You’re doing all the right things – posting, showing up and putting yourself out there – but your sales are inconsistent.
In this episode, Sam shares the key shifts that help perfectionist entrepreneurs go from sporadic sales to consistent, reliable income without working more or trying to become someone else.
You’ll learn why perfectionism makes selling feel harder than it needs to be and how to start selling in a way that works with your brain instead of against it.
If you’re ready to make consistent sales without having to work harder, apply for 1:1 coaching today at samlaurabrown.com/coaching.
Listen To The Episode
Listen to the episode on the player above, click here to download the episode and take it with you or listen anywhere you normally listen to podcasts – just find Episode 559 of The Perfectionism Project Podcast!
Subscribe To The Perfectionism Project Podcast
- Spotify
- Apple Podcasts (iPhone only)
- Google Podcasts (Android only)
- Stitcher
- Castbox
- TuneIn
- Overcast
FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Introduction
Hi and welcome to another episode of The Perfectionism Project. A podcast full of perfectionism advice for entrepreneurs. My name is Sam Laura Brown, I help entrepreneurs release their perfectionism handbrake, so they can get out of their own way and build a fulfilling and profitable business. I’m the founder of the Perfectionists Getting Shit Done group coaching program, which is otherwise known as PGSD. And for even more perfectionism advice to help you with your business, you can follow me on Instagram @perfectionismproject.
Sam Laura Brown
Okay, so I just wanted to sit down and record this to really just share with you about what are some of the things I do with my one on one coaching clients that allow them to go from sporadic, inconsistent sales in their business to actually being able to make consistent sales, to actually being able to pay themselves like a real business. And what is that difference? What is that shift that happens? And to really just give you those practical things. So there’s a bunch of stuff that I could have talked about, but I just jotted down three things that were top of mind, and I want to share them with you, because I think just seeing the path, seeing the roadmap, is so valuable. I know it can feel like in a lot of my one on one clients and spots are open again, sorry, my one on one clients, they really want to have a reliable, steady, full time income. They want to feel successful in their business.
They want to feel like they can actually contribute financially to their family in a really reliable way, and that they can depend on themselves to actually show up for the business. And the clients that I work with, one on one, are already following through with most of their plans, they’re showing up, obviously, not perfectly. I’m not showing up perfectly. No one is, but they are, for the most part, able to follow through with the plans they make. But what they’re finding is that that action that they are taking, the posting on social media, recording YouTube videos, pitching to people like all of that that they’re doing, like they’re doing the right things, but it’s not actually working. And so that’s what we solve together. And my one on one clients just get incredible results. And it’s really because I think a big part of it is the kind of people that I work with, one on one, are perfectionist entrepreneurs.
So I’m just going to assume, if you’re listening to this podcast called The perfectionism project, that you identify as at least having perfectionist tendencies and patterns like a procrastination, all or nothing, thinking, burnout, people pleasing a fear of judgment, like that’s something that’s going on for you. And the one on one clients that I work with are smart, they’re knowledgeable. They have been putting a lot of effort into building their business, and they just want to have it feel like it’s actually paying off. They want to actually have that business go from feeling like a hobby to feeling like an actual, real business. And so that’s what we do together, and it’s just such incredible work. I am so honored to be able to guide my one on one clients through this process, and to really do it in a way that works with your perfectionist brain instead of against it. So I really want to talk about that as well.
Actually, I’ll do that now, because that’s kind of like the context for all of this. And something I really want you to understand is that perfectionism is your biggest sales problem, and that’s because the way our perfectionist brain works. It over complicates. It disconnects us, because all we see is the imperfection. All we are focused on is how to fix, how to make things better, how to optimize. And that makes us freeze, or it makes us have to work way longer than we need to be working way more hours, which is exhausting, which means it’s not sustainable to do that. And really it has us, and this is one of the key things I do with my one on one clients. It has us not actually doing the very simple things that work. And the people that I work with are typically people who sell through connection. They might not realize it, but they typically just sell the best when they’re showing up as themselves, whether it’s on a YouTube video, whether it’s when they’re at a networking event, whether it’s going on Instagram stories and just chatting and showing up and sharing or a podcast, no matter what it looks like, whether it’s word of mouth, this is so important too.
Word of mouth is such a legitimate way to build a business. I have so many of my one on one clients think like social media is the only legitimate way to do it, and that is actually not how it works. Word of mouth is the gold standard of building the business, and social media is an option that you have, and pitching yourself to others is an option that you have, and doing platforms like YouTube and a podcast is an option you have. So when we’re in that perfectionist mindset, you don’t have to be different to how you are in order to make sales and have consistent sales, you just need to work with your perfectionist mindset instead of against it. And so when it comes to being able to start making consistent sales, we have to learn and understand and see specifically for you how that perfectionism is coming up. And I will tell you I am an expert at spotting that and being able to see what’s going on.
So working together, you will not be left guessing about what’s happening there, but being able to not only just see that, but then being able to change your approach so that without you having to be better or be different or work longer or work harder, that you can actually make more sales without that. And naturally, of course, you up skill. And naturally, of course, you become better. But we want to have you actually just tap into what’s already true, which is you’re onto something. You’re already making some sales. Yes, they are sporadic. Yes, you don’t really know how to repeat them. It just feels like it comes out of the blue, and then it’s crickets again. But you’re on to something. There’s something that’s working there. And when you can really start working with your perfectionist mindset, instead of against it, when it comes to sales, that is when you will start making consistent sales.
