0:00:00 - Michelle Pualani
Today's episode is all about authentic selling and marketing, with a very special guest, emily Fisher. She's the founder of Aligned CEO, a mindset and business development coach, and here's the thing that I love about Emily. So, when we were prepping for this interview, she is not only incredibly enthusiastic, but very, very down to earth, and currently, if you can't see her right now, she's also surrounded by plants, so I feel like that makes a lot of sense. Her vibe is cool, calm, collected, and we're today going to get into how you can embody authenticity, and Emily radiates it. So she's going to be an excellent source to have this discussion. And before we get started, welcome Emily. Thank you so much for coming on the show. We're very happy to have you here.
0:00:46 - Emily Fisher
Thanks, so much for having me on. I'm really looking forward to this.
0:00:49 - Michelle Pualani
To get started, I really wanted to start off with how our prep call actually ended. So, before we dive into authentic selling marketing and your experience and background, when I asked you how you prioritize yourself which is really a huge platform for this show and this podcast you had a really powerful story to share. I feel like we didn't get enough time to really dive into it and I wanted our listeners to get to know you a little bit more. Again, before we get into the background, before we start talking about some of the nitty gritties of selling marketing how you show up authentically in the online space can you start by sharing your journey with us and how it's really impacted your business and how you prioritize yourself and where that comes from?
0:01:33 - Emily Fisher
So you're probably referring to what we started getting into with my near-death experience and what we started to talk about. That I'd love to share about in regards to taking care of ourselves first is what I learned at age 25. I was 25 years old. I had kind of a freak accident that ended up almost taking my life. I had a near-death experience where, essentially, I had the option to either die or come back. In that moment that's how the experience was the choice for me, and I made the choice to come back to earth. It felt like I had unfinished business, that I wanted to continue living, but really what it came out of was this newfound appreciation for my body as something that I get to take care of during this lifetime and that I get to use in order to experience the human experience.
And I know that's kind of an odd perspective. That might be kind of hard to understand off the bat, but what has happened for me is it's deepened how I look at everything in my life. I don't get stressed out about things that I used to get stressed out about. I don't allow people to have the same impact on me that I used to allow them to have. And when it comes to self-care. When it comes to prioritizing myself, I've become a lot more unapologetic about putting myself first and leaving space for that win-win scenario. So, yes, I get to have everything I want, I get to have the self-care, I get to do all these great things, and there's that win-win that I also get to have a massive impact. I get to be authentic. I get to have this really beautiful expression of my work in the world. Rather than approaching anything from an either-or or this place of self-sacrifice, I've really pushed myself to always go for that win-win. Everybody gets to kind of come out on top.
0:03:07 - Michelle Pualani
Yeah, absolutely amazing. I just think that the impact of having that experience at such a young age, essentially in your mid-20s, really reframes the rest of your life and your choices. So a little bit more of what you shared with me was experiencing some burnout in the corporate world as well. You'd reach this high level of success. Can you tell us a little bit about your background in that space, what you experienced and what happened as a result of that?
0:03:33 - Emily Fisher
This is actually. I'm so glad you brought this up too. This is one of my favorite authenticity Instagram versus reality kind of moments, because after this head injury, that was my near-death experience I was really sick, so I left entrepreneurship. I got a job with health care benefits, the whole thing, but I was really in a bad place. I worked my butt off out of this need, honestly at that time, to not rest. I really didn't have a good relationship with rest. I didn't have a good relationship with prioritizing myself. I was very like hustle kind of oriented.
Well, what happened the good-looking version of that was that I grew my career incredibly quickly. I hit multiple six figures. I had a corner office in Irvine, california, like I got to fly all over the country to do like really cool work. So it looked really cool from the outside. On the inside, I was burned out, I was miserable and I hadn't taken care of myself for the past two years while I was doing that. That was another huge lesson. That it's not that I didn't have the skills to do those things. It's not that that was not something that I had to prove to myself right, but I could have done it in a way that wasn't at the detriment or the sacrifice of my body along the way as well.
I see that a lot, though, too and that's another thing I'd like to say is there's so many people in corporate America that many people compare themselves to and they say, wow, she's killing it. That person's amazing, she's at the top of her game. Well, that person also, a lot of times, is burnt out. They're sacrificing their own health.
I remember I was in the ER several times in one month before I left my corporate job. Literally, it was like three or four times in a single month, and one of the doctors finally was like look, you're going to die if you don't leave your job. And they just pulled me aside and said that to me in my face. Yeah, they're like, you are going to die if you don't quit what you're doing right now, and that was such a wake up call. Having had that near death experience, that felt like a second chance at life. I was like what am I doing? Why would I sacrifice this chance I've been given to do something I dislike? For what, right? And so that was a huge part of that journey as well, even though I had gotten that really powerful and impactful experience, the first time, having a reminder that was so kind of like in my face was needed.
0:05:38 - Joanna Newton
Something I think that we can really easily forget is we are who we are in any job, and what I mean by that is someone will be in a stressful job experience. That doctor said if you don't leave your job, these things are going to happen to you. If you were to leave and get a new job and you're still yourself, you're still going to bring those habits the not taking care of yourself probably anywhere that you actually go in that space. And so one of the things I think is so important for people, if they're burnt out, if maybe they're seeing success in one area of their life but neglecting another, they're going to have to change those internal habits, have some sort of wake up call If they're going to be different in their next, either employment or as an entrepreneur or whatever it is. If you don't take care of yourself in one job, you're likely not going to in another unless you have an internal mindset change.
