Ep #297: MVP: Solving for “Needing to Think About It”

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, today I’m going to talk to you about what to do or how to think about when you’re on a consult and someone says they need to think about it. I’m also going to talk to you about what happens when you think that that’s a good idea. What it means to think about it. I’m going to give you an alternative viewpoint that I coached one of my students in my 25k group on. And this is something we spend a lot of time talking about in 2k.

I just gave an alternative viewpoint. We talked about it. I thought everyone on the podcast needs to hear my thoughts about this, whether you want to adopt them or not. Hearing this episode may change everything for you and also your clients and increase the value of your consults whether people say yes or no whether they coach with you or not. And really dramatically shift if a client tells you they need to think about it and you try to coach them and they get defensive, I’m going to change all of that for you and I’m going to talk to you about decision protocols.

So this is going to be a value packed podcast. I just have to tell you all really quick though before we dive in. Hook you in then go off the rails for a second. I’m so excited. I’m going to Italy. I leave tomorrow. I’m taking my whole family and my nanny for two weeks to Lake Como and to Tuscany to a winery, spa place outside of Florence, it’s insane. I’m so excited. It’s a 300 acre estate. We’re going to Florence and then we’re ending our trip in Portofino. I could not be more excited.

I just have to tell you that. I had to get it out of my system. I’m so excited. I will do my best, and all of my clients have been saying, “Please, please, please update your stories and show us all of the things.” I will do my best. Sometimes I ghost a little bit on vacations. But if you follow me @staceyboehman, I will do my very best to post some incredible photos and videos of our experience. We’re staying at some of the nicest hotels I will have ever stayed at in my entire life.

And I’m just feeling very grateful to have this family time after having spent most of this year just working so hard. So I’m feeling very, very excited. Okay, so now that I’ve got that out of my system, I’ve been like that, when you’re about to go on spring break or summer vacation. It’s the tingles I have going through my body.

Alright, this is a conversation that happened in the 25 group. We were coaching on a consult where the person needed to think about it. And my client said, “Well, I need to think about it too. I really struggle on how to move forward from there because I do that in my own life, it seems like a good thing to do.” So we just had this really interesting conversation because most of the time in most circumstances I have the opposite experience.

And I’ve learned to be really, really good at being a person who doesn’t need to think about things. It’s made me an excellent decision maker. It has made me move very quickly through life and helped me get to know myself very, very well. So here’s what I want to say before we dive in. There are some people who do need to think about it. So I am not going to argue with you or argue against the idea that people don’t need to think about things or that they’re wrong if they tell you they need to think about things.

There are people who will say, “I need to think about it.” And what I am not suggesting is you say, “That’s the wrong thing, you’re doing it wrong.” But what I want to offer, what I’m going to talk you through is that developing a think about it or a decision plan or protocol could be extremely valuable. Have you ever said, “I need to think about it”, and then followed that up with, “What’s my think about it plan going to be? What’s my decision protocol? What’s the protocol I use to decide? What’s the plan I’m going to use, the strategy I’m going to use to make this decision?”

Think about that for just a second, do you ever actually do that? Or do you and the people you speak to say, “I need to think about it”, and what you need to do is just spend time thinking all the thoughts that you have about the decision and just repeating those in your head and weighing which thoughts might be more true or not? It’s a really interesting thing to think about.

I think that most humans, when they say they need to think about it, what they actually are saying is, I need to spend time either not thinking about it and delaying a decision. I just want to delay it to hopefully feel better about it. Or I’m going to spend time repeating the thoughts that I have about it over and over and over in my head and trying to find all of the thoughts I have about it in my head to try to somehow then decipher an answer. And I think this is where coaches come in.

This is the power of life coaching. At the core of what we do is we help people navigate their brain to make decisions towards the life they want. That’s what we do, you all. That’s why I love talking people through objections, it has nothing to do with convincing them, it has nothing to do with telling them they’re wrong, it has nothing to do with arguing with people. I love helping people figure out their criteria for decision making.

I think that’s what we do as coaches. And it feels like the best opportunity to get to exercise the magic of what we do is not convincing, holding space to investigate someone’s brain and someone’s decision making process. And help them develop criteria that allows them to powerfully move forward in an intentional way that they want. This is exciting. Now, I’ve also spent a lot of time doing this for me because as a CEO I have to make lots of decisions every single day.