And that was definitely the journey that I had to go on. I was trying to do all the right things and do everything bigger and better. I know, for example, for having my first 10k month, which was such a big goal that I had, like, on such a pedestal, I really just wanted that 10k months, it felt like such a big deal. And of course, my perfectionist brain made it into one. I felt like I had to really do something massive, I had to do this big launch. I had to sell something with the perfect messaging to the perfect niche. And like all this perfection was required because it was such a big deal, and when I was actually able to lean into what I now call self trust selling, this is a skill that I teach my clients. When I was able to do that, I was able to make sales with what I already had, and that meant, that’s why, a big reason why I’m now able to work three days a week, if that I’m still exclusively breastfeeding my son, Liam, who’s five months old.
I have four kids under the age of five, including twins, and I’m able to have a business that works because I’m self trust selling, because I have figured out what that looks like, and I allow myself to do it. And if I wasn’t, if I was in the perfectionist selling, if I was in the having to have everything be just right so that it can work, that is so time consuming. You definitely can’t do that in three days a week. And what I have found, what I have learned the hard way, is it doesn’t work. It doesn’t actually bring in the sales. If you have had the experience, say you’re trying to write an Instagram caption, for example, or maybe it’s an email or record something like a YouTube video or a podcast, if you are writing or talking and then you just start getting yourself am I saying the right thing? Do I need to say it more like this? This person said to say like that, like if that is the chatter constantly going on your mind, you are not connecting with the person on the other end, you are not in the energy that they need you to be in, to be able to have them buy, to be able to have them feel safe, to make a buying decision, if you are so in your head, you are disconnected.
And this selling comes from connection to yourself, connection to what you sell, and believing in that. That’s another big thing that I work on with my clients. I’ll get to the three things in a second, but that’s one that I’m not going to be talking more about in this episode, but really believing in the value of what you do, the specific work that we do together, to have you not just intellectually understand that it’s valuable, but like deeply feeling compelled and convicted about what you Do and about what you sell, and sometimes a few little tweaks are needed to be made to what you sell, and we identify exactly what they are, and have you make them without it being this overwhelming, big project, this overhaul that we tend to think in. But when you’re connected to that, you’re connected to the person on the other end, you’re connected to your craft. When you’re in that connection, that’s what’s magnetic. That’s what really, really sells. And so that’s what we have you do. And it’s a six month container, a six month coaching experience, because it is a process. Yes, you will have quick wins. A lot of my clients make their investment back or are well on track to do so within the first 30 days of working together. It just depends on, obviously, what they sell, but to just know that, like, you don’t have to be different.
You don’t have to do this big, crazy thing, you have been doing the right things, but with the wrong mindset, and oftentimes just following rules that like you’re using inspiration against yourself. And seeing someone else do things in a certain way, and then your perfectionist brain goes, that’s the way I have to do it, instead of being like, that’s an option I have. So I want to talk about three things that I really consistently work on with my clients. It makes such a difference to having them go from making those sporadic, random sales and just feeling like, essentially, it feels like a hobby, because when that’s happening, it’s really hard to be able to pay yourself consistently and rely on your business. So it does literally feel like you have a hobby, to being able to pay themselves consistently, to being able to have the feeling of actually having a successful, real business, and not just feeling that way, but actually having that practically speaking. And so I’m just going to share some of those things with you.
So first of all, what we do and what I work with with my what I work on with my one on one clients, is making sales without working every day. So most of my clients, actually, I would say pretty much all of them are either working part time hours or, like myself, have a limited amount of time that they want to work. And so what we’re really looking at here is creating leverage and figuring out for you what the sales system is that has you making consistent sales without you having to be, like, posting on stories every single day, unless you want to be, but posting on stories every single day, or having to be on every single platform, like just doing all the things, doing the most, we perfectionists are pretty good at, like, doing the most, and then it gets so frustrating when you’re working so hard and it isn’t working, and that’s just because you’ve been approaching sales in a way that is making your perfectionism, hair break, turn on.
It’s making you freeze. It’s making you go tense. It’s making you think that weekly content should be making sales for you, instead of actually seeing there’s marketing and content that’s going out. And and then you actually need to have a process for making sales that goes beyond posting weekly or posting daily or posting twice a day, like that. Marketing activity isn’t actually going to make you sales. It might make you some sporadic sales, but it’s not going to make you consistent sales. So that’s a really important thing, and a distinction my clients need to understand as soon as they come in, is like, yes, we want to have you, and we do this work in pgsd like showing up in your spark and sharing and like allowing yourself to be visible and to actually put yourself out there. Amazing, so important. That’s the foundation. And we don’t want to have you expecting that you sending an email newsletter every week should result in you making consistent sales. That actually isn’t how business works.
