Ep 103 Transcript: The 5 Step Reset for Overthinking Accidental CEOs

This transcript was auto-generated and may contain errors in spelling or inaccuracies in the spoken words.

Shauna Lynn Simon (01:50.062)

Hello and welcome to the Real Women Real Business Podcast. I am your host, Shauna Lynn Simon, and I want you to tell me if this sounds familiar. You send out a proposal to a prospective new client, a couple of days pass, you don't get any reply, and your brain starts to write an entire Netflix series about all the reasons why you haven't heard back. This is incredibly common, especially for high achievers. High achievers are accustomed to being told that they're doing great things.

that the world is going to be handed to them, that everything that they touch is gold, essentially. And so if we don't hear from someone, we automatically go into kind of this worst case scenario. And today we're going to be talking about how to turn those spirals into a repeatable process that allows you to remain calm, professional, and avoid the stories that we're telling ourselves. Because this is happening pretty constantly. here's the thing. Here's what's happening. The reality is that our brains

hate uncertainty. What your brain's going to try to do when something is uncertain is it's going to try to fill in those gaps. So, you you might be telling yourself with this proposal situation, for example, you're saying, well, I think they're shopping around. They're going to try to find someone else. My price was too high. They hated the proposal. I didn't get the scope of work right. I didn't nail their vision. You know, that if they're questioning anything, you immediately start to think,

Well, they don't trust me. Or if they ask you a question about something, this is one of my favorite things. I have this happen. I've had it happen with team members, with my clients, where, you know, let's say you send them the proposal, someone responds back and says, hey, can you just explain what this charge is here? And immediately you get your backups and like, well, they don't understand the amount of work that goes into this. And that charge has to be there because of this, this, this, this, and this. I get that. But they're just asking a question. So instead of getting into defensive mode,

Let's just answer that question. Let's start by just answering the question. We are going into the assumption that they are challenging that pricing, but they're simply asking for clarification. So I don't want you to misunderstand clarification for a challenge and that you need to defend anything. And what ends up happening though, when we make up these stories in our head is you end up getting defensive. You might come across a little needy about things.

Shauna Lynn Simon (04:11.174)

You might even avoid following up on a proposal because you haven't heard back and you've immediately gone to worst case scenario in your head. You might preemptively discount something or over explain or try to justify something. Say, well, can just waive that or that's not really necessary. Or if it's a big deal and you end up losing your momentum, you lose energy on this. Here's the reality check. The problem is that the boring truth, the less exciting truth,

the one that's non-controversial is usually actually true. So what do I mean by this? Well, we're all busy, right? Have you ever received a proposal or an email that you sat on for a little while? And maybe there were different reasons for it. So let's say, let's use interior design as an example, because I have a lot of interior designers in here. So let's say you decide to hire a contractor to do some work on your house and they come in and they give you a proposal. And that sounds great.

You're looking at the proposal like, yeah, that seems kind of reasonable. You're not necessarily shopping around for it, but you haven't pulled the trigger on it because all of a sudden life got busy. Maybe one of your parents fell ill and you had to go and support them for a little bit. Maybe your kids hockey team was traveling for a couple of weeks. Maybe it's just a matter of, know, that you've got to get certain ducks in a row before you can bring the contractor in. You want to get those things figured out before you tell the contractor that you're proceeding with them. Life happens.

This is a thing, your clients get busy, they get sick, they travel, they've got family stuff as well, just like you do. And how often have you accidentally ignored something completely unintentionally? It's possible that they just simply got busy. There's other things that they might be working on. And again, relate this back to the last time that you didn't respond to something right away. Perhaps there's some sort of additional approval that you need from a spouse or a partner or someone else who's involved in the decision process.

Maybe it's your own internal approval that you just need to come to terms with. Okay, well, that's the price. I'm not going to argue the price. I believe in the price. I believe that they're the best people to get the job done, but my budget doesn't really allow for this right now. So you're trying to figure out how can I make the money so that you might be waiting on payroll or bonuses or some extra income that you're expecting to come in. The other option is that simply they opened it and just forgot to reply.

