Welcome to episode 170 of the Grow your independent consulting business podcast. This is Melisa Liberman, and I'm excited today to dive into a topic that is not a fun one, that is being ghosted as an independent consultant. I'm excited to dive into this because I think it's important that all of us recognize this is a normal part of doing
business. And it's not something for you to be afraid of, that you have to be feeling like you've done something wrong or that it really takes you down from an emotional perspective. So the excitement comes from there is a solution around this, and that's what I'm excited to share with you today. So with all of that, first, I just thought I'd give you a short
personal update. I'm super excited to share with you. The Olympic trials are coming up here in the US in the next week, and I thought it would be fun to report that the cadet, so that is a college student who goes to the US Air Force Academy. So it's basically, it's a college, a university. So the, the cadet who's been swimming against my oldest son or who my oldest son has been swimming against, I should say, because he's definitely swimming against
him. Anyway, the cadet has made it to the Olympic trials, so he got this time cut and is going to be swimming at the Olympic trials here in a few weeks. So it's really fun to, you know, report back. The oldest has been swimming against this guy who will be at the Olympic trials. And we're super excited to watch those here in the coming weeks and then the Olympics later this summer. So that's
what's happening here on a personal front. But today we're going to be talking about this situation of being ghosted because if you've been in business for any period of time as an independent consultant, you, you've likely experienced this situation. And I really want to dig into it today for you to help you better navigate this situation, because it happens to all of us. So let's take a step back and talk about the agenda for
today. We'll start off by talking a little bit about what does it mean to be ghosted? Just so we're on the same page here as we're starting out, and I'll share a story with you that, that you may relate to. Then we'll talk about what are the causes of being ghosted, three ways to handle being ghosted when you are, how to prevent it. And then we'll wrap up the episode with next steps to put it into action.
So that's our focus before we dive in. A companion resource that goes with this episode is the book grow your consulting business, the 14 step roadmap to make your independent consulting goals a reality. And in chapter nine, it focuses specifically on lead generation and your lead generation system to uncover high quality opportunities, which is really the main piece here between lead generation and sales, where ghosting
most commonly happens. So go check that out. There's also a really powerful chapter on mindset, and that's part of this equation as well. So if you haven't yet downloaded the book, you can go find it at consulting businessbook.com. we'll put the link to that in the show notes, and you can go download the book in PDF form for free. Or you can go grab it on Amazon in printed copy, which looks like this. It's. It's a manual. It's exciting. Something you can go back, back to
time and time again. Okay, so with that, let's now dive into this topic today of being ghosted. So what does that mean, to be ghosted? I'm sure you know what this means, but just in case you don't. So I'm going to paint the picture here. You've had a great meeting with someone who's a potential client. They seem really on board with what's going on. You both agree on what the next step would be, which may entail you sending an email and a proposal, even scheduling a
meeting. And you send all of those agreed follow ups, and then you never hear back and you wonder, what's the appropriate amount of time to wait until I check in again. And there's all this back and forth in your mind about what to do next. And you send another follow on email and you still don't hear anything from the person. And you just start wondering what has gone wrong? What
have you done wrong? The other scenario that happens so often is that you have a potential client who says they've got some urgent need. This one's so fascinating to me because it happens so often where you've got this consulting client who's telling you they've got an emergency. It's got to be fixed. Do you have availability to help them? They're asking you all of the questions that indicate that they need help. They want your help. They just need to kind of cross the t's and dot the I's
and then you're ready to get going. And so you pivot. You kind of put things on the back burner to respond to them. You know, you kind of jump through hoops to get things over to them more quickly than maybe you normally would. You may even agree verbally to all of the logistics and the pricing and everything. And then you send over a written proposal and the next steps, and may even schedule a meeting to kick off. And then you never hear back from them. And you just start wondering to
yourself, what is going on here? This makes no sense to me. Every indication was that they wanted to move forward, and now they're not even replying back. It's not even that. They haven't are saying to you, well, I changed my mind, or I'm not sure about this, or, you know, finance is giving me a hard time. They're just not even replying back. And it can be such a brutal experience, and it can create a spiral where you start second
guessing everything. What you said to them, what you didn't say to them, how you wrote up the follow up in the email, did you send something that went into their spam? You know, you're questioning what they might be thinking about you or what maybe they found online about you that is making them question whether or not you're an expert. You're questioning and second guessing why they didn't reply to you, and wondering, even I've seen this, where it kind of balloons out. I don't know if you've
experienced this, too, but where it balloons out. And you start wondering. You start imagining that not only have you done something that's permanently damaged the relationship, but also you're wondering if they're telling other people about you aren't good at what you do, or you aren't an expert, or that they shouldn't talk to you as a potential consultant for the work that they may need that's similar. And so you wonder about these larger impacts on your reputation.
