“One of the ways that I was able to find a business that serves me, no matter if it’s who my ideal client is or what my offers are, I always looked back at what my core values are in life and business and towards other people.”
Episode Summary:
This episode of The Business Whip is slightly different from the norm! I am sharing a roundtable discussion I was invited to with Julien Recoussine and Hayden Humphrey to talk about showing up authentically in your business and how to run a business that suits and serves you!
As much as we love operations and talking about how important they are for whipping your business into shape, there is more to the game than just that. Sometimes we can feel that we are too weird, too out there, too unusual, and these ideas can limit us and our work in tragic ways. Here at The Business Whip one of the core values is freedom. Having the freedom to build an unapologetically authentic business has also enabled the success we have experienced!
We all want to run a business that we are proud of, and that pride is tied to our connection to our work and how much we identify with what we do. To hear more about how to build a business that is genuinely yours, finding more fulfillment on the entrepreneurial journey, and creating a client base that you really want, listen in with us today!
What You’ll Learn From This Episode:
- [00:06:09] What it means to build a business that serves you
- [00:11:05] Using core values as a starting point for your business and its model
- [00:14:38] The process of discovering your core values and inspiring activities
- [00:18:54] Transitioning from selling your hours to selling your expertise
- [00:22:50] The importance of transcending limiting beliefs and creating habits
- [00:27:59] Tools and tips for building out your vision and realizing your unique goals
- [00:33:56] Unpacking sales science and a process for getting to a ‘yes’ or ‘no’
- [00:36:24] Why defining and evolving your ideal client avatar is vital to your success
- [00:39:02] How motivations and core beliefs combine to create your ideal client
- [00:42:41] Qualifying clients through better listening
- [00:46:10] How simple lessons from coaches can alter a person’s career
- [00:48:32] Timing and readiness; aligning with the right clients when they need you
- [00:49:52] Playing the role of the truth-teller
- [00:54:34] Perspectives on business satisfaction
Connect with Us:
- On Instagram | @businesslaidbare, and @veronicayanhs
- Connect with Veronica on LinkedIn.
Connect with Julien:
- Connect with Julien on LinkedIn
- Check our Julien’s website at salesfixx.com
Connect with Hayden:
- On Twitter I @haydenashimself
- On Instagram I @haydenashimself
- Listen to the Paid To Be Me Podcast
- Check out Hayden’s website at haydenhumphrey.com
Resources Mentioned:
- Read Atomic Habits
- Visit the website for The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
- Purchase The Challenger Sale
- Learn more about The Gallup CliftonStrengths Assessment
“I think we all know a lot of people who make a ton of money and have a ‘great job,’ who are miserable. They’re miserable; they’re trapped. It’s because they’ve sold out that integrity piece.” – Julien Recoussine, CEO, Sales Fix
[00:00:00] Veronica Yanhs: Hey, I’m Veronica Yanhs. I’m obsessed with back-ends. Specifically, your business back-end, your operations. I’m the CEO and founder of Business Laid Bare. We’re a digital operations agency that builds well-lubricated and Orgasmic Operations ™, so that your business is pleasurable, productive, and ultimately profitable, because when you feel good, everything else feels good too, like your team, your customers, and your bank account. I mean, who doesn’t want to consent to that? This podcast gives you the tips, interviews, and mindset shifts on how to run your business and its operations so that it’s immensely pleasurable, productive, and profitable. So, ready to whip your business into shape with me? Let’s get it on.
Hey friends, I’m coming at you with this episode today from a little bit of a different angle than what I usually am doing. I love operations, don’t get me wrong, and they are the key to a pleasurable, productive, and profitable business. But something that I also am excitedly passionate about is talking about how to show up in your business in a way that honors you exactly as you are, like 100 percent. What I wanted to share with you is a roundtable that I did with my two business buddies, Hayden and Julien, where we talk about how to run a business that serves you. I had such a great time talking with them on LinkedIn that I really wanted to share it with you here.
I was so worried about customers and potential clients not wanting to work with me, because I was too weird or too left field, like too out there, and that they are more used to traditional consulting firms. Hey, I proved myself wrong. If I had to run my business any other way than how I’m doing it right now with Business Laid Bare, I would absolutely feel suffocated, and that my most important core value in my life, freedom, would totally be so violated. This is why this is so close to my heart, even though it’s not related to operations, but we got to talk about this stuff anyways, because why run a business that you aren’t proud of, or that brings you immense joy and laughter every day, right? So sit back, enjoy. I hope you take a lot out of this roundtable that we did together because I am so proud of it.
[00:02:34] Hayden Humphrey: Hello, everybody. Welcome. Welcome. Happy Wednesday, I’m super excited to be here with two of my colleagues, Veronica and Julien, who will get to meet in just a minute. Just want to thank you for taking the time out of your day to learn a little bit more about yourself, learn a little bit more about your business, and learn a little bit more about how you can build a business that really serves you. The content today is mostly going to be a conversation, why it’s called a roundtable, a conversation between myself, Veronica and Julien. That said, if while you’re watching, you have questions or a comment or something comes up for you, we would love to hear from you, while we’re in this conversation. So please feel free to pop any of those in the comments, we’ll be able to bring it up on screen and interact with you that way.
The topic today is how to build a business that serves you. I think this is really, really important, given what’s happened over the last year and a half, so much disruption, so much new normal in a sense, and really supporting us and getting clear on how do we create a business for ourselves that actually serves us versus us being a slave to it or having to serve it. We’ve got a panel here of folks who are experts in very different things, which you’ll hear about here in a second. I think it’s going to be a really great conversation. I’d love to start off with some introductions. Veronica, if you want to give us a little sense of who you are and what you’re up too.
[00:04:02] Veronica Yanhs: Yeah, thanks for having me. My name is Veronica Yanhs. I am the CEO of Business Laid Bare. We focus on creating well-lubricated and Orgasmic Operations ™ for high-growth businesses, so that, the next level of growth for them is even more pleasurable, productive, and ultimately profitable because we are not here to run an expensive hobby. Anything that has to do with business systems, standard operating procedures, automations, things that support the engine of our business, that is our operations is what gets us all hot and bothered. So, yeah, that’s I would say that the quick one about me in a small nutshell today.
[00:04:36] Hayden Humphrey: Yes. How about you Julien?
[00:04:38] Julien Recoussine: Well, thanks for having me on. It’s a pleasure to be here. My name is Julien Recoussine. I’m a struggling hair farmer, as well as a sales consultant. What I do is work with companies large and small, on being able to craft an outbound or outward aimed sales approach, that’s focused on navigating around the human defense mechanisms. If you think about most of the time when you’re being called on by somebody in a sales interaction. It’s typically not enjoyable or it creates a lot of defense’s, defense mechanisms and people typically have fears. So I teach people how to navigate around those things, leveraging human behavioral science, so they can have quality, find a fit or don’t find a fit conversation with their potential customers, and not have it feel like it’s manipulative or you’re hunting people or all the negative connotations that get easily associated with sales.
