[00:00:00] Hey. Hey. It's Renee Rebar, your sales coach and author of Selling Your Expertise book, which inspired this podcast. And today's episode is all about a story I talked about in the book called The Cake Effect. Now. Yes, this episode I am gonna talk about cake. So you might get a little hungry. Don't worry.

I've got a recipe in the book for my grandma's crazy cake. You can go have it 'cause that's what I'm gonna make later on today too. So we're kicking off this week by tackling this sneaky. What if thoughts that keep way too many women stuck and not selling. So let me introduce to something that I talk about in my book called The Cake Effect, and it's, it's, no, it's not just about your sweet tooth, but it is about the false stories that your brain bakes up, that stop you from reaching out, that stop you from.

Following up that stop you from inviting someone to [00:01:00] anything, let alone working together. So back in university, my friends and I would totally spiral over our crushes. We would look at them from across the room or from across the, the university, try dyad, or we would look at them from across the,

the sports court, we would, you know, looking at these cute guys we're like, oh, he is so adorable. Wow. He is so sweet. Oh my goodness. He smiled at me. And then immediately things like this would pop out of our brains. Well, what if his mom hates me, or what if he doesn't like dogs? Or, what if I get a promotion at work and that requires me to move and then we break up because of it.

Er put on the brakes kids. Meanwhile, we hadn't even gone on a first date yet. Sound familiar, right? There's no reason I have to worry about his mom. We haven't even dated or a promotion at work. I'm in university. I don't have a job. It's a mythical job that I might get down the [00:02:00] road and maybe down the road I'll also get a promotion that potentially could require me to move, and that is the reason for our breakup.

So therefore, I should not even make the first move. That's the kind of junk that our brains bake up and that. Is the cake effect. So in my book, I take you through really a fun tale of how something as simple as baking a cake for a friend could be a swirly whirly rabbit hole of untrue. Stories. And yes, I do share my grandmother's crazy cake recipe.

Her cake wasn't going to ruin her friend's life. And, and like it is in the story, and no, your DM is not going to ruin anyone's day. So the cake effect though, isn't obviously just about baking. It definitely shows up in sales, and that's why I wanna bring it to your attention today. So let me ask you this, have you ever imagined worst case scenarios, like if you invite someone.[00:03:00]

To be a guest on your podcast or be quoted in an article that you're writing that somehow you're ruining their day. That's it. They hate you. Now the next time they see your face, they're gonna spit on the ground. No, right? I have totally imagined the worst case scenarios. And then I say it out loud and it becomes funny.

But the reality is, is these are stories that our brain. Bakes up and it gets in our way. So another example, I was chatting with a woman in my program recently, and she is so good at what she does. Totally has built a whole business on referrals. However, I. She knows that that referral pipeline is not under her control and it is not reliable and it's definitely not forecastable.

So she wanted to get back into control of how and when she gets new clients, [00:04:00] and so she came into my program and she fully admitted before she went through my program. She used to feel like she was bothering someone if she invited them to be a guest on her podcast. PS she has like an award-winning podcast.

It's like really good and people love it. It's got, you know, thousands of downloads and o over 200 episodes. She's not like some, you know, wannabe. I mean, she really has a great thing, but she honestly felt like she was. Bothering someone and would upset them if she invited them to be a guest on her podcast.

And that stopped her for so long. And now of course, she has a process where she is more intentional about who she invites and also has a process to get to know them better, not just as an interviewee on her podcast, but also afterward, right? Being a guest on someone's podcast or you having guests on your podcast if you decide to have one.

It's a [00:05:00] fantastic way to get to know people. In fact, that's one of the five primary connection strategies that I talk about in my program is interviewing people is definitely a gift. And so having said all that, what she used to imagine was the equivalent of middle school, mean girls whispering behind your back after a bad haircut.

Okay? I did have a bad bangs incident once in seventh grade, and I'm still scarred. My friends called me the Dutch boy for about three months. You've ever painted anything and you've seen the Dutch boy paint can, that was pretty much what my bangs looked like. So here's what she did. She did the mindset exercise in my program that I used to have my sales teams do at the last week of every month, because if you've been around sales teams, you know, they, we have sales quotas and they're typically 30 day sales quotas.

And that's how it was in my company. And so they had to, they had to hit their sales goals. So I would. Do this mindset training exercise with them, and it has stood the test of time. It [00:06:00] is the reason for millions of dollars in revenue. So she did the mindset exercise, which was a great start, but then she took it one step further.

She imagined all of the positive outcomes, and this is what I wanna invite you to do right now. So if you felt like the worst case scenario, outcome was your mindset, then let's imagine this. I wanna invite you, just like Walt Disney says to his imagineers, right? If you can imagine it, you can achieve it.

No, I wasn't there in the room, but I can imagine him saying that. So I want you to imagine all of the positive outcomes from asking someone. To anything like you make a new friend or you collaborate on a project, or you refer each other, or you hire each other, or all of the above, all of them are also possible outcomes and honestly, more likely outcomes than you ruining someone's day because you've invited them.

To something. [00:07:00] And so of course we can take a page from Walt Disney's book, and if we can imagine it, we can achieve it. And that is my encouragement to you. So how do we break out of the cake effect? We realize when we're storytelling. Not selling. We call out our fear. We ask ourselves, is this real or is it some Monty Python scene in my head?

And then we get back into action mode with one simple outreach. Just to start the conversation. So here's my action step for you today. Pick one person that you've loved up, right? That you know they're not strangers, but you haven't really gotten to the point where you're discussing more about their concerns or their problems, or your concerns or your problems, or, you know, they're, they're, they're not at that point with you yet in the conversation.

You wanna rekindle the conversation. Maybe you had started a conversation, it kind of died on the vine. No problem. [00:08:00] This is what I want you to do right now. Send a message like this. I saw your most recent post and it inspired me. It really resonated, especially when you said this. What was the inspiration behind that?

That's it. Rewind if you need to. That's it. Look at the transcript if you must. That's all. Keep it super easy. Keep it easy. Okay, so now I need to go bake my grandmother's cake, but before I leave you, make sure you're on my email list so you can get my free kickstart sales course. And of course, the best part you can hit reply to any email I ever send you and tell me what your false story is that you are done believing.

This week, can't wait to see you on Friday.