684 Samantha Varner:

What is it about money? Most people are obsessed with it whether we think it’s good or bad … whether we attract it, or repel it, whether we accumulate it or let it slip through our fingers. We ALL have deep subconscious beliefs about money, and my guest today – the profit coach Samantha Varner – says our ability to succeed in business comes down to one thing: Overcoming what she calls our B.S. about money.

Hi, I’m Melinda Wittstock and welcome to Wings of Inspired Business, where we share the inspiring entrepreneurial journeys, epiphanies, and practical advice from successful female founders … so you have everything you need at your fingertips to build the business and life of your dreams. I’m a 5-time serial entrepreneur who has lived and breathed the ups and downs of starting and growing businesses, currently the game changing social podcast app Podopolo. Wherever you are listening to this, take a moment and join the Wings community over on Podopolo, where we can take the conversation further with your questions, perspectives, experiences, and advice for other female founders at whatever stage of the journey you’re at! Because together we’re stronger, and we soar higher when we fly together.

Ok so today we’re talking about money. Yes, a topic many of us were brought up to believe was rude to talk about, something we can feel guilty for wanting, or something we can feel righteous about not having.

Whatever your beliefs – conscious or subconscious – are about money, today we’re going to roll in it. Yep, Samantha Varner is here to talk about what stops women entrepreneurs from growing revenue, boosting profit margins, and well, just playing bigger.

Samantha is a profit coach and moneymaking business creator for driven female entrepreneurs. With 14+ years in PR & Marketing, Finance strategy and Business Development, she coaches women to develop as leaders of their businesses and realize they are capable of changing their financial reality through business ownership.

Ok, so what do you really, I mean really, believe about money? Maybe you’re in so much abundance that you believe it grows on trees. Odds are you have some unseen beliefs buried deep, deep down you formed as a young child hearing your parents argue about money, or you learned in church that money was the root of all evil. Maybe you don’t consciously believe that, but your subconscious mind drives 80% of your actions and the reality you experience, so letting go of these subconscious beliefs is THE key to your earning potential and your ability to grow a scalable, profitable business.

Samantha Varner helps women find success and profit through business ownership, helping women develop as leaders of their businesses and realize they are capable of changing their financial future. There are a lot of practical tools in her toolbox, like how to successfully market yourself, master sales, know your numbers and your value – and she says that in the end, what it always comes down to is mindset.

She’s also a busy mom to 4 kids aged 8 to 13 who doubles as a chauffeur in her dirty minivan – and the host of the podcast She Needs Grit. Make sure you check that out on Podopolo and also join our conversation there by downloading the app and following Wings.

And now let’s dig deep into learning Samantha’s CRUSH formula for building a profitable business.

Let’s put on our wings with the inspiring Samantha Varner.

Melinda Wittstock:

Samantha welcome to Wings.

Samantha Varner:

Thank you so much for having me today. I’m thrilled to be here.

Melinda Wittstock:

Well, of course, everybody wants to crush it in business and that’s something that we talk about a lot here on Wings of Inspired Business, helping female founders really drive revenue and hopefully profitable revenue. And you have a whole system called the CRUSH Formula. I thought we could just jump right into that. What does CRUSH stand for and what does it help people do?

Samantha Varner:

So CRUSH was me taking a look at all of the patterns I kept seeing with clients and trying to figure out how do I package that, how do I talk to people in a way that makes sense? So it is five areas, just as thinking of it as an acronym. We’ve got the core of your business at the beginning, and that talks all about what is your mission, what’s your vision, what’s your why? All the things that if you’ve been in business for a long time we can lose sight of, and if you’re at the beginning of your business, sometimes those things are not yet clearly formulated. So we work on both sides of that.

Then we go to the R, which is revenue. So really looking at the financials of the business and that encompasses all of the pieces of getting that money house in order in your business to make you more profitable. I then work on the U, which is utility. So talking about automation, talking about getting your business backend really well structured and growing with you as you’re scaling your business, moving forward. The S, of course, has to be sales. So helping people really hone in those sales skills, getting really good on your closing ratio, or your visibility, whatever piece of that seems to be a challenge. And then the all-encompassing head space at the end. So really diving into the mindset that comes with all the other letters at the end of the day.

