189 Sharla Jacobs: Heartselling for 6-Figure Success

Sharla Jacobs is the co-founder of Thrive Academy where she and her husband Jesse Koren help holistic healers, coaches and entrepreneurs transform their passion into profitable businesses. Their heartselling method has helped them help 50,000 coaches worldwide attain their first $10,000 Month. Collectively over the past 14 years their clients have earned over $100 Million.

Melinda Wittstock:         Sharla, welcome to Wings.

Sharla Jacobs:                    Thank you so much for having me again Melinda.

Melinda Wittstock:         I’m excited to talk to you because I love to talk with pioneers, people who saw an opportunity, and jumped in and took the lead even when people were telling them they were crazy and of course you were very early in this whole space of creating coaching programs and whatnot for very heart centered entrepreneurs, people in the holistic space before those things were even a recognized industry. What made you take that leap and have so much confidence in your future, and future direction?

Sharla Jacobs:                    Yeah, great question. I don’t know if we had as much confidence in those days I have to say. So I know if I had kind of looked at a crystal ball and said, “Wow, look at what you’re going to create.” That might have made a difference, but it was really for us … I just have to say that today I live and work with my husband and business partner, Jesse Koren is the love of my life, and so many of our members have raved about their experience with us in large part because of both the highly effective step by step templates that we … He has refined over the last almost 14 years and as well as, you know, his leadership. We’ve actually lead over 225 live events. Like, these are two and three day live events over the past almost 14 years and each time he really creates a place where even the most introverted shy people can feel safe to shine their light and we’ve been told by people from marginalized groups that we create a safe space where all people feel welcome. And, you know, to date our members of collectively helped hundreds of thousands of people get healing and empowerment, but it certainly wasn’t always this way.

Back in 2002 was the day I graduated from acupuncture school with $80,000 in student loans. Also got my coaching certification and it did not take long for me to know, to realize that I knew nothing about what it took to attract clients and I hated sales and marketing. I was really bad at it and I actually remember the moment I was standing in the produce aisle at the health good store one day with an organic avocado in one hand and a conventional avocado in the other hand and the difference of a dollar was such a big deal that I was sitting there wondering like, should I just quit this business? What am I thinking? ‘Cause I couldn’t even afford my own rates and I thought I couldn’t afford my own rates, how could clients afford me? And, at that time I really felt like something must be really wrong in the universe. Like, how could I have invested tens of thousands of dollars into my dream of helping people and now that I could do it, I didn’t, I couldn’t get enough clients to pay the bills.

And, what I know now is that, you know, there were heartfelt things I could’ve said that would’ve helped these people come into a fully line guests, but I had no idea back then. But, I was really at a crossroads. Like I had to decide was I going to give up on my dream and go back to getting a job or was I going to find a way to make it work and I made a no matter what decision to follow my dreams, to go for what I wanted, which was to make this business work and at the time it was really just, hey, I wanted to have a little, you know, coaching and acupuncture practice where I could earn $60,000 a year. It was twice what my parents earn, I thought that was really great.

You know, I’d be set if I could do that. So, I hired a mentor. I found someone who … I mean he used to coach like realtors and mortgage officers and just like anybody, bookkeepers, anybody who was in business growing their business and he promised that if I did what he said, that I would triple my income in three months. Now, this meant from going around 1,800, you know, I was earning around $1,800 a month and I live in, in Santa Cruz, California and that’s not enough to get by even, you know, 16, 17 years ago, it wasn’t enough. Was barely getting by at 1,800 a month and if I had tripled my income I’d be over 5,000 a month and that sounded really good to me. So … And I didn’t have the money to pay him, so I actually borrowed the money from Jesse, who was my, he was my boyfriend at the time and when this mentor told me what the homework was, I almost fell off my seat.