And in. Sometimes you might even wonder if they're still alive, which is kind of crazy, right? We're wondering, like, did they get hit by a bus or did something crazy happen in their life? Our mind just starts going into all of these dark places, wondering why this person, who's seemingly on board and interested in building a relationship with us or even moving forward to an engagement, has all of a sudden stopped
responding. And so the implications of this are not just about the deal itself or that relationship itself when someone ghosts you, but it's also about the implications that are larger for you. The mental drain that this creates, the time suck that this creates, all of that time spent second guessing and questioning and wondering, and ultimately, the confidence
that it potentially shakes in you. And so that's kind of the picture that I want to paint here for you today as we're starting this episode, this idea of being ghosted and what that really looks like. And I am here to tell you, in having been a consultant and coach for the last twelve years, and in working with independent consultants on a daily basis, I can tell you that this situation of being ghosted is part of doing business. There
is nothing wrong with you. There's nothing that you personally have done that creates a situation where you're ghosted and other people aren't. All of us have been ghosted in some form or fashion in the normal course of doing business. So let's just start off by really normalizing this, that it's not that. Nothing to be ashamed of or to really allow to question your capability to succeed as an independent consultant. This is something that happens and part
of doing business. The truth is, as we start thinking about what causes ghosting, the truth is that oftentimes, more often than not, we're getting ghosted because the person is busy. When we think they have an emergency and they've communicated they have an emergency, it doesn't necessarily mean that. And even if they say, I need to get starting to get solved in the next 24 to 48 hours, just because they've settled,
that doesn't necessarily mean that's true. Not because they're lying to you, but just because they've got so many things coming at them that their emergency doesn't necessarily always match up to your imagination of what that means. It also is caused by them changing priorities or hitting an obstacle internally. They may be ready to move forward with you, and then. Then some CFO pops up out of, you know, nowhere, or whatever it might be that something in their
life popped up. Who knows? Right? We have no idea what might have caused this ghosting. At the end of the day, they could just be rude and decide that they went another direction and just not to close the loop with you. At the end of the day, it really doesn't matter what caused the
ghosting. It really doesn't matter. It could even be something you said or didn't say that's causing the ghosting, which is usually a very minute percentage of the time that this, you know, when you're getting ghosted, that's usually a very small percentage of the time that that's the truth. But at the end of the day, it actually doesn't matter why the ghosting is happening. We're just looking as a human and human nature. We're trying to look for a reason that we can hold on to to
make ourselves feel better. And what I want to share with you today is techniques that you can be leveraging to. Number one, avoid some of the ghosting. And there are some strategies and tactics that we'll talk about here in a minute that can help you to just to avoid it if possible, and
reduce the amount of times that this might happen. There are, of course, some strategies and tactics around that, but the other piece of this is helping you with the tools to get to the place where the ghosting is not a problem, where you're not having to spend so much time and mental energy trying to figure out and. And create solid footing for yourself to make yourself feel better, where you've built up a muscle and a strength to make the
ghosting have less impact on you. Now, listen, you're a human. It's. It's going to have an impact. But what I want to share with you today are the tools to help you to get to the place where the impact is really so much more minor for you in your business. All right, so with that, let's