I have to make a lot of decisions in my own personal life every single day. And the more, we actually can get decision fatigue and bog ourselves down with decisions. So I’ve gotten really, really good at creating decision protocols over and over and over and over for myself that I just know how to make decisions very quickly and effectively all of the time now. So I don’t have lots of decisions that are open waiting for me to decide on them, weighing me down and I get more done in my day and in my life.

So one of the things that I want you to consider is that there are people who lack proper thinking about it protocols or thinking about it plans. And then there are also people who use thinking about it as a way to buffer against and avoid or prolong making decisions and taking action. And either way, I think that we can help both groups of people on consults and in our selling as the magic of what we do as life coaches. This is fun, this is exciting, just try it on.

So when I talked to my student, one of the things that I presented to her was the idea that being someone as a self-concept, you just are someone who doesn’t need to think about it. How that could actually bring value to your life. Because one of her thoughts was, it’s valuable to think about it. She was agreeing with her client, it’s valuable to spend time thinking about things. And I think that when people think this, they’re thinking they’re being careful, they’re thinking they’re being thoughtful, contemplative, that they’re taking it seriously.

And I just want to offer that that could be true. But I’m going to give you a powerful argument for the opposite. What is the value of being someone who doesn’t need to think about it? So this has been my experience as I have worked to become someone in my life and business who doesn’t need to think about it, that is who I am as a person.

So the first set of value that has been brought to my life by being someone who doesn’t need to think about it is I know myself very well because I now know the order of my priorities in every area of my life. I know what I like, truly. I think it’s a very few people who actually truly know what they actually like versus what society or Instagram or Facebook or TikTok shows us we should like. So I’m going to give you an example of that.

Instagram will show you the coolest, hippest, sceniest hotels and restaurants with the most instagrammable lobbies and spaces. I don’t like those hotels. Every single time I stay at them I have a horrible time. What I really love is great customer service, great beds, great views and healthy food.

When I know this, if I’m making a decision quickly on a hotel, I’m going to immediately search, five star luxury hotels. And I’m going to immediately see if they have a Four Seasons, a Ritz or a Saint Regis available and probably Four Seasons, Saint Regis, Ritz in that order. I prefer Four Seasons or the Saint Regis or if they have an Aman, the very top of the gold standard, then that’s probably going to be where we stay.

And when I look at reviews, let’s just say they don’t have any of those hotels in that area. I’m going to Italy. So we’re staying in Portofino and Portofino doesn’t have any of those hotels or Lake Como didn’t have any of those hotels. They have a Mandarin Oriental which is also a really great hotel. I just haven’t stayed there as many times, but I gravitated right towards immediately, I’ve stayed at this. I know that they have great customer service. I know that they have good beds. I know they typically have great views and they always have healthy food.

So it was easy to make a decision to stay at that hotel. In Portofino, no hotels that are US chains that I recognize. So I started looking at who is known for great service, great beds, great views, healthy food. It became an easy choice, especially when I like to stay in luxury places. There were very few hotels to compare. It’s very easy to make that decision.

So I’m able to do that in a lot of areas of my life just because every time I have to go to make a decision and I make myself make that decision in the moment versus prolong it. I don’t give myself extraordinary amounts of time to think about it. What that requires of me is to actually break down the decision right then and there in the moment and find what’s the order of priorities for this decision, what’s most important to me in this decision. I also know how I make decisions.

The way that I prioritize what’s important in making this decision, for me it’s will it save me time? Is that time worth the money I will spend? Will I use the time it will save me in a productive or nurturing way or will the drama of spending the money create more stress than saves time? These are the things I think about. You will come up with your own organic questions or be able to navigate your clients’ organic questions that they need to answer to make a decision if you’re willing to talk them through making a decision now, not for you, but for them.

They don’t ever have to commit to anything. There’s a difference between making a decision and committing to that decision, which is maybe really important to think about. But when we actually are faced with a decision, if we’re willing to just sit down and say, “Okay, how am I going to make this decision? What’s my order of priorities? What do I like? What’s important to me about this decision? What do I need for it to be an easy yes?”

For me here’s what I know because I’ve done this so many times, making myself make the decision immediately in the moment to kind of force my brain to come up with the criteria to bring forth the things lacking to make the decision. So now I know what I need to be an easy yes right away. I need, if I’m dealing with a salesperson I need transparency. I need to know the drawbacks. I need to know how people are making money off of their offers, especially if it’s one of those offers where it seems like they’re making no money and it’s only upside for the person.

