Why Clients Keep Saying "Let Me Think About It" (And the Energetic + Strategic Reasons You Haven't Considered)

Intro/Outro: [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 are 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 are 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 swift, the air tuning this week's episode. I cannot wait to dive in today's topic [00:01:00] because I am building off of an episode that launched three episodes ago now where I talked about the incongruencies in messaging, whether that's internal or external, and how that's impacting your business from the type of clients that you might be attracting.

To the types of objections that you might be getting when people are, um, looking or considering working with you to getting a lot of chargebacks or refunds or just clients that maybe aren't that trustworthy or that sort of thing. And I think if you've been in business long enough, you've probably experienced.

A lot of variations within your business, whether that is clients that ghost you and don't pay you or ask for a refund or a chargeback or whatever it might be, and also knowing that. Just because you're getting and experiencing these things doesn't mean that like you're a bad person or you're doing something wrong, or anything [00:02:00] like that.

What I wanted to highlight was in that episode was my own journey, my own story, and how I sort of uncover some of these things and spot these incongruencies in other people's businesses. So that we can sort of clear up that energy. Well, I had a lot of reception from that episode, and I had a past client actually reach out to me and say, this is my current situation.

Can you provide any sort of insight into why this might be happening? Or where I can start to look to discover this for myself, right? And so I just wanted to dedicate an entire episode to really talking about this particular energy that's sort of circulating her business because it also resonates with me and something that I've navigated in my own business.

And that's the energy of waiting. And what I mean by that is. If a client, potential client or potential clients are showing up on sales [00:03:00] calls or you're having conversations in the dms with them or whatever, and you're getting a lot of, let me think about it, or, I really wanna do this, but I wanna wait until X end of the summer in the new year, whatever it might be.

There are a few things that you can start to sort of. Process with for yourself to see where that incongruency is. Happening within your business. Now, the way in which I, uh, approach incongruencies is not from a, like, this is the thing that's wrong or this is what's going on. Yes, I can get really micro detailed on that.

Oftentimes, it can be a combination of a few things, so I'm just gonna share with you. How I would respond to this potential client or this client of mine, sorry, that was asking this question, and also share insights into. How this has appeared in my business and [00:04:00] what was sort of going on at the time and how I sort of cleaned up sort of that energy.

So the first place that I would look if I was getting a lot of waiting energy, which has happened to me a few times. In my online business, not particularly in my brick and mortar, but more so in my online business. The first place that I would look, and I see this a lot with founders, is the capacity to receive.

Meaning what does your capacity look like in your business, but also what does it look like outside of your business, for example. If your calendar is booked solid in your business and you don't actually have space to receive new clients, two new clients, five new clients, 10 new clients, then the waiting can actually be.

That appearing in your business because you actually don't have the capacity to onboard or you don't have that capacity to [00:05:00] receive new clients and fulfill those clients, even though you might think that you do, and this comes up for a lot of high achievers, if I'm being honest, is that we often bite off more than we can chew.

And therefore our capacity is often stretched very, very, very thin. And it doesn't have to just be in your business. It can also be in your life if you're juggling a move, if you're juggling planning a wedding, if you're juggling, um, kids, if you're juggling an aging parent. These are all things that I see, the emotional capacity and the actual capacity to deliver.

Isn't there to receive the clients? And so we might look at the waiting as like, why does this keep happening? Why do people tell me that they wanna wait until the end of the summer or the end of Christmas or New Year or whatever? And I wanna onboard clients now. That usually is a factor, [00:06:00] is the capacity to receive the calendar is full and or your emotional buckets are full.

You just don't have any more to give, and this is really predominant for women who are usually juggling all the things and are juggling everybody else's needs and everybody else's stuff. And. They have a desire to grow their business. They have a desire to serve more people. They have a desire to get their work in the hands of more people.

And yet emotionally, that emotional capacity isn't there to be able to fulfill on that, and it doesn't all have to be. Like emotionally dragging or trying times, right? It literally could be the fact that you bought a new house, or you're planning a wedding, or you're juggling maybe another career simultaneously to grow this other part of your business.

Or maybe you are like leveraged in your delivery. I've seen this with clients so much where they have literally like three or four offers that they're selling [00:07:00] and they're successful. Then they're doing live events. Then they're, you know, they're, uh, consulting one-to-one, that they, their practice is actually full, and then they're wondering why.

People are canceling or not renewing, they're wondering why clients aren't coming in and that's because it's like a natural space making that's happening for you to be able to like fulfill. That's one component and that's really the energetic component that I look at first, and usually nine times out of 10, that's where a lot of high achieving women are capped emotionally, physically, mentally.

