Selling in Chaos: How External Events Impact Your Business

0:01 Welcome to The Coaching Equation, brought to you by Empire Partners and hosted by Ryan Lang and Brooke Bishop. Our mission is to help you build a profitable and impactful coaching business by cutting through the noise and all the expert advice to deliver tried and true, actionable insights that you can deploy in your business today. Each week, we bring on expert guests, unveil cutting-edge tactics and strategies, and share the secrets and stories that we've gathered from working with the most successful coaching companies on earth. Welcome to episode 29 of the Coaching Equation Podcast.

0:42 I'm your host, Ryan Lang, CEO and co-founder of Empire Partners, alongside my co-founder and co-host, Brooke Bishop. And, you know, for those of you that are wrestling fans, you know, you remember... The days of Hulk Hogan, his famous saying, What you gonna do, brother, when Hulkamania runs wild on you? Well, in this episode, we're gonna explore what you gonna do when everything else in the world seems to be complete chaos, And we've got the holidays approaching and it's going to take a toll on your sales, but it doesn't have to.

1:24 So in this episode, we're really going to look at how external forces, especially when the world is crazy and we got elections and we got holidays and we got all these things, possible recessions, all the things are going down right now in the world. It is going to impact the psychology and the decision-making of our prospects. And we need to have very clear and intentional strategies on dealing with it. In this episode, Brooke and I are going to give you exactly that. In addition to that, this is a two-way street. And we're going to give you the clear strategies on how to make sure that you have your head screwed on straight in your sales engagements so that you don't experience a dip and you can walk people artfully and with empathy through the process to the result that both of you want.

2:07 So buckle up Hulkamaniacs. This is episode 29 of the Coaching Equation podcast. Welcome back to the Coaching Equation podcast. I'm your host Ryan Lang, CEO and co-founder of Empire Partners alongside my co-founder and co-host Brooke Bishop. Yo bro. It's gonna be a good episode and very timely. Yeah. It's game time right now on so many different levels. And today we're going to broach a topic that I think very, I don't know that anybody talks about this. And it's really, really, really important. And that is understanding... what's happening in the world and in the time of year, and how that plays a part in your sales engagements, both for you and your prospects.

2:53 So as of the time of this recording, we're here about a week away from the election here in the United States. One half of the population is gonna be very happy, the other half is going to be super pissed. There's not a lot in between right now. And in addition to that, we stand on the precipice of the holidays. We've got Thanksgiving coming up in right about a month, Christmas and New Year's to follow. There's a lot of craziness going on in the world, not to mention the fact that some people are talking about recession. It's wild in the world right now. We got all kinds of crazy weather events and all that, as most of you know, I experienced semi-recently. So let's talk about this. First things first, why should we even care about what's going on externally with regard to the world and the holidays and all the things when it comes to our sales engagement?

3:43 Why bother? Yeah. I mean, in any sales engagement, I mean, we talk about this in our Close Everyone training. I mean, literally every single session we have, we hit this as a fundamental piece. And I've actually never heard anyone else address this. But you have yourself as the salesperson or the business owner who doesn't identify as a salesperson who's doing sales. You have on the other side, you have a prospect or you have a client. The thing that's oftentimes missed in all of that is the environment. Yeah. And so, we have to be really, really mindful of like, not only what's happening in people's immediate environment, but what's happening in the bigger environment, what's happening globally, what's happening, you know, sometimes even planetarily for some of our woo-woo folks.

4:26 But there's this dynamic of like, okay, we'd be ignorant fools if we didn't think that what's happening in the world is not a... affecting people and thinking that our sales conversation is this closed bubble scenario. And then if I do my script the exact same way, every time I'm going to get a yes. And like, if I know objection handling and I know the exact words, and if I say it, they're the right pitch and the right tone at the right time, it'll move everybody to give me their credit card. And so there's this dynamic. We have to be real about what's happening. And to your point, you just addressed a lot of what's happening in the world right now that creates a bit of a pressure cooker. And that shows up as emotions for the client that we get to talk to or prospective client we talk to. So true.