Like a lot of financial tools are sold, there’s only upside for the client and then I’m like, “But there has to be upside for you, so what’s that upside? How do you get the upside?” It’s not going to necessarily make me not want to make the decision, but if I know how you get your upside and it makes sense to me. It’s actually easier for me to then say yes. So I need transparency. I need to know how you’re getting the upside. I need to know the drawbacks. I need directness and I need efficiency.

I remember when we switched to, at one point. I don’t know, we opened years ago a banking account with Chase Bank. And the way they teach their, they call them relationship bankers, and the way that they teach them to build relationships  with their clients is spend 30 minutes of a meeting asking questions about family and just bullshitting conversation, basically. And for a CEO that runs an eight figure business, that is such a waste of my time.

So I like to walk into those situations and say, “Listen, I just want to offer, if you want to sell me today, the best way to do that is to be super direct and super efficient with my time, let’s not do any small talk. Let’s get straight down to business. I want to go straight through the facts, I want absolutely no fluff and the faster you can get me out of here, the happier I’m going to be.” So I’m also transparent and direct and efficient. So I know that that’s a value of mine.

So if I can find people who are willing to do that with me, then I actually value them more. I value their service more. And through that, what the value that that’s brought to my life is, it’s taught me how to teach people to show up for me so that I can be an easy yes. I don’t need them to just know how to do it naturally. Sometimes I’m like, “Okay, okay, because I know you’re trying to sell me. I’m just going to make your job a lot easier. Let me give you my criteria for making decisions. For being a yes right now, here’s what I need.”

So I know how to communicate what I need really, really well. I also am able because I make myself do this so often where I just decide in the moment so that I don’t prolong the thinking about it. And I don’t buffer over making decisions and taking action that I end up figuring out the thoughts holding me back from making the decisions.

I gave this example once on this podcast where I had a sweater sitting in my closet for a couple of weeks, which is really unusual. I follow this process that I learned from Shira Gill after she organized my closet, that once you buy something you immediately take the tags off and you put it in your closet. So you have nothing in your closet that doesn’t fit and you have nothing in your closet with tags still on it. And so this was something sitting in my closet with a tag still on it, which was very interesting for me.

And I was like, “Okay, what’s the deal? You love the sweater. Why don’t you want to take the tags off? What is making you hesitate?” And when I made myself actually sit and just make the decision right then and there, what I found was the thought, it’s supposed to be oversized, but maybe it’s too oversized for my small frame. And then I was like, “Oh.” I put it on, snapped the photo, sent it to my stylist and was like, “Is this too small for my frame? I know it’s supposed to be oversized.” That was it. And then I was able to make the decision.

I call those micro thoughts that get in our way. I have them all of the time. I think you have them all of the time. Everyone has them all of the time. So the better you can actually get at finding your own little micro thoughts or obstacle thoughts that are holding you back from your decisions in the moment of the decision, the better decision maker you will become. The more you will know about yourself. You will actually become very confident in making decisions because you’re clearer on your decisions.

And then you will get so good that you know how to communicate your values to salespeople. I will tell people, you know how you get a sales spiel? And you’re like, they’re telling you all of the things. And you’re like, “God, I don’t care about that. I don’t care about that at all.” That could not remotely be the reason I would make this decision. I will just stop them and I’ll say, “Listen, that’s lovely. I really appreciate all of this. Here is what I care about and why, talk to me about this.” And I save them time.

Listen, I promise you, this has never offended anyone. Every time I stop someone and say, “Listen, that’s lovely. I don’t actually care about that at all, this is what I care about.” Every time you can see relief on their face. Oh my gosh, my nose is so stuffy. I’m having the worst allergies today. No one judge me about my allergies. I’m having the worst allergies. The weather keeps, dropping and increasing like crazy and my nose just keeps getting so stuffy.

So I think every time I do this, it’s like a breath of fresh air. They’re happily surprised. They’re thankful. The people who are giving you the spiel. They don’t want to give you the spiel. It’s this rote memorization, just reciting things. They don’t want to do that. They want to get direct and to the point. They just haven’t been trained properly to do that, so I just help them out. Saves them time, saves my time.