[00:05:27] Hayden Humphrey: Thanks for being here, Julien. Lastly, my name is Hayden Humphrey, I am first and foremost an Uplifter. Really, my whole game in life is supporting people in breaking up with the script so that they can step into fully becoming the creator of their own life. More tactically, I work as a leadership coach, so I support purpose-driven solopreneurs, how to create more time, energy, and freedom in their business. This is a topic that is very near and dear to my heart. I’m very excited to jump into the conversation. Where I thought we could start is this idea of building a business that serves you can mean different things to different people. I’d be curious to hear from everyone I’ll share as well, what does building a business that serves you actually mean to you?
[00:06:08] Veronica Yanhs: Okay, I can go first. This is something that’s very near and dear to my heart, because if I did not build a business that served me, and we can go into a little bit more of that, what that means, like I would just absolutely not show up. I would feel completely trapped, and just not able to show up and serve. By building a business that serves me, that means that I have to and my clients have to see that I am 100 percent, who I am. If you’ve just met me, my branding is absolutely kink and sex-positive and how we’ve blended that into an operations perspective seems almost natural, because it’s exactly who I am.
So nothing feels forced, nothing feels inauthentic. It’s all about making sure I have fun and who I am online is exactly who I am in person. If you hear me throw out puns or double entendres, that’s exactly who I am offline too and to never have to split that personality into two means that I am showing up and honoring myself 100 percent and the fact that my clients love this, like who would have thought that this was possible. So this just means the world to me that I can build a business that serves me so that it brings me joy.
[00:07:18] Julien Recoussine: I love that answer. Mine is a little less – I guess it’s more pragmatic at its core. My approach to this, I look at most people leave their job and start a business, because they find themselves dissatisfied with hating 40 hours of their week or 45 hours of their week in order to put food on the table and a roof over their heads. So what do they do, they start a business and very quickly lose control of that business and now find themselves trapped again, in their own business when in fact the main advantage of being an entrepreneur and starting your own company is the freedom to be able to make decisions so that your business isn’t 40 hours of your week that you hate.
Yeah, you’re putting food on the table. Yeah, you’re occasionally doing specific activities that you may not love, but overall you’re guiding your day in what you spend time doing, earning a living as something that fulfills you not something that you’re trading your hours for a paycheck. I think that’s why a lot of people get into entrepreneurial pursuits and sadly, they spin out of control, those take over and they find themselves trapped by a job again, when the whole reason they started a company was to not be trapped by a job, right.
I look at it very much as is that logical pursuit of what was my mission for starting my own business. It was tied to I didn’t want to work for other people anymore for a variety of reasons, but the main one being trapped. My last actual job situation, I got laid off three times in 18 months, and after the third layoff in 18 months, I went, I am never going to be in this position again. I am never going to be in a position again, where somebody can take away what I do for a living, with one meeting and sitting down I’m going to gain some control of that. If you accept that control piece, then why not control the fun stuff. You jumped into it to control things control the fun stuff for the joy that you should get, the fulfillment that you should get out of doing something that you love.
[00:09:03] Hayden Humphrey: Yeah, I love that, Julien. I think that’s so important. So much of the work that I do with people is supporting them and understanding where are you doing the things that you think that you’re supposed to be doing or that you’ve been told that you’re supposed to be doing? I think from a work ethic perspective, quote, unquote, there’s this very puritanical idea, I think, especially in the US around how work is supposed to go and so much of that is like, “Hey, if you’re not hustling all the time, every day, if you’re not struggling, if you’re not suffering, then you’re not doing enough.” It’s not going to be successful.
While there are definitely times especially in the beginning stages of building a business that it might require a little bit more from you. I think the conversation that we’re in is one of, it’s a future orientation. It’s where are we headed? How do we create something and be intentional about starting to construct an architect, a business that really works for us where we don’t have to work 40 hours a week if we don’t want too. The cool thing now is, I continue to meet these incredible lifestyle entrepreneurs, people who are working 10, 5, 20 hours maybe a week, because they’ve really intentionally constructed their life and their business in that way. I really loved what you shared Veronica, as well, this is one of the main reasons why I just love collaborating with you is, I think you’re such an incredible example of this, like building a business that feels like it’s an authentic representation of who you are.
It’s not easy, it requires a level of vulnerability, it requires a level of courage because it’s scary to put yourself out there in that way. It’s scary to bring those parts of yourself and put them up on display and ask people in a sense to invest with you, because of those things. I also think like that is the goal. I think so many of that’s – so many of us are actually looking for is like, “Hey, how do we create a life in a business where we don’t feel like we have to be anybody else except ourselves?” In a sense, we are successful, we are creating financial stability and wealth, because of who we are at the core. I think, that’s really, really important. I love that.
[00:11:02] Veronica Yanhs: Yeah, so the main core values that I have in my life are freedom, joy, and integrity. So, I learned that if to discover what your core values are, and to begin with, it’s like have you ever thought of a time where you are absolutely really, really happy and ecstatic and just want to cry with positive tears. Then on the flip side, to have you thought of a time where you were so angry and so enraged. It’s like when you have these polar opposite emotions, you know those are when your core values are either activated in a positive way or violated.
So when I sat upon building my business, I was like, I need to feel free. If I don’t feel free, like you said Julien, I will feel trapped. If I do not find myself experiencing joy, I might as well not work so hard and just work half like half the joy, maybe double the income and go work at a job, right? But that’s not who I am. That doesn’t feel like someone who values integrity would say. It’s like, one of the ways that I was able to find a business that serves me, no matter if it’s who my ideal client is or what my offers are, I always looked back at what my core values are in life and in business and towards other people.
[00:12:11] Julien Recoussine: I love that piece about integrity. That’s so key to it, because if you’re not respecting that, then you’re selling out. So then what’s the difference between having your own business or working for somebody else, if you’re selling out, you’re selling out. I think we all know a lot of people who make a ton of money and have a quote, unquote, great job who are miserable. We know, we know a lot of those, they’re miserable, they’re trapped. It’s because they’ve sold out that integrity piece and they know they’ve sold it out. So it’s harder to be genuine in front of their customers and their clients and that’s the people who look up at the end of the career and go, “Okay, so I have a lot more zeros in my bank account than if I’d made some different decisions. I got a lot of toys that I’ve never gotten to play with. I missed out on my kids his childhood or on birthdays and other things in my family and I don’t travel and things like that, but I’m not happy.”
Those zeros aren’t just going to make you happy unless they’re fulfillment. That ties into I think a mistake that’s made often is people try to build a billion-dollar business before they actually try to build a business that makes them happy. It’s like, you’re not a failure if you’re not the next Mark Zuckerberg, there aren’t that many Mark Zuckerbergs out there who built the business of that size. But if you build a business that pays your bills, and you’re fulfilled, there’s a lot of people with Mark Zuckerberg money that wish they could buy that fulfillment from you, if it was for sale.
