Removing the Obstacles to Selling Your Work
We are all creators. We have a great idea. We’ll offer a new course, a new program, a new class. We get excited. We see it happening. We get so excited in the process of building it. And then it doesn’t fill. We are a failure.
If only people would come! If only the people knew how good this was! If only peeps know what a deep transformation they would experience through our program!
What happened?
What happened is that selling your program is very different than creating your program or delivering your program. Creating and delivering is a cakewalk for cultural creatives like yourself. If you ended up on Yogahealer.com, you are a cultural creative. You love to create. You love to deliver. Here are a few more defining characteristics, according to The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World by sociologist Paul H. Ray and psychologist Sherry Ruth Anderson:
- You are optimistic towards the future
- You want to be involved in creating a new and better way of life
- You are concerned with big business and the means they use to generate profits, including destroying the environment and exploiting poorer countries
- You are unlikely to overspend or be heavily in debt
- You dislike the emphasis of modern cultures on “making it” and “success”, on consuming and making money
Roadblocks to Selling Your Work
Can you see from the list above you love to create and you hate to sell? When it comes time to selling, or exchanging value based on $ in the marketplace, you are deficient in skills. You are underdeveloped. You have shadow issues.
Is this a problem?
No. Once you decide to move through the discomfort of the unknown and get the skills you need, you’ll be just fine and able to get on with the more familiar parts of creating and delivering.
You need to expect discomfort along the way. You will hit roadblocks. You will feel your deficiencies. Why? In short summary because our nervous systems as human beings are wired to preference the comfort of the familiar over the discomfort of the unknown. In the process of making an idea, a project, a program, a pilot real for the first time, roadblocks appear.
Eavesdrop on A Breakthrough
Here is a shadow work exercise I worked with VIP client Sean Guinan of Holistic Yogi. Sean is a Chinese Medicine doctor and Yin Yoga Instructor. He has 3 kids. He wants to fill his new online course: Become Your Body’s Healer. Sean and I agreed to share our conversation because we knew you could benefit. We both know Sean isn’t the only one wanting to fill his new program. Let’s swim through the difficulties of selling what you want to deliver.
Almost everyone I work with in the Yogahealer Business Course or Yoga Health Coaching experiences roadblocks – filling their program doesn’t go according to plan. In this episode, find out why.
In this conversation, I walk Sean Guinan through shadow work on selling his program.
Sean Guinan with his family.
- How to uncover the emotion that repels people from signing up
- Understanding the emotional exchange that happens when selling
- Why you can’t NEED the person to sign up
- The Art of Making Your Idea Real
If you’re a fan of the children’s story, the Velveteen Rabbit, you know what I’m talking about with making something real. In the story the child makes his rabbit real by placing all of his attention on his new stuffed “lovie”. The rabbit becomes real in his eyes due to his attention.
In this podcast, you’ll see how the importance with a new program, a pilot program, is to make it real. Yes, you can sell it. Yes, you can make a handsome chunk of change on it. Yes… well, maybe. You’ll hear in this episode how Sean makes a 180′ shift, as his perspective expands through the shadow work process.
Links from our conversation
***Free Career Design Workshop*** with Cate
