Today Patty shares some universal truths on the podcast. Everyone, no matter where you are on your journey, deals with fear, doubt and worry. If you’ve used those things as proof that you can’t sell, or aren’t doing it “right”, today’s podcast is for you.
A few years ago, Patty held a conference when she wasn’t known and didn’t have a big list. A few months before the event, she wasn’t sure that the room would be full. Talk about fear and doubt!
She shares how the shift from selling to serving made her fear disappear. Listen to find out how you can use the energy of serving instead of the energy of selling to gain new clients on your terms.
Grab Patty’s sales script here
Transcript
(00:02) Welcome to the wealth and purpose podcast where people who are led by their hearts come to learn the secrets to creating wealth in a way that feels really good and live their purpose fully in the process. I’m your host, Patty Lennon. I’m an ex type-A corporate banker, turned intuitive business coach. I’m also a wife, a mom to two preteens, a professor, girl scout leader and well, hey, you get it. Like you, I wear a lot of hats, whether you’re looking for inspiration to get started or strategies to get growing. I am here to help you create abundance in every area of your life in business. Welcome
(00:40) Hey there friend. I have a story for you today, and it’s a behind the scenes story of a part of my business that most people have heard about. And the version of the story that most people hear is the one that is the finished product. It’s telling the story in hindsight, um, being able to say, you know, look what happened through all this struggle, all these marvelous things, but rarely do I get a chance to tell what it was like leading up to the finish line. And the story I’m talking about is the time that I launched my first conference. And the reason I’m, I want to share it is because I think there’s a lot of misunderstanding about what success looks and feels like. Specifically, I just did a speaking engagement, and this came up with people that were in the audience, and this regularly comes up for my clients.
(01:44) And so I want to make something clear, reaching a level of success, whatever, you know, whatever you’re seeing as success does not come with a freedom from basic human struggles like fear, worry, doubt, insecurity, all of that. It’s not that when you figure out how to succeed, all of those difficult emotions go away because, in order for those to go away, you’d basically have to be without ego. And although I think there might be a few humans on the planet that, that have sort of mastered that. I think, for the most part, most of us still have our egos firmly intact, and there’s a reason for that. Our Egos are the human component, it’s what links us here on planet earth. The reason we came to do this human game was to experience creation as divine beings through a human filter, through human limitation.
(02:48) That’s, that’s the whole, that’s the game, right? That’s the reason we’re doing it because it’s through that limitation that our soul evolves. It learns to understand it’s own power and beauty essence. So in a conversation with a few women at this event, what came up was, so you’re telling me you still have fear and worry and doubt about sales sometimes and the reality is that sometimes I do and when, especially when I’m doing something big, you know, I wonder, am I going to achieve the result that I’m going for with that big event, whether it’s a launch or a conference or whatever it is that’s natural. It is natural to feel that way. What changes over time is that you build muscle around those insecurities. And what I mean by that is you build an inner structure that helps you disconnect from the insecurity, helps you disconnect from the fear, doubt and worry faster.
(03:55) And just like lifting weights, you have to practice with it to get good with it over time. So if you’ve used your insecurity or your doubt or your fear or your worry as a proof that you can’t be successful or you think it’s the thing that’s getting in the way of success, especially where sales is concerned, I want to assure you that is not the case. And today’s story is about what the behind the scenes look like in real life. For me, launching my first conference and the reason why I’m using this is because that first conference was a tipping point in my business. It was a place where I went from, you know, no one knowing about me until suddenly people really talking about me. And for you, it may not be a conference; it could be a lot of things really just requires a lot of energy around, you know, sort of a big event, right?
(04:54) Something that, that raises the energy around your business. It can be a launch or a book or a live event. It doesn’t have to be a conference. In my case, it was, and so I had put it out there. I was doing this conference in um, right at Rockefeller Center, first 150 people committed to this $45,000 budget. I was going for it. And in the beginning it was all, you know, yeah, let’s do this, let’s do this. And you know, with the way I had ended up launching ticket sales was through a crowdfunding campaign. There were 150 tickets, and we sold about 70 of them through the crowdfunding campaign, which was super cool because it generated a lot of buzz almost a year before the conference and was actually on, well I guess six or seven months. So the crowdfunding campaign was in October, and the conference was in April, so I had all these tickets sold.
(05:56) And then from those tickets sales and from the buzz of the crowdfunding campaign, it did really well. Um, there were also a lot of sponsors, rose up and volunteered or raised their hand as wanting to be a part of this event. So a big part of the budget, it was covered with sponsorships in those pre-sold tickets. Sounds really awesome. Right? And in fairness it was, but in fairness to me, I had done a lot of work to create that buzz around the crowdfunding campaign. But as time went on, ticket sales started to slow, I guess maybe two months before the event. I forget the timing exactly. But I do remember that there was a feeling that maybe all the seats would not be filled and part of the, the pain. around would the seats be filled? Was that 70 of those tickets were purchased through this crowdfunding campaign and I wasn’t a hundred percent sure whether people purchase them because they really wanted to come to the event or if they had just purchased them to sort of support me.
