The 3 Key Problems Holding You Back from Making Sales (and How to Fix It)

If selling feels hard and you've been just trying to find the right platform and it still feels hard. For example, maybe you decided you wanted to try TikTok when you've been on Instagram. Maybe you've decided you wanna try YouTube even though you've been podcasting. I'm sharing with you why this might feel hard to you and why you aren't converting and making sales. And it's a surprise that you probably don't realize, but I'm going to give you the 3 key problems and how to fix them in this episode so you can create what I'm calling rooted or grounded sales.

Welcome to Business with Chronic Illness, the globally ranked podcast for women living with chronic illness who want to start and grow a business online. I'm your host, Nikita Williams, and I went from living a normal life to all of a sudden being in constant pain with no answers to being diagnosed with multiple chronic illnesses and trying to make a livable income. I faced the challenge of adapting traditional business advice to fit my unique circumstances with chronic illness, feeling frustrated and more burned out than I already was while managing my chronic illness, to becoming an award-winning coach with a flexible, sustainable online coaching business. I found the surprisingly simple steps to starting and growing a profitable business without compromising my health or my peace.

Since then, I've helped dozens of women just like you learn how to do the same. If you're ready to create a thriving business that aligns with your lifestyle and well-being, you're in the right place.

Together, we're shifting the narrative of what's possible for women with chronic illness and how we make a living. This is Business with Chronic Illness.

Okay, first and foremost, why are we talking about this? Oftentimes when I'm talking to my clients, one of the first things that comes up is this spiral of not being enough, falling behind, feeling like they're not cut out for this because they have inconsistent energy and they quote unquote feel like they're not disciplined or pushing hard enough through whatever trauma, chronic illness, drama, and life things that they've got going on in their life. For example, you could have woken up this morning and you had a whole day's work of life planned. For your business, for your family, or whatever, and you realize, I can't even move. I need the windows closed. I need to just keep my eyes closed and I can't get out of this bed. Right? What happens in this moment is it often goes into overdrive if you haven't done some of the pre-work I'm going to share with you in this episode. It drives up some common fears when it comes to your business, especially when it comes to sales and marketing. All of this fear comes up because you're feeling like you're not enough and that you aren't doing enough. Because of that, it leads to some decisions that could harm you physically and emotionally. So instead of making confident decisions, you end up in the fear paradigm, the survival mode, where you say yes to the wrong clients, you're clinging to strategies that don't work. Or you're throwing money at quick fixes that you can't even follow through with because you don't have the capacity physically, health-wise to do it. And all of this results in frustration, for some of us, shame, and a feeling that sales and having a business is just not the thing, right? But what if the problem isn't that you're inconsistent or that you're too sick? Or that this isn't for you. But what if, but what if you've been taught or conditioned by this world and everything that we see on social media that in order to sell and have a successful business, you have to assume that you're a machine, that you have to push through and grind through, you have to hustle it out. What if you had a framework though? What if you had a way to regulate your nervous system and your thoughts first so that you can sell from a place of calm, peace, and even curiosity. And I'm going to be sharing that with you today. Look, when you wake up in that pain and your body says nope, and your entire day that you planned for, as I mentioned at the top, immediately gets set back, it doesn't have to mean that you're unprofessional or that you're going to lose clients or that you can't keep up. Okay? You're not alone in life. And being a human, it's all about how you show up within your body and in your business. And that's exactly what I'm calling the Rooted Sales Process and how it's built for addressing this. I came up with this concept recently, just listening back through content for my clients, from sales calls, from listening to my clients, and also seeing How I've— how I've come to understand sales and marketing and business. It's really just a different way of talking about what we talk about inside my program, Chronically You and Profitable, which is my program that teaches you how to build an aligned business, a business that works with you from mindset to business marketing and sales that happen without you always being on to leveraging systems and community to create the results that you want so that you don't have to do this alone. This is what happens inside of Chronically You and Profitable, but Rooted Sales is birthed from that. Okay. And here's how Rooted Sales solves 3 problems. There are 3 problems that I see, and I know, and I've seen this happen with my clients, kind of become kiboshed by Applying Rooted Sales. So number 1 problem is you can't stay consistent is a problem that you have. You feel like, I can't stay consistent. My energy is too unpredictable. My life is too unpredictable. It looks like when clients come to me and they show up with energy on Monday, and by Tuesday they're on a completely different space, they're having more pain. Maybe there's more brain fog. They're in excruciating pain. New doctor's appointments, all of that, right? And they disappear not because they don't care, but because they're overwhelmed by how to communicate without seeing quote unquote unprofessional when it comes to their business. Now, this happens because you're human. It's not because you have a lack of discipline. Your body is still working through whatever processes that it's working through to heal. And so the fact that you aren't the same person as you are today as you will be tomorrow is not in itself a predictable sign that in some way you're unprofessional, right? Neuroscience shows that chronic stress deregulates the prefrontal cortex. So that's the part of the brain responsible for, responsible for planning and follow-through. So when you're in that cycle of like going through all of those things and you're beating yourself up for not quote unquote pushing through, grinding it out, or you should have accomplished more today. It's kind of null and void. When the body is in pain or in extreme fatigue or fatigue just in general, the nervous system defaults to survival mode, which makes consistency in your business specifically the way you probably describing it, which is showing up every single day, which is sitting at your computer, scrolling the internet, fixing your website, doing all these little things, is impossible. Just quite impossible. And if you are doing it, it is not going to be sustainable. At some point, your body is saying, uh-uh, we done, right? So when you apply the Rooted Sales Response, I'm calling it, you get a little bit of regulation. You get an ability to kind of get your mind from feeling like, man, I have to do this thing, right? I have to do all of these things, to letting go. Right? And maybe if you have the capacity, doing one thing, if anything. But before you even can get to that, here's the part of the Rooted Sales System or response that you need to have, or you need to keep in mind. You need to take a deep breath. You need to regulate. You need to ground. If you're the person that's in the bed and you are having one of those bad days and you are instantly triggered into thinking how much you're going to be behind, this is where you get the chance to regulate. Take a breath. Do some deep breathing. Do some EFT tapping. Give yourself more time to process how you are feeling in your body and that you're okay, or that you will be okay, right? Rethink all of your to-do lists after you've taken a moment to regulate, right? Actually cancel things, reschedule them. When you take this moment to ground and like take things off of your plate, you calm your nervous system down enough to potentially at some point re-engage sooner than if you didn't do this step. Okay, the next part of this, you're gonna rebuild. So instead of chasing the idea today or any day when life is doing the life thing, that consistency means you have to be doing the same thing the same time all of the time, you create a persistent rhythm on the times you have capacity. Showing up in smaller, more sustainable ways that flex with your capacity. Some days this will just be that you're in bed and you're resting and recuperating or processing whatever the day meant. And the next day you will focus on rebuilding one baby step at a time. Problem number 2 is sales feels pushy, emotional, or draining. And so you avoid it. Clients often say to me, I get so anxious even thinking about selling. It feels like I'm forcing someone to do something, do something. And that avoidance around, you know, sales shows up in underpricing, procrastinating, and taking clients just so that you quote unquote feel safe, even though you don't actually be safe. Right? So why does this— sometimes sales can activate a threat response when your nervous system is not regulated. It brings up things from our childhood, from feeling like rejected, conflict, which all are things that can lead to fight or flight. It feels extremely uncomfortable, right? So research shows that rejection activates the same brain regions as physical pain. So no wonder it feels intense when you're experiencing this feeling of like, I hate sales.

