—>>https://www.askmecoach.com/

The biggest obstacle between you and your next client isn't your strategy, it's the four inches between your ears.

Renee Hribar unpacks why so many talented service providers and consultants convince themselves their sales strategy is broken when the real problem is how they're interpreting rejection. Drawing from a recent coaching conversation with a client who nearly quit her business despite just landing a new one-on-one client, Renee breaks down the difference between disappointment and data, and why one unanswered email or a thinly attended workshop doesn't mean your offer, your niche, or your business model is wrong. She revisits SW4, the sales rule she learned cold-calling in 1990s Manhattan, and explains how to tell the difference between discernment, testing intentionally and adjusting, and defensiveness, deciding something doesn't work because it felt uncomfortable. The conversation moves from networking rooms and referral fatigue into the real inner work of selling: building trust, starting conversations, and tolerating uncertainty long enough to find the room where your ideal clients are actually waiting.

Renee closes with a simple written exercise to help listeners identify the one sales activity they've been avoiding and the fear underneath it. It's a practical, no-fluff nudge toward doing the outer work of selling without letting inner resistance quietly run the show.

Mentioned in this episode:

Ask Me Coach

Askmecoach.com

Ask Me Coach

Podcasting for Your Spiritual Business - Kim Parkinson: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/051-honor-the-season-your-podcast-is-in-and-grow/id1814692686?i=1000752864110 Learning Experience Design for Changemakers - Renee Koster: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/learning-experience-design-for-changemakers/id1896864819 That's Good Parenting - Dori Durbin: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/thats-good-parenting-expert-tips-to-reduce-parenting/id1667186115 Your Productivity Pulse - Michelle Oucharek-Deo: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/time-management-accountability-goal-setting-self-improvement/id1867957851

And today we're talking about something I say all the time. The hardest step of any sale is navigating the four inches between your ears, because sometimes you do not need another sales strategy. You need to be willing to do the work the strategy requires. Oh, but Renee, I work so hard. Oh, yeah, yeah. I know.

I know. I see you working hard. And yes, obviously you need to do the outer work, right? Like finding the people, starting the conversations, following up, developing offers, proposals. I mean, actually making the invitation to exchange your skills for M-O-N-E-Y. That's money. And I have to whisper because I feel like some people are so afraid of it.

The part where you have to decide whether you're actually done or whether you're just disappointed Those are not the same thing. Being done and being disappointed are different. You can be disappointed. Sometimes disappointing things happen in business and life. So if you're starting to wonder if I saw your last text to your best friend, no, I didn't.

She was ready to quit. That's it. Done. She told me she had recently signed a one-on-one client. I was like, "That's good news, right?" Except in the same breath, she's like, "Oh, but I still haven't taken quitting off the table." And then she said it wasn't fun anymore. Oof. Anybody been there? Yeah. I'm imagining everyone raising their hands because we all have.

She's experiencing what we all experience, and this is usually when we start assuming our business is broken. See, I know this woman's background. I know her experience. I know she has phenomenal skills, and she is amazing at what she does, so I wanted to know what actually happened, so I dug a little deeper.

In fact, she told me she felt that she needed to unlearn most of it, and that part I wholeheartedly agree with There's a lot of advice floating around planet internet that gets handed to business owners like one size fits all pantyhose. And anybody who survived the '80s knows how well that worked. Some of the advice isn't bad, of course.

It's not you, it's just that the s- the strategy, that advice doesn't have a one size fits all ability. So if your ideal client isn't hanging out in the networking rooms you're attending, attending more of those networking events isn't going to solve the problem. I mean, I, I don't think I have to be the one to tell you, but I just wanna tell you.

You run a workshop. Not enough people show up. Workshops don't work. You reach out to someone. They don't answer. People don't want me bothering them. You spend time networking. Nobody sends you a referral. Networking is useless. You make an offer. Nobody buys it. Nobody wants this, or worse, nobody wants me.

Because disappointment is not data. One workshop is not a business model. A few unanswered messages are not market research. One room full of people who are not your ideal clients doesn't mean your buyers don't exist. It means wrong room. Move on. We don't need to turn this into, like, a, a John Hughes movie, right?

Because accepting what's handed to you sometimes feels safer than intentionally going out and finding what you actually want. I get it. I get it. That sales job in Manhattan at our office, it taught me something else, too. There were 30 sales reps. My manager interviewed 100 people every week just to maintain that number.

She'd read the book. She listens to the podcast. That's data. She has skills. She has experience. She can help people. And now we have actual evidence, somebody willing to pay her. So the question wasn't, does anybody want this? I mean, somebody did. The bigger question was, can she build a repeatable path to more of those people without requiring every attempt to be a home run?

Two kids, two stalls, one with all the beautiful toys he could ever want, only one turd, and the second stall filled with manure. First kid cries after like 10 minutes, "Oh my God, these toys, ugh, these toys, they don't... He doesn't... I don't like this toy. I already have that toy. Why is this toy here? Is this broken?

Are we considering the potential of how we could help someone? 'Cause I know it's not just about the money. It's about wanting to be worthwhile, wanting to be wanted, wanting to have something that we leave behind more than just the house, the car, the 401. And this is where I think a lot of you get caught because reality is, is you were fantastic in corporate, fantastic.

Y- you are fantastic at delivering your service. That's why people send you referrals. That's why you've been able to live off of them. Someone hands you a problem, you solve it, right? If you got a problem, yo, I'll solve it. Check out the beat while the DJ revolves it. Okay, I will not sing that. But reality is gold stars, gold stars all around.