Melinda Wittstock:

Mindset drives all of the letters.

Samantha Varner:

A hundred percent, yep.

Melinda Wittstock:

So we can be coaches of all types and at the end of the day, whether you’re a fitness coach or a profit coach, whatever kind of coach, ultimately it comes down to mindset. So what are some of the things that get in the way on the mindset issue for your clients? Are there repeatable patterns where you see, “Oh, yeah, right. Okay. This one.”

Samantha Varner:

Mm-hmm (affirmative) Yep. There’s almost always some degree of money blocking, or money weirdness. I talk to my clients a lot about being weird. And weirdness comes with money. There is a hesitation to sell, a hesitation to charge your value, a hesitation to feel okay about that not wanting to be sleazy. Those things come up all the time. And especially, I think for female entrepreneurs, a little bit more so even than the male clients that I come across too.

Melinda Wittstock:

You go back into it and all the things we’ve heard about money, whether it’s in a television series or whether it’s from Church and the Bible and the whole somehow money makes you a bad person, or experiencing icky salespeople, or whatever it is. And we have this mass of all these money stories deeply embedded in our subconscious minds where sometimes we’re not even aware that we have them.

Samantha Varner:

It’s so true. Yeah. Yeah. Clients they never come to me and say, “I have a deep rooted fear of earning more money.” Never had a client [crosstalk 00:03:56].

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, because everybody wants money. That’s the weirdest thing, except a lot of people actually don’t.

Samantha Varner:

Yeah. Yeah. And they’re almost hip checking themselves right away from it without noticing, and then getting very frustrated about the fact that they continue down the same path of not making any money.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, how does this subconscious belief show up? You alluded to it, so some cases like underpricing or over-delivering, maybe not asking for the sale. What are some of the things that you see people do?

Samantha Varner:

I think that the stream along the over-delivering and the lack of boundaries around what access a client has to you, that’s one that’s a sneaky one that people don’t think of about, but it does really show up. I also see, I see clients that tell me they’re working really hard in their business and they’re promoting and they’re marketing all the time, and they’re seeing no results. And what we determine when I do a little poking is that actually they’re thinking about selling all the time, but inadvertently not actually selling all the time. And you feel tired, you feel exhausted that you’ve done all of that, but you’re not actually doing the work, you’re not front facing telling a client or telling a potential, hey, I have this service. It’s amazing. It will solve this problem for you. Let me share it. You’re not actually doing that. You’re thinking about doing that and that doesn’t actually work.

Melinda Wittstock:

There’s a lot of people who spend a lot of time planning for the sale, but not actually asking it. I’ve told this story before on this podcast. So apologies to all the people who’ve heard it 99 times, but I had a mentor way, way back in the day in an enterprise software sales scenario, which is a really complicated, consultative sale. And he told me that my job for the next couple of weeks was to go out and get as many ‘no’s’ as possible.

Samantha Varner:

Yes. I love that game. Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Melinda Wittstock:

This was hilarious as I began to understand, so first of all, it liberated me and, but it meant that I had to actually ask for the sale to be able to get the no.

Samantha Varner:

Correct.

Melinda Wittstock:

And I was being measured. That was my metric. I was to get like a hundred ‘no’s’, 500 ‘no’s’, he set these possibly high benchmarks for me of what I was supposed to get. And what happened was I started getting yeses because-.

Samantha Varner:

Yeah, because it’s just the numbers game of you tell enough people what you do and what it solves for them. Inevitably, someone will eventually purchase [crosstalk 00:06:34].

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. Exactly. But it also helps to really know who you are selling to and why? And get into the psychology of, not only what’s the problem that they have, but what’s the deeper psychological part of it. You’ve got to know your customer. And so on that end of it, so many entrepreneurs that I’ve mentored over the years and I found this in my early days as well, where you create a product or a service and, oh, it’s for everybody, and it’s not. So how do you help people that don’t in actual fact know, with real laser pointed accuracy, who their customers actually are?

