Women, Money, and Love

You’re listening to The Jewish Entrepreneur Podcast  with Debbie Sassen Episode 89.

Welcome to The Jewish Entrepreneur Podcast. I’m your host, Debbie Sassen. I went from being a financial adviser, author and chronic underearner to building my business to six figures as a financial planner and money mindset coach. Then, on to multiple six figures as a full-time money and business coach. I help entrepreneurs create money making businesses and build wealth, using sales and money mindset strategies in alignment with authentic Jewish values. Now, let’s dive in to today’s show.

Hello, my friends, and welcome back to the podcast. I want you to know that the sales training that I have been talking about for weeks and weeks and weeks is live. You can go onto my website, DebbieSassen.com/selling, and you can download and listen to my free audio training The Art of Ethical Selling: Four Steps to Non-Sleazy Sales.

It has been already warmly received. I’m getting great feedback from the first audio that dropped yesterday. I hope you enjoy it. I hope you share it. I think it will be a game changer for you and your business. Because in order to make money in your business, you have to know how to sell. Selling is how you serve your clients and invite them in to change their lives. So again, go to my website, DebbieSassen.com/selling and you will be invited into that sales training.

For today’s episode, I want to share with you a case study from one of my clients. I’m going to call her Dana. We’re going to talk about how to stop quitting on yourself. Let me give you a little bit of background. Dana is a life coach. She works specifically with women, women in midlife, and helps them find themselves, and reinvent themselves, during their midlife episode; women who, maybe, their kids are out of their house.

What I want to do is I want to guide you through the coaching that I’ve been doing with Dana for the last couple of weeks as she is reopening her membership. She has a membership program that has been operational for about two years. She reopens every two to three months, inviting new women into the program. When we met in the beginning of July, Dana had an idea that she was going to do a webinar.

She’s done five-day challenges in the past, and various things that people do to invite people into their orbit when they’re opening their programs, their membership programs, or other programs. Her goal was to have a webinar in the end of July.

When we spoke in early July, she was feeling a little bit low, a little bit discouraged, because the last time Dana opened up her membership, fewer numbers than she wanted signed up to her membership program. Her goal is always like 30, and about 16 women joined her membership program. She was feeling a bit discouraged, so she had not yet scheduled the webinar.

We did some coaching around that. She got to the place where she was like, “Okay, I’m going to schedule the webinar. I am committed to my goal. I am committed to my people.”  I want to remind you that in Episode 87 we talked about, on the podcast, how to believe harder in your goal. So, she got herself back into the mindset that she was really here to serve her women. She scheduled the webinar, and away we go.

Then, we met this week. Yes, she sent out her email, and she has 137 women signed up to the webinar. Rather than being excited and motivated by 137 women, Dana was feeling discouraged, when we opened our coaching session.

I know for some of you, depending on where you are in business, you might be thinking, “Wow, 137 signups! I’ve done webinars before, and I’ve had 13, I’ve had 28, but 137? I would be over the moon if that many people have signed up to something I was doing.”

But for Dana, who has done webinars in the past where over 400 people have signed up, 137 felt really, really low and she was really feeling discouraged by that number. She was kind of having a hard time getting herself motivated to keep going. So, here’s the first thing that I want to offer you, and it relates to both the first coaching that I did with Dana and now; when we started at 137 women and before we finished our coaching session. That is, we don’t have to be motivated by our business.

I know it sounds a little bit crazy to say that, because we want to get up in the morning and we want to feel inspired, we want to feel excited, we want to dive into our laptops and start working in our business. Motivation, inspiration, excitement, joy, they’re all very short-lived emotions. You get a quick high, and then you come back down to earth, right?

With all due respect to Marie Kondo, your business doesn’t always have to spark joy. Your business is about service. Your business is about serving other people. It’s not about serving you with lovely, happy, effervescent emotions. If that’s what you want your business to do for you, you should probably get out of business. Because you’re here to serve other people, not want your business to serve you.