[00:13:27] Hayden Humphrey: That’s huge. Julien, thanks for sharing that. I totally agree. It’s so funny, I ran a podcast last year called the Paid To Be Me podcast. It was really focused on lifestyle entrepreneurship. That was one of the main reasons why I started it was helping people understand that, especially when it comes to business, I think there’s this idea that, oh, if I’m not scaling, if I’m not huge, if I’m not building this huge billion-dollar business, then I’m doing something wrong. Versus, like hey to Veronica’s point, like let me start with what’s important to me, let me start with my values. nLet me start with the experience of life that I want to be having that freedom, and then actually design backward from there, versus trying to form fit in, because I think that’s where a lot of people get tripped up is, you start a business, it starts working, or you’re trying to make it work, and you’re not intentionally looking at like, “Hey, how am I designing again? How am I designing or architecting this to be in service of my lifestyle?” Versus feeling oh, the only way forward is to continue to build how I’ve already built to this point.
I think this is actually a really interesting segue too, in talking about business models, because I’m sure you all have gone through multiple iterations of your offerings, and how you work with people. So, I’d be curious to hear from you all, like how do you know or how did you know the business model that best fit your personality and felt like it was a business model that really lit you up and served you?
[00:14:52] Julien Recoussine: For me, I focused around the activity that I liked doing the best. I went through a pretty standard path. I went – got a college degree, went into the business world. The one place where they always accept people with no real skills, but a lot of enthusiasm to sales, right? I naturally gravitated got interviewed in a newspaper for a writing job. I showed up on that Monday, and they were like, “Here’s a rate card, go sell some ads.” That was essentially the beginning of my official sales career. Then I went through this being a sales rep and being a sales manager and started training some other people.
When I started building my business, I focused around the activity that I love the best. What I loved the best was the mix of being on stage and coaching and mentoring people. It was more satisfying to me to watch somebody else succeed off of my instruction or guidance than it was for me to actually go out and close some of those contracts myself. Most people in sales, your top paid salespeople in a sales organization are not the managers of the trainers, it’s the top salespeople. It’s actually a pay cut to go into leadership, but people do it because either they think it’s the career path or be in my case, because I love that.
So, the model started off of, I just want to do more of this. How do I go find more of doing this? Because this is the piece where I don’t have to pull myself out of bed early in the morning, on a day where I’m training. I set the alarm for six, and I’m wide awake at 5:15 and already geting up and geting ready to go, because I know today is going to be one of the fun days. It’s going to be one of the days where I get to do what I really love. Put me in a room full of like 20 to 150 salespeople and I’m happy. I’m glad that I get paid to do it, but if I’m honest, I probably would do it, even if they didn’t pay me. I just really love that piece of it. I’ve got my model around the portion of the day, the activity, the behavior that I loved doing, but then I just followed it in to find the ability to be able to do that.
[00:16:36] Veronica Yanhs: Okay, so for me, yeah. It’s been a journey. This last iteration where I burned my business to the ground has been my most successful iteration yet. I started in the startup world, because going to school at Stanford, and being in Silicon Valley, all that good stuff like, I saw what it was like to hustle and most importantly, to grind like grinding was a badge of honor. Then that just never felt right to me. Then I was like, how do I go into and see I’m a storyteller. So how do I go into business for myself without having to sacrifice my integrity, again, my freedom like grinding 12, 15, 16 hours a day? It’s not me. Then I discovered the online business world, which apparently is something that’s really foreign to a lot of people.
The first thing that I saw, because I bought into all of this was like, oh, build something once like an eCourse and sell it over and over again to like limitless financial potential, right? You build it once, and you don’t have a ceiling as to how much money you can make. When I followed those things, that the influencers back then told me, I was like, I realized that things felt really transactional. I’ve tried the eCourse, I’ve tried the membership sites, and nothing ever felt fulfilling, like it just felt super transactional. I would rather have just refunded people their money.
Then one day, I took this thing called the Gallup Strengths Finder, a strengths assessment thing. Apparently, according to the results, my number one skill, my number one strength is this thing called relator. Meaning I can build and crave meaningful and deep relationships and can build those rather quickly to be able to build relationships, one on one with people. To make things understandable that relation part, I was like oh, maybe this is where I will shine is instead of these models, where it’s one to many, it’s one to one for me. It’s according to the internet, business influencers and people who have made it big, it’s like the worst business model, because it’s the least scalable, but at the same time, it’s well, I’m fulfilled, and I’m really happy. I get to build those relationships with clients. To me, it’s always been quality over quantity. That’s why I have my business model the way I do right now.
We’re adding different areas of revenue streams, of course, so it’s not all eggs in one basket, but the main moneymaker, the main offer we have are all one-on-one work, because that’s what fulfills me.
[00:18:54] Julien Recoussine: Hey, I want to point out one thing, call attention to one thing that Veronica said, because I think it’s an essential shift in this journey, which is going from selling your time to selling your expertise, when you can make the transition from trading hours for dollars, to trading knowledge or expertise for hours, that’s the first step to free yourself from this rat race. So that Veronica can plan around what that expertise is not just an hour of her time, and that was the – a lot of people make that scalable first step that she described, I’ve had a lot of pressure to put online courses and stuff like that. So far, I’ve resisted it, I think coming from the same place Veronica, right. It’s like, okay, but that’s not as much fun as actually getting to interact with people, right? Yeah, I sold a video today compared to, yay I’m in a training today.
That’s the first step that you have to make, is to figure out what passion drives what expertise so that can be that’s what you sell. You’re not trading your hours of labor, you’re trading your expertise. In the age that we live in, it’s easier to do than it ever has been, which is wonderful, but it’s still a mental shift that a lot of people have a hard time making. All right, they’re like, “Well, I can’t charge $1,500 for this, because that’s only an hour.” It’s $1,500 an hour that’s – and you go, you’re solving a $2 million problem at $50,000 for that hour, that’s a great value to your customer, right?
Stop looking at it on how long it takes you, start looking at it at how long it would take them to try to duplicate that expertise, because that’s really where the value is coming in. Understanding that is a monumental shift. I want to call attention, because the way Veronica said it, it just it pinged in me when she said that was like, that’s right. It’s about that shift. That’s the first thing that you have to be able to turn to be able to free yourself from the rat race concept.
[00:20:38] Hayden Humphrey: I agree, totally agree, Julien. I don’t remember whose quote it is, but there’s the quote around you get paid in direct proportion to the size of the problems that you solve. In that model, it’s not how many hours you work, it’s not how hard you’re working, it’s what’s the size of the problem that you’re solving. If you can start to cultivate that level of mastery and awareness of hey, here’s the knowledge, here’s the value, here’s the expertise that I’m bringing to the table, it makes it way easier than to look at how do I want to deliver it? Because I think in this in this conversation around, how do you build a business that serves you? It’s this concept of configuration. There’s a lot of different ways to configure how you deliver that expertise, how you solve those problems.
Step one to Julien’s point, is getting clear, I’m like, “Hey, what is that knowledge? What is the expertise that I can bring? What are those problems that I’m solving?” Then starting to pay attention to, Julien, what you said earlier around, “Hey, what are the things that really like and what are the different aspects of what I’m doing that I feel gives me a lot of energy versus drain energy from me?” Then looking at how can I do more of those more consistently. I think another really cool way to approach it, similar to what Veronica said is like, being intentional about “Hey, how can you start to understand and pay more attention to what are my strengths? What are my strengths? What are those things that I do extremely well, that I do better than everyone else? How can I start to build a business around that?”