Samantha Varner:

Yeah. And that’s a big one. Skincare people that think anybody with skin is a human that they should talk to. And yeah, I agree that it takes the exploration. This is the part I think sometimes of entrepreneurship that we gloss over when we’re at the beginning and we think, oh, doing an avatar exercise or whatever, it feels silly and imaginary and not directly connected to the actions of getting a client, but the reality is going through that exercise. So any, I use a variety of different ones, but any time that you can say to a client, I want you to envision this person that you want to sell your product to. Let’s say you’re, I don’t know, let’s say you’re doing kitchen gadgets and you want to sell kitchen gadgets. Well, who’s using them? Where do those people hang out?

I think sometimes we get wrapped up in, what do they wear? I don’t think that’s as relevant. I think where are they? Where are places you can rub elbows with that sort of a person that would be into cooking, or is a big foodie and is trying to do it at home, or is looking at loving, having little gadgets to do things as opposed to, I have one knife and I just do all the functionality with that. It’s going through and pushing your brain outside of the three ways that you think about that person, that come really quickly to the tip of your tongue and pushing way beyond that. And to be able to uncover where you think those people are and to specify them a little bit better along the way.

Melinda Wittstock:

And there’s so much that we think we know, and, of course, entrepreneurship is all about testing hypotheses, like I often liken it like, so you’re a scientist and you’re going to try a whole bunch of different formulations until you figure it out. But if you’re not out really talking to people, and really understanding what they need and really shaping it around those avatars, or personas, or whatever we call them, it means that your sales process is going to be super scattershot. You’re going to be wasting a lot of time talking to people that weren’t qualified to begin with. So the qualification piece is really important.

Samantha Varner:

Absolutely. Yeah. And figuring out what are the metrics to measure a person by, to determine? And being very careful that we’re not, this comes back to what we talked about earlier, that we’re not putting our own thoughts about what a person can afford, or is it a good solution for the person. We are not assumptions. We’re not hopping into their wallet and deciding for them ahead of time whether it’s a good fit. So there’s that fine line of figure out who your people are and really speak to those people. And everything that you’re doing, pretend you’re talking to that person across the table, having a cup of coffee. That’s really important, but don’t pre-judge in a way that you think they’re not capable of paying for my service, or they’re not going to be interested because X, Y, and Z, that you’ve preconceived notions can become problematic in that environment as well. So it’s a [crosstalk 00:10:31].

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. So we often, this gets into the mindset issue again, because we often project onto others what we feel ourselves. So people will find the money for things they really want, or something that really hits a chord for them, they will.

Samantha Varner:

Absolutely. Every time.

Melinda Wittstock:

I don’t know if you found this as well. I find it easier to sell at a higher price to men than to women. What’s that about? Because if anyone’s ever tried to negotiate down or want something for free, or whatever it is, I hate to say this, it’s more likely to be a woman. And is it because we just don’t value ourselves enough, or if, as a female customer, if you think, if you’re in a scarcity mindset and you don’t really believe that you can charge a lot, then you don’t really want to pay a lot? And I’m on a mission to get women to invest in other women and buy other women’s products and be more abundant minded in their money mindset.

Samantha Varner:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). I think that’s a huge factor. I think, and this probably goes for male clients as well, but I do think there’s the concept of, if you are charging a price for your product or your service beyond what you have ever paid, you’re going to have a really hard time, because you’ve never actually attributed that dollar amount to the value, to value in general. You’ve never paid it. So you see that. I see that a lot with clients where they are absolutely setting the price of whatever it is, their service, their product themselves, and there’s not really a market control, or they’re not close to the market edges of what the minimum maximum price would be. And they’ve never spent that much money.

So you have a coach client who has never spent five or $10,000 on a coach themselves. It’s a lot harder to talk yourself into believing that, that’s the best price for your product if you’ve never actually invested at that level for yourself. So, that becomes a big factor that we see with clients often.

Melinda Wittstock:

On the other side of it, of course, is understanding what the transformational value would be. If someone bought your product and they used it. And as a result, they maybe five X or 10X their own income as a result of what they’ve learned, or what they bought, or they had that, what’s the value of that product to them? Like where are they now? And where would they be? And being able to paint a very clear picture of that, and that requires confidence because you have to really believe in your own product or service.