Shauna Lynn Simon (06:31.01)

completely done this where I thought that I had replied to someone when I actually didn't. This is a very, very common thing. So just remember that no response is not a verdict. It's not a no. A no response is simply a timing gap. And there are things that we can be doing in order to avoid telling ourselves these stories. Now, here's the thing. I am using this proposal example as just one example of stories that we tell ourselves.

How often have you found that someone has created their own narrative about your life, about something that you did, and they've interpreted it in a way? Well, you did this. Therefore, it means this. And you probably got pretty upset about that, right? We don't like someone else to dictate what the narrative of our story is. We like to have control over our own narrative. And, you know, there's something to be said for

What is your intention behind something? And this requires a little bit of benefit of the doubt, but if I say something the wrong way, some people might get really offended by it. But if you look at what my intention of it was, maybe the words just came out wrong, but my intention was good. And so this is the same thing when it comes to, you might be having conversations with family, with friends, with your partner, and sometimes things just come out wrong.

and we misinterpret them and that can cause a lot of conflict. But if we lead with curiosity, if we lead with questions, if we ask them to clarify things, if we offer grace and the benefit of the doubt, we're less likely to jump to conclusions. So the next time you're telling a story in your head, I want you to ask yourself, am I telling myself a story in my head or is this actually happening? Because a lot of the times it's a false narrative. It's something that we're making up again, because our brain wants that certainty.

telling yourself. So first of all, I want you to name that story. The next time you're doing this, I want you to name the story. Identify that there is a story. Say the story I'm telling myself is. So let's go back to the proposal example, because I think this is one of the most common ones that we can relate to. But there are so many times that we tell ourselves stories. For example, like I've let me give a few more examples of things that might show up in business where we tell ourselves stories. So let's say one of our employees isn't doing the work.

Shauna Lynn Simon (08:55.224)

properly and we might start saying, I wonder if it's because I didn't give them a raise this year or, clearly they're out to get me because they're absolutely sabotaging, intentionally sabotaging the work that they're doing. These are stories we're telling ourselves. They may be true, but if we don't gather the details and the information to back that story up, it is just a story that's in your head. Speculating doesn't get anyone anywhere. So I want you to tell yourself.

First of all, I am telling myself a story and the story I'm telling myself is this. When you've named it as a story, it allows you to kind of step back from that and almost have like an objective third party view of it. So it creates a little bit of distance between you and that thought so that you can have a bit more objectivity. Even if it helps you, you can maybe say if this was happening to someone else, how would I be viewing this? Because that's also a different narrative. If your friend came to you with a similar story,

Wouldn't you be offering some benefit of the doubt to the other person that they're talking about saying like, did you ask them about that? Well, did they actually say that? Are you sure that's what they meant by that? So it's funny that we'll do that for someone else, but not necessarily for ourselves. Okay, so that's step one. This is kind of how we're gonna reset when we're telling ourselves a story. Step one is to name the story. Step two is you're going to come up with five, that's right, five neutral explanations for it. So.

Here's an example for the proposal one again, just because that's an easy one that we can use. So you've sent out a proposal, you haven't heard back. Here are five reasons you might not have heard back. They're busy, they're in meetings all week. Number two is they need to review it with a partner. Number three, they have a deadline elsewhere that they're trying to take care of before they hit. So they're busy basically, before they can get back to you. They want you, but they need to confirm budget timing. That's going back to that cashflow, waiting for some money to come in.

or they saw it and they meant to reply. There's five neutral reasons that have nothing to do with your pricing, with the scope, with you at all that has simply to do with them. So step number three is you're going to choose the most useful assumption, not best case, not worst case, but the most useful. So they're busy and they need a clear next step. That's a great one to choose. And again, the reason why we're choosing something is because our brain wants certainty.

