic wealth equals bad and if you have money it also means you do not have contentment, a life of peace, and integrity. These are your thoughts.

“Understandably it would be bad to see this photo in this ad, but many see it and are inspired because they do not think that wealth means you have no integrity. They think it means quite the opposite. I think it means quite the opposite. Money comes from value. To make money as a life coach you have to give a ton of it. Because I show up with integrity and give value all the time, I have one client making her first million this year, five making $200,000 and countless others making six figures.

“Their clients are losing weight they have tried their whole life to lose, getting back their power over diabetes, saving their marriages, starting businesses, reconnecting with themselves, dealing with a parent who’s been diagnosed with autism, healing from suicide, healing from losing their spouses, healing their hearts after heartbreak, finding the loves of their lives, recovering from burnout and so much more.

“My clients are helping corporate women get promoted into leadership positions, helping people become financial independent and free from debt, helping people fight sugar, flour, and alcohol addiction, helping people feel happier in the lives they already have and helping life coaches make money and reach more people to help.

“My clients also don’t think money makes them less loving, caring, intentional with their time or causes them to lose their integrity. They love money. They know money is wonderful and want more of it. They want a vacation all over the world. They love to buy expensive things and they love to sell expensive things. These are my clients. It’s okay if you’re not one of them.”

I then went on to say, “Let the haters hate. They can’t help themselves. It’s just their model. It doesn’t have to be yours.” Then I said, “Now, let’s go make an F-ton of money.” Okay, so that’s who my clients are. I sat down. I didn’t just write that post off the cuff. I didn’t just respond to this person and argue with them. I sat down for a solid hour and asked myself questions, picked apart her thoughts and her belief system.

Then I asked what mine was. Then I asked who my clients were and I articulated that response in the truest truth for me and I used it to really get very clear on who I’m marketing to and I think from that moment on my copy – I think that was the turning point for my copy. Everyone ever since then has been saying, “Oh my gosh, everything you write, it’s so good.”

But it really just came from helping – taking the time to get super clear for me on who I was in the world and who my clients were in response to this person and their comment on my social media, on my Facebook at.

Another question I ask myself is, “What is my responsibility to my students, my clients’ money?” It’s a really interesting question. Here’s what I came up with for me. Here is my responsibility. I take someone paying me $2,000 or $25,000 or any amount of dollars very seriously. I know that this is a big investment for them and I’m going to commit to provide more value than they could ever expect.

I will be responsible for overdelivering. I will work tirelessly to solve their problem faster and simpler every single day. I will continuously create and never stop even though some of my clients only pay me once, I will keep delivering them value. I will also coach hard and hold nothing back. I will love my clients fiercely. I will take responsibility for them getting results. I will teach them to have responsibility over their results. I will do everything in my power to give them everything they need to succeed.

I will continuously improve my program year after year. My responsibility is simply the value I give in exchange for their money and it will be great. It is not my responsibility to treat clients differently. It makes no difference if the money was purchased through credit or with savings or walk around money. By the way, that’s my favorite term ever, walk around money or WAM. I learned that from one of my friends and colleagues, she said it so casually and I was like, wait a minute, that is the greatest term ever for discretionary money. Just if you have an abundance of money and you just have a discretionary amount that you can spend whatever, walk around money, yo! It’s so good. It’s such a good term, I love it!

So, it makes no difference whether someone pays me with their WAM, their credit, or their savings, with their retirement fund, their paid time off, it makes no difference how they come up with the money it’s my responsibility to treat my clients the same. These are such powerful questions to ask yourself. I also ask myself, “What’s my responsibility with my money?” Here’s my answer.

I have no responsibility with my money other than to use it and have it. Once it’s mine, it’s mine. I personally love buying fewer, nicer things. I like to buy really expensive things and take care of them. I only let myself invest in things I will go all in on. I will also use my money to make me more comfortable, to take care of my family, and to blow my mind. I will also use it to always pick up the tab and over-tip to service professionals. I will use it to give it to causes I personally feel called to help. I will use it to always become the next version of me and to buy myself more time whenever possible.

I will also use it to blow my clients’ minds. For them to have an incredible, user-friendly experience. I know my money and how I spend it is a reflection of my thinking and the results I want most. It is my responsibility to me to use it to travel as much as possible. What? So good. I feel really good about my answers.

I want you to answer that for you. What’s your responsibility once a client has paid you with that money for you? With your money? Once they’ve paid you, the exchange has been made, it is your money, what’s your responsibility with that?

Another one is, what do I believe about my value? Here’s what I believe, that’s it’s 100 times greater than the money my students pay. It changes like. 2K for 2K will create millions of dollars for coaches. It will change their family’s lives permanently and that is just the beginning. Another few questions, I’m not going to give you all of my answers here just for the time that we have on the podcasts, but here are a few other questions I like to ask myself.

