Male Announcer: You’re listening to From Pain to Possibility with Susi Hately. You will hear Susi’s best ideas on how to reduce or even eradicate your pain and learn how to listen to your body when it whispers so you don’t have to hear it scream. And now here’s your host, Susi Hately.
Welcome and welcome back. I’m so glad that you’re here because today I’m beginning a new miniseries and I’m really excited to share this with you. And the topic might actually surprise you, and it’s all about sales and particularly about feeling safe in sales.
Okay, now this might be really strange coming from me, given that most of the time on this podcast I am teaching technical aspects about helping people to reduce and eradicate physical pain. And there’s a reality, the reality is that one of the reasons I’m really good at helping people to reduce and eradicate physical pain is because I have people who are my clients who want to reduce and eradicate physical pain. And whether we like it or not, in order for those people to become my clients, they had to go through a sales process.
Now I, like any other yoga teacher that I have met out there, used to recoil at the notion that I am selling people a process to help them reduce and eradicate physical pain. I didn’t want to be associated at all with anything that ever had to do with the word sales. But the reality is we are selling. We are selling a service to support people in reducing and eradicating physical pain.
So I want to address this in this miniseries because it’s such a fundamental part of this process of becoming really talented as a yoga therapist because here is the real reality out there, that there are a lot of yoga teachers and yoga therapists, health professionals who follow me, and many of them are super skilled at helping people.
Some of them are already professionally trained, like I said, they’re really good at helping people already reduce and eradicate symptoms, whether it’s pain or whether it’s other factors that are going on in their lives. And they don’t know how to reach the people they want to help. So these technical skills are going unused, and what’s more is they can’t improve on those technical skills because they’re not working with clients.
So they have technical skills, they also have a lot of theory in their head about what works, but they can’t grow that, they can’t develop that, they can’t transform it, they can’t actually make the difference. And for some of them what remains is this yearning to help others. And they can sometimes fall into this really gross kind of energy that we all can kind of feel is gross, you’ll know what I mean when I say it.
It’s like, how do I get clients in the door? How do I find customers? And that’s just a really, really gross thing to be thinking. And I’ll explain more of that in a moment because nobody wants to be thinking that. They just want to get out and work with people and help people.
And it’s this kind of dichotomy, if that’s the right word, between someone being technically really good, but having this like, how do I get someone in the door that creates this narrative in the yoga industry that you can’t make a business out of this. You can’t earn a living at this.
And part of that problem is because no one has actually taught them the skills. So then they’re left with trying to get people in the door. They’re trying to find customers. They’re trying to find clients. And because they can’t find the clients, they think, well, you know what? You just can’t. It’s impossible. Or I have to learn these business skills that are so out of alignment with helping people get out of pain or whatever other symptoms. It’s like oil and water, you just can’t make it happen. So it makes sense that that conversation exists.
There’s another piece to this that I think is important for me to mention at this stage of this process, is that in addition to this vicious circle I just mentioned, this narrative around not having the skill set, so then kind of grabbing for clients, trying to convince people to come into your space to teach them a process, and then not really working at it, feeling really, really gross.
What sort of feeds that, but also what results from that cycle, is that a lot of yoga therapists, yoga teachers, health professionals are super afraid of selling their services. They’re terrified because they don’t want to feel gross. They don’t want to go through that process of trying to convince somebody. And so then they lead to this place of not wanting to sell, and just even thinking about selling makes them nauseous and sick to their stomach.
So I’ve got some really, really good news here. First of all, over this mini-series, I’m going to be teaching and talking about a whole bunch of ideas and concepts that you can play with, because one of the things I’ve always wanted to do since I’ve been training teachers professionally is I really want to help them earn a living.
And there’s a key reason for this, it’s that the world, it seems like every year I see this, the world needs yoga more than ever. And it seems like every year that I’ve been teaching, they need it more than ever. For whatever is happening in the world, or in the environment, people need this ability to down-regulate their system, to have a mind-body approach to reducing pain and other symptoms. They need it for mental health. They need it for so many aspects.
And I know so many yoga therapists and teachers who are super skilled at what they do. I mean, a lot of them are my grads, they’re really, really, really skilled. And so from the beginning, I’ve offered business training.
And I used to run a training called How to Make 50K, which evolved into Yogi Business Training because I started attracting more and more people who already were earning 50K and more, but they were running ragged and they didn’t want to run ragged anymore. They wanted to integrate the concepts that I was teaching so they could have a slightly different model, not work as much, and still make the same amount of money or even double their revenue.
The result of that is that people who trained with me doubled and tripled their revenue. And even when they were starting from zero, you might say, well, Susi, if someone’s starting from zero and they doubled and tripled their revenue, they’re still at zero. No, they’re not. They may have been at zero, but they got themselves to 10K, 20K, 30K, 40K.