Shauna Lynn Simon (11:17.934)

One of the options is also just simply to ask them. But by choosing an option that is fairly neutral and fairly useful is you can now act on that. So assuming that they're just busy and need a clear next step, how would you then handle that? So step four is to take one clean action. So that clean action can just be send a short follow up. Hey, just checking in. I can't tell you in all of my years of coaching how many times

I have had clients that have lost business simply because they didn't follow up. And when I asked them, well, did you follow up? Well, no. Again, no answer is not no. I have them follow up. Wouldn't you know the client actually does want to proceed, but maybe their timeline has changed or their budget has changed or some other circumstances have come up. So send a short follow up to them. Offer a quick clarification call. Say, hey, if there's anything that you wanted to discuss further about the proposal, I'm happy to set up a quick call so we can discuss things.

and get this moving for you. Confirm the timeline and a decision date. Saying things like, I know you really wanted to get this project started in the spring. In order to do that, I'm going to need a decision by this date in order to make sure that we can meet that timeline. But if your timeline has shifted, please let me know and we can adjust things accordingly. Or just ask some other direct question. Not an assumption, but just a direct question about the status of things. Have you had a chance to review this email?

And would you like to move forward with it? And then step five is I want you to regulate before you communicate. So I want you to take a quick breath, take a reset of some sort. So it could be some breath work, maybe about a minute of breath work, breathing in and out, keeping your shoulders down, making sure you're nice and relaxed. Read your draft. If you're doing this over email or if you're to do it on phone call, you've created yourself a little bit of a talking points draft. Read it out loud. Does it sound calm?

Or does it sound like you're going on the defensive? Keep in mind, they have not brought you any offense at this point. And then remove any sort of apologies or over-explaining. Because again, that sounds defensive. You don't need to defend anything yet. You're not justifying anything at this stage.

So let me just recap this really quickly. So the next time you're telling yourself a story in your head, and I'm using a business example here, but again, go back to your personal life as well. We do this all the time in both personal and in business. We tell ourselves stories and I've caught myself doing this. For the most part, I don't do this, but I have managed to catch myself occasionally.

wondering why someone hasn't responded to a proposal. And this is the structure that I use. So the first thing is, so we're gonna go to the, again, we've got a five step reset framework. So when you're telling yourself a story about something that didn't actually happen, let's say you send out a proposal to someone, you haven't heard from them. Again, no does not mean, or no answer does not mean no. So now you're gonna do a quick reality check and a reset.

to ensure that you don't go spiraling into stories. So step one is you're to name the story that you're telling yourself. So the story I'm telling myself is because you don't have any certainty to it. So if there's no certainty, it's a story. Step two, you're going to list five neutral explanations, five very reasonable reasons why you have not heard back from them or why you're telling yourself that story and what could be happening instead of the story and the narrative that you're telling. Step.

Three is you're going to choose the most useful assumption, not best case, not worst case, but the most useful. They're busy. They need a clear next step, whatever it is. Step four is you're going to take one clean action. That could be a short follow up. It could be offering a quick clarification call, confirming their timeline, whatever that looks like for you. And then step five, you're going to regulate before you communicate. Take some deep breaths.

Shauna Lynn Simon (16:02.574)

ensure that your draft sounds good, whether it's going to be a phone call or email, and you're to make sure you eliminate any apologies or over explaining to avoid sounding defensive. All right. Sound good. Cool. Okay. So now let's create a bit of a follow up process because I mentioned earlier, so many of my clients I find are losing out on jobs and projects simply because they don't have a solid follow up process. So what does that actually look like? This is something that

For my team members, we've always had a bit of a flow chart, let's say, of what the expectations are based on timelines, based on the client timelines, as well as our own schedule and how the project proceeds. But we have a bit of a standard that is no different than if you go to a restaurant, they've got kind of the steps of service that they follow where they're to bring you your drink. And then within a certain amount of time, they're to come and take your order. And within a certain amount of time, you're going to get your appetizers. And then certain amount of time after that, you're to get your main course. There's a step to all the things.