All of it. They don't have the capacity to receive anymore, even though their system is like, I really want this. And so a lot of the work that I do with women at that level is how do we clear space and how do we make space? Like what is the non-essentials that have to go and where are you spinning your wheels on things [00:08:00] that sure might feel fulfilling?

Like you're offering all these live events and these free workshops and these free challenges and all the things. Those aren't actually really producing the results for you, but they're taking up a lot of mental capacity. Then like where do we clear that? Right? You've heard this a lot in, in probably home decluttering, right?

When you declutter your home and you free the space of it, you take clothes to the Goodwill, you clean out your Tupperware drawer, whatever it might be, and all of a sudden you've created space. And all of a sudden, maybe a client comes in. So that's where I'm saying that energy isn't compartmentalized and that it's not like, oh, it's just in my business.

I need to look. It's literally looking in all of the areas of your life where you're absolutely capped. Mentally, spiritually, emotionally, all of it. The other energetic component of is like where are you waiting? Where are you in a state of waiting [00:09:00] for you to really pursue the thing that you want to pursue, for you to really go after the thing you want?

Where are you? Not being decisive in your life and in your business. Where is that wishy-washy energy coming through? That was a big one for me in a lot of ways, and predominantly with. How I navigate pivots and changes for a long time, and I did this in relationships. I do this in, you know, business where I hold onto the thing longer than I should.

It's out fear of what's next? What's the next thing that wants to come in? The problem with that is, is that when you are indecisive and you're not taking that clear action forward or letting go of the thing that no longer serves you, you're sitting in limbo. And that energy will then start [00:10:00] to show up in all facets of your life, right?

Because again, you're not quite, you're not making the decision. And so that's gonna be reflected right back to you with potential clients going, well, let me think about it. I don't really know. I. There, I don't know, is just, I'm not willing to prioritize this right now in this moment. And it's either because they don't see the value of it to take action now and or there's other priorities in their world that are taking the topper priority over the one that you're presenting them and.

That often comes up too. So for me, it's less about the clutter because for me, I am, I'm very precise in having that organization within my business and having organization within my life and all those sorts of things. And so for me, it's not like bucket full, you know? Five years ago, six years ago, when I've had my brick and mortar absolutely biting off more [00:11:00] than I can chew, for sure, and taking on way too much and not knowing how to ask for help.

100%. That is one that I've definitely outgrown. The other, the one that I see more now within myself is holding onto things too long, specifically when it comes to the business and what I know I need to let go of, but I'm too afraid to let go of it because I don't know what's on the other end of that.

There is indecisive energy with that and so energetically, if you are getting a lot of weighting energy, then that for sure. Is a place to sort of look at. The other component of it is, is that we live in a collective environment, and so we just went through a really crazy el uh, eclipse season Virgo, which is all about letting go and cutting sort of the fat, but also.

Is a waiting game, right? Is like to not [00:12:00] make decisions right away. Now, if that's not when you're getting that waiting energy, then that, then look at the other areas. But for me, from the start of September till now, there have been some pretty. Epic contract negotiations in the works that I've been waiting for, and that timeframe has been that, that long.

I've just now started to solidify that and I am, I say I'm in limbo. That's the thing I keep saying is I'm in limbo. I actually don't know. What the next three months looks like for me, because I have some really epic contracts in the works right now that will likely take up a lot of my bandwidth. And therefore I don't know what I'm doing with this project and this project and I can't actually make that decision until I have this solidified and I'm not rushing that negotiation and I'm not [00:13:00] rushing that process.

Therefore, I quote unquote, I'm sort of in this like limbo state. So. There has been a lot of waiting energy that has come through in my business of people indecisive or wanting to think about things, and that is to me, what's going on collectively and how that collective energy is impacting the business.

So that's another thing to sort of look at. And then I think the thing that. I wanna really make sure that you walk away with here today as listening to this, is that it's not just the energetics, right? There is also a strategic element to this, and I wanna share my own learned experience from this because I have talked to women who were on the fence to invest in spell bound for years.

And they were hemming and hawing about it. And I don't know. And I think in that moment, and I [00:14:00] think a lot of the messaging out there is, well, your messaging isn't solid enough, or your positioning isn't solid enough or whatever. And sure, maybe there were elements that I could, um, tighten up for sure. And I think it was the way in which I structured it, and again, you can say this is positioning and sales and all the things.