What is my intention here? If someone tells me I have bad intentions as a form of shaming me, I just ask myself, “What is my intention here?” I get really clear on it. Do I love my reasons for doing what I’m doing? And I get really clear on that. Do I have my own back? Am I loving myself in this moment? Am I taking care of myself and what does that look like?

I recently asked myself this about something completely different is what would it look like to have my own back here? The situation was I had made a decision and I was sitting in feeling a lot of shame. So, I said, “Do I have my own back here and what would that look like?” The answer, to me, is if I actually had my own back, once I made the decision, I wouldn’t shame myself about having made the decision. I also wouldn’t second-guess myself or doubt myself and I wouldn’t discredit how I was feeling and why I did what I did.

I would totally own what I did, why I did it, and that I would do it again in a second and here’s why. Such a powerful question to ask yourself, is do I have my own back and what would that look like in this moment for me to have it?

Another question that’s really interesting because I see a lot of people that want to shame coaches for having high prices. This happened for one of my students in my 200K mastermind, she had a really great consult someone, at the end she told her prices and then the person lost their mind and then went and wrote – which we had a good laugh about this, wrote a really negative Yelp review. I was like, “For sure, my ideal people are not reading Yelp reviews.” It’s not a problem at all for me. You can write all the negative Yelp reviews you’d like.

But she had posted a lot of things that she was being very scandalous and she had broken her trust and she said all these things about her because her prices were so high and she had asked her like, “Who do you think you are? And what do you think allows you to charge these higher prices?” My client had said, “How would you have handled this? What would you say to someone when they say, ‘What makes that right?’” I said that I would have just responded simply because that’s what people pay me and that’s the truth. It’s not even being snarky, it’s just the truth.

I get to charge this because this is what people pay me. So, one of the things I had posed to her and to the group was to think about is it wrong to charge higher prices? Why or why not? So good. I’m going to do an entire episode on why paying matters, but this is something you want to think about. Everything that someone challenges you on in the form of shaming is such an opportunity for you to get super clear on your philosophy and your beliefs and why you’re doing what you’re doing, who you’re doing it for, and to make sure you’re having your own back.

So, remember, shame always points a finger to limiting beliefs and where you aren’t having your own back. So, answering these questions is just a call to have your own back and to get good at having it.

Here’s something else that I like to do. I like to find turnaround statements for all of the triggering statements. So, if the statement is, “Now isn’t the time for selling,” I might say, “Now is the time for selling and here’s why.” Then I would answer that.

If someone says, “You’re taking advantage of people.” I would say, “I’m serving people and here’s how.” If someone says, “Help should be free.” I’m going to say, “Help shouldn’t be free and here’s why.” Again, I’m going to get very clear on my answers. Now, I’ve given you some of mine, but I’ve intentionally also not given you all of mine because I want you to ask yourself these questions. I want you to get really clear on the answers to these questions for you without polling anyone else.

So, if you’re in 2K you can totally start a chain on this and we can find out what everybody’s thoughts are. I was going to tell you, you couldn’t, but you can. Because we do things like that all the time, but if you do here’s what I want to offer. Any time you are like I’m going to poll the 2K students or I’m going to poll my Facebook audience if you’re not in 2K, although if you’re not in 2K you should definitely get in 2K for these types of conversations specifically. But if you’re in 2K before you start a conversation thread to find out what everybody else’s answers are, for any topic whether it’s this one or anything else ever take the time, at least 30 minutes to sit down and answer that question deeply and explore it for yourself.

If you don’t, if you go straight to the page to find out what everybody else is thinking, what their thoughts are, you miss the opportunity to find your own raw thoughts unfiltered. You miss the opportunity to see how much knowledge and insight you have inside of you. Right? You’ll never know what’s in there because once your thoughts are influenced by somebody else their thoughts are in your brain, you can’t unthink them.

So, before you start thinking somebody else’s thoughts about the answer to these questions make sure you’ve spent a lot of time thinking about your own thoughts and your own answer to this question. Then when you ask what other people’s thoughts are you can go through and see if there’s anything you want to add to yours but at least now you have your answer and then everything else is just bonus instead of delegating responsibility for these answers to other people and not having really thought it through on your own.

So, I didn’t ask anybody the answer to these questions when I came up with my own. I just sat down and I searched my own brain for the thoughts I already had because if I already have them, I already believe them. It’s a lot harder to try to believe a new thought that somebody else gives you, it’s so much easier to believe the thought that you give you. What? So good!

All right, here are some final things to know, shame is a form of control over ourselves and others. We do it from fear. So, any time you are feeling shame ask yourself what you’re trying to control? What outcome are you hoping to avoid by shaming yourself? What outcome do you think happened and how do you think shaming yourself is managing that outcome?

That was something I asked myself recently this week when I was shaming myself for having made a decision I’m like, “What’s the point of this? What am I hoping to have happen here?” Notice when other people are trying to shame you, they’re also just experiencing fear and you get to decide whether you’re available for the shame from yourself and from other people. I always say to myself, “I’m not available for shame today.”

