Renee Hribar [00:00:00]:

Let me start with this. If you are someone who expects more of yourself than you expect of almost anyone else, this episode is for you. And it might hit a little close to home 'cause I know it did for me as well. So welcome, welcome, welcome. This is the Selling Your Expertise podcast. My name is Renee Hribar and I am a TEDx speaker, author, coach. I love to help people get what they actually started their business for, which is time and money. And of course, you can make friends and sales at the same time.

Renee Hribar [00:00:36]:

So wherever you're listening from, make sure you go to askmecoach.com for all the freshest ways to stay connected beyond this podcast. Now let's dive into this week's episode. Okay, so because here's the real fact that I, that I know about all of us, we're ambitious and we have a habit of doing this, thing where we move the goalpost the second we get close to it. We rush past wins without letting them land or celebrating them. We evaluate ourselves almost entirely on what's left instead of what's already been done, which creates constant low-level feelings of, "I'm behind. I should be further along. Why doesn't this feel better yet?" And today, we're gonna slow all that down on purpose. So I get asked a lot of times, how do I stay on track? How have I maintained consistent, sustainable profit and sanity for decades? This is my third business and I have started, grown, and sold two others.

Renee Hribar [00:01:49]:

And this one has been going online for almost a decade now, which is like 100 years. In regular time. So I really want us to solicit on purpose because when I have progress meetings with myself, I call them sometimes CEO days, or I have progress meetings with my clients, there are so many ways for us to measure what is actually happening and move through toward our big vision and mission and goals. Without lowering our standards, without pausing or stopping growth, even though we as humans can pause, but we change how we measure our entire perception of our progress so that the growth sticks. So I'm excited about this one. Here's something I see over and over again with smart, driven women, AKA you and me, just like us. They're future-oriented, to a fault, right? Every check-in sounds like, "Oh, this is what I didn't get to. Well, here's what still needs to get done.

Renee Hribar [00:02:58]:

Here's why this didn't really count yet," right? And on paper, they're doing a lot, but emotionally, they feel like they're just treading water. And the problem isn't that they're not working hard. They are working hard mentally, emotionally, physically. It's how their progress is being evaluated. By them. So when everything is subjective—feelings, expectations, comparison—it's almost impossible to feel the real momentum that you're creating. And I would bet that every single person whose ears land on this podcast this week can attest to at least part of this conversation. So stick around.

Renee Hribar [00:03:38]:

We've got just 20 minutes where I'm gonna break down exactly how these progress meetings go, and I'm gonna share it with you. With a little story. So what I like to talk about are the changes that we make when progress is visible, when it's measurable, when it's grounded in something you can touch, right? I always talk about— I'm laughing because it's so phallic. Remember those thermometers we used to make, like, when we were fundraising? I remember doing this for, like, school, and we were fundraising for different projects. I know I spoke at the Girl Scouts organization, which I love, and some of the troops had a little thermometer for how many cookies they were selling. And I'm like, oh, still phallic, still gross, but also very poignant. I know that, for example, I will work out harder when my personal trainer's there because she has a very clear, visible— she carries a binder still, God bless her, she's old school— a visible track of how heavy I lifted last time, the last time she was there with me, right? It doesn't matter if she was— if she— if I lifted hard and she wasn't there, if I didn't track it. So she has, you know, all the key performance indicators that I'm measuring, and it's visible, it's tangible, it's written on paper.

Renee Hribar [00:04:56]:

If you were to come into my office right now, you would see whiteboards all on the walls. I love the sticky ones. They're actually made by Post-it. I'm not a— this is not an ad, but I'm just telling you my walls are weirdly shaped, I think. And so I cut— you can cut them and they stick to the wall like a sticky note and they come off the wall without taking the paint off. Okay, this feels like an ad. It's not, I promise. The point is, is that the things that I want I want to remember to look at with data and not just feelings are literally written on my walls.

Renee Hribar [00:05:28]:

So I wanna encourage you as we go through this with this story. So I wanna share a little more context here. I've started, grown, and sold 2 other companies before I brought my brand to the online space. I just shared that with you. I also didn't share with you, but it is true, I made my first million by the time I was 25 years old. And honestly, on paper, I had bought my mom a house, I bought a fancy car, I would go on these awesome, you know, exotic trips. Trips and all these places. And I still do love to travel and I still do love to own properties and drive nice vehicles.