talk about what the first strategy is. And that is really the acknowledgement that spending time thinking about why you're being ghosted is such a waste of mental and emotional energy, which you're very well aware of, you know, when you're doing it. I probably shouldn't be doing this, but I'm just ruminating over what did I say or what did I not say, or what
are they thinking? And trying to figure out why they're ghosting you so that then you can do something about it versus getting to the place where you just know that spending time thinking about this is a waste of mental and emotional energy. So that's what we're going to be working on as we think through these
three strategies. So the three strategies, I'm going to tell you what they are to handle being ghosted, and then I'm going to dive into each one individually, and then we'll talk about how to avoid being ghosted as much as you can after these three ways. All right, so the first of the three ways is putting in place in your business some strategies that help you to protect what I call your asset. So that's number one. The first way
to be handled, being ghosted, protect your asset. I'll tell you what that means here in a second. The second is exploring how it's not true that you're actually making it up, that you're not even being ghosted at all, which happens very frequently. So we'll talk about that, and then we'll talk about what if it is true, what if you are being ghosted and what to do about that, how to handle it. Okay, so let's dive into the first one. What to do about being ghosted
from protecting your asset perspective. And by your asset, what I mean is your mental energy, your mental capacity, your emotional ability to handle things and regulate them from an emotional perspective so that you're not putting so much energy into the situation where you're being ghosted, that it's robbing from where the energy will be much more impactful, which is making new relationships, generating new leads, creating new sales conversations, and ultimately pursuing ideal
clients for you. So the first of the three strategies they handle being ghosted is to be aware of the cost, the cost that the time you're spending and the emotional energy you're putting toward this situation where you're feeling like you were ghosted, what that's costing you, and being really aware of it. Recognizing that you're anxious, for example, because, you know, sometimes we just feel anxious. You're
feeling anxiety. You're not quite sure why. Just really recognizing, okay, I'm feeling anxious because I haven't heard back from John regarding that proposal yet. Just really naming it is one of the most important things to start off with. Naming and recognizing that you're feeling some stress over a situation that you're in and worrying that you've been ghosted. Then the next piece, in terms of really focusing in on protecting your asset, is normalizing it. Normalizing it. The waiting game is
part of doing business. Sometimes when we think, oh, they didn't get back to me for two weeks, it must be dead. The deal must be dead. It's actually not true. It's just that our timeline is very different than the potential client's timeline. So just recognizing and normalizing that the waiting game is part of doing business and so is being ghosted as part of doing business and just helping yourself to reassure that you're on the right track, it sucks, but at the same time, there's
nothing about you that's gone wrong. And then finally redirecting. So redirecting, when your brain starts going into those places where you're trying to, you know, figure out why are you being ghosted? What could you do differently? And how might you get back in communication with the person just really after you recognize and normalize that, redirecting it so that you just cut off that kind of tailspin that can so often happen and sometimes impact you
for days and even weeks at a time. So it could be something like, in the grand scheme of things, it sucks that John's not getting back to me, but it's actually not a problem in the bigger picture. And it only becomes a problem when you let it, like, telling yourself those types of things so that you can redirect and put yourself back on a path where you're not feeling so anxious. But it requires purpose and intention.
