Ep 56: Growth & Confidence: Saying Yes to Hearing No

This transcript was auto-generated and may contain errors in spelling or inaccuracies in the spoken words.

Hello and welcome to the one year anniversary episode of the Real Women Real Business podcast. I am your host, Shauna Lynn Simon. And whether you're new to the podcast or if you've been following us from the beginning, I just want to say a special thank you for being here with me. This journey has been absolutely incredible and I have my loyal listeners to thank for making this all that it's been. I can honestly say when I first started this podcast,

I couldn't even imagine what it would look like. And a year later, it's hard to believe that we've had the incredible growth that we've had, that I've had the opportunity to have some of the most amazing conversations with so many outstanding female entrepreneurs who are just kicking butt in everything that they're doing. And it's been something that's been more rewarding than I could have even imagined.

And a lot of people will start a podcast and it's, I'm not gonna lie, it's a lot of work. And I'm so thrilled to have made it to this milestone, this one year mark, and not just to have made it here, but to see the podcast really thriving the way that it is. And again, I have each and every one of you to thank for that. So sincerely, from the bottom of my heart, I know that you have a lot of choice when it comes to where you're going to consume your listening.

these days and I am so grateful that you have invited me in to be a part of your journey. I thought for today that a powerful topic that we would cover is about our fear of hearing the word no. We tend to almost protect ourselves from hearing no and that that protection that fear is actually holding us back. And so I want us to start thinking about how do we say yes to hearing no.

Stay with me on this one. So what happens when we're afraid of hearing the word no? Well, some of these might sound a little bit familiar to you. You might price yourself lower than you know you should because you think you have a better chance of getting a particular job if you price yourself lower. So you're going to under price yourself, undervalue yourself. You might tend to say yes and accommodate requests that maybe don't align with your

brand or your offerings in the way that you envision offering them. And so by making those extra accommodations, you avoid having those awkward conversations that maybe require you to say no or have someone else say no. If you're saying to them, listen, I can't do what you're asking me to do, but here's what I can do instead. And you're afraid they're going to say no to that. So instead you just say yes to whatever it is that they're asking you for. But what else does this fear of saying no hold us back from?

There is a lot of potential for missed opportunities by us being so afraid to say no to something. What is that holding us back from actually exploring? Because we're just so terrified to even ask a question. So maybe there's something that you want to do and you want to explore, but you're afraid of putting yourself out there. You're afraid of asking the right people the right questions. And we can also find ourselves in like a decision paralysis where maybe we're postponing making some important choices.

because we don't want to potentially hear a rejection. So maybe you're someone who would love to be on TV, but you've never actually pitched to be on TV. You've never actually approached a TV station about showcasing a story about a topic that you're passionate about because you're so afraid of hearing no. Maybe you want to do speaking engagements. And again, you haven't pitched yourself for that. Maybe it's just a matter of wanting to get into a higher level of clientele.

but you're too afraid to ask for. So maybe you're an interior designer, you're working in residential, but you really wanna work in hospitality, but you're so afraid to even ask people questions about even where to get started, nevermind actually going out and pitching a client and completing an RFP. So, there's a lot of things that our fear of hearing no can do to us. Probably one of the biggest ones that I've talked about previously is burnout.

When you're saying yes to everything and you're so eager to get those yeses that you're undervaluing, you're overworking yourself, what's happening to you now? You're sacrificing yourself all to avoid that little bit of discomfort. You might drop some of the professional boundaries that you know you should have, but because again, you're so afraid of hearing no from someone or getting some other form of rejection from them that you drop some of those boundaries.

such as saying, I don't want you texting me at nine o'clock on a Friday night because that's my family time. And what does that do to your own mental health? Over time, your self-worth can be compromised because of this. Your confidence can be compromised because of this. And I know that sounds like an oxymoron because you're probably thinking, well, my confidence is gonna be shattered if I hear no. So if I hear yes, is that actually helps to boost my confidence, doesn't it?

not if it leads to burnout and resentment and overworking and getting underpaid, right? So I don't want you to settle for less than ideal clients or projects. I don't want you to miss opportunities. I don't want you to resist innovation and potentially lose out on some of that creativity and that innovation that because you're afraid to pitch new ideas to someone that you work with, to a potential client or whatever.