Your follow up process should be no different. And a lot of us have these processes in place for setting out the proposal in the first place, doing initial consultations, delivering on the actual deliverables that we're hired to do. But so many of us just don't have a solid follow up process. So the first thing I want you to do is I want you to set expectations upfront with your client. So when you send out a proposal, say, you know, have a look, let me know by say Thursday.

I don't hear back from you. I'm going to follow up with you on Friday. So you've set those expectations with them. This is also triggering yourself to remember that you need to follow up and makes you feel a little less uncomfortable when you haven't heard back from them because, well, they might be just waiting for you to follow up. That's a great story to tell. So you're to put a little task in your calendar to remind you on Friday to follow up with them and or you can even say something to them along the lines of if questions come up, send them on over to me. I'm happy to clarify.

I mean, I think this is a part of kind of a standard part of every email that we send out, but you can go a step further maybe and just say, if you'd like to hop on a call, I've got some time available actually on Thursday around one o'clock, would that work for you? Right? Get it kind of a bit more solidified and then set up a bit of a cadence following that. for example, when I had a home staging company, a lot of the things that we were setting up were really time sensitive in terms of proposals. So we would send out the proposal on say day one.

Shauna Lynn Simon (18:26.946)

Let's call it day zero. We send out a proposal on day zero, send it out to the client. If we didn't hear back from them within a day or two, we were following up with them. Usually it depended on what their timeline was, but we were following up with them. I should also mention going back to day zero is we always sent it within 24 hours of meeting with them. So they always knew so that we're keeping the momentum going. Not all businesses are going to send a quote within 24 hours. For example, my contractor is easily minimum four weeks, sometimes up to six to eight weeks because he's

getting in quotes from his sub-trades. I'm not doing that with staging. So it was a really quick turnaround, relatively easy to create these quotes. We turned it out within 24 hours. Set that expectation as well when you're sending out a proposal before you send it out as to when they can actually expect to receive it. Okay, so day zero, we send out the proposal, which is less than 24 hours or less from when we actually did the consultation. Within a couple of days, usually max, we're gonna send a quick check-in. All that follow-up does,

It says I just wanted to confirm receipt. That's it. There's no emotion to it. There's no did you like it? Did you want to proceed? It's just I want to confirm that you received it. If you have any questions, let me know. It's quick. It's easy for them to respond to to at least confirm that they received it. Now, if you still haven't heard back a few days later, let's say it's day seven. So it's been about a week now since you sent it. That's when you're going to follow up with them again and just say to them, you know, I

whatever makes the most sense for you. So maybe it's a value-based follow-up, where you're providing one helpful insight that is reflected in their project. Maybe it's something along the lines of, I noticed that this supplier that we use is going to be having a sale next month on their flooring, and I would love to be able to get the order in for that. In order to do that, we need to start moving here. Or it can just be a tip of, we talked about.

For example, I met with one of my design clients recently and we were talking about doing radon testing in his house and what the timing of this should look like. Well, wouldn't you know like a couple of days later, I get this notification about a news article about when you should do radon testing and how it actually works. So I sent him the article as a follow-up, right? So maybe there's something that you discussed in your meeting with them that you could send them a quick follow-up. Maybe it even doesn't even have anything to do with the proposal.

Shauna Lynn Simon (20:44.354)

So let's say a couple weeks goes by now and you still haven't heard from them. That's when you can send what we call a close the loop message. And you've probably received these from anyone who's been like soliciting your business. The close the loop email is basically along the lines of, I guess you're not interested and I'm going to move on. I suggest picking a tone that works well for both you and the client. I don't like when someone says to me, well, I guess you're not interested in this. That is a little off-putting to me

and it sounds like they're upset with me and now I definitely don't want to work with them. What I prefer to do is just send an email saying I just want to circle back to this one last time. If you're not interested, no problem. I'm not going to message you again, but I'm here whenever you need to or whenever you're ready. If you if you would like to proceed or settle on those lines. So it's a little it's not so passive aggressive, but it is clear that I'm now putting the ball into your court. I'm not going to keep following up with you. Now, all of that being said.