Those people who were making 20K were making 40K, 50K, 60K because I was teaching them the skills. That’s the thing. I was teaching them the skills of how to do this in a way that was aligned with them. That’s why I called it the Yogi Business Program.
The bottom line here is nobody wants to be sold to. People want to buy. People want their problems to be solved. People want to get out of pain. People want to manage anxiety. They want to have help with their PTS. They want support, whatever that support is. And if you’ve got the skill set to be able to provide that support, then let’s help you get there to be able to help provide that support and it not be creepy or gross.
So that’s what these next series of episodes are going to be about, teaching concepts and ideas to help make this shift, to help kind of, I’m going to throw a love bomb into the narrative that yoga and business don’t mix. In fact, they’re essential and they’re sisters, they’re siblings that get along really, really well and nurture and nourish each other.
Because when you understand business concepts, you understand what it is to really serve your clients and your prospective clients in a way that not only nourishes and nurtures them, but you yourself, you get to decide how many days a week you want to work. You get to decide what price you want to offer. You get to decide the process through which you want to provide the programs. Heck, you get to determine the problem you want to solve.
And the beauty with understanding business concepts is there is no limit on the amount of revenue, the amount of income that you can earn, right? When you have a job inside of whether it’s a medical corporation or some other corporation and you’re being paid per hour or salary, you’ve got a limit on what you can earn.
Whereas when you have your own business, you really can create whatever income that you want, and you do it within the parameters that you set out for yourself. So it’s really quite an amazing space to play in when you understand those concepts and it becomes a lot easier and more straightforward and just not gross at all.
So let’s begin with today and one of the foundational concepts that I want to teach you. And this concept, I hope, almost makes your jaw drop. I hope so. I hope it helps you see the true alignment between business and teaching, between business and your being a healer. Because what happens in the initial stages of a sales process will determine the relationship you have with your client.
I want to show you how. I want to show you how you have conversations with potential clients that fully align with you as a healer, that also align with body and mind neuroscience, that connect with this element of creating safety. Nothing gross, nothing creepy, but rather the entire opposite experience.
Okay, so let’s talk more about this. Let’s talk more about what it is and what I mean by how you start this interaction dictates the relationship you have once they’re a client. And I’m going to explain it in sort of the opposite way because sometimes looking at this from when you don’t do it highlights what it is when you do do it.
So think about if you’re in a scenario with somebody and you’re in a sort of convincing space that you’ve got to get them, you’ve got to sign them, you’ve got to, you’ve got to, you’ve got to. Like there’s a “you’ve got to” kind of experience and you’re trying to get them to become a client. And feel that relationship in that space. And just take a moment and if you can recall a time when you were in that space, what that energy was.
Now, that person may not have become a client. They may have been kind of grossed out by it all. They may have become a client and the following may have happened next. Did that same client miss appointments? Did they not do their program? Did you find that you had to come up with something interesting or exciting to motivate them or did you have to come up with novel ways to try to get them to become aware?
Did you notice that language there? Did you notice that you had to do things to try to make them? You see this? So to say this another way, how you engage with clients before they become a client will impact or even dictate the relationship you have with them while they are a client.
So if you’re trying to convince them to become a client, you are likely going to have to convince someone while they are a client. Let me say that again because it’s really important. This is why it’s so important to notice when you’re in that, oh my God, I’ve got to get a client. Oh my God, I’ve got to find a client. When you’re in that space, you’ve got to learn how to down regulate yourself.
You’ve got to find your happy space inside and just simply not engage with people if you’re in that space because people will either be turned off or the ones that do enroll, it will not be a great relationship because the relationship you start with will dictate the relationship you have when they’re a client.
And what you want to develop is you want to develop a really safe, therapeutic relationship even in the sales part of the conversation. If you don’t have that then, you won’t have that when you’re in the actual client relationship.
A bumper sticker here is that it’s just gross. Nobody wants this, not us, not our client, because not only does it feel gross, your client’s result won’t be great. You’ll feel less confident in your skills and you’ll continue to wonder how to get people to do their programs. Why aren’t people compliant? If only people could do their programs, right?
Do you see how that just kind of keeps feeding that vicious cycle? So let’s take a pause, shake it off a little bit because that’s just feeling really, really gross inside of me. Press rewind. If you have an etch and sketch image in your mind, like clear your mind, clear your heart.
Now think about this idea of safety. In my practice, when I teach trainees and when I’m working with clients, I have something called the healing helix and it outlines this relationship between me and my client, between the teacher and the client. And it’s ultimately this experience I call power with versus power over.
A lot of times in medicine, there’s a power over relationship where the medical profession knows best and you, the client, should just pay attention and fall in line. Whereas for me, it’s more power with. So I believe that the person who’s coming into my space has a whole bunch of expertise.
