Hello, and welcome to Episode Number 63 of The Shine Show. And today we're going to talk about how to sell with confidence. And if you have been part of our recent launch of the Launch Lounge, our brand new membership, then I want to say, thank you so much for coming on this journey with me and for being a part of this experience. And if you're a new member inside the Launch Lounge, and you're a listener of the podcast, I want to say welcome to you. I can't wait to help you reach more people and to build more profitable online courses. I can't wait for those zoom goals. That's where the magic happens. And if you haven't joined as a member of the Launch Lounge, and you want to get on the waitlist, you need to go to shineandsucceed.com/waitlist to get on the list and be notified, the next time we're going to open the doors.

Giving up your time and freedom to make money is so 2009. Hi, I'm your host Salome Schillack. And I help online course creators launch grow and scale their businesses with Facebook and Instagram Ads. So that they can make more money and have an even bigger impact in the world. If you're ready to be inspired, to dream bigger, launch sooner and grow your online business faster, then tune in because you are ready to shine. And this is The Shine Show.

It was back in 2014, just after my youngest baby turned about six months old. I started a sales coaching business because I believe that I did not have to choose between doing work that stimulated my brain, earning income and being a mom to two little girls. So I started this coaching business thinking coaching business sounds like it's something I can learn quickly and on the fly. And I had already been a very successful pharmaceutical sales rep, and I thought, well, okay, if I'm going to be a coach, I need to niche down. So I'm just going to niche down as a sales coach and teach other people how to do what I was doing very successfully inside the pharmaceuticals company that I work for.

Now, when I started the business, I immediately started hustling my face off. Because I am by nature a hustler. I am by nature, someone who is going to work myself to the bone to get where I want to go. And I think it's just a part of my South African background. We South Africans are known for working really hard and maybe a little bit too hard. I think the Australian culture has rubbed off on me a little bit. The whole work life balance thing has really rubbed off on me really well here in Australia. So I started networking my heart out and I was at every breakfast event, every BNI meeting, every lunch event, every dinner meeting, once a week was networking, once a month networking, networking, networking, networking. It drove me nuts.

And as an introvert, I just ended up feeling incredibly exhausted from all the shindigging with people, making small talk with people who were never going to become my clients anyway, and just hanging out in the wrong crowds where my ideal clients weren't. But I didn't have the knowledge yet to know that my ideal client wasn't there. The worst thing is I really sucked at selling my own services as a sales coach. It is so ironic. And today looking back on it, I have such a different perspective on it, and I know exactly why I sucked at it, and I know exactly why it felt icky and yucky, when I was selling my services as a sales coach. The thing is I had this constant feeling of lack of belief in myself and lack of belief in my capabilities.

And the lack of belief in myself showed up as fear. And it showed up as lack of confidence. And in order to get past it, I pushed the lack of confidence aside and kind of embraced this whole fake it until you make it, a belief. Because I didn't know that I had any other options. I just knew that I had made a decision to be a sales coach. I needed to sell my sales coaching. And any weird feelings... Back then, I didn't know to pay attention to my intuition. And I just squished the feeling and kept moving because they thought that was how I was going to get to sales. So into my lack of belief in myself and my fear and my anxiety and just feeling really weird selling my services, of course, I read every book on the planet about sales and selling.

I realized that selling pharmaceutical drugs to doctors is very different than selling your own services, which I didn't quite anticipate when I started, but I read books. I listened to podcasts and I listened to training. And most of the information that I was filtering in kept telling me that the reason I feel this way is because I have limiting beliefs. And to this day, I have a little bit of an allergy just to the term, limiting beliefs. I fully believe that our minds and our thoughts control everything and determine the outcome of everything in our lives. But don't use the term, a limiting beliefs with me, and then think that I'm going to feel empowered to actually change them. I just find that term so disempowering.

Anyway, so me and my limiting beliefs, I kept believing because I was filtering in all this information that it was just my limiting beliefs and I just have to keep pushing. But I couldn't shake the feeling that I was an imposter. And that I was going to get caught out for not knowing anything about sales, for not knowing anything about selling. And it was kind of obvious because I was struggling to sell my services. So every sales goal felt really weird because I was coming from this place of, Oh goodness, just don't catch me out as someone who can sell my own services while I'm selling you my services as a sales coach. It's all very meta.

The thing is, what I know today is that there are two sources of confidence that we have to draw on as online marketers and as entrepreneurs. And the first one is the external confidence. Now, I recently and during coronavirus lockdown here in Brisbane, I decided to take up a playing the piano again, my kids has a keyboard and I downloaded an app, which I have been incredibly impressed with. And it's taking me step by step. I used to play when I was a child, but I haven't played in 30 years, 25 years. So I decided to start playing again. When I just started out, my hands were cramping, it was difficult. It sounded horrible. And I felt really sorry for my family who had to listen to me practice every day. But I chose a song. I chose the theme song from Friends and I decided I'm going to practice that one until I can get it right.

And I practiced and I practiced and I practiced and being in lockdown, you have nothing else to do. And nowhere else to be. So I had a lot of time to practice. And after a few weeks, I started actually sounding like something, "I'll be there for you in the rain the starts to fall." It started sounding a little bit like something. And now I can play the Friends theme song. And if you asked me what my confidence level was when I just started out, I would have said it was like out of 10 minus three. But now if you ask me what my confidence level is to play the Friends theme, I would say I'm probably at a seven and a half, but if you ask me what my confidence level is overall to sit down and play the piano, I would say my confidence is at a one because I am not emotionally attached to my ability to play the piano.

