Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan - #198: Don’t Take NO For An Answer, With Heather!

Episode Date: March 9, 2022

In This Episode You Will Learn About:  How to bounce back   Staying persistent   Focusing on the “yes”  Asking the right questions  Resources: Overcome Your Villains is Available NOW! Order here: https://overcomeyourvillains.com  If you haven't yet, get my first book Confidence Creator Show Notes:  Hearing “NO” can be off putting, but it doesn’t mean ANYTHING. Don’t become discouraged, instead take a “no” as inspiration to pivot and come back even STRONGER than before. I will share some insights that can help you the next time you have something to pitch and are scared to hear “no”! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

I'm on this journey with me. Each week when you join me, we are going to chase down our goals. We'll overcome adversity and set you up for a better tomorrow. I'm ready for my close-up. Hi, and welcome back. I'm so glad that you're back here with me this week. Thank you for being here in International Women's Month. And it's a crazy month for me.

So many companies have reached out wanting to do International Women's Day events, international women's month events, virtual keynote speeches. It's been super exciting. I'm really grateful for this influx in business and interest in doing things. So it's been a hectic few days, but I've learned a lot. And it's funny, for every time I book, whether it be a virtual speech or a keynote speech, one of the things I do is I set up a qualifying call for me and just the decision makers, you know, on the other side to talk about what their goals are, what they're looking to achieve, how I can best support them, you know, what my deliverables, my keynote will look like for them and making sure that, you know, they're going to be happy with it.

And it was funny, one of the topics that came up on, it was big, it was for Amazon women, which is a huge humong. This is probably the largest audience I've ever spoken for in my life. It's massive. And we were talking about nos and not accepting a no. And she really liked that. She thought, you know, wow, this really resonates with me with my team, my people. I really like that topic.

Yeah, let's build it in. And so I was looking at different ways to build in. And it made me think about you. So here I am today. I want to share with you some of the notes as I was working on different speeches for this month. I was thinking about the nose that I've gotten. Now, here's the thing. A lot of people are put off by nose.

I get it. However, if you have a background in sales, which I do. It knows me nothing, right? It just, it's part of doing business. You might not be dealing with the ultimate decision maker. You maybe haven't done a good enough job qualifying the benefit to the other person. It could be timing. I mean, there's so many things. It's nothing. It really doesn't mean anything. So I'm going to give you some specific examples recently that have occurred with me. And then also I'll give you one that happened years ago just to kind of give you a little bit of insight and hopefully prop you up for the next time you're pitching something or going after something that you

want so you don't get discouraged when you get a no. A no is actually part of the process. Okay, so let's start here. All right, as you know, I have a new book out. It's called Overcome Your Villains. It's with HarperCollins leadership. Well, let's go back to 2019, the end of 2019. I had Googled who is Rachel Hollis's agent, and I found the name. I went to her website. I sent sent her a direct inbox message saying, you know, I can add value, I can drive new revenue. You can use the same game plan you already have. I am not competitive to her. She's Christian. I'm business. You know, this is additive, not competitive. She loved it. You know, we jumped on a call. She said, send me the book proposal. I didn't have one. That was the first no, right? She said,

well, call me again when you have a book proposal. I did not let her hang up there. I said, let me ask you one question before you hang up. If you had a family member who would, wanted to write a book proposal, who would you send them to? She gave me Peter Economy's name. I tracked Peter Economy down on Twitter, and I ended up hiring Peter Economy, investing in myself, right? This is someone who was light years ahead of me in the book proposal world. I had never done one. And the agent was recommending him. So I thought, probably a good investment. It was a lot of money, by the way. It was a big investment. But sometimes you have to take that leap and take that chance. And I did. So we worked on this book proposal first.

months, it was so flipping good. And by the way, in my opinion, writing a book proposal is harder than writing the book. Literally. It's that intense. So for me, writing the book isn't that hard, but this part was really hard. Okay, so we get it done after months of work together. He's a great guy. I loved working with him. I thought the product, end product was amazing. I sent it to her. That was the day I got my first know. She said to me, great jump off point. However, this This isn't going to work. It's not good enough. That was my first note. We went back and forth with revisions, changes, additions, deletions, you know, upgrades, revisions, additions, deletions, whatever. For another two months maybe, I ended up from her on this book proposal getting 14 solid hard nose. Not mean nose, but just, nope, this is not going to work. No, I don't want to, you know, work with you on this book. So, of course, you get a little discouraged. That's totally normal.

