The Communication Hack Needed to Improve Client Relations & Business Relations

INTRO: [00:00:00] After generating over a million dollars in sales and selling one of her businesses with a single email, your host, Kathryn Thompson, takes an unconventional approach to marketing and sales. So if you're ready to tap into a more powerful way to be seen, heard, and a sought after entrepreneur in your industry without having to spend endless hours marketing your business and chasing clients, you're in the right place.

Be the sought after entrepreneur podcast is here to help you ditch the cookie cutter one size fits all approach to marketing and use your unique energy to effortlessly attract the most aligned clients. When you do this. You can spend less time marketing your business and more time doing your soul work and enjoying the richness of your life.

Welcome to be the sought after entrepreneur podcast. And here's your host, Kathryn Thompson.

Kathryn Thompson: Hey, hey, super stoked that you're tuning in this week's episode. I cannot wait [00:01:00] to dive into today's topic because it is totally spontaneous. Which is kind of how I roll. But at the end of last week's episode, I shared with you that I was going to record a podcast episode, which I absolutely still will, on how to self assess your marketing and sales data so that you can start to spot Where there might be a kink in your customer buying journey, and by kink, I mean, what's actually impacting why maybe you're not seeing the results that you want, or you're not meeting the goals that you want to meet, and whether or not the expectations that you have set actually match kind of what the data is saying.

Oftentimes, our emotion and our disappointment in not achieving the results we thought we were going to achieve impact our decision, which keep us, in my opinion, throwing spaghetti against the wall. And so I want to record that episode. However, This idea popped in after I [00:02:00] recorded the podcast, The Mental Game That Is Likely Sabotaging Your Marketing and Sales Success.

And I wanted to bridge a gap off of that, because I think there's a really important conversation. That I think we all need to have and I want to use my own story to spark that conversation, but also create a little bit of self awareness amongst ourselves as business owners, because how we show up. In relation to ourselves, it starts with us, starts from within how we have a relationship with ourselves will impact all of the other relationships in our lives.

And if you're in business, you've probably heard me say this, you're in the business of relationships. It doesn't matter if you're selling a pen, or you're selling a high ticket, intimate, group coaching program, or even one to one coaching program. You're in the business of relationships. And if you're walking around this planet, and you're a human, [00:03:00] you're in the business of relationships.

You have relationships with your friends, your family, your kids, your spouse. It's all about relationships. And... I feel like we have to have a conversation about what that looks like and how to have that relationship with ourselves that then reflects the relationship we want to have with the people around us.

And I'm going to share two stories with you because that's the best way that I can do this is, um, one is my brick and mortar business. And For those of you that know, I was in partnership with three other people, my brother, my sister in law, and my husband. And so you can imagine the dynamic within that of being in relationship with them, but then also being in relationship with our customers, the people that were coming through the door, and then in relationships with the people that were providing us with the product and shipping it to us.

We're constantly in relationship with people. And... I can't remember how in [00:04:00] depth I've gone with this story, but a big part of how I operated when I had my brick and mortar, while we created success and we sold wine and we had happy customers, I was a total anxious ball on the inside while running that business.

I was definitely operating from a place of scarcity, worrying incessantly about the product. Are people happy? What if they don't come back, all of the sorts of things, and this need to control and sort of grip the business to get it to work and go the way I wanted it to permeate it out into the types of relationships I had with my partners.

And one of the things I say now. which at the moment never really said or maybe recognized was the biggest regret I always have is how I reacted to certain scenarios and situations throughout the business venture, whether it was getting really angry at my partners for making a [00:05:00] mistake or, you know, doing something that I wouldn't have done in the business, or it was getting frustrated with my husband because he wasn't helping me enough, or I was getting mad at my parents for Being in the situation I was in, you know, blaming them because somehow it's their fault that I was in the situation and stressed and anxious and all of the things.

And my biggest regret was in how I reacted to the challenges I faced to the different interpersonal relationships I had within the business, whether it was with customers or my partners, logistical people that were delivering all of the things. And when I left that brick and mortar and I started my online business.

More and more started to come up because of the depth of relationship that I was having with my clients and I remember hiring my mindset coach and my somatic killer and I remember saying can you just help me turn my emotions off? I feel too much and I care too much and my [00:06:00] both of them looked at me and they were like Well, the whole essence isn't that We want to help you turn it off.