And the fact the matter is that as human beings, we will do a lot to avoid discomfort, right? This has been proven that we will do a lot to avoid pain as long as we can feel comfortable. We like those warm, fuzzy, cozy feelings. It's one of the reasons why we like to eat our comfort foods. We like to snuggle up in front of a fireplace. We value shelter. We value good company, safe company.

These are all things that we seek out because we want to feel comfortable and we will do a lot to avoid discomfort and pain. How many times have you procrastinated on doing something that you just know is just not going to be any fun? Well, the same thing happens when it comes to hearing the word no or receiving any sort of negative feedback. There's a bit of a discomfort when it comes to feedback. And I was reflecting recently back on when I started my

first company, which was my home staging business, because I was speaking with a client and I asked her to go out and do some market research and I wanted her to interview some of her past clients. No problem. She said, I want you to talk to your clients and understand what it is that they really valued about working with you, how you really help them. What problem did you solve? No problem. She's on board. Okay. Now I also would love for you to pull up some of those people that you had those initial conversations with that didn't move forward.

And she froze, kind of paralyzed. And I could see by the look on her face that she was absolutely terrified at this thought. She was so afraid to speak to the people who said no. Why? Because she didn't know what they were going to say. There's this fear of the unknown, For some, know, they might have said that they said no because the timing wasn't right, the money wasn't right, other circumstances in their life, whatever.

But the idea of doing a market research call where you've got to dig into some of those reasons and identify like, was there anything else that she could have done to get them to say yes? And was there anything that she said or did that made them feel like it wasn't the right fit for them? All of this translates in her mind to potentially negative feedback. So I remember when I started my home staging business and I knew I needed feedback. I knew that I needed to collect this information. And so

with every single client that I had, even if it was just a consultation that I did with them, once their property had sold, I sent them a survey. And I started doing this pretty much from day one in my company. And every time I sent out one of those surveys, I would get a little bit of anxiety at the thought of getting a response. And I can remember when my email would tell me that there was a new response to that survey that I was sending out. And I would just go into a panic mode before I opened it up.

because I was so terrified. Like, what if they didn't like me? What if they say that everything that I did was terrible? What if they thought I was mean to them? What if they say something mean about me? I asked them to give a rating on something like on a scale of one to 10. What if they rate me as like a one at the bottom? You know, how am going to feel about that? Here's what I learned over time. I loved the positive reviews. Of course I did. You know, that instant dose of dopamine that you get, that feels so good, right?

But I didn't learn nearly as much from the positive reviews as I did from the negative ones. And let's be honest here. My negative feedback was not that negative, but I asked them for honest feedback. I made sure that I structured the survey that I sent out so that I wasn't just leading them to a positive answer. This is not on Google. This is not on Yelp. This is not on anywhere that there's an actual rating system. This is simply an internal survey that I sent out.

that I wanted to get honest feedback on. So I wanted them to tell me, was there anything big or small that was a part of the process that you didn't enjoy? And a lot of times, again, because this was a home staging business, what did they not enjoy? Well, they didn't enjoy actually prepping the house to get it ready for the sale. Or they didn't enjoy hearing about the things that they needed to improve on. Or they didn't enjoy spending the money to update a house that they're selling.

None of that was a negative reflection on me. But here's what it did do. It provided me with valuable insights into what the real problems and challenges faced by my clients were. And so it gave me an opportunity to then identify are there ways that I can structure my services to make these negative parts easier for my clients. I can't completely eliminate them necessarily, but helping to...

better set up expectations, provide additional supports during some of this transition process. You know, what else can I do to make that experience so great that they're just raving about it? Even the negative parts don't sit that negatively with them. And so this negative feedback that I got helped me to shape the business into the award winning, incredibly successful business that it was. And so I want you to think about that.