(07:08) And that was where my mindset was, you know, did everyone kind of feel sorry for me? Those are the tricks my mind starts to play on me. And leading up, I was up to the event; I was thinking, my goodness, should we oversell the tickets now? Like what if those 70 people don’t show up? And I was having visions of the room not being full, and I forget how many tickets we still had to sell for the, just to make the room full, but enough that I was anxious about it and, and I was spinning my wheels and spinning my wheels, and it was building up where I was really starting to think like, would this be a massive failure? Would, I mean, would people come into the room and look around and see half the seats empty and just, you know, judge me or worse more than half the seats.
(07:57) And you had two little kids at the time, and my husband was out of work. I mean this week I had put a lot on this, and so every day I was getting up, and I was, you know, getting the kids where they needed to be. Um, half the time they were home with me, I was running my business as it was and doing all of this work to sell tickets, everything I could think of to sell tickets. And I remember one night I just crawled up in a ball and it just started sobbing. I mean, sobbing is probably too nice of a word. I was like, you know, snot-filled, crying, feeling so desperately alone in all of this when I wasn’t, I had plenty of support around me, but I just felt like there, I was out on the edge. I teach people, you know, you need to stand out on the edge of your own vulnerability to really experience full success.
(09:01) Well, I was out there, and I was so far out there that every part of me was screaming to pull myself back in and I was, I just felt so empty and so scared, and I thought, what have I done? I mean, I was putting so much time and energy into this conference. I wasn’t putting into filling my coaching practice, and at this point, I was the only provider in our home had these small children. They had lots of needs and every morning I would get up and just think, how do I sell more tickets? How do I sell more tickets? And that night was just the worst out of all of them. And I got on the phone with a friend who I had also hired her to help me with marketing and she had helped me with doing a lot of the marketing and I was just asking her for advice, like, you know, what do I do next?
(10:00) What do I do next? And she said, Patty, calm down. And I guess this was about two and a half weeks before the conference. She said, you have done all that you can do and now you need to focus on the people that have agreed to come stop worrying about the other tickets. The other tickets will sell, or they won’t sell, but the time to focus on sales is over. You need to focus on making that event so fabulous for the people in the room that that’s what they’re talking about, not the empty seats and that, was like a wake up call to my heart because even in the excruciating pain I felt of the fear and the doubt and the insecurity and the worry. Something about that really made my heart come alive and being of service to people and helping people was the reason I launched that conference, to begin with.
(11:04) I didn’t launch that conference to catapult my business. I had zero idea. That’s what it would do. I launched the conference because I saw so many people needing what I taught and not having the ability to hire me privately and I really wanted to just offer this to a larger number of people and she helped me remember that. And so for the next however many days before the conference, that’s what I did. I just focused on making this better and better and better every moment that I was not caring for my kids, and you know, supporting my husband and also taking care of myself. Cause I knew part of me serving the people that day come with me coming fully rested, hydrated, exercised, et cetera. But every moment that I focused, um, my business, I was focusing on how do I serve these people more, refining the content, coming up with new ways to engage the audience, doing a few last-minute calls to get some extra goodies in the goodie bag, which by the way was probably one of the most fabulous gift bags ever.
(12:19) I think we had the the VIP gift bags I think had something like $250 worth of product in them. It was amazing, and that was a complete result of me shifting into this energy of how do I serve and just opening myself up to it. So that day of the conference, the day came, and I was standing on the stage waiting for the event planner to open the doors and let everyone through. At this point, I still had no idea how many people were going to walk through the doors. I know we sold out, I don’t remember when we officially sold out, but again, remember I wasn’t sure that those 70 people that bought tickets through the crowdfunding campaign were coming and as the doors open and people start to stream through the love, I’m tearing up just thinking about it. The love I had for every single one of them took over.
(13:19) It just took the whole thing over, and it stopped being about me. I think it stopped being about me the moment my friend told me to start worrying about making that day great for the people that were there. But I mean, every part of my ego just dropped out of me, and my heart opened up, and all of that prep that I had done to be of service just poured through me. And the conference was amazing. To this day, I’m not sure I’m ever going to be able to put on a conference with that particular quality of energy because it was so pure and so light and I hope all my events will always be like that. But there’s something special about the first time and the day came, and it was amazing. And you know, one of the memories I held on to, or one of the thoughts I held on to as I went through those weeks prepping was to really think about my kids because I knew no matter who else was and was not in the room, I knew my two children were coming because the crowdfunding campaign I used to launch the conference my children had contributed, out of their own piggybacks to that campaign.