We want to help you shift the perspective of how you look at the situation in the first place. And on last week's episode, I talked about the fact that we can't control people. We can't control what someone's going to say to us, how they're going to say it, the way they show up. We can't control that.

What we can control is the reaction. And... I'm sharing this with you because, again, if you're in the business, you're in the business of relationships, and the reason why I would react the way I did to a lot of the things that happened in my brick and mortar, whether it was the way someone said something to me, or how they said it, or maybe they misunderstood me, or misrepresented me, it was me.

The reason I reacted to it was because I cared so bloody much what everybody else was thinking about me. I cared that they misunderstood me. I cared that they misrepresented me. I cared what they thought about me. And [00:07:00] that, in of itself, was the fact that I had this deep seated issue with myself. Right? I, I doubted my worth.

I doubted the value I brought. I questioned it. I needed validation to feel recognized and appreciated. I wasn't validating myself and a lot of the actions I was doing within the business and going into the business in the first place was from that place of wanting validation and people pleasing, right?

I'm going to do this because you asked me and I can, so I'm going to do it. So here we are. But it was a misaligned decision from the beginning, and I've shared that many times on my podcast, and which then in turn created a lot of internal chaos. Within myself throughout the four years that we had it and then obviously a ton of chaos with the relationships and not from again this bad negative place, but from a place [00:08:00] of I was having internal turmoil and chaos within myself and therefore, how could I expect my relationships to not reflect that back to me and.

So when I started working with my mindset coach, I said just turn my emotions off because I thought that was the solution. Just tell me not to care what other people think. And she said, Catherine, your emotions and the way that you process emotion and the way that you feel emotion is actually a superpower.

You're able to compassionately relate even if you haven't walked in someone's shoes. You're capable of holding space to a capacity that a lot of people can't because they just don't have that wired in their DNA. You have the ability to really, truly see and understand people, which is why people work with you.

And they love working with you because you see them, you get them, you understand them. You try to come from that place of understanding. We don't want to turn that off. We just want to turn off, well shift the way that you look at. [00:09:00] them and the relationship and what's going on. And when she said this to me, it literally turned my world upside down because for many, many years I was exhausted.

I was tired. I was energetically drained and burnt out because I was trying desperately to manage everybody else in my life and the way they showed up. And if they didn't show up the way that I wanted them to, it triggered and frustrated me. If they said something to me that I felt like was rude or condescending or off putting, it was like, how did they not know that that is off putting and rude?

And I would get frustrated at the fact that they didn't know or they didn't have the self awareness. And I would spend all of this time in this like mental mind drama. And. I think that in the early days of my consulting work, and what I really wanted to highlight in this episode and really illuminate about my journey is the root of why I was really showing up in this capacity and how that [00:10:00] was transpiring in, like I said, my relationships, and that the root of it was is that I was looking at the world through this scarcity consciousness.

It was all or nothing, black or white, right or wrong. If you didn't show up in the way that I think is right, then you're wrong and you're bad. And I'm going to sit and justify why that is the case, right? Or if you do something that pisses me off or treats me poorly, I'm going to cut you out of my life.

No discussion. We're done. End. That is totally grounded in scarcity. That is not really being okay with somebody expressing their authenticity, even if it is different than the way that you would express it, or it's not coming across in the right tone, or it's not seeing things for the thing that it is.

Right. So that was the one thing my mindset coach said to me was, you know, you can look [00:11:00] at, your clients or your customers or your partners in this light of right or wrong, black or white, all or nothing. Or you can decide to shift the way that you look at them in general, right, for what it is. That they're human, they're having a human experience, and how they show up is never going to appease you in every way, shape, or form.