0:06:33 - Emily Fisher
One thing I'll add on to that, too, is that that works to both the positive and the negative right. One thing that I like to say is that your Dharma isn't what you do, it's who you are, and so I think that what you're saying is, if you're trying to move from one situation to another to get a different result, that's really it's not necessarily the situation, like, yeah, it'll change a little bit, but a lot of times it's who you are and the practices you have, both to the positives you're getting and the hard parts of what the experiences you're having. Right? So no, that's so true.
0:07:03 - Joanna Newton
Definitely, and today we're going to talk a lot about selling and sales and selling authentically, and we know you have a background in project management, working with startups, but you've also had some success in sales before you transitioned to being an entrepreneur. Can you talk a little bit about that?
0:07:23 - Emily Fisher
Sales has been a part of my life forever. I was one of those kids that was very entrepreneurial. So I was like five years old collecting golf balls and selling them on the side of the road and I was like I'm not going to be a entrepreneur. You know, like I've always kind of had that in me to some degree. I've always had some sales role. No matter what job I choose, I get pulled towards it. I think I just enjoy sales a lot too, really Like I have always enjoyed the conversation. I think it's very fun, I like a lot of elements of it and it also is just something I'm naturally been very good at. So, as far as my experience goes, when I was a teenager and I'd work at the movie theater, they would always put me in concessions. Right, they're going to buy, but in concessions there's a lot of room for upsells and you know different opportunities. And I'll never forget a very short story One time we were trying to clear out these nacho cheese cups.
They were phasing them out of the theater that I was working at and it's just a side of melted cheese, right, and they were like we're selling one of these a month. Whoever can sell like one a day for a week or something like that wins a prize. And I was like, okay, cool, let's do this, this is fun. And I sold like 25 a day or some like outrageous number and it was just this fun game Like customers honestly gave me a lot of good feedback about like you're so enthusiastic, right, like this made it a lot more fun. They're doing their in their popcorn, they're doing with their hot dogs, like whatever. It doesn't matter. There was always some sales component to every job I've ever had. I've also had jobs that are more primarily focused on sales and that has been a great learning experience. Sometimes there's a lot more pressure in that role, but it's just kind of the same across the board, honestly.
0:08:52 - Michelle Pualani
I love that story. It really pinpoints how you approach sales is exactly what sales is going to be. Sales is not this objective thing that we have to fear or be worried about or self-conscious about Really, the attachments, the belief systems and the ways in which we're perceiving sales that's what we make it out to be in the world. I'm loving this really beautiful storyline of yours. Coming from this personal experience, this very dramatic kind of like potential life-ending thing. I've never had anything happen like that for me, but I've heard stories about it and I know that it can be this huge point in time in which you make different decisions. Then you go back to the corporate world. You experience the burnout. You once again realize I can't keep doing this. I feel like things have been pushing you toward entrepreneurship, toward having a larger impact, toward sharing your story and doing something more meaningful. The way in which you have shifted the mindset, shifted the perspective around. That really encapsulates what you're bringing to the table and how you show up. How we show up is our sales, it is our marketing. That's a lot of what we're going to discuss today.
In that term One throws it around being authentic, thinking about your storyline in terms of transitioning from corporate world, from sales, from startups. You became a full-time business owner. Can you tell us a little bit about what that transition was like for you, because I know for some people that can be really challenging. It can be hard to take that leap, it can be daunting, or maybe someone who's listening right now is thinking about it, but they're afraid that they don't have the security. Whatever it is, we all have our own storylines. I just would love to hear your storyline of what that looked like in your transition to entrepreneurship.
0:10:37 - Emily Fisher
One thing I never had connected the dots that it was all pushing me towards entrepreneurship. So I'm glad that you actually said that, because, yeah, you're totally right, that's so funny. Yeah, no, it's definitely always been who I am. I think that I had always convinced myself that it wasn't a viable option and that it was too hard or too much work or whatever. That was only for some people, but not for me. That was a lot of the internal dialogue I had around it.
The transition itself was actually really difficult for me. In a weird way. I was ready to leave my job. This is that project management job. I'd worked my way up, totally burned out. The doctor said I was going to die if I didn't leave and I was like, okay, I wanted to start my business. For a long time I am naturally a coach. I've always wanted to do that. I'm just going to do it and I finally worked up the courage.
I put in my two weeks notice and I'm not kidding you, it was within a few days I got a message on LinkedIn from a recruiter from my literal dream startup job doing business development for significantly more than I was being paid. It was one of those temptations, and I hear this so often from people that when you finally get the courage to take a big leap, there will be some temptation. Well, I took it. I was so scared still, that I ended up taking that job. It didn't work out, but what happened was the CEO actually came to me and was like you're an entrepreneur, he's an entrepreneur, right, he's a business startup, multi-million dollar startup, very, very successful guy. It was cool. He sat me down and he was like you're an entrepreneur, you need to get out of here. So he actually fired me with a severance that allowed me to start my business. So now it gets weirder, right? So I am now jobless. That was crazy, that was fun, whatever.
