Sales Mastery Meets Business Stability with Julie Traxler

Sales Mastery Meets Business Stability with Julie Traxler

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[00:00:00] Harry: We are starting the Sales Made Easy podcast with Julie Traxler. And we are cracking the code, if you will, sales mastery meets business stability. So julie, why don't you tell our sales made easy audience a little bit about yourself?

[00:00:18] Harry: What is you do and who you're serving these days?

[00:00:21] Julie Traxler: Oh, gosh, I feel like I'm a total mess right now. This has been, if I'm being really honest with you and I don't feel like I'm alone in this, no, 2023 has been. A hell of a year, it has been really, really tough, but I'm not one of those people who typically shows up on social media talking about how hard it is to be an entrepreneur, because I just assume that everybody knows that it's a hard path to take.

[00:00:49] Julie Traxler: But I am an entrepreneur. I'm pretty sure I was probably born an entrepreneur. I can remember. As a child pretending to be an [00:01:00] entrepreneur and walking around, I grew up on like a hundred acres and I can remember walking around outside when I'm like five years old with a cup of coffee that I made for myself, which was a lot of coffee grounds and not a lot of coffee drinking it and pretending to boss people around.

[00:01:15] Julie Traxler: And I wish. I wish that that's what being an entrepreneur looked like because I don't get to boss anybody around everybody bosses me around. I have my, my company is called Maverick Mentors and I do a lot of coaching and mentoring and I also do consulting. I have. A really deep background in mergers and acquisitions.

[00:01:39] Julie Traxler: I spent, you know, over a decade doing merge mergers and acquisitions work for corporate America for the man, if you will. And, you know, finally decided I'm just going to go out on my own and do my own thing as a direct result of the pandemic, I work with small businesses, solopreneurs, entrepreneurs, and, you know, I'm pretty well versed in a lot of [00:02:00] business things because of my M& A days.

[00:02:01] Julie Traxler: But where I really like to focus is helping people with business stabilization and, you know, helping them to build up that recurring revenue so that they can scale their business.

[00:02:11] Harry: Yeah, it's really good. And I just love the, how genuine you are. And I'm just totally at ease here. And it's just, it's fun where you don't have to be totally stressed out and saying, I'm looking for perfection.

[00:02:23] Harry: You know, sometimes not that I've had any of those guests. But some people are so nervous about being on a podcast or doing a LinkedIn event. And it's just that, that uptightness is contagious, unfortunately, right? Cause I'm not worried about me. I'm worried about the other person. Then I do more worrying about them that needs to happen.

[00:02:46] Harry: So the fact that you're so chill. Is you know, a woman after my heart on that because I totally can appreciate where you're coming from. So this thing that we're trying to, we're talking about [00:03:00] today about business stability. This is, you know, you and I were chatting a month or so ago, we were talking about the daily grind and how people are just constantly grinding.

[00:03:13] Harry: And I think you and I both have made a decision that we're not. We're not going to be grinders and from the Northeast, that means a sandwich like a hoagie or a sub, but

[00:03:23] Julie Traxler: listen, it's also a really dirty dating site. So,

[00:03:27] Harry: yes, that's right. That's a, that's a more modern interpretation of the grinders word.

[00:03:32] Harry: So, yeah, so this, so trying to make it easier. Is really the goal is. So what are some things that we can do to make business easier where we're not constantly grinding? And I, I think one of the first things that comes to my mind, Julie is just mindset is that I hear people say all the time that being an entrepreneur is a grind.

[00:03:56] Harry: I come from the sales side of it. And I hear all the [00:04:00] time that you have to grind to be successful in sales. And one time I realized it's like, I don't like the idea that I have to grind. To me, a grind is something you don't enjoy doing, but you have to do it anyway. And you spend a lot of time doing this.

[00:04:19] Harry: I don't know if I want to be in a place where I don't enjoy it. So what's your thought on this?

[00:04:25] Julie Traxler: Well, I love what you said about the grind because. I also don't enjoy the grind. I think there was a time in my life when I did, when I wore that as a badge of honor, right? Now, not so much. I literally, we have reached that time of the year that so many people refer to as separation season.

[00:04:48] Julie Traxler: Which makes me want to choose violence and punch somebody because that's saying, hey, even though it's the holidays and it's this really [00:05:00] special time of year when we should be focused more on family and our blessings and all of the good things that we have and that we've worked so hard for all year, instead, if we we double down on our work effort, we can separate from everybody who's actually taking time off, and I think the last thing I want to do between Thanksgiving and Christmas, or Thanksgiving and New Year's, Is work more, I want to find ways to work less and you know what allows me to work less having a stable business, having predictable monthly recurring revenue and so yeah, no, I'm not here for the grind at all.