Because the value is, if you’re showing up at your best and brightest, and clearest and most energetic, that is going to have the highest amount of impact on the people that you’re serving. It’s a win-win. It’s a win-win.
[00:22:13] Julien Recoussine: Money is an abstract concept, right? I mean, you say that to people and they go “Well, that’s not really true.” I mean, a gallon of milk is a gallon of milk and you go, “Okay, well is $1,000 a lot of money?” If you ask 10 people in a room to raise their hands, you’ll get different response, but if I say, “Is that is $1,000 a lot of money for a Diet Coke?” Every hand is going to go up. If I say, “Is $1,000 a lot of money for a brand new Nissan Sentra?” No hands are going to go up. The money itself is not the issue. It’s the abstract value of what you’re exchanging for, right? I mean, otherwise, we’re talking about little pieces of paper and little pieces of metal. I mean, that’s what we’re talking about. We’re talking about money, right? You have to look at the abstract value of it. That’s the only place it gets its value.
[00:22:49] Hayden Humphrey: Yeah. 100 percent.
[00:22:50] Veronica Yanhs: Hayden, you’ve asked us about our business models. Tell us about yours, like what lights you up about how you run your business?
[00:22:57] Hayden Humphrey: Yeah, so the thing that I love most about my business and serving clients is, I get to act as a conduit to a totally different future. Meaning, when people are in conversation with me, I really don’t care about how things have gone. In a way, I don’t really care about how things are going. What I care most about is how do you want it to go? What’s the experience that you want to create for yourself? We get to be in this really cool, different limitless type of conversation around what you want to design because I think that one of the things that keeps people stuck in serving their business is feeling as though there is a specific way that it has to go. This is how I get clients. This is how I serve clients. This is how I package my knowledge. This is how I do pricing, whatever the story is.
Until you start to assess and reassess those basic assumptions that you have around how you’re building your business, and how you’re serving people, you will be beholden to those assumptions. You will be stuck inside of in my language, those scripts, the stories around how things are supposed to go. So it’s so fun to be able to and I have a one-to-one practice. That’s the main way that I work with people and be able to be in a conversation with someone and they’re sharing about why it’s going this way and why it has to go this way and to be able to stand outside of the story as a third party and say, but does it, but does it.
Is there a way that you could do this or reorient or reconfigure to create something that feels like it’s more in service of you? That being able to support people and understanding, it doesn’t have to go the way that it’s gone, like for me that is like, that’s where I get all my juice.
[00:24:34] Julien Recoussine: A slayer of limiting beliefs, right?
[00:24:37] Hayden Humphrey: Yes, sir.
[00:24:38] Julien Recoussine: Or head trash is – the Sandler. Sandler is the great sales system that I’ve worked for closely, and they call that head trash. I love – head trash because it puts it where it belongs right? In a trash bag ready to be taken out to the curb and thrown away, right? Get rid of this stuff, it’s head trash. Yeah, I could see how you would get a lot of satisfaction of being able to open up people’s limiting beliefs. The self-imposed limiting beliefs that they have in most cases.
[00:25:01] Hayden Humphrey: Yeah.
[00:25:02] Veronica Yanhs: But those inner Gremlins man are so strong. How do you both maintain that, that vision to do what it is that fulfills you without constantly wondering if it’s like the right thing?
[00:25:15] Julien Recoussine: Well, it’s a good question. It’s actually a really key question, right. To me, the understanding is how the belief wheel is powered. You have a lot of people, if you look at beliefs and actions right in a circle and how they end you can insert other things like judgments in there, but if you start to look at that circle and you ask most people, where does it start? If I want to change one of them, which one do I change first? Most people will tell you what, change what you believe in, and then your course of action will change. That’s actually wrong. It’s really hard to change your beliefs in a vacuum and an abstract. What you need is to change your actions, translate it, have faith and faith will come to you or fake it until you make it.
Start to act like you are what you are. My first client in sales consulting had no idea they were my first client. They had no possible way to understand that they were my first client, because the entire conversation, because I had been trained well enough by other people, my course of action made it look this was a run of the mill thing, and inside I was going, “Oh, I’m going to get them, right. Oh, I’m going to they’re going to.” What happens now is that now typically, the conversation in my head is, these guys are a client, they just don’t know it yet. These guys are clients for me. They just don’t know it yet.
So that belief, that right is that statement changes my actions. So then my beliefs come in alignment to that. I think that’s the key and it comes down to who you expose yourself too. If you sit around a bunch of people who tell you, you can’t do it, you have a few contrarian personalities that, that’s jet fuel for, but for the most of us that’s actually really deflating and you can’t get it done. This is why people are in the roles that you’re both playing. I guess I’m a coach too. I’m I consider myself a consultant more than a coach, right? This is why, I’m sure Hey, you have times where you tell somebody something, and they’re like, “Oh, my God, it was right in front of me this whole time. How did I not see this?” Because it took that outside perspective, without all that head trash to be able to free that line of thought and then, then that becomes jet fuel. They react to it, then they’re and they’re off to the sky, right?
So, for me it’s making sure that you’re reinforcing those things, and that you’re pop in and just start acting it out. If I start acting like somebody who’s focused on health, then I’m focused on health. If I start acting like somebody who gets up early, you want to be good at getting up early? Get up early. That’s how you do it, you start getting up early on a regular basis, and eventually, you look up and you go, I’m a person that gets up early. That’s who I am now, right? That I believe came from the action of being able to do it, not the other way around.
[00:27:40] Hayden Humphrey: Totally. Yeah, it really reminds me of James Clear in Atomic Habits, where he talks about what creates the most lasting change and it’s the identity level change, like I am the person who does this or that.
[00:27:53] Julien Recoussine: Yeah. The Covey book isn’t called, The 7 Beliefs of Highly Effective People. It’s called, The 7 Habits of it first. So –
[00:27:59] Hayden Humphrey: Agreed, agreed. Veronica, your question around, how do you maintain that vision? I think for me, it’s understanding and we’ve said this in a couple of different ways, but that change doesn’t happen in a vacuum and it doesn’t happen by yourself. You are, and I’ve had to learn this the hard way, you are destined to underperform unless you are partnering with other people who can support you in reminding you what you’re committed to reminding you what your vision is, reminding you how great you are because it’s so easy to get sucked into the, I can’t do this. I don’t trust myself. This is never going to work etc. etc. mindset unless you are partnering with someone who is supporting you and seeing that, and stopping that and saying, “Hey, it doesn’t have to go that way, we can actually have it this different way.” You’re more likely to stay there.