But now I start my business and I'm putting myself out there. I'm starting to take these steps. Then I get picked up by a major brand. This is within three months of me starting to put myself out there as a coach. A major brand picks me up and says hey, we want you to be our pro coach. Now I'm going on webinars in front of hundreds of thousands of people. We're selling a high ticket program where I'm being touted as this pro coach that I have all the answers. We're doing like a media circuit, a promotion circuit.
It just went from zero to 100 so quick and, honestly, that imposter syndrome, all of the doubts, all the fears, were still so present for me that I just didn't respond to it. Well, this was also during COVID, by the way, all of this. So my start to business was a really rocky road, but not in the way that it was really slow, and it's funny because a lot of people struggle with it being kind of slow to pick up and a lot of times I sell them that, honestly, that might be a huge blessing in disguise, because you're talking to a smaller audience while you're figuring things out, you're doing smaller calls, you're teaching programs to fewer people while you're getting your feet under you, rather than going from that zero to massive publicity, which honestly freaked me out so badly that I kind of had to just push back for a little bit and even though things were growing, it was too much To answer your question. It was all of those things. There was the self-doubt, there was all of these pushes from the universe, there was all of the support, but then there also was a lot of me not being able to handle it at that point and really having to take a step back in order to get my mindset under control.
I'm really grateful for the way it went, and it was a very rocky road, so my big takeaway from that being that, yeah, all that imposter syndrome was there.
All of the fears were there and rather than being able to work through them slowly and kind of build up into it which is more of what I've done over the past year where I really have taken my time I've embraced that authenticity to where I'm not putting myself out there as larger than life or larger than where I'm at. I've been a lot more real, circling all the way back. This is a much stronger foundation for me to show up and say like, hey, this is where I'm at right. Like I tell people all the time like heck, yeah, I'm scared. I did a webinar last night and a couple people jumped on and they were talking about how they would never do something like that and I was like, don't get me wrong, I would have cried if no one showed up and then I would have gone to work on my marketing, right? Like that's what we did. It's not that those things aren't there, it's not that they don't happen, they just are part of this whole journey and part of this whole process.
0:14:22 - Joanna Newton
That's super interesting and I work with business owners every day who are at all different stages of their journey. And there is some benefit in that waiting to see success right, because you can build the systems, you can build the processes, you can present on a small stage and then present on a big stage. But then there's also some of times, those opportunities that you just have to, like, grab hold of and say I'm just going to do it and roll with it and I'll have to build and figure out the systems afterwards, right, because you're just thrown into that situation. And in a past life, when I was like in high school, college, a little bit after college, I was in theater and one of the things that makes me think of when you're an audition.
You go to an audition, you might be thinking you're auditioning for one character and then the directors have a different mind of who you are and they're like oh, you have to just go be this character. You have this moment where you're like I've never done anything like that, I've never done an accent like that before, I've never played a role like that. It almost feels like a switch goes on and you just have to hit that level and just go for it and almost not care if it's good or if it's you're just like. I have to do this, I have to do it now, but if I don't go for it, I'm definitely not getting it. There's that moment. You have to have that switch in your mind.
0:15:47 - Emily Fisher
Absolutely, and the one thing that you said that I've really have gotten a lot of value of, too, is that it's not necessarily not caring right, but that detachment is how I've come to think of it. It's like being committed but not attached to an outcome. Now I'm committed to getting something done but, honestly, if it doesn't happen, it's not the end of the world, it doesn't mean anything about me. I think that's a huge mindset shift. When we all start out and we have a failed launch, which is going to happen to everyone, it can mean so much like oh gosh, I shouldn't be doing this. Do I even know what I'm talking about? Yada, yada, yada. There is that attachment to an outcome versus just being like man. I'm committed to doing my best. I'm committed to launching this product to the best of my ability. There's so much more freedom in that. Like what you're saying too. You know, maybe you didn't get the leading role, but if you nail that other role, that's still going to open up more opportunities for you and you'll have fun.
0:16:35 - Joanna Newton
And think that people have a super complicated relationship with putting themselves out there, whether that's a presentation, an audition, a sales call, a sales relationship. It's really complicated, likely because what you're talking about people being so tied to the outcome they're worried the whole time will I get the sale? I know when I've interviewed for jobs and several times in my life I was a lot more successful getting job offers when I wasn't desperate for money. When I'm like, not, I just need money, I need to get this job. When it was like I have a job but I want something better, different, whatever it is, I came into it with so much more confidence.
And one thing I hear from people that when they have this complicated relationship with selling a product, selling themselves, whatever it is, they can really doubt themselves. They don't think people want to buy from them. They think that maybe it's not worth the price that they're offering. They want to just give everything away for free. They want to know how they can actually sell and make sales more easily. Can you describe your relationship with sales and what makes it so easy for you?
0:17:47 - Emily Fisher
Well, and you're totally nailing it. Another thing that I loved how you said that was and one way that I explain sales to people is that there's often an area of your life where it's really easy for you to be yourself, to be confident, to be unattached, almost always an area of your life where you just shine naturally, and what we do is then when we try to translate that over into another area, we get really weird about it. So for me, for example, with sales and like relationships as another one, relationships I am very like take me or leave me, I do not care what you think. Dating for me was so much fun, honestly, because I'm like I'm just here for a good time and like you know what you're going to have your own experience, whatever, and so that's the kind of energy in the sales relationship is very magnetic because they're not attached, they're not trying to convince you. The energy of being convinced is very different than the energy of like collaborating and playing and having fun, and naturally for me, going into a sales relationship, it's always had that playfulness. Here's something to think about with sales. It will make it a lot easier for you. You're not convincing anyone of anything.