But. This experience and how I sold it, performed exceptionally well. Blew industry strand standards out of the water and didn't even hit the mark on them. Right? People were like, I don't understand how you're creating the re these results, and yet I still got waiting energy that would come through. And so I think when we're in the face of potential rejection, which is one of the hardest things for many of us to navigate, especially as a personal brand, is that.

When we're in the face of that rejection, it feels really, really, really hard and maybe tender and maybe raw and [00:15:00] all of the things to ask people why they're indecisive because we, we don't wanna necessarily hear the answer or we're scared to hear the answer. And after two and a half years of running spell bound and hearing some of this, but also seeing women.

Hemming and hawing and being on the fence for like years. I would ask them outright like, what's the indecision? And you might be surprised by what a lot of their responses were, because I think again, we're conditioned or told or there's message. I see messaging all over the internet. It's like, you know, you are not getting chosen or, uh, they're choosing some other coach that's not as good as you, blah, blah, blah.

Right. Which very well could be the case. And it might not be. And so while there's an energetic component to do some energetic cleanup, probably having that invitation of energetic cleanup in your world. There also is a strategic element to [00:16:00] this, and for those of you that don't know how spell bound was sort of run, it was run on Evergreen.

Evergreen, meaning there was open enrollment, you could enroll whenever you wanted, come when you're ready. I wasn't going to twist your rubber arm to be in space with me because I knew the value I brought and I knew I could help women and I only wanted to help the women who were ready for the type of help and support.

That I offered and I stood in that, which presented women walking away from sales calls that needed to sort of think about it. And as a one-off woman that walks away and thinks about it and doesn't come back around, that's fine. But the women that stayed in my world that were in this sort of indecision waiting, I ask them, why are you so indecisive about this?

And this might shock you. It's because spellbound didn't have a deadline and not from a [00:17:00] false scarcity or urgency, and not from a manipulative tactic. It was the fact that there wasn't a deadline and they had other things they wanted to prioritize that had nothing to do with getting messaging support or copy support.

For example, a handful of the women were going to get a credential or an upgrade in their training, whether that's rapid rewiring, whether that was somatic level two, whatever it was. They were like, I want to take this upgrade and get further. Certified in, in my gifts and what I'm offering, Reiki one, Reiki two, yoga, whatever it was.

They were like, I want to go into this training and there's a start and an end date and or, I know that in order to really succeed in your program, Catherine, I need some really deep mindset support around this particular topic, and so I'm gonna invest in that first, so I can really excel in your program.

I think sometimes we don't [00:18:00] think about. The other competing priorities that are going on in someone's reality. We just think they didn't choose me. They must be choosing somebody else. Right. And that rejection runs deep. But when you get curious with people why they're being indecisive after the fact, right?

You might be surprised with what their response was. 'cause I was actually shocked. I was like, oh, interesting. I didn't realize that. The priority wasn't necessarily to choose another coach that was gonna help them with messaging, copy, and funnel building, but it was actually the fact that they were prioritizing other courses and programs and learning and all of that, either to prepare themselves to excel in spell bound, or.

Further deepen their own mastery and practice. And the fact that the people that they were looking to get that support with had a [00:19:00] deadline and a start and an end date made their decision for them because they were like, well, I can take spellbound later. I need to do this certification right now because this is when it starts and this is when it ends, and it's not gonna, you know, happen again until 2027 or something along those lines.

So. That was the decision making factor, is that they couldn't prioritize spellbound while also prioritizing certification and or getting that additional support that would help them excel in spellbound. So that was a shocker, and that is something that could be being presented in that conversation. If somebody's like, I, I want to do this at the end of summer.

I wanna do this in end of Christmas, or I'm waiting until 2026. Rather than have that be a a rejection, that's hard to sort of navigate, ask them why. And I've started to do that a lot. I've just said, so [00:20:00] what was your decision? Blah, blah, blah, blah. So that I can get a better understanding of where potentially people are in that indecision because that then I can strategically.

Communicate or articulate well before they get on that sort of sales call and or consider that there maybe is a deadline that's needed that. You know, I think the other part of this is as, as women particularly, we have this conditioning of like not wanting to be too assertive, too pushy, too salesy. We don't wanna piss people off, we don't want people to think we're icky.

All the things. And that seeps through in our sales strategy and our marketing strategy. And I think the biggest thing for me, after about a year and a half to two years of running spell bound was getting more assertive. In what we were allowing people to walk away with. Like we do need a response within seven days [00:21:00] and that's so that we can move on energetically from this conversation.