Like, you follow up, nothing. Follow through, nothing. And you have to walk into a room and eventually realize, wrong room, and then you have to leave the room without making it mean you're the wrong person. That's the inner work of selling. Nobody wants that on their LinkedIn, right? "Come build your dream business.

Selling asks you to look at another person and say, "I can help you." And then you have to wait to determine whether they see what you see. That can be really scary, so we find very sophisticated ways to avoid it. We call it marketing, networking, research, fixing your offer, figuring out your niche, trying another platform, getting one more certification.

Hey, and sometimes that is legit business work, okay? And sometimes we're just rearranging the cans in the pantry because we don't wanna reach out and have the conversation. Same pantry, still no clients, okay? That's why I talk so much about conversations. Eventually, you have to get close enough to another human being to find out what they actually want, what they're actually complaining about.

You've gotta go where your ideal clients are, and then you've got to talk to them. "But Renee, I don't know who needs me." Yeah, she said that to me, too, and this is an important distinction. It's true. If you solve a problem, that you, like, people don't announce publicly, you may not see obvious buying signals.

And please don't diagnose strangers. That's just gross. Instead, build proximity. Go into the right rooms. Have conversations. Get curious. Listen to the exact words they use because somebody they know knows you, and you can trust them, and they can trust you, and it's awesome. Like, become someone that they know.

Sales doesn't have to be, "I have identified your secret pain and arrived in your DMs to fix you." No, sending a, "Hello, nice to meet you. What was the inspiration behind that podcast episode?" That's a great question. And you can ask those questions, but it's not, "Hi, I see your butt's big. I'm a health coach. I can help you with that."

Right? It goes like this, right? "What should I do, Renee?" I tell them. "Yeah, but I can't do that because..." Dot, dot, dot. "Okay, here's another option." "Yeah, but..." And another option. "Yeah, but..." I got thousands of ways to find people to share your expertise, to ask the right questions. "Yeah, but..." And at some point, we're no longer solving a strategic problem.

I don't know. Because fear is f- uh, like a rock star, right? They... Fear has a PowerPoint. Fear has supporting documentation. Fear brought exhibits A through Q. Fear has testimonials. Fear, fear can give you 14 extremely convincing reasons why the thing you haven't tried definitely won't work. That's why the hardest step of any sale is navigating those four inches between your ears.

Your strategy could be freaking sound, like solid, and your brain can still talk you out of it I don't want you leaving this episode thinking, "Renée said you have to force yourself to do uncomfortable things." Absolutely not. Some strategies genuinely are not right for you. Some rooms are wrong. Some platforms are a waste of your time.

Discernment makes a new plan and tries again. Defense turns discomfort into a fact written by Moses himself in stone, "Thou shalt not sell." Okay, I know my voices are on, are on today. And your job as the owner of your business is to learn to see the difference between discernment and defense. It sucks, I know.

Eventually, my love, we've got to deal with the four inches. I mean, people ask me, "Renee, why do you keep teaching us when you could just as easily go sell for others?" My answer is my mission. We say it at the beginning of every team meeting. We exist to awaken women to their infinite choices in business and life one conversation at a time.

I was inspired by Starbucks' mission, so check it out if you want. Google it. AI it. Is that what we're gonna say now, AI it? So that's what gets me through, honestly, all the crap that I have to do, my ClickUp, my Slack, 'cause it's full of emails, proposals, KPIs, SOPs, and all the other STUFF, I won't even say it out loud, that can make running a business feel like one giant freaking task list, right?

She had 10,000 chickens. She raised veal. She did what she had to do. She had 19 foster children over the course of, like, I don't know, 15 years. another grandmother wrote a weekly newspaper column, kind of like, your local version of Dear Abby. She was freaking... Both of them were amazing, but my grandma, the one who wrote the column, was like, "If you're pregnant, I will tell you what you're gonna have, a boy or a girl."

And I'm like, "Well, you're, you got a 50/50 chance of winning, you know?" Anyway, she's amazing. She was definitely convinced that we all had ESP, and she had, like, ESP cards, and she's like, "Try to tell me what's on the other side of this card." And I would think about it and think about it. I never got it right.

And, you know, years later, when I entered the online business world, I saw incredibly skilled women struggling to sell what they knew. I tried hiring many of them myself. I was ready to buy. But after hour-long discovery calls and no defined process, waiting for me to tell them what I needed, how long it should take, what I should pay, I mean, shouldn't they have figured that out already?

And that's why I'm still here, because selling isn't just a tactic to me. It's about choices. When you know how to sell what you know, you have more choices, and I want more women to have them. So here's what I want you to do this week. Take out a piece of paper. I know. Uh, roll your, roll your eyes. Take out a piece of paper out of your Trapper Keeper.

And don't write 17 things, just one. Maybe it's following up with the person you asked, uh, something of last month. Maybe it's reaching out to people you already know and asking a simple question. Maybe it's finally going to that event where your ideal clients actually gather, instead of another networking event filled with people just selling to each other.

Yes, you need to do the outer work. You need a repeatable sales practice. You need conversations. You need follow-up. Yes, yes, yes. But if every time those things create discomfort, you retreat into research or content or tweaking or planning or another certification, we're gonna be sitting here six months from now discussing the same problem.

Different Canva template, same pipeline. But before you go, if you've been thinking about quitting, I'm not here to talk you out of it. I want something better for you, and I want you to know why you're making the decision. If you're done, be done. But if you're exhausted and disappointed and frustrated because you've been doing a pile of activities somebody on the internet told you you're supposed to do, maybe you're not done.

See you soon