My homework was to have 100 sales conversations every week. So, that was the guarantee. Like you have 100 sales conversations every week and you’re going to triple your income in, you know, within a three month, 90 day period. Now, the reality is that I ended up having 60 conversations and I say quote and you know, conversations in quotes, ’cause this meant I went to a networking … I mean I went to every networking event that you could go to and stand up at a table of eight people and that counted as, you know, I was one of those people counted as seven conversations, right? But I hustled and I really hustled for that first eight weeks. So, that was a 480 conversations, but I’ll tell you what, my income didn’t change that much. It was really scary and, but fortunately just right at that 60 day mark of this 90 day program, I asked myself this question like, how can this, how can I actually be aligned with selling?

Like, you know, I felt just weird and awkward in these conversations. I felt, you know, like a fraud. I felt inexperienced. All of those things. I always felt like I was the youngest person at these events. Just all these concerns I had. But I asked myself this question of how can these conversations actually be similar to the way that I work with my clients? And after I asked myself that question, I got this divine download of an easier heart-based way to attract clients. And this divine download was like a map for how to have conversations with potential clients. So, they practically talk themselves into working with me if it was a good match. And in that last 30 days I made $5,400 and you know, there’s many, many years ago I thought, okay, this is a pretty good start.

Jesse was really inspired and he made his no matter what decision. He figured out that he needed eight new coaching clients to replace his job income. He got five new clients in one month, quit his job, never looked back. And so that was where we started and what happened is that friends that were coaches and holistic practitioners started asking us what we were doing to build our businesses. You know, we had friends who had just graduated from coaching training with or when I went to acupuncture school were there other people in our community were like, wow, you guys are doing it. So, what’s going on? So, we joined forces and just started teaching this little system that I had learned. I mean, you know, since that time our system has become much more sophisticated, lots more templates to it, you know, people use our templates and they’re like, wow. They’re pretty blown away by how effective they are.

But, back in the day, it was just a really simple system of the five elements of heart selling, which I’m hoping I’ll get a chance to share with you all today, but we … You know, we joined forces and made $175,000 in our first year together. And, I do want to say like, I would never ask anybody to have 100 sales conversations per week. That’s totally crazy. Many of our clients are actually talking to three potential clients a month and earning $10,000 plus each month. And when you can plug into a great heart based system, there’s just so much less work to do. And so, you know, we call this system the five elements of heart selling. It was perfect for our clients who are coaches and holistic practitioners. They needed clients, but they refused to do anything that felt really manipulative or pushy to get clients.

And they loved it so much that they asked us to create our first workshop that we now call the client attraction summit. We’ve led this three day event 78 times. We’ve had over 8,500 people attend and I’ll say this. I never thought Jesse and I would be acknowledged as two of the world’s leading authorities in teaching coaches on holistic practitioners how to attract more clients. We certainly feel grateful. We both made that no matter what decision and followed the steps that the universe put in front of us and you know, since that time it’s just awesome. We’ve gotten to make a huge difference in other people’s lives and if you look at a lot of the transformational leaders of today and I could name a very long list of names of people that you know and have probably studied with, you’ll find that many of them had their first $10,000 a month plus while they were in our programs.

And we’ve literally had hundreds of members who have had their $10,000 a month after attending this event.

Melinda Wittstock:         That’s awesome. Who are some of the people?

Sharla Jacobs:                    You know, people that have worked with us, Sage Lavine, Brenda Norman, Justin Livingston, Callan Rush, Penelope Jane Smith, Morgana Rae, Elizabeth Purvis, Kendall Summerhawk. Kendall, we had a fun relationship. She’s actually one of my first coaches and we and she hired us when she was doing one of her first live events. So.

Melinda Wittstock:         Oh, that’s amazing. So, you know, Sage is in one of my mastermind groups.

Sharla Jacobs:                    Nice.

Melinda Wittstock:         We’re both in the Unicorn Club. So.

Sharla Jacobs:                    Oh, fun. She’s one of my dear, dear closest girlfriends.

Melinda Wittstock:         She’s lovely; she’s amazing. And she’s going to be coming on this podcast soon …

Sharla Jacobs:                    Awesome. Awesome.