[00:05:39] Julie Traxler: There was a time in my life that I was, but I, I am not, I'm not here for it now. Yeah.

[00:05:44] Harry: And you know, I think some of us have to experience that. Years ago I was in Washington DC and I was driving. Anywhere from 90 to 120 minutes each way to get into the office.[00:06:00] And I felt like I was ahead of the game. I was living outside of D.

[00:06:04] Harry: C. and suburbia. I was in the nation's capital. And it was awesome. And then one time I'm making this commute back home saying, what am I doing? This is the life I chose. I mean, this is what I chose. And, you know, it's like. I decided then is if I cut back, if I cut back 10 percent of the time, what would be different in my life?

[00:06:32] Harry: And the reality is nothing would be worse at, I mean, I wouldn't make less money. I would just be doing less busy work and I could still dedicate the time I needed to run sales organizations and spend more time in my family. So that's what I decided to do. Just making a little bit of a cut. From whatever number of hours those are, four, eight, 12 times five, 60 hours a week to [00:07:00] 60, 66, whatever it is, six to 54 was helpful, you know, just, just a little bit of the mindset and a little bit of a cutback and it wasn't a decrease financially.

[00:07:13] Julie Traxler: I think so often as entrepreneurs, we think that. If we're working longer hours or working more days, that it means we're more committed or we're more dedicated when the reality is, and I've said this so many times over the last couple of weeks. The well rested and relaxed version of me is way more productive than the wound type version of me, right?

[00:07:40] Julie Traxler: And so when I find myself starting to stress out, I, you know, I do, I've got like three little hacks that work for me every single time when I'm feeling that pressure or the anxiety or the stress or the numbers aren't where I want them to be, whatever it is with my business. The first one is. Gratitude.

[00:07:59] Julie Traxler: It's really hard to [00:08:00] be full of anxiety when you're expressing gratitude for the things that you have, right? Really hard. It's impossible. It's almost like it's impossible to not be happy when you're dancing. So you just start dancing. You're going to be happy. Just that's a little fun fact for you. The other thing that I do is I'll go outside.

[00:08:18] Julie Traxler: I'll just take my dogs and go outside in the backyard for 10 minutes and just watch them play and run and just really, you know, get some vitamin D and Take a pause, like there's nothing that's so critical that I can't take 10 minutes to go play with the doggos. And then the third thing that I will use is When I am avoiding work and I keep finding busy work in front of it because I feel like a lot of the work that entrepreneurs do is just busy work in front of the things that we don't really want to do.

[00:08:46] Julie Traxler: Like if you don't like sales, like you love sales, right? I love sales. There's a lot of people who don't love sales. And so they're going to find a million things to do before they do the sale. Oh, let me just tighten up that script. Oh, let me go over this. Let me look [00:09:00] at this one more time. Let me, let me fix that little thing on my website, whatever it is.

[00:09:04] . And so when I find myself avoiding a particular task, feeling anxious or stressed about it, I literally ask myself, why are you avoiding it? What is it about this task that you don't want to do? And, you know, and then asking myself whatever it is about that task. If that's true, is it true?

[00:09:23] Julie Traxler: Like, Oh my God, I'm terrible at sales. I don't want to do it. Are you terrible at sales? Are you just uncomfortable with it? Good news, everybody's uncomfortable with it, right? But it's just a, it's total mindset and it's finding tricks and hacks to be able to move yourself forward. Being able to do it without grinding is key.

[00:09:47] Harry: Yeah, well, and you know, you know, I love the whole gratitude conversation. I mean, gratitude is something I never really thought about. I thought about it being great, thankful. [00:10:00] I was, you know, I was raised, not raised, but I spent a lot of my adult life in religion and being a missionary and so forth. So there is the appreciation, but it's different when you think and you focus on what you're grateful for versus, you know, thank you God for the food and thank you for my home.

[00:10:20] Harry: And, you know, it just becomes kind of a routine, but when you can go into moments of gratitude and think about. Your fingertips, right? I mean, it's just crazy things like my toes are touching the ground and I'm moving my feet and I feel my toes in the grass, you know, silly things that you can just start thinking about that.

[00:10:43] Harry: There's so much to be grateful for that. You really can't run out of it. And like you said, it's You cannot be in a moment of gratitude and be griping about, you know, what's the future like, you know, where we get lost in that. So, yeah, I [00:11:00] love that stuff. So this, okay. What was your thought

[00:11:03] Julie Traxler: here? I was just going to say, I think that being it's easier, easier to be an entrepreneur, it's easier to do life in general.

