(I Haven’t Made It Yet) I MADE A SALE! - Ep 5

For those that didn't already hear the earlier episode of I Haven't Made it Yet , which kind of prompted some of this , but it was episode number two , where I was talking about , like when you experience the self-doubt , no matter how good you are at bringing yourself up again , sometimes that self-doubt takes over and I had been struggling , understandably , with the

idea that I hadn't made a sale in 2024 . Now my plan for the year , when I'm sticking with something you know reasonable in terms of a goal , was $50k for the year and therefore , based on my packages and on average , that basically meant I only needed one sale every single month . So I don't think that's too high an expectation . It's quite reasonable .

But then when it didn't happen in January and February , that can feel really , really difficult . That said , I also had to look at what I know about buying and the way that I was working , in that you don't know where it's all going to come from and how it's going to come .

I was looking at it and going well , naturally based on brand awareness , on being aware of people in the pipeline , bringing them through time , etc . To build trust for people to be ready . Then ultimately this is going to be skewed towards the end of the year and I'd kind of succumb to the fact that who knew when a sale was going to come in ?

And okay , I had other streams to support my income and it would be quite nice if I could start to generate something in the business that was a bit more solid , one of the bigger packages that I have . But ultimately I can make that happen . I can't make anything happen .

I can take lots of daily actions to keep pushing forwards , to generate leads , to nurture leads , to keep moving people through that pipeline to see if there's a good fit and to make that happen when it is the right time . But ultimately you don't know when it's going to happen .

Not in the early days , not when you don't have leads waiting to work with you and people just to tip over the edge into saying definitely yes as opposed to yes , just not sure when . So the absolute joy when someone very easily said yes . It was our first call together , our first exchange personally .

It had come through a referral , admittedly , so had a little bit of social not social proof , but just that little bit more confidence that someone can have if you get a referral , and this is what I work on in terms of when we're working on the podcasts and getting people to listen to them .

Ultimately , word of mouth is one of the strongest ways of doing that , because people trust what people are told by them and personal recommendation , especially if the person that is telling them is someone that they trust deeply and trust their judgment of things .

So we had this one call and I mean , as far as I was concerned , he looked like a good candidate and I didn't go for the close in the call . Now maybe my sales coach would have said I probably should have done . I don't think it's because I doubted myself , but I followed my intuition and I treat these first calls as first calls .

I'm not there to sell to you , it's your decision to do that , and they would argue possibly that had I avoided that and if I continue that behaviour , then it's possible that I'm going to lose sales because I'm not closing people that are basically saying , yes , let's do this .

But whilst I felt confident , this person was very interested I was also aware of the stage that our relationship was at and I actually didn't go for the close because I said , well , I'll send the details over , let's lock down a time to talk about this at another point , give you time to look at it , ask questions etc .

And if you decide earlier that you want to go ahead with it , then by all means we can do that and make our future call the first call that we have to get , as opposed to another call to discuss the package . And even in response to that , he had said you know what I like that you didn't go for the close .

So maybe it was intuition , maybe it was listening , maybe it was being aware , whereas if someone's chomping at the bit , like when could I start ? When's the first session , then I'm gonna go for the close , right . But when someone's still deciding or you know they've made that first early decision to me it felt right and I have to follow that .

And I suppose that's the only way that I can ever stick with what I've done , which is to follow the intuition , because over the past five years now , following my intuition has served me incredibly well and anytime that I have delayed on it it's caused me some problems or , you know , it's just caused a delay .

So when I jump back to my relationship , my previous relationship and getting married and then needing to leave within a year . Had I not followed that , I wouldn't be where I am now .

Well , there's signs earlier that I ignored my intuition , yes , and I wish I hadn't , or I don't ever really wish that it would change , because I don't think you can ever ever wish that on yourself . Otherwise , you just live in regret . What I mean is , in hindsight , it would have been much easier that entire process if I had paid attention earlier on .

There's been some other little moments that haven't been quite so life-changing , and I think about moving to podcasting . I had the idea to move to social media over two years ago and I chose not to because I was like well , you're invested in this , you can't run both . You love the other one right now . You got to go with that . Now that comes back to .

There's a concept around this and I can't remember the name of it , but sort of like the fact that because you've invested , you don't want to give up on something . So you could have said that about my relationship . My relationship was six years long , something like that .

So at the first indications that this was possibly not going to go well or that they were going to be bumpy , bumps in the road ahead . I was looking from a perspective of this is what I've already got and this is the time I've put in the effort , like how can I throw all of that away inverted commas and then you can say the same for the business .

