Transcript generated by Podium.page
Help us spread the word by tweeting about us at @podiumdotpage and including us in your shownotes! https://podium.page

0:00:00 - Speaker 1
Alright, so welcome back to another episode of the Sophie Kessner podcast. In today's episode I want to talk a little bit about what to do when you're hitting that wall of disappointment and frustration, when shit is just not going your way. Now, the first thing that I always ask any clients and or myself, if I am and are they are going through this process is where are you in your menstrual cycle? But I ask this because you know, every every month you go through different hormonal stages and those different hormonal stages heavily influence how you feel. So if you're feeling really down, we want to track that. Now let's say you are not somebody who has hormone fluctuating hormones and are you're in a stage of your cycle that's not necessarily the most emotionally dense part of it. If you are in that stage where you're in the emotional dense state, usually between your luteal and your menstruation phase, just take a break, take a break. Take a break, take a break and wait to see if things change after you get through your cycle and you rest when you're out of that stage. Now, if it's, if this is the case, where you're continuing to feel that way even outside of that, when you're in your ovulation stage and when you're in your follicular phase, meaning the stages right after and in the midst of your cycle. This is when you should be filling in your prime Now. 

Obviously, again, not a hormone expert is just putting information out there, and what I want to speak to here is if you're noticing, a, that you're just constantly feeling beaten down or just frustrated, or has been going on for an extended period of time, or B you're just somebody who's just having a really hard time with things not working, the first thing that I want to say is I so fucking hear you and see you and get it. Oh my God, do I get it? There is nothing more frustrating than trying to make something work and it just doesn't seem to be working, and it's not easy to deal with. The biggest part is you're navigating a big sense of disappointment, of the frustration, of the questioning, of the doubt, of the uncertainty of it, especially if there was a lot of hope and a lot of dependency on this thing to have it work the way that you wanted to. So if you are going through that season right now, first off I get it, and everything that you're feeling right now is 100% valid The disappointment, the frustration, the self doubt, the questioning. I am here for it And I feel free. I really really do And because it's not an easy place to be And I think it's important to recognize that we all go through that. 

It does not matter how long you've been in business, it doesn't matter how many things you've done we all go through these stages multiple times in our journey And, if it's any consolation, you likely will be able to move out of this and it won't likely not be the last time that you experience it, because you'll continue to push through. So, that being said, what I want to speak to you about in this episode is how to actually move through that. How do you, when faced with massive adversity and what feels like a huge failure or a huge disappointment or something just not going the way you want for whatever reason, how do you deal with it? What do you do in that situation? Do you just push through? Do you just keep going? Do you throw your hands up and quit? Do you throw it out the window? Do you take a break? And I think the answer to this is going to be different for every single type of person. 

What I do believe is something that should be done for all folks is processing the grief, processing the disappointment, because usually the thing that happens in our business is not necessarily about the thing in our business. It's about what we're experiencing in ourselves because of what's happening in the business, and usually when we start to explore this, there's a lot of feelings that come up And it's a lot of stuff that's not usually very comfortable or fun to go into because it's the heavier stuff, the stuff we like to avoid. So it's important, when you're doing this work, to have a safe space to do the processing of this, ideally with somebody who is trained in this work and, depending on what you're navigating and the severity of it as well. So if you're somebody who goes into deep patterns of depression or anxiety, please work with a licensed mental health professional who specializes in that space, are the equivalent, with training and with supervision, so that you can know that you're being taken care of. If you're somebody who's on the lighter side of that spectrum maybe it's not full blown depression, but maybe it's just a sense of like really feeling frustrated The first thing that we wanna do is create safety in what you're experiencing, to recognize like okay, there is a lot of disappointment here. 

I really wanted this to go a certain way and it didn't. And being with those emotions for a short period of time And again, this is something that you want to do with somebody, ideally somebody you can trust, who can hold out with you and who can be there with you. Because it's not that we wanna stay stuck in this forever, but we wanna acknowledge, like man, i am like a little sad that that didn't go the way that I wanted, i'm a little disappointed, i feel a little devastated about that and giving yourself permission to feel what's there, because it's valid and it's real and it matters. And once we can move through the validation of the experience that you're having, then we can start to shift gears. Then we can start to move into okay, well, what worked and what didn't. What about this felt like it went really, really well and what about this felt like it needed to shift. That I didn't love, that I didn't enjoy. 