You need to have your marketing, and then you need to have your sales. And we can be in this mindset of like, if I just write the best newsletter and I have a call to action at the end of it, then I’m going to make sales. That actually isn’t how it works. But our perfectionist brain thinks that because it thinks, Okay, I’m not making sales because my content isn’t good enough, instead of actually being able to see, oh, I just actually don’t have a sales process here. I’m marketing, and I’m letting people know I have something, but I’m not actually really creating a simple sales process. So that’s one of the key things that we do together. We we identify. And this is, I say we, I mean me. I learn from you what’s going on your business, but what I do for you, and this happens on the first call, so you get this right away, is I pinpoint. I’m so great at spotting this. I pinpoint what has quietly been working in the background to get you those sales, our perfectionist brains have such a hard time seeing what’s working, especially when it’s quietly working or it’s working sporadically.
Such a hard time our perfectionist brain just sees imperfection, the things to be fixed, the things to make better, the things other people are doing that I should be doing, and I’m so behind, and I should be further along by now, and all of that drama. So it’s really hard to actually identify as a perfectionist in your own business. What is that thing that’s quietly working? And let’s create a really simple system to double down on that. This is why, with my clients, they can work less than they’re already working and have so much bigger and more consistent sales results. Is because we identify the 20% of what’s happening that’s creating 80% of the results, if not more, in their business, and we just focus on that. So instead of it quietly working and just happening to work and they don’t really know or understand, like, if you’re like, I know something’s kind of working because I’m having some sales randomly, but I can’t actually repeat it.
Like it feels like a fluke, it feels like I’m not in control of my sales. I can’t forecast what sales will be coming in in the next 12 months, because I have literally no idea, like, what, what I do that creates sales when that’s happening. We want to have you actually move from being in this place of just feeling powerless and helpless. And when my clients come to me, they’re often in this like something’s working, but I can’t actually make it work. Like, I don’t know how to get it working more without working a lot harder, and even then, I’m not sure that it wouldn’t be a waste of effort, because I don’t really understand it. So I pinpoint exactly what’s quietly working. We just have, you have a really simple sales process. I work with all kinds of entrepreneurs in all different industries, but we have you have a really simple sales process that you love, that plays to your natural strengths that you have when it comes to selling, and we have you double down on that. And again, if you’re a perfectionist, it’s just so hard to spot that, because our brain is like it’s just so attached to all the shoulds of but I should be posting every day on this platform, and I should have this launch with this different email sequence that I have.
And then this needs to go to this landing page, and then this goes here, and then it upsells that, like our perfectionist brain loves all of that. And what we do is we strip it away and make it painfully simple and have it be what works. And this just works like magic. So it’s why, when my one on ones come in, we are able to get really great results. Because you’re doing something that’s working, you your perfectionist brain really just can’t see it. And if it does, it really just doesn’t allow you to focus on it and not be so busy doing all the things and constantly questioning, like, what should my niche be? What should my strategy be? What like should I do? What this person is doing? This person says you can’t do it like that. And like all of those rules that we perfectionists have, what we do in the one on one coaching together is we have you create new rules that actually make sense for you and that you and that you actually want to follow and then actually get you results, so that you can be working on your business and actually have that pay off. That’s what we want to have happen. We don’t want to have you keeping on feeling like it’s this hobby where you feel so unappreciated by yourself. You feel like you have to justify it to your partner, of like, here’s why I’m putting so much energy in and please, please believe in me that one day I’ll actually be able to make a significant financial contribution to our family.
We really want to have that habit. I know for me, when I was in the process of building my business up and really figuring out for myself, like, about the perfectionist selling and why that really didn’t work, and it was so frustrating and so hard to do, and it was so not effective. And before that, even when I was just constantly in this, like, but if I’m doing great. You know, marketing, content marketing, I should be making sales to actually being able to switch into really stewarding the business. I’ll talk about this in a second with paying yourself. It’s another key thing that I work on with my clients, because that is such an important shift. But I know what it’s like when you have this belief, this deep belief in what’s possible when it comes to your business. You know that you can have a successful business. You know you have the intelligence to do it. You know you either have this skill or can develop the skill. You see other people who are doing and think, Well, if they can do it, surely I can do it. You also have the doubt questioning of yourself, like, maybe I can’t maybe I’m just fooling myself. Maybe I’m not cut out for this.
And really, it’s just like understanding that the thing that’s stopping you is the perfectionism and working against it instead of with it. And when I started to work with my perfectionism instead of against it, that is when I stopped having to try to convince Steve to believe that, like, yes, it’s worth it for me to keep just reinvesting all the money back in the business, because, trust me, one day I’ll be able to pay myself. I remember there was this time. It probably would have been around 2018 and we just moved into our house a few months prior to that, or maybe a year prior. We moved in in 2017 we bought our house. And Steve was like, So when are you going to stop just putting your money back into your business? And we need, like, we want to have a better driveway. Like, when? When are you actually going to, you know, make that shift and kind of, like, not recognize it’s not working, but be like, Okay, let’s have some sense here. And I was like, never, I’m never going to do that, because I believe in this, and I know I haven’t yet got the finances, the like financial statements to show for it, but like having those difficult, awkward conversations where you have to be convincing, and like, Steve is so supportive of me and deeply believes in me.
