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Courage & Clarity
148: Stop Obsessing Over the Wrong Stuff — These 3 Levers Actually Make You Money
00:29:57
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Hey there CNC fan. Quick heads up before we dive in, if these episodes are lighting a fire under you and you're ready to actually launch like a pro, not just talk about it, not just learn about it, I need you to get yourself on the wait list for sold out group programs. That's my mastermind. That is very high touch for experienced entrepreneurs who want repeatable sellout results without the burnout. And doors are going to open one more time in just a little while. If you want first dibs, you got to go to stephcrowder.com mastermind to raise your hand. Let's get into today's episode foreign. Welcome to the Courage and Clarity podcast. I'm your host, Steph Crowder. I'm a former sales training director who's helped thousands of entrepreneurs earn a living doing something they love over the past 10 years. On your journey, you'll need the courage to be bold, to take risks, and to do what looks crazy on paper. You'll also need the clarity, the brass tacks, simple strategies that actually work. And on this podcast, we deliver both in equal measure. Oh, and by the way, we've got absolutely no time for bs, gross marketing tactics or get rich quick schemes. Just sustainable business strategies for good humans with big dreams. If that sounds like you, you're in the right place. Let's go. Hello. Hello everybody. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you for hanging out with me today. So excited, so excited to be here. As always today we are talking about the three levers that actually make you money. All right, this is going to be a good one. I really hope it is my aim of today's episode to really help you feel clearer. I'm like doing an exhale. I'm like oh like simplifying your thoughts, your feelings and your entire strategy really when it comes to knowing what you need to do to make money. What I notice across both of my programs, all of my clients inside of same day sales, which is my foundational program that helps you get really good at converting essentially, like really will help you get your first three clients or your next three clients. And then I also see it in my mastermind, which is called sold out. Group programs is when we think about how to make money, the actual activities, we call them money making activities, MMAs. In both my programs there are like a hundred different things that you could work on and it can be really over overwhelming.
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Right?
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You're like, I have so like if I were to make a list of all of the things that I could do and I could work on like I'm recording this episode on a Monday and it's like that Monday energy of you start making your list and you're like, there are so many things that I could work on and I don't know which of these things is really going to move the needle. That's one of the best skills that you can have as a business owner is to really understand what your true drivers, you know, you're truly like needle moving activities when it comes to your sales, when it comes to how you're putting your offers out there. I think that learning to tell the difference between tweaking shiny objects and fiddling and doing sort of like busy work, essentially knowing the difference between that and actually sitting down at your desk and being like, I understand. I'm very clear on the top 10, five to 10 things that I could be doing every single day in order to make the money that I want to make, have the clients that I want to have. That is a huge divider between business owners who are going to grow this year and beyond and business owners who are going to continue to struggle and probably even ultimately give up. Which is exactly why I'm here. What motivates me to come back to the microphone again and again is to help fewer people give up. Especially because so many of you listening, most of you listening, maybe even all of you listening, are so smart, so, so talented, such experts in your industries. I have the privilege of working with people and having listeners across like so many different unique niches and industries and subject matter areas. And unfortunately, when we don't know what levers actually make us money in business, you may falsely conclude that you don't have what it takes because you've been trying and trying and trying and nothing is working. You're not making the money that you need to make. And so you end up giving up quite quiet, quitting on yourself, if not full quitting. And the reason that's a misstep and a mistake and a false conclusion is because typically it's not that you weren't smart enough. It's never that you weren't smart enough, that you didn't have good enough ideas. It's not even that you have the wrong offer typically, it's usually that you really don't understand what money making activities are going to move you forward day after day. And you're not stringing those money making activities together enough to create meaningful momentum. And so in today's episode, I want to help you stop obsessing over doing the wrong stuff, okay? Because the Truth is, I talk to lots of entrepreneurs every single day and most of them are really busy. I think entrepreneurs are super good at being busy, busy, busy, but they're not necessarily effective. Maybe a better way to say it is. They could almost always be more effective and more efficient with the time that they do have. If you're anything like me and you're a busy mom, you have other responsibilities in your life. You don't have endless work time. I mean, we could be so lucky, right? You don't have all kinds of time. You have to really be effective and efficient with the time that you do have. You don't want to spend that agonizing over what font you should be using, posting more and more and more reels because somebody told you that you just need to post more. Rewriting your next upcoming training again and again. Right? Those aren't the things that will actually create sales momentum. And so I want to talk about the three things that will move the needle. And I even have a sort of silly little way of remembering these three things that came to me when I wrote this out. This little framework I'm going to teach you today is dtc. We can also think of it as down to close. How do you get your, your leads to a place where they're down to close? What do I mean by down to close? They're like ready to work with you, right? They want to say yes, they're ready to say yes. You start hearing yes more often. There's three main levers that will help you finally move the money needle and it's dtc. So let's unpack each one one by one, kind of in no particular order here. They're all equally important. And I help my clients in both of my programs with all three of these. Ok, so the first one is demand. Okay, so the D stands for demand. The question on this one is do enough of the right people want what you're selling? Do enough of the right people want what you're selling? And there's actually a couple different ways we can ask like demand based questions. Do enough of the want people. Sorry, do enough of the right people want what you're selling? And also do enough people know that what you're selling exists? So do enough people want it?