What are you doing right now that you are avoiding that discomfort? I will say this too, that if you are in a place where maybe you're having a really bad week, you feel like you've been beat up. We've all had those weeks, right? Where, you know, your spouse is angry with you, the kids seem to hate you, your client got upset about something. It just feels as though every time you turn around, someone has something negative to say.

So in those weeks, I can understand maybe wanting to avoid some of the potential negative feedback and wanting some feel good moments. And that's okay. But again, we can't live in that. If we're only living in the positive moments, we're missing out on potential improvements that we can be making. And some of my best innovations and ideas for my businesses and for the trajectory that I've taken them on have come from real, honest client feedback.

So myself recently, I had a client from my design business who had expressed some feedback to me that I was so grateful to receive. It wasn't overly positive necessarily. It was a particular area of the work that didn't sit as well with them as it should have. And they wanted to reach out to me to provide that feedback. It was just a couple of months after the project had completed. And I so appreciated that. And I responded back to them, let them know how much I appreciated it.

But I also knew that ideally a phone call was in order. And I'll admit, I put off that phone call for a little bit for exactly this reason. I wanted to avoid the discomfort. But let me tell you, once I did make that phone call, I had hyped that thing up in my head. I had anxiety about it for like two weeks before I made the call. And once I made that phone call, you know what? It actually went really well. And it helped me to be a better business leader.

to be a stronger CEO, to be able to better serve my clients, what's that worth to you? Is that worth a little bit of discomfort? So let's talk about some of the science behind why we avoid hearing the word no. This is actually something that goes into our, we've got a neurological response here. So the brain tends to process rejection similarly to physical pain. This was actually,

a UCLA research study that was done that identified that your brain actually processes rejection similarly to physical pain. And we'll do pretty much anything to avoid physical pain, right? So it's the same anterior cingulate cortex that's activated for both your physical pain and any sort of social rejection. And so our primitive brain interprets that rejection as like a survival threat. So this is deeply embedded into our systems.

which is why we need to make a conscious effort to be able to overcome it. So when you can recognize what's happening and be able to tell yourself like, listen, you're safe. No one's going to hurt you here. It's not going to actually be a physical pain to you. It might be a little uncomfortable, but the benefits of it far outweigh the negative aspects of it. So let's just get through it. And the best way through something is through something. You got to get through it. So our fear of rejection tends to stem stem actually from our evolutionary need to belong to a group.

Which is not surprising. I mean, look at what we do to seek that socialization, that those social standings and the social groups between the social media that we have nowadays to the individual interactions that we have with with friends and family and colleagues. We want to feel like we belong. We want to be a part of something that's bigger than us, and we want that acceptance. So that is something that is embedded deeply into us. But in addition to that,

You know, we all grow, we are all on this journey of life and we've all had various experiences in our past. And perhaps you've had some past experiences of rejection that have stayed with you. And these actually create these neural pathways that amplify the future fear of something. Right. It's sort of like if you, you know, fell down the stairs and broke your arm, you're going to be a little bit more leery when you're going down the stairs going forward. Right. There's almost this fear of doing that.

It's going to be similar with rejection. When you've received some sort of rejection that's really impacted you, that's laid heavily on your mind and on your heart, then you're going to be less inclined to want to experience that again. And so you'll go to all efforts to avoid it. And the problem is that we're sort of associating all rejection together and not looking at all the benefits of it. So the amygdala, that fear center becomes like hyperactive when we're anticipating rejection.

But the best way to calm that down is to plow forward because we're going to be sitting in that fear otherwise for way longer than we should and then we need to. So I want to provide some tips for overcoming that fear of hearing the word no, because let me tell you what hearing no looks like. Hearing no looks like raised prices, for example. Let's say your services cost three thousand dollars.

and you're going to raise the price to $4,000 at $3,000. Everybody's saying yes. Now at $4,000, you're probably going to hear some no's, but who's going to say no to you? The people who don't value you, the people who are looking for a budget friendly option. That's not you. The people that might cause the most challenges on whatever that project or service is that you offer. So now if we hear a few no's, but we've raised the prices.