Melinda Wittstock:         So, small world. So I want to jump right into these five elements of heart selling because I think people, you know, they feel … When they feel sold, it’s kind of an icky feeling and so then they get the sense of sales that sales is icky, but it doesn’t have to be. But, I think it stops a lot of people from really sharing with the world what their true super power is, or in this case, SuperShero power. And, it just fills us all with fear and dread and all these kinds of emotions which are not very good when you’re trying to build a business. And so to get into that heart selling way of thinking and just being takes that ickiness away. So, please go ahead. Tell me what the five elements are.

Sharla Jacobs:                    You bet. Yeah. And I’ll say this about the system that, you know, for us, we were learning … The really, one of the magic questions that kind of had me have that divine download is I was a geek about the five elements of Chinese medicine. So as, you know, as I said earlier, I was a coach, got my coaching certification and got my acupuncture license and I looked at the world through the lens of the five elements. So, this is, if you’re not familiar with it, it’s a holistic system. It’s used to heal the body. It’s used to diagnose, you know, who we are constitutionally, where we go out of balance. So, that was my filter, my lens for how I viewed the world. So, when I was there trying to grow my own practice and I was out there talking to potential clients, I asked myself this question that’s just kind of blew my mind. It was, how are the five elements present in sales? And when I asked myself this question, that was when this divine download happened for me. It was a melding of this healing system that I’d been using and this thing that I was trying to do to build my practice because I just wasn’t meshing with a lot of the sales techniques that I was, you know, watching out there or learning about it on there. Just didn’t feel right for me.

I didn’t want to feel like I was pushing anybody and I didn’t want to feel awkward. And you know, of course there’s a lot of inner work to do around that awkwardness and how much we charge. But, this system really gave me something where I could talk with a potential client, they would feel good about the conversation, I would feel good about the conversation and they would be much more likely to say yes if it was a good match or to refer someone. And so let’s talk about what these five elements are. So, the first element is the fire element. And, you know, and if you haven’t guessed, they are the elements. So, we’re talking about, fire, earth, metal, water and wood.

So, the fire element is all about connection. We have a saying that connection matters more than anything. So, you want to make the relationship more important than the sale. When you first meet someone, make it about that connection. You don’t immediately meet someone and think of them as a potential client. Just meet someone and get connected and put any agenda aside and just have that connection from your heart. And I find that when I do that with people, you know, something magical usually happens, not always, but if there’s not a connection there its like no point in even going farther. And I will say this that I think that old school kind of business and I think we’ve all shifted and become a lot more casual, but old school business is about being really professional, right? And then having this wall between you and your potential client and kind of having this big separation of like, I’m just going to be the professional here. And when we do that with our potential clients, we appear as cold and not inviting and I will tell you that people will want to spend more time with you if you create that connection. If you just, you know, have a warm, inviting, friendly heart open feeling.

Now, when I was first going to, you know, events when I was just starting out on my practice and I felt so awkward and nervous, I’d sometimes feel like I was going to throw up walking into a networking event. So, I’d actually go and do a little practice of going into a bathroom stall and putting my hands on my heart and kind of creating this like figure eight energy running through, you know, my arms, my hands and then when I would shake hands with people it would be like they were connected directly to my heart. In Chinese medicine actually there are two meridians that connect to our heart that run right through the palm of our hands. And so when we are shaking hands, it really is a heart to heart connection. So, I really bring that intention of connection. And, you know, really like finding that balance. So, that’s the fire element.

The next element is the earth element and our earth can be out of balance in the sales box by just really kind of trying to kind of force people to have, you know, it’s like we want to serve so badly so, you know, the earth element balances service, showing up in service. So, showing up to serve people. But, when we get in the sales box and we want to serve so badly, there’s a lot of just like kind of try to push our thing on someone. And, talking a lot about our thing and what service really is about being in balance is showing up and really wanting to understand what someone is struggling with, wanting to understand what is it that they are asking for right now in their life and, or business and how can we help them.