Renee Hribar [00:06:02]:

At this point in my life, I was crushed on the inside. I was dying on the inside. And from the outside though, it looked like huge success, you know, all before I was 30. But there wasn't a joy. I was exhausted. I was emotionally stretched. I constantly trying to prove something. And back then, I believed that the outside is all that mattered.

Renee Hribar [00:06:29]:

The inside would eventually catch up. There was this Saturday Night Live skit back when I was growing up that was like, "Don't worry, darling, you look fabulous. It doesn't matter how you feel, it's how you look." And it just always cracked me up. But I think that's what I was living out. In my 20s and even to my early 30s. The reality is it does not work that way. Joy comes from inside. It doesn't come from hitting a number.

Renee Hribar [00:06:59]:

And a lot of my clients, when they hear that, they're like, "Well, I came to you to help me with my sales." Oh, I will. But sales is not one thing. It's attached to everything. Just like, just like our bodies, just like our world, right? It comes from alignment and health and perspective because what I teach is sustainable. Sustainable growth, sustainable progress. Not just one number, not like, oh, I hit my $50,000 month, and then you're nothing for the next 3 months. No, we're not playing that game. Sustainable growth.

Renee Hribar [00:07:33]:

And it doesn't mean it's little by little by little incremental. It means that whatever we've done to increase the volume of sales is going to be sustainable. It's not something that we're gonna just hit and then hope everything continues to go to plan. 'Cause what happens is as soon as I start showing people how to make more money, they do. And then other problems become clear, right? I say this all the time, new level, new devil. And I've been told it many times too. I did not invent that phrase by any stretch. But the reality is, is that joy is what we're seeking.

Renee Hribar [00:08:11]:

Joy in our life, in our family, in our bank accounts, all of it. It comes together as a beautiful symphony of events, and that lesson informs everything I teach. So let me tell you about a client. I love my clients. I'm never gonna tell you her real name, but I am gonna share her real story. So she showed up to one of our progress calls and immediately starts listing everything she didn't do. She didn't finish this, she didn't launch that fast enough. I mean, she's even, she's down on herself for speed.

Renee Hribar [00:08:48]:

She didn't follow something else through perfectly that we had mapped out. And you know her tone, right? It almost felt like confession. So I stopped her and said, "Before we do anything else, please stop beating yourself up. Please. Because if you should have done something, I should have done this, I should have done that, I should have done this, then you're shoulding all over yourself." Careful how you say that. So this is what I want you to know is all I did is I pulled up the document that we share on all the different sessions that we do and all the work that we do together. And most of this document that I was sharing with her has micro-actions, things we've been working through, like price adjustments, offer adjustments. I call them container adjustments.

Renee Hribar [00:09:36]:

Her revenue growth in, in many areas and the revenue that she's let go in the areas that were not aligned anymore. This particular client, she had been in business for 5 years before she let go a VA client. She's a marketing strategist, but when she came online, she found, oh, I'll be a virtual assistant and start out. That's great. But someone that brought her on as a VA 5 years earlier, she was still letting them treat her like a virtual assistant and not as a strategic partner. Also, the pay was horrifying. I'm like, you're spending how, how many hours per month with this person and they're paying you what? And they're not even taking your advice, which you charge other people thousands for. They need to go because they're killing your energy.

Renee Hribar [00:10:25]:

So her revenue growth in many areas and then the release in others, her email list growth, that was something she hadn't really focused on. She was like, wow, this is easier than I thought. And they answer me back. Holy moly. Even subtle little things like how she ends her emails. So we had worked on a lot of things and these were all subtle little shifts, but this is where I get to show her genuinely what was actually happening. She had created and launched a brand new program for people who couldn't afford her one-on-one work. That, that was huge.

Renee Hribar [00:10:56]:

She took the client work that she was doing and we worked it into a program that she was able to sell and deliver without her being there for every decision, every moment. She also shifted her focus to high-value VIP days. I loved that for her because she, as a single mom, Daughter in middle school, her family lived like an hour away, like her parents. And so they weren't there for pickups or everything. They couldn't be there all the time. She needed the physical calendar flexibility. And that month, this one, when we hit on this progress call this past month, she had 5 sales calls. That was huge.

