A (5:04)

Oh my gosh. All right. I'm excited about this one today. It is a topic that I think is a real bottleneck in many farm businesses. It's not your website. It's not your email software. It's not your offer. Although that may be it, that's a common thing that we have to troubleshoot in farm marketing school first. No, the thing that often bottlenecks farm businesses is hesitation is imposter syndrome. And I see it over and over again inside of farm marketing school. Farmers who will build the product, they'll grow the email list, they'll do all the work. But then when it comes time to promote, they pull back. They shrink. They don't want to be annoying, they don't want to be salesy, they don't want to feel pushy. And there's just this huge fear that that's how they're going to come across. And I get it because I was there once, too, and I frankly still sometimes get in that place when I'm not confident about an offer or I just think it's going to flop or I don't know. I feel it, too. Still. I'm so much better than I used to be. But I get it, okay. Most of you are not natural salespeople. I wasn't either. We're growers. We're producers. We take care of animals. But here is what I want to explore today. What if the thing that feels uncomfortable isn't marketing? What if it's your belief about marketing? I know that's very meta, but I think that's what's driving a lot of it. And so I want us today to surface those thoughts that are quietly running the show in the background and see if we can walk around that, be curious about them. We're going to analyze them and just notice them and see what's going on there. No judgment. Okay? But I want to try and point your attention to how you're thinking about some things and then suggest another way of looking at it. All right, so I identified three different mindset blocks behind selling. There's definitely more than that. And in each case, I'm going to kind of point it out because I see it. I mean, I see it a lot. In our. In our farm marketing school monthly zoom calls, we have, like, a group coaching session where everyone's invited to come and we just share what's going on, we ask questions, we troubleshoot stuff, we look at each other's work. And I have seen patterns showing up. And that's what I want to talk about today. So I know that these are common. We're going to identify three of them, and then I'm going to try to also share the alternative way of thinking about it, like how to shift that thought to a different thought, a different mindset shift. Okay, so let's see how we do. I hope you enjoy this episode. It's a little bit more mindset focused, not as tactical, but the things I'm going to uncover, I hope you'll practice that. You'll be able to practice catching yourself in the old thought and trying on the new one. Even though it's going to feel like wearing a new set of clothes that don't quite fit yet, you're just going to feel the burn, feel the discomfort and still practice it anyway. Okay, so let's start with the first one. See if this is something you have found yourself saying to yourself. In your head when you resist the urge to pitch an offer. Okay, see, if you, you find yourself thinking this. No, no, no, no, I don't want to be annoying. I don't want to be annoying. Okay. Is that ever a feeling or a thought you have in your mind and it keeps you from making an offer or bringing up something or trying to pitch something? What this often sounds like in real life is, oh, I don't want to bug people. I just emailed them last week. I don't want to come off as salesy. If they want it, they'll come ask me or they'll text me. I hate when businesses spam me. So in other words, I don't want to do it to others. Right? And there's many other ways that that manifests. But the underlying fear in this particular thought is, I think, rejection and social disapproval. Right? At least when I have these thoughts, that's what I'm worried about. Like, oh, if I annoy them, if I actually do annoy them, they're not going to like me anymore. They're going to disapprove of that behavior, they're going to reject me and I'm no longer going to be included in their circle of influence. I won't be welcome. And we have this deep need to belong that is like part of our human nature. And so of course this would feel threatening if this thought were actually true. And we farmers especially, I think, are very community oriented humans. We really care deeply about being liked and trusted. And many of us go into farming with these really powerful idealistic ideas and virtues and we stand for something important and we, we care about our integrity and that people think well of us. Right? And so selling feels like it risks that if we come off as annoying or we risk that, we put that at risk. So here's what's really happening. We end up equating promotion, promoting a product with pressuring someone. But those are not the same thing. I'm going to challenge you right now. Those are not the same thing. And I have to tell this to myself a lot. Okay, so I'm preaching to the choir. Please don't think that I am above all this and I have somehow ascended into the clouds and I'm amazing. I want to suggest another way of thinking about this when you find yourself coming up against this. I don't want to be annoying thought, what if you considered this instead? Reminding people