So, for me, when I show up in a heart selling conversation, first, I’m connected. Next, I’m showing up in service. I want to find out, you know, what are they looking for right now in the realm of life or business? And the fortunate thing is that human beings complain all the time and as an entrepreneur this is a good thing for you because if you are solving problems for people through your work, you can listen for the things they’re complaining about. And, I like to think of myself as a walking Rolodex here that, you know, every person I meet I am thinking how can I contribute to them? I’m listening for their complaints so that I can find a way to ask permission to contribute, to offer a solution, to offer some kind of resource. And so that’s really what earth and balance is like, is showing up in service and sometimes and often if you’ve actually chosen to serve a certain group of people and you’re in the right place, you know, you know where to go to be the right place at the right time, or you know, you know how to get your phone ringing and people are calling you, the service, what’s in service is to offer, you know, whatever next step that I have to offer. So, that’s the earth element.

And, you know, one of the ways that a lot of, particularly women coaches in holistic practitioners go out of balance is they give away too much. They give away too many free sessions. They … And they don’t have a structured way to have people be most likely to say yes to them. They just give away a lot of free sessions. They hope people will sign up. And that is a big mistake. That’s like too much earth. That’s like a landslide, right? So, we want to be in balance. We want to show up to contribute to people, but we don’t want to give away the farm. So, that’s the earth element.

Melinda Wittstock:         That’s so important. You know, I find that with women we do tend to fall into that where we’re so giving, right? By nature and … But we give so much that we forget to give to ourselves.

Sharla Jacobs:                    Yeah. Yep. And, that’s part of it is there’s, you know, for the people that are a right match, you know, refer people that, you know, it seems like they need services that somebody else, but if they’re a right match for you, part of it what makes it a win-win is that you win as well, as the entrepreneur. That if they are an ideal client that you actually take that next step. And so, you know, of course there’s a whole process of this, don’t have a lot of time to talk about it here, but it’s something that we go into in our book, the art of attracting clients and also in our client attraction summit. I’ll just tell you for now, just really show up to contribute to people. But, that doesn’t mean like give people a free session on the spot. You know, I’m thinking about one of our practitioners, one of our thrive members, Jackie Simpson.

She’s an energy healer. And she’s an energy healer with a multiple six figure business. And when she came to thrive, she was, you know, she’d meet someone and she’s psychic, right? And intuitive. She’d be like, let me get those chords out of you, and she just start like working on people. Now, one she didn’t have permission to do that. You cannot show up in service to someone if you don’t have permission. So, she stopped doing that. Now, she has a conversation, she listens deeply, she learns more about what they’re looking for, she finds out some of the things they’re complaining about and then she says, if I could help you with that, would you like to hear more about that? And then once she has the permission, she talks with people and she offers a consultation. Sometimes you could call them discovery sessions.

It’s got a cool name though, of course. She offers them a consultation and then she talks about working with her ongoing during that consultation. So, there really is a process by which you want to take people through rather than just like, you know, giving it all away. See, she used to just give it all away and do all these free sessions, basically like at networking events where it’s not even appropriate to go that deep with people and now she really takes that conversation to a more intimate private space and people sign up for packages with her and now they’re really getting what they need rather than kind of like feeling like somebody is kind of, you know, an inner space and, you know, maybe they might even be grateful for the free work, but it’s not the same when they have invested and they’re ready to play. So, that’s the earth element.

And, you know, I have story after story of people who are like giving it all away. They really saw that that was disservice and they started shifting the way that they offered their work and they started showing up in service and instead of just giving it all away, they offered some kind of next step.

Melinda Wittstock:         That’s wonderful. And, so we’ve got a whole bunch of different elements. I love how you are so … Oh goodness. Sorry, I’m just going to pick up there. So, Sharla, I love how you’ve integrated this so seamlessly. Like, you really are walking your talk and with such authenticity, right? Applying everything that you believe yourself into this sales process and you can see how that has so much power and so I think, and I’m often giving advice to women and men as conscious entrepreneurs in terms of how to find their authentic purpose, like how to align with what’s in their heart and soul as a person. Like what’s their true purpose in their life.