And at 14 was when I kind of started getting discouraged. I thought, okay, this thing is so good. It's so solid. I believe in it so much that maybe she just doesn't like me. Maybe it's me and I'm not the right fit. And I'll never forget on 14, I Googled who are the top agents in the country. And she was one of them, but I wrote a list out of 20 other ones. And I decided, okay, if she says no on this,

15th one, I'm going to these other 19 top agents. And maybe it's just, she just doesn't like me or the theme of the book or whatever, but maybe it's, you know, something off. Something's off with us. And that does happen, P.S. with people, right? Sometimes people just don't connect or align or whatever, and you have to move on to someone else. So after 14 knows, I started thinking, okay, maybe she's not my person. I send the 15th, lucky number 15 over to her. And wouldn't you know, that was a day. I got the big yes. So crazy, right? So you never know how close you are to getting something. That's why it's so important not to give up. And so many in sales, which is that's my expertise. I have over 20 years in sales and sales leadership. So many salespeople will give up after three asks. Three. And that is just

not enough, right? You haven't put the work in. You haven't done your homework. You haven't attempted. You're just starting. So don't give up on one, two, or three. Remember me and remember 14 knows from an agent. I had the right person. I had the right concept. I hadn't made enough revisions and tweaks to get it to where she was happy with it until lucky number 15. So don't get discouraged the next time you're asking for something and you're not seeing that progress. Okay. So we end up, We go to market, and this is right when the pandemic hits, worst time ever to get a book deal. And it was like two weeks after the pandemic hit, we start pitching the lucky number 15 book proposal to, let's say it was to, I don't know, 12 traditional publishing houses, the largest ones. The first four came back no.

But I remember, don't focus on the no, focus on the fact that you only need one yes. Focus on the yes. So I knew we had pitched four, we had 12 out there. I had eight more opportunities to get a yes. I only need one yes. That's fine. So she went to market again, followed up with these other eight, and we ended up getting, I think six of them came back. Yes.

So it was great. We had a bunch of yes, and we had to then make a decision. Okay, who do you want to go with? I thought, what's important to me, knowing now what I know from corporate America and working with people that didn't like me, what's important is that they like me, they like the book, and they're behind it. That's more important than what the deal was, you know, anything. I just thought, I only want to work with good people that want to work with me.

It's critical. I don't want to work with people that say, oh, she's good, she's really pain, but I guess we'll, you know, tough it up because we like the book. We'll just make ourselves do it. No, those aren't my people. Those are people that appear to be in your circle, but will never be in your corner. And you know I am all about overcoming your villain, so no. That was the key conversation I had with my agent was, I want the people that are like ride or die, dying to be with us. So it ends up, there was two in the end that were just so excited, so wanted the book, so wanted to work with us.

And in the end, we went with HarperCollins leadership, which is great. Okay, so from there, the pandemic got worse and worse, and book sales started plummeting. And then there was this whole new, weird, unexpected thing that nobody could have ever forecast, right? which was paper supply, remember there was no paper towels, there was no toilet paper. Well, there wasn't any paper paper paper either. Paper supply just started disappearing. And certain really big books, like Will Smith's book was coming out around the same time as mine, they decided to go like all in on some of these really big books. Brenne Brown had a really big book coming out right around the same time. My book came out. So they gave so much paper count to these really

massive books that they knew would sell millions of copies. And from people, like me who were not, you know, officially millions, you know, going to sell millions. We will, but we haven't yet. They decided to pull from these other people. So I get basically like an emergency email from our publisher, HarperCollins leadership, to me and my agent. And it says something like this, hey, we need to get on a 911 call. There are some things happening in the publishing world, which I'm sure you both know about. It is impacting Heather's book and we need to have a discussion about it. I had no idea what I was walking into. I didn't know what that meant. And honestly, it's a pandemic, right? So no one really knows what's going on at this