You cannot—

my, one of my favorite coaches, DL Charron, says you cannot do what you hate. So how do you undo this? You lean into the rooted sales response. In this case, you want to do all 4 steps. So the 4 steps are the first 2 you learned in the first problem, which was to regulate, which is to take some breaths, give yourself some grounding, reassess your expectations of a situation. And give yourself and your nervous system time to reengage when you are grounded and rooted. The next step is to rebuild. So instead of thinking, I have to do such and such a certain way, think about how am I doing such and such a way in a way that aligns with my complexity, city, and is actually sustainable. And for the problem of feeling safe and selling and not feeling like you're too pushy or emotional or like it's draining you, You want to view your marketing as a way to reveal solutions for their problems and share your story and your clients' results, which build connection and safety. The opposite of rejection, the opposite of conflict, right? When we share our stories, when we share our results, if we've come from that angle of we're gonna be talking about solving people's problems and helping them share their story and sharing my client results. There's not going to be a lot of conflict, right? There's not going to be a lot of rejection unless these people are not for you, right? Having this in mind will help you feel more grounded. The number 4 step in this response is to respond frameworks that feel conversational, not manipulative. I know in the world of sales, there are a lot of scripts and a lot of quote-unquote funnels on how we supposed to do this and do that and all those things, which is another reason why our nervous system revs up when it comes to selling. That doesn't have to be the case. Sales can equal service giving, right? And that can— that will calm your nervous system. When you feel like you're coming from a place of giving people something that they can use in their life, whether they become your client or not, it helps you feel good. Problem number 3. This is a big one, especially in this time of life right now. Many have a fear or a problem of feeling, I've invested in programs before, but I can't follow through, or haven't been able to follow through. Here's what this looks like. Many of my clients feel shame for not finishing courses or implementing strategies that they've done with their one-on-one coaching, or have changed their mind about what kind of business that they're going to have, thinking nothing they did before is going to serve them now. But the truth is those systems will serve you. All based on how you view yourself in those, those things and give yourself permission to be like, maybe those things weren't designed for the body and life that I was living at the time, chronic illness, burning out, whatever that might be. And it's not about the fact that I did wrong. I got through it. Right. So what happens when you feel more grounded, when you shift this mind— mindset? This thought process. Realize that a lot of sales advice out there wants us to feel like we have unlimited capacity and we're seeing everyone's highlight reel, but research shows executive dysfunction and fatigue reduce the brain's ability to initiate complex tasks. So without our nervous system aware foundation, which many of us were not taught when we first started our businesses, we were taught to start marketing. Or start like we were talking, like some generalized idea about mindset, about how we view ourselves, but not how that actually affects our physical body and our brains. So without our nervous system aware foundation, a lot of those strategies may not work for you, or if they could have worked for you, you weren't quite ready because you hadn't implemented this nervous system regulating foundation. So How do you deal with this with the Rooted Sales Response? Last of the Rs is to root. Ground yourself in safety and alignment before taking action. That creates a baseline of peace that makes implementation possible. Meaning, do those 3 steps again, specifically regulate, rebound, reveal, and respond for yourself. And once you're rooted, any investment or strategy becomes usable instead of another shelf course gathering dust. When you can get your nervous system at this pace of— at this place of peace, this baseline of I'm okay, going in and out of like, oh, I'm uncomfortable, but I'm okay. Oh, I'm uncomfortable because that's business. Oh, I'm uncomfortable, but I'm okay. You can then go through any piece of content that your, your coach past coaches or whatever, if you so choose to, and be able to use what is there for you. One of my one-on-one clients came in holding on to like 4 done-for-you clients, and she was afraid of, you know, losing them or letting them go. And it equated that she just felt insecure, right? But through the Rooted Sales System, which she That which I implemented with her without her really using, like, noting it. Something I've been testing without calling it a name. She released two misaligned clients. She raised her rates confidently with two other clients that she currently had and opened up a new group that's lighting her up in a