So. That's one of the things we implemented in is like, I'm, I'm no longer letting you just go to walk away and go all think about it, right? It's like, well, when do you need to think about it for and when are you gonna make a decision? And this is also telling 'cause for me, again, it's not about taking on everybody and anybody, it's about taking on the right women that are going to really excel.

In my experience, and those women are assertive and those women are decisive, and those women know what they want. Sure. We all have shit that comes up that gets in our way. Absolutely. But if you can't give me an answer within seven days, then. Best of luck. Like I, I trust that you're going in a direction that you need to go into, but I'm not going to continually follow up with you for months and months and months, hoping that one day you turn around and say, okay, yes, I'm ready to do this.

That's not. The approach I was taking. Right. And [00:22:00] so we, we implemented that into the sales process that we needed an answer within seven days. And also that I wasn't available all the time. So we, we switched the enrollment actually before you could enroll whenever then we were, we're only letting five people in every single month.

Right. And I don't know when those five people will come in. And so if I'm on a call with you right now, then. You might wanna get into this rather than wait. And it wasn't to just put in a tactic. Part of the wishy-washy indecisive energy was me not being assertive in what I actually needed in my business was some structure specifically around enrollment and onboarding because.

Nine times out of 10, I would have a holiday planned and all of a sudden boof, I would get four people saying they wanted to join, and the four people would be people we had conversations with in a 90 day period, like the past 90 days. And so then I'd go, well, I'm leaving for two weeks. Well, I want to get in now.[00:23:00] 

Well, okay, well, I'll do your strategy session while I'm on holidays, and that's usually what would happen. I would compromise my holidays or I'd compromise something, right? Because, quote unquote, I was available all the time and that didn't work for me, and that was no longer working for me. And so there was some assertiveness and some parameters and some boundaries that I was putting in place.

Call it strategy, call it energetic, whatever. Right? But there's some strategic pieces here is that if you are like, come when you're ready all the time, it doesn't matter. That will impact because people will prioritize the more immediate thing. That's just natural tendency, right? Then in that moment, and the come when you want to, I think works.

If you're selling. Like if you're a Shopper's Drug Mart or a Target where it's like, I mean, they still have open hours and closed hours. They're still closed in open hours. It's [00:24:00] not a 24 7, but with a service-based business, it's not like you, you get to just walk into a massage therapist and say, I need a massage today.

Hello. I'm available. Like, well, yeah, I'm not like, you have to book in advance in order to get in. Right. There's some planning and all of these things start to one. Really reflect to you the type of people you're attracting as well, because if there is that expectation that you're available whenever they want you to be available, there is no boundary and therefore there really is no sort of urgency to then want to get the support from you because, well, I'll just come tomorrow or I'll come tomorrow.

People love delaying their goals and dreams and desires. That's common, right? We say we want something, but are we willing to actually put in the reps to achieve it? For many people, that's a hard thing. So if you're receiving these, I need to think about it. I'm gonna wait on it. There's a better time in the [00:25:00] future what that translation is.

As I'm sure you're aware is really, I'm not prioritizing this right now. And unless you ask people why they're not prioritizing it, you will never truly know within your business what that thing is. And so one, I think internally and the internal landscape and what it is that you are reflecting outwards.

There are some reflection pieces there that I shared with you that you could absolutely start to dig into the capacity that you have and how full you are emotionally, mentally, physically, not just in your business. Do you have the capacity to receive more or are you absolutely full? The other one being the indecisiveness.

The the you being in limbo. You being you playing a waiting game. Um, you not being able to really take action on things because now isn't the right time or you're not ready, or you will do it someday [00:26:00] maybe, right? If you are in that energy, that's going to be reflected in other people showing you that back a hundred percent.

And then strategically is actually thinking about. Why are people indecisive and getting really courageous to ask people with no attachment, with not taking things personally, but truly asking them like, why? Why do you wanna wait until August? Why do you wanna wait till December? Rather than going, okay, okay, sure, yeah, you can wait till August.

I'll circle back around. That's people pleasing in its finest coming out because in reality, again, as a business owner, I. Your time and your availability and your expertise and the value you bring is the currency in a lot of ways. And if you're just telling people, well, yeah, you can. You can reach out to me whenever the heck you want to and I'll be available.

Then a lot of things might go up psychologically for them. Like, well, if she's available all the time, like the massage therapist, well, are they really that good of a massage [00:27:00] therapist if their calendar's wide open all the time and they never have bookings? Interesting. I don't know. Right. That whole open availability piece will tell that story to people whether.

You are telling that or not, like your intentions do, don't have to match what their unconscious mind is gonna start to make up. So strategically putting parameters, boundary structure around when you are available, what you're available for, and what you're not available for. And that could be, no, sorry, you can't just come when you feel like it.