I think for me, the biggest thing has been investing in myself. It’s been investing in my own development. I’ve worked with a coach every week for the last four years and I’ve been involved in communities with other people who are up to really amazing, incredible different things. So I think the biggest piece around how do you maintain that vision, especially when it comes to building a business that serves you is because it’s unlikely to look like what other people have built before if you’re doing it, if you’re doing it right. It’s about being around other people who are on that same journey, who to Julien’s point will give you that positive feedback, who will affirm you, who will celebrate your wins with you. It’s not about doing it yourself. It’s about doing it in a relationship and doing it in a community with others.
[00:29:29] Veronica Yanhs: I love it. I mean the hype squad is crucial, especially for the days that you do not believe in yourself as much as they believe in you. That’s when you need that little pick me up. Entrepreneurship is one of the craziest personal development journeys you can go on. You can feel this positive negative wave of emotions, highest of highs, lowest of lows, and I’ve done this myself, like even within the first hour of the day. So it’s like to not do this in a vacuum is absolutely helpful for your mindset. A lot of people feel like mindset, at least what who I’ve talked to, is a solo game, like you have to work on your own mindset, but it’s like not necessarily you need the support. We’re not meant to do this by ourselves.
Have other people to help make working on your mindset, a lot smoother and easier. Especially when you need that pick me up. That has been the biggest one, at least for me is not doing it by myself. I’ve had so many people tell me, they’re like, “Hey, you shouldn’t be doing your business like this.” You could be making so much more money, because there’s a lot of management consulting operations, consulting groups, like the Big Four, like the Boston Group, all those and they’re like well, you can get a fraction of that money if it was easier for people to come work with you, but I’m just like, if you don’t honor who I am, and if I don’t honor who I am, I don’t know if making a ton of money is going to be fulfilling.
There are tons of people who have said, maybe you need to tone that kink down a little. Well, Hayden has told me, especially going on LinkedIn, he’s you should actually tone that kink up because LinkedIn is a place where I assume it’s people are more professional, more buttoned-up because it’s like my profile picture on LinkedIn is different than on Facebook or Instagram, but he’s just like show up. It’s going to be great. I constantly need that reminder too, because it is a very vulnerable act and that screws with your mindset sometimes.
[00:31:17] Julien Recoussine: That wouldn’t be true, if it was a gimmick. It wouldn’t – the kink thing wouldn’t be true. If it was a gimmick, the reason it’s true, it’s because it’s genuine, it’s who you are, right? When you run into somebody that responds to it, you have a match of core beliefs that are happening and you’re already three-quarters of the way towards having an agreeable interaction or potential client situation with that person because if you were doing it as a gimmick, it wouldn’t work.
Most people would see through it. We’ve got the 10 percent of suckers they’ll fall for it but the rest of the other 90 percent would see through it and they would be like, “Yeah, this is gimmicky, this is not.” If you think about some of the famous people that you know, I mean like – Do any of us have any doubt that Jim Carrey is a goof in real life as an example? I mean, does it seem like a stick or a gimmick? Or do you know he goes around the house like doing funny voices? Robin Williams, same thing. Do we think Robin Williams sits at home with a cigar with English accent sipping Sherry, saying, “Well, that’s not quite appropriate?” Of course not.
We knew when he was alive, he was probably like, his kids were probably like “Oh my God, get this guy under control.” But that’s why he was – that’s what you couldn’t take your eyes off of when he was on the screen, that’s why he was so compelling because it was so genuine. I think that that tapping into that genuine thing, there’s an exercise I do with a lot of my clients which — feel free to steal it, because it’s a great, it’s a great exercise to do with clients. Ask them to take a blank piece of paper and ask them to imagine a potential customer and write down two or three core beliefs that you have to agree on with that person for them to be a viable customer for you.
That simple exercise of defining that idea gets people to say, “This is what I’m about, I get it now.” These are the core beliefs and they start looking for those right away and if they don’t have them, they go, “This isn’t a good client for me.” They’re able to make that — and spin-off and when they run into somebody like that, they’re not worried about, oh am I being formal enough on my LinkedIn profile my – because they know the connection is genuine and so the little stuff just doesn’t matter at that point, because it’s a genuine connection.
[00:33:16] Veronica Yanhs: That’s such a great point. I didn’t even think about the gimmick part, because that’s not who I am. This is 100 percent through and through who I am, but at the same time, it’s like, this brand that I’ve built creates a lot of polarity. You either love me or you’re running the opposite way and being in that middle ground of like one foot on one side and one foot on the other doesn’t really work with me. I would rather be around people who genuinely want to be in my company. Oh god, that sounds weird, but basically, you don’t want people who are just like, I think I like you, I don’t know if I like you, but I’m just going to be here just in case. It’s like you’re either fully in or fully out and that’s just been who I am, because I go back to quality over quantity for me. So thank you for that reminder.
[00:33:56] Julien Recoussine: That aligns perfectly with sales science, just so you know. Sales science is about, get them to a yes or no and move them off of maybe. So you’re doing that naturally by selecting and being, I don’t want to say controversial, but let’s say disruptive. You’re being disruptive in a particular ecosphere, and guess what, that’s great because people make a decision very quickly, yes or no. I’m in or I’m out. I relate to this person or I don’t and you’re not wasting a lot of time and energy on chasing clients that don’t relate to you.
Moving them to a yes or no and away from maybe what you’re doing aligns perfectly with Sales Science, that’s probably why it’s working because it applies to the sales sides of my job is not to get everybody to say yes as a salesperson. My job is to get people to say yes or no because I found a fit or I didn’t. That’s it. The maybes I’m going to assume that people that are just want to say no, but they’re being too polite. Okay, so that’s –
[00:34:45] Veronica Yanhs: I know. That’s why I say like, in kink and even in business, enthusiastic consent from everybody means the world. I don’t want to maybe, like you either want to work with me and are excited and me feeling the same way or if there’s a hint of doubt, or maybe, then it’s an immediate no, immediate –
[00:35:04] Hayden Humphrey: Yeah, I think it’s so easy, especially in the beginning stages of a business to feel like, I don’t know, I definitely suffered from this, this idea of, well, I don’t want to – I could work with anybody or I don’t want to upset anybody, or what have you. I really love what you both shared in this idea of creating polarity, especially if you want to build a business that serves you, where you’re working with clients that you really love, in the way that you want to work with them, you have to be very clear about the type of people that you’re looking to work with, and who you want to invest with you.
You have to be willing to put yourself out there or create branding, create marketing, in a way that attracts those people, because if you’re trying to build a business that serves you, but you’re working with clients that you don’t really enjoy, it doesn’t work, it doesn’t ultimately work. I think there’s a level of willingness around, Hey, how do I be very clear in my marketing and how I reach out to people and how I qualify people, really. So, that the people that I’m working with are people that I really, genuinely love. I’d be curious with each of you when it comes to choosing clients, how do you figure out or how do you start to qualify and understand who are the clients, or what’s the type of client that I really want to work with? Then perhaps even more importantly, like who are the clients that I should just walk away from?