[00:11:12] Julie Traxler: I think when you have faith, when there's something bigger than you, that you're believing in. It becomes much easier, right? And when you look back and you think about the role that perhaps Providence has played in your life, right? So when I start to think like, Oh God, nothing is ever going to work out, right?

[00:11:30] Julie Traxler: Like I had a month in, I had a day, a single day, and I think we've talked about this before. I had a single day in March where I lost 60 percent of my recurring revenue, my monthly recurring revenue. And I thought, I can remember I couldn't even speak after it happened. I was so absolutely, I was just beside myself.

[00:11:54] Julie Traxler: I thought, Oh God, I'm going to go out of business. I'm not gonna be able to pay my employees, blah, blah, blah, all these things. [00:12:00] And you know, in that moment, and it took a couple of days for me to pull myself out of bed. You know, now I look back and I think how frequently Providence plays a role in where we go with, you know, our businesses, our lives, whatever it is, but you know, things in my opinion, things always work out exactly how they're supposed to always.

[00:12:25] Julie Traxler: And even though it may be really feel very heavy and burdensome in the moment, there's going to be a point when you're going to look back and say. Oh, that was, I know why that worked out like

[00:12:37] Harry: that now. Yeah. I mean, the longer you live, the more you see that. And I so love it in the sense that I may, I don't know if it's true with you, but I may have compared myself once or twice to others.

[00:12:53] Harry: And it's like, I never compared myself to people who are just starting out. I [00:13:00] compare myself to people who are like 10 years ahead of me. And it's like, how did they have it so easy? How does everything they touch turns into money? And I have to struggle. Then it's like, hello, stupid. They're not, they had to start out somewhere as well.

[00:13:18] Harry: And they had to go through their journey and you're going through yours or I'm going through mine. And it's like these lessons. I get to share, right? Just like you, you're just like, well, why did I go through this thing? Where in, you know, a day I lost 60 percent of my business by recurring revenue. Well, now you have a story to share and you can help someone else through it.

[00:13:42] Harry: And you can help yourself prevent that in the future by doing things that you've learned since then. And so there are all these lessons that come at us and when people are just in despair, because sometimes it does get harder than we anticipated, just learn, just, just take in the lessons [00:14:00] is the way I look at it.

[00:14:01] Harry: It's just, okay, God. You're teaching me something here. I'm going to open up my mind to what this is and is typically I can take this story and help someone else is the way I look

[00:14:11] Julie Traxler: at it. It's so funny that you say that because I, I literally just did a social media post this morning on, and I had no idea that our conversation was going to go in this direction, but I just did a social media post this morning on LinkedIn and Facebook where, you know, I just have this one.

[00:14:26] Julie Traxler: I have, I don't have a lot of rules in my life, but I have one rule that I'm very rigid about. And it's that. I never, ever try to wish time away and never wish time away, never wish that it was, you know, Thanksgiving so he could get to the really good meal. I never wish for the holidays for a big wedding, for a vacation.

[00:14:45] Julie Traxler: I don't wish that that time was here because you know, as we all know, but sometimes forget, we don't know how much time we're going to get here. So wishing time away to me. Just, like, really, it seems [00:15:00] very, very selfish, and it seems also like, like you don't understand from the bigger picture that you're not even promised tomorrow.

[00:15:10] Julie Traxler: So, yeah, I can anticipate a vacation or a holiday, but I don't wish the days away. Much like when I'm going through a really difficult season in my business, as much as I want to get past that difficulty as quickly as I can, I don't want to get by it so quickly that I either have to take a shortcut, do something unethical, or that I lose the lesson in it, right?

[00:15:35] Julie Traxler: I need to, because otherwise I'm going to be repeating that difficult season again and again and again. So really understanding why did I lose 60 percent of my recurring revenue? What can I do in the future to prevent it? That's the important piece for me is, yeah, it sucks and you got to work your way through it, but being able to help yourself in the future and help [00:16:00] others.

[00:16:00] Julie Traxler: That's the big piece of it.

[00:16:01] Harry: Yeah, that's so good. And if we could definitely go on and that conversation, I'm so similarly thinking of, of you, of like you and that. So let's talk about the recurring revenue, because I think a lot of business owners, small business creatives, people who have left corporate, people who listen to this podcast, starting out, they're just thinking like, how can I replace my old income?

[00:16:27] Harry: And they're not necessarily, and they're thinking of themselves as the. Constant that is bringing in the revenue. So how does one start thinking about getting recurring revenue? What are some thoughts that are going through your

[00:16:40] Julie Traxler: mind on that? Subscription models are great. So if you have what's interesting is, you know, when I was first starting out.