A lot of times I also know how to address my own questions that I have or my own indecision or my own objections. I don’t even need people to do it. If I can just figure out what my questions are or what my sticking point is for the decision or what objection I’m having. Typically I love is to solve it myself so that I create this situation where I don’t think I’m dependent on other people. My decision’s not dependent on other people. My success isn’t dependent on other people.

Now, sometimes they have outside information and so I’m going to talk about that in a second, where I do need to get that outside information. But if you just allow yourself to figure out what’s your sticking point of your indecision, what your questions are and can you answer them yourself and what your objections are and can you answer those yourself? Can you walk through those? And remember, when you do this for yourself, you’re not trying to be a yes at everything. That’s what’s helped me know myself so much more.

I’m not pushing myself. I’m not selling myself to be a yes at every single decision I make. I’m selling myself to figure out what is the criteria that helps me make the best decision for me, when is yes my best decision, when is no my best decision? And how do I get to those answers, yes or no, quicker? That’s the value of this.

One of the things I love to do when I have objections or if I have fears and I’m not able to answer them, where they actually feel like they are reasonable fears, reasonable objections, things that actually could happen, and there is no way to tell until you move forward with the decision. Then I like to ask myself what my backup plan will be right then and there.

If I’m going to make an investment and I’m not sure if it’s going to work out, I want to know, okay, well, I may not get the money back for this thing that I’m going to go invest in. And if that’s the case, here’s how I’ll make it back in a different way. I’m going to give you an example of this in just a second.

But another thing I like to know is what I’m exchanging when I’m making a decision. I’m deciding this and I’m exchanging this for that. So I’m going to give you a double example of a backup plan and what I’m exchanging. So earlier this year I filmed 2 Million Dollar Group, my process for the 2 Million Dollar Group. I filmed the content and I brought my entire film crew. I flew them in. We rented a house so that I could be outside of my house with all my dogs and my baby and all the things and all the people that are always in our house, I wanted just pure focus.

And I was looking through that decision, I think it was originally a $75,000 decision and we ended up spending I think, double that. We ended up filming for two weeks, so I had to remake that decision. But I knew I was exchanging $75,000 for knowing I gave it my all with this process to create the most beautiful, valuable product I could for my clients. And that thought and feeling going into selling it, I believe would make me more than $75,000.

I’m also exchanging $75,000 of this money to ensure that I get it done in a timely fashion and the project doesn’t linger. One of the things I had asked my film crew to do that created higher expenses is I said, “Bring enough people that you can be editing while we go.” So we’re filming and then someone’s editing as soon as we’re done. Filming, someone’s editing as soon as we’re done. I didn’t want me to have filmed it and then all this time go by.

And it turns out that editing takes so much time that even doing that still because they have to back up the filming to, I don’t know, other drives or something, that that actually takes quite a bit of time. And then the editing and all of that, I’m so glad I did that otherwise we wouldn’t have completed on time. And what I also wanted to do is I didn’t want to do it from my computer here and there. I wanted to do it in a whole week, clear my calendar so that I could clear up space to just think about that, focus on that, give it my best and then be done and moving on to other things on my calendar.

And so when I thought about this, I thought about that exchange, all of those things is worth $75,000 to me. My team did a budget analysis where it would be like this is how much it would add per customer, joining 2 Million Dollar Group to have done this over a year’s period or something like that. And I thought about, okay, so if it doesn’t actually add value to the program, worst case scenario, if it didn’t add value I would go make the money here or I would come up with the money there to replace this money.

So I had a backup plan as the absolute worst case scenario because I really have never spent that much money to film anything. I’ve only filmed things from my office forever and ever and ever and ever. So this was a big gamble for me. But whenever I was able to look at what am I exchanging and see all the value of what I’m getting for that money. And have a clear backup plan of what I would do if I didn’t for whatever reason feel like we got the money back. I was able to move forward and say, “This is the right decision for me”, and make that decision right then and there.

Another thing that has been a quick decision maker and someone that doesn’t need to think about it, the value it’s created for me in my life is I also don’t often indulge in regret. I recently made a decision and felt regret as something I hadn’t felt in a very long time. I just typically don’t spend a lot of time regretting things. And not in a way where I don’t learn from things, I just don’t think regret is super useful in learning from things and growing, but I had regret come up.