It doesn't just go away on its own. The feelings that are created when you're thinking you're being ghosted, you've got to really purposefully recognize and normalize and redirect so that then you can shorten the amount of time that this situation is impacting you. It's kind of like a toddler. Think about a toddler, and they become really enamored by a toy or something. Let's say I was trying to think of an example when my kids were younger and my youngest had this, like a toy
piano. It was so annoying. The sound of it, it's, like, so annoying. And I would try to hide it from him, and he would just always find it, and. And I would hear the thing being played. It's kind of like this, where you try to put it aside that you've been ghosted, but your mind just keeps coming back to it. Your mind just keeps coming back to it. Like that toddler who keeps finding this toy that creates these. This terrible noise, but the same way
you would with a toddler, you're redirecting them. You're showing them a toy that is, you know, that doesn't make any noise, and redirecting them over to focus on that. You want to do this. Think about your mind like that toddler where
you're. It's not a problem that they're going back to the toy, or in your example, it's not a problem that your mind is going back to questioning this ghosting situation, but you want to redirect it as quickly as possible so that you're not wasting a lot of mental energy on trying to figure out what's happening or not happening or why what's happening is happening or not happening. All
of that mental energy and overhead. So the first component here, a ways of handling ghosting, is you won't be surprised if you've listened to this podcast episode very often. It's all on the mental side first for you to focus on building a practice that helps you to protect your asset, which is your mind and your energy and your emotional state. So that's the first step of handling being ghosted.
Now, let's talk about the second step. The second step, or strategy that you can leverage when you think you've been ghosted is to just assume that it's not true. Like, your mind might tell you, I've definitely been ghosted. They haven't replied back to my last email or my last two emails, or they didn't reply to the text I sent them or to the call that I made to them. Whatever it is, they're out of
communication. Let's just take a moment and assume that even if that's true, that you're not being ghosted. Because how many times have you worried about someone not getting back to you, and then it just turns out to be a non issue in your mind, they're ghosting you. And for them, they just got busy, and even a month went by and they hadn't picked back up on the conversation. That happens so often. Then you feel stupid because you wasted all this time worrying about why they weren't replying
to you. And then it turns out that, just, like, business got in the way for them, and then you might feel angry. Why did they do this to me? Just, like, thinking about all of this emotional overhead that's created. So the second strategy is just assuming that it's not
true. Giving yourself and them the benefit of the doubt and reinforcing for yourself that it's not about you, even if they're not getting back to you and they're not doing what you both agreed that you would both do, and it feels like they're ghosting you, just taking some of that energy away from it by assuming that it's not true,
and when you take that kind of. That charge off of it, assuming that they're not ghosting, you, kind of leaping forward to the idea that you've been ghosted, even if it's been a month, and then asking yourself, what do you want your follow up cadence to be? How could you get back in touch with them? Sometimes, you know, for me, for example, sometimes I'll email people, don't hear back from them. I'll text them,
and then they reply back right away. So really asking yourself, when you think you've been ghosted, asking yourself, what would I do if I've not been ghosted? Or let me assume I've not been ghosted. Now, what's next? What other method could I leverage until they basically tell me, don't contact me again, right? What kind of verbiage would you use? And even setting that up, I love
setting that up for myself before any of this happens. And we'll talk more about that idea or that concept here in a minute so that in the moment when it feels more charged, you've got something to rely back on. So the second strategy is just getting your head into the space of this is not true that you've been ghosted, and then go operate from that
headspace that you've not been ghosted. Until someone tells you that, please don't contact me again, because that opens up your ability to problem solve versus focusing all of your mental power and cycles on. Why were you ghosted and what did you do wrong? And all of those questions that our brain as a human
naturally tends to gravitate toward. So again, this second tool I should say that you can leverage is assuming that when your brain thinks you've been ghosted, just redirecting and reinforcing that you haven't been ghosted, that it's not true, that you're lying to yourself. Now, the third way to handle being ghosted, and
again, we don't even know what that actually means. Does it mean, you know, for the person doesn't reply for two months and you've contacted them six times, you know, there actually is no such thing as being ghosted, right? There's really no such thing as being ghosted. We don't really know what this means, but in our mind, it's easy to quickly decide, I've been ghosted. So let's just say that the person hasn't been in contact with you and you believe that they never
will. And so now what? This third way to handle the situation is to assume that it is true. And then what? I love to look at things always, not as it's either this or this, but it's both. So let's assume that from our second technique that you are not being ghosted, you're lying to yourself. And we walk through that. Now, let's also assume that it is true that the person's never going to reply back to you again. Now what? And so this is where you can really leverage
the power of curiosity. Leverage the power of curiosity thinking. And just looking at this from a logical perspective, that the person's never going to reply back to you again. Thinking about that and approaching it from curiosity versus inadequacy, that you did nothing wrong to create this situation, that it's just wondering and being curious about your process could be shifted, moving forward to reduce the occurrences of this happening? That's the
question you want to be asking yourself. What could I be doing in the future to reduce the occurrences of this happening? Not because something's wrong with you, but it's about your process and not about you. So if it's about your process and not about you, then what would you shift moving forward?