And what's interesting about that is, is that that is how I want to be treated. And yet I was projecting outwards in this sort of way that you couldn't then be that way, right? I want to live my authentic truth, I want to show up how I am, and I want to be, you know, I want you to be compassionate towards me when I make mistakes, because I am human, I'm gonna make mistakes, but yet I was asking people to show up in a way that Met my needs and that was according to my expectations of how they should show [00:12:00] up and a few weeks ago I shared a post about that right because I think this is a bigger Topic of discussion and it all boils down to sort of this whole cancel culture and we see this so prevalently In the online space with influencers more than anything, you can go to any influencer post and you can just read the comments and there's probably a 50 50 split of like hate, like your lips are ugly, your hair is gross, you look like a man, like what are you wearing, you know, and then there's like the loving comments and all those sorts of things, but, or somebody makes a bloody mistake in whatever it is that they're doing, and all of a sudden they're cancelled.

Right? Let's cancel them. Nobody should ever follow them. I hope you die. People get death threats. Like, it's crazy, right? But that is where this thinking and mentality comes from. So I say it's crazy, and yet I can equally be part of that. And that is the compassionate, loving grace [00:13:00] that we can give ourselves.

And when we look at it from that perspective, it's like, how am I contributing to this? mindset and this way of being. Where have I in my life looked at maybe a client or a customer or a partner or husband or a wife or partner, whatever, and said, and looked at it through this lens of like, you did me wrong.

And they're looking at you going, I'm really sorry, but I have no idea what pissed you off so much, or what frustrated you, or why you're so angry. How can you not know? You didn't take all the garbage the way I wanted you to, or you sent an email that sounds condescending. That was not my intention at all.

I'm really sorry that you think that way. Well, it was, so I want an apology. Well, I can give you an apology, sort of, but like, I wasn't being condescending. I'm sure you've... probably navigated maybe some of these conversations, and maybe you haven't, but I'm sure you probably have, or maybe you've looked at a client like, well, that client didn't pay, and so I'm cutting them out of the [00:14:00] program, or I'm not responding to them one to one, or they canceled the call with you, or they didn't show up to a call, and therefore they've wronged you in some capacity, and in reality they might have just got the freaking time wrong, or they canceled the call They just realize maybe they don't want your support and that's cool.

Or they, something else came up and they weren't able to deal with it or there was an emergency or whatever. I mean, there's so many reasons why people do what they do. And when we can look at a human from that perspective and we can show an ounce of curiosity to try and understand where they're coming from before we blanket statement them, before we paint them with a broad brush of They didn't do what I wanted them to do, therefore, they don't meet my standards.

I'm going to give you a practical example. I was in a community recently that I paid for a long time ago that I'm still in, and a woman posted a debrief of [00:15:00] her launch that she did, and it didn't go the way that she wanted it to, and she was focusing on a few things of why it didn't go that way, and people started to ask her questions, and within the debrief, she mentioned that The tech bits of the launch didn't go the way she wanted.

She messed up with a bunch of the tech integrations and stuff like that. And so it wasn't as smooth as she wanted to. And somebody in the community commented, well, you definitely want to fix that because anytime somebody has a tech issue, like I'm out, I've got no time for that. It's not professional. And that to me is that black or white, all or nothing.

You're right. I'm wrong. There's one way of. living life. There's one way of walking through this world and if you're not polished, perfected, and perfect, and poised all the time, then I have no time for you. Now I want to unpack that comment a bit because typically that stems from them holding [00:16:00] themselves to this extremely crazy amount of high standard that isn't even achievable and they're dying on the inside because they can't even hold it, right?

They're, there's this, they're, fronting this beautiful, outward facing, I'm perfect, I'm polished, I got my shit together, I never make a mistake, my tech always goes perfectly, which tech never frickin does, it doesn't matter how organized you are, it can frickin break down, and go sideways on you, and That is an exhausting front to make, and that then goes back to the relationship with self.

But this is what sparks what I call cancel culture, which is that really judgmental place of I'm going to judge everybody around me. I'm going to... paint them with one broad stroke of a brush when we are all unique snowflakes, as cliche as that sounds, but there's so much nuance to who we are and what [00:17:00] makes us tick.

And more times than not, if you actually sit in front of somebody and get to know them, they're more like you than you think. And they might not hold every single value that you hold to be true, but they're more likely to resonate a lot of who you are in a lot of different ways. And this is some of that big perspective shift.