I need to know. What my booking looks like and all of that. And also, I'm not available for people that are gonna be indecisive in this, right. I'm not gonna sit energetically and wait and hope that they're gonna say yes someday, maybe nada, right? Like. By the time they get on a sales call with you, hopefully [00:28:00] you've done your marketing and your sales, and they get on that, that sales call with you, and they know what it is that you're bringing to the table.

And it really is just a decision making process. And if it's not a decision making process, then it's looking at your marketing and your sales of why I am getting on calls with people that aren't ready to make a decision. And if they're not ready to make a decision, then getting strategic about what that is.

And the only way you'll know that other than all of the psychology stuff that's being printed about sales, right? Like deadlines, urgency, scarcity, all the things beyond that is actually asking them why are you. Not making this decision. And I was shocked. Like I said, when I got the responses I got, it had nothing to do with the fact that they didn't see me as the person that was gonna help them with messaging, copy all the things.

It's just that they had to prioritize in their [00:29:00] mind and in their decision making process. They prioritized the thing that had the deadline because otherwise they would have to wait maybe another year to take that certification and or. They didn't think that the program itself would help them on this one particular block they had, and therefore they found somebody that would help them on a deeper mindset issue than what Spell bound would actually help them with.

And they wanted to set themselves up for success for spell bound. Therefore, they. Quite literally invested in the thing that they were hoping would do that, but it, it wasn't a direct competitor. If we're looking at direct competitors and they were saying, well, I actually went with this coach, or I went this, this mentor, mentor, then you could look at, you would be looking at strategically in a different way because.

Then it was a direct competitor thing. Then To me it's a messaging, positioning, offer thing strategically. But if they're choosing another [00:30:00] indirect competitor, they're choosing to put their money into something that's not a direct competitor, then to me it's looking at things like. The timing, the exclusivity, whatever it might be, is like what would've got them to make that decision and be less indecisive?

And that would've been to have a deadline. Because the thing is, there will always be something that comes up for many people, right? It doesn't matter that messaging and copy and funnel building and customer journey mapping and all those sorts of things are like, if you don't have that, it's gonna be really hard for you to sell, particularly in the online space.

Now, given the saturation of it, in many ways, if you don't have that, you will struggle. But that's not what the brain is. The brain is rarely rationally making decisions when it comes to buying things, right? It's not usually a rational decision. It's the fact that they're now rationalizing, I need this and I need this, and I need this in order to be ready for [00:31:00] this.

Therefore, I'm gonna invest in the things that have the deadline first, rather than go into smell mode. 'cause I can go whenever I want to. So that is a deep dive into. The waiting and people putting off, making that decision. And so I would love to know what you have to think about that as you've listened to this podcast now, and as you kind of, um, reflect on your own journey, your own experience, what might be going on for you and your business and where you might be able to tighten up.

Energetically, but also strategically, right? That you get to ask for what you want and you get to create boundaries around what you want, and you get to be assertive in that. And that leadership will also reflect out and will attract people with that sort of same energetic. Match to you, but you get to ask for what you want in business.

And it's not about turning yourselves inside out to appease the people [00:32:00] sitting in front of you. And it's having that detached stance though, of like, this is what I'm offering, this is what I'm available, this is what it's about. It's not a take it or leave it. It's like this is the value that I bring to the table.

And standing in that confidence, not overexplaining, not over validating, not over justification, none of it. It's like this is what it is and this is how it can help you. And that less is more approach on a sales call. Rather than trying to fill in all of the silence of like, this is all it can do for you, right?

There is strategic elements to closing a sale and getting that yes, and again, from a grounded, genuine place, but if you're not willing to be in that assertion and that confidence and that conviction, that will naturally be displayed and reflected back to you, which can then result in, I'm gonna go think about it, [00:33:00] and.

Sure, maybe somebody goes and, and does hire your quote unquote competitor and, or it could just be a totally indirect decision that has nothing to do with what you presented them. It's just you're always available whenever you're ready. Um, energy is like, well just put it off and I'll prioritize this thing first.

So hopefully that helps. Uh, if you have any questions at all. Drop me a dm. I'm happy to answer them for you, and obviously always happy to record podcasts like this that can help further dissect some of the things that I chatted about in past episodes. So I hope you have a Fab Week. Cheers. 

Intro/Outro: Thanks for listening.

We'll see you right back here next time. You can also find us on social media at creatively owned and online@creativelyowned.com. Until next time, keep showing up as your authentic [00:34:00] self.