5:06 And I think that, you know, we talk a lot in Close Everyone about kind of what's going on in their environment, what's going on in our environment. We have kind of that fun little graphic that shows it inside the program. But this is so important. You know, we were talking about this a little while back when I was kind of sharing. I think I shared on LinkedIn about my teacher, Pat Cherry, who taught me to, you know, in acting to get really clear on what just happened. Well, it's the same thing in our sales engagement. And in some cases, it's not necessarily what just happened, which of course is going to play into things. What's going on externally? You know, if we get into a situation where people are talking recession and let's just say that your prospect happens to be in a work environment where that topic keeps to be coming up constantly around the water cooler.

5:55 Everybody's talking about it. Do you think if they're at risk of potentially losing a significant amount of money and stability for their family? that they might be a little more reticent to pull the trigger on a big financial decision? Just a little. Just a little. And the other thing is, too, sometimes it's something that can be very clear that way. But the other piece is... And beliefs come into play when a whole lot of other things are going on in the world because I can tell you one thing. The election is going down next week one way or the other. And quite frankly, the bigger impact is what people decide it means.

6:38 What does the result mean? And in most cases, they're not thinking, what does this result mean for the United States and the rest of the world? And my fellow man, they're going, what the hell does this mean for me? Right. And so now all of a sudden they're toting around a whole bunch of emotional baggage and beliefs that may or may not serve them with regard to what things mean. And I think, you know, one of the things too, Brooke, talk a little bit about us because, you know, obviously we're not impervious to this and we've got to have our head screwed on straight. So how can these kinds of things impact us, much less our, you know, potential clients?

7:18 Yeah, let's spend the rest of the episode talking about my needs. I like this. That's right. Yeah. Yeah, you're absolutely correct. We're not impervious to it. I mean, here's the reality. We're going to have triggers and experiences we've had from the past and beliefs that we have about all the environmental components as well. And then on top of it, we might be trying to combat other people that are in that toxic soup and we're trying to navigate their world. So we have like a compounded effect of... We'll just call it crazy. Right. So we have to in those moments where when we get into I'm going to use some extreme language on this, but I think that it actually plays in when we're in a wartime situation, we have to have our head on straight. And for those of us, we might not have bombs going off.

8:00 We might not have bullets whizzing past us, but that doesn't mean our system might not feel the same way. You know, somebody telling you, you need to think about it or your show rate. How many people we had this week that mentioned their show rate just fell off a cliff, right? Because we're in that environment. It's really easy for people to procrastinate. It's really easy for people to say, I'll wait till next week or next month or next year or whatever. That might not be a bullet flying past us, but that can show up in our nervous system very much the same way where we feel like, oh, man, this is life threatening. If I don't have my meetings showing up, that's very similar to a bomb going off and we go into... Fight or flight, we have that emotional hit and we have hormones that run through our system and we have a freak out moment, whether that shows up the way that it might for somebody in the military or whether that shows up in our own unique little way.

8:48 So we have to be prepared and we have to have a strategy because here's the reality. Guess what? Did we know that Halloween and the election were coming? We did. Did we know that Christmas, Hanukkah, New Year's, Thanksgiving, do we know all of those things are fixed in moments in time and they're coming? We do. Do we know human behavior is going to happen? So we have to have this triage plan. It's kind of like this in emergency break glass moment. And we go, okay, shit's happening. What do I do in that moment? Do I go into the shit and freak out with everyone else? Or do I go, great. What's my plan? How do I navigate? How do I go above and beyond?

9:29 And how do I make sure that I'm intentional in the mix of the chaos? I love that. And that's such an important word in all of this is intentional. I think the big mistake is sticking your head in the sand and having some belief that this isn't having an impact on other people or their decision making or you or your decision making. Now, you know, this also boils down, Brooke, to something we talk about a lot, which is especially, I mean, this is true in life in general and in business, but especially true in sales. You got to control what you can control. You have certain variables that you've got control over and you got to control that. One of those variables is what's going on upstairs for you.