about my product is actually serving people. My job is not to pressure. My job is simply to remind people. I know people are busy they forget that I'm here. And so if I believe that my product, that my food matters, that it's in some cases life saving, I look at food as medicine for some people, for my life. It is. I always talk about how, what if you could imagine that your product is like a life saving serum for someone, wouldn't you move heaven and earth to get that product to as many people as possible and talk about it and be proud of it and point to it. And yeah, they're going to be people who, who don't need the medicine, but there are some who do and let's make sure they know about it. Right? So if we believe that our food is valuable, that it matters, then reminding them about the offer, that we're here is actually an act of service and an act of care. It's not annoyance. Another way you could think about it is that the right customers will be grateful for my reminders or silence doesn't make me more respectful, it actually makes me invisible. What if that were also true, this idea that, oh, I'm just not going to ever talk about it, I'm not going to bring up my offer very much. I'm going to be quiet over here because I'm just worried about being annoying. Well, if that's all for the sake of being respectful of people, it's also going to make you invisible. The wrong customers may bristle when you pitch an offer. They may actually think in their minds, oh, this is so annoying. You know what? When people think that if you have a customer that thinks that they should not be on your list anymore, they should not be a customer, it's okay if they leave. That's a really hard thing to get behind. I'm not saying that that's true every single time. Please don't. Like I am speaking a little in hyperbole, but I want you to just notice that if you have customers who are complaining about how you're making offers all the time, they're either not being segmented properly and you could segment them, or maybe they just aren't a customer. Maybe they aren't someone who's ever going to buy. And yeah, then they should get off your list. Okay, so the last kind of reframe of this idea is, is annoying is when you're pushing what people don't want, but marketing is inviting people to what they already said they value. So if your people have shown interest before they purchase something or they've gotten on your email list because they requested it, then they've raised their hand and they've said, this is something that I value, this is something that I want. And so it is completely understandable and acceptable for you to invite them periodically to continue to participate in the things that they say they value. Okay, so that was my first kind of mindset block. I don't want to be annoying and I just want you to reframe it as annoying. It doesn't have to be about being annoying. This is about you are, you are serving, you have something that can help people and you're actually serving them when you pitch offers to them. Okay, let's move on to the second one. The second one is if they don't buy this offer that I pitch, it means something about me. Now I've never heard somebody say it that way, but that's the underlying thought. And I know that I have thought this before. I have a fear of pitching offers, usually brand new ones that I've never tested because I'm afraid people aren't going to actually buy it. And that that means that I am not good, that they don't like me. So here's some other ways that this thought can actually sound. If you actually hear someone, you know, say something, maybe they don't value my prices. Have you ever said that to yourself? Maybe I'm charging too much. Maybe my product isn't good enough. Maybe I'm not cut out for this. So people don't buy the product and we conflate that with I'm not good enough. And the underlying fear is personal rejection. And our self worth gets tied to up with our sales outcomes. They are like intertwined. And I see this, like when I pause and really look at it, I'm like, wow, what am I doing? I am equating my self worth with my sales outcomes. Which is ridiculous, right? When you walk around and you spot that and you notice it, you're like, oh, that doesn't make sense. But farming is so personal, right? It's our land, it's our sweat, it's our story, it's our passion. And so when we're promoting something, we do feel really vulnerable because we're putting ourself out there and what we believe and stand for. So if someone else says no to our offer, man, that cuss to the heart. And it's very easy for us to make that mean, oh, they must not like me. When all they're saying no to is the offer pitched at that specific time, in that specific way, at that specific price. It doesn't mean anything about you. So underneath all of this is a fear of personal rejection. And this is a big reason why many farmers are afraid to pitch because they just don't want to get the no. I have so much empathy for those of you that struggle with this. This is. This is really big for me. I once had a conversation with my coach, Rebecca, about this when I was afraid to pitch an offer. And we talked it out over the course of an hour. And I remember there was a powerful sentence that she shared with me. I did an entire podcast episode about it, actually. She told me, what if your yes