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Right?
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And do enough people even know that what you're selling exists, that you are offering them a solution? It's so fascinating. I would say the vast majority, I mean honestly, probably upwards of 90%, if not more, if the of the clients that I work with have a Visibility problem. So it's interesting. The first one, the do enough of the right people want what you're selling? That's a messaging problem. And I know messaging can be a big ball of wax, so don't get too freaked out. I know messaging can really be a black hole of, like, you spending all of your time trying to rewrite and rewrite and rewrite your messaging and not actually getting out there. That's a really big problem. So messaging is the first one, but then that second one, that pesky visibility is, is like, you might be selling something great, you might be selling the right thing, but people just don't even know that you have it.
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Okay?
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And so what we really have to focus on is making sure that you have enough demand now before you despair. Because I have a feeling that some of you listening are like, steph, I've been trying, I've been posting, I've been podcasting. I've been trying my best to get out there. And you're thinking to yourself, creating demand is really, really difficult. I'm not going to disagree with you on that. I will tell you that demand, actually demand and visibility both are a snowball message. Your messaging and your visibility, they be. They can really snowball and create momentum for you. But I find for a lot of you, when you do ask yourself the question, do enough of the right people want what you're selling? Is you come to a false conclusion about that and. Or the strategy that you put in place to try to address that is not the right one. So let me explain. If you suspect that you don't have enough of the right people that actually want what you're selling, the most common behavior or the most common answer I see for that with people that I work with and people that I talk to is to just kind of keep writing and rewriting and rewriting your messaging and to keep sort of like continuing to, you know, maybe if I get a professional website built or maybe if I hire somebody, like a copywriting person, like, maybe they can help me or another thing that I see is because you don't believe enough of the right people want what you're selling, you conclude that you don't have the right offer. So you start like, offer hopping, right? Like, let me come up with a different offer. You even might conclude, well, the audience that I have is not the right audience for the thing that I'm selling. I'm not even talking about getting into any of that. What I'm really talking about and the way to answer your messaging problem is to get outside of the building. What I mean by outside of the building is this is a turn of phrase that was coined by Steve Blank. I remember learning about this. For those of you who are og, Steph Crowder. I have been talking about customer conversations for, for a long time and I learned about Steve Blank, who is sort of like this person who talked a lot about the importance of getting outside of the building. He was talking about this as it relates to corporations. And corporations have this tendency, just like we do as solopreneurs and small businesses, they have this tendency to try to answer the question of customer demand and you know, what customers actually want by staying inside of a think tank, inside of a conference room and thinking that the answer is inside of the room. Similarly, you're probably thinking that your, you know, amazing messaging or your great offer or your amazing way of positioning yourself, you're thinking it's inside the four walls of your office. And that's where you're mistaken. If you are not out there connecting with people, talking with people, asking them questions, if you don't know how to have customer conversations, if you don't know how to conduct coffee chats and full sales calls, to really understand what are people dealing with in your audience and people that you want to help, what does the problem sound like in their words, not yours, Are you mirroring that? Are you reflecting that you are the person who is going to be able to help them solve it? Are you creating a transformation? So often I look at people's sales pages every single day and what I notice is that we default to describing the offer. I call these features. Okay, so when I say features, it's like how many calls are in your package? How long are the calls? Do you get support in between the calls? Are there. How many lessons are in your modules? If you have a group program, right, Those are features and they are very, very much an afterthought in your sales process. Yes. When people go deeper into your sales process, when they're interested, when they're hooked, they want to know the details of your offer. But most of us are jumping right to describing the offer. And you're describing the offer to people who don't even care about the offer. Now here's what a lot of y' all get wrong. You think they don't care about the offer because you think you have the wrong offer or you have the wrong people when the reality is you just haven't painted a really vivid emotional transformation story. One of the most mind blowing, life altering sales principles I ever learned back in the day at Groupon is that people buy on emotion and justify with logic. This is exactly why we get buyer's remorse. You go to the mall, you go on a shopping spree, when you buy all those clothes, you are buying them because they make you feel something or because you think they're gonna make you feel something. You think that they're gonna make you feel beautiful or you're gonna get a great date or going to, you know, step into some new identity, there's some emotional reason that you're buying the items.