[00:16:48] Julie Traxler: As a entrepreneur, I, when we would offer, and at that time I had a business partner, we would roll something new out and it could have been like, you know, a year long of [00:17:00] coaching or some course or something we would always, we'd offer the payment plan versus paying all up front. And I always wanted everybody to pay up front because I wanted all that money right away because we didn't have a lot of cash.

[00:17:16] Julie Traxler: We bootstrapped it. Yeah. Wow. And I used to think when I was purchasing something, like just recently I bought a subscription, a very, very low price subscription, but like somebody who has a, a blog on Substack, right? It's that simple. A blog, a blog on Substack. It's like it was 50 for the year or 5 a month.

[00:17:40] Julie Traxler: Neither one of those are big cash money, but now I'm so much more committed to the concept of the recurring revenue. And as a small business owner, knowing how that can stack up so quickly, I'll take the monthly payments. It's easier and cleaner to just [00:18:00] pay it all up front, but It's also more beneficial, I think, to business owners to be taking the recurring piece of it.

[00:18:09] Julie Traxler: So that's what I, that's what I typically do at this point is do recurring so that they have numbers on their recurring revenue. So it could be a subscription. It could be honestly, you can write a blog 5 a month. That doesn't feel like a lot. But that adds up if you get enough, sorry, I was like, what is that noise?

[00:18:26] Julie Traxler: And you probably don't hear it, but I hear it very clearly. It's my dog trying to dig a hole in the floor. But you know, or you could create courses or, you know, like this just here, we're doing this conversation here. You could, in theory, turn this into, if we have good enough lessons in it, you could turn this into a paid.

[00:18:48] Julie Traxler: You know, webinar that you could then resell for, you know, I don't know, 19 bucks, 10 bucks, whatever, 997, it doesn't matter, but the more things that you have in [00:19:00] your library of services or products that you can sell that are going to contribute to that recurring revenues, there's a lot of different ways to approach it, you know, you know, payment plans, subscriptions to blogs or things like that, courses.

[00:19:14] Julie Traxler: Like an all in where this is a really good one. I've seen a lot of people use this effectively. So let's say you're a coach, let's say your sales coach. Right. And. You put out these different masterminds throughout the year and you put out these different, like, you know, you know, two or three week courses that people can join.

[00:19:34] Julie Traxler: You can sell an all in model where literally somebody pays you, they're committed for 12 months and they get everything that you put out during that year. So now you're more incentivized to put out more stuff, but you've got this recurring revenue that's coming in from people that they've already bought, whatever it is that you're creating, they're already in.

[00:19:54] Harry: Gotcha. Yeah. I mean, so it's not, it goes way beyond just the service. [00:20:00] It goes way beyond, you know, as a coach or a sales coach or life coach, whatever it is that you're coaching people on and that side of the aisle where it's typically one to one and you get your paid, you get your clients and you're always constantly looking for clients.

[00:20:20] Harry: But in this scenario, I talked to people who are doing the memberships that are 30 a month, 49 a month, whatever the number is, it's a pretty low dollar amount and they have to keep providing value, which they do. You know, the goal is you get a thousand people. That's up. It may not happen overnight. Right?

[00:20:43] Harry: Then this is the thing for some of us, there's like 49. You got to do all this work for 49. And those who are doing this are saying, get a look at the big picture for the next two or three years as these numbers grow. I don't expect that there's always going to be 10 people in here. [00:21:00] Right? Right. And then you're constantly bringing in more people if you're doing things right.

[00:21:05] Harry: And is that kind of the vision that you're talking

[00:21:07] Julie Traxler: about? Yes. Yes. And you know, one to one is the hardest thing to scale because one to one requires all your time. The other things, it's create it once and then you can continue to sell it. So I could have, let's just, let's, let's go a little bit deeper on this all in type model, right?

[00:21:23] Julie Traxler: Yeah. So I have Of course, it's called, friction. So friction's in presale right now. Right. And it's all about reducing the friction in your business, making it easier for people to give you money. That's why we're in business. We want people to give us money. So friction will release in January and it'll probably be three or four sessions and there'll be live sessions.

[00:21:47] Julie Traxler: Right. But I can resell all of those sessions as the course. So even when the course is done, it's in my. Services menu where people can buy it. They can come in and buy it for, I don't know what I'll sell it for. If it's [00:22:00] 29 or 199, it doesn't really matter. That's people can continue to buy in. And that's also the more stuff you add into your library of services or products that you have, the more freebies that you can give to people when they join.