point in time because it was very early in the pandemic. And P.S., everything we do is virtual, right? I've never met any of these people in real life, never met my agent in real life, never met my publisher in real life, which is, that's an epic fail. When you have those face-to-face connections and vibes and people feel your energy and get to see you in action. I know for me that's where I shine. So I didn't have that power and connection with them, which is a loss, right? So I don't remember if it was on a Zoom call or if it was a phone call. We all get together, all in our different states, different homes, different whatever, isolation at the time. And HarperCollins leadership went on to say, they explained there's a huge paper shortage right now. We don't have enough paper to print books. We have

enough to get a round of books done, not as much as we had originally thought we'd have for you, but we will get your book published on time, Heather. So that was good news because some people, I know people that just didn't get their books printed for months because of the shortage. She said, but because of the shortage and because we're willing to still bring your book to mark on the timeline we originally agreed to, we have to cut some hard covers to save paper. We're going to go ahead and cut your hardcover. I mean, there was just silence. the phone. And let me explain to you what I mean by that. So remember my first book, Confidence Creator, I wrote it in 2018, I self-published it, I financed everything, I paid for all the printing

myself. I had a hardcover. I had a paperback. I had an audible. I had an Audible. I had a Kind of, right? So in my mind, I'm thinking, if for my first book that I self-published, I had a hardcover and every appropriate, you know, book underneath that, why, now that I'm with Harper-Collins' leadership like the biggest and the best, would I go backwards and not do that? Heck, no, right? In my mind, this is what I'm thinking. But of course, in any moment of business, we don't want to react to what someone else says. When we react to what other people say, we're allowing them to control us and basically puppeteer us. When you want more, start your business with Northwest registered agent and get access to

thousands of free guides, tools, and legal forms to help you launch and protect your business. all in one place. Build your complete business identity with Northwest Registered Agents has been helping small business owners and entrepreneurs launch and grow businesses for nearly 30 years. They are the largest registered agent and LLC service in the U.S. with over 1,500 corporate guides, real people who know your local laws and can help you in your business every step of the way. Build your business identity fast with Northwest registered agent and get access to thousands of free resources for. forms and step-by-step guides without even creating an account. Sign up for a free account

to begin managing your business hub with lawyer drafted operating agreements, bylaws, resolutions, membership, certificates, bills of sale, and more, all at no cost. Northwest is your one-stop business resource. Learn how to build a professional website, what annual filings your business needs to stay in good standing, and simple explanations of complicated business laws. With Northwest privacy is automatic. They never sell your data. And all services, are handled in-house because privacy by default is their pledge to all customers. Don't wait, protect your privacy, build your brand, and get your complete business identity in just 10 clicks and 10 minutes. Visit northwestregisteredagent.com slash confidence-free and start building something

amazing. Get more with Northwest Registered Agent at www. northwestredgisteredagent.com slash confidence-free. Starting the year with a wardrobe refresh, Quince has you covered with lux essentials that feel effortless and look polished. They're perfect for layering, mixing, and building a wardrobe that lasts. Their versatile styles make it easy to reach for them day after day. Quince has all the staples covered from soft Mongolian cashmere sweaters that feel like designer pieces without the markup to 100% silk tops and skirts for easy dressing up to perfectly cut denim for everyday wear. Their wardrobe essentials are crafted to last season after season. Their Italian wool coats are real standouts. They're beautifully tailored, soft to the touch, and built to carry you through years of wear.

Not just one season. The quality shows in every detail. The stitching, the fit, the fabrics. Every piece is thoughtfully designed to be your new wardrobe essential. And like everything from quince, each piece is made from premium materials in ethical-trusted factories that are priced far below what other luxury brands charge. I can't tell you how much I am loving my new cashmere sweater. It's a staple for sure, and I can't wait to give one to my best friend for her birthday this year.