different way. So here's the thing. You can have more income with less stress. And you can have alignment with your long, long, with your long-term vision. That's what happens when you stop forcing sales from survival mode and start rooting them in flow and peace. So why am I talking about this now? We're living in a time that there's a lot of mistrust with people. People are taking time, plus they're bogged down with so much information, so many things, right? Because life is lifing. So they take longer to make decisions. It's not that they take longer to make decisions because of you. They just take a bit of time because of the situation that we're all in, in some different ways, shape, or form. They may have been burnt by a coach before. They may have different financial situations that they never experienced before. Maybe nothing has changed and they're just a little more shy as a person. What this does is trigger— also triggers a fear response in you. You end up feeling like, well, since it takes people longer to buy, I should just say yes to any client that comes my way, meaning in a misaligned climate, just so you can feel safe, meaning you're chasing, chasing people, like hunting them down for investments that aren't really right for you. And you're accepting offers that drain you instead of sustain and help you to grow. Rooted Sales is the antidote. It helps you reclaim neutrality and peace so you don't make fear-based decisions. Instead, you stay grounded, patient, and attracting the type of people that you want. Even when the market feels slow or people and the environment and things are happening, even when those things are happening in your life and theirs, you are grounded. You are rooted. So you don't have to push harder to sell. You need a system that roots you back into your peace, clarity, and persistence. And that's what Rooted Sales is. And if you're ready to go deeper, that's exactly what we build inside of Chronically You and Profitable. So your business can grow even on your lowest capacity days. When you wake up that morning, you feel like, oh my gosh, I'm so Bahi.

That's a wrap for this episode of Business with Chronic Illness. If you would like to start and grow an online coaching business with me, head to the show notes to click a link to book a sales call and learn how to make money with chronic illness. You can also check out our website at www.craftedtothrive.com for this episode's show notes and join our email list to get exclusive content where I coach you on how to chronically grow a profitable business while living with chronic illness. Until next time, remember, yes, you are crafted to thrive.

When I started my podcast, I was in recovery from a surgery related to my chronic illness. Trying to connect with other businesses and searching for a way to keep growing my business without sacrificing my healing or well-being. Podcasting became my most aligned marketing tool. It let me show up consistently without showing up constantly. That's why I created the Start Your Podcast Planner, a digital guide to help you launch a purpose-driven podcast that feels like you. Whether you're starting from scratch or finally ready to get your voice and your story out there, or looking for a sustainable way to grow your business through marketing that converts, This planner gives you everything I wish I had. It's got step-by-step strategies that won't overwhelm you, confidence and building prompts that help you fall in love with your voice and share it with the world, and tools and templates you can use again and again without overworrying or being concerned about the tech. Most importantly, it helps you turn your story into sales or income that actually feels aligned. If you're ready to grow your audience, attract clients, and share your message in a way that works with your capacity, this is where you start. Tap the link in the show notes to grab your Start Your Podcast Planner or visit thrivewithnikita.com/podcast-planner. You've waited long enough. Let's get your voice and your story out in the world and build a profitable, sustainable marketing system through podcasting. So let me tell you about one of the tools that has quietly become the heartbeat of my business over the years. It's HoneyBook. I use it for everything. No, seriously, everything. It's how I book my podcast guests, bring on new one-on-one clients, even manage group coaching calls when my other platforms decide that they wanna have a meltdown. From contracts and payments to contact forms to task reminders, HoneyBook keeps all of the moving parts in one place and it is all automated. And here's the real kicker. It works with my capacity, whether I'm having a low energy week or need to automate a bunch of stuff in one go, or just create a system that makes it easy for me to run a flexible business, HoneyBook gives me that freedom to still move my business forward. If you are looking for a central hub to help you work smarter, not harder, I highly recommend you checking it out. So if you head on over to the show notes, you'll get 50% off your first year. And yes, that's my affiliate link, but I only share what I actually use and love. HoneyBook is my jam, and I hope you check it out.