[00:22:16] Julie Traxler: So you can run a model. I know three different coaches who run this model, this all in type model, very, very successfully. And one of them. I joined, I joined two of the three coaches that do it and they're all in, and one of them, the rule is, as long as the, it doesn't matter when you join in the month, as long as a course is active, you can have, you'll have access to it, even if we're on the last week of it and there's, you know, four or five other sessions, you get access to everything.

[00:22:46] Julie Traxler: But what she did was after about four months of being in her all in community. She literally opened up her entire catalog of everything she'd ever offered and said, here, this is for my all in people. You guys can have everything. There's just [00:23:00] like, you know, you're already paying and she decided she had enough people in all in that she wasn't gonna lose a ton of money.

[00:23:07] Julie Traxler: But what it did was it made me want to invest in that coach even more because she did something that was totally unexpected, didn't have to be done. It was just really generous. So now when my year is up, Will I buy from her again? Absolutely. I'll buy something else because she's putting out really great courses.

[00:23:30] Julie Traxler: And I, and I think that's key is you have to look at what is what something can already be out there. What's the most important thing is what are you an expert at? What are you more qualified to talk about or what can you talk about and you believe or work through it differently than anybody else?

[00:23:50] Julie Traxler: Right. So there could be a million sales courses out there, a million sales masterminds, but maybe yours is different. Maybe yours is [00:24:00] about selling with dignity. Right? So you have a different philosophy around selling and, and because it's authentic to you, it, you can speak about it very naturally and that will draw people in.

[00:24:14] Harry: Yeah. This is so good. I was just thinking, I was talking to someone recently who was concerned about. Getting started. It was taking longer than they had anticipated their started, but it's not going fast enough, like with a lot of us and they're worried about the competition. And they were saying things along the lines of, I have to get this going or I'm going to miss my window of opportunity.

[00:24:40] Harry: And I chuckled is like you're not creating an iPhone. I didn't say this. That you don't have the new iPhone, you don't have something that's going to change the world. You are going to be a coach and your main topic is a word that is commonly used in the dictionary in our everyday [00:25:00] speech. So it's not news, but what is new is that you're the one that's going to be delivering it.

[00:25:06] Harry: So when we have this competition thing going on and I've been there, I said, well, There's a lot of people doing sales. Who am I? What's my pro? How's my approach any different? And when I hear others talk about sales and always be closing and kind of pushing your agenda on people. It's few and far between where I hear people talking about the human element, being empathetic, being a good listener, politely and respectfully asking for the business.

[00:25:41] Harry: Understanding no, not now is not forever, but that does not mean we come right at somebody at the jugular saying, what do you mean not now? But we can politely uncover what that means. Very few people are doing. So I look at my approach and I'm like, [00:26:00] Oh, I get it. I'm not, I'm not the same in all this world where you look at sales books and sales philosophies.

[00:26:09] Harry: I'm not the same. And neither is this person. Neither are you, right? There are other people. So people are buying. Your spin on, and not that spin is a bad word here, your personality, your experience, your journey, your insight, all of that is unique to you. What's your thought on that? Yeah. They're buying

[00:26:29] Julie Traxler: you.

[00:26:30] Julie Traxler: It's so funny that you, you mentioned the, you know, you got to understand the no, like the why behind the no. I'm reading this Grazer, who is, You know, a big Hollywood producer. He's partnered a lot with Ron Howard. Like he did Apollo 13 was one of his movies. So this is, you know, he's big wig, but he has a book out about curiosity.

[00:26:52] Julie Traxler: And I literally was just reading in it this morning and he was talking about, you know, getting a no, but [00:27:00] understanding what's behind that now. So that you can reframe. And he said, you know, listen, I'm a big time Hollywood producer. So people think that nobody tells me no. He said, I hear no every day, all day long.

[00:27:12] Julie Traxler: That's all I ever hear. No, I'm not making that movie. No, I don't want to be a part of that. No, no, no. And so what he does is he asks from a position of curiosity, more about the no, not from a position of selling, but a position of, can you talk to me a little bit about. Why this was a no for you? Was it is, is it the price, is it the story?

[00:27:36] Julie Traxler: You know, whatever it is. And then you can understand it. And, you know, one of my favorite sales stories to tell is, and I honestly, I, I'm pretty sure that it was this, coach that I had worked with for a while back in 2022. This is, they, this is a big, big community, right? Mm-Hmm. . And they had. The guy, when he started the [00:28:00] company, he decided that every time he hired a new salesperson, he's got a lot of salespeople, he's been through a lot of salespeople since he's had this organization, that If anybody, once they were ready to start doing sales calls, if they could get through a hundred sales calls and only ever get no's, he would pay them 100, 000.