It is timeless, gorgeous, and the softest thing I've ever touched. Which quince pieces are you interested in it? I mean, from the bags to the denim, to the sweaters, to the jackets, they're all incredible luxury high-end products without the high-end price. Refresh your wardrobe with quince. Don't wait. Go to quince. com slash confidence for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns now available in

canada too that's q you i ncee dot com slash confidence to get free shipping and 365 day returns quince dot com slash confidence if your anxiety depression or ADHD are more than a rough patch you don't need just another meditation app tachiatry makes it easy to see a psychiatrist online using your insurance in days. Takayatry is 100% online psychiatry practice that provides comprehensive evaluations, diagnoses, and ongoing medication management for conditions like ADHD, anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, OCD, PTSD, insomnia, and more. Unlike therapy-only apps, tachyotry is psychiatry.

That means you're seeing a medical provider who can diagnose mental health conditions and prescribe medication when it's appropriate. All their 600 plus clinicians are in network with major insurers so you can use your existing insurance instead of paying monthly subscriptions or out of network fees. You'll meet with an experienced licensed psychiatrist who takes the time to understand what's going on, build a personalized treatment plan, and can prescribe medication when it's right for you. Your care stays consistent and evidence-based. Head to tachiatry.com slash confidence and complete the short assessment. to get matched with an in-network psychiatrist in just a few minutes. That's talkiety.com slash confidence to get matched in minutes.

I really am focused on stay calm. Think of what your goals are. Think of what your end game is and how do we get you there? So I sat quietly for a moment trying to get calm because I was so pissed, so pissed. Because I was thinking I would have been better off self-publishing, what the heck is going on here? And I thought, all right, end game is. I want her to give me back my hardcover, right?

So I said, I'm going to ask her some questions, right? The more information we can get out from somebody else, the more opportunity we have to change their mind or give them tools to help them work with us to achieve our end game and together win. So I said, I started with something like this. Okay, wait a minute. In our contract, it states we have a hardcover. She said, yes, but given the global pandemic, this is above and beyond normal. circumstances in the paper shortage, Heather, this is, it nullifies, you know, different parts of the agreement like that, which did make sense. I understood. I said, so let me ask you this. You're

printing no hardcover at all for any authors. She said, well, I didn't say that. No, that's not true. So right there is where I knew I had my end, right? So we need to ask better questions, get more information, and come from a place of curiosity. Once I knew they were going to print some people's hardcover, but they didn't want to print mine. I knew I had an opportunity to move myself from the no hardcover lane to the yes, hardcover lane. So I said, so why are some of the people getting hardcover and some not? She said, I'll be honest with you. I'm not the ultimate decision maker on it. Okay, so that was issue number one. I'm not dealing with the ultimate decision maker. So then once she admitted that to me, I knew I need to take another approach. I need to prop her up to better go sell

her boss, right? Because he was the ultimate decision maker, and she was not willing to get me a meeting with him. She said she would broker the deal on my behalf, but I knew I was going to have to help her do it, give her incentive to do it, and show her the way. So then I said, okay, why were some people chosen to have hardcovered and people like me chosen not to? And she explained the best she could. She said, well, like anyone huge, like a Brune Brown is getting one, anyone they know will sell millions, and then also anyone they feel like their audience will spend more money and will want a higher price point book because hardcover are the most expensive. So in my mind, I started thinking and immediately in my mind I thought of LinkedIn.

My largest social media following, I have over 220,000 followers super engaged are on LinkedIn. All business professionals. Business people have more disposable income than non-business people write than Facebook or Instagram followers do. And I knew that from data points that I've seen. So I knew I could pull the data points. I could pull the research to show LinkedIn community has more money to spend, more disposable income. And I could probably find some data on LinkedIn people buy more hardcovered. Right. So in my mind, I started thinking, I can build a case for this. So I didn't argue with her. I didn't start screaming, this is not our deal. I'm not allowing this. You know, I just said,

okay, here's the thing. Let me ask you this question. If I, I can put together a compelling enough case to show and justify why we need a hardcover and, in fact, not having a hardcover, will hurt all of our sales and actually hurt the success of the book, would you be willing to go on my behalf and pitch that and make that case for us? Well, she said, oh, my gosh, yeah, for sure, Heather. She said, if you can bring me data, information, and intel that shows me and paints a story as to why it's imperative to have a hardcover, I will. all day long go fight for you. That was the only yes I needed to get on that call. So I hung up with her and I knew my job was to help prop her up to do her job. And I took, I think it was maybe a day, a day and a half. And I did a ton of research. I went into my stats. And it was so cool. I went back to my original book proposal because in your book proposal, you lay out what your social media following is,