So I'm able to have a really sober look at my external ability and my external results, which is something I couldn't do back when I was a sales coach. I couldn't dissociate from being so involved in the emotion and being so attached to the meaning of being good at this thing that I didn't have an objective opinion of myself and my own external abilities. Another example of an external source of confidence is I have a very high level of external confidence in my ability to run webinar ads on Facebook. I've done it so many times. I've taught it to my team. I've unpacked so many webinar results that I am an expert at it. And I can look at anyone's results and tell them in 10 seconds, what went wrong or what they need to fix. Now, I'm not bragging because again, I have no emotional attachment to needing to be proven correct, or needing to be proven to be the expert, because I'm that confident in it.

I've just done it so many times that I can say that without flinching. I have enough evidence on the outside that I know what I'm talking about. So that's two examples of external confidence. It is when things in your world shows up as results. And you can independently evaluate those results as being good or as being on par with where you want to be. So for example, I'm not a good piano player. I'm a beginner piano player, but I'm confident that I can sit down and play a fairly okay Friends theme song. So think about your external confidence when it comes to your business. Think about your external confidence when it comes to doing new things in your business, or when it comes to selling things in your business that you have done for a very long time, or you undercharging because you've just grown, so used to being good at something that you're not viewing the value of that from another person's perspective.

Maybe you're undervaluing yourself or your service or your online course or your coaching program. Because to you something just... It's just so normal and natural. I want to challenge you to think that through and think if there's an area in your business where maybe you need to look at the value that you provide more from the perspective of the person who needs your expert skill rather than from the perspective of, yeah, but I've just been doing it so long. You've been doing it so long, I'm so confident in it that I don't even see the value of it anymore. The second source of confidence is internal confidence. And this is about the mindset and about believing in yourself. And back when I was trying to figure out why it felt so yucky selling my services, that is the limiting beliefs that I kept hearing about.

So an example of internal confidence is when we started The Launch Lounge, or when it was just in [inaudible] launch, I did not yet know that I had the ability to translate the knowledge I had from creating profitable launches for our clients to actually teaching students how to do that. So I knew that I had the knowledge in my head. I knew that I know what I'm talking about. And I knew that I had the experience. I had that internal confidence. But I did not have any external confidence yet that I can actually teach someone else to go and do that. And so what was the first thing I did as I started, I started working with these students and working with them and working with them and working with them and they started posting in the Facebook group.

And they started saying, "Wow, this is amazing. This is wonderful. I had this breakthrough today. Wow. You've just explained something so well for me that now I get it." And I started paying attention to those posts. And do the things they were saying that they value, to the things they were saying to me that I was doing well. Because I was proactively looking for external evidence that I can build upon, the skill that I was already confident in and use that skill as my source for internal confidence to then go and do something new. And look for the external confidence that this new thing that I'm doing is also working. Another example of internal confidence is your money mindset. How confident are you that money comes to you easily? If it's an internal mindset thing, that's something you can work on. It's something you can hire a coach to help you with.

It's something you can read a book about. It's something you can listen to a podcast about. It is usually not something you build up with sweat equity, but rather something you create inside your mind by identifying your thinking blind spots. Back when I lacked the confidence to sell my services as a sales coach, I kept hearing that they were limiting beliefs and I should just overcome them and believe in myself and charge your worth. The truth is you have to believe in yourself and work on your mindset every single day, but you also need the confidence in your ability to deliver the value you're selling. I lacked confidence in what I was selling because I had never taught anybody else or coached anybody else to sell anything before.

And my lack of experience showed up as lack of confidence. And that's why it felt icky and fake. I didn't believe in the value of what I was selling, because I didn't know if there was any value. Because I hadn't seen any evidence of it. So if I could go back and tell that girl something, she feels like a girl to me, but she was 34. If I can go back and tell that girl something, it would be this, "Work on your internal confidence every single day. Because your mind is your greatest source of creation. Everything you create is going to come out of your mind, including money, what shows up as money in your life, but don't ever underestimate the power of the confidence you'll have when you have actual runs on the board. And until then, charge less money than what you believe your service is worth. Then when you see the external evidence starts to match your internal confidence, you can charge a lot because you know you're worth it and everyone else knows it too."

So as you listen to this podcast, think about an area where you could be charging more because you have the external evidence. Look at the evidence and don't hold yourself back anymore. Or think about an area of your business, where you don't yet have the external evidence. Where you're doing something new or unfamiliar and ask yourself what internal confidence can you draw upon until you have developed the external evidence. Maybe you can have confidence in your own ability to figure things out or to cope with the unknown, or you can have confidence in your own creativity and your ability to solve problems, which is what you'll hold onto. Until you can see the external evidence that you can deliver the value you believe you're worth.

And then you're back on track. Remember that external and internal confidence are two sides of the same coin. And you need both to build a successful online business. May your week be filled with internal and external confidence this week. Have a lovely week. And please send me a DM on Insta and tell me what you've just learned today. And if it's internal or external confidence that you'll be drawing on this week. Talk to you next week. Bye.

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