Sorry, just picking up there. [inaudible 00:35:39]. Lost the question on the end of that. And so what is one of the ways that you help your clients actually get into that zone? How many of them are struggling with what their purpose actually is? Or they may be struggling to find clients, because they’re not actually in alignment?

Sharla Jacobs:                    That’s a great question. I tend to find that most people that come to Thrive are pretty clear on their purpose; they know the work they want to do, they love the work they’re doing, but they’re really focused on what the work is, and they’re really focused on the modality.

 

Sharla Jacobs:                    They just don’t know how to get clients for it. What they haven’t really meshed yet is there’s what you do and there’s how you talk about what you do, and those are actually two different things.

What you do is all about your personal mission. You have this purpose and this passion that might be about transforming people’s lives. Your purpose and your passion might be about really healing people and providing the empowerment they need.

Yet, that’s not how you talk about what you do. We have to actually meet people where they’re at, and we have to get the communication strategies to talk about what we do and to write about what we do so that our potential clients see that we can help them get the results they want. Particularly, we want to help them solve a problem that they’re dealing with. What is that problem, that most urgent problem, that your ideal clients are dealing with that you could help them with?

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah. No, that’s so true. I find it’s interesting with coaching that everybody has something to share, because if you just think of what you just learned, there’s someone else right behind you in that line. You think of high school. If you’re a senior, you can teach a junior. If you’re a junior, you can teach a sophomore. If you’re a sophomore, you can teach the freshmen.

Sharla Jacobs:                    Yup. We like to say, “As long as you’re two steps ahead, then you can get a start.” Your ideal clients will be right there behind you.

Melinda Wittstock:         What are the biggest mistakes people make? When people are coming to you, and as you say, they’re mostly aligned, where are they going wrong? Women in particular.

Sorry, I’m going to start that all again. I’m sorry. So, Sharla, where do people go wrong? Particularly female entrepreneurs that are coming to you. We’ve established that most of them are already aligned in their purpose in your case. That’s awesome. But where are they letting themselves down mostly?

Sharla Jacobs:                    Well, we could talk about inner game all day long, and that’s really one of eight keys to attract clients about struggle. If you don’t have a way to get through those sabotaging beliefs and have those breakthroughs …

Again, my list is really long. I didn’t become a multimillion-dollar business owner by not breaking through those beliefs. Even at the beginning there’s a lot of inner game work.

Some of the other keys, obviously you have to have a vision that inspires you. It’s got to be a vision that you actually can go for, and that it’s got numbers to it, and that you can know that you’re moving towards something that really matters, because once you have those numbers to your vision, then you’re like, “Okay. Am I on track or am I off track?”

There’s also, you’ve got to be able to talk about what you do in a compelling way. When you share what you do, people should be saying, “I need to work with you,” or, “I know someone who needs to work with you.” If you’re not getting that response, then you’re missing the mark in your communication.

Essentially, when it comes down to it, we have to be able to communicate what we do in a way that people really get it and want it. It’s going to be helping people solve an urgent problem, get a certain kind of set of results that they want. That’s one of the biggest pieces. “Are we communicating what we do in a way that people want it?”

The next thing is, do we have enough people reaching out to us? Do we have leveraged marketing? Are we able to … And I’m not saying you have to go out and do a webinar, but there are things that you can do to reach a lot more people.

One of my favorite ways to leverage is speaking to groups. We have clients, we’re speaking to small groups of 10 people a month, having $10,000-a-month businesses because they know what they’re doing, and they’re doing it properly, and they’re doing it well. So, speaking is a really powerful way to get leverage. You might want to have leverage in your business where maybe you want to be doing home study courses or high-end group programs, and wanted to do a different way of delivering your service.