what your engagement is, how you're going to help monetize the book, sell the books, what different things you'll do. And when I went back to, you, the original book proposal, which now was months old, right? Because we had started working on that in 2019, and now here we are. We were in the middle of 2020. My social media following on LinkedIn had grown so much. My engagement had exploded. So I had data points to show that while the rest of the world might be unwinding, my value was growing exponentially, which made me more valuable to HarperCollins leadership now than when I wrote the book proposal and signed with them earlier. So I put together the case. I did a lot of research around

who buys hardcover books, business professionals, people over the age of 30, all the things that lend yourself to LinkedIn. I backed it up with the data points I have on my audience on LinkedIn and all the information I have on LinkedIn, my growth trajectory on LinkedIn. And I told the story that, you know, basically says, here's a thing. I understand your concern. We are living through global crisis and there is a paper shortage. However, certain authors need to have hard covers and I happen to be one of them. Here's why it will benefit both of us. And I went on to tell the story about how quickly my audience was growing on LinkedIn, how much it had grown just since I had signed with them just a few months prior, how the LinkedIn audience is the audience

that buys higher price point books, i.e. hardcovers. How my book was coming out in November, which was holiday, so Christmas purchases. And there's data to show. people buy hardcover for Christmas gifts. It went on and on and on, right? So I built this really rock solid case for her. I supported it with data, hard numbers, growth trajectories, and intel on my audience and intel on book buying audience in general. I sent it to her. I jumped on a call with her. We went through it together. She felt really solid about it. She asked me any question she had. I asked her if she wanted me to go on the meeting virtually with her boss. She said no. And then I said, you know what? I know you can get this done. I have total faith in you.

And it's important, you know, to trust people when you work with them because she's going out there without me. And I wanted her to know. I had her back. I knew she had my back. This hadn't been her choice to begin with. She went out and a few days later, I got a phone call and she said, I'm calling today to let you know. You have a hardcover to overcome your villains. And it's so funny, These are the crazy things people don't understand happen behind the scenes. It's that things don't always go seamlessly. It might seem that way in the outside. It's not that way on the inside.

There's always going to be speed bumps, and it's going to be up to us to see how do we decide to handle them? Do we give up, lay down and cry? Or do we find solutions to overcome them? And as you know, I love overcoming my villains. That was a small villain in my life, someone trying to get rid of my hardcover. We overcame that one. We got back on track. and back to business. And yes, my hardcover are alive in the world. I'm looking at one right now,

and I love them. All right. So then here's another great example of nose. I was fired at the end of 2017. I wrote Confidence Creator my first book beginning of 2018. It went out live to the world May of 2018. I googled, how do you sell books? It said speak. I started cold calling businesses, asking if I could come in and speak, asking them to buy my books. Somebody said, what's your keynote fee? I googled that. I saw Gary Vaynerchuk was making. 250K for a 60-minute speaking engagement, I decided to pivot my business to speaking. And so I leaned in heart to speaking, started researching all the speakers, and really trying to figure out what's my best plan of attack to kill the speaking business and become a top speaker. And so one of the

things I saw is that TEDx speakers are higher profile. They kind of have like, they check the box, right? Giving a TEDx speech is a big deal and having a TED talk is a huge deal. So I, set my sights on that. I wanted to land a couple of agents, which I did, and then I wanted to land a TEDx talk so I could, you know, I want to check all the important boxes so that I could overcome whatever objections people might have when looking at hiring me. So I took out a Google alert on TEDx speakers wanted. Google alerts are your friend. Use them wisely. They help you so much. And so I started applying randomly to every single TEDx speaker wanted request I would get. And I would get 10, 15 a week, right? This is back in 2019. And I was applying like crazy.

