Why You Shouldn’t Equate Your Business Competence With Confidence
Do you have all the degrees, certifications, specializations, expertise, yada yada yada in your industry and feel you deserve the BIG bucks for it? Reality check: nobody but you cares how many degrees or certifications you’ve racked up, including your potential clients. You have to give them a reason to care to work with you regardless, and that’s where selling comes in.
In this episode, I talk about why your competence isn’t a replacement for confidence in business.
3:58 - What inspired me to record this episode
6:06 - Why relying on your degrees and experience makes you feel safe in business
7:56 - The “chasing expertise trap” and how women (and men) really get ahead in business
11:00 - Knowing this about yourself increase your personal authority, confidence, and ability to sell
13:59 - Good news if you truly want to build a scalable business
Find me on Instagram or LinkedIn or email me at hello@lesliedlyons.com.
As Mentioned In Why You Shouldn’t Equate Your Business Competence With Confidence
Unshakeable Sales Confidence waitlist
How Women Rise: Break the 12 Habits Holding You Back From Your Next Raise, Promotion, or Job by Sally Helgesen and Marshall Goldsmith
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Transcript for Why You Shouldn’t Equate Your Business Competence With Confidence
Hey boss, I am Leslie Lyons, your embodied leadership and sales coach, and this is Pleasurable Profits. This podcast is ideal for owners and leaders of tattoo shops, permanent makeup studios, cannabis businesses, movement studios, sex toy shops, and other industries that are too often left out of the leadership conversation. If you’re looking for a woo meets strategy approach to defining your strengths and values, designing a business that supports you, and creating a soul-driven, and of course, pleasurable plan for profitability, then let’s get started.
Hey boss, the moment you've been waiting for, I am opening the waitlist to my Unshakable Sales Confidence Program. It's time for you to learn how to advocate for your work so you can get paid what you deserve. Look, I'm going to help you to dismantle any misconceptions and dismantle any nasty narratives that you have around selling.
I'm going to give you the tools that you need to confidently harness and stand in your unique selling style. Some of these tools are going to be woo. I'm going to give you a heads-up now. But you know I don't play around. It's going to be chock full of strategy so that you can go out and confidently ask for the sale so that you can make more money.
It’s going to feel good. That is why I sell so easily because I only sell things that feel good to me and play into my strengths. When you know what your selling strengths are, and we combine that with the power of coming up with great selling stories, you will be unstoppable. If you know you need some help in this area, if you know that you are hesitant to pick up the phone, you're wanting to be more confident in sales conversations, this is the program for you.
You can get more info. The link will be in the show notes but it's beunshakeable.co. All right, my loves, let's jump into today's episode and I will talk to you soon.
Hey party people, it's Leslie, your embodied sales and leadership coach. What's going on, party people? I am preparing to go on my sabbatical. Yes, sabbatical. I am taking the entire month of October off, basically. I think I'm working like four days in October. The only reason that I'm working four days in October is because I didn't plan this out well. It was a sporadic thing that I came up with back over the summer and I was like, “Yeah, I'm going to do it,” but then I was at that point that I could not move.
But next year, baby, I will be taking the entire month off. I may do it in November next year. But that was the goal. That's what I've been working towards. Now I'm finally here by God's grace. How are you all doing? Are you busy? Of course, you are because you're running a small business. Well, thank you for joining me today.
Today, I want to talk about competence doesn't equal confidence. This is going to be one of those ones when you don't get a little up tight with me. I'm already preparing for you guys to send me your hate mail. Come to my door with your pitchforks, and tiki torches. I already know what's coming and I'm built for this. Don't forget, I'm in Enneagram 8, I gotta tell you all the truth.
What inspired this? Because I'm often inspired by things when I am thinking about what I wanted to talk about on this podcast and I am in a lot of circles with really smart women. Can I just say that? I mean, brilliant women, women that I'm just like, “Oh my gosh, you are so accomplished.” But what I've also seen in those spaces is that there seems to be this sense of entitlement.
There's a lot of entitlement in entrepreneurial spaces these days. It seems to be at an all time high, so you better wear a raincoat to protect yourself. What do I mean by entitlement? I mean that there's this air that my work, my degrees, my experience, somehow should speak for me and there's this undertone of bitterness, and I hear it and there are a couple of podcasts, I'm not going to even mention them because I don't want to go down that route.
But there are a couple of podcasts that really focus on this theme like “You're an expert, you should get paid a certain amount.” These people who have less experience than you, who have less credibility than you have shouldn't be making this money. But guess what, knock, knock, they are. As opposed to getting mad, because that's what it feels like, it feels like you're bitter about these people being successful, f*cking double down on what you do and learn how to advocate for your work. Let's just get it out there and in the open. Don't nobody care how many degrees you have, don't nobody care about how many experience you have, until you give them a reason to care about those things.
That's where you're selling comes in. Hello, I know you hate those words, but it's true. You got to learn to love it. I'm not here to poopoo on people with degrees and experience. As a matter of fact, I think that is the hallmark of what makes a good business owner is that you are an expert. But I need you to understand that in this competitive landscape, in this entrepreneurial landscape, that's the bottom floor. There's an expectation that you know what you're doing.
Women get very comfortable in spaces where it is about our intellect, it is about our knowledge, it allows us to insulate and it allows us to stay safe. Like I said, I understand this. I'm a woman. I'm a Black woman living in America. I know what it's like to feel the need to have to prove yourself, to come into spaces where people automatically underestimate you. I know that intimately so trust me, I'm not speaking at you, I'm speaking with you.