There’s also, “How much do you charge?” That question and being able to talk about how much you charge, feel fully aligned with your rates, and be confident. Because if you are not confident when you share your rates, there is a very high chance that somebody who’s listening to you is going to make up that you’re not confident about your work. So, how you break through that inner game mark that has you feel fully confident. And maybe even give yourself a raise. A lot of that has to do with the transformation work that has to happen inside.

There’s a lot more that I could say about it, but these are some of the important keys that you’ve got to have a system for having your phone ringing, having people say “Yes” to, having a consultation with you, delivering that consultation, and being able to transform concerns.

A lot of people call it “overcoming objections.” I hate that language. I pretty much hate any typical sales language. I used to teach to insurance salesmen in the 70s. We don’t want to overcome objections. It’s basically like defeating an opponent. It’s a win-lose paradigm.

So, transforming concerns is really about supporting someone to be empowered if they want something, but there’s a money or a time issue, or whatever it is, some kind of an alignment issue. To help them find their empowered “Yes” or their empowered “No,” and to honor that. There’s work to be done.

If a woman entrepreneur isn’t getting the results she wants in growing her own business, there are some things that she is missing. A lot of times, people get sucked up into some of these … My friend, Melanie Vinsistrick calls it the “bright shiny objects syndrome,” where they’re like, “Okay, now I’m going to do webinars. Now I’m going to do this. Now I’m going to do that,” but they haven’t done the foundational work to really communicate what they have to offer in a way that people really want it.

You’ve got to make sure that people want your work one-on-one and you really, fully understand your people before you start trying to do any of that other stuff. There’s a lot more I could say, but that’s a good start.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah. No, that’s beautiful. So, one of the things that’s interesting is that so much of selling, particularly online, is fear-based. It’s all around fear and scarcity, and yet folks who are selling transformational programs that are really about the abundance of the universe, the fact that we can sell from a position of love instead of fear … And yet all the paradigms from the countdown clock to all these things is false scarcity and all of that.

Sharla Jacobs:                    Countdown clock.

Melinda Wittstock:         There’s such a contradiction there. So, when people are selling online, what are some of the ways that that is changing, and how can people differentiate themselves when there’s so much noise out there from people who are talking about heart-based selling, or authenticity, or any of these different things? How do you know the difference?

Sharla Jacobs:                    Yeah, it’s a funny thing. The term “heart-based selling,” I think we invented that 14 years ago. To have it be something that is so saturated and just sound so noisy out there is like, “Wow.” It blows my mind.

I think that there is a lot of … People using heart-based terminology or spiritual-based terminology and then really using some old-school tactics that don’t seem like there’s a disconnect there. And I will say this: People do need to make a decision.

Just for example, one of my children is starting soccer season. Well, they’re both starting soccer season, but he’s starting soccer season. He also likes to do aerial acrobatics. There’s a class on Thursdays, and I’ve just been like, “Yeah, I don’t know. Is he going to do that again?” I got an e-mail yesterday from his teacher that said, “Hey, the deadline to get the discount is tomorrow.”

Now, this is a $25 discount, but you know what? Getting the e-mail that the deadline is happening tomorrow had me actually take action and be like, “Okay, yeah. Are we signing up or not?”

So, there is a place for deadlines. I don’t like countdown timers, personally; there are a lot of things that I won’t do that I feel pretty icky about. But this really is like you have to find what you are aligned with. There’s both impact to pay attention to, so, are we using false scarcity …

For example, when Jesse and I are doing any kind of a launch and there’s some kind of a bonus that’s limited, we don’t make up a fake limiter. It’s not like, “Hey, only some of you can get this digital download.” That doesn’t make sense. It has to make sense.

For example, sometimes we open scholarships for our client attraction summit. I was recently doing an open scholarship campaign to our e-mail list. We have one of our Thrive business coaches that will provide an extra 20-minute mentoring session as a bonus, but he has a limited amount of time. That’s a real limited bonus.

Whenever something is limited, I say, “Have there be a reason why it’s limited.” Don’t do something that is limited that is obviously not where somebody can say, “Wait a minute. Why?” So, you just want to be thinking about from the potential client’s perspective. Are they going to say, “That’s bullshit.” Pardon my French, but “Are they going to call bullshit on you?” Really think about that.