[00:36:24] Veronica Yanhs: This has been something that’s been on my mind forever, and it’s very much and they don’t teach you this in business school, at least I didn’t feel like I was taught, but this is such an iterative process. The ideal client avatar is always going to evolve or always change. If you thought at one point you were going to work with somebody like me, because operations, you need this from the very beginning. I always feel operations feels like the middle child where they’re just as important, but they’re ignored, because things like branding, and marketing, and sales, no offense Julien, but I’m just saying like things that are flashy and pretty get prioritized.
Then I always ask my clients like, “Hey, so what happens when your sales, marketing, branding, everything works together and suddenly a flood of clients knock on your door to work with you?” Do you have the operational capacity and the systems to fulfill and serve them or are you leaving money at the table and turning them away? So for me, when I started, I was like, I’m going to work with new entrepreneurs because you have to get it right from the get-go. Having good operations from the very beginning of business building is going to serve you so well. However, they did not feel the same way. I was scraping the bottom of the barrel like begging people to work with me. Then in turn, questioning of what I was really good at was even something worth being good at.
When you are looking for or at least when I was looking for the ideal clients, it’s like I got really clear like pen to paper, who is at the, I want to work with and why? I want to work with people who are future thinking. I’m about to grow or am growing, but up to 3x, my revenue from like say, 10,000 months to $50,000 months. I need better operations than when I have today, like what got me here, won’t get me there. I liked that their future pacing rather than, oh my gosh, my business is a complete hot mess right now. I’m putting out fires every day. I’m exhausted. I’m the bottleneck. So it’s like that mindset shift, the things that our potential clients are thinking about, matters in the stage of business.
So for me, it’s about what do I align with? I try not to be part of like gossip, or things rumors and stuff, or just the negative side of things in my life, so why would I want to lean towards the negative when I could lean towards the positive? Because I’m always thinking about the future, and of course, enjoying the present, but like, how can I be better? How can I evolve? So that’s how I also work with my clients or select them. I have a whole entire articulation guide written by my copywriter as to who my ideal client profiles are? What their situations are? What they’re thinking? What they desire from us? It helps me get really clear so that I stay the course and not just like, oh, you have a heartbeat let’s work together.
[00:39:02] Julien Recoussine: Heartbeat and a bank account, right? Is the – you got a heartbeat in a bank account, check, you qualify as a client. For me, it starts with the matching core beliefs, right? If you believe that sales is a confrontational interaction, and it should be that way, versus a cooperative one, you’re not going to be a client of mine. You’re not going to like what I have to teach. Not a question of me approving you and saying, “Oh, you’re not good enough.” You’re not – you’re going to hate everything I teach. You’re going to hate everything I coach, right. So I’m not going to take that personally, I believe the world is set up this way, you believe something different. We’re going to make different decisions based on that, but I can guarantee you one of the decisions you’re not going to make is to work with me.
So from my perspective, if I match a couple of key core beliefs right out of the gates, I’m already going to disqualify a lot of the people that I should disqualify, because it’s not going to be a fit. Then the other one, I’ll plug right into what you just said, which is motivation for me, right? We know that there are only two forces that impact human behavior. The avoidance of pain, and the seeking of gain. It’s the pain-pleasure index is what it’s called. It’s psychologically in all the books.
Every action, every decision, every human being makes every day on the planet is motivated by one of those two things. Now, 70 percent of decisions if you follow your average human being around for a day, or pain avoidance decisions, versus only 30 percent are seeking gain. In a situation where the decisions are pitted against each other, people will default to avoiding pain 90 percent of the time over defaulting to seeking gains. You won’t commit the simply stated, you won’t get a guy to quit smoking unless he starts to focus on the pain of continuing to smoke, that’s what will get him to stop.
It won’t be or you will be in better shape and the pain of quitting, the pain of giving up the cigarettes and the nicotine addiction will prevent them from quitting until the day where they look and they’re in the hospital and they see an uncle or a cousin or a stranger dying of lung cancer. They go, “I want to avoid that at all costs.” So now they’re going to make a switch in behavior. To me, since I’m a behavioral coach, at the core of what I do, is psychology applied to behavior, people are not going to change their behavior if they’re not in enough pain.
To me, are we matching core beliefs and are you in pain enough in your current status quo that not necessarily mean, not necessarily what I want to teach, but you know you want to do something different. If I’ve got those two elements of line, you’re probably a good potential client. If either of those elements is missing, we’re going to waste each other’s time and probably end up annoying each other in the end. The main delineator that I have is on those things, and that’s where the integrity piece back to what you were talking about earlier kicks in because if you’re matching core beliefs first, you’re not going to run into an integrity battle, you’re not going to be in a situation where you’re like, I can’t tell this client the truth, because you’re willing to walk away from a client that’s not matched on the core belief.
So it’s okay to admit, I’m not a fit, right? If we take it to the dating analogy, you go to bars when you’re single, you meet people and sometimes you meet somebody – it’s not a judgment, I don’t think they’re a bad person, we’re just not a fit for each other for whatever reason, right? It could be one of us is married. It could be, I only want to date people taller than me. It could be you only want to date people that are under a certain age, whatever it is. It’s not a value judgment on the other person. It’s just – it’s not a fit, because there’s a lack of matching core beliefs on these essential elements.
Which is why some couples have, let’s say politics for example, some couples have been able to have differentiating political opinions and have very successful marriages, because where they rank the politics on the core belief is not high enough that it creates a conflict. Other ones, the first question they ask somebody on a first date is who’d you vote for in the last election? If the answer is wrong, there’s no dessert. Forget about the second date, there’s no dessert, right? They bail right away, because they’re ranking that in importance in a different spot. To me it really, it’s those two, those two levers that I’m pulling on. What about you Hayden, what’s your –
[00:42:41] Hayden Humphrey: Yeah, yeah. I love that. I think what I’ve heard thus far, I think is super brilliant is really, it’s like putting pen to paper. It’s getting super clear, I’m like, “Hey, what’s important to me and how I see the world in my version of reality, what are the pillars of my reality in a sense? How do I start to attract people who share those same pillars?” It’s being really clear on what those are, first and foremost, and then being willing to go out and actually start to qualify or look for, “Hey, where are these people? How do I get in touch with them more?”
I think for me, it’s been, it’s really interesting like my journey with clients and qualifying clients, because I think, especially as a coach, you attract a lot of people who want saving, like you attract a lot of people who are like, “Hey, I want things to go different.” But in reality, they’re not actually willing to do anything different about it, it’s a lot of complaining, or just wishing it was different. So that’s one of the things that I had to get really present to and aware of, when I was in conversation with people was listening behind what they were saying and listening to, okay, they’re sharing this pain point, but what is their history telling me? Because the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. Looking at past behavior, are they somebody who is responsible for themselves? Are they willing to take ownership? Are they looking for, hey, what’s the solution here versus hear all of the reasons why this isn’t going to work?
Paying very close attention to how people show up in a conversation and are they genuinely willing to be in a conversation around how things can go different, because the type of work that I do with people is not necessarily tactical, it’s not necessarily like, “Hey, go implement this system.” A lot of the work that I do with people, it has to do with their relationship with themselves. It’s the core stories and narratives that you’re telling yourself about your life, about the world, and about your place in the world. Doing that, almost research doing that discovery, doing that exploration is not comfortable, it requires a radical degree of ownership because you have to be willing to understand and realize that your life is the way that it is, because of the decisions that you’ve been making, whether they were conscious or not.