And one of the thoughts that I used to keep me out of being frozen in indecision moving forward in this specific area of my life is I came up with a thought. I made the decisions with the mindset I had at the time and the information I had, which was the best I could do. And now I have new thoughts or new information. And specifically I may not have even had new thoughts or new information if I hadn’t been willing to make that decision in the first place.

So we think if I make a bunch of decisions quickly and I don’t spend lots and lots of time thinking about it, I’m going to end up with lots and lots of results I don’t like and then I’m going to end up with a pile of regret. But the more you make decisions, the more that you require yourself to go through a decision protocol, to figure out what’s important to you in making a decision, to figure out your priorities, to address your own questions and indecisions and objections.

The more you do that to make good decisions right then and there in the moment with specific information, the more decisions you will make and actually the more you will learn about yourself and your decisions, the better they get moving forward. And because you’ve made so many of them, that’s the only way you could get to where you are right then and there in the now. The only reason I’m here where I am in my business is how many decisions I’ve been willing to make and how little time I’ve spent thinking about decisions.

And I have so much new information and so many new thoughts. I think not indulging in regret is the best way to not fear making decisions. That’s something you can talk to your clients about is, do you often experience regret? Does it make it hard for you to make decisions? What would it be like to decide not to regret your decisions? What would you have to think about decisions that didn’t create the outcome you wanted but also, not experience regret?

It might be that they need to think, I made the decisions with the best information I had at the time and the best mindset I had at the time. I made that decision thinking of me and what was best for me. And I think it’s my best method for having my own back, which also means that I have my back more often because I make decisions more often. And so I’ve created the self-concept of just really owning myself and having my own back and having a great relationship with myself. And I also close decision cycles very easily and effectively. I’m going to give you an example of this.

So we do this as a household now, I’m always pushing everyone in my household to make decisions right away and figure out their decision criteria or their protocol. And I got permission to use this example, my husband’s vision at 41 is starting to wobble. And he’s been complaining about it. And so we just made a plan. He brought the complaint up and I said, “Listen, make an appointment for the eye doctor. Find out if there is actually something wrong.”

If there is, he was like, “I’m immediately getting LASIK.” And I was like, “Great. Find out if that thing that you’re having issues with can be solved with LASIK. And if it does, we’ll immediately make the appointment and get it done.” It was just no need to think about it. No time spent thinking about it. It was, what does he want? He wants LASIK. If there is an issue, he wants to get it solved as fast as possible. Get it on the calendar. Let’s get it done. So we spend very little time being in the problem of not having the result we want.

In our entire household, it’s just what’s the result we want? How do we fix it? How do we do this quickly? I have so many friends and so many family members that when I am talking to them, they have so many things that they’re getting around to. And I think that that is a symptom of thinking about it, of sitting around thinking about the things we could do instead of just getting to do them, thinking about the to-do list instead of just doing the to-do list.

But in order to bridge that gap, there are thoughts in the way that we have to find and we have to address. Again, this is our jam as life coaches. So when I’m willing to make faster decisions, make them in the moment, not prolong them, not think about it. I get more done. I have more time. I use my money more effectively. I have less clutter in my house. I have a smaller to-do list. I feel more confident in myself to make big decisions and I feel like I know myself better.

And I problem solve really well because I’m used to deciding so quickly and thinking things through right then and there to a decision. Because that’s really what problem solving is, is we just think things through right then and there in the moment to a decision. Again, this is what we do as life coaches. And I want to offer that you can have so much peace when you are a no, when you’ve gotten really good at what your decision criteria is and who you are when you make decisions and what’s important to you, what you need to be a yes or a no.

I don’t spend a lot of time in fear of missing out. I’m like “Oh, no, no, I’m not missing out because I didn’t want to do that for these very clear reasons.” So here’s what I want to offer. What if finding the core thing that your client needs to think about is the value of the consult? What if that process of helping them make this decision of buying coaching, of investing in coaching, what if the process that you walk them through is the value of the consult? What? Try it on.

What if helping them do that is the value? If you help them find the thought, I don’t trust myself to make this investment, that’s such a powerful realization to have. Now we know where you are and now we can explore, what do you think will happen? What would be the negative side? What would be the consequences if you made this investment that you imagine that you’re not trusting yourself to make? How do you think you’re going to influence this in a negative way? Let’s talk about it.