Because the biggest thing when it comes to business is that nothing is a sure shot. Everything is a giant testing experiment. It does not matter if you've been in business for 10 years, 10 months, 10 weeks. The reality is you never know for certain how things are gonna go. You can have an hypothesis, you can have a prediction, but at the end of the day, it's gonna happen how it's gonna happen, and then you take that information and you make decisions from it. Now, an example I can give here is when we create a new offer and we launch it, we obviously all have high hopes, and when you repeatedly do something and something that was working before stops working in the way that you want it to, it can feel really disgruntling and confusing. Now, that might be something that's a change that you made. It might be that there's just change in the world. It might be that there's things that are shifting. 

There's so many different variables that can contribute to the reason why something didn't work, and so this is where, again, it's important to A, validate your emotional experience and have a safe space to process that emotion, but then, b, to be able to practically look at the data points for what it is that's shifting. Now, it's really, really hard to do this when you're in emotional space, which is why we have to do the emotional work. First, we go through the process of navigating and dealing with our grief, with our disappointment, with our frustration, with our anger, with our sadness, and then we can dive into navigating the reflective experience of unpacking what worked, what didn't, what are my hypotheses, what's the data saying? And I think, when we're looking at disappointment, disappointment's an interesting one, because the question is always what could I have done differently? What's wrong with me? Why didn't it work? Why didn't we internalize the experience? 

And the reality is, it might not necessarily a hundred and ten percent of the time B that you're at fault or that you're the problem, that there's something inherently wrong with you. That's not it, it's just there's some data points that are gonna give you more answers. And so the biggest thing is, if you're in a place of massive defeat, first take a step back. Take a step back and take a break and get yourself back into a place to where you can start to feel inspired, connected to the thing again. But if it's to a point to where you're just feeling that utter sense of defeat, don't try to keep pushing through. Give yourself permission to take some time so that you can then get back into a space of feeling more grounded and more centered in your way of processing the information, so you can make decisions from that place And you're not constantly taking every data point and saying it's my fault, i'm the reason why or this just sucks or it's never gonna work, because it can very, very quickly become something dark and gloomy and heavy and dense, and that's not what we wanna stay. So get to a place of regulation, get to a place of feeling more centered, more here, more present, as much as you possibly can, and then, when you are in that place, take, come back and see if you can take a look at it, if you're able to approach it and say, okay, i'm feeling a disappointment, but it's not taking over my system, it doesn't feel overwhelming or overbearing Great, then you might be able to more quickly shift gears into that reflected process. 

Now, when we're reflecting on something, whether it's a botched launch or a botched off or whatever it is, usually it's something around the sales and marketing process that didn't go the way you were hoping it would. What we're looking for here is all of the data and information. So I'll give you a few of the data points that we look at when it comes to our marketing and sales process, and these might apply, these might not apply, depending on what you use and don't use. But the first thing is how did we feel about it. I didn't know. This is more subjective, but it's important because did I feel like that went the way I wanted it to? Did I feel like it was really great? Did I feel like we did a great job, like we gave it a draw, or did I feel, like me, it was all right? Because that first thing that's going to be important is going to dictate how I go and look at the rest of the information. If I felt like, oh my gosh, that was the best thing I've ever done and it was so good, it was amazing, then I need to go see, okay, what the heck happened between my experience of that and people choosing not to invest or buy. If it's the other end of it where I'm like, ugh, i didn't feel too great about that. What did I not feel too great about? Because those are going to be the pieces of information I'm going to say, okay, these are the things that I need to look at and shift. Now let's say I did feel great about it, because I think that this tends to be the case for most folks You felt really great. You felt really like clear and certain about what you were doing. 

So now what we want to look at is all of the different data points. The first data point that we want to look at is sales. Did any sales come through? No, okay, so nobody got to the sales process. What was the step before the sales process? Were you doing a workshop? Were you doing email marketing? were you doing social media marketing? We want to go and look to see where were you selling and are people actually clicking over to the sales page, or are they booking calls? Are they filling out applications? Now, depending on what your sales process is, this is going to look different for you. So if you are somebody and let's say, your process is to have people apply and book a sales call, so what we want to look at is how many people booked either booked a sales call or how to fill out an application. If the answer to that question is zero or none, then we know that the issue is before that. If the answer to that is some, but there were no sales, then we know there is some sort of disconnect between the application and the sales call and folks enrolling, and so then we can go and look and see okay, what information, what data did the sales call give us about what's happening here and why this person didn't enroll. Now, if the issue was not the application, it was not the sales process, and I'll give you an example here On all of our applications and for most of our clients, we have them have a question on there that says you know, this program is X amount of dollars to X amount of dollars. 