And the same with a lot of my clients, they have a partner who really does believe in them, and they’re also like, Okay, and let’s be practical about it. And it can feel like, and this is one of the things I coached on. Like, what comes up throughout this is like, really being able to navigate as you become the person who is able to make consistent sales and pay yourself consistently, and have that be your literal reality, how to navigate those kinds of conversations in a way that doesn’t keep knocking your confidence and making you think, okay, maybe I should get a full time job. And like, maybe this is a bit of a joke. And like, it’s normal to have those wobbles as you are navigating this journey, and to just be able to have the support with that, and like, to be able to lean on my belief, if your belief gets shaky because your partner is, like, okay, but like, let’s be practical. Like, when are you going to get a job? Or, like, when are you going to give up on this thing? Or, like, Are you sure it’s worth the effort?
Maybe you should have this kind of business, or what if you did that instead, like, to just be able to not only lean on my unwavering belief, but to be able to get coaching, like you can just literally WhatsApp, voice message me, or WhatsApp text me and say, like, this is the conversation I just had, or what my partner just asked me. And like, what do I how do I think about that? And like, should I go and look for a job? Like, any of that, just as it comes up, you can, like, get coaching it right there, instead of having it take up a whole month because you’re just in this shame spiral about, like, my partner doesn’t think that I actually contribute, and they think I’m wasting my time. And like, I want them to believe in me, and I’m sad that they don’t, and I don’t believe in me either. And like, how do I believe in me when they don’t believe in me? And like, having me believe in you, having me there to support you is such a simple, easy answer to that that’s available to you.
So we identify what’s working, double down on that, and we get you out of this. I don’t have enough time loop. So if you’re finding that you’re constantly in overwhelm about not having enough time to build your business, because either you have things that impact your energy, maybe you have a health condition, maybe you have personal life stuff going on, maybe you have just you want to work shorter work hours, or stuff keeps happening. You keep getting sick or whatever, if you are constantly finding yourself in this I don’t have enough time loop and feeling overwhelmed, and then, like, you have to just spend your time getting yourself out of this overwhelm. And like, not knowing what to do with your time because you don’t have much so you have to use it super well. But then, because of that pressure. You don’t use it well, like, that is a really key thing that comes up as well. So if you just feel that, like, I just don’t have enough time, that is something that we solve so that you know, and I’ll talk about this with number three, with your needle movers, but so that you know exactly what to do with your time.
I don’t want you guessing. Like, should I focus on this or that? Or I just had this idea? Do I act on that? Or like any of that, we don’t want to have you guessing. We just want to have you have a clear path and take those steps. And that’s what we do together in the one on one coaching so we get you out of that loop. The second thing I want to talk about is paying yourself. This is a key thing that I work with, with all of my one on one clients, that they are in a position where they want to have a full time income, whether that’s on, typically on part time hours, they want to be making a full time income, which is 100% doable. I have been doing that myself, personally, for many, many years now, when even just a full time income on full time hours felt so far away. Now I’m doing that on part time hours with four kids and twins and all of that. So it’s definitely possible to do that.
I just want you to know that like because some people will say that can’t be done, and yes, it can, when you’re working with your perfectionist mindset instead of against it, when you stop battling against yourself and actually do things in a way that is painfully simple. It’s easy. It works with the you, who you are today, instead of like your ideal self, it all gets so much easier. So when it comes to paying yourself, we want to have you be able to start paying yourself consistently. That’s just a goal that a lot of my clients have when we begin, and that’s something they want to do. So we actually have you do that and so together, when we are working, what we go through is a process that I have to be able to pay yourself, and we tend to be in this all or nothing mindset with it.
So two things I see I wanted to tell you about. So number one is I see clients who, when they come to me, they’re not paying themselves at all. They’re in that, like, I’m just going to constantly reinvest until the business is making enough that I can pay myself exactly what I want. So whether that’s 50k 60k 100k they’re just in this mentality. And I get it, it’s just that classic perfectionist, all or nothing, just in this mentality of like, well, once the business is perfectly able to support me, then I will let it do so, and until then, I’m not going to pay myself anything at all. And and typically there’s also, like, I just literally don’t have enough money to pay myself, and so I can’t actually pay myself even if I wanted to, because the money literally isn’t there. So there’s that. Or the other thing that I see is when entrepreneurs are paying themselves with what’s left over. So it’ll kind of be like a manual deposit, maybe once every two weeks, maybe once a month, maybe once a week. Often. It’s very sporadic, because it’s just like, Okay, what’s left over? Here’s my kind of rough goal of what I want to pay myself.
And if there’s money left over, then I’ll pay myself that amount of money. And what we have you do is actually shift into where you’re able to get to the place where you can pay yourself consistently. So of course, as I mentioned, we have you make more sales, and we have you make consistent sales without having to work every day. So that’s a big, a big piece of it, like, that’s a lever that we pull so that you can have money to pay yourself, and we don’t want to have you in this, like, all or nothing mindset with paying yourself, because it doesn’t really make it easier to pay yourself. Here’s what’s what happened for me when I was in that all or nothing mindset of like, okay, I’ll pay myself. I want to replace my accounting income that I was making when I was working as an accountant, and so I need to have this big launch, and then when I make that money, then I can I, you know, I need to just make what I’d make in a year, and then I’ll be able to pay myself.