What aren’t you trusting about yourself? Let’s come up with a couple of ideas. I’m not trusting myself to do the work. I’m not trusting myself to take it seriously. I’m not trusting myself to answer other people’s questions about working with a life coach. Okay, now we’re getting somewhere. What do you think they might question? And how do you think you’ll feel in that moment? How would you want to respond? We can really dissect it. We can get to work. What would I need to do to create that trust? That’s a great question.

You can also ask them, “Would there be value in waiting, what would that be? What will be the value in moving forward even though you’re scared? How can you have your own back if it doesn’t work? What can you decide to think ahead of time? What can you decide to know ahead of time about making this decision right then and there in this moment? How can you decide to feel about the experience no matter what?”

I get a lot of feedback and thoughts about my trip to Italy and taking my son, not taking my son. Lots of people have lots of opinions. But I really went through my decision protocol. One of the things that was super helpful is someone said, “You’ve got to know what kind of trip you want to take. And you’ve got to know what kind of trip it would be with a child.” And I laughed so hard at this. I found a Reddit thread of it was actually people really, someone had asked if they should take their kid to Europe. It was actually a whole thread of hundreds of people saying, “Yes, you should totally take your kid.”

But one person’s comment made me belly laugh out loud. It was something about Paris. I think it was a guy who said, “You just have to know that it won’t be visiting the Louvre in Paris. It’ll be going to a playground outside of the Louvre in Paris”, if that’s how you pronounce it. And I died. I was like, “That’s exactly it. It will not be going to the museum. It will be being at the playground outside of the museum.”

And when I really looked at what’s the trip I want to take, I was like, “Actually, I don’t want to be running around.” I actually usually love to go to the smaller cities that no one really knows about or that don’t get talked about a lot. I’ve spent a lot of time in Madrid, but some of my favorite cities are Toledo and Segovia. And so I love those little outside trips. But that’s not really what I was wanting for this trip. I imagined beautiful scenery, being at the pool, taking boats out on the ocean or the lake.

I imagined relaxing. I imagined eating ice-creams with my baby and just having him taste and experience different foods. I imagined us just all being together. And I was like, “I don’t even want to do a bunch of sightseeing. I want to just be in Italy and experience Italy as just a vacation, just [inaudible].” That’s what I keep telling people, I just want to experience [inaudible]. And when I realized what I wanted, it made it so clear that I wanted to take my child.

I also looked at the criteria of I don’t want to be highly anxious about leaving my child and then thinking about being away from my child for so long. And then I thought about my value right now for me, it has nothing to do with anybody else, my value for me is I just don’t want to leave my child for that long, when he’s this young. I want to really create a lot of safety and security for him. And so when I look at all of those decisions it was like this is a hell yes.

And I’ve thought about all of the obstacles that could come our way and how I want to feel even then. How I want to feel if we have to leave dinner or if other people are staring at us or we get less done or the flight’s really stressful. How do I want to feel if certain things happen? I get to decide that ahead of time. I get to tell myself I loved my decision. I still get to love my decision and it’s worth it because these were my reasons that have nothing to do with any of the bad things that could possibly happen.

Another question that you can ask yourself or your clients is, how can I make sure I’m focused to get what I came for? What criteria can I work towards to be ready? If they’re like, “Well, I’m not ready yet.” Well, what criteria can you work towards to be ready?

Something else to really consider is, be careful that you don’t make yourself your client avatar. So my client had said what seems reasonable because I like to think about things for people to tell me they need to think about things. So I just kind of in the conversation, I just do a follow-up. And I want to offer that I don’t go into a sales situation thinking it’s unreasonable, you just need to make a decision now. Neither of these things are things I’m saying. I’m not saying it’s reasonable to think about things or it’s unreasonable and you need to make decisions now.

I want you to think about as a coach and a salesperson, how can I help you with your decision plan, your decision criteria, your protocol so that the time that you spend deciding adds value and is useful whether we’re able to decide now or later? My job is to make sure you spend the time you do spend deciding and ‘thinking’ about it that that is a valuable use of your time.

And one of the thoughts I like to think is, how can I help you close the cycle now? How can I help you get as close as possible to closing it? How can I make sure if you are going to think about it, that you have great food for thought? How can I make sure you have specific food for thought? Something else to consider is what if it isn’t reasonable to spend time thinking about things? What if you framed this for yourself first before you ever frame it for clients?