[00:28:22] Julie Traxler: And he said, I have never had to pay anybody 100, 000 for hearing no a hundred times because what you realize very quickly is, Small tweaks and adjustments will get you to yes, very quickly. And listen, if I can, if I know that I can get a hundred thousand dollars by making, getting a hundred nos, I already know enough by probably the 10th no to start getting yeses.

[00:28:50] Julie Traxler: I can make more than 100, 000 off of a yes than I can off of the nos. And so it requires the listening and the [00:29:00] curiosity to move you past that. And I so agree with you that every one of us, listen, you might be a coach, I might be a coach, but we have very different backgrounds, very different experiences, very different beliefs.

[00:29:14] Julie Traxler: And so. Someone who is right for you, they were never going to be right for me, right? Like they're like, it's, it's that simple. And I, and so when somebody tells me, no, I'm almost grateful for it because I think. That would have been a probably a very difficult client for me to work with.

[00:29:33] Harry: Yeah. So sometimes, so when you hear the word, no, sometimes you want to be grateful for that.

[00:29:39] Harry: No, because you're thinking through it. It's like, I really don't want to work with this person. I didn't know how I got down this path, but I'm here. And if they tell me no, or if they want to end early, I'm all for it. I've been in those situations. But one of the things that you mentioned, and I just lost my thought there, so it was [00:30:00] perfect timing because that also happens with me and I used to get nervous about it.

[00:30:04] Harry: But like, if someone doesn't like what you're going to reframe this question, go back to what you're saying. If they don't necessarily want to work with you, doesn't mean they don't have the issue. They want to work with someone else. Same is true in reverse, right? And this is, I think, is a struggle.

[00:30:24] Harry: Challenge, whatever the word is for people who have come out of hyper competitive environments like me. So competition was fierce and I never had the idea. That I was going to work with my competition, that there was opportunities to collaborate with a competition because they would slice and dice you and take your accounts.

[00:30:48] Harry: And this is the world I was brought in. Super, you know, you step on the competition's neck, right? This is the, this is the world I was in. And I come into this world of, you know, [00:31:00] coaching and collaboration and I love collaboration. I'm just not used to it. Right. So especially with people who are doing the same or similar things.

[00:31:11] Harry: Sounds like you're a collaborator and you get this and are just jumping. We've never gone down this path, but what's your thought on this is being in the same space with people who do similar work with you and not feeling like you're stepping on their toes or that you're taking their clients or something along those lines.

[00:31:31] Julie Traxler: Yeah, I'm super respectful of other people in terms of the, you know, not, not, I'm not, I'm not a client stealer, right? I think where I, I, I give all of my clients, anybody who's reading what I'm doing, following my followers, you know, people that I'm connected with, I start from a very basic assumption. That they're all really highly intelligent people and that they know[00:32:00] who they want to work with.

[00:32:02] Julie Traxler: Right? And listen, coaching, like we're small communities, right? You have pockets of other coaches that, you know, and so, you know, if someone really needs a sales coach, while I love sales and I'm good at sales, I'm not, I'm not the person that should be coaching anyone on sales. I would say, Hey. You, do you want to take that one, Harry?

[00:32:23] Julie Traxler: Because it's not really like, let me make this introduction. I just, just did it yesterday. I had somebody who really wanted to partner, wants to partner with med spas. And I don't know anything about med spas, but I know somebody who has a lot of med spa clients. And so I was like, let me make that connection for you.

[00:32:41] Julie Traxler: Because, you know, if this person ends up being able to partner with them. Then everybody wins, the clients win, both of my friends win, and I'm really interested in, you know, I just believe everybody can win. I don't believe that business has to be cutthroat and I just, [00:33:00] I think that, you know, people can self select and like we've talked about before, I'm a Christian who curses, right?

[00:33:06] Julie Traxler: So if people don't like the cursing or don't like the Christianity, I'm probably not for that, but I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna alter who I am. Yeah, just to get business because that, that feels slimy and really inauthentic.

[00:33:22] Harry: Yeah. Yeah. So I love what I'm hearing again. This people are making, they're smart enough to make their own decisions.

[00:33:32] Harry: You don't have, I mean, it's like if they're raising their hand and you're in a group and the way I'm looking at this is that if you're in the same larger group. Not everyone's going to work with a group facilitator or the group lead. Like there are some Facebook groups or LinkedIn groups that have tens of thousands of people in it.