But I had to come up out of that. I had to get up out of that space because yes, it was very comfortable in those spaces, because it kept me safe. Safe from what? That's what you might be asking yourself. What did it keep me safe from? It kept me safe from criticism. It kept me safe from my own thoughts around failure. These are things that I have to coach clients through on a regular basis. We have to get comfortable taking risks.
There is tons of research and many books that have been written about why men who have less experience get ahead and we don't. A lot of it has to do with the fact that they aren't so focused on being experts, they're more focused on connections. Which brings me to my next point that in sales, business doesn't often go to the most qualified, it goes to the most persistent. I really need you thinking about that. What is your posture around your expertise?
There's this book that I read, and I'll link to it in the show notes, called How Women Rise. It's by Sally Helgesen. I believe it's her name, but what struck me in this book, she references these four kinds of power. She's speaking more about women in traditional corporate spaces, but I felt that it was applicable to those of us who own non-traditional businesses as well.
These four buckets of power, number one is expertise. Number two is connection. Number three is personal authority. Number four is position. Expertise is what we've been focused on. Remember what I said before, that's the barrier for injury, that's the pay that you have to get in the door, that's the ticket you play to get in the door is to be an expert, to be really good at what you do.
What that does though, and she points that out about this whole what I call an expertise trap, if you will, is that it keeps women chasing perfection, chasing “I'm going to be so invaluable in this job. I'm going to be so invaluable in what I do,” and in corporate spaces, she notes that that often works against us, and the fact that we make ourselves invaluable, and so when it comes time for promotions, your boss is like, “I can't let Suzy go. I don't want to lose Suzy because she's so valuable to our team.” What once kept you safe is now holding you back.
Number two connections that are really about relationship building. Remember earlier when I said men aren't so focused on becoming experts, they're more focused on building relationships. Because the truth of the matter is that is how we rise in all spaces. This is how we get speaking opportunities. This is how we get partnership opportunities in our community. We must make connections and women have to acquire that skill if we really want to be successful in what we're doing.
Number three is personal authority. That's really something that I want to lean into. Because in my Unshakable Confidence Program, that is what I really help people do. That is what I help women get really good at, because I know it's an area that we struggle with. It was an area that I've struggled in. I've been very candid about that in previous episodes.
When you can master personal authority, this is when you start to see gains. Personal authority is really rooted in confidence. That is what we talk about heavily in that five-week program is how you develop confidence. It's charisma, it's confidence, and it's your ability to inspire confidence in others. Guess what? It's hard as hell to inspire confidence in other people when you don't inspire confidence in yourself.
When you get personal authority, it does depend on your expertise. A part of personal authority is being an expert, but it's also the connection piece. What helps us to become stronger in personal authority, it's your presence. You have a distinctive way of speaking. How you listen, how you inspire people, just the gravitas that you have as an individual. You guys know I always say selling is an energetic game. People can feel how you feel about yourself in your product.
What helps us to increase in this area of personal authority, that confidence, it's knowing your strengths. [inaudible] this until Jesus comes back because I know it's true. You know what you do well at an instinctive level and an innate level, it is hard for people to move you. You become unshakable because you're like, “No, I know what I do well, and I know how I add value to situations. I know how I change my customers' lives, and it would be a disservice for me to keep that to myself.”
When you can switch into that type of energy, selling becomes easy, selling becomes something that's just natural. Isn't that what we want? When you say you want to make more money, you say you want to scale, but if you are the expert in your business, I just gotta tell you this, come real close to the speaker, you will own your job, and if you get sick, if Lord forbid you need to take extended periods of time off, if the business is just dependent upon your expertise, it's going to be very difficult. I'm not saying it's impossible, but I am saying it's going to be very difficult for you to step away.
This one-month sabbatical I'm taking, can you do that? If the answer is no and you desire it, because some people don't desire it. I learned this the hard way too, that some people don't desire time off and that's between you and your therapists. But if you truly want to build a business that is scalable and not just own your job, you've got to get good at this personal authority piece, which means you have to build your confidence.
Here's the good news. You've already got the foundation to it. You are an expert. You are smart. You do bring a lot to the table. Now let's work on conveying, or as you know I like to say, advocating for yourself in your business and combine that with some charisma, combine that with the ability to connect with others and your business will be unshakable and you will be unstoppable.
If you need help with this, I'm dying to help you. I literally want to see you shine. We got to f*cking kill those light dimmers so that you can be the business owner that I know you've been called to be and you can make the money that you want to make.
You need help, I need you to run, not walk, to beunshakable.co. If you need help with this, go over and get a little bit more information. Let's schedule a call and have a little bit of conversation around how I might be able to support you. Because you know what, as we go into 2023, it is my mission to help 100 women in 2023 break the revenue ceilings that you self-imposed, revenue ceilings that you've been running up against. Let's do this together. Onward and upward, my loves. Until next time. Great and peace.
Thank you for listening to today's episode. I just want to remind you that I've opened the waitlist for my Unshakable Sales Confidence Program. Head on over to beunshakable.co. If you know that you need some support around selling, specifically around mustering up the confidence to go after the money you deserve, this program is going to be for you. Jump on the list now. People who get on the list early will get access to special pricing and bonuses when I open the doors. Head on over to beunshakable.co and I will see you next week. Grace and peace.