And that meant I put so much pressure on trying to figure out this like big thing that I could do that would work, that it froze me and made me overthink anything that I was actually putting out or sharing or doing, so I was actually doing a lot less selling and even marketing than I needed to be. And then it kept that goal of being able to pay myself further and further and further away, because I was just waiting for this, like miraculous event, essentially, to happen. But because of my perfectionist brain, having that kind of pressure to pull something like that off, actually made me freeze or just go into busy work like that kind of functional freeze, where you’re, like, doing things, and oftentimes for my clients, this will look like a lot of like back end systems and like content planning, and just like spending time working on your business, but not on the needle movers. And again, I’ll talk about needle movers in a second, because this is just super key, and I want you to know this about needle movers, but to just stick with the pain yourself for a second. So for me, I. What I had to figure out is how to actually take off the security blanket, if you will.
Because what I realized is that having that kind of approach and like because my part time job, so if you don’t know my story, I have a law and a finance degree, and then I worked in insolvency accounting, so liquidations and bankruptcies. That’s why I know a lot as well about businesses and how they work. Even before I was able to be full time in my own business, I was helping run other businesses through being in that job, and then I left that job and went to being a part time receptionist. I just worked afternoon so that I could have the day to work on my business. And what happened with that was that I didn’t have to pay myself. And you might find yourself in this position, whether you have a part time or full time job, whether you have a nest egg of savings, and you gave yourself a runway with entrepreneurship, in that sense, whether you have a partner who’s paying a husband or wife who is paying the lion’s share of the expenses, and your whatever you pay is just a nice to have, whether you have an inheritance, whether you have things on a credit card, whatever it is, if you have this external source of funding, it’s very easy to be in this mentality of, okay, Well, like, I don’t actually have to sell, I don’t have to be doing certain things.
And for me, I realized like, and I remember that day so clearly, I was driving to my part time job, and I was listening to a podcast, and I just remember, like, I literally remember exactly where I was sitting near the Brisbane River on the highway going to my job. And I was just like, it is a security blanket at this point, because there was a time for me where, and this is why I went to a part time job. After quitting my full time job, I was like, I actually feel like, if I put pressure on the business at this point to pay me, I am going to make myself freeze with that pressure. So I need to have something else give me that income so that I have the ability to think longer term about my business. And so like many of my clients, when they come to me, they didn’t have financial pressure on their business. And that can really be beautiful at a point in time.
And for a lot of my PGSDers so our clients inside perfectionist getting shit done, who are just like getting their business off the ground and getting that confidence to just post and to just show up and to just share, that can be such a beautiful thing. And then there comes a time where not having to pay yourself becomes this security blanket, like it becomes this excuse to not have to do things. And I realized for me, like I wiggled and wormed my way out of selling and, like, really showing up and really telling people about my story and what I did and how I could help them. I got out of that by telling myself, well, it’s okay if I don’t do it because I don’t have to pay for, like, the mortgage. My part of the mortgage was coming out of my part time reception job, the same with any hair appointments, brunch travel, like any of that was coming out of my part time, like salary that I was getting.
So I didn’t need, quote, unquote, I didn’t need to make any money from the business, but because I wasn’t actually paying myself anything at all, and I was just waiting for this big windfall of cash to come in from me suddenly figuring out some magical thing that it meant that I then was in this cycle of because I didn’t have to sell, because I didn’t need any of the money from the business to support myself, then I wasn’t selling, so I wasn’t making sales because I wasn’t selling, and then or I just sell super sporadically, so I wasn’t making consistent sales. And then that meant that it was like I was never going to be in the position where the business could actually just be in that place of making 100k and suddenly be able to pay me. And so I had to break that cycle. And with my one on one coaching clients. I teach that exact process, and we do the math on the exact numbers for you, no matter where you live in the world, we do the math on exactly what that looks like to create positive pressure for yourself. And have you have this is one of the things we’ll do together. Have you have your full time income plan.
So that it’s not just as far off one day, someday, maybe dream. And also, so it’s not like I should have done that yesterday, and I’m so behind. We actually have you have a proper plan that you feel great about. It can always be updated, but a plan to be able to pay yourself a full time income that is math based. That isn’t just like vibes or like, I just want to replace my income, but like, we actually do the specific math for you, and that is so transformative to do that and have you actually start paying yourself as well. So that is such a shift for all my clients when they start doing that, and has a massive compound effect for me, for example, when I actually made that shift that I helped my clients make, it was. Only, like, I don’t know it would have been definitely in, like, the next six months after that was when, like, I was able to make massive shifts in my business and be able to be in the place of making 150k so I was able to pay myself consistently, like I was making money consistently, consistent sales.
And then I was able to pay myself consistently, and I was able to confidently leave my part time job, not just like I hope I’ll be able to support myself, but like, really, truly being able to do that, and actually shifting how I approach paying myself was one of those key shifts that needed to happen in order to be able to have the ideas that I ended up having, to be able to make the income that I was making, I had to start, like, actually putting myself on the hook a little in a positive way. And that’s why as well, having coaching, of course, having my support and accountability and all of that along the way, is so powerful. Because when you have those wobbles, all those moments of doubt, like, you don’t have to be alone in them and, like, spiral because of them. Or just like, Okay, I’m gonna go back to not paying myself because the money is not there. And, like, I don’t know what else I could do. Like, we actually troubleshoot everything together, and you just get to come to me messy with whatever’s going on for you.