[00:33:53] Harry: The person that started that group wanted a community. Would love, and I'm sure gets a ton of business out [00:34:00] of that group, but not everybody. Right. People in that group getting content, people in that group out of curiosity, but then they have a conversation with someone like you and say, yeah, I'm striking a chord here with you.

[00:34:12] Harry: What's it look like to work with you? Right. Well, what do you do at that point? It's not like Hey, I'm going to tell the group facilitator that I'm going to give them the referral. They have the connection with you, but if, if it's something that's not in your space, and this, I think it was a challenge for some in the beginning is that they don't know how to differentiate, say.

[00:34:33] Harry: Yeah, I'm not really good at that, or that's not an area where I can really provide any real value, but this person to my right sure can, and if I give a referral, am I going to, is my family going to starve, right? Well,

[00:34:49] Julie Traxler: if your family is going to starve from a referral, you might want to consider getting a different job.

[00:34:53] Julie Traxler: Yeah, it's

[00:34:54] Harry: like, go get a job, right? Take the pressure off. Yes, right? Yeah, because you're, you're, [00:35:00] you're too needy if that's what you're thinking, right? And I hear this all the time is that and nobody wants to hear and look, you got to put food on the table. And if the food is not there, and you're needy in front of prospects, then you need to do, you need to get the job at Home Depot or Walmart, right?

[00:35:21] Harry: Or do something in a corporate space for, you know, part time something to get you take the pressure off because you can't act needy and sales. Cause it's not going to work out. It's really,

[00:35:34] Julie Traxler: it's really hard to be an entrepreneur when you are stressed all the time over money. It's hard because all you're ever thinking about is, where's that next dollar going to come from?

[00:35:45] Julie Traxler: And that, you know, we all know people who come across like they have commission breath all the time and nobody wants to work with those

[00:35:55] Harry: people. Exactly. And it's funny. But what's glorified [00:36:00] often are the stories of people who are eating ramen noodles and they were able to make it out of that. That does not mean that's you who is ever listening because that person may not come across as needy and maybe they don't care if they eat ramen noodles.

[00:36:20] Harry: But if you're stressing over ramen noodles and you come across needy, you cannot compare yourself to that other person. Right. You have to know yourself and you ask somebody that you respect and say, am I coming across as needy? Yeah. Right. It's like you need to do, you need to put money on the money in your checkbook somehow, because that will take the pressure off and then you can serve the people you want to serve.

[00:36:46] Harry: Without that kind of pressure. That's my take on it. What's your thought?

[00:36:49] Julie Traxler: I agree. It's really hard to get sales when you're coming across as needy. And I think never once in my life have I needed to ask someone else if [00:37:00] I was being needy. I can always tell, you know, when it's happening, you know, you know, and I think there's the, the other piece of it is that being creative and curious when you're thinking about other ways to bring revenue in the door.

[00:37:21] Julie Traxler: Right. Making the phone calls. Now, listen, I don't do cold calls in my business. It just wouldn't really work for my business model. Right. I've done them. I'm not afraid to do them, but it doesn't really work for my business model. I pick up the phone and do them. But I am about to, you know, I'm, I'm relatively new in the community that I live in.

[00:37:40] Julie Traxler: I moved from Virginia to Nashville earlier this year. And I don't know a lot of people, so I made up these really cool postcards that basically tell about my business on one side and on the backside, it has these three different checklists that they can use for either stabilizing their business or building a [00:38:00] high performing team or I can't even remember what the third one is to be honest with you.

[00:38:04] Julie Traxler: Maybe it's reducing friction in your business. Not entirely sure. But anyway, starting tomorrow, they just arrived yesterday, starting tomorrow, I'm going to go hand them out and introduce myself. I'm not selling anything to people just like, Hey, listen, I'm new here in town and focus on small businesses.

[00:38:20] Julie Traxler: And I really wanted to come in and introduce myself. If you ever need anything, like here's my information and. You know, so a little bit of that pounding the pavement, knocking on the doors, but it's not residential, you know, cause I'm B2B, but really truly like the things like, do you think I'm excited about doing that?

[00:38:37] Julie Traxler: No, not even a little bit. I don't actually like to leave my house, but bring your dog. Well, I'm taking the dogs to doggy daycare tomorrow so that I can actually do it. So that'll be my first one. I can leave a postcard with doggy daycare. Yeah. Right. But. There are unconventional things you can do if you are feeling that level of [00:39:00] desperation where you're like, Oh my god, I have to get this sale or I have to get money.