If it's someone that I really resonated with and I feel like there's still an opportunity there, maybe let's say six months later, if I still haven't heard from them, I might touch base with them and just say, hey, I saw this thing today and it reminded me of your project and I want to check in. Did you ever manage to get that project moving or what's the status of that? Or anyway, if there's anything that I can help you with, let me know. Whatever it looks like for you. Some sample follow-up scripts you could use is like, did you get a chance to review the proposal?

If you'd like, can answer some questions for you. We can do a quick 10 minute call. What's easiest for you? Or if they've asked you a question, perhaps, that's a great question. Happy to clarify this. What's leading to this question? Is it about timelines? Is scope? Is it budget? Once I understand where you're at with things, I can give you the cleanest answer. And then like I said, the close the loop one. I know things get busy. If now isn't the right time, no worries at all.

Do you want me to keep this open for you? Should I close this file for now? That's also another good one where instead of just saying I'm not going to I'm not going to message you anymore in the balls in your court, you're actually asking them a question that's requiring them to answer without being a passive aggressive. Well, I guess you're not interested in this again. Do not send those emails. I absolutely despise those emails. So just remember that following up that's leadership that is running a business that is being a CEO not following up is potentially leaving money on the table.

Shauna Lynn Simon (23:03.712)

Last but not least, I want to cover a couple of common triggers. We've kind of talked about these previously, but I wanted to go through bit of an exercise to do a little bit of a reframe. So the first one is they ask you a question and you immediately go to they're challenging me. So I want you to reframe this in your head. The next time someone asks you a question, a clarification question, I want you to reframe how you're thinking about in your head to questions mean interest. Someone wouldn't ask a question if they weren't

interested in actually using you, right? They are trying to find the path from what you've provided to what they need. And they are hoping that that path leads them to bringing you in to help to solve that problem that they're having. So I want you to reframe this instead of are they challenging me or they're pushing back on something. Instead of thinking that, I want you to think, OK, questions mean interest. And so I want you to respond with clarity, not defense.

So how can you provide clarity to them without emotion? And so sometimes what we do is we go immediately to justifying. You can provide clarity without providing justification. So as an example, I'm gonna use my staging business again for this, because we had a common, what we would call question often, and it was easy to think that it meant pushback. When we would send out a quote for staging services,

Our quotes always had three lines on them. One was the staging rentals and what those fees are going to be. That's a recurring monthly fee. And the next one was the staging services, which is the what it takes for us to prep the job, load the job, plan the job, install the job, tear down the job, de-stage it and return everything to our inventory. And so we just labeled it as staging services. Now we did have a bit of a description that said that this included the prep and the install and da da da. But for the most part, it was just

It was a single line. And then we also had a delivery fee. The line that always got challenged was the staging services. And the reason why it got challenged sometimes was people wondered if it was optional. Like, do I need the staging services? Can't I just get the rentals without the staging services? And we would simply, so if they would ask us, so sometimes the question would be that specific where they're saying, do I need the staging services or can I get it without the staging services? And we would just simply explain further here is what that includes.

Shauna Lynn Simon (25:26.528)

Sometimes the question was just, what does the fee include? And so we've already got a bit of a brief blurb there about what includes the prep time, the install, the de-stage and everything else. So to clarify it, we would just give a little bit more detail. It's the time that it requires for us to create the design plan in the first place and then select all the items from our warehouse, pack them all up, load up the truck, deliver them to you, install them and then return when the house is sold to pack them all up.

take them back to our warehouse and return them to inventory. Now, that is a non-emotional clarifying response, right? The emotional response is you probably don't realize it takes a lot of work to put this together. There's a lot of things going on behind the scenes that you don't even realize until we actually get to your house. We've done most of the work. So we do this, this, this, this, and this. And you see how there's a difference between the tone of these two? One is definitely much more defensive than the other. So we want to make sure that we are providing clarity.

in a very simple framework without getting super emotional. Okay. So then the other one that we've been talking about is they went quiet. They didn't respond to me. Did I do something wrong? This is the story that we're telling ourselves. Did I do something wrong? Here's how I want you to reframe this. The next time this happens to you, I want you to remind yourself that silence is not feedback. Say this out loud right now. No answer does not mean no.