Actually, this might, I might have started this at the end of 2018. So I was applying like crazy. I sent out over 100 TEDx applications. And they are not like a one sentence thing. It's like you have to fill out an application. It's a lot of time. I sent out over 100. I was rejected every single time from the end of 2018 through the beginning of 2019. I was doing multiple every single week. Anyhow, I end up speaking at an event in Miami about my book, Confidence Creator, and a woman comes up to me after, and she says, oh, my gosh, you're such a great speaker. You should give a TEDx talk.

And I started laughing. I said, yeah, you and I both think so. However, TEDx doesn't think so. And she said, well, what do you mean? I said, I took out a Google Alert. I've applied to over 100. I'm always told no. And she said, well, can you talk to me a little bit about what your application's like?

Basically, here's where I was going wrong. I was making it all about me. I'm an amazing speaker. I've spoken on the largest stages in the world. I've spoken for the National Association of Broadcasters. I've spoken for an audience of 10,000 people. I've been speaking as a sales leader for 25 years. I've done thousands and thousands of speeches.

That's what I was pitching. I wanted them to know I was really good and I was going to do a great job for them. This was so cool. She worked for TEDx and said to me, Heather, we are a volunteer organization. We don't care if you're the greatest speaker in the world. That doesn't matter to us. We care. They're going to support our efforts.

You're going to be more volunteer-like, like we are, help us sell tickets, help us, help support us, help us on our initiative. You're going to align with what that big idea is on your talk with what our theme is, which I had completely no clue about. You know, she gave me the inside track. And so after that, I said, would you be willing to work with me on a TEDx pitch? And she did, and we ended up getting it.

Okay. So, but the point is, I had over a hundred nos on TEDx talks before I got my one yes. So don't think if you've had a couple of nose, oh my gosh, it's over. I'm never going to get it. I literally had over 100 noes for TEDx before I changed my approach and immediately got a yes. Don't give up. It could be the wrong pitch. You could be pitching the wrong people.

And let me give you an example of that. Early in my career, I was an equity partner in my early 20s. Did an unbelievable job. I netted my partners and myself $30 million in this huge deal we did in Michigan. I think we sold it when I was 27 or 28. Killed it. Super exciting time in my life. However, The company that acquired us put a non-compete, non-solicit on me, which meant I could not work for my old boss, my partner, any longer for like two or three years because they were trying to force me to stay at the new company, which I was not going to do. So I said to my old boss, well, where should I go now if I can't work for you? And he said, well, go work for my friend George in Florida. He's a much bigger publicly traded company. You're ready for the next level jump.

You know, you've already done this for a smaller company. you can kill it for a bigger company. Go in there and run that company. So I went down to Florida. I interviewed with them. The only job they had available was a director of sales job for their Naples operation,

which was much smaller than what I had just been doing, which was running a company for the state of Michigan and, you know, much bigger organization. So I took a step back in the hopes I could take a step forward, right?

So I took that job and in under a year, we took that market to number one of the company. I called the president of the company. That's who I had interviewed with. I said, let's meet for lunch. Whenever you want to pitch someone on something or ask for something, sit down with them face to face, you are going to be so much more powerful face to face-to-face, and you're so much harder to say no to face-to face. Think about it. Someone shoots you an email. Hey, would you donate to this blah, blah, blah, blah. Delete. Right? But if they're knocking at your door,

you're going to have a conversation with them. It's harder to say no to people. face to face. Leverage that to your benefit. Okay, so I sit for lunch. I ask him how he's doing. I have him empty his glass on what's going on. Then I pitch him. Basically, I said something like this. You know, you've seen the trajectory of my impact on this market. Since I've gotten here, we went from last in the company to number one in under 12 months. We've raised revenues, whatever it was, 30%. It was crazy the growth we had had. We did an unbelievable job. I said, I'm here today to talk to you about how I can impact. your entire company at scale to that same level. In fact, I think we can double revenues. Here's how I

would do it. Here's how I'll make you look great. Here's how I'm going to make you look great to the board. Here's how I'm going to make your shareholders more money. Boom. I'm like, I'm definitely getting a yes. He smiles and he says, no. He says, you're doing a great job in the role you're in. Let's keep you here for a little while now. I appreciate your ambition, but we're going to keep you where you are. keep up the great work. We're so proud of you, so appreciative of you're here. I was young. I was probably 29 now at the time. I was not married. I did not have a child. Immediately I went back to work and I started dialing for dollars. Started calling other companies, pitch myself, if they're not going to value me and they're not going to value what I've done for them and give me this opportunity that I

clearly deserve, I'll go work for another company. You know, there was nothing to tie me to Florida at that time. I had no mortgage. I was renting and I had no child. And, and, and, and, and, and, And, you know, I wasn't committed to that community or that company. Found another job. Two weeks later, it was a bigger job. It was back in Boston. I called the president of the company. I said, let's meet for lunch.