People love buying stuff. Okay, what you're trying to do is see if it's a good fit. So you're trying to understand what it is that they want, or what they're looking for, or what they need because they already want to spend money in order to have more entertainment and enjoyment, solve a problem. They feel like they're having or do something to better their lives, like they already want to spend money on that. So if what you have fills into one of those categories for that person, you're not selling them anything. All you're doing is showing them how to buy it.
And I think that that non-attachment and also that understanding of human needs and human psychology is what makes it so easy, because I can go up to any person on the street if I have a product to sell, say, hey, what are you looking for in this area? And if they have described something completely different than what I'm selling, a lot of the time it's going to be like ah, this might not be a fit, here's what I'm selling. Do you see that for yourself? And then they can kind of self-select, right, but there's no attachment, there's no dedication to them responding a certain way. Another thing that people get really hung up on is money, but I think that we as salespeople sometimes get in our own way when we think about taking money from someone or charging and whether our pricing you know that whole conversation and that's kind of a whole nother arena where we overthink something that's really not our choice.
0:19:57 - Michelle Pualani
There's a couple of things that are coming up for me. One is that when I was first getting started in the online space, I made the sales of my products and programs a reflection of my enoughness. I made it about me Exactly what you're saying. I did almost everything textbook wrong. I put my value in the products and programs that I was creating and then, when it didn't have traction in certain settings, I made that a reflection of I'm not good enough, even so much as like I'm not pretty enough, I don't look the right way, they're not wanting to spend time with me, like it was all about me, me, me, me, me. And it was very egocentric and it was very focused on what I was doing wrong or what could I do differently, or all of these things. When really shifting that perspective on sales right, because, remember, the way in which you approach sales is how it's going to be. It's subjective to you. It's not objective when you're treating it that way.
So all of these experiences really led me down this negative path of not making sales because I was super attached to the outcome.
I was investing myself, my value and who I was as a person in those products and programs when really there was a huge separation. There's a huge separation between you as a human being, you as a self, and your business. There's a separation between you as a human being and yourself versus your sales, your products, your programs and what you're delivering on. And I think the sooner we can make that disconnect, the more intentionally we can approach our sales, we can approach our marketing and we can approach our businesses with clear, intentional actions, choices. Let the numbers and the data drive decisions as opposed to emotional reactions. Now, of course, not intuition, because intuition is important. Not let yourself be driven by these emotional reactions to how people are responding to you. So, when people are really thinking about this sales process, when they're approaching their presentation or whatever that looks like selling in general, whether that's a physical product, whether that's a service, whether that's themselves in any setting, where do they typically go wrong and how does their viewpoint on finances impact that experience of selling?
0:22:14 - Emily Fisher
as well. There are so many good things in what you just said. That was gold. Honestly, I think that it's our perspective about ourselves is a huge part of the sale and we project that onto money. So we have a lot of ties in with what you're saying as far as whether our program is selling or not, what that means about us, but also in worth and money. We kind of collapse those things together and make them mean the same thing.
One massive breakthrough that I worked through with clients is the realization that what we offer is often more valuable than money could ever really equate to. We just put money as a placeholder for it. Right, because we're offering something that's human, connective, we're offering something that truly transcends what money is, and yet we are trying to put a price on these things, bringing that back down to a more tangible level when we're selling something, we get really in our heads about money. We get really in our heads whether we can charge that much, whether we're worth that much, and it's really the wrong way to go about it, in my opinion, because it doesn't take into account again that authenticity of exchanging value with somebody, of showing someone hey, I want to create this transformation for you. I want to create this value for you, whatever it happens to be. Here's what I charge in order to make that worth my time or in order to make that viable for me, whatever that is. That's what money represents is. Hey, this is the value that I've assigned to this offer. If that doesn't work for you, there are usually many other options for me giving you some kind of value.
So that sales conversation so often in people's minds is really hinged on that money topic of whether they can charge as much as they're charging or ask as much as they're asking, rather than recognizing that every sales conversation is deepening into how we can serve someone. Now let me give you an example on that. If you're selling a program for $5,000, let's say you have a high ticket coaching program and you're in your head saying, oh my God, that's way too much money. I just can't believe I'm charging this much. Is it even worth this? Yada, yada, yada. Then when you're in that conversation with someone and maybe they reflect some of those things back, they can't afford it. It's too much. The next logical thing is well, I really want to support you and if you want my help, then what would be a more reasonable amount that I could support you in another way. There's still this conversation. It's not like a sales conversation is a closed door, it's a yes no.
Oftentimes, when we make an offer, all we're doing is giving people the opportunity to buy into that offer or not. But we're giving them a taste of our work, we're showing them what we have available. Then that conversation can continue based off of what suits their needs the best. I love that you brought that up. A lot of what that comes down to, honestly, is recognizing our value and our worth and kind of co-creating that, not as something that we have to pretend.
Earlier, you were talking about a way that you were being. You were talking about coming at it and you were putting a lot of your self-worth on how it was selling and all of this. But then you also had a way of being about that way of being, which was that you feel bad, that you're doing it that way, that it's wrong to do it that way. That's why I'm not getting sales. We get really hung up in all of this and what that actually presents as an opportunity when we get really messed up around sales and we start having all of those self-doubts come up or we start having all of these icky feelings come up. Those are a huge blessing, a huge opportunity to be able to see, like, wait a minute, what's coming up around this, what belief have I been just kind of repressing or pushing down or pushing to the side that I can actually take a look at and play around with and see how it would open me up to look at this a little bit differently.