Let me just give you a heads up that if you decide to close down your business, I don’t think you will, but let’s just say you did. If you wanted to close down your business, and you wanted to go work for somebody else, guess what? You’re still going to be showing up in service of somebody else. You’re going to show up serving your boss, and your boss is serving their clients, right?

That’s all we do in life, is that we serve other people. Yes, we do get joy out of it, we do get fulfillment and satisfaction out of what we do. So, if you don’t want to be a surgeon and you don’t like blood, well, then I don’t suggest that you should be a doctor. Right? That is definitely not your path to having a satisfying life.

But your business doesn’t have to be motivating, exciting, and joyful every single day. There are parts of it that are fun. There are parts of it that you get great feedback from your clients. You see that your clients are changing their lives. Or you launch a new website into the world, and it’s beautiful, and you get that sort of really full bodied, lovely experience of doing something and creating something and bringing it to the world.

But then there’s the next website, or then there’s the next thing that you’re doing in your business. We can’t always be living on this high of something being motivating and striking joy. So, that’s the first point that I want to bring to you.

If you’re expecting that all the time, you’re going to end up quitting on yourself because business isn’t like that. Some parts are good, and some parts are less good, just like raising kids. Nobody likes to get up at two o’clock in the morning when your kid has an upset stomach, and I’ll just leave it at that.

All right, number two, Dana had 137 signups for her program. Her thought about 137 signups was, “Oh, these people just show up for all my free trainings. They’re not going to sign up. I know who they are.” When we got down into the numbers… Because our brain is going to offer us all sorts of thoughts. Most of them are going to be useless. Most of them will be negative. You’ve got to be onto your brain.

So, when we actually parsed through all the information, I said, “Wait a second. Out of those 137 signups, how many of them do you know are,” let’s call them, for lack of a nicer term, let’s call them, “tire kickers. They show up to all the free trainings, and they never do anything.” When she really thought about it, she said 12.

“Wait a second here, you have 137 signups, 12 of them you know come to all of your free trainings. For the 125 people who signed up to your webinar, you’re going to be discouraged? There are 125 people who want what you’re offering. Not only that, even the 12 people that are signing up, they also want what you’re offering. You can’t give up on your goal because of 12 people who’ve never bought anything from you in the past.

It could be that today, when you’re doing your webinar, you’re going to say something exactly that they needed to hear today. That’s going to be the trigger for them, the inspiration, motivation,” not that you always need it, but anyway, “but that will be the thing that will take them over the goalposts, to now decide to sign up for your membership program.” So, you never know.

But when you’re making your emotions hang on to the 12 people that you pretty much know, and 125 that you don’t know, you’re quitting on yourself. You can’t do that, because there are 125 people in the world who signed up and said yes to you. You’re here to serve them, plus the other 12 that you have some sort of existing relationship with. But it’s not that intimate relationship where they’ve said yes and joined your membership program.

So, that’s quitting number two. You get discouraged by small numbers instead of encouraged by the big numbers, and you’re putting your brain, because that’s what brains do, on this small sampling of people. You’re creating a big story out of this small number.

Number three, let’s talk about those 125 people, plus those 12 people, and realize that each of those people is “new.” What do I mean? There are the 125 that she doesn’t know who they are, they’ve come from new places in the world, and the 12 that always show up. But here’s the thing about you in your business, and your clients, wherever they’re holding.

Every single day, you are a new person and they are a new person. How is it possible that they could hear something new on the webinar, and that will be the thing that’s going to get them to say yes to join the membership? Because today, I’m not the same person that I was yesterday. I’m not the same person that it was last week, last month, all the last two years that these 12 women might have been on all of Dana’s webinars and all of her challenges.

We grow and change every single day. Every morning has a new dawn. We have new things that happen in our life. We’re just different. We’re molded by our experiences. We have new thoughts. We’ve been exposed to new media, new podcasts, right? People might have said something. Those 12 people who have been in my orbit for so long, it could be that today, they are just that new recreation, that new iteration of themselves, and they can also join my membership today.