We met for lunch. I sat with him. I said, have you rethought my pitch and proposal? He said, no, not really. I said, let me share it with you again. I pitch him again. He smiles. He says, thanks, but we'd like to keep you here.

You're doing a great job. And I said, okay, then I'm giving you my resignation right now. And he said, what do you mean? I said, well, I've shown you what I can do. If you guys don't value that and see that I'm ready for that next move, I took a step back into this role. I was running a much bigger company. If you're not willing to see that, I'll go run another company that does see my value. He said, hold on, please. He walked out of that restaurant, and he came back five minutes later. He sat down and he said, I'm here to award you the newly

created position of VP of sales for the entire company. Congratulations, you deserve it. You're doing an amazing job, and I'm so excited to see what you do. And I said, let me ask you a question, where did you just go when you walked outside? He said, I had to call my dad. I couldn't make this decision on my own. I needed his approval. So one of the things I want you to remember about getting nos is never take a no from someone who can't give you a yes. That's the worst no we can ever get because we can't get over it. So always qualify who are the ultimate decision makers. Who are the people that we actually need in the room to make those decisions? And then there's going to be times when no has to come into play and might actually make sense. And I'm going

to give you an example of it right now. So back in 2019 and to 2019, I had a company reach out to me. They wanted me to deliver a keynote in Italy in 2020 for their very high-end five-star event. We sat. We went on the phone. We went over everything. I was new into the professional speaking business, even though I had been speaking for large audiences for 20 plus years, but in the quote unquote professional speaking business, I was still a year in or whatever, eight months in. And so I wasn't charging as much as I should have. I didn't know any better. That happens par for the course when you're new.

And so I was going to accept this opportunity at a much lower fee than I should have with five-star travel, business class flights, great hotels, whatever, and they'll take care of everything. Great. Okay. And I wanted to do it because I thought, I'm going to check another box. International keynote speaker sounds more impressive than keynote speaker, right? So I thought, okay, I'm going to get the value ad I need. Even though I'm not going to make a lot of money on the actual speech, it'll be a nice trip.

I go somewhere new. I meet new people. And I get the title international keynote speaker. I'll do it. Well, as you know, COVID came. So for the last two years, this event keeps getting changed. Well, now here we are. It's this month.

and the woman who's in charge of the event called me in January. And now, since then, since we originally spoke, I'm now named top 50 keynote speaker in the world for 2022, which is huge. My fees have 30 times what they were in 2019, of course, right? I've spoken for Google, Harvard. Like, it's crazy what's happened in the past couple of years. I could have never planned this.

But I'm a person on my word. I had given this one my word. I said, if I can make it happen, I will. back in January she calls me and asks me, hey, these are the dates, you know, can we do it? And I said, well, listen, I have no one to help me with my son. I'm going to have to pay for help for my son. My son's in school. The best I can do is leave on a Monday and be back home by Wednesday night. So you've got to find a way to fly me in there on Monday. I speak on Tuesday, fly me back on Wednesday. I'm home by Wednesday night. Okay, we'll do it. That was in January. Well, wouldn't you know today she sends me a note, hey, my travel agent has been working on flight. and we can't get a flight that makes that work. You're going to have to come in Sunday to Thursday night, which is not what we agreed upon. And I have a speaking engagement on Thursday back in the United States.

So, you know, I responded to her as we discussed. And again, I like this lady, right? Like, I want to do the event. But I respond to her as we discussed in January. And this is after two years of changing, you know, and I haven't raised rates on you, trying to respect that we had an agreement and it's been a global pandemic.