These uncomfortable topics like sales, like money, like sex, like all these other topics that tend to get people's eyebrows up, are some of the best ones for ourselves to discover where we're getting hung up or where we lack this authenticity and freedom. When that discomfort comes up, having the willingness to say like, yeah, I actually do feel a little bit guilty about this or yeah, I actually do feel really bad about myself because I didn't sell they're right there at the top of your consciousness is an ability to say like why am I saying that I don't deserve this or I feel this way about myself because of that outcome? Then that gives you the opportunity to resolve it. This whole conversation around sales and I did a lot of that work.
Even though sales has been easy for me, I've still done a lot of that work, especially when it comes to marketing. Those are two different things sales and marketing. Sales has been easy for me, marketing not so much. But I've applied a lot of that inner work and a lot of that working through those beliefs to my marketing in order to show up authentically with freedom, with connectivity, with this kind of sense of affinity and fun and play that I love to have in my work. But it's all been a result of being willing to look at those uncomfortable feelings that come up.
0:26:35 - Joanna Newton
I've never really thought about purposefully like detaching yourself from your outcomes before and until this conversation today. It's something that I have done, though I just never really thought about doing that. But starting to say my outcome and who I am are not the same thing can help you look at your process more objectively. I also think about how I handle if something's not going right in my business that an employee or a team member is doing. I don't think, oh, that team member is bad because that client project went wrong. I think what happened in the process that made that happen? How do we fix that for next time? I don't think they're bad for it, but it's harder to do it for yourself. I think taking that for yourself if a sales call goes poorly you thought you were going to win it and you didn't, or you're not selling regularly enough, whatever it is actually detaching it from your self worth and thinking, okay, maybe I need to approach this differently. Maybe I need to qualify someone before a sales call a little bit better. Maybe my pricing is wrong for the market Not that it's bad or good or anything like that Maybe I should adjust my pricing or maybe I should think about this or that or the other thing, but actually thinking through objectively what you could adjust, change to get a better outcome without thinking of it as such like a reflection of your self worth, is going to help you see this success.
I watched this TikTok the other day about sales and this process of selling that the woman in the video was talking about. When she's done a lot of haggling on price and discounting and going through the process that those clients end up being not so great fit clients. They're more demanding, they ask for more revisions, they ask for more things. Sometimes when someone walks away because of price, that can be a good thing because it means they're not the right fit. It doesn't even mean you're a bad salesperson. It might mean that person wasn't the right fit for your service. They can find someone who provide that service at a lower price point that they want to pay and they can work with that person.
Great, I think, really shifting our mindset of detaching ourselves from the outcome, thinking about sales and a process. Maybe you do make adjustments, maybe you do change things, but it's not actually your, this reflection of the inner work of you as a human being. But I want to circle back to something you mentioned while you were talking about the difference between sales and marketing. So I spent my entire career in the corporate world. I've filled sales roles, I've filled marketing roles, I have led sales teams, I've led marketing teams and let me tell you, people are really confused in this world about sales and marketing and even sales teams and marketing teams within a company. Sales will think something's marketing job and marketing will be like no, that's your job, like that's actually something you're supposed to do. I don't do that. So I'd love to hear from you about what you think that difference is and how you define sales and marketing for an organization.
0:29:53 - Emily Fisher
You know, it sounds like you actually might be more qualified to answer that. No, I love that. The reason I say that is just because, frankly, marketing is I'm just not great at it, to be honest with you. Like that's something that I've really been working on this past year, especially with this authentic element. So, okay, here's how it feels to me. So I've actually worked at marketing startups and I've worked with the sales teams of marketing startups and here's how it feels to me.
Marketing, to me, is very much creating the experience of a brand before the sales conversation. So it has these elements of like framing the brand in a certain way. There's a lot of psychology in like setting different anchors, like price anchoring, setting different like brand aesthetics and values and feelings, Like there's all of this personality that we use in marketing in order to create the experience of a brand before you work with it. Sales, then, to me, is more of a decision oriented conversation. So sales to me, is not prepping someone through the buyer journey, which, for those of you who aren't familiar with the buyer journey, it's moving through the stages of being unaware of a problem, being aware of a problem, being aware of solutions and then choosing a solution is the basic version of it. So marketing, to me, is what's leading people through all of that, while adding this brand personality. It's while convincing you that that brand is the best solution, yada, yada.
A sales conversation, on the other hand, is more in that moment of a decision being made where we are trying to say is this the right decision for you? So a sales page, yes, it has those elements of branding, it has those elements of that personality and framing and anchoring, but it also is really putting a little bit of pressure on people to make a decision. So a sales page being the same thing as a sales conversation in person, which is just saying like, hey, I'm looking for what you need. If you fit this, this and this criteria and you want XYZ things, then this is the right product for you. Here's why you should make a decision right now. So that's really how I see the difference is that with marketing, there's no decision being made. It's more of a leading people on a journey. Suppose there's a decision to be made, but actually I would be genuinely interested to hear your take on that, having been in that field.