(14:48) They were actually my first two funders. And so when I would get really low, I would think about them, and I would think about pulling them up on stage, and I would think about thanking them in front of whoever was in the audience and giving them the credit of really having believed in me and just being of service to them. Just being of service to whoever was in the audience was what kept me going. And so that day came, and I had that moment with my children, which to this day is still one of the most spectacular moments in my life. And it’s not because I wanted to show my kids off to the world it I’m not built like that. And it wasn’t because I had made a commitment in my heart to do that to them, and for them it was because in that moment there was an energy flowing between the stage and the audience and the stage and the audience that was so gorgeous that I just hoped that my children could feel it because it was, it was the the full energy of life and love passing between a large group of people.
(16:09) It was a high, high vibrating energy and own years later. Now I can tell you that I think it did what I wanted it to do or at least what I hoped it would do, which was to help my children understand that we are all connected and that there’s opportunities to affect people even when it’s scary to stand up there and do the hard thing and that that’s a good thing to do that because to this day, my children happily get up on stage even though they’re in those weird preteen and teen years, they will get up on stage, they will, they will go door to door selling things and none of that bothers them because their relationship to the “crowd”, is different and what most of us experience, and I think it’s because of that, that moment, but my children aside, after that day was over, I was just so happy to be, be complete and feel that I had served the people in that audience fully.
(17:12) I had done very well in sales. I had no expectation of what those sales would be, but I knew it was my first five-figure sales day. I don’t remember exactly what the amount was, but I remember it was a lot of money from back then. But that wasn’t even what felt so glorious. What felt so glorious was just the knowledge that I had brought it at 150% and then the next day came, and you know, I was ready to get back to work. I mean there was the downfall, like the downfall energy you feel after a big, you know, there’s kind of like that low, but almost immediately it was lifted by overwhelming messages in my email box on social media. I couldn’t get over what everyone was saying, and it just kept happening and happening. And I was getting called for interviews with magazines and people were still having sales conversations with me, and they were asking how to work with me.
(18:15) And the most important thing was they were sharing with me how something that had occurred that day. Something that was said, a speaker, something they found in their gift back. Lots of different pieces of the puzzle for lots of different people had shifted something for them. And to this day, to this day, and how many years later are we, thank goodness, seven years later I will still get off a stage somewhere, and someone will come up to me, and they’ll say, you probably don’t know me, but I was at your first conference and here’s what that did for me. And they’ll tell me a story of success they created because of something that happened that day that is miraculous. That’s amazing. And the thing is, if I had stayed in that those last few weeks focused on selling, selling, selling, none of that would’ve happened. None of it, because I would not have been the person that I was on that day and I would not have brought what I brought on that day.
(19:21) And all of that selling I did was great. It did get people in the room, but the thing that really created a climate and momentum and impact, all of that was service. Staying in an energy of service to others. And what that helped, that of that helped me do was build a muscle really, really quickly and a firm understanding that believing that you are here to serve and focusing on that really truly does create the kind of results that you want, and it does it without doing crappy, slimy, sleazy things. So if you feel like this is meaningful for you, like that, that sales, sales, sales energy is not you, and you really want to know how to have that service focus, I can tell you that there’s easy ways to shift that focus. Just, first of all, go into sales really thinking about how can I help someone in this process and if that doesn’t make sense to you, you can download my sales script.
(20:29) That might help open up the energy for that and you’ll, I’ll just show you through that sales script. It’s free. How I do that. Just go to https://www.pattylennon.com/salesscript. We’ll put the link in the show notes too, and you can get my guide on how I walk a sales conversation. You’ll see how you can make it be about the other person, not about yourself. That gets you out of all those weird feelings. We also have a video training series coming up next week, and I will put a link to that training series in the show notes. Now I registration at the time I’m recording this registration isn’t available, so I’m hoping by the time this drops it will be, but minimally we’ll come back here and put the link in the show notes once it is. here’s what I want you to understand.
(21:20) Your desire to help other people, your desire to serve that is pure and good and light and love and is the, it is the fuel of your business. You do not have to reject that part of yourself to have sales flowing in that sale. That sales energy that that pushy energy that actually pushes sales away and you don’t have to be like that to happen. Good quality clients working with you on a regular basis. So right now, if you’ve been feeling like sales is a pushing energy, I want you to breathe in to the idea that sales can simply be a matter of serving well and then receiving. Truly. I hope this was helpful. Hey, if you’ve got questions for me, I always love to hear from you. Email me, patty@pattylennon.com. I’m happy to answer any questions you have. Have an amazing day.
(22:24) And as you go out there, I truly hope that every single person that wants to sell to you is doing it from a place of service. So you’re receiving as good as you’re giving out. Have a great day.
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