No answer is not a verdict. It's a question. Okay. Silence is not feedback. So what I want you to do instead of creating stories in your head, I want you to follow the process. Remember, you've got this follow up process now. I want you to create if you don't already have one, I want you to create a solid follow up process that outlines based on your standard turnaround time based on the standard processes that you have in place, your client interactions.

I want you to create a standardized follow-up process that you and your entire team are going to follow when this is happening, when you're getting the silence. I want you to simply refer to your process, keeping your tone neutral, providing clarification as needed, answering questions, but keeping emotion all out of this. So I want you to think about what was the last time you had one of these spiraling conversations with yourself and what did that look like for you? And I want you to take the time to do the exercise. Do those five steps that I mentioned.

Shauna Lynn Simon (27:48.014)

earlier of, where you're to name this story, you're going to come up with five neutral explanations, you're going to utilize the most useful one, and then you're going to take one clean action. And of course, before you communicate, you're going to regulate yourself as well. It's possible that despite the story you've told yourself, when you reframe it through this framework here, that there's still time to follow up because you might be saying to yourself, oh, that happened a couple of weeks ago, but it's too late for me to follow up now. But if you follow this process, you might find yourself saying, actually,

There's no reason why I can't follow up now and come up with a framing that makes sense and feels most comfortable for you. OK, so what do we learn here today? Well, for one thing, we learn that we make up a lot of things in our heads sometimes that we don't intend to. It's no different than the stories that we would tell ourselves in childhood and play make believe, but it can have more damaging effects as we get older and as we operate a business as well. So.

The best thing that we can do for ourselves, for our business, for our mental health, for our clients is to neutralize the situation by simply identifying the fact that we don't have all the facts and seeking curiosity, seeking answers through curiosity. I like to always say that I lead with curiosity. This is my default mode, I would say, is that I lead with curiosity. I lead with questions. I don't lead with assumptions. And this comes from

anything that anyone says. I don't like when someone misinterprets something that I've said because they've made assumptions and I aim to do the same for them and offer them that same courtesy and grace. And I do think that in general as a society as a whole we would all be a lot further along if we all offer that same grace to each other every single day. So I want you to take some time this week

and identify some of the stories that you are telling yourselves and use this framework. And if you do use this framework, I want you to let me know how it goes for you. Feel free to tag me or DM me on Instagram @shaunalynnsimon I want to hear from you because that is one of my favorite things. I can't even tell you every week I have listeners that reach out to me and tell me how they took the lesson from that week's episode and put it to work in their real lives. That is why this podcast exists.

Shauna Lynn Simon (30:01.506)

That is what I am here for and I love hearing those stories. And of course, if you want some additional further support, then think about joining the Real Women Real Business Mastery Program. In this program, you're gonna get the support that you need through a group coaching environment where you get to connect with other like-minded women who are in a similar stage of business as you are and get the support that you need to ensure that you've got the foundations built, that you've got someone holding you accountable at all times and that you're moving your business forward.

in a way and a structure that makes the most sense for you. So if you are an accidental CEO feels like you're overwhelmed because you are super busy all the time and your bank account is not quite reflecting that this program is going to help you to identify exactly what is moving the needle in your business. What is driving the revenues? What's just draining your energy and where to focus your efforts and how on the things that really matter on a day to day basis?

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with someone that you know could really benefit from the message here today. So if there is someone that you know who is telling stories to herself and spiraling out of control at times, share this episode with her. She'll thank you for it and I will thank you as well. Until next time, keep thriving.