Now , luckily , I could see through it for the relationship and I had enough to go . If I'm at the end of my life , if I'm on my death bed , like how am I going to feel about this if I don't action it ? And that got me moving quicker than anything

. And I suppose when I was still doing the life coaching versus moving into social media , there wasn't that element of urgency . I don't think I did that exercise but , thinking about it , I don't think I'd go , oh , you know the end of the world , because if this works , then I'll be really pleased with it .

So there was still some belief in it , there was still some need for it to want to do it and I was enjoying it . And so , whilst it wasn't the most profitable although I think I could go back now and make it more profitable from what I've learned in two years and even just in the oh , what are we on now .

So eight months , nine months of focusing in on social media , getting clarity on messaging , kind of just starting over with that blank slate , because it can be scary to start over . But with Chantel the coach , with the life coaching , I had so much that I had brought to that brand with me and I didn't want to let go of it .

So it was hard to reset and to get the messaging and you end up complicate yourself and you overthink I was playing a fresh to social media . I was firstly just doing social media and then people were like , oh , can you help with LinkedIn ? I was like I have no idea about LinkedIn at that point .

No , I was short form video on Instagram and TikTok and then I just still didn't want to just be known for that and I was like , well , that's not my process . My process isn't just short form video . Actually , we do it really clever ways , which is where the name for the clever content creator came up with clever ways that streamline .

I've always leveraged the content I have . It hasn't just been let's make a new post every single day , let's leverage that post wherever it came from . And where it came from was podcasting . Podcasting was the thing that sat at the top .

It was no matter what I do , the podcast is there , and if I can then use that to get social media posts out , then I'll do it . So it actually only took me about three months into going into social media to go oh wait , no , this still doesn't feel right .

I was actually prompted by a talk that Lisa Johnson was doing at the sales and closing super conference in Birmingham in September and she was like just getting over one thing and I was like this is , I knew this , I already knew this , I just haven't been following it . And lo and behold , that was when we went into podcasting .

So to have to rebrand or get known again , I'd already done three months of work getting known as social media , as content , and then I had to reestablish myself as podcasting .

So that's been a delay , as it were , or it had an effect , not a very long one , admittedly , but from September to December it's kind of working out in my head as to what this looks like , what I'm going to do , and I had two initial clients then and then since then it was like , okay , right , I need to rebrand in my local network and let people know

what I do , find more people utilize that network and that's kind of what December to March has been three months of that and it has been very quiet . I've been thankful for the clients I have because they keep me busy , keep me on top of what exactly they need and then what I can communicate to an audience . But the sale coming in finally is just wonderful .

It's something that I always said I would celebrate in something , because you have to celebrate every single win and sharing it on here is one way of doing that speaking it out loud , sharing how precious every single sale is . Now , don't get me wrong , I've had some very , very small sales in between for Content Creation Club .

That's kind of like a networking market research opportunity to support people with ongoing content creation and hold some accountability in general , and I really love it . I love the community aspect of it .

When it comes to this , which is the lifeblood of my business , actually getting some money in and we've also been pivoting into done for you services and that's an exciting realm that complements this strategic side that I work on . It just everything is coming together in terms of creation .

Having a sale is a lovely little cherry on top for the last few months of work , obviously hoping that that's not the only sale for the next month or two , but ultimately the good goal is 50K . The best goal is up at 200K and that sounds lofty and it does make me feel scared . The reality is that that's the real goal .

50k would be very impressive , I think , from going from zero to 50K . In my head logically sounds great , but at the same time it's not scary enough . It almost seems doable and if it's doable then I'm going to be playing safe . Part of me has to go okay . Well , even if we're not 50K yet , let's just keep aiming for 20K . That's part of me .

Let's keep aiming for the 200K and that has been solidified by me listening to 10 times as easy as two times , which has just said you don't need to know how to work it out to get there . I do know my numbers in sales and

tracking . By the year I wouldn't be anywhere near on track , but there is still a majority of the year to go . That one sale could be the domino of the rest . We're probably going to see some moments of feast and famine where it's not that stable in that sense yet .

But there is a pipeline , there are leads , there are people to continue conversations with , to not get caught up in the one client , obviously serve that person , but keep on pushing forward .

And if you're in that same position where , like where is this next sale , like where's it coming from , you do just have to keep going and ultimately there must be a cut off point for , okay , I need to change this , I need to update this , I need to pivot , I need to listen , but you keep on evolving , you keep on taking action and you keep on moving

forwards and a sale will eventually come , just like my sales coach said , just like a sausage machine pardon me , a sausage machine where eventually a sausage will form entirely and just pop out a fun little analogy or visual for you to take away with you after this episode of big vision , business owners and the I haven't made it yet series .