Samantha Varner:

Yeah. And it requires, it is easier for our brains to wrap around that concept of is there an ROI or return on investment for the person if they hire me? For me as a profit coach, it’s an easy measurement. We can look at the dollar part of things, but there’s a lot of business owners out there where it’s like, there’s not a money making opportunity as a result of buying their service. So if you are, good example of this. If you are a weight loss coach, there’s no return on investment, I guess you can get really granular and say, you could figure out a numerical value if you really wanted to do that, but I think the value you’re bringing to that person in their life and the overall transformation, isn’t a numerical number, but that doesn’t make it any less impactful in their lives.

Melinda Wittstock:

But you got to paint the picture, so say let’s take weight loss. So the person is going to feel a lot more confident, is going to feel like, how are they going to feel?

Samantha Varner:

Yeah. And even just the practicalities of how much more longevity do they have in their life? How much more do they play with their kids? How much more does that shift their relationship? Because they feel better in their skin and therefore show up more confidently in all areas of their lives. It becomes really broad, but each individual business owner has to have that level of belief in their own product and the transformation so that they can sell it. You can’t sell it if you don’t believe the thing is amazing and the best thing you’ve ever seen out in the world.

Melinda Wittstock:

This all comes down to money mindset. I’ve always been a big believer in coaches to help us all with these. And just even discovering some of my own. And the subconscious mind does not make sense.

Samantha Varner:

Especially if we only see bits and pieces, you don’t even [crosstalk 00:15:34].

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, you can’t even really [crosstalk 00:15:35].

Samantha Varner:

… oh, no.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, you can’t even actually even analyze it with your conscious mind because it just doesn’t make sense. So trying to get out all that stuff right. Where we think, oh my goodness there, I don’t know, a coach that I’ve worked with had through this whole exercise. Well, look, do you resent or do you hate Oprah because she has a lot of money? No, people admire Oprah. Do you hate Taylor Swift because she has a lot of money? No. Steve jobs, I don’t know. You go through all these people. And it’s like, because I think sometimes women think maybe they’re not going to be liked, or their friends aren’t going to like them, or their man isn’t going to like them if they’re a bigger earner, or all those kinds of issues. How do you work with that piece of it?

Samantha Varner:

Well, I think my generalized philosophy with coaching is I poke holes in a lot of BS that you tell yourself. And the problem isn’t it, and it is funny to watch with my clients because after a couple of sessions, they’re stopping midway in the BS story of why the thing is happening or why it’s working or why it’s not working. And they’re like, oh wait, this isn’t factual. Is it? Oh, you’re noticing midway. Whereas before we do tell ourselves that those are true, that people who make a lot of money are bad. That is a message that is all over the place and has been there historically. And you have to really poke holes in that and poke holes in, why do I believe that, that could be true? And how am I showing up? Because I think I could be that person eventually who would lose friends, or not be respected, or not be in a relationship, a loving relationship because there’s no way they’re going to put up with me making three times as much money as they are.

And then there’s that whole, the whole balloon that becomes, that you don’t even know is happening in your brain until you start to verbally process things with somebody like a coach who can say, hold on, hold on. None of that is fact. What person in your life right now would like you less if you made a hundred thousand dollars more? Nobody has an answer to that. That what? No, that’s not a thing. People don’t actually care. And they only know how much you make, if you tell them.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, exactly.

Samantha Varner:

You can keep that in whatever group you would normally, most of us don’t go around bragging and saying, oh, there’s a money thing, bragging, interesting word choice there, but most of us don’t go around with our bank statements hanging out and feeling like that is something that people want to know or need to know. But when we start thinking we’re going to make a whole lot of money, we feel like people are going to know that about us and make judgements and it’s going to be negative.

Melinda Wittstock:

So the other part of this though, beyond stepping into our value and knowing our value and all these money mindset issues is the other fear that a lot of women have of being really visible, stepping into their life, being seen. What’s at the root of that? Why are so many women afraid to really be seen?

Samantha Varner:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). I think it comes down to so much of as little girls, so many of us are taught to be quiet, to be mild, to be agreeable, to watch the world around us and anticipate other people’s needs. That’s a big one that we talk about with clients sometimes. Where somehow it’s that societal pressure that, that’s just what a good girl looks like. They’re quiet. They’re not causing a ruckus. They’re not loud, they’re not taking up a lot of space. They’re not strongly opinionated, all of those things. And we can see those playing out in all areas. We can see the difference between somebody who has a very strong opinion, who happens to be a man in business. Somebody who has a very strong opinion, who happens to be a woman in business, there is often a dichotomy of how that’s perceived.