lives in the land of no? And I had to kind of back up and think about that for a minute. It was a beautiful metaphor. Like my yes lives somewhere in the land of no. I will have to cross into this metaphorical land of no and experience no's from a lot of people who live in the land of no, but hiding in the land of no. There are people who say yes, but the only way I'm going to find the yeses is if I'm willing to meet a few no's along the way. And that was so life breathing for me because I think before that I thought it was wrong to get a no. And she normalized it. She's like, no. If you're in sales, no is a part of the territory. In fact, you get more no's than yeses in most cases. And that, that is the way it is. Like every product has a percentage of yeses and a percentage of no's. And part of marketing is sort of figuring out what is my conversion rate. If it's 10%, well, that means that one out of 10 people say yes and I get nine no's for every yes. And it just is what it is. And I just have to get through the numbers to find those 1 out of 10 yeses. So this is sort of the reversal thought that a no is is just data. It's not a verdict. Anytime you get sales outcomes, whether they're nos or yeses, it's information. It has nothing to do with your identity. So if something doesn't sell, we shouldn't be spiraling, right? We should be studying it. We should take the emotion out of the equation. We should become unattached to the results of our promotion. And that's hard. I'm going to say that again. Is it possible for you to become unattached from the results of your promotion? It's not a commentary on your identity. So we study the data, we adjust the offer, we adjust the timing, maybe we adjust the messaging. We don't attack ourselves. And I think this is really huge for entrepreneurs, business owners, farmers like us, because a lot of times what we do is we end up blurring the line between the product and our self worth. So I just want to encourage you to remember my story about the land of no, okay? Every business hears no. It's normal. I'm normalizing it right now. Okay? Every business will be required to go into the land of no. And mature businesses are not afraid of it. They don't think it's strange. They're not intimidated. They go in and they analyze the numbers in the land of no. So marketing is really about testing, testing, testing, being willing to quote, unquote, fail. I don't even like using that word. Everything is a beta test. We take a new offer and we put it out into the world as a beta test. We take the pressure off. We're just being curious about what it's going to do. The way we've positioned the offer, the way we've named it, the way we built, the timing around it, the time of year we decided to pitch it, the price we decided to put on it, how we're bundling it, what we're including. And we're not including, whether we added a freebie, whether we put a minimum order on it. Right. There's so many things that you can do to tease and change the offer and test it. And every time we do, we just look at the data and see what it does and we keep ourselves out of it. It does not mean anything about you. So I want you to practice detaching yourself from the results and instead just be curious. Play in the sandbox. Today's podcast is sponsored by Farm Marketing School. I want to talk to those of you who are thinking, okay, I get it. I need a better marketing system. If you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you know I don't believe in random marketing. I don't believe in just posting and hoping. And I definitely don't believe in working harder every season just to feel the same stress again. That's why I created Farm Marketing School. It's my monthly membership where I teach you, step by step how to build a connected marketing system for your farm. Not more ideas, not fluff a structure inside fms. We start with a sales funnel audit, so you can map your entire customer journey and see what's working and what's missing. And then you build one focused asset at a time. Your weekly email system, your promotion calendar, your product ladder, your lead magnet, your Social media plan that actually supports your whole system. Each project is designed as a 30 day finish line so you don't overhaul everything overnight. You build intentionally and over time those pieces start to connect and that's when the flywheel starts spinning. That's when revenue feels more predictable. That's when marketing feels lighter. Farmers inside Farm Marketing School have told me things like, I finally feel like I'm on the right track or we saw a huge jump in sales during our slowest months, not because of luck, but because of structure. So if you're the kind of farmer who has proven you can grow something, but you're bumping up against the ceiling of now what Farm marketing school is for you, it's $69 month to month. There's also an annual option if you know you're ready to commit and you can learn more and join@mydigitalfarmer.com FMS that's mydigitalfarmer.com forward/fms. And now back to the show. The third mindset that I want to uncover here is that good products should sell themselves. So what does this sound like? You know, if it's really good, I shouldn't have to push it. In other words, I shouldn't have to sell it. It should leap off the shelf. I shouldn't have to really promote it. Hard