The things that I find frustrating or maybe triggering when somebody reflects that to me, I'm like, well, I'm actually doing that. Or, ooh, how am I doing that in my business? Or how am I showing up in my relationships like this? It's kind of like this big old light that's being shone on me because What they're doing in frustration I can probably find somewhere in my frickin life that I'm doing it whether that's in Relationship outside of business or it's in business and then I sit there with compassion and go I can be compassionate to myself Because [00:18:00] I'm not perfect.

I'm not a perfect human I make mistakes and I want to be in community with people that see that and honor that and don't cancel You as a human because of one tiny little mistake that you made or a blip that you made or something that didn't go according to plan. I often joke that I'm a mani gen and I totally freaking own this now, but I used to never because I had this deep creative scar within me and that was my typos and my mistakes.

And one of the biggest things that Manny Jen's, the curse of the Manny Jen, let's just say it's not really a curse, is that we move so quickly that we can often skip steps and make mistakes or typos. Typos is a big one and I used to get so anal about a typo and then again you do this work and it's like, What is the typo even saying?

It doesn't say that you're a horrible human being, and if someone wants to judge you based off a typo and say that [00:19:00] you're bad at what you do and you're not great, or they make this judgment about who you are based off a typo, like, that to me, again, is that cancel culture. It's quick to go, you made a mistake and you wronged me, you're in trouble.

But did I really wrong you? That's the question that you have to sort of, the dichotomy you have to have, right, is like, as we move through this world, and again, when we come from that abundance perspective, it's through the lens of compassion and gratitude for the person sitting in front of you or the customer that bought the pen from you, right?

It's the gratitude of like, thank you. And thank you for sharing your input and your insight. I can take it for what it is, but I know who I am at the core of who I am, and I'm not gonna change myself to appease you. I'm not gonna change myself to fit in and belong. I'm not gonna change myself to, um, you know, make people like me.

I'm gonna say with all of this, again, there are lessons that [00:20:00] need to be learned too. We don't always show up in the best light either, which is why I wanted to share the brick and mortar, right? Is I can sit there and go, Oh, I was justified in my behavior because I was frustrated and stressed and all the things, or I can say, no, I reacted like an asshole and I'm sorry about that.

And that's not who I am, nor do I want to be that way. You know, there's, there's a difference there. And so it's acknowledging that. We are human and we make mistakes and I wanted to have this bigger conversation because some of the stuff I start to see in the world and with my clients is they put themselves out there and so many of my clients are heart centered, soulful people that are sensitive in a lot of ways, like I am.

And that, that projection and that judgment and that anger and that hate that can come. We take it personally for, for a long time and. My work in my mindset and somatic healing work that I've done and continue to do has really helped me [00:21:00] to not shut myself off from what I'm here to do, but to navigate this in a way that doesn't, like, destroy me on the inside, right, or I'll see you tomorrow.

Bye. Have me shut everything down and go, okay, I'm going to go live in a cave somewhere because I can't handle the criticism or the feedback or the anger or whatever. And, and when we do this work and shift our perspective, we can see it for what it is. That, that projection or that anger or that criticism is black and white thinking.

Yes. And no, right or wrong, you're bad, I'm good, good and evil, right? It's that duality. We can see it for what it is, but then we can also come from a place of compassion because as humans, we've likely done it. We've likely been there. We've likely reacted in a way that we didn't like, right? And so we can sit and judge that person and go, well, why would they do that?

And I can't believe that they would talk to me that way. And I can't believe that, you know, they would send that email with that tone of [00:22:00] voice. And in reality it was like, have you always been perfect? Have you ever sent an email that you regret? Or a text message? Or had a phone conversation with somebody?

Or talked to your spouse a certain way that you regretted? At some point in your life I'm sure you've gotten angry and, you know, reacted in a way that, You didn't like, and the worst thing that you can do is one, beat yourself up for it. And that's where the shame comes in, right? And the guilt, and then you start beating yourself up.

And none of that is grounded in compassion and grace. And when we can give ourself compassion and grace for the way that we show up in the world, we have a lot more of that for everybody else. And that has been my greatest lesson in entrepreneurship and in relationship. And I'm not perfect. Like I'm going to paint this.

picture again for you. I am not perfect. I don't always react the best way, but I can say from doing this work, this deep inner work and this self actualization and realization work that my [00:23:00] relationships with my clients and my customers and my friends have gotten a hell of a lot better because I've learned and that When we can give people the grace to also make the mistake and learn from it, there's just something beautiful there that happens in a relationship because we're looking at it from a different perspective.