That’s a great thought that I like to have to keep me out of it. It doesn’t always keep me out of it, but sometimes it does. I once had someone, when I was pitching, when we were doing slicers we would slice up like a ton of vegetables during this demo and it would just be covering the stage when we’re done. Then we would swipe it into a trash can that was lined with a trash bag and then reset and do the whole show again.

I sold a lot of slicers in Walmart. The thing that people don’t know about Walmart although I do think is a little bit irrelevant for the argument because it really doesn’t matter, like you can get to think however you want about it, but what people don’t know about Walmart is they compost. So, any vegetable that doesn’t get used they compost it. So, we would put it in a separate trash can, we weren’t allowed to throw any other trash with it because we would go and compost it every day. We had to dump it from the bag into the composter.

So, people don’t know that but that’s not just throwing vegetables away. Some people would come and get permission from Walmart managers to take it to feed their livestock. That happens a lot. But anyways, I’m clearing it off into the trash can and this guy comes up to me and he turns his face up, like his whole nose and he makes like he was smelling a fart. That’s what his face looked like and he said, “You’re going to throw all of those vegetables away? That’s so wasteful.”

Then I looked at him and I said, “Don’t shame me. I’m not available for it.” I just went right back to putting the vegetables in the trash can and spraying the counter down with Lysol. When people throw it at you, you can just throw it right back. You don’t have to keep it at all.

But I also knew after that guy walked away that he was just afraid for the vegetables. That’s all. Just afraid for the vegetables. That’s a valid fear to have. To be fearful of waste, that’s fine. You get to keep that if you want. You get to be outraged, but I don’t have to be outraged at your outraged. Such a good thought to think. You don’t have to be outraged at other people’s outrage even if it seems kind of valid, you just get to not be open to it.

The other thing to think about if you remember the episode of the podcast where we talked about the value bank? That money is created through value? The proportion of value to money always has to be higher. It’s just the way the world works. So, if you haven’t made money yet in your business, it’s just because the proportion of value isn’t higher than the money you want to make yet. It will be. You have to work on becoming more and more valuable in your business.

But the proportion always has to be higher than the money you make. It’s so fascinating, but my programs are the best example. My clients have made more money as a total in 2K than I’ve ever made from it and my students in 200K I do almost a million-dollar lunch when I launch my 200K mastermind and those students make more money individually than I make on each person individually and as a collective they make more money, they generate and create more money that I do in that launch. That is always true. It has to be. The proportion of value to money always has to be higher.

So, if you are selling a lot of coaching, you must be giving a lot of value even to sell your first 2K a lot of you think, “I haven’t made that much money,” or, “I haven’t made any money so I must not be giving any value.” But it’s not true, you have to get an obscene amount of money especially in the beginning to make money in return.

It’s actually the opposite of what you think, right? I must not be valuable because people aren’t buying. No, no, no, no, it’s just that we always say 2K is the hardest part, it requires the most value upfront. It just does. It’s the hardest part. So, even if you haven’t made money and you’re not actively selling coaching as in the transaction isn’t happening and you’re not profiting from the value that you’re giving out you’re still a ton of it.

Until you make that first 2K you giving way more value than what you’re getting back. But the more you sell, the other thing to think about is the more people you help for free because of how much value you have to give ahead of time to get it back. So, now matter what people say, you have to know the truth that the more you sell during a crisis, the more value you give during a crisis. It’s so good.

The other thing that I think is that people love to shame salespeople always, not just in a crisis, but always until they want to buy something. Think about if you were a toilet paper salesman right now, people would love you! They’d be like give me all the toilet Mr. Toilet Paper Man! They would not be shaming you for making offers of having toilet paper. So everybody loves to shame a salesperson until they want to buy that thing.

Okay, and the final thing I want to share with you to think about is a thought that my coach, Brooke, gave to me and I loved it so much. She said, “People who complain about selling may have the luxury of not selling right now, but they for sure work for someone who has to sell. They should be careful what they wish for.” What? This was so good!

It’s just because they have a luxury that not everybody else has. Every job on the market is a result of someone selling something, always. So, again, if we want to keep the economy strong, we have to sell everything we can and keep selling during this time so that we can keep workers working. Selling keeps workers working.

Having someone else being the one who sells so that you can keep working, that is definitely a luxury. I also love thinking that selling itself is a luxury, especially during this time of having something to sell virtually and a way to make money independently, that is a luxury. That’s how it feels to me.

I have the luxury of making money any day that I put my mind to it, so no, I’m not going to let you shame me for that I luxury that I understand is a luxury and I appreciate deeply and think of as a honor, no, sir or ma’am. I’m going to keep on selling. All right, I hope this was helpful. I’ll see you on the next episode.

Hey, if you are 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, and then $200,000 using my proven formula. It’s risk-free. You either make your 2K or I give you your 2K back. Just head over to www.staceyboehman.com/2kfor2k. We’ll see you inside.