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Okay.
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Where buyer's remorse comes in is, you know, you notice that, right? It's like you don't. It's not until you get home, you start unpacking all the things that you're like, maybe I overdid it. That buyer's remorse is coming in as your brain is trying to justify the emotional purchase with logic. And if it can't do it, if it's like, oh, actually this wasn't really like, the logic isn't there, the math isn't mathing. That's where the buyer's remorse comes in. And so yes, we want the logical. These are the features. This is my package. Absolutely. But that for you to be putting that out there front and center and not doing nearly enough of the emotional storytelling, people don't buy that way. People don't make purely logical buying choices. There is always emotion involved and for a lot of you, that's what I'm seeing in your inability to create demand is most of the time, if you were to just think through more of the transformation, story, story, more storytelling in general, you are instantly going to have better messaging as long as you're telling stories that resonate with people. And so this goes back to studying your person, sitting close to them, understanding how they tick. This is all of the work that we do. Inside of the sold out group programs, Mastermind, we have a whole section called Messaging Makeover to really help you make sure that you are sitting close enough to the problem and that you're telling a good enough story, a compelling enough story, a riveting story that is going to make people be like, I want to hear more. Okay, so that's the messaging side of things. And then we have visibility. As I mentioned, I think visibility is a problem for nine out of 10 business owners that I interact with. You might put a couple emails out there and I want you to do five times that amount. Not to be annoying, not to badger people or pester people. I want every single Communication to have its own value and its own reason for existing. But especially in today's day and age, the volume of messages that we all have coming at us, I can almost guarantee people are missing your offer, okay? Especially if you, I want you to ask yourself, am I making offers every single day? Am I connecting with people and making offers? If not that you're going to have a visibility problem.
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Okay?
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And also we should not just have selling times and non selling times. That's the other issue I see in folks businesses is maybe you have a launch based business and you're like, oh yeah, I launch two times a year, three times a year and the rest of the year I'm not really showing up, okay? That is going to create a huge visibility problem downstream. We have to be, we have to have a really solid visibility plan. It's not going to burn you out, it's not going to be exhausting, but it is going to keep you top of mind and that will help. Not only is it going to keep you top of mind, it's going to keep your problem top of mind, the problem that you solve. Because keep in mind your Target audience has 99 problems of which your problem is just one. Right? And so you have to continue to, you guessed it, storytell and send sales messages and sales stories that get in front of them and help them move. Prioritize the problem that you solve up the hierarchy. If all of us have a bazillion million things on our to do list, they might be thinking, oh yeah, yeah, that's important. But I'll get to that later. Part of what we do when we build demand is we make it non optional to solve this problem. If you are not doing that, you have a demand problem.
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Okay?
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So that's the first thing you want to be focusing on to move the needle is how are you creating demand every single day? Okay, that was our d, our T is trust.
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Okay.
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Do they believe now? I know you've heard that, you've heard about know like and trust. You've heard that people have to trust you. You know how important trust is in the sales process. I know I'm telling you anything new, but trust goes in a few different directions here. Number one, yes, they have to believe that you can help them. Right? We build that through the stories that you're telling, as I mentioned, the value that you've created, your credibility. So telling stories, most of you are not doing enough storytelling in terms of shedding a light on your client stories, on your success stories, on all the people that you've helped and how deep those transformations were. That builds trust and also transparency.
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Okay?