So you have to be at that place. So I’ve done a lot of work around being more intentional around who I spend time with and looking for those sorts of things in the clients that I let hire me and also being clear on like, I also got to be doing my own work. I got to be in integrity with myself, I got to be walking the walk, and not just talking the talk. If I’m walking the walk out in the world, if I’m sharing that energy from a place of integrity, from a place of being responsible for my mindset, in a place of wanting to create the things that I want to create, I know that I will attract people who feel that same way.
[00:45:17] Veronica Yanhs: I love that, because a lot of my entrepreneurial career when I was trying to make it on my own in the online world was, I was playing the victim. I was not taking that responsibility. Someone said this really, really, short but concise and yet hit me straight in the fields, like saying, they’re like, “Are you playing to win or you playing to not lose.” I didn’t realize that I was one justifying, complaining, blaming the signs of playing the victim on why I wasn’t making money or building a business that served me or thriving. I was also playing it too small because I didn’t want and didn’t want to take that ownership of what if there was no other option for me. Technically, there is no other option, because I don’t want it to be right. So that was huge in terms of taking ownership and responsibility. Thank you for bringing that up Hayden in such an elegant way.
[00:46:10] Julien Recoussine: It’s interesting – all the setup that you go through. So that epiphany that you just talked about, about saying – somebody saying to you, “Are you playing to win or are you playing not to lose?” You probably heard that in some format or another a couple 100 times, but it took somebody else saying it in a slightly different way for it to get through and cause that epiphany. It’s literally the straw that tip the camel’s back and that broke the camel’s back and that one statement as – and this is the beauty of what we do being coaches is, we are often the ones that are delivering those kinds of statements where people come to you and go, “Oh, my you said this, and it completely changed my sales career.” I’m going, “I say that all the time. I’m not the only one.” Not even in the – I’m copying that guy who says it. But it doesn’t matter, because –
One of my mentors has a saying, which I love. When the student is ready, the teacher appears. When you’re ready as a student of life to hear something, the teacher magically appears in front. They could have been there the whole time, but now you finally says, because that moment, and that’s how great is it to be on the receiving end of that to be able to be on the giving end of that, it’s so incredibly fulfilling.
[00:47:13] Hayden Humphrey: Yeah.
[00:47:14] Veronica Yanhs: Like who I was two years ago, even so like, so 2020 was when I burned down my business, because hey, new decade, new me, I fell for that. But like sales, so we’re going to talk about sales. It was the thing I hated the most, like entrepreneurs, I meet left and right, they’re like, I hate sales, I don’t want to be sleazy. I don’t want to be this. I did that, because at first I didn’t know the value in what I was selling. I didn’t trust myself or trust in my offer enough to know how it was going to transform that person’s life. But now there has been such a huge shift, mindset-wise, and also tactics and strategies where it’s like, sales to me is more just a conversation because it’s who I am, that relationship, right?
If it’s not going to work, I have to adapt that abundance mindset to keep finding people, because there are 7 billion people in this world who are the right alignment, because clients who are not the best of clients are who aren’t aligned with who you are they are stressful. We’ve all been there I can assume, when you don’t have those perfect clients who makes you anxious, like open your messaging app every day, or check your email or work with them or demand life-changing results, because they paid us X amount of dollars. Yeah, let’s talk about mindset shift and ownership. That’s why I was like, I’m going to reinvent – I’m going to change the script on how I do sales because I’m taking ownership of my success.
[00:48:32] Hayden Humphrey: The important piece too, I just want to underline in what we’ve been talking about from a client perspective when it comes to building a business that really works for you. I think the cool part is, understanding that, people have to be in a certain place in order to get the most value from you. I think this is why and I’d love to hear your perspective on this to Julien from a relationship perspective why that’s so important from in sales. Not having it be transactional, but instead of having it be a relationship because you might meet somebody who you really love and really enjoy, but they are literally not in a place right now to benefit from working with you. Six months from now, a year from now, two years from now, they might come back to you and say, “Hey, okay, I’m ready.”
I had a woman that I talked with and she literally called me a year later, I heard nothing from her. She called me a year later out of the blue, and said, “Okay, I’m ready, I’m ready. Let’s start working together.” I’m like, “Okay, cool.” You just never know, you literally just never know.
Paying attention to that knowing like what’s the stage of life or business that somebody needs to be in, in order for me to best serve them in order to have a really great positive value-driven interaction with them as from a client perspective, and then the people who aren’t ready, how do I just nurture that? How do I stay in relationship with that? How do I continue to build that relationship so that down the line when they are ready, we can have a conversation around, “Hey, how can I support you?”
[00:49:52] Julien Recoussine: Yeah, I think you got to be the truth-teller in their lives. I think ultimately, that’s what people respect and when people challenge you, we all have that person in our lives and some of us have more than one, we’re incredibly lucky when you’ve got one. But you’re great when you’ve got more than one even better, right? That person in our lives that you love, and at the same time they get on your nerves a little bit, because they’re always the one that call you on your BS, right?
Now, a lot of us, I’m not going to name anyone here, me, end up marrying that person, because if you think about it, I mean, from the perspective of a lot of my guy friends, especially the ones that were like the ladies men, they were like players, that they ended up marrying the girl that called them on all their BS all the time. They were like, she’s on me all the time, but that person pokes them, tells them the truth and at some point, when you’re mature enough to hear it, you value that.
So when you chat now, there’s a book called The Challenger Sale, which elicits this concept. It’s backed by science. I’m a data driven coach and consultant. I really liked this book, because it’s based on a lot of studies, and with The Challenger Sale what he theorizes that there’s these five archetypes of salespeople and that the most successful ones are the ones he calls the challengers. They’re the ones who continue to sell and recession. So the relationship is really important, but it’s not a relationship of me being your bestie and telling you that you’re great, right? It’s a relationship of calling it out, calling out the truth.
I’m actually just watching this video this morning. Somebody sent me the video and they were like, “Hey, you were talking about this the other day.” It was – I forget what it is, there’s a stand-up comedian in his job. He was one of the writers on the show, Sex in the City. He was a consultant to the writing staff. He’s the one that ended up writing the book, He’s Not That Into You. He’s Just Not That Into You, which was – and he talks about the experience of being in this group of writers and he talks, it’s like, there were two gay guys and five women in this group, I was the token straight guy.
At some point, that woman’s giving me this and I said, “I just don’t think that guy’s that into you.” If he didn’t want to come up after you, I don’t think he’s that in to you. He said it was like, I had just blown hot lava all over the building when I said that because they really looked at me like, end of the world. And to him it was such a natural truth-telling. It doesn’t – in his argument valid one, when you hear him tell the story is, I’m looking at this woman who is a successful writer in Hollywood, not an easy thing to achieve by itself, clearly intelligent, beautiful, smart and yet the rejection of this one person is making her feel like she’s not any of those things. I’m the one in the room that goes, the emperor’s got no clothes on here, this is a bad thought that you’re having.