Frame it for yourself first as just delaying decision making. It is an interesting reframe, that I can either make a decision now or I can delay decision making. And let me just make sure I love my reasons for that. Because all a decision requires is me being willing to put my brain on the criteria and get down to the brass tacks, to get down to what matters about this decision right now. To find out what thoughts are in the way, what thoughts are in play.

And then what if you start identifying when you’re delaying decision making is buffering over just pure discomfort to decide? And when it’s coming from lack of information only you can get for yourself. And then if it’s lack of information that you can’t get yourself, that you need to get from other people or in other avenues like research, you can create a plan for every single time how you will get that information.

So for example, I recently made some decisions for my program that I knew I wanted to make, and I knew what I wanted to decide. I was decided. But I needed coaching on actually committing and doing the thing now and moving forward powerfully. So I didn’t need more time, I needed better thoughts. I needed more useful thoughts to move forward with the decision. Sometimes that’s what your clients need.

And then there are also decisions right now in my business that I’m thinking about. I know that I want to make a decision. So right now I’m actually creating a protocol for how I will get the information I need to decide because my team and I have talked about it and we really think we need data. Data and analytics would help us make the decision more clearly than just a guess or a theory. And while we’re getting that data and the analytics, I’m going to be just watching everything from the lens of what’s the criteria that I want to make for this decision?

I want to think about my clients. I want to think about my team. I want to think about the results I’m trying to create. I want to think about how fast I’m trying to create those results. I want to think about the longevity of my clients being able to continue in my programs. And so I’m going to be getting coaching on these decisions as well and all the thoughts that come along with it. So we’ll be collecting data as a company and I’ll be getting coached on useful thoughts to move forward.

So at least I’m not sitting around just repeating all the thoughts I have about it over and over and over. That’s not what we want. If we are going to spend time thinking about it, we want to make sure that we know exactly how we’re using that time thinking about it. That’s what I’m interested in when I coach someone on this in a consult situation.

Now, some information we lack and it’s information that we can find, that we can figure out. Sometimes other people can give it to us. And then we just need to find out what information seems to be missing and get the answer. So I want to give you an example of this.

We wanted to move, my husband and I wanted to move $1 million over to a new regional bank because we are building a relationship with this bank who is helping us fund our house build in Nashville. We bought land and so we’re going to be building a house. And they’re giving us an insane rate to hold some of our money there, but I had been hesitating moving forward. So again, if I don’t make a decision then I really love to find all the places I’m not making a decision.

And in the hesitation, after we had the conversation, when I had the hesitation, I asked myself what that hesitation was about. And I told my husband it was my fear around that accounts are only FDIC insured up to $250,000. And some regional banks have gone under in this year, so many that now they’re not even reporting it on the news. And right now it’s just sitting in Chase and I have no fears of them going under. I have some doubts about regional banks.

And so when I realized that ultimately that was what was keeping me from pulling the trigger I brought in help. I don’t have that 100% knowledge to say, “Okay, how would I break down this decision?” So I started asking around and one of my executives had criteria. Then he researched the recent banks that had gone under and found that the FDIC not only backed the accounts above the FDIC threshold. But they also helped move the money into new banks overnight for depositors so there was no loss of service.

So he came to me and said, “It doesn’t mean that they will continue to do that always, but it shows that they want the American people to have faith in regional banks right now. That’s what that action shows me.” So then I had much clearer information to go on than just, I need to keep thinking about it. Well, then my husband talked to the bank and the bank said, “Actually, we work with several banks.” I don’t know if I’m going to explain it correctly.

But the money that you put in our bank then goes into other banks in those increments to make sure that all of the money is actually FDIC insured. So we were able to feel really positive about making that decision and moving the money over and then just take action on it. So if you need information that maybe you lack, it can be asking questions from an expert, someone that you know has it. It can be seeking outside guidance from someone who you think is really well versed in it. It could be finding research on the internet. It could be finding books that have that information.

It could be asking around, there could be so many things that you could do but think about what’s different about that level of problem solving versus just if I had just said I need to think about it. And if I had kept just feeling, the emotion I was having was hesitation, and let’s just say that I didn’t examine those thoughts. I didn’t examine my thinking. I didn’t ask myself what’s creating the hesitation? I could have just hesitated. I was going to say ummed and ahed. That shows where I’m from.