They’ve lived in their body way longer than I’ve known them, for example. They’ve had the experience with their symptoms. I want to know their experience. And yes, I’ve got expertise and together we blend our expertise together and create something really cool.
To highlight this actually just really briefly in the certification training program, one of our trainees actually came in the other day and said on our Slack channel, I really got what a therapeutic relationship is. She was saying something along the lines of how she was at a medical appointment and they were providing her an exercise program for a condition that she has that required that sort of medical intervention.
And she felt like the practitioner did not see her at all, hardly looked at her. And she left with this program that she felt really kind of drab. She wasn’t listened to. The idea of safety wasn’t cultivated. Nourishment wasn’t cultivated. It was kind of blah. And you know something? The likelihood of her actually doing that program is probably low, except she knows better.
She knows that she needs to do it. She knows she’s got the support of all of her cohort and all of me and my team. Even if that program is not what’s needed, she’s got all of us to support her and to watch her movement and to help her build out the components of movement and function that she needs to support herself and with the condition she’s got.
But without that, you can imagine someone leaving a space like that just being like, wow, I wasn’t paid attention to. Nothing was nourishing here. Why would they continue with their program? You have to have a lot of fortitude to do that when you really don’t feel the love, so to speak, from your practitioner, when you don’t feel that sense of nourishing, safe space from the practitioner.
So that’s, again, another opposite way of looking at this. So when we think about safety, I’m talking about safety for both the practitioner and the client. With safety, we foster trust. With trust, we allow for smoother, more connected conversations and sales experiences. It’s just more ease involved, more peace, more connection.
I think we all innately know this, but we have this thing about enrolling people in sales tactics of the past, think the proverbial snake oil salesman or the used car salesman, who were more about convincing and persuading and trying to separate you from your money, not elevate you to a better place than where you began. And that, to me, is ultimately what the healing relationship is, is we’re helping to elevate someone to a better place.
Yes, they are paying us money, but the result of that is to elevate them, to improve their state, to reduce their symptoms or eradicate their symptoms. Totally different experiences. But to get there, we can’t foster aggression or pressure or even resignation, which is kind of what it sounded like this practitioner that my trainee was talking about almost. But rather to foster true connectedness, true connection and openness.
So let’s break this down a little bit because when I think about safety for myself, one thing I’ve recognized when I’m in a client relationship, whether it’s with my trainees or a private client or any one of my group classes that I run, like my Power of Pure Movement classes, or when I’m in a sales process with somebody before they become a client, I’m thinking about safety.
I’m thinking about nourishment. I’m thinking about how do I enable someone to be elevated at the end of this? That result is elevation. It’s not the action, like I’m not trying to get them somewhere, but out of the way I am being and the things that I’m saying, they are in a different space following those interactions with me. And it’s a space that has them feel calmer, more at ease, clearer, more understanding within their system.
Now, they don’t always say yes to me. This isn’t a persuasion type of thing I’m teaching. It’s that I’m teaching them the way that I teach when I’m in the sales process. And at the end of that, if they’re like a very clear no, then it’s like, okay, great. And if they’re elevated, awesome, bonus points. And if they’re elevated and the answer is yes, great, let’s get going.
So when I’m considering this whole notion of safety and nourishment, I think it’s really, really important, and sometimes this can be a bit controversial for people to hear from me. And so when I say it, I’m also going to add a caveat, and that is ultimately, ultimately, ultimately there are things that I can do to help foster safety in a space, but I can’t create it for another person because ultimately, this is the controversial part so hear me out, safety exists inside of somebody else.
Now, that doesn’t mean I’m being like an a-hole. No, not at all. Like all the way up through this podcast episode to here, clearly I’m not being that. What I can control though, because I can’t control how someone experiences me per se, but I can control me.
And when I can control myself and honor and nourish and honor the relationship and nourish the relationship, more often than not, safety is felt on the other side. Nourishment is felt on the other side. But I can’t go inside someone and turn on the safety switch or the nourishment switch. That’s really my point.
But what I can do is I can notice what I am doing, I.e. do I show up late to an appointment, for example, right? How does that foster trust? How does that foster safety, right? Those are little examples. How I show up, how clear I am, how ready I am, how present I am, things that I can fundamentally control myself, that has an impact on the space between me and that client.
And guess what? That happens in the sales process. It happens in the private one-to-one process. It happens in my group process. It happens in my certification process. How I show up is important. It’s significant. It makes a difference. How I listen or how I don’t listen, right?
And there’s been plenty of times in my own humanness, I have screwed things up and people have not felt nourished in my space. I’ll be absolutely and fundamentally honest about that. It’s not intentional, but it’s happened. And holy smokes, have I learned from it?
