Hey. Okay. First of all, hi. This is a low energy, high return episode. Welcome to all the new listeners. This book is flying off the shelves as coaches and consultants send heartfelt holiday wishes and gifts. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm Renee Hribar, and if. You are listening for the first time. Hello, this is Selling Your Expertise podcast and as always, keeping it real.

This is the Monday before Christmas, which means our brains are half checked out. Our to-do list is aggressive and we're pretending to be basically done for the year while secretly wondering if there's still money left on the table. No judgment. I see you. If there is money left on the table and if you officially collect it in January, it's still activities you can do easily today.

So this is not a set massive goals for 2026 episode. This episode will give you one thing you can do today, literally today, and then keep doing between now and when you officially get back in the new year. It's easy, it creates genuine conversations, reconnections and yes, re the new. My favorite word and that one thing.

Reviewing your inbox. What? Renee, that seems so easy. It is. That's it. That's not a big funnel and not a big launch. Not redoing your website, not a vision quest in the woods. I do have one person who is doing something similar. God bless her. Just your inbox. That's it. That's all I need you to do. And let me tell you, you can do this from anywhere.

What this came from was a screen share, zoom call with one of my clients I had recently, and together we went into her inbox to do this exact exercise, and before we even got started, she goes, oh, oh, I, I'll email them later. And I immediately said, whoa, pause. Who is them? Who is them? I'll email them later because I know her.

Like many of my other smart, very skilled clients, sending any email, especially to a former client, comes with a side of anxiety, a main dish of overthinking and a serious dessert filled with pungent, mean girl monologue. You like that? Yeah. I'm thinking about food a lot today. I'll tell ya. So turns out she just received a very sexy email.

I said Facetiously from Microsoft. You know, the kind, basically, Hey, heads up for European traffic. There's a new consent enforcement requirement. Here's the deadline. Hot. Right? So she builds websites and manages them. As a part of the work she does, she immediately recognized the effects it will have on several of her former clients, right?

So she was like, oh my gosh, this is gonna affect this one and this one. Hold on, let me look. And she went to some backend project board she has, and she's like, it's like seven people, including a big former client that she'd worked with for years that she had been thinking about getting back in touch with.

So this was like perfect, but when she said, oh, I'll email them later. I wasn't gonna let that go. And so this is what I wanted to share with you. This one sentence that I hear all the time was, I've been meaning to reach out about this update, but I feel like I need to understand everything about it first.

That's what she told me, and I get that I'm not a web designer, so I had to say, listen, tell me more about what's coming up, like, what's going on? What do you have to do first? And she said, well, there's this 30 minute tutorial explanation about how to handle it that I just haven't had time to watch. And then I just basically stared at her.

Lovingly, but directly. And I said, email is not a marriage proposal. It's just a question. That's all we wanted to do. So let me say again for the people in the back, those who are stress cleaning their kitchen right now I'm talking to you, email is not. A marriage proposal, you are not committing to a full solution.

You are not committing to free work. You are not committing to a 30 page plan or some lifelong obligation. You are asking a question. That's what this initial email is going to do. That's it. So here's what we did together on the call. We forwarded the Microsoft email to her former client and we added a short note.

Not a thesis, not a technical breakdown, and not a, let me explain GDPR since 2018, which is honestly, I say that out loud with love because a lot of my clients love to give the backstory. I get it. I get it, I get it. I sometimes fall into the same trap still, even though I know better. So here's what we sent ready.

I am sure you've already seen this come through. I took a quick look on the back end of your site and I think it'd be smart to do a quick 20 minute screen share to make sure you're all set. I can do this day, date, and time or this day, date and time. Do either of those work for you? That's it. Short, clear, human.

Now notice what we did not do. We did not explain the entire technical situation. We did not promise a solution. We did not say, I'll take care of this for you for free. We did not build a five page plan before knowing if the client even cares about this. Because what if she doesn't care about European traffic?

What if that's not something she's even focused on for the coming year? Right? Then that's what we have to figure out. So instead we simply brought the issue to the surface, showed we were paying attention. Offered a contained next step and asked one clear question. That's it. I'm giving you the same analogy I gave her.

So I, if I text you and I'm like, Hey, do you wanna go to dinner at 7:00 PM tonight? You do not need to know the full menu, the wine list, the seating chart, or the chef's childhood story before you can say, yeah, I can do seven. Right? Like, either you wanna come or not. Once you say, yeah, then. We can figure out where we're going, what the restaurant might have that would fit your newest current dietary needs and specifications, right?