We're probably going to end up making at least the same amount of money, but working less and not dealing with those difficult people. So where was the downside to hearing that? No, you know, I know that oftentimes we're afraid of hearing no, especially from loyal clients when we raise our prices and amusing raising prices as a great example, because I think it's one that we can all relate to as a common fear in terms of that. No, but I can tell you I've worked with so many clients.

where we've worked to raise their prices. We do this strategically. Like it's not just on a whim. You don't just look at your price and say, well, I was charging $3000 yesterday. I'm going to charge $4000 tomorrow. That's not necessarily the thought process that goes into it. But I have worked strategically with my clients. We identify what their pricing structure actually needs to be in order to maintain profitability, in order to propel growth. But not only that, but to reflect their value. We really dig into, you know, where is your value and where should we repricing you?

And so once we have that clear, it's so much easier to stand by your pricing. And you know what happens? I can't tell you the number of messages that I get from my clients who say, my gosh, I just pitched a new client at my new pricing and they said yes. And this client is my ideal client. They check all the boxes. I can't wait to work with them. I'm so excited for this project. How does that sound? Is that worth hearing?

potentially no. And I know what you're thinking too, but what if that client comes to you like they're my ideal client and I really want them to say yes and now I'm to raise my prices and I'm terrified they're going to say no. And you know what? They might say no. And that sucks. That's a whole other conversation for a whole other day when we talk about pricing. But the shortest answer is that you can go back to them and see about reducing the scope of work if that's an option for you in order to meet their price point or

get them to understand the value better to be able to come up to the budget that you've set out for them. But again, that's a conversation for another day. So let's cover some quick tips for overcoming this fear of hearing the word no. The first thing is I want you to view a no as information, not rejection. So train in your mind. So before you go somewhere, like let's say you are going to do some market research with someone who said no to you.

Or maybe you're going to ask for something that you know is a bit of a big ask and someone might say no, you're going to treat it as information. So if they say no, what information can you gain from that? What data are you collecting? Perhaps they can explain to you why they're saying no. What is it that's turning them off? How can you restructure things? How could you have potentially gotten a yes from them? That is valuable. If everyone's always saying yes to you, you don't know why they're saying yes to you. I worked with a business coach years ago when I was first starting out my business.

I worked with many coaches, to be honest, over the years, but this was one of the first coaches I worked with. And he said to me, you you've experienced this incredible success in your business. How did you get this success? And I'll be honest, I had in my first couple of years of business, I had next to no sales and I a couple of years in, I shut down the business, I rebranded it, I relaunched it. I've told the story on this podcast previously, so I'm not going to get into all the details of it. But what I will say is that when I relaunched the business, my goal was to double

my previous year sales and I did five times the previous year sales instead. And at the time, I knew I had made certain changes, but I didn't understand why they worked. It wasn't until speaking with this coach when he said, why is it that people hire you? Why have you had the successes that you've had? And I was like, I don't, I don't really know. And so that's when my journey into market research began. I started asking my clients.

why they were hiring me, what they liked about working with me and really digging in deeper. And again, I already had this survey that I was sending out, but I added to it to get a little bit more information about why they chose me in the first place, why they said yes in the first place. But again, why they say no is just as valuable. So if you don't understand why people are saying yes, then you're also not going to understand why they're saying no. Right. It's easy to say, well, they weren't my client and it wasn't priced right or whatever.

But asking those questions actually helps to provide better information than the speculation that you might come up with. Keeping in mind as well that each no brings you closer to yes. So if you talk to any salesperson, especially someone who's done cold calling or knocked on doors or telemarketing or anything like that, they will tell you that no is a part of the process. And so they might make, 100 calls and 10 percent of them are going to say yes.