0:31:59 - Joanna Newton
Different organizations end up needing different things for sales and marketing, right. So if your business requires a conversation to be had to make a sale because not every type of business does require a conversation to be had to make a sale but if you're in a business where the actual closing of the sale needs to be a salesperson because there's a contract, there's a particular agreement, there's custom pricing and all of that, your marketing and sales teams fit a lot of the function exactly as you described. Your marketing team is building that brand awareness, either about the problem or the solution or some sort of combination of both. Your marketing team is drawing people in. Your marketing team is building brand authority, credibility, all of those things so that when a salesperson has a conversation, that salesperson is going to have an easier time because they're backed by this amazing credibility of the brand. And you can do that in a lot of different ways, like the how. The tactics could all happen different ways, but your marketing team and that type of organization isn't going to be closing deals and should not be responsible for closing deals. Your salespeople should, but your marketing team should be responsible for building leads and potentially even like booking demos, helping to book those calls, helping to feed people to your sales team. That's a really good, I think, way to distinct between that.
Now, in a different world, when there's transactional sales someone's going to add to cart, put it in there where you don't necessarily need a salesperson, marketing can help with that decision point. Marketing can be in that e-commerce more of a world, or even like purchasing digital products, where you don't need that discovery called process to push them over the edge. In that case, I start to think of marketing as sales at scale, right, marketing that sales that don't require a human to get someone through their buyer journey. Marketing can get someone through that buyer journey through a funnel, through email engagement and different things like that. So, looking at your particular organization, I think is really important to think about and for solopreneurs, for small business owners, a lot of times they're the whole thing, they're marketing and they're sales, and I think this is why some people struggle is because they do all the marketing. They get out there, they go on social media, they write great copy, they do all of that, but then they don't do the sales.
It's really interesting is I focus in marketing and a lot of my career I've done some sales. My business has grown purely on sales tactics not purely, actually, because we've been like myself and my business partner have been featured on other people's sites and we actually get inbound leads through some of that variance and that brand awareness. But I would say 90% of what we do is sales to grow our business and we made that a conscious effort. We decided we're going to start with sales, then we will add marketing, because that was our choice, right. So I think the key here for small business owners, for entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, is to pick a strategy. Maybe you only have a sales arm, maybe you start with a marketing arm. You have to kind of think through what's right for you, but understanding there is that distinction, yeah.
0:35:24 - Emily Fisher
So, joanna, one thing that you were talking about, especially for solopreneurs we're playing both of these roles ourselves. One of the things that I really kind of hit on in what you're saying, too, is the things that we can be doing to really move the needle forward. So you were saying that you and your business partner made a conscious effort to be largely based in sales. I think that that's something that we often avoid as solopreneurs because it can be uncomfortable, and so I just briefly wanted to say that when we are not making sales, when we are not even having sales conversations, then it's something to look at whether we're actually pursuing that area of our business and our business growth.
If you're not getting rejections, you're probably not having enough sales conversations, right? It's so natural for us to avoid those conversations and to avoid those activities. They are what builds our business. They are what gets our products into the hands of our customers. So I'm glad that you made that distinction for all of us, and I wanted to highlight and underscore how you and your business partner choosing that and it working out for your business the way it has just makes perfect sense when I think of this distinction between sales and marketing, at least in the online and digital space.
0:36:26 - Michelle Pualani
You have your larger organizations who do have the different departments, and you're kind of going at it from these different models. I think of it as kind of like marketing is more the top of funnel and then sales is more the bottom of funnel. You're not doing a lot of selling conversations at the top of funnel. You're oftentimes doing your marketing, which is your initial outreach, whether that's your social media platforms, whether that's a larger email marketing subscription or newsletter that you do. It's getting on other people's platforms, it's having conversations, it's being featured on podcasts, it's kind of putting it out into the ether, whether that's ads or anything else. And then as people get to know more about you, move through that awareness phase, then you're going to move more into the selling and that could be on your sales pages, that could be in conversations, that could be in the DMs, whatever that looks like. So it's kind of like moving people closer to you, but you do have to think about them differently and the language that you're using in each situation is different. So, as you're listening, starting to think more intentionally about how you're approaching your marketing on a larger level and how you're approaching your sales and being able to pay attention to either one, being able to fulfill one of those.
As Emily is saying, if you're not getting the rejections, you're probably not asking for the sale often enough. And being okay with those rejections, as we've kind of talked about, is who are you being in that situation and what does that mean and say about your business, your offer, your marketing and leading up to that sales conversation, as opposed to about you? So, as we move through this conversation today, we've heard said the word authenticity a bunch of times. We talk about this authentic selling, authentic marketing, be authentic, be vulnerable, go up in this way, and it's a word that gets tossed around a lot and, emily, I'd really love to learn from you what does that mean and how, as we start to understand it, how can someone actually accomplish more authenticity in their sales and marketing, apply it to their business?
