The first yes is always the most important.
Renee Hribar shares the story of a busy business coach who left corporate consulting to create more flexibility, only to find herself overwhelmed and invisible in her market. Together, they mapped out a simple yet powerful strategy using a Spotlight interview series to reconnect with her network, create valuable content, and build her email list while offering genuine business assessments.
This conversation highlights how simplifying sales and focusing on the first yes can reduce friction and increase responses. Keep it simple, grow relationships, and let clarity create momentum.
Transcript
So I wanna give you some backstory. She's a 39-year-old business coach with one kid in middle school who's in a soccer league. So, hello. I know what that looks like. That means lots of away games, lots of laundry, lots of extra, extra, extra. Even tonight we had another soccer event that was totally unrelated to soccer, but important because it was a part of the soccer team.
e has two sisters that lived [:Should I say 90% of the time. So with this client, we get along right away because we had a lot of the same scenarios. She had a very busy household. She had nieces and nephews running through there. She had lots of, I'm just stopping by for a minute, interruptions. So, I mean, she was definitely juggling school, dropoffs running her business, and she only had one very part-time virtual assistant.
She was low on time and needed simple. Structured systems so that she could publish, so she could connect, so that she could close clients regularly. Are you nodding your head? Do you know why we hung out? This is what I do. So she'd left her corporate. Role in vis dev for a global consulting firm that shall not be mentioned, but it sounds like mosh Mencher.
if you know, you know, and, [:But that was the kicker. She's like, I cannot. Cannot continue to work at the speed and pace that this company has me working. And it was for nothing. Like she didn't feel like she had a mission. She, she wanted to build something for herself that gave her more flexibility with her family, but she also wanted it to mean something.
es, you know what I'm saying?[:So she was waffling a little bit and, and honestly unsure of where to prioritize her. Limited precious time. And that's. Where she needed, she needed guidance and obviously if you've been hanging out with me for a length of time, you know that that's what I do. So she found me after hearing me speak at a virtual summit, which I love doing.
I love getting together with people that are on a mission. Talking about the things that are coming, talking about the best practices, I absolutely love virtual summits. So thank you. If you're listening and you've had me as a guest, or if you are planning one and you're looking for a guest, I would love to talk about all the things that you hear me talk about here on the podcast.
So she told me that she was standing at her kitchen table folding laundry. Uh, I can relate while watching the replays of the summit. If you know how summits work, you get them free for a certain length of time, and then, then you have to pay for the replay. So she's sitting there as, as how many of us do, right?
[:So her business was becoming completely invisible. So this plan would give her great content while also giving her a reason to reach out to her network and reconnect. I mean, she had. A lot of really great colleagues, and even if they weren't gonna be her ideal client, they knew people who would. So in short, it was one of my Spotlight interview series maps that we were building out.
still record and host them, [:So she was gonna interview people, space them out, and after each interview, not only would she have content. Great content that was gonna be shared around to her ideal clients, but she also had a better understanding of the guest. So they could have been a local business owner that she might have known in some way, but she didn't know the whole picture.
And so during the interview she was, in essence, given the opportunity to ask questions she might not normally have asked if they just went out for a coffee and it was so good. The other part of that was she got to see other ways she could help them. So then we mapped out what she would do to thank them.
at I was raised going around [:But now I'm like, that is good stuff. That's good Merch, homemade pickles and a hand towel. Ooh, la la. Speaking my love language now. But as a 7-year-old, I thought I was like, my mom is cuckoo, but. That is part of my Spotlight interview series process is to thank them. So we mapped out the plan. For her to reconnect, for her to do the interviews that gave her content and a reason to reach out and reconnect with her network.
y shared with her, she would [:And she had been collecting business cards at local networking meetings for. Years. Now, if you've read my book, you know that I always say there's no statute of limitations on relationships. So she was ready to go back. She had the plan to email a hundred people to be able to invite them to fill out a form.
To be featured. Now, them being reached out to via her Gmail is one thing, but them being on her official broadcast email list, well, that's where the form came in. We needed a reason to have them take affirmative action so that they could. Legally be put onto her broadcast email list so that she could continue the communication with them over and over without.
d if they didn't take her up [:And if they were accepted to be interviewed, they would have already seen the value of the gift that she had planned to thank them with the business assessment. And that would increase their enthusiasm to accept it. So we had this all mapped out in a timeline. We had the names, we had the plan, we had the questions.
eople even bother? Right? So [:So here is the truth. The simpler you make it, the more people will respond. So you like that? I don't really have good sound effects, but I hope you enjoyed that, that part of it. So when I looked at her form, she had 15 questions, totally valid questions, but. I told her, let's just start with three or maybe four, and so name, website, email, phone number, basics, and then an optional kind of dropdown menu of a co of uh, what their specialty was.
o choose something specific. [:Initially. In her case, and I mean, this is the same thing for freebies or you know, anything you give. If a free workshop, a free masterclass, just come and get closer so that we can talk more and we can discern together if anything beyond this point is a good idea. So the first moment of engagement. I just want you to remember this.
e mapped out for her. If you [:Action step. Look at whatever you're putting in front of people right now. Maybe it's a consultation form or a calendar link or that sales page for your one-on-one program. And I want you to ask yourself, how can I make this simpler? What's the first step I need to move the relationship forward? Because when you reduce friction, you increase responses.
All right. That's it for today. Keep it simple. Get that first. Yes, and I will see you@askmecoach.com.