So like in the same thing with business, too many of us are building out the entire restaurant experience before we even ask, do you wanna go to dinner? And that's how you burn time, burn energy, and burn emotional bandwidth on people who are never gonna go anyway. So, like I say this all the time about the the process.

I say sales process. Start with a question. You don't have to know all the answers to all the possible questions that are gonna come up, but you have to ask the first question first before you even have to worry about that anyway. So here's what matters right now between December 22nd today and January 6th, which is when most of us are going back in, maybe not maybe a week later.

Regardless, you've got two, three weeks. Where you're probably saying to yourself, well, you know, I'll lightly check email and lightly check social, and maybe you're mentally planning the year. You know, you got yourself that gorgeous paper planner for Christmas and okay, you know, you'll start out in January and maybe you're working on some projects that you've put off since June.

Okay, don't worry. Or you're weirdly open to conversations that you've ignored since January. You know, like these are all, these are all things that are happening in our minds between now and when we. Quote unquote, come back in January and you if, if you want to use your short pockets of time between now and when you come back in January to build revenue for January.

Instead of a content calendar or webpage that no one will see anyway, then listen in with love. I am saying this, what I'm about to share with you. You can do from anywhere. You can do it from the airport gate while you wait for your flight to Minneapolis because it was delayed due to inclement weather.

Ask me how. I know you can do it from the back seat while your husband drives or your partner drives and uh, or your kid drives. I know my kid's like old enough to drive now. It's a crazy town. You can do it while you're having coffee. Oh, that magical time before the house wakes up in the morning before the dog even knows you're awake.

Yeah. That quiet time. When you have time to think you can do this, then this is a short, I sit down, I know exactly what to do. I'm not gonna get distracted. It's one person at a time. And PS you can also do it in your PJs as you watch love, actually, again, with wine. Of course, I don't judge. Maybe I'm doing it too.

And by, by the way, this does not have to be one-to-one. So if you're thinking, oh, Renee, if I go through my, you know, QuickBooks and my Xero, and my calendar, my inbox, all these places you've been telling me to look and just talk to one person at a time, it's gonna be too many people. Okay. You can reconnect by inviting people to something simple and low pressure in January, like a beginning of year group coffee chat, you know, like I do, or a casual, you know, zoom vision board party.

You don't have to be a life coach to have a vision board party. You can invite them to a round table on one way. You're using AI right now, both personally and professionally, or just one or the other. You do not need to be an AI expert. To do this, you could give a little short demo, have a conversation.

And just have a, Hey, I am hosting this. If you wanna join us, kind of thing. Like this is easy to do with a one to many reconnection. It's also very powerful. It brings people back to you, back to conversations with you. You are allowed to say, I'm hosting this. I thought of you. And that's it. Do you want the details?

So here's your assignment from this episode forward, one relevant question to a past or current client with a short note. And ask one question at the end. It might sound like this. Three sentence email. Hello script incoming boop boop boop boop. This will be a good time to take notes. Here's two examples of three sentence emails that my clients are sending, that I'm sending between now and when we quote unquote come back for the new year.

And honestly, this is all I'm doing, um, in those small pockets of time. Ready? Three sentences clearing my inbox over the holiday while the kids are out. Saw this, I'm sure you've already seen it already, or something like it. Do you wanna look at this together in the new year? That's one. I send that to somebody that I probably know pretty well, a former client or a current client, right?

Second three sentence email ready? This crossed my desk and it made me think of you. I'm hosting a small Zoom room circle with a few of my favorite people around this in January. Want me to send you the details? That's it. You do not need all the answers to ask one question, to email one person to reach out to one person.

If they say yes, then you can prepare more stuff. If they say no, move on. You're clean, it's clear. No big deal. They might not have seen it. So I leave you with this, my friends, reach out before you know everything. Your inbox is an easy first place to look and it makes sense, right? You're cleaning it up, you're getting ready for a fresh new year.

You are allowed to say, do you wanna look at this together? Book the time, then go nerd out on the solution like my client did, 'cause she did get that appointment and she did get all the details before she actually had to talk to her. This is how you reconnect. This is how you reopen conversations. This is how money shows up without you hustling during the natural end year break, right?

You, you don't need all the pieces of the puzzle together to put this next piece into place to stay close to the money, to stay close to the things that will actually bring in revenue that will fund. All the other things you want to do. Yeah, you wanna fix that funnel. I get it. it's not an urgent problem.

You need clients now, clients that can help you fund that this activity. We'll get you that next client. All right? I'll see you in the next episode, and if you do this one thing this week, you are already ahead. And if you like this, then go to ask me coach.com for the most current offers and ways to connect with me and other smart experts just like you.

See you soon. Happy New Year.