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Transparency, authenticity, honesty. All of these things go so far beyond tips and tricks. Can I tell you all something? Tips and tricks are out in 2025 into 2026 they're out. Stop with your how to content, stop with your, you know, 10 step process tips and tricks hacks. It's not going to get it done anymore. And that's because of things like ChatGPT AI. We know that. I've said this a bunch of times and I'll keep saying it. I'll go to my grave saying it. Information is cheap. People do not need information. They need implementation. They need customization. They need to understand how to do it. This is why you hear people say, I know what I should do, I just keep not doing it. That's exactly why. Because they have many different reasons why that happens. A lot of times it's a skill gap, other times it's a belief gap. There's lots of reasons, but they don't necessarily need the information. They need your unique take on it. They need to believe that you can help them. And you know what's even more important? Y' all know I've talked about this before. They need to believe in themselves. And that might sound weird. You're like, how can I help them with that? But your sales process has to help them with that. Most likely. I know, like for my clients especially, they'll tell me. And I know this like, I'm probably not their first business coach, right? And if you buy a program with me, it's probably not. I'm well aware it's probably not the first program about business that you've ever bought. Maybe for some of you, but for the majority of you, that's not going to be the case. And what that means is you've been in other programs and you were maybe disappointed. Maybe you didn't like the way the coach showed up and maybe you didn't like the way you showed up. You felt like you fell short, you didn't get as much done as you hoped. That creates a trust problem between us. Not only do you need to trust me, but you need to trust yourself to try again and your people will be exactly the same. So how do we do that? How do we help people trust themselves? We have to show them that, you know, in any program, in any coaching container, in any service providing offer, there's going to be booby traps, there's going to be a trip and fall. It's not if it's when. And so through our marketing material, through our sales copy, through our emails, through our strategies, we have to show people, here's what happens when you fall. You're not gonna fall into your death, right? Here's how we support you. Here's how we get you back on track. Here's your, your, your prospect has questions. They're like, what happens if I get sick? What happens if I try and it doesn't work? What happens if I try to quit on myself? You have to have answers for every single one of those what if scenarios. And these are a form of objection that will come up in your sales process. And again, no amount of telling people like, no, this is the thing. This is why for my clients who try to slash their prices, they're like, maybe if I had a lower price. Can you see how price isn't going to address a trust problem? You guys are trying to out price a trust problem. You can't get me to pay a hundred dollars if I don't trust that I'm going to get anything. I tell the story all the time of my local YMCA gym. They're always giving away free T shirts. You can't get me, take the T shirt, right? I don't need any more T shirts, okay? I don't trust that I'll wear it. That's the problem is I've gotten lots of T shirts and they just clutter, clutter out my closet. It's a trust problem.
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Okay?
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So they have to believe that you can help them and they have to believe in themselves again. So you have to think about on a daily basis, how are you creating trust, trust of your brand, being a trustworthy brand with deep, deep, deep client transformations, lots and lots of client results. If you don't have those, it's time to get them and showcase them and learn how to show them off. But also how are, how is your content? How is your strategy creating self trust within your ideal client? That is your T. So we've got D and T demand and trust. Now we're getting to the C of the DTC and C is conversion skill. This is why I always say you have to know how to close. Okay, you have to know how to walk someone to a yes. Do you know how to close the sale when someone is wanting to say yes. When somebody's warm, most people think that they have a lead problem and sometimes you do. Like, okay, so again, back to demand. You do need to be adding more leads sometimes. But a lot of times the one that I Want to tackle with you all first is your sales skill problem. This is how you can get good at making money and having clients with a small audience. You always wonder what people say that, you know, you can have a six figure business with a small audience. How do you do that? Those people are super good at converting and closing. You have to feel really confident that you know and understand your own sales process. And if somebody is, for example, in your DMs and they're chit chatting with you, do you, number one, recognize that as interest? Do you know how to turn that interest into a sales environment? Do you know how to invite them to the next step, yes or no? Once they take the next step and now they're on a sales call with you, do you know what you're doing on that call? Do you know how to take them through a very consultative, authentic, supportive sales call environment that is going to make them feel really great saying yes, even if they are scared? How confident are you in your own ability to close? What's incredible is this is a skill that everybody needs at every level and it's a skill that lots and lots of people neglect. I have friends who are multiple six figure business owners who will sheepishly admit to me they don't feel like they're very good at converting. They're like, and, and the problem with that is you can be successful without feeling confident that you know how to convert very well. But you are gonna have to work so much harder, right? If for example, if you're converting one people, one people, one person in every thousand people who finds you. Think about how many more eyeballs you're going to need. How much more demand back to demand. How much more demand you're going to have to build versus out of a thousand people. What if you know how to close a hundred?
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Right?
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When I do sales calls, I have nearly a 100% close rate on my sales calls. Is it sorcery? Is it magic wizardry or coercion? It is none of the above. It's because I have built the skill of sales and that is why I teach it now. So that when you have connections, when you go to a networking event, you hand out business cards. For those of you who are just getting started, you should be closing in that environment. You should be getting people to book an appointment with you and you should know how to run that appointment.