Renee Hribar [00:11:34]:

That was more than the entire previous 3 months combined. So I really want to emphasize more sales calls isn't better, but these were qualified. I also say you don't find your next high-ticket client, you make them. You build them. You build a relationship together, and then it makes sense for them to invest in the way that they need to to get full transformation from you. So all of this was because she had been taking micro-actions every single week. So her brand new program, her focus on higher— on high-value VIP days, the 5 sales calls she had in one month, which was more than the last 3 combined, was from micro-actions on a regular basis. So that wasn't nothing.

Renee Hribar [00:12:18]:

It was definitely momentum. But the thing is, with most high-level experts, no matter how much you improve, and I'll include myself in this group, we're constantly moving the goalposts, right? Like, it's like, okay, I wanna make this much. Okay, I made it. Oh, now I wanna make this much. Okay. And we never celebrate. The actions and the milestones that we've accomplished. And that is how someone shows up to a progress call thinking, I didn't do this, I didn't do that, I didn't do this, and treats it like a confession.

Renee Hribar [00:12:50]:

Because it's not just about the money, right? Like, yes, I'm a sales coach. Yes, I help people make more money. Yes, I absolutely am a fractional CRO. But the point is this, is that the money is just one key performance indicator. And what happens is when we start to make the money, we start to see where the leaks are in the other places. So we also face challenges all the time with, with time and with new clients that are onboarding. So she did have some new clients onboard in new ways. And so we needed to address her delivery, 'cause as soon as we started making her visible, more visible consistently, getting to the point where she was on 5 sales calls, she had new clients.

Renee Hribar [00:13:32]:

And so a big part of her progress was unseen. We were investing part of our time building the back end of her business, which honestly wasn't a priority before because she only ever had 2 or 3 clients at once. But with a, with a group program that she launched and having 5 sales calls in 1 month and focusing on VIP days, that meant she had more people saying yes and the need for a process to be refined for onboarding and delivery now became something we had to focus on. She had totally blanked on that. She was like, "Oh, that's right. We did do that." Yeah, we spent a lot of time doing that. And that's the good part about having somebody in your corner who can help you in all the different pieces and all the different ways, right? Because again, new level, new devil. So here's the thing that she started doing that she had totally forgotten about.

Renee Hribar [00:14:25]:

She was inputting emails into an automation instead of hunting through her Gmail for the last email she sent about the same kind of thing. If you're listening to this and this feels familiar, it's time we might have to hang out more. She was also, for the clients who were onboarding, she was setting calendar dates during the onboarding for their exit interviews, for the completion, for the first time ever. So for example, as a marketing strategist, she often creates marketing plans. For companies of all sizes. She would work on the project. She was focusing on VIP days now, but she didn't always. Sometimes it was a project that spanned a week or a month, and she would start the project, onboard them, do the work, and then just send them the deliverables.

Renee Hribar [00:15:14]:

No call at the end to— no call, no follow-up call. So she was, she was missing opportunities for testimonials. Renewals, like, hey, I want another one of those. That was so good. Can we do this again next quarter? Right. She was missing the opportunity for just even offering any kind of continued support because every single time she gets in someone's business and creates that editorial calendar for them, she realizes, yeah, there's a lot of things here that I can actually help you with that you aren't even asking me for, but I'm going to now offer them to you because it makes sense. So the future revenue that she could count on is from the system she built, but she had totally just discounted it. And then when we brought it up, she's like, oh my gosh, that's right.

Renee Hribar [00:15:57]:

It was a really good progress meeting. But then we moved on to the marketing side of her business. Now, our focus had been on consistency because before we started working together, she would get busy with client work and she is so good at what she does. She goes deep down headfirst, but then her business wasn't showing up publicly so that when a client would finish, she would spiral into panic mode because she hadn't put anything out there in days or weeks. So, I mean, the reality is marketing is her zone of genius, but her own business was always last on the list. So now after working together, she's got a plan where we have predetermined what is going to be in what I call the front window. Every single week before the month even starts. She's pre-writing and pre-scheduling, not thinking, oh dang, what should I post today? As she's waiting for her afternoon tea.