I’m talking as if I’m Dana, but I also want to offer you, that people who have been on your email list, people who have been engaging with you on social media, people who have been in your orbit for a while, even if you think that, “They’ve been around. They’re not going to join my whatever,” you really never know.

Because today, they are new creations of God. New inspirations have come into them, new thoughts, and they really can join. So, don’t be discouraged by people who say, “They’re never going to join me. I know their types. They just want to come to all my free things.” Because that, again, is quitting on yourself.

Sometimes it takes people three years of following you, and engaging with you, to all of a sudden decide that now is the time. So, don’t quit on yourself that way.

Now, let’s talk about number four. In the past, Dana has had 400 women signing up to her webinars, and now she only has 137. There were still five days between when we coached and Dana’s webinar. You have to keep going for the people that haven’t heard you yet. She’s like, “Yeah, I sent my emails out. I posted a little bit on socials.”

But you know what? If you have a social media channel that you love posting on, whether it’s Facebook, or Instagram, or Threads. If you’ve joined that new experience out there in the world, I haven’t. LinkedIn, wherever you show up, maybe it’s in WhatsApp groups, maybe it’s in your local community where you’re giving workshops.

There are still more people out there who haven’t heard about you. There’s still more people out there that have heard about you, but, again, they’re waiting for something else to be the trigger. As I reminded Dana, because for some reason her brain forgot about this, people sign up for things at the last minute. Just because, five days out, you have 137 signups has no connection whatsoever with 400 potential signups, as you have had in the past.

So, just remember that people are last minute kind of people. They will show up. Maybe you’ll get 400, and maybe you won’t get 400. Maybe you’ll get 500. Right? That’s the place where we took Dana’s brain. I said, “Who would you have to be to show up as if 500 people are going to sign up for your webinar?”

T the first thing that came out of her mind, when I asked her that question, was that she would stop hiding. So, your brain is very sneaky. Your brain knows what’s going on. Your brain also knows when you’re hiding, and you’re not showing up in service of your people. Your brain knows when you’re quitting on yourself.

When you ask yourself a question like that, who’s the future “you” who has 500 women signed up to her webinar, that’s really taking yourself to the future of that. I, even now as I’m recording this podcast, I’m sitting up stronger in my chair, and I’m kind of thrusting my shoulders back.

I’m like, wow, that’s a much more empowered version of me. Where I’m like, “Wow, I got 500 women. There are 500 women in the world who want to sign up for my webinar.” Do you feel the difference in my energy? Because when you’re really sitting in that place…

Maybe that future “you” can’t imagine her showing up in July. Maybe you’re feeling that she’s going to show up in August or September, or sometime in 2024. But if you could take yourself to the future, and you can think from your future self, that energy is going to dissipate out into the world and people are going to connect with you energetically. You’re going to call them in. They will be magnetically attracted to you.

I’ll bet she’ll get her 400 or 500 women, signing up for her webinar, just from taking herself to the place where her future self has called in so many people who want to be in her space, want to learn from her, and want to sign up to her membership program.

So, don’t quit on yourself from the facts that you see today. Take yourself to the future, because your future self has already accomplished all of your goals. Really try to think, as much as you can… It’s a bit of a mind trip. But what would she be thinking? What would she be feeling? What would she be doing in order to create those future results, that you know today that you want? Because she’s already accomplished it.

Here’s the key thing that Dana said to me, when she said she would stop hiding. The next words out of her mouth were, “I would embrace discomfort.” She said, “I don’t get uncomfortable.” I thought that that was really the a-ha moment. When you hide, when you keep yourself small, when you’re not willing to get uncomfortable, your people can’t find you.

Why do we know about Coca Cola? I’m not saying it’s comfortable or uncomfortable for Coca Cola, because they just plaster…I’m not saying that in a bad way. They plaster the billboards, the commercials, and all of the print ads. Everywhere you go, you see Coca Cola. They make themselves visible.

If you want your people to find you, you have to embrace discomfort. Whatever that means for you. You have to, again, sit up in your chair, stand up strong, get a power pose, and be willing to be more visible, be willing to get uncomfortable, and let more people know about you. If you’re hiding, you can’t call your people in. You can’t serve the 30 women in your membership program, or the 500 women on your webinar, if you’re keeping yourself small.