0:38:25 - Emily Fisher
So, first, what authenticity actually means. What authenticity actually means is who are you and are you being true to that? What is their alignment between what you're saying, how you feel and the actions you're taking? In essence, what authenticity kind of represents. A lot of times we will find ourselves pretending something and then there's actually something underneath that that we're trying to hide or we're trying to be different than we really are, and that's where we get kind of messed up. It's in that gray zone, right. That is also where that really can play a huge role in our sales and marketing. When we're trying to pretend to be someone that we're not, people can sense that. You can tell when someone's being super authentic versus when someone's trying to put on a front or they're trying to make things look better than they really are. And when we are in the business of building, knowing, liking and trusting. Well, we're building trust and being known and liked by our audience. What we're able to do with authenticity is instantly create a connection, instantly nurture people, rather than having to do so through some really contrived way where we're saying the right things or we're knowing the exact science and psychology. We can put a lot of work into those things, or we can do the work to honestly just kind of align what we're doing and what we're saying with what we're selling. An example of that that I can say is we've talked a lot about making our offers available and people responding to them a certain way. There is a lot of authenticity in being able to say I'm really passionate about this offer, I think you should buy it. That's very authentic, and people can say whatever they're going to say about that. What is also very authentic is to say, okay, ideal client, I really want to help you. What do you want help with? And that's a bi-directional conversation as well. So there's multiple ways for us to own the area that we're really passionate about and the work that we want to do, while also ensuring that we're providing this experience with our customers and with our audience. That is not only very co-creative, but it's also based in their experience of being sold to and being marketed to what I've done really well as a brand. I have a lot of very warm leads.
When people come into my world, they move very quickly between being a complete stranger to being someone who buys from me. A lot of that is because of this authenticity. They see that I'm showing up, I'm sharing my life, I'm sharing why I love my work. I have worked through a lot of my own confidence issues and realized that they didn't actually impact the quality of my products. They were something entirely different.
And in doing all of that work in a very public way, people can see that I'm not hiding anything. They can see that I've put in the legwork to really stand behind what I sell, and so we don't have to do a lot of dancing around. They don't have to take a year and a half to get to know me. It tends to move very quickly. Either that or people bounce. There's people that don't follow me, there's people that I'm sure don't like me. That's totally fine. But again, they can know that very quickly. It's not something they have to figure out over the next three to six months. They can just know very quickly whether I'm right or for them or not. As a solopreneur, our time and energy is very valuable. So, you guys, the idea that I can work less by just being myself and, honestly, having it be a lot more in flow and have people know right away whether they want to work with me or not, works out better for everybody.
0:41:20 - Joanna Newton
I want to highlight something you said, because earlier in this conversation you said you're not really good at marketing. But what you just said for a coach, for a creator, about doing what you do, living your life in a public way, that is marketing. That is the best marketing, right? Because you're just inviting people along the journey with you to watch you work, watch you do things, and then the right people will raise their hand and say I want more, which is going to give you the opportunity to sell to them. And I think sometimes people really discount in marketing. They want the perfect message, the perfect funnel, they want the perfect thing. But if you're doing the work and you're showing the world that you're doing the work, that's like the best way to do that.
It makes me think of, like back in the day, old school dating conversations about like, how do you find your ideal husband, or something like that. If you cared about that. And the idea is go live your life doing the life that you want to live, and you will meet the right person to do that life with you. It's not that different than finding customers, right? Do your life, living loudly, what it is that you offer, and people will find you, and sometimes we, over a complicate marketing. Now you have to have the systems and the processes and the things to actually make people move through the journey. But being able to do that authentically out loud is half the battle. We've talked a lot about your background, your thoughts on things. It's been absolutely fantastic. But I've actually loved to know a little bit more on your business. You've focused on one-on-one coaching, digital products, workshops. Can you talk about sort of how you have your set up, your business with its system and how you maintain that authenticity throughout, like your whole product suite?
0:43:16 - Emily Fisher
For my business. I did start out with one-on-one coaching, also subcoaching, like I mentioned earlier. So how I translate that into my businesses and systems right now, I am huge on like ethical marketing, and what I mean by that is not promising one thing and then giving another. This is another one of those like establishing trust. Right, you know you can trust me, I'm inviting you to something. You're going to get what you signed up for, and so what that looks like for me is hosting live monthly workshops, like the one I did last night. People can come hang out. It's not a webinar, it's not unidirectional, it's a very bidirectional conversation where there's a theme for each month. People can have this conversation, they're reflecting, they're answering in a community setting with this group of other participants, and at the end I invite them to book a consultation call with me. So that's one example of a system that's really integrated my authenticity into a marketing and sales effort and that's been working very well for me.
Same thing with my social media. It's having things on my social media that share my life, and then, of course, we're using freebies. We need to want to get people into our world as far as our email list and things like that, and so it's having that intention of sharing things that are going on in my life. Well, naturally, I'm going to talk about the things that have been the most valuable for me, so that it only makes sense if there's a meditation that's worked exceptionally well for me. Hey, you know, drop this in the comments or message me, whatever. I'll send you this, a link to this.
Well, then they opt in, they get on my email list and they get this resource that I've genuinely found valuable or think they'll find valuable. It's kind of integrating this into every step of the journey, where people are not only getting to see my journey they're seeing my life but they're also then coming into my world and what I'm passionate about, the things that I have found super valuable, and I'm just integrating all of that into a system that works where they're coming in. Of course, I'm paying attention to that funnel system, where we have this larger audience. I want them to subscribe and get on my email list. I want to then have this opportunity to convert and then I want them to have this opportunity to come up a product ladder with me.
0:45:04 - Joanna Newton
It's all just kind of baked in Great explanation for anyone who is looking to be a coach, looking to sell digital products, having authentically and then having the system to support whatever it is you're doing is super important, and one of the things that you just mentioned actually is ethical, and this word stands out.