Renee Hribar [00:16:57]:

She is proactive with her marketing versus reactive. Again, this is stuff that she teaches her clients. And so she was putting herself in so much shame and it was a very easy fix. With my systems in place, she has one core piece of content feeding social and Substack and email and her podcast and LinkedIn articles. Articles, even book chapters. Oh yeah, that's leverage. And I, I do wanna point out, due to the nature of her expertise, she wants to be and thrives on all of those platforms that I just listed. However, I have many clients who are on LinkedIn publishing once a week, and that's more than enough for them to connect with their ideal clients and grow their audience.

Renee Hribar [00:17:41]:

So don't panic that you need to be on 75 places. That's just her jam, not yours. But the lesson here is, is that she was now predetermining, pre-writing, and pre-scheduling everything so that there was no more panic. She could just go nose down, tail up with her clients like she had been, but her business was already covered. She had spent, invested, as we, as we say, that energy into premeditating the month ahead. And that Literally changed everything. Then when I brought up the work she'd done on her operations and her life, by the way, you're gonna love this. So she was finally able to celebrate the fact that she was able to elegantly exit a business partnership that was draining her emotionally and financially.

Renee Hribar [00:18:26]:

Like many of us, she has more than one business, and this other business she had with a business partner, it was a local physical business, not digital, not scalable. And the other person was very, very set in their ways. And when they first came together as partners with this business, the person that I was working with was saying these things, oh, this is our vision. And the other person was like, yeah, that sounds good. But then when time passed on, it wasn't working. So it was toxic. And you know, this, my client's like, I'm afraid I'm going to see her at the grocery store, at the park. And I'm like, it's okay.

Renee Hribar [00:19:01]:

And so we figured out a way to navigate this. Minefield, if you will, of this person. And it worked out great. And I can say now, even weeks afterward, it's still not a problem. The other thing that she did was she hired a key team member who was focused exclusively on revenue-generating work. Revenue-generating work. That was such a huge filter that we put through. So even like writing the job description, posting it, doing the interviews, vetting her, giving her a test project, liking her, making her an offer for 3 months, having weekly team meetings with her, having a Slack channel, opening up a ClickUp account, like all these things that were just living in her head or swimming around on sticky notes.

Renee Hribar [00:19:47]:

It helped her shore up her SOPs and it gave her efforts a focus because when you have to teach somebody else, it makes a difference. So although it felt like it was slowing down, it was actually speeding up, and that was a huge reason why she was able to do the next thing, which I'm about to share with you. And that was she took multiple beach days with her family without guilt. Now, granted, she lives in a part of the country that is beautiful and the beach is not too far away, but that was one of the things that we set up when we first started working together. I'm like, what is your North Star? What is that thing that when you do it, you'll know that? You've hit a milestone. And she says, I wanna be able to go to the beach at least twice a month with the family without guilt. Because she was, before we were working together, she was on her laptop every single weekend. Oh, I mean, she was, it was stress, it was stressful for her.

Renee Hribar [00:20:43]:

So having said all that, her health, her energy, her time, all of that, the work we did on her operations helped her have those moments that she marked as her milestones. And then finally, we looked at, of course, her finances, 'cause it's not just about the sales. Top line revenue isn't your financial health. She and I reviewed expenses objectively. She had made some investments in the past that, you know, she could shame herself around. I could too. We've all bought stuff we don't need or things that we thought would work and didn't. And it, hey, we own it.

Renee Hribar [00:21:17]:

Okay, let's move on. She made strategic cuts specifically in her tech stack. And for the first time ever, she put herself on payroll. And that was a huge part of it as well, is is, you know, it's, it's like getting on a scale, right? Prepping your meals for the week and loving yourself as much as you love your family and doing at least as much for yourself as you do for them. But the simple fact that she was drawing payroll, even though it was not quite replacing her corporate paycheck yet, that distinction that she was an employee of her company made a huge difference to her. Energetically with her confidence. And I remember her saying to me, she's like, my son said, mom, nice work. And she broke into tears because it, it wasn't as if her business had gone from making $7,000 a month to $50,000 a month overnight.