10:11 You know, are you running a clean machine up there or you got a bunch of head trash that's getting in the way right now? So one of the things that I would encourage you to do, because here's the thing, you know, you could be thinking about this has to go both ways. In order for this to actually be effective in terms of you rising above all of this stuff, it's gotta be a two-way channel. And you not only have to be aware of it with other people and what they might be going through and being willing to show up in a very empathetic state or being willing to, at bare minimum, observe someone's model of the world, even if you don't agree with it, you've got to be able to do it for yourself.

10:54 It can't just be one or the other. So one of the things that I want you to really consider is with everything that's going on in the world right now, in fact, I would love for you to stop this episode and say out loud to yourself, if you're here in the US, if blank wins What is it for you? I'm just curious. Maybe you're not putting a lot of meaning around that. Maybe you are. But I'd love for you to get clear on that. The other key is, you know, as you're pausing this episode, here's another one for you. Well, you know, it's the holidays and you know what happens to sales during the holidays.

11:35 Yeah. Well, what is it? What's your story on that? And anything else that's floating around that might be related to what's going on in the world and or the holiday season that's upcoming. And I want you to get really clear. Have a little bit. Look, hey, coach, it's time for a little bit of self-coaching, right? Where you look at that and you go, OK, like, what's the story that I'm writing about it? What's actually true? And is my story serving me or is it not serving me? And get really clear on that and make sure you clear that away before we dive headfirst into this crazy season we're about to dive headfirst into. There's so much gold that you just shared right there. I mean, in the moments of chaos, by the way, guess what everybody who's not prepared does?

12:19 They look around to see where's everybody running and they usually just jump right into the herd. And so of all the times to be a true leader, and that's what sales is, by the way, and that's what running a coaching business is, by the way, being a coach is being a leader. It's championing other people to lead. And so we have an opportunity in this to go, I'm just going to jump into the river with everyone else who's in freak out mode. And I'm going to wait till it comes to the nice, calm, serene lake at the end of the river. Or I'm going to go, you know what? Nope, I'm marching up. I'm taking the mountain. We're going to go. And so there is this opportunity and we do have to do certain things at a higher level. It means we do leading. So I'm going to be candid. Leading requires that we use more energy.

12:59 Well said. And that's where a lot of the wheels fall off for people. I don't have the energy. And how many times burnout, burnout, burnout, burnout. It's like the word of the year. It's like how many people are burning out, but yet we have so much energy trapped inside of us and we need to be stepping into the space of truly leading and bringing that energy forward so that we can help other people. Because guess what? If we don't, they're going to fall into that river of the media, the hype, the chaos, the news. And that's all it is. It's a giant distraction that's keeping people from the life that they want. And at the end of the day, yeah. Mic drop on that one, dude. Mic drop on that one. Listen, to piggyback on that as well, you might be thinking, this is a moment where as you're going through this, first of all, you're thinking to yourself, do I really have to pay attention to this?

13:46 Is it really necessary? That does feel like a lot of work. Boy. You know, it's funny this week, Brooke, you and I talk a lot about kind of like exposing our kids to movies that we love and that kind of thing. So my assistant number one, Kendall, got exposed to The Matrix this week. Mm-hmm. Perfect example. Perfect example. God, I wish I would have taken the blue pill. Well, here's the thing. Right now in this moment, just like Cypher does when he decides that he wants to go back, get plugged in and eat his steak in peace instead of having to fuck with all the bullshit. You got the same choice right now.

14:27 my friend, you want to take the red pill or do you want to take the blue pill? And the truth is that the red pill comes along with a whole lot of responsibility. There are plenty of days where I think to myself, my God, it really would be a whole lot easier to just run around believing that I'm not in control of my life and that it's at the mercy of the winds or whatever the hell else I think it's at the mercy of. That I don't have control over all these things. And additionally, it would be awfully nice to not have to care in your sales engagements about what's going on in the external world and how that may play a factor in your engagement. You know, the engagement between you and the human being that you're about to connect with.