[00:39:04] Julie Traxler: If you ever had clients, pick up the phone and call the, your past clients and ask them if there's anything that you need, that they need. Is there anything I can help you with? I've got some capacity right now to do some work. How can I help

[00:39:21] Harry: you? So good. Yeah. And you'll find once you do a few, you're going to get very comfortable.

[00:39:29] Harry: It's getting that first one done. And then you're like, Oh, people are nice. That's right. People in general are nice. And then you're just, you're, you're giving something out and helping with awareness. And some people are going to say, what's this about? And then you're going to have conversations. Yeah. To me, it's stirring the pot and like, when you have all of these conversations and you're one and done, just go back to those people you had conversations with.

[00:39:55] Harry: It'll be amazing how many people are really interested in what you [00:40:00] have to say. They just don't tell you they've got other things on their plate. But it's just, you provide value for them, you have a nice conversation, they're saying, you know, some will say, I've been meaning to call you, I've been thinking about you, and then opens up the conversation.

[00:40:16] Harry: Don't just say, Oh, that's great. Just say, what were you thinking about? Right? They'll tell you, right? That's where the curiosity comes in. And it's not flattery when they say, I've been thinking about you, you want to explore what that means. And good things will happen.

[00:40:30] Julie Traxler: So I think, you know, one of the other things too, that's really important to remember is, you know, we, we put so much emphasis on the engagement or the number of followers that we have on social media, I can tell you with, you know, very close accuracy, 80 percent of the business that I've ever gotten, they never liked or engaged on a single post on social media.

[00:40:55] Julie Traxler: But found out, found me through social media. So people are watching. [00:41:00] They're just not commenting. They're not liking, they're not sharing. It's not personal, but that's the reason why, you know, you get so discouraged when you've been in business for, this is me. This is, this is the truth on Instagram. I've been in business for, you know, 2020, I started this business.

[00:41:17] Julie Traxler: I don't even have a thousand followers on Instagram yet. Don't have a thousand followers. And it used to just drive me insane. I would send my social media person on missions to get us more followers. And now I'm like. It doesn't matter because people find your content, they, there's a lot of people that I don't follow on social media, but I look at their stuff at least two or three times a week.

[00:41:41] Julie Traxler: Right? And so the whole notion that somebody has to follow you or like or engage or comment or share whatever before they'll spend money with you is rubbish. It's just pure rubbish. You have, but you, what you need to be is consistent. You need to consistently. [00:42:00] Post put content out there so people can understand what your value proposition is that you can give you can provide to them and help them.

[00:42:10] Harry: Yeah, so good. So true. And that also just ties into the number of clients that you need. You don't need a million clients. You need. It's a relatively small number. It may be 20 a year. So when you think of the numbers of the people you already know and people you haven't had conversations with that, you know, just have conversations with those people and then just politely ask who would benefit by having a conversation with me?

[00:42:40] Harry: Who do you know that would benefit by having a conversation with me? Just get a couple of names and then you're having more conversations and it's not like. You're asking, well, who needs my services? That's different, right? Because now you're asking for kind of help me get a sale. It's who would benefit by having a conversation with me.

[00:42:59] Harry: And [00:43:00] that's really showing that you're ready to give and help others. And you know, good things are going to happen that way. Exactly. Final thoughts there, Julie, because it's been great.

[00:43:10] Julie Traxler: Final thoughts. I would say be consistent and try not to get discouraged. And here is my number one piece of advice that I have learned since being an entrepreneur.

[00:43:25] Julie Traxler: Support never comes from where you think it's going to. We think it's supposed to come from our family or our friends. And ideally we've got family that's like, yes, go get it. I support you, but they're not going to buy from you. Right. Unless, you know, it's your grandma and she wants to really support you.

[00:43:41] Julie Traxler: And she's like, Oh, Hey, I'll, you know, let me, let me get one of those. But the reality is. Support doesn't come from where we think it's going to come from, and that's okay because it still gets to be perfect. You're going to meet so many people along the way [00:44:00] because support doesn't come from where you think it's supposed to come from.

[00:44:03] Julie Traxler: And you're just gonna, you know, a year down the road, your community will look entirely different and it will be better, but you will still have those friends and family, but because you didn't put pressure on them. To buy from you, your world looks a lot different.

[00:44:18] Harry: Great, great way to end. And I'll just throw in, if you're thinking about getting recurring revenue for your business, you need to talk with Julie Traxler.

[00:44:29] Harry: She will not disappoint. So that's all we have for today. It's been awesome. And for The future live events. I'm going to do a better job of getting more of those invitations out. Me too. But we, we, we made the best of it. This has been great. Thanks, Julie. Thank you.