So let me give you some examples. You might come to the conclusion that when looking back at a situation where someone's no longer replying to you, you might realize if you just look at yourself in the mirror from a place of curiosity instead of inadequacy, that you almost handled the situation from an entitled mentality or energy. Like they owe me something because I spent so much time working on this proposal. Or they owe me something because we've had so many meetings.
Or they owe me something because they told me they were going to do x, y, or z. And so perhaps you came at whatever that follow up was that they haven't replied to from more of an entitled energy or mentality. How could you shift that? Or for example, if you come at this from curiosity versus inadequacy, ask yourself, what could you come up with in the future to prevent this from moving forward? Such as asking them just as open ended question, do you have any
concerns? I know a few things are up in the air, but let's schedule a time now so we have a placeholder in the calendar using simple techniques like that to keep the ball moving forward, whatever those look like for you and your business, and they come from you leveraging curiosity about your process versus making this ghosting situation in adequacy and being about you. So that's the third way to handle being ghosted. Again, if you're even being ghosted, if that's even a thing, is
really to explore. If it is true, what might you shift with your process and separating it from making it about you and somehow that you're inadequate. So to recap, those three ways to handle being ghosted, and then we'll move forward into how to prevent being ghosted. Those three ways are, number one, protect your asset. Like really see that your mental and emotional well being are one of the keys to your success and
longevity as an independent consultant. So putting those tools and practices into place, such as the ones I just shared with you, to really protect your asset, knowing that every minute and day that goes by where you're ruminating over being ghosted is costing you in some form or fashion, and we don't want that to happen. The second of those three ways for you to handle being ghosted is to assume that it's not true, that you're lying to yourself and making it up. And now what? Now
what? It's not even true. Now what? And then the third way of the three ways to handle being ghosted is to assume that it is true. Maybe you are being ghosted, that the person's never going to talk to
you again. And so what does that mean? How can you leverage that from a place of curiosity versus inadequacy and questioning what you can shift about your process and your strategies in order to mitigate it, in order to avoid it moving forward as best you can, knowing that this is going to happen, this is a normal part of doing business. All right, so with those three areas now in place, and now you know what they are, now let's shift to how to prevent being ghosted.
Again, the spoiler alert here is there's no way to really avoid being ghosted unless you're really not putting yourself out there. So while tactically you can always improve at setting clear time based follow up plans and getting the other person to buy into them and agree to them, of course, there are a lot
of ways you can do that. And that's where that third piece comes in, really questioning what can you be doing to really lock down your process so that the follow ups are really clear, so that you're uncovering any concerns that the person might have or roadblocks or obstacles that might, you know, kind of come into the picture and using that to continuously improve and shore up your process. Of course, you can always do that to prevent the scenario of being
ghosted. The other tactic that you can use to. I don't want to use. Let me restate this. I don't want to use the word prevention. Reduce. That's the word we want to be using. Reduce the amount of time that you're being ghosted. So tactically, you can be thinking about things like what do you do at the end of every call? For example, I've worked with consultants in the past where we were really clear about
we're never going to get off a call without a very clear next step. And that's just like the micro skill that they worked on until that became something that was second nature, and then they can move on to focusing on other things. So you might focus like that consultant did on really getting
crisp and good at setting a next step. The other thing you might do to reduce the number of times being ghosted is to get more brave at asking questions about where your stakeholder could hit a roadblock internally, or where that this might get whatever work you're talking about might get deprioritized or where the budget stands. But getting more brave and courageous about asking those types of questions can also help you to reduce the number of times.