So that means that they have to get through 90 nos to get the 10 yeses. So every time they get a no, great, chalk it up to one step closer to getting a yes. That's one down, 89 to go before I get my 10 yeses, right? So each no brings you closer to yes. And then track your nos as proof of taking action. If you are not already tracking your sales leads, your pipeline,

your lead generation, your conversations that you're having, which ones are converting, which ones aren't, then you are missing out on some really important data. But in addition to that, if you look at this as a measurement of your productivity, a measurement of your growth, every no means that you took an action. So it might not be technically moving the needle on your business, but behind the scenes it is. It is helping you.

So go out and get those no's because that's what you need in order to get your yeses. So how do you get yourself desensitized to hearing no? You might start with like a low stakes situation. What is something where you know someone's probably going to say no, but it's really not going to hurt you. So maybe it's a matter of something like going to your local Starbucks and asking if you can get two for one deal. They're probably not going to give that to you, right?

I mean, you never know, never hurts to ask, right? But start with something that's very low stakes where like, what is it really going to do to you if you you ask them for this? Even better, instead of going to your local Starbucks, go to one you've never been to and you'll never go to again. Your chances of knowing anyone there or ever having to face them again is pretty slim, right? Or go to any other coffee shop. Just be kind and polite about it, of course. Maybe you set a weekly no goal. I love this one. If you say to yourself, I'm going to aim to hear the word no at least 10 times.

What does that look like? If you can get more people to come into your business or on the phone. So maybe it's a matter of like, you're going to do some cold calling yourself and yeah, you want every call to translate into a sale, but that's just not realistic. So start off with some of the people perhaps that you aren't as optimistic about or aren't just eager to work with and start with them first. Practice your pitch. Get a little bit more comfortable with it. Get those knows.

And you never know, you just might get a yes or two in there, right? So set a weekly no goal. How many nos do I want to hear this week? If you are sending out 10 pitches of let's say it's this $3,000 offer that you have here, if you're sending out 10 of them and your goal is to get 10 yeses, well, that might sound great. Sure. That's what $30,000? Fantastic. But what if say only eight of them say yes, but you're at $4,000?

Wait a minute, if my math works out correctly, isn't that $32,000? Well, didn't I just make more money, but I got two no's in there? You see where there's value here? Again, I'm using the pricing as an option, but I don't want you to associate that every no has to be about pricing. I think that just tends to be one of our most common associations with it. So maybe your weekly goal to hear no is not just about putting out actual bids, but it could be in other ways as well.

What are some things that you want to try to build up? Maybe it's a new partnership that you want to build. Maybe it's something that you want to add to your business. Maybe it's a software program that you want to get, but you want to get a discount on it. You know, take a look at what else you could you could try to get. And maybe you're going to hear, no, maybe maybe you're not. You go online and you see this great software. You know it's going to be game changing for your business, but the pricing of it isn't great. But you're like, well, it's just an online sign up. I don't think I can get any additional options. What if you message them?

For all you know, they've got a promo going on saying, oh, actually, if you pay for the first two months, we're going to give you another two months for free. Does that make it more worthwhile for you to take it? So setting this weekly no goal will have you potentially negotiate and asking questions that you wouldn't have thought of previously. So celebrate each one of those no's as growth. And then there's power positioning too. So creating some scarcity in your offerings will make it that much easier for you to hear no, because you can't take on everyone. So that $3,000 offer,

Maybe you're doubling the price at $6,000 and you've you've added an exclusivity to it. So you can't take everyone. So you want to be strategic. So you're creating that scarcity of like, listen, I can only take on a few people for this because it's so time consuming. So now I've really raised the price on it and they're going to say no sometimes. But that allows you to offer that exclusivity to someone else. Stand firm in your pricing no matter what. Like I said, if someone comes back to you and says no.

It doesn't mean that you can't negotiate further by reducing the scope, but you're not going to say, oh, okay, you don't want to pay $4,000. That's okay. I can do it for $3,000. I actually went to my local farmers market with my mom on the weekend and the farmers market opens like crazy early in the morning, which you would think I would be the first one there because as everyone knows, I am definitely a member of the 5 a.m. more like the 4 a.m. club. I love my mornings. I love getting up and starting my day early.