You don’t have to put yourself together. You don’t have to have a perfect question about it. Just like, oh my god, this is what’s going on for me today. Or I keep finding myself thinking myself thinking about this, or, like, what about that? And like, I got you, I have got you. So that’s such an important shift as well. And we actually get you, like, having been on track to have that full time income with that full time income plan. And of course, as I mentioned, we are having you already at step one, having you make sales consistently without working every day, through identifying me, pinpointing for you what’s been quietly working that your perfectionist brain like literally just can’t see, and doubling down on that in a really simple way within the time you already have to work on your business. So we’re definitely not going to have you trying to be working more. We are having you work more effectively and not from this like pressure of like, okay, now you need to do the perfect thing and use your time perfectly. No, we just actually lean into your strength that you didn’t realize you had, because your perfectionist brain, you.
Are telling you that you’re not good enough and you should be so much better and all of that, and it just works so well. So number three, that I want to talk about, a key thing that I do with my clients is just pinpointing needle movers. I believe in you. I know you can get there. I will hold that belief for you even when you don’t believe it. That alone is worth it, in my opinion. Like I have invested in so much, in so much coaching and support, and I just like needed to have someone else believe in me when my belief was wobbly. That’s why I still pay coaches and do coaching like get coached, it’s just such a valuable thing. So I believe in you deeply. I believe in what’s possible even when you don’t. And I can see the bigger like I can see kind of like everything is like the system and the moving pieces, and like how it all incorporates together, and like what you need to do next.
And also, because I’ve coached so many entrepreneurs at this point, I know as well. Even no matter what kind of business you have, it’s just like, the core first principles of business, like, what the levers are, what are the things to focus on, and the sequencing of what order to do them, is where a lot of perfectionists get stuck, and this is where as well. I just want to help you release a bit of shame. If you’re like, I know how to build a business, like, why can’t I actually do it is because there’s more than just knowledge required. You need to be able to implement you need to be able to regulate yourself and have the emotional capacity to follow through and to not get caught up in that I don’t have enough time loop or like, be so focused because of your perfectionist brain on all the imperfections that you just stop doing the things that are working because you’re so busy trying to fix the things that you think are going on. So I’m just able to, like, pinpoint. It’s my favorite thing to do, just super pinpoint for you, like, what the exact need.
And we’ve raised to be focused on and just always keep you connected back to the goal. If you feel like you set a goal, and then you kind of forget about it, and then three months, I’d be like, Wait, what was the goal? Like? We are constantly in touch with that and connected to that in such a supportive way, and I’m just always thinking about how to get you there more quickly, more easily, more sustainably, in a way that’s so aligned with your values that you have. A lot of my clients are parents, or they want to spend time with their family or with their dogs or with their cat, going on holidays and traveling and all of that. And so being able to just have the exact needle mover identified for you, and then having support and accountability as you implement that, being able to have that, it just speeds everything up so much. It just takes out, like, any shame you might be having about like, I’m not good at business, like I don’t know what I’m doing. Why am I not far enough? Like, further along? Why am I so behind? Like I should be making more sales by now? Like, all of that is often just like you not having the proper support.
You doing things that don’t actually work for your perfectionist brain, like taking an approach that turns your perfectionism handbrake on and makes you freeze and makes you tense up in your selling or like you’re doing the things, like you might be, like writing the email or whatever it is, but like you’re so in your head and trying to get it right that you’re actually disconnected from the person on the other end, which disconnects the sale. We want to have you connected, and we do that work together, to have you be connected, and to have you making those sales, to have you know exactly how to pay yourself, what that plan looks like. Have it be doable. Have it be something you’re excited about, that if you want, you can even share with your partner, so that you don’t have to keep having these like, so when you’re going to start paying yourself and like, I thought you were going to pay yourself this month, or, like any of that, you can just get out of that, or even if that’s just with yourself, and you’re, like, I thought I’d be paying myself by now, there’s that.
And just, you know, in exactly in any moment, what to focus on. And so you can just not have the noise of like and the guilt of like. Well, I should be doing this, and I thought I needed to be doing that. And like any of that, just like you know exactly what the needle mover is at any given moment, the compound effect of that is wild. And I mean, I love my one on one coaching clients, and it is such an honor to be guiding them and leading them. And just like, particularly as a perfectionist, because so many of so much of the way that sales is taught, and this isn’t intentional, but if you’re a perfectionist, and you tend towards people pleasing and wanting to be liked, especially if you feel like you’re bothering people when you sense like emails or like if you were selling to them or and like, that would be too annoying for them, or, like, that typical perfectionist stuff, just procrastination, like all of that kind of thing.
When sales is taught in this, like, there’s a right way and a wrong way, and like, here’s exactly how to do. And this is unintentional, because there are so many people who figured out formulas at work and want to share it, and that’s. Such a beautiful thing, and sometimes unintentionally, if they don’t understand how the perfectionist brain works, it’s taught in a way that makes it easy to have those perfectionist thoughts and think like, I have to do it that way, or it’s not going to work at all, and it’s going to be such a waste of effort, and then I have to get it exactly right, and I have to just do exactly what they say. But I can’t do that because of this. And so it just creates this spiral that doesn’t need to be happening. So I’m just so honored and privileged to be able to have figured out so much about perfectionism, having coached so many perfectionists now, and having, of course, my own journey and experience with that myself, and obviously, because I quote so many perfectionists, I’m just able to, like, see the perfectionist patterns really clearly, and just like how the perfectionist brain works.