word of mouth should be enough. I don't want to have to convince people to buy this. Marketing feels manipulative. Okay? So under this particular mindset, like, whenever I hear this again, I have a lot of sympathy and empathy because I have thought these very same things. And what I have noticed, when I walk around the thought, when I try to challenge the thought, I'm like, okay. Underneath that, once again, is a fear of what I call integrity conflict. I didn't know how else to call this, but like, we, we want to be authentic. We want to be true to our roots. And, you know, we're producers, not persuaders. Our product should stand for what it is and people should see it for what it is. We shouldn't have to try to convince them we're not hiding anything from anyone. Don't they see what we see? Right? And so we don't want to come off as somebody who's not integris. So if we tell ourselves that this is manipulative or that we're having to convince people, almost like we're, I don't know, like it's a big lie and we're trying to sneak one over on them, like that feels like we're, we're not being integrous. No, we are people of integrity. We shouldn't have to feel like we dress up a product in something. Okay? So values driven, mission oriented business owners and farmers like you, this is going to come up. You're going to bump up against that fear. And so here's just another way I want you to think about it. What if we practiced this reversal thought? If I don't explain the value, I'm hiding the value. Can you see how that's another way of looking at this same circumstance? Instead of saying good products should sell themselves, I shouldn't have to convince people. We could say, but if I don't explain the value in my pitching process because maybe they don't see it, then I'm hiding the value. I am hiding it. Which is also not integris. Right. People cannot value what they don't understand. So my job isn't to convince. Maybe it's to clarify. Marketing is actually education. I don't know. I love that. Like I look at marketing first and foremost as sales and service, but also as education. A lot of my marketing is done like people just don't know they have to have their eyes awakened. I need to help them put on another set of lenses so they can look at their circumstances in a different way and see a completely different problem and a completely different life transformation. Because many people just don't see the problem. And so they're not going to be drawn to my solution. I have to educate them. And that's a long process. Sometimes before I can make a customer ready. Here's some other alternatives that kind of work as a reversal thought. Growing great food is step one, but communicating why it matters is step two and they are very different. You sometimes have to lead the horse to water because it doesn't know what step two is. Word of mouth works faster when I give people words. I love that one. And promotion isn't hype, it's actually leadership. It's stepping up, believing in what you do, being a thought leader and a guide in your space, claiming that mantle and shepherding people to a solution, being a leader. So this really reframes marketing as, I don't know, stewardship, being impactful, being inspiring. One of the things that I noticed about all three of these sales blocks is that they are rooted in protecting our identity. Did you notice that too? They're protecting our likability, they're protecting our self worth, they're protecting our integrity. Not protecting our customers, protecting us. And that was kind of A breakthrough for me when I was working on this a few months ago. And when you can flip the lens and look through a different set of glasses on these. Marketing becomes service, it becomes leadership, it becomes education, it becomes clarity, becomes stewardship. This week, I want you to think about which one of these three do you most need to work on? Which one is running your business? Which one gets in the way a lot? Which one did you hear yourself in? And what would change if you operated from the new belief? When I do this work, like, how do you. How do you change the belief? Right. I often get that question. So the first thing is that you become aware of it. Hopefully this podcast just kind of helped you see an awareness of what the thoughts even are. And the first goal is just to spot it. If you spot it, you got it. When you notice it in yourself, be like, oh, there it is. I just had the thought. I found myself saying that sentence. No judgment, just notice it. That's kind of step one. And I. I live in that space for quite a while until I decide that I want to try to fix it and shift it to something else. And that's when you make the next step where you. When you catch yourself thinking it and you spot it, you do the next thing and you actually practice the alternative thought. And you try to say, well, what's another way that I could look at this? And you do the thing that feels uncomfortable. In this case, promote pitch the offer, trying to feel the other way about it, trying to practice the reversal thought. And I have to tell you that when you do this for the first time, you're going to say, corinna, that still felt really uncomfortable. And yes, it will. Anytime you try to shift how you think about something, anytime you're trying to work on a mindset shift, it