For a long time, I declined all podcast interviews. Not because I am a grade-A, melodramatic recluse, but because I wanted to give ALL of my attention to THE BOOK. …And then Jess Lorimer came along. And she asked me to talk about selling yourself like a pop star. And she did so with her Scottish accent. And then I freaking fell in love with her, obviously—so I accepted.
So now I'm smoking an imaginary pipe and sending this off to you. LOOK, MA! I DID A THING! I hope you listen! I hope you're driving down the road to an ice cream stand going, “Shoot, Leonard, I'm going to put that on!” And I hope it inspires you to be the most radically real version of yourself every single day—especially when you're selling.
A few fun excerpts for those of you who are grouchy and only like listening to Metallica?
—“I’ve got a hypothesis about why so often the webinars and the sales sequences are falling flat for a lot of well-meaning people who are trying so goddamn hard to make it work: it's not so much the tool they're using, it's that the work they're doing is simply not the work they really want to be doing.”
—“People are hoping with all their might that they can just put it on the Internet, and then hopefully people will buy it. But something I’ve learned time and time again? The only way people will buy stuff is if you are offering to help them over and over again.”
—“People forget: we don’t really see you fucking up as much as YOU see you fucking up. Even if you launch a book tomorrow and it only sells one copy, nobody else knows that. We can’t see your sales reports. We have no idea how well something is doing or not doing. And that’s important to remember: we get wrapped up into our ego and what are people going to think about you, but nobody is thinking anything about you. They don’t have access to that.”
—“I’m a huge fan of email marketing when done tastefully, and when done with the benefit of the reader in mind…and not just some shitty sales ploy. When done well, and done well with an eye for value, it can be awesome.”
—“Going back to imposter syndrome, that’s why we end up spending a lot more time on social media than we probably should, from a sales perspective: because by putting out that glossy image, we’re somehow trying to put a bandaid over our own feelings of inadequacy.”
—“One of the surprising things of entrepreneurship for me has always been how easy it actually is to make money, as opposed to working for someone else where you’re completely limited, you’re capped off, you can maybe get a 2% raise even once in a while, but that’s not going to move the needle. Whereas, if you have this service or this product that is solving a problem, and you create the right conditions, it only naturally follows that money is what people are going to give you in order to get that thing. So much about selling is just creating the right conditions.”
—“Struggling is sometimes as simple as a breakdown in the sales process versus the marketing process. Which one are you sucking at, and can you get better there?”
Once again, you can find this podcast interview here. Rock on, bitchessss—LOVEEEE YOUUUU!