And then my experience in entrepreneurship. I’ve been an entrepreneur for over 10 years now. I’ve made over $2 million in sale. It’s in my business, and I also worked in insolvency, accounting and running businesses like before I even have my own business, I did that, and also just my sheer love of personal development and like supporting you and cheering you on, and I feel like the best day for me in my life are the days where I have helped someone believe in something about themselves that they didn’t have the courage to believe and just help them step into the version of them that they know that they can be. But is a bit scary because other people in their life might not get it or like aren’t able to support them in the way that they really want to be able to do that, because that person has their own fears and doubts and things like that. And just like to be able to create possibility, and not just that, not just motivate people, but to be able to create that possibility and then support through the execution and through the ups and downs and like the wobbles that come up along the way, that is my, my greatest gift and joy, and it’s the best.
And I love this work, and it’s so powerful, so incredible. And if you have just been feeling like, like you’re doing, especially this, if you’re doing all the weekly marketing stuff, and you are posting and you’re sharing, and you’re doing all of that, and you’re not making sales. First of all, of course not, because you’re doing marketing things, not sales things, and just because you have a call to action in your post doesn’t make it actually have you have sales. So I just wonder if you’ve been feeling bad that your weekly email newsletter hasn’t been creating sales for you like, of course it hasn’t, because you’re actually missing a key mechanism in your business, which is sales, and you’re doing marketing. And just because you’re marketing so good, that doesn’t mean it’s going to make all the sales for you, at least not consistent sales. So let yourself, like, let yourself actually soak into that. You’re not wrong. You’re not doing it wrong. You’ve just been missing the sales piece.
And a lot of times with perfectionism, we’re so scared to sell like, that fear of rejection, that fear of other people seeing us sell like, all of that perfectionism comes up and makes us want to not be salesy, and it makes us want to to not actually let people know what we have to sell to them, that they can buy from us. And it really is like, when you can start working with your perfectionist mindset instead of against it, it unlocks consistent sales. And yeah, if you can relate to what I say to just actually, like, get like, oh, it’s not that I’m not good enough or not capable. It’s literally I just need to learn how to sell in a way that works for my perfectionist brain and with it, instead of against it. It’s just it, it. I’m so grateful that I was able to figure it out through so much, so much, so much, so much trial and error. And this is what I want to invite you into your people. They want to be sold. They want you to sell them. And I will just wrap up with a quick story. And I think I’ve shared this before on the podcast at some point, but when we
So, we renovated our house in 2021, the year that we had my daughter, Lydia, who’s four, we renovated the house, and we now have in our you might have seen on Instagram, like what my house looks like in our dining room, in our particularly our dining room, we have this beautiful raked ceiling, like just and all this glass and like massive we took out these small little sliding glass doors we had before, and put in these giant sliding glass doors. We live on acreage with beautiful trees and bushes and like everything around and we really wanted to see it all. And so the issue we had, the problem we had to be solved, was that we needed curtains because we didn’t want to have so much, like coming in all the time. We wanted to be able to, for watching TV, be able to pull the curtains shut and just create a bit of ambience. Now with the kids, I said, like, let’s put the home on cozy mode. You didn’t close the curtain. So, like, we wanted to be able to have curtains, we wanted them to really elevate the space.
Like, we’ve watched so many renovation shows and we’d seen like, curtains can really make or break a room. Like, if you have little curtains that are the exact size of the window, that just actually makes the whole room look smaller. But if you have beautiful ones that, like, go right to the ceiling and like, certain kinds of materials, it can actually make the space look so much more elevated and put together and like, just create such a mood. And we wanted to do that, so we had a curtain and blind company, like a consultant come out to let us know, like, what would be best for our space, help us pick out curtains, pick out fabrics, pick out blinds. Like our bathroom situation was a bit tricky, because it’s all tiled, so, like, we didn’t really have and all the windows are in the shower, so we didn’t know what to put there. And the person who came out she didn’t want to sell, she did not want to sell.
And it wasn’t like she wasn’t withholding information, like, we asked questions and she answered them, but she just gave suggestions of, like, Well, I think maybe you could do this, or you have this option, or you have that option. And I wanted to be sold. I wanted her to say, Oh, my God, you are not going to believe these curtains. Look at this. And also that helps me as well. Just go, oh, like, that’s a no from me. I want this one instead. But she was just wishy washy. She wasn’t like, she wanted to make sure it was our choice. And so because of that, it was such a bad experience, we still bought, but I wasn’t sold. And because I bought, because we needed curtains and blinds, we ended up actually not buying any blinds, because she was like, I don’t really know, even though she had all the options available that anyone else would, we bought the curtains.
And because she didn’t sell, and instead I bought, but I wasn’t sold. Then I was constantly like, oh my god, I think we’ve picked out the wrong color. Like, I just, I’m not feeling confident about the color. She didn’t give me any reason to feel confident about it. Like, oh, you could do this, or you could do that, or I didn’t really know. Maybe you know. Like, no, I want to be led. I want to be helped by you. Selling is a way that you help me. So I then found myself just constantly second guessing what it was going to look like. And I was like, oh, like, are we even going to like it? And then when the curtains came and we have them in every room, in the bedroom, we have four bedrooms, we have five bedrooms, we have five bedrooms, all the same curtains and the same we like, want a consistency in this, like, cohesive kind of vibe, so they’re all the same throughout the house. So a lot of curtains, I think it was maybe like $15,000 so like, a very significant investment in the curtains.