15:11 And the truth is that you can make that choice. And most people do make that choice. That's another one of the reasons why a lot of people don't succeed in coaching. And another one of the reasons why a lot of people don't succeed in selling their coaching because they're not willing to do the hard things that are going to be required in order to show up as the leader that they have to be. So in this moment, what are you going to do, man? You're going to take the red pill. You're going to take the blue pill. I'm just saying. There's some magic that here's the best way I'll try and describe this. When we have challenges, we oftentimes get frustrated because we have this belief in our head. We're not supposed to experience challenges.

15:52 I don't know where we got that in our world. Maybe it's the conditioning of being comfortable is probably where it came from. But when we look at this dynamic, we think like, I'm not supposed to have any problems in my life. My business is supposed to be easy and rolling people. I should never get any objections. Right? Like when we look at the world we're in, we have challenges so that we ask better questions so that we can come up with better answers, which then guess what it leads us to. new challenges so that we ask new questions so that we can get new solutions. And we have the cycle that comes into play. And case in point, like full transparency, we had a light calendar week this week with leads. And guess what it did? We came to the drawing board and we're asking all sorts of new questions coming up with all sorts of questions.

16:36 all sorts of new ways to go out there and drum up new clients and come up with all these new tactics and ways to go about it. And in this pressure cooker, what I can tell you is this, because our whole Close Everyone framework, the foundation core of that, it started in 2008 to 2010. When the marketplace was at its most challenging moment of being able to enroll people when no one wanted to spend money because nobody had money. And so from that, we asked better questions. We got better answers. We got a better strategy. And we kept refining it and refining it and refining it. Well, guess what? Here we have a new challenging marketplace. because that was crafted in a moment in time, guess what? It's already set up for this new battlefield moment where we can put it right into playing.

17:20 It's going to produce at a very, very high level. But I love your distinctions as it rolls within that, because there's so much opportunity right now. We do have a choice of a red pill or a blue pill, and it's in our hands. Our future and destiny is in our hands. Yeah, and you laid it out really nicely just now, dude. And I think one of the other things that we have to be willing to show up for, like when we talk about, well, all right, if I make this choice and I make this decision to take the proverbial red pill instead of the blue one, what am I actually committing to? What am I actually showing up for? Let me key you in on something. And by the way, this is not just about sales. This is – Definitely in the business owner slash entrepreneurial arena and in life in general.

18:06 But basically what we sign up for, Brooke just talked about how, you know, we're going to do it and then things are going to change and we're going to have to ask new questions and ask better questions. Well, guess what? That's what's required to get to the next version of ourselves, to get to the next version of our business, to get to the next thing that our clients are really going to need, to get to the next level in our sales. And let me key you into something. You want to know how deep that rabbit hole goes? All the way down and there's no end. And it doesn't stop. And here's the other thing. Right now, if you're listening to this and you're going, oh, my God, shit, I thought it did stop.

18:49 What the hell? I signed up for the wrong thing here. If that's where you're at right now, you might want to get off this train. But here's the thing. You might actually find it exciting. I do. And Brooke does. And here's the thing. It doesn't mean that we don't have moment like holy shit moments. We do. I had a couple of them this week. Yeah, we did. Legitimately. Legitimately, we did. But I think the thing is, it's being able to have the oh shit moment and then look at it for what it really is, which is the opportunity that's going to allow us to grow and expand into the next version of ourselves, which is going to be required for us to get to the next level.

19:30 And I know the two of us are both complete growth junkies. We want to be continuing to grow and get better and move forward. Hopefully you do as well. And if you do, I can't promise you there won't be any oh shit moments. In fact, I can promise you there will be. But what I can promise you is that if you can really look at those moments as opportunities, they are the grandest of opportunities. The grandest. Well said. Yeah, it's like our problems aren't going to stop. It's just the quality and the caliber of them is going to shift. So the more you do and the more you, by the way, more is at risk. So you think of somebody who goes to top of Mount Everest, they have just as many problems at the base camp as they do at the top of the mountain.

20:10 The difference is there's more risk the higher you keep going up that chain. So the same thing is true in business. You want to grow in business. You want to have a successful business. A lot of times, most people don't know what that even means, by the way. They're just thinking they want the rewards of what having a successful business will give them. And they haven't really thought through like what that actually looks like and means. Like for a lot of people, they go, oh, I want to have a company with 50 employees. Have you really sat down and thought about what that means? You got 50 people. You got 50 people who have 50 lives with 50 families with 50 chances of massive amounts of drama every single week. Like there's the potential for chaos. And if you've ever hired your first person, you know what that means. When you've got one person, you're like, my God, right?