When you see that, what's your initial response? Is this something you can afford? Are you excited to pay? Do you need a payment plan Or is this absolutely out of your budget? Now, if something's absolutely out of somebody's budget and they click that, then they're automatically disqualified from being able to move forward in the process, because our clients tend to have a lot of people that come in and reach out to them, so we have to protect their time, and so then we say, okay, great, So there's something here in the pricing of this that's a mismatch for the people who are applying. Now, are the people who are applying perfect fit for this product? If yes, then we need to have a conversation about the pricing of the product and are the way we're communicating the value of it for it to be more valuable for them, so you can reach out and you can have the conversation Now. If they're not the perfect fit for the program, then you know that these aren't the people that you want to be marketing to. And now we need to have a conversation around looking at the data of who you're attracting in your audience, based off of what your marketing is and how you're talking about the problem. So we continue to backtrack and we look to see where is the leak in the funnel, where is the leak in the process. So data in marketing is pretty intense, depending on how many different marketing cases you have. 

I like to use a lot of email marketing and I do bare minimum on social media these days. So when I look at my email marketing, i look at a few things I look at open rates, i look at click through rates and I look at reply rates. If I'm seeing that the majority of my emails are not being opened, then I know I need to change my subject lines. If I'm seeing that a lot of my emails are being opened but they're not being clicked, then I know I need to work on my call to action and the copy within the email itself. If I'm seeing that people are opening and clicking on the emails, but then they're going to the sales page and not moving forward. That tells me that it's the sales page that needs some love, because people aren't actually understanding what's happening on the sales page. There's enough inspiration and enough curiosity to go from the email and from the marketing to the sales page, but the sales page, it stops. They don't apply, they don't put a call, they don't purchase. Great news Now we know where to start. 

Now, let's say, the issue is that people aren't opening our emails or they're not clicking over to our sales page. If you're marketing on social media and you're getting very minimal an engagement reply is common Then that tells us that this is a marketing and a messaging and a positioning problem, because then we know okay, well, people are seeing this stuff, but they're not engaging with it. So there's something in the way in which I'm talking about the thing that people are not connecting to, which means we need to spend our time better understanding of the market in which we are trying to fit ourselves into, so that we can better talk about what it is we do, what we're selling, the service that we're providing in relationship to the people that we're trying to sell it to, so that they can more easily and clearly get on board. Very rarely is it an issue of the market not wanting our offer, and so much more is it an issue of us not knowing how to clearly communicate the value of what it is we're doing in a way that's relevant and resonant for the people who are actually ready to buy the offer. Now, that is, more often than not, the problem when we're talking about marketing, and so, in this scenario, it's going back to the drawing board, it's collecting information, it's getting data. 

Usually, we see this problem the most with folks who have not ever done market research and never actually done proper market research. They're just kind of hoping for things to work and posting and putting things out there. So if this is the case and you're noticing, okay, nobody's responding to my social media posts, no one's opening my emails, nobody's engaging then it is time to go and do some market research and figure out, okay, what is it that people are resonating with, what is it that they are curious about? And so that we can figure out, how do we actually need to talk about the thing in a way that's going to make sense for them. And here's another interesting one. Let's say you have people who are like oh my God, that's great, but not the right clients. 

So if you're noticing that you just have an audience full of the wrong kinds of people, then there's a shift that needs to happen in the way you talk about the problem so that it's more relevant to the type of people that you want to attract. An example of this is if your messaging is something like you're really struggling to just get through the months and every month you're struggling to get through your bills and you're living paycheck to paycheck. If you're using that pain point in your marketing and in your messaging, you're going to be attracting people who are resonating with that right, and this isn't a bad thing. I just want to address it. The difference here is, if you're speaking to that, you're likely going to attract people who have a lot of financial challenges and are probably going to have a lot of objection around pricing because they don't have the financial money available to be able to invest in the thing that you're trying to sell. 