And I was like, Oh my God, they’re too peaky, like, they just the colors off, and it was all and I would have changed them, if it wasn’t such a big hassle to, like an expense to do so. But all because she hadn’t sold me on why the color we picked was gonna look amazing. I was going into it I’d already bought i It was like impacting my experience as a client, because I was now going into this experience being like, Oh my God. Like, I I’m not sure about this, because she didn’t want to sell, because she wanted it to be my choice, but I needed help to see that my choice was one that I wanted to make it even this reminds me. The other day, I was going out with some of my really close friends for lunch. We went and had a picnic lunch with all our babies, and I went to pick up salads from this place, and I was feeling tired. I’d had a rough night of sleep, and I hadn’t been to that place before. I didn’t know it was popular, and the salads are all a bit unusual.
And what happened was I was like, I just wanted to be sold. I was buying salad. I like, had the problem of, like, we need to have lunch. We’d chosen to go to that place to bring the lunch to the picnic. I was the one to do it. So I was like, Can you like, let me know what to get. Like, I want suggestions from you. Can you please help me pick out some salads? And she just kept telling me, Oh, this one’s really popular, and this one’s really popular, and this one’s really good. And I literally had to say to her, Can you please tell me what one to get. And even then she said, Well, this one’s really popular, and then so is this one. And like, I she just kept telling me, like, here’s what’s popular, but giving me so many options, I just wanted to be sold the salad. Like, just sell me the salad. And your person wants that, like, they want to be sold. It’s part of and not just, like, part of a great buying experience, but part of a great customer experience. Of then, like, with the salad, if I’m like, Okay, well, then I have to choose, instead of being able to be like, Oh my god, like, this salad is going to be amazing, she told me, like, it’s going to be like, such a great salad. Everyone loves this one.
It was like, well, she was quite wishy washy about it. So now I’m more so in that mindset of like, I don’t know if this is going to be good or not, and my brain’s kind of looking for like, this might not be good, and my perfectionist brain into like, I might have made the wrong choice. Will everyone else like it? Whatever? Instead of being like, everyone at your picnic is going to love this one. Everyone loves this one. Like, thank you. Tell me that. Please sell to me. Especially, I’m buying anyway sell to me. So I have a lot of I have a lot of thoughts about selling that make it easy for me. And those are some of the the things that I will impart on you as well, that you will naturally start to see, like, oh, people actually want me to sell. It actually doesn’t feel good when you buy without being sold, or when you don’t buy because you weren’t sold, and because that person was so in their own perfectionism and fear of rejection that they weren’t willing to actually tell me fully and directly about how this was going to be the best thing ever for them.
So I love selling. I love to help you. Love selling and really just being able to go from that like sporadic, random, inconsistent, like, I just hope one day, someday I can pay myself and actually rely on it, but I need to figure out, like, you got this long list of all these things you need to do to be able to pay yourself a full time income, and that just feels exhausting, and you’re already scared of burning out, let alone with this long list of stuff, and then we have, you have consistent sales, constant support, needle movers, you know exactly in a given moment what to focus on. If life happens as it will, you’re going to go on vacation and have things like that happening that all is the perfect time to be working on this skill and developing that and getting into consistent sales. We don’t want you to be waiting until some magical time in the future that doesn’t exist, when life isn’t going to be happening, when everything’s certain and you have nothing coming up that isn’t even a good time to learn it.
You want to learn how to make sales when life is lifeing, because life will life and you want to learn how to do that on the hours that you have that you actually want to work, and when you are taking vacation, that is one of the things we work on together. A lot of my my one on one clients come to me and they’re like, I don’t take any time off unless I’m sick. We work on that. We need to have you getting some rest and actually letting your brain have a break and fully recharge, and having you have a personal life outside your business and all of that. So with that said, if you want to become one of my one on one clients, I would absolutely love to work with you, and if you resonate with this, I know 100% is going to be insanely helpful and just such an unlock to be able to start working and selling in a way that works with your perfectionist brain instead of against it, and just like letting go of a lot of these thoughts that aren’t helping you, like, Well, my my weekly or daily marketing should be making me sales consistently. It’s just not how business works.
So we want to have you actually paying yourself, doing all those things, having you have a real business that makes consistent sales. You can make it a contribution to your family and having you feel successful and like you actually you’re on the path you want to be on. So you can go to and we’ll put the link in the show notes. Samlaurabrown.com/coaching, that is where you can go to find the details and where you can apply to work with me. I’m normally fully booked with one on one coaching. So if this has resonated with you, I highly, highly encourage you, for your own benefit, to apply ASAP. If you have a question, reach out and and ask that. You can ask that through the application form as well. I’d love to invite you to work with me and to really start getting those consistent sales in a way that feels easy and natural and like you’re not working against yourself anymore. So with that said, I hope you’re having a beautiful day. I hope to see your application to work with me privately, and I’ll talk to you in the next episode.