And it’s really, really enabled me to get very clear that who I am and how I show up makes all the difference, which is why when you are going into a conversation with someone and you’re thinking in your head, I got to get them as a client. How can I move this conversation towards my classes or towards my yoga workshop? When you’re coming into it with that energy, people can feel it.
They might not say, oh, this is what’s happening, but they can feel it. They can feel where you’re coming from. It’s a grippy, icky, kind of gross thing because it’s not aligned to who you are. And a person will feel that dripping off of you. So how you show up makes all that difference in the world in terms of fostering this place of safety, this place of nourishment, this place of trust, this place of caring, this place of someone saying, oh, I really like this person. I want to work with them.
Because an old sales concept is that people will buy when they know you and they like you and they trust you. And the liking and the trusting comes from how are you showing up in these conversations? Where is that energy arising from? What’s going through your mind? Are you being the person that you would be if you are teaching them? Where is that connection?
So it’s incumbent on us when we’re in a place where we’re having human moments where life is hard, where things are challenging. Maybe there’s things going on at home. Maybe there’s things going on elsewhere in your life. Maybe there’s something else in the environment that is impacting you and you notice that you’re sort of off. It doesn’t mean you always have to be on and happy and vibrant and all that. No, no, no.
You can have the crappiest of the crappiest days and still have nourishing, connecting relationships with people and you don’t even need to tell them that. But there’s an authenticity in knowing where you’re coming from. An ability to regulate yourself so that when you are engaging with someone, you’re coming from as clean a place as possible, even in the muckiness that sometimes can be our lives.
So I think that’s where I’m going to complete this particular episode. And I’ll leave you with this bumper sticker and actions for you to play with. This process of sales is a process in the business of yoga and yoga therapy, in this business of helping people heal.
You as a healer get to learn this as a skill set, just as you learned the skill set that makes up who you are as a healer. And you can utilize these skills in alignment. So it’s not like you’re doing oil and water, that you’re doing some sort of convincing crapola stuff, and then you bring the person in and all of a sudden you’re this healer that’s got this other way of behaving. No, no, you got to make the behaviors the same, the connection the same.
You’re not doing a bait and switch on somebody. You get to be the you that you know to be. So when you are more regulated, even when you’re having the crappiest of the crappy crap crap, if you can regulate yourself and connect with yourself, you’re going to find the conversations you have with people so much more real, so much more connected, and so much more elevating.
That’s when someone can tune in and go, okay, this person can help me get out of the muck that I’m in to the place where I want to go. They can help me relieve and even eradicate the symptoms that I’m having. That I’m ready to sign up for. That is like the fundamental bumper sticker. It was a bit longer than a bumper sticker you might find on the back of a car, maybe on a van, but you get the idea, right?
So here are the action steps I want you to take, and it’s simply awareness. I want you to notice when you are considering sending an email about what you’re offering or when you’re engaging in a conversation with someone, from what energy are you coming from, even covertly so?
Do you have that energy of, I’ve got to get a client? How do I get a customer? I’ve got to convert them into a client. Notice how grippy and dry and kind of dehydrating that kind of feeling is. That’s how it feels to me when I say that. So maybe for you, the qualities of how that energy feels are different. For me, it’s like it’s dry and it’s brittle and it’s just kind of, yuck, is what it feels like.
Whereas when I’m in a different state, when I’m in the opposite of that, when I’m in a place of connection and love and listening, a totally different game. That’s what I want you to notice. First, to gain awareness of what it is that you’re doing. And you might say, but Susi, give me something to do. I’ll do that in the next episode.
I want you to gain the awareness because I want you to notice when you’re there because frankly, you are a human being. You are a human being. You will have moments when you’re in that grippy energy because humans do that. And if you can notice when you’re there, you can also notice and train yourself out of that place.
And you train yourself by coming into a place of regulation, right? You tune into how you can self-regulate to bring you back into a more calm, safe space inside. That own internal locus of control. That place that in the pain world, we call a SIM, safety in me. And when you can get there, you can start to really fine tune your relationships and connections with your clients and potential clients.
So begin there, begin with the awareness. And in the next episode, I’m going to give you a few more steps that you can take to support yourself and your client making the very, very, very best decisions. And help you become more and more relaxed in this process. I look forward to welcoming you back on our next episode, have a great time exploring. See you next time.
By the way, if this is really interesting to you, I want you to know that this Safety In Selling module is a part of our certification program. And we are running a precursor to that program where you get to have a taste of some of what we teach inside of the certification program. It’s called Journey of the Healer, and we’re running it at the end of January.
We have a wait list open right now for people who are curious and are wanting to learn more about it so that when registration opens, we can send it out to you. If you would like to get onto that waitlist, then please go to functionalsynergy.com/healer. I would love for you to join me.