And when it’s just saturated in everything we’ve always seen, it takes a lot of pulling the threads until it’s not as strong of a weave for us to believe that we can be strong, we can be loud. We can be opinionated, we can be visible. We can stand on Instagram, or on a podcast, or wherever you are and declare with emphasis and confidence, what we bring to the table. And that takes practice. It takes, if you’re not used to being that person, it takes practice and it takes somebody who is really your cheering squad I think behind you, that even on the days where you feel really shaky, they’re like, no, no, you can do this thing. I’m right here. The worst thing that’s going to happen is you might be embarrassed. You might trip, it might be awkward or uncomfortable. None of those things are deadly. We can do them and still survive. So we have those conversations a lot too.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Because do have to stop hiding and be known. There’s a very powerful aspect of a business where the CEO has a personal brand. This is important, although it’s tricky though, too, because if you’re building a company that you someday might want to sell, it’s hard to sell if it’s all about you. But, again, but still the personal branding is important, but getting and then there’s the company branding. And how do you advise on all of that?

Samantha Varner:

I think it really depends on where the long term goal is. As much as we talk about the idea of one day being able to sell a business, there’s a lot of entrepreneurs that are out there not actually looking at that, and not to say that they shouldn’t, that is a way of building wealth is to create a sellable business down the road. But I do think it’s really deciding as an individual, is that what you’re looking for and creating a vehicle to do that in down the road. So having that evaluation, knowing that if you decide three years into business, that all of a sudden Samanthavarner.com, or Samantha Varner coaching doesn’t make as much sense as She Collective coaching, because then She Collective doesn’t need to have me.

I don’t have to be the only face of the business. That just takes, I think the openness to pivot. I think there’s a lot of understanding and forgiveness of that in the marketplace that if you decide to go a different way to try and make a sellable business and you haven’t done it at the beginning, it’s never too late to do that. But doing those big, longer versions of a little bit farther out than the next 12 months, thinking that 10 year plan helps a lot. So, I do talk with clients about that so they can have a bigger vision, even if we don’t know all the pieces. You don’t have to know 10 years’ worth of pieces, that would be chaos.

Melinda Wittstock:

So what type of clients, we’ve been talking a lot about your perfect clients and all of that. Who are yours?

Samantha Varner:

So my perfect clients are service based business owners that are looking to move into the six figure plus market. So they are really close, or they’re at the very beginning of that six figure revenue number and they are service based businesses. The other thing I look for is somebody who is so driven to their goals, even if they don’t know exactly what their goals are all the time, but they are a driven individual that just goes after it. I love that. That is a client that I love working with. And they are coachable. They are willing to let me poke holes and call bullshit in all of those things so that they get the value out of the coaching relationship that they’re looking for. So, I’m always looking for that person who’s really striving to build and looking for how fast can I do it, and how can you help me do it? And that’s where I come in.

Melinda Wittstock:

That’s wonderful. So I want to make sure, Samantha, people know how to find you and work with you.

Samantha Varner:

Perfect. Well, probably Instagram is the best place to find me. It is, Shecollective.biz. That’s where my Instagram is. And, of course, there’s links to everything everywhere on Instagram. So then you can find me from there.

Melinda Wittstock:

Well, thank you so much for putting your wings on with us today. And, of course, I’d like to invite you to join and carry on the conversation further over on Podopolo where folks join the Wings community there, we’ve got more than five million podcasts now, the Wings is one of them. And we can keep the conversation going beyond this episode in the comment section on Wings. So I hope you’ll join us there and carry on if anyone has any further questions for Samantha have at it.

Samantha Varner:

That sounds perfect. I will wander over there and peruse any questions or comments that are [crosstalk 00:25:18].

Melinda Wittstock:

That’s fantastic. And I want to make sure people, you also have a podcast, so make sure that people know all about your podcast, it’s called She Needs Grit, and that’s also on Podopolo and everywhere else that you get your podcast, right?

Samantha Varner:

Absolutely. Yep. It is everywhere.

Melinda Wittstock:

Fantastic. Samantha, thank you so much.

Samantha Varner:

Thank you.