takes a lot of practice, a lot of reps before it starts to feel less uncomfortable. It's going to be a while of doing this again and again, catching yourself again and again, trying to practice doing it a different way. And it's going to feel like wearing a set of clothes that don't fit you, and you just keep doing it anyway until eventually you begin to start believing it a little bit more, like 10% more, 20% more. And that discomfort starts to go away. It's not quite as powerful. And then it starts to feel more like you. And then one day you find that you've wiggled your way into a new identity, a new thought identity. It's really cool. I've seen it happen a few times for me on some of the things I worked on with my coach. And that's the best way I can describe it, is wiggling your way into a new way of thinking and being. So I encourage you to catch it, to spot it, become aware of it, try not to judge yourself, just notice it. And then eventually try to practice the other thought and then do the selling while having that thought, even though it feels uncomfortable. So here's what I want you to hear before we wrap up. Marketing is not about convincing people to want something that they don't need. Hear me? I know. That's where we go. A lot of times it's about helping the right people. Our ideal customer, okay, they're out there. There are people who love your stuff. We have to find them. It's about helping those right people see what's already available to them. So if you grow nutrient dense food, if you raise animals ethically, if you steward the land with integrity, then hiding your offers is not humility, it is withholding the life saving serum. It is withholding your talent, is withholding your gifts, it is withholding your power in the world. So when you stay quiet because you're afraid of being annoying, you're not protecting your customers, you're protecting yourself from discomfort. And that's human. That's human. But it's not leadership. Leadership says this matters, I'm going to talk about it. Leadership says if it's a no, I'll learn. Leadership says my job is to communicate clearly and consistently. You don't need to become someone else to market well. You just need to see promotion as a service. And the more that you can separate your identity from the outcome, from the results, the more confident you will become. The farmers who grow don't just grow better carrots, they grow thicker skin, they grow stronger beliefs, clearer conviction. So the question isn't how do I stop feeling uncomfortable as I promote. The question is what belief would make promotion feel like service instead of pressure? What belief would make promotion feel like leadership instead of pressure? That is the work, that is the practice that I invite you into. All right. Well, I hope this was helpful. Something to think about. Maybe talk through some of these mindset blocks with your business partner or another farmer friend. See what comes up for you. And I wonder if as you think about the things that hold you back from selling more, maybe there was a thought that I didn't bring up. Take a. Take some time to walk around or journal a little bit about, like why? What's at the root of why? I'm afraid to sell what? What are you protecting? A lot of times it's a survival mechanism that's in place. What is that thing? What? What is that thing for you? And if it wasn't one of the three, maybe it's something else. And do the same work, walk around it and try to identify what's another way that I can look at this circumstance, that it's empowering, an empowering belief. All right, everyone. I hope you liked this episode as much as I enjoyed outlining it. Today's show notes can be found@mydigitalfarmer.com 355. If you liked this episode, please go leave me a rating or a review on Apple Podcasts. I would really appreciate that. Or you can share it with a friend. Just text the link and send it to them. If you want to get onto my email list to learn some more marketing wisdom, I have some free stuff to send your way. It's really good. I want to empower you and invest in you. Go to mydigitalfarmer.com subscribe and get on that list. I'll send you something every week for like three or four months. It's good stuff and if you get sick of it, you can unsub. I also send you an update about the podcast every week with a little teaser of what it's about. And remember, I also have this amazing community called Farm Marketing School. I want to invite you in. I want to help you. I want to. I want to be of service to you if you need help putting the pieces together of your marketing machine. Like if you feel like it's just this fragmented approach. I hear you. That is the problem. It's a fragmented approach and I'm here to help you stitch it all together, get the machine working so that it's like a baton race, like a relay race. And every piece of your marketing machine passes the baton on to the next piece. And if you don't have all the runners in your race, you will be having problems with your marketing. And I'm going to help you find out what runners are missing and we're going to stitch them together, all right? So you can come on in anytime you want. We are open year round. You can go to mydigitalfarmer.com FMS thanks for joining me today. Have an amazing week. I'll see you next time. And remember, I believe in you. Bye. Bye.