But I told my mom, no, we're not going to go until around two o'clock. The reason is they closed at around three thirty. So what do you think happens at the farmers market around two o'clock? They end up discounting a lot of their prices and you can negotiate. So they might be offering like, buy four for ten. And I might say, well, actually, how about I get five for ten? No problem. They negotiate it. Now, I wouldn't try that at seven a.m. because I don't want to take those sales away at the end of the day.

They need to get rid of these items. This is fresh produce that they have that they need to get rid of because it's not going to last. And so they would rather make some money than no money. So I'm still doing them a favor. Now, I take a risk at going at the end of the day that they might be sold out of some things and that's okay with me. But I know that that's where my negotiating power is going to come in. For yourself, if someone is asking you to do a lower price,

I want you to stand firm in your pricing and reduce the scope. So if I had gone to the farmers market at 7 a.m. and said I want them to do better on the price, they're going to look at me like I had to, had to say no way. We've got a full day ahead of us here. We have no reason. There's no reason for them to reduce their pricing, just like there's no reason for you to reduce your pricing. So stand firm in your pricing, potentially offer to reduce the scope of work in order to meet their budget or reiterate your value to get them to come up.

And then use like if then statements instead of yes, no questions. So if someone's saying no to you, asking them if we were to do this, then would that allow you to move forward with this instead of saying, do you want this? Yes or no. Right. So using some of those if then statements.

And then the last thing that I want to talk about when it comes to getting more comfortable with hearing those notes is just the overall mindset shift. This does take time. So give yourself some grace if you're not perfect at it at first. And like I said, as much as I know this, I found myself recently in a situation where I was avoiding some discomfort because it's just a natural instinct that we have. But I want you to think about a few things to remind yourself of every time you are approaching a situation where you might hear no.

The first is to remember that no is often more about timing than your worth. Okay, so maybe the timing isn't quite right for them. Maybe they're struggling financially in some reason, but it doesn't necessarily mean that you're not worth it. So remember that. Focus on the learning opportunity of that rejection. We spoke about this earlier. Focus on that learning opportunity. And then here's one of my favorite ones. Keep a wins folder of some sort to balance out rejection experiences.

One of the my favorite things to do actually came from the book The Gap and the Gain and it talks about living in the gain rather than the gap. So instead of focusing on what didn't go well today or what's going wrong in my life, you're focusing on all the things that are working. So one of the things that they suggest and that I do and I've done with my clients as well is keep a wins journal. So at the end of the day, I want you to write down three wins for the day.

And that will help you, especially on days where you've had some rejection, that will help you to keep it boosted. I've definitely had some challenging days in the last several months that it feels as though there's this huge weight on me when I'm going to bed. And there's been a variety of things, both personally and professionally, that I've been up against that have caused some of this. But maintaining that wind's journal means that I go to sleep peaceful. I go to sleep on a high. I go to sleep remembering and realizing

my true worth because your worth is not defined by the things that people are saying no to you about. Your worth is defined by the people who are saying yes to you. Those are the people you are serving. Those are the things that really matter and really count at the end of the day. So if what I'm saying here is resonating with you, you're like, yes, I need to hear more no's, but I need more support. Let's hop on a call.

Let's chat. I'd love to have a call with you in order to identify maybe where some of these fears are coming from. I've got some great tools and resources that I can connect you with in order to help you to be able to move forward. If you want to book a call, simply go to aboutshaunalynn.com/successsession We can chat. We can review the challenges that you're facing, where you're hitting some of those blocks, where you're hitting some of those rejection blocks and create a path for you to move forward.

All of the resources that I've mentioned in today's show, of course, will be shared in the show notes. So be sure to head on over there and check it out, including that link to book a call that I just mentioned. You can grab that there as well. And I just want to say thank you again to everyone, not only for tuning in today, but for joining me on this journey and allowing me to be a part of yours. It truly is an honor that you have opened up your mind and your heart to allow me to come in and share some of my thoughts and insights with you, as well as learn from you all at the same time. So thank you.

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women supporting women, please share this episode with someone that you know can really benefit from hearing this today. And until next time, as always, keep thriving.