20:53 Managing one human is crazy. Great. Multiply it by 50. Yeah. There's this dynamic. We have to step into a space of accepting the challenges that we're given and showing up in a way that goes, okay, I'm ready for higher level problems. That's really what it comes down to. And I know, Ryan, you've done some crazy physical activities, so I know you understand this stuff intimately. But when you get into the world of Kokoro or the seal fit stuff and you put your body through these crazy things, it's the same thing. It's just a different avenue, right? Oh, 100%. And you know, with the physical challenges, we always, most of us will run around through life, believing that we are capable of so much.

21:33 And basically, we easily got another 10 to 20x beyond what we believe we're capable of physically. Well, that's true in life in general. That's true mentally, spiritually, in your relationships, in your sales. Where things get really interesting is when you stop saying, I can only blank. And you start saying, how could I blank? It is the difference between a statement that closes the mind and the question that opens the mind that determines what's possible for us. Because here's what I can promise you. You know, if you can't see it or you can't even open the door to the possibility of more or better, then it will be impossible for you.

22:17 You want your limitations? Congratulations, my friend. You get to own them now. You know, as we get close to time on what's going to be a shorter episode today, bro, I came across this quote recently that I really, really love on this topic. And Sharon Salzberg said, the difference between misery and happiness depends on what we do with our attention. Let that sink in for you for a moment because it's true for you. It's going to be true for your prospects. And ultimately, you've got to be the one, the leader in the conversation who is rising above. As we start to put a bow on this one, my brother, what thoughts you want to leave the audience with today? Yeah, I just want one more of a call to action in the moments of some of the chaos that's happening out there in the ether, double down on your strategy, double down on your tactics.

23:06 So really get into the logical side of your business right now. Like get into that space of what is it I'm doing? Is it working? What can I do differently? Who's doing other things? What are they doing that's working? Like be really, really mindful. And remember, a huge part of this business is really knowing your numbers. Yeah. If you go, oh, my show rate's 50%. It used to be 80%. Cool. Double the number of bookings. If you go, oh, my enrollment rate used to be 20%. Now it's down to 10. Cool. Double the number of people you're talking to. So again, in the space of chaos, don't overcomplicate what you're doing. Get back to fundamentals. Get back to the basics. Dig in on your strategy and tactics. And if you're like, I don't even know what the hell those things are. Like we're over here.

23:47 We're waving at you. We can help. Right. So true. Yeah. There's support that's there. One thousand percent. One thousand percent. Bro, this was really good. Thanks for diving in on this one. I think it's such an important topic. Very few people talk about it. I'm happy we had the platform to talk about it today. I hope this episode was impactful for you. And take this one to heart. Make sure that you spend some time really reflecting on this stuff. Like we talked about last time when we really dug in on decision making, this is another point of decision for you, for your business, for your sales, for your relationships, for how things are going to play out over the next couple of months. And here's the thing. If you can either unplug yourself from the matrix, if you're plugged in there right now, get the hell out.

24:29 Get in that weird, you know, fucking pod with water or goo, whatever the hell that is. Get out of there. Or keep yourself unplugged. Don't go eat the ribeye. Keep eating the weird mush that they feed you for breakfast. Trust me, it's better for you. And make sure that you're very clear and intentional as we go into this, what could be a very interesting, crazy, dynamic, tumultuous time. Until next time, my friends, thank you for listening to this episode of the Coaching Equation podcast. And we will see you on the flip side. Thanks, bro. Take care, everybody. Thank you for listening to this episode of The Coaching Equation. Please hit subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast.

25:09 And if you got value out of this episode, we would be so grateful if you would share it out with a friend and leave us a review on iTunes or your favorite platform. To learn more about Empire Partners or to inquire about working with Ryan and Brooke, please visit www.empirepartners.io forward slash go.