But that would have shown that, if I had just ummed and ahed, if I had just sat around hesitating, I would have gotten nowhere. A month could go by and I would have been in the same, well, I don’t know. My husband would have brought it up. “Hey, do you want to move that money?” They contacted us again and I would say, “I don’t know. I need to think about it.” And then another month could go by and then another month could go by versus what is the information we need to make this decision right now? 

This is so much more valuable for you and your client. I think that the number one objection that keeps people from wanting to make decisions now is the fear of feeling reckless or being reckless. So another question you can ask yourself is how can you, you have to do this work on yourself first, how can you be a faster decision maker without feeling reckless?

And I want to offer that recklessness or nervousness is just the absence of a really good decision protocol and the decision to have your back no matter what, to believe in yourself when you made the decision. That version of yourself who made that decision to believe that that was the best decision you made at the time you made it. And even if you have new information now, you will have your own back. But even before that, it’s really just the absence of a really good decision protocol, decision strategy, decision priorities, whatever you want to call it.

It’s just the absence of really good decision investigation. So think about how can you help your clients make clearer decisions for themselves? And what if you considered, ‘overcoming objections’ is just a call to help your client make a clear decision for themselves. When they say, “I need to think about it”, it’s your clue, it’s your cue to say, “Hey, wait, I can actually help you with that.”

What coaches do is, we help clients make clearer decisions and create decision strategies or protocols and narrow down what the actually deciding factors are and get really clear on what matters most about the decision. And really kind of examine all the things. So even if you do go think about it, you have just much better food for thought. Would you like to do that with me right now? I’m happy to do that. You don’t have to commit to any decision, but I really can help you get criteria for your decision and get super clear about it.

I was coaching someone recently in my 200k Mastermind. And he had done a consult and he said, “The person was looking around for other coaches and they were really set on speaking to at least four other coaches.” And he said, “I couldn’t really get him out of his circular thinking of needing to talk to other coaches.” And he had asked him, “What are you looking for?” He said, “I’m looking for if we mesh well and if we’re a good fit, I want to gather data. I want to get the full picture and I want to make the best decision.”

And then my client had thought, I couldn’t get him out of that line of thinking. And so I said, “Okay, all it takes is just questioning that line of thinking. What data does he want to gather specifically? If you had to break down what it looks like to mesh with someone, how would you describe it? What happens? What do you feel? What do you think? What do you experience? How does the conversation feel? You don’t have to give them all of those questions, but any of those would bring insight into what does it look like for that person?”

If I know what it looks like for me to mesh well with someone and I do because I am someone who doesn’t need to think about it because I’ve had myself exercise the muscle of making decisions and examining my criteria. What I know is I mesh really well with people who are very direct and tell you exactly what is on their mind so that you’re never guessing with where you stand with them. And you communicate really clearly, really effectively and efficiently and quickly. I don’t know if I said that, but quickly because the conversation is so direct, I do really well with that.

I struggle when people tend to beat around the bush. And I lose trust with people who beat around the bush. I gain trust, I create trust with people who are super direct, even if sometimes it will cause hurt feelings or even if my body has a reaction to the directness. I would prefer that.

So again, what if we consider that every single time we need to think about it, we are either missing clear criteria for decision making or other obstacles are in the way, and that clearing those up gets us to a yes or a no, period? What if you committed from this podcast episode on to being curious and helping people make decisions instead of selling them coaching, what a relief it is.

Okay, my friends, I hope my thoughts about closing these decision loops and being a person who makes fast, clear decisions, who knows themselves well and creates a lot of value, in the world because I do not do a lot of thinking about it with my decisions. Hope this was highly helpful and gives you some food for thought when you’re tackling a very, very, very common objection to really buying anything but specifically buying coaching. Help them figure out, create criteria for what they will be thinking about.

And then join 2k for 2k. All of my modules are my thoughts exactly like this, the entire process. There’s five modules. I talk about organic marketing, making offers, clean selling, which is selling without attachment, running consoles and talking through thoughts like I need to think about it. And then give you all of my thoughts like this that make me a really powerful buyer and not afraid to buy things and a really powerful seller.

So you can go do the overcoming objections module, get coaching in the community and Ask A Coach at our live coaching calls every week on walking people through this conversation and lots of other thoughts that contribute to this conversation. Alright, I will talk to you next week 

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 five-step formula for getting consults and closing new clients. Just head over to www.staceyboehman.com/2kfor2k. We’ll see you inside.