Like, however, we discussed leaving on a Monday, being back home by Wednesday, I told you how important that was to me for me to make this work. The fact that you didn't get the flights or figure out what the itiner was then, that was your decision, which is fine. Again, I'm not here to complain about it, but I am here to say, that is what I've blocked off for you. That's what I've allocated for this event. And I cannot change that to Sunday to Thursday because that's now what works for you. So obviously she's upset because we're, you know, just a couple weeks away from the event. And when I was younger, I would have definitely started scrambling and trying to cancel on other people and change things. But what I've learned at 47 is this.

You know, we can't control everything. I can't control that the woman didn't have a travel agent checking flights months ago. I can't control that there's a war right now that maybe is affecting flight. Like, I'm not in control of any of this stuff. I'm in control of what I commit to. And in January, I was on the phone with her. and I said, as long as you can fly me out Monday, I can get in there by Monday night, I've got Tuesday to speak, and you fly me back Wednesday, we're cool. I can make it happen.

I'll make this work. And that was no longer existing. So she sent me another note and said, well, what are we going to do? We can't not do this. So I gave her another idea. You know, last year I had a company that could not find a flight, a commercial flight, to get me in on the times they needed. So they ended up doing one of these net jet. It's like a fractional jet. So you buy hours on a jet. And so they were able to hire one of these companies. It doesn't have to be your own plane, but it's like you're buying into it. And they were able to fly me private.

And so that I was able to make it in and out the times that they needed. It worked out great. So I said to her, there's like four different companies I know that do this. I can give you the names of the one that the company that hired me last year used and call them and see what the solution is. Like, don't give. If this is that important to you, don't. Don't give up. Stay focused on the solution, not the challenge, and, you know, move forward. And later on that day, I got a message back from her. You know, they want hundreds of thousands of dollars to go international and, you know, it's not going to work.

And so I said, okay, then the next option I'd have for you is I'm happy to reach out to my agent to see if they have anyone that has, maybe there's speakers out there that have the whole week, you know, blank right now. And like me, they wanted to check that international box. And maybe they're happy to do it and fly out for, you know, what are, for. four, five, six days, whatever it is. And so I go back to this with the nose in that I didn't feel, I wish it could have worked. Who knows, maybe she'll still find a solution. I don't know if she will. She could. Of course, there's always solutions if we keep looking for them. However, I wanted it to work, but I knew that outside of those dates that I had committed to and blocked off for her, I'd made other commitments. And I don't need to feel bad because other things are happening around and outside of me, I don't have to go disrupt all the other commitments I have. And neither do you.

Right. So there's going to be times in your life where you just need to say no. And people might push back and say, can't you change this? Can't you cancel this? Can't you find a way? I can't. I did agree to these dates. I am happy to be there if you can make that work. I'm happy to brainstorm solutions with you. And if that doesn't work, I'm happy to try to help you find somebody else that can. but that's what we've agreed upon. And as I realize there are so many years of my life, I spent trying to find ways for things that were completely out of my control were not my fault when people would call me and say, but this is, Heather, we need you, you've got to figure out a way. And I never committed, okay, fine, I'll drop everything. Let me go cancel on this person,

change on this person, let me leave my kid for a week. I did that for years. And let me tell you this. Not only was I not valued because of it, I think I was valued less because of it. That company that used to make those phone calls to me that had me traveling every week fired me after 14 years. They didn't see the value because I was constantly removing my boundaries, reneging on the word that I gave them that this is what I could do. And then they pushed me to go for more and I kept doing it. And I just realized I'm worth more than that. So I want you to know you're worth more than that. I want you to respect your boundaries. When you make an agreement with someone or a commitment to do something, of course, honor and respect it where you can.

And when their situation changes and your new reality can't fit into that, you don't need to apologize for that. I hope that helps. I hope this episode helps. If you like this episode, share it on social. Tag me. You know I will always repost and reshare. You know I want to hear if you like it because when you let me know you like it, I can give you more content like this. All right, so until next week, keep creating your confidence.

Keep rocking International Women's Day. Support women for the guys listening right now. Support your women out there. Women support yourself. You are worth it. You are confident. And you can say no. But I highly recommend not taking it now.

Until next week, I'll see you now.