You can’t expect that people are just going to find you, because they’re not. There’s a lot of noise out there in the world. We don’t live in little villages anymore. So, people are constantly being inundated by information. Your responsibility as a CEO, if you want to grow your business, is to figure out a way to rise above the noise.

You have to get uncomfortable. You have to think more like a CEO. You have to think from your future self. Stop quitting on yourself by keeping yourself exactly where you are today. Because the future version of you, who has grown her bigger business, has done things that you haven’t yet done. So, you have to think like her, and you have to stop hiding.

The final thing that we talked about, was her goal of signing 30 women in her program, in July. Because her brain was telling her, “It’s the holidays, people are busy, they’re out with their kids. They’re just not going to have the time for this.” She was really feeling, again, discouraged by her goal. Maybe she should lower her goal, that was where her brain was going, “Nah, maybe I won’t keep it at 30.”

I challenged her again about that future version of her who had 30 women. Some of the thoughts that came up in her mind, as we were going through this was, “Wait a second, the people who were showing up in July, during the summer holidays, those people are more motivated. It’s so important for them, during this time, that they are going to show up. They are going to decide to make a decision.”

Because when we’re in a more relaxed mode, it gives our brain more capacity to want to change. So, we took her brain there, to all of the reasons why even if she had smaller numbers this time because people were on vacation, why now would be the perfect time for people to show up.

She came up with herself, “Oh, yeah, a lot of teachers. Teachers are more relaxed during the summer. They sign up for things, because they’re so busy during the school year they just don’t have time.”

So, when we gave her that space to expand into possibility, she came up with new reasons and new motivations and encouragement for herself for why people would sign up, and it would be the perfect time for people to come to the webinar and to sign up for her membership program.

Again, you have to get out of where your limited thinking is right now, and take yourself to the place where there is more possibility in the world. When you are not connecting with possibility, you’re quitting on yourself. There are 8 billion people in the world, and there are 30 women… That’s what I was saying, there are 30 Women who could sign up to Dana’s membership program right now. Right?

It would be possible, when you just stop quitting on yourself. When you relax your mind, you get all this gunk that’s in your brain, that’s taking up valuable space, and telling you it’s not going to work, everybody’s on holiday, there’s only 137 people… Do you hear the pity party that’s going on in my voice when I’m talking like that?

Get it all out of your brain, write it all down, and then take yourself to the future where 500 people signed up for your webinar, and 30 people signed up for your membership program. Remember, you’re here to serve. You’re not here to have joy. You’re not here to have motivation and inspiration and excitement every single day in your business. You are here to serve your people. That’s what you’re here in the world to do.

All right, my friends, I hope you got a lot of value out of today’s podcast. I want you to look at your business. You could look at your life also, but that’s not what we’re talking about here. I want you to notice, where are you quitting on yourself? Where are you quitting on your clients? Where are you quitting on your business? Where are you quitting on your family, when you get discouraged by whatever’s going on in this moment in your business?

Because when you stop quitting on yourself, there is so much available to you, to your family, to your business, and to your clients on the other side. Thank you, my friends. I look forward to seeing you next week on The Jewish Entrepreneur Podcast.

I want to remind you that one way that people quit on themselves, is not showing up to their sales conversations in service of their people. I’m reminding you that my free training, The Art of Ethical Selling: Four Key Steps to Non-Sleazy Sales is now available as a free audio download. Go to my website, DebbieSassen.com/selling, and sign up for your free training. I will see you next week. Bye-bye.

Thanks for listening to The Jewish Entrepreneur Podcast. If you want to stop underselling and underearning and close more sales, you need to clear the limiting money beliefs that are sabotaging your business growth.

Head on over to DebbieSassen.com/mindset and download my free Money Mindset Workbook. Uncover and dissolve money blocks, like hundreds of other entrepreneurs who are now building six-, multi-six-, and seven-figure businesses and creating true financial freedom.