We're not painting everybody with that one brush and we're not living in that. world of, if you do one thing wrong, you suck, I'm canceling you, you're done, I don't want to follow you, I don't want to read your emails anymore, I can't believe I even hired you as a mentor, you, you know, you did all of these things that were wrong.

That energy is not an energy I want to play in, but it's not up to me to attract people and to speak to people in a way that attracts all [00:24:00] that type of people in my world. It's about me from the inside working on that within me that then will reflect that out. Because the other thing that I want to make really clear is, is that.

In relation with people, because relationships are nuanced, and it depends on the time of day, and the month, and the week, and the year, and what's going on, and what just happened, that can impact our reaction and the way that we're reacting, right? Our nervous system can go into that flight, fight, fawn, or freeze, and we can respond in that way.

And so on any given day, We're, we might show up slightly differently and we might react in a, in a different way. And so again, it all comes back to that compassion and grace of like, just because somebody had an off day doesn't mean that they're the worst person on the planet and therefore we should write them off.

Or just because somebody had a typo in an email or a typo in a sales page that they're not good at what they [00:25:00] do. Or somebody that Was maybe the way in which they showed up on a group call. Wasn't the way that you thought they should show up. And therefore you're now starting to question whether or not that the right mentor for you, when in reality, again, we're all human.

And so anytime we're outward gazing at our clients, our customers or people just in our lives, and we're picking apart. Why they aren't good enough for you and why they don't meet your standards and why they don't measure up One, that's just pure judgment and two, it's like, where do you not see that within yourself?

Like where is that not good enough coming, good enoughness coming from within yourself that you're looking at everybody else picking apart what they aren't good at and making some assumption or, or blanket statement of, of what the scenario or situation is. And so I'm going to leave you with this cause I think this is like [00:26:00] 100 percent wholeheartedly.

will change any relationship you have is curiosity and understanding. When you can go into any conversation with a level of curiosity, it doesn't matter how somebody sent you an email or said something on a voice note or talked to you in person, it's as you're sitting there getting more and more clear about why they said it.

What they really mean by it and what they're hoping to get and achieve, right? When we can come from that place of curiosity and wanting to truly understand, so much magic can happen. And this also reflects back in your business when you can look at your business from a perspective of what can I learn from this?

What can I understand deeper about my client, about my customer journey, about my marketing, about my sales? Where can I put this hat on of curiosity and understanding and not make it mean anything about me, my worth, my value, or not make it mean anything about them, the other people. There [00:27:00] isn't an us versus them, which is again that black and white thinking, us versus them.

Then there's this oneness. This co creation, this thought partnership can happen and beautiful things happen and that ripple effect and that impact that then permeates out into the world because you are coming from this place of deep compassion and gratitude and understanding and It diffuses probably every conflict you'll ever have when you can just ask the question.

I'm curious what you mean by that. I'm curious to understand a little bit more by what you're saying. I hear you saying this. Is this what you mean? These are just communication cues that are so easy to use, but we have to do that inner work and that nervous system regulation more than anything, because when we get triggered, it's hard for us.

To come from that place when we're triggered and when we get into defensive mode, when we want to fight or we want to flight, we want [00:28:00] to freeze or fawn. It's hard to get into that place of emotional intelligence in a lot of ways. And that is the depth of the work that I've done with my coaches that have literally impact my business and my business relationships, but all relationships, as I said, an emotional intelligence is not, I'm going to spew whatever the hell I want.

Emotional intelligence is understanding that what you say can have an impact on the person receiving it and that you may make mistakes, but it's owning up to those mistakes. But it's also coming from that place of curiosity and understanding, um, before making any sort of like black or white. All or nothing, right or wrong, perspective, assumption, or judgment about the person.

So with that, next week's episode, I'm going to record on how to assess your marketing and sales from a data perspective so that you can stop throwing spaghetti against the wall. Cheers. Thanks for listening. [00:29:00] We'll see you right back here next time. You can also find us on social media at creatively owned and online at creatively owned dot com.

Until next time, keep showing up as your authentic self.