The other way to reduce the number of times is talking with the person. Hey, listen, let's talk about next steps. Let's say you're talking with a potential client. You're toward the end of a call, and you're working on setting up the next set of calls. Hey, listen, we agreed I'm going to do X and Y. You agreed you're going to do z. What do we do if for some reason we miss the deadline or I don't hear back from you? Is it okay to send
you a text? Like that can be a very simple way just to get their permission so that you don't have to be questioning and wondering, oh, should I send a text? Or is that too kind of invasive? You just have those agreements established upfront. So those are some of the strategies and tactics that you can leverage to reduce the number of times that you're ghosted and assume that you will be ghosted. No matter what you do, no matter what you put
in place. Assume that you will be ghosted, and from there, create what I like to call a ghosting protocol. The ghosting protocol is something that you can set up, especially if this is something that you feel is really kind of top of mind for you or really impacts you emotionally. What you can do from a ghosting protocol perspective is when you're not in the middle of a ghosting situation or a perceived ghosting situation, when your emotional state is really confident or
not charged in some way. Write down your ghosting protocol. Write down what is ghosting in my mind, first and foremost, does it mean the person hasn't replied back in two weeks? What does that mean? What does it mean to you to be ghosted? And then in that moment, how do you want to think? How do you want to feel? How do you want to leverage those strategies, those three ways of dealing with it that I just shared with you? What is your cadence? That you will continue to connect with the
person even when they're not replying to you. What is the time box look like for you? Like just really building out a scenario for you about how you're going to handle the situation when someone doesn't reply back to you in some period of time that you think is you know, in the window of when they should be replying. Create a ghosting protocol for yourself and then implement those mental tools that we were talking about earlier, the recognizing, the normalizing, the redirecting so
that you can shorten the amount of time. Listen, you're a human and I'll share with you. I had a situation a couple of weeks ago where I felt like I was being ghosted. It ended up not being true, but for probably a week I noticed that I was feeling off my game, just emotionally, and it was because I was worried that I had been ghosted. And so I was just working through these mental
tools. Whereas in the past it probably would have taken me a month, in this case it was a couple of days to really get myself back into a more neutral place. And that's why I wanted to share this with you. Today is the mental side of this is equally as important as figuring out strategies that you can use about, well, what is the cadence of when I should revisit with them and that kind of thing. All right, so with that, let's wrap up today's episode with
how to put this into action. So, very simply put, really think about what that
ghosting protocol is for you. Write it down. Leverage the aspects that I just shared with you to build out a really comprehensive ghosting protocol that helps you to understand and get clear about what it means to be ghosted to you, what your cadence are, what are your strategies to deal with it, and then how are you going to leverage the mental aspect of the tools that I shared with you today to help lessen the overhead when you get into this situation and not allow it to take you down
in days or weeks or months on end. All right? And if this is something that you want additional support on as you grow your consulting business so that you feel more confident, you feel more clear, and you feel more capable as a business owner to hit the goals that you have set for yourself and even exceed them while feeling better and more fulfilled as you do it? Reach out to me to see if coaching would be a good fit. You can find a link to apply and time on my
[email protected]. dot thanks for tuning in and I'll see you again next week. Take care. Thanks for joining me this week on the Grow, your independent consulting business podcast. If you liked today's episode, I have three quick next steps for you. First click subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to make sure you don't miss future episodes. Next, leave me a review in your podcast app so other independent consultants
can find and benefit, too. And finally, to put the ideas from today's episode into action, head over to melissalieberman.com for the show notes and more resources to help you grow your consulting practice from your first few projects into a full fledged business. See you next week.