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Okay?
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So conversion skill, you have to know how to convert absolutely huge. If you want to learn more about how to convert. Same day sales is an amazing program to help you with that, you can check it out. Go to stephcrowder. Com and literally it's a conversion program for brand new beginners as well as for people who have audiences and have businesses and just want to get better at closing. Okay, so that is DTC down to close. We have demand, trust and conversion skill. If you stop. Here's the thing. Remember where we started in this conversation. What are the three levers that actually make you money? Demand, trust and conversion skill. Look at your list of things. When you think about like what are all the things that I could do? My clients will tell me this and my followers and you know, folks that I chat with, they'll be like, I just have a hundred things on my list and I just don't know what moves the needle. I want you to pass all of those ideas on your list through the lens of dtc. Do they fit? Is it. If it's not creating demand, it's not building trust and it's not increasing your conversion skill, it's not going to be one of the tippy top things that makes you money. And so you can really look at what on your list is actually going to get you there. What is actually going to start taking things in the right direction. You really want to be thinking about connecting with people and having more conversation where you can be up close and personal and do these three things. So this is what's cool, is you can think about dtc, demand, trust and conversion skill about your entire audience. But I also want you thinking about it on the one on one level. So if you're having a conversation with somebody, you can think about demand, you can think about how can I listen in this, in this conversation and figure out what problem they're talking about and how they're talking about the problem in a way that there's very high demand to solve the problem on the individual level, right? Trust. When we're having a one on one conversation with somebody and we're maybe doing a customer conversation or a sales call, like a research conversation or a sales call, they're two different things. But either way you can be listening for what does this person need to feel like they can trust me and trust my program and also trust themselves? Can they trust themselves? Where are they not trusting themselves that they can have a new, better and different result and where are they not trusting that my program and my coaching and my environment is going to be the one that helps them be able to get that result?
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Okay.
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And then the third being the conversion skill is this is really where you can measure, you know, on an individual level, how comfortable are you knowing what you need to do when somebody is warm? Do you understand the steps? Do you know where to take the conversation?
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Right.
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Do you understand? And actually, are you able to read between the lines and hear the question behind their objections? To really understand what do they need to hear, what do they need to believe, and what do they need to just feel good about in order to be a yes.
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Right.
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That's something you can really, really get some solid reps. And just this is why one of the number one things I tell people is just be having more conversations. Because when you have more conversations, you can, yeah, you're gonna fall on your face, I'll be honest with you. But then you can get off that call and be like, I know where that went wrong. I know where I got confused. I know where I need coaching. I know where my skill gap is.
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Okay?
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But you're not gonna know these things if you're sitting behind your computer screen, tip, tip, tapping away, you know, editing your website for the 700th time. You gotta get out of the building and practice your dtc. You can practice it again at the audience level, building demand, trust and conversion skill with a. With like your Instagram and your email list and your webinars. And you can also use DTC on the individual conversation level. If you stop tinkering and you start pulling these levers on purpose, it just gets easier, not harder. It gets easier. It becomes part of the fabric of what you do on a daily basis. Everything you do is run through the filter of does it create demand, does it build trust, and is it helping me convert better?
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Right.
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When you focus on these things, that's what creates your freedom in the long term. This is how you scale without ultimately working 24, 7, spiraling into burnout, and ending up quitting. When really you just want to be able to help people with the gift that you have, with the knowledge that you have. So I hope that you guys found DTC helpful. I hope this is something that you can take with you into your week. And as you think about money making activities and moving the needle, implement these three things to really help feel like you are getting closer and closer to your client goals. All right, more coming next week. I hope you loved this episode. And if you did, I'd love to hear from you. You can always reach out to me. I'm at. Hey, Steph Crowder on Instagram. You can reply to any of the emails that you've received from me. If you're on my email list and yeah, you know, we have. I know I mentioned this at the beginning of the episode, but sold out group programs. The Mastermind going to be opening up one more time before the end of the year. It is going to be a really great time to get into the program. More coming on that soon. I have a brand new training coming up that's going to teach you lots of things that I haven't taught publicly before. So to get all the information and be the first person to actually get to have a conversation with me and get extra bonus time in the program, you can go to steph crowder.com mastermind and put your name on that list and that is going to kind of put you in the front of the line, so to speak, for the next opening of the Mastermind, which is coming soon. All right, friends, I will talk to you soon. And until then, I'm wishing you the courage and the clarity to go after what you love.