Renee Hribar [00:22:08]:

But, but it was that, that she finally chose herself to put herself on payroll. And we'd been making small incremental steps forward every single week. And she hadn't realized how far she'd come. So you can see why now it's important to measure everything and celebrate even the little things, because most of us ambitious entrepreneurs only measure where we're headed, right? We almost never measure what we've already built, the systems that are now in place that we worked so hard on, the decisions that required courage. And KPIs, key performance indicators, they're powerful. They help us move progress from emotional to observable. And when progress is visible or observable, you make better decisions. You stop overcorrecting, right? Oh, it's all— it's like driving on ice.

Renee Hribar [00:23:04]:

I don't know if you've ever had to do that, but don't overcorrect. And it builds our confidence. So this is not about perfection. It's not about, I need the right KPI markers, sheets. Ah, no, it's just write a couple things down wherever you write things down or wherever you can see things. I told you already, I have writing on the wall, literally in my office. And it's about movement. It's about identity.

Renee Hribar [00:23:28]:

It's about seeing what you have. It's not about manifesting things. It's about seeing what you want and then taking incremental steps on a regular basis. I know that's not sexy, right? But it's true. Warren Buffett says, you know, when asked in interviews, you know, why don't you know, why doesn't everybody use your systems and formulas? He's like, well, people don't wanna get rich slow. They wanna get rich quick. And unfortunately, that's just not the way you get rich. So that's from Warren Buffett, at least paraphrased.

Renee Hribar [00:23:55]:

It's off the internet, so I'm sure it's true, right? Here's what I want you to do. I want you to apply this. Create a monthly progress review for yourself. Open your calendar right now. And just put a little— whether you call it a CEO day or a progress review— and start to list out some things that you want to measure. Maybe it's how many calls you get on with potential clients. Maybe it's how many emails you send to your email list, or maybe it's creating a freebie, or maybe it's creating some sort of consistency with marketing or operations or just your own health. Second, separate effort from outcome because everything that you track matters.

Renee Hribar [00:24:37]:

And it's just a reflection. It's not a reflection of your quality or value as a human. It's just, this is what is, okay? And then have yourself those hard conversations if you have to. Because when you start to look at the numbers, you start to see what needs to be let go of. You start to see who you need on your team, who you need to hire. And this could be consultants, this could be VAs, this could be OBMs, this could be some— this could be a claw bot, right? It could be, it could be an AI agent. But it also helps you choose to have progress over perfection. And I know that is so overused.

Renee Hribar [00:25:18]:

I even hate saying it out loud, but it is true. It is having a measurement system on purpose. And so here is what I want you to do this week. Here's my little challenge. Write a list entitled "Evidence That I'm Further Than I Think," and include decisions you avoided before but made anyway. Include systems that now exist in your business, like you have a freebie funnel, or you have a calendar app, or you have onboarding emails that are, that are in one place. You don't have to dig through your Gmail to go find them, or you have a template for proposals.? Or you have a first offer that you can sell to anybody, no matter how big or small their company is or how big or small their project or true transformation might be. What is that first thing you could sell anyone so that it becomes easy? And really share with yourself, celebrate with yourself the consistency that you've maintained.

Renee Hribar [00:26:15]:

So if this episode resonated with you, here's what I want to know. I wanna know how you're doing, how you're feeling, And I know that when you listen to this episode, it's probably because you care deeply about your business, about your clients. You hold yourself to a high standard, and you're probably doing more right now than you realize. And you're probably doing more right than you let yourself acknowledge. Progress doesn't require you to feel stress or pressure. Like, you don't have to be coal that's being squeezed into a diamond. But it does require visible evidence. And so that's what I wanted today to be about, is that you could see with your own eyes, your own progress, and trust it.

Renee Hribar [00:27:05]:

And trust that that progress is real. Because in a world of deepfakes and God knows what people are saying and how they're saying it and how they're proving it, you can at least be true to the woman in the mirror. And if you want more support like this, sales strategy, clarity, grounded growth, go to askmecoach.com. And at the very least, get on my email list and you can hit reply to any email I ever send you, ask me anything. You can start with my free 5-day sales course. It's a powerful reset. I mean, I retake it. It's a powerful reset for you to think about selling and building momentum in your business.

Renee Hribar [00:27:44]:

Choose progress. I'll see you next week.