So there's a mismatch between the offer and the people, and that might just be that okay, this needs to be a more accessible offer for this type of audience to be able to invest in, or it may be the conversation that these just aren't the right people for the offer that you're selling. So you need to make sure that there's a connection point, there's a match point between the two. So if it is the case in which it's a mismatch, you have to decide are these the right people, but the pricing is not quite there. Are these are not the right people and the pricing is there? If it's the latter, then what we want to do is we want to shift the way we're talking about the problem and the solution. 

So the problem might be something more like you've been able to build a somewhat successful thing, but no matter how much money you're making, you can't seem to figure out why, at the end of the year, your bank account gets to zero, and this tends to be a problem of the management of the money versus of the actual making of the money. So the problem for them is a little bit different, right? It's not that they don't have any money that they're making. It's that they're having a hard time managing the money that they make and that the end of the year, it's always down to zero. So you're gonna be attracting people who do make money, but the money is always disappearing, and if your solution is helping them to better manage their money, then great, you've perfectly positioned yourself for that. 

So this is a wonderful example of how that process works, how we actually go from informing and educating our audience on where they're at, what they're struggling with, and speaking to people who are more adequately ready for what it is we're selling. So we won't know what the gap is, what the problem is, inside of your marketing and sales process, until we look at all of these data points, and we won't have enough data until you've gone through the entire process of launching your program. Now we can go and see, okay, what's working, what's not, what data points can we shift and can we change. But this is the thing where it's like time is the real teacher here. We can't shortcut these things. Yes, we can look at stuff and say, okay, this is what worked for this audience, but it might not work the same way for yours, and so taking things and just duplicating them isn't always the answer. We have to customize it for your audience and for what works for them and for what works for you. 

This is also the issue with the product structure. An example of this is. You know, we had a client who was trying to sell to a certain audience, but this audience was not buying because they just aren't in the place where they can afford high ticket. Now this person has high volume, meaning they have a lot of followers in a big audience, but the audience just doesn't have the financial ability to invest because it's the everyday person, the consumer, and they're not trying to spend thousands and thousands of dollars. So the high ticket coaching model didn't work for this audience. And when we shift that from a high ticket offer to something that's low ticket, hands off, it performed exponentially better, but like just a lot, just exponentially better. We're talking a thousand percentile And this is important to understand because if you have an audience and you want to sell to the existing audience, you need to know what product and pricing and structure is gonna work for them. 

And it also is relevant to where we are in the world, the economy and what's happening in the world, because that also influences where people are at. For instance, in 2020, everybody was buying stuff in the online space, But in today, in 2023, everyone tends to be in a more skeptical place because of all of the stuff that's gone down in the last few years and so many of the scams and the failures and all of the things, people are a little more jaded and there's talk of a recession. People feel a little bit more fear. So the pricing structure changes and that might not be true across the board But again, depending on who your audience is, that may be more resonant than not. 

So we have to be attentive to these pieces. We have to understand where people are at, what they're needing, what's going on, and when you start to figure out what the data points are, then you can start to tweak and make adjustments to those data points to make them better for the next round. The easiest thing to fix obviously is your marketing, and then you can start to adjust and adapt from there. But again, the biggest thing that's gonna support you in this process is your market research. So if you have not done market research, go do it, please go do it. It'll save you such a headache because you're doing the market research anyways in your marketing process. Save yourself the headache of having to go through lunch launches by getting the information ahead of time And that way you can just put it into there right. You can know exactly where your audience is at and what they're needing. So hopefully, this episode is providing a little bit of hope and insight into what to do next. 

And if you have no idea where to start, start with the market research. Start with figuring out okay, where is my audience, who are they? What's going on here? If you're in a deep state of just frustration with it, take a break and have something else that you can do for us as a short term, for financial stability, and don't quit. Take a break and come back to it when you're feeling more grounded. Take a vacation, take some time off, stop staring at the computer and at TikTok and Instagram. Go, do something for you to get yourself in a better space and then come back to it and address it and do the reflection process afterwards. That's when you'll be able to make the big differences. 

All right, whoa, what an episode. So I hope you all enjoyed this one. If you know somebody who needs to hear this, please send it out. Share it out And if you're listening on this on social media, tag me at. I am Sophie Kessner. I would love, love, love to see and know who's listening and who's watching and what you think of all of these episodes and if they're helpful, and that is it for today, i will see you all on the next episode. Bye, bye. 

Transcribed by https://podium.page