0:45:23 - Michelle Pualani
It came up in our prep call and I think it's really important for me because we find that in the online space there is a lack of integrity and ethics. There's a lot of scammy stuff out there. We've had this conversation on the podcast before. We've talked about the legalities behind content creation, behind marketing messaging and falsifying information, falsifying data as you present it to people, and there's so much social media and so much content around this and you're constantly getting fed ads that are painting a picture that maybe is unrealistic, maybe it's not as true as you want it to be, and people are tending to inflate things. So when you bring up this concept of ethics, you use the term better ethics when you support folks and clients in their businesses and how you help them scale. Can you explain what that means to have better ethics and how it can really support someone else's business in their sales and marketing efforts?
0:46:21 - Emily Fisher
So ethics is largely subjective. I'll start out by saying that. But that's also where we see a lot of this play, like you're saying, where people are saying that they can do something that they can't, or they're making things look a certain way that they're not, and what happens is that eventually, people do find that out and it diminishes trust. It diminishes Honestly. It's just not a good feeling to be on the creator side of that, like I've played that line before, for example, recently with Reels. It's more popular on Instagram Reels to have a short video checkout caption and while people are reading the caption, it's playing in the background and you get hundreds of thousands of views while they're reading the caption, while kind of manipulating something that was meant to be one way and you're using it a different way. Right Again, where does that fall on the ethical scale? We get to play around with that for ourselves. That applies to all levels of our business and when I talk about having better ethics with customers and clients, how that applies at that level is making sure that I am treating my clients and my potential clients as whole people who are capable of making their own decisions. I don't need to trick them into anything. I don't need to force their hand.
I've heard a lot of people say, like sell them what they want, give them what they need. I don't think that's a good approach. I think people, to a large degree, need education. They need to be informed about the solutions we're providing. They need to be able to make powerful decisions. We have less issues as an industry People signing up for coaches who can't actually help them, people signing up for programs that are not meant for where they're at in their journey, right Like. We see a lot of that because coaches are taking shortcuts in order to make sales and they're looking at those metrics rather than looking at the actual people who are signing up and the results that they get.
When we talk about having better ethics, I think it largely does come down to those two concepts of one looking at am I doing things the way that they were intended to be done, and am I treating people as whole and complete and capable of making their own decisions? From that, it's largely up to your just personal choice. What that looks like for me is being very transparent. It's being very transparent in what I'm showing. A lot of times on my Instagram.
You'll see me say like hey, here's the Instagram version, here's the reality, or like this, looks like this, but it really feels like this. And I'll kind of try to show both sides of you know, having a $25,000 a month doesn't solve all my problems and it honestly doesn't mean that I'm doing that every single month, right? So showing both sides of that and kind of sharing the whole journey there will always be costs to that. There are people who won't be as impressed or they won't be as bought in or wanting that result, right. That you're kind of you could portray unethically, but I think in the long run people get that sense of trust, they get that idea that they know what to expect from you and it's a longer term relationship you can build.
0:48:58 - Joanna Newton
And when you're a coach, when you're a creator, when you're in the digital space, that relationship is everything right. You're not selling pens. You're selling you your knowledge, what you can bring to the table. There has to be that trust, there has to be that level of almost intimacy between yourself and your clients. And when you see some of these big creators, big coaches, with all of these things, I've met lots of people who've been disappointed with the product they got because of that exact thing what they purchased, what they thought they were getting, didn't match. Well, I really appreciate the conversation we had today. I feel like probably talk for like 75 hours about each of these things, because that's how we are here.
On the Her First podcast, michelle and I often record episodes where, like, this is just gonna be a short, quick one and then, like an hour and 15 minutes later, we're like, oops, I guess it's gonna be two parts. This is like a regular occurrence over here. I would love our audience, the people listening to this podcast, if they resonated with anything that you've shared. I'd love them to be able to find you. So can you tell our listeners where they can find you and spend more time with you?
0:50:10 - Emily Fisher
Yeah, absolutely so. You can check out anything I've mentioned on the show on thealignedceocom, and then I'm most active on Instagram, which is aligned underscore CEO, and I'd love to meet anybody so like. If you come, follow definitely, send me a message and introduce yourself. Let me know where you found me. I'd be happy to actually meet you online.
0:50:27 - Michelle Pualani
Thank you so much for joining us today, emily.
This conversation has been insightful and thoughtful and I'm really looking forward to our listeners just enjoying it and starting to question how they're moving about their day, how they're moving about their business, how they're approaching sales and marketing and bringing in that authentic piece.
And one of the things that I'll share today that didn't necessarily come up but did come up in our prep call was actually this idea of being authentic, and you mentioned something was it was more that you take clients through the process of getting rid of the inauthenticities, and that really connected with me, because it almost feels like there's so much to do in our lives, there's so much to do in our businesses.
There's so much that almost feels like a burden. We have to do these things and so when we have to be authentic, it can feel daunting and it can feel like a challenge and it can feel like a lot, but, realistically, being more authentic and how you're showing up is about getting rid of the programming and kind of releasing those things that you might be holding onto, those attachments that you have, maybe some things that you've learned, you've picked up from your environment, from your family, from your school, from your peers or from the online space in which you're trying to kind of maybe copy or replicate what someone else is doing? Can you actually release some of those things, release some of those masks that you've maybe been holding up for too long and find that authenticity in who you are and showing up in your business in that way?