Some people aren’t ready to hear it. They won’t ever talk to you again, and others will circle back a year later. You’ll have the experience where they’ll go, “You know what, a year ago, when I was doing this stupid stuff, you’re the only one that told me the truth.” You’ve just moved yourself to the level of advisor now in that relationship because they know you’ll tell them the truth, even if it doesn’t serve you getting business from them and you can’t buy that trust. There’s no way you can buy that. My mortgage broker is my mortgage broker, because when I was stupid 25 years ago. I wanted to do this refi on my house and he said, “If you want to do that loan, you need to go somewhere else. I’m not doing that.” I’m like, “Why?” “Because, no, I’ll make plenty of money on it, but it’s not serving, it’s a bad business decision. I’m not going to write that loan for you.” Well, why would I go anywhere else now? I know that guy will turn down a commission in order to protect my interest as his client.
We’re not friends, we don’t golf together. Kids don’t hang out. We’re not friends. He’s my mortgage broker, but the relationship he treat me with respect to tell me the truth. I think that’s what you experience in that scenario. When somebody circles back a year later, what they’re telling you is a year ago, and you’re the only one who told me the truth. Everybody else, let me continue to kid myself about what was going on. You were the one that asked the question that went right to the heart of it. I wasn’t ready to get out of my comfort zone. I am now, you’re the only one that I trust to guide me because you’re the only one way back then.
[00:53:46] Hayden Humphrey: Yeah, I keep thinking people-pleasing is not a sustainable business strategy.
[00:53:52] Julien Recoussine: Sales is not a place to get your emotional acceptance needs met. That’s the sales equivalent of that. If you’re going out trying to be best friends, with all your prospects, you’re going to get hammered out there, because you’re going to be making all kinds of bad decisions, right? Truth tellers, or maybe not truth-tellers. The more you value somebody, the more you should tell them the truth and for anybody out there that’s listening to this, that’s buying something you are torturing salespeople when you don’t tell them, no, to be polite.
You’re much better off saying here’s why I don’t think we’re fit, but thank you and you’ll see a lot of them will thank you for your honesty in that, because you’ve moved yourself out of the maybe zone. It’s a yes or no at least they know where they stand, just tell the truth, it’s so much easier to remember anyway, at the end of the day.
[00:54:34] Veronica Yanhs: Okay, so I want to circle back to something we talked about really earlier, because this conversation is bringing up the word fulfillment for me. I would love for the both of you to explain how you – what are the things that needs to happen in your business for you to feel fulfilled? All of this is about building a business that serves you, but like, what you were just talking about, Julien, about needing to have the right conversations or aligning with the right people, like these things add to your fulfillment list, but to help people who may not be understanding how a business could actually serve them, I think giving concrete examples as to what fulfills each of you in your business would be really helpful.
[00:55:13] Hayden Humphrey: Totally. I also just want to be cognizant of time. I think if we do some bullet points, and then wrap up, but I don’t know Julien, did you have thoughts on this one?
[00:55:22] Julien Recoussine: It’s really interesting question. Nobody’s ever asked me that before. Which is funny, in the context of what we’re talking about. I think, look there’s nothing, yes, there’s a certain amount of fulfillment in getting an invoice paid, right? Especially taking a risk and charging a little bit more and having a client go, yep, we get value out of that. That’s great. That’s awesome.
To me, there’s nothing more fulfilling than, even when I’m hired by the company and not the individual Rep, when an individual sales rep reaches out to me at some point and says, “Oh, my God, here’s where I was, here’s what I did with what you taught me, here’s how well it’s worked and how much it’s changed.” For me, that’s the ultimate fulfillment.
It sounds corny, but it’s so true. My feet don’t touch the ground on days where I get emails like that. I’m just, I’m on a different plane. I write back to those people and say, thank you for sharing that with me, you got no idea how much it makes my day to hear that you were able to have the same epiphany that I was able to have, because I was in your seat at some point. I was dealing with that stuff. I know what it’s like. I love that you got over that hurdle. That I was even a small part of that huge to me, right?
[00:56:24] Hayden Humphrey: I love that. I would definitely echo what Julien said. I think the thing that I would add is, I noticed that when I feel most fulfilled, it’s those situations and those conversations in which I lose, almost I lose a sense of myself because I’m so focused on what I’m doing. I’m so focused on the other person, and I’m so focused on supporting them in seeing something or supporting them and moving forward. So I think there’s an energy to that, I always liking it to this idea of I’m a big improviser, and I’m like, man, if I can set up my day, so it just feels I’m doing improv all day, that’s I’m done. I’m literally done, because then I just get to play. I get to play and co-create with people. The energy of that, for me is beautiful. That’s what I’d say. How about you, Veronica?
[00:57:09] Veronica Yanhs: There’s a lot, because I’ve been thinking about this a lot. I think the biggest thing, especially building a business that serves me, because this is the topic we’re talking about, is to be seen, heard and accepted for exactly who I am, like 100 percent me. By the people that I work with as clients or as friends or as teammates and team members. It’s like to be accepted to just being my absolutely unapologetic kinky self who loves puns and alliterations and all that stuff and who loves to eat, there’s no better fulfillment. I am accepted for just being me. I don’t have to like achieve something to be liked or wanted.
[00:57:47] Julien Recoussine: I love that too. Not for nothing. I also liked the fact that you paired up puns and loving to eat together in the same category. This is so, so quite clearly if we’re ever in the same town, we’re going to figure out like what restaurant we’re going to and telling bad jokes throughout the course of the evening because — or bad puns rather because I just love that pairing.
I don’t think that’s unusual. I think most human beings ultimately yearn for acceptance. That’s why people join groups. That’s why human beings are inherently social animals, which is challenging in the era of COVID, where we’re all sitting instead of doing this in a room together, where we’re all sitting in our isolated little pods on microphones through an internet connection. This is why this stuff is so important. These conversations are so important because it’s that social validation of what we believe in finding other people that match core beliefs with us that’s so empowering and fulfilling.
[00:58:36] Hayden Humphrey: Very much so. Well, you all this has been an awesome conversation. I am definitely leaving, feeling elevated and energized from this. A couple of things I will put Veronica and Julien’s contact info in the text of this post. Please go check them out. Please go connect with them. They’re both incredible, amazing people. If you’re watching this via replay, we’d love to hear from you as well. Anything that you took from this highlights key moments, aha’s realizations, that thing. Julien and Veronica, thank you all so much for being here. Sharing your energy, sharing your insight. It was a really, really good time.
[00:59:12] Julien Recoussine: Thanks for organizing this taping. This was great.
[00:59:14] Veronica Yanhs: Yeah, I had such a fun time. Thank you.
[00:59:15] Hayden Humphrey: We’ll have to do it again. Amazing. Well, you all have a great rest of your week, and we’ll talk super soon.
[00:59:22] Julien Recoussine: We’ll talk soon. See you.