Now, also don’t get so caught up in what everybody could possibly be thinking about you that you get frozen and paralyzed in fear, ’cause that can happen, too. But you just have to find out what you’re aligned with. I say, “Learn a lot of different stuff. Choose a mentor that you feel really aligned with that you feel is going to provide you with tools that you can be aligned with.”

Hopefully you’re going to go to people’s webinars or learn from them and you’re going to learn that you get enough content from them, not just fluff, but real content from them, that you can get a sense of what they have to offer. Then you can find out if that’s a good match. But really, I say go deep with someone. Then you have to really decide what you’re aligned with and what you’re not.

If you’re not aligned with, I hope you’re working with a mentor where you can push back and actually work through that to really get clear on, “No, I’m just not aligned with that,” or, “Oh, I actually see how, if this is my intention and I’m going to have this impact, how that’s going to work for me.”

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah, that’s beautiful. I’m going to pick up here. Sharla, given that you … Wait, one more time.

So, Sharla, you were an early pioneer in this space. Now it seems like there is a lot of “Me, too” in a different way. It’s suddenly gotten really crowded. How does a pioneer continue to differentiate? And, from there, what’s next for you guys?

Sharla Jacobs:                    Yeah, great question. I’d say that, as a pioneer, we are also staying true to what we do. I’m a mom. When a lot of my friends who are guys were going to every internet marketing seminar that was out there and traveling all over the country, I was at home with my babies.

There is a space where sometimes I laughed about this. I remember having a conversation with my friend, Eben Pagan, when my oldest son was just one. He said, “You have to decide as the company, ‘Are you going to be more product-focused or more marketing-focused?’ If you’re going to be more product-focused, you have to get really good at getting referrals’.”

I am so glad we made the decision to be more product-focused, to really focus on excellence and really … We’re obsessive about our clients getting results, so we’ve come from that place most of our clients still come from referrals. And, yes, we are on Facebook and we are doing other things. We do have partners that we work with, but we’re not a part of the big launches in our space anymore. Really wanted to separate ourselves from that space of being in the “Me, too” with everybody else in that way.

Again, I would really recommend that each and every one of you that, yes, it’s important. You have got to get those foundational marketing principles down. Partnerships still work really well, and there are things about Facebook that really work really well. When it comes down to it, I highly recommend that you focus on making your work as good as it can possibly be. Be obsessed about your clients getting results. Talk about those results. Tell those stories.

That’s really where we’re more focused on, now, is telling the stories of our Thrive members and our graduates, ensuring what’s happened for them, going back to getting referrals. We definitely play referral games in our programs, and our clients love the community so much they want other people they love to join. That’s been really big for us.

And then we’ve just decided to partner with smaller organizations that … Rather than having one partner put 2,000 people on our e-mail list and get 10 people to buy a home study course that they’re probably not going to do much with, and only one or two of those people coming to our live event, I’d rather work with an organization where they’re going to put 400 people on our e-mail list and 50 people are going to sign up for our live event, because that’s where the real impact happens.

I think you’ve got to be willing to break out of the pack, not do things like everybody else is doing, and find your own way that really works for you and that’s authentic.

Melinda Wittstock:         Beautiful. How can people find you and work with you?

Sharla Jacobs:                    Well, you can certainly go to find us on Facebook at the Thrive Academy page, or you can join our Facebook group, Coaches and Holistic Practitioners Who Change the World. We’ve got a lot of action happening over there, a lot of value content there, and also games and some things like that.

I have a special gift for our listeners today, Melinda. I’m really excited about this because I’ve shared a few tips, I shared a little bit about our 5 Elements of Heartselling system. If you were inspired or felt compelled by anything that I shared, like, “Hmm, this might be something that could work for me,” I want to give you a copy of our book, The Art of Attracting Clients. You can go get a digital download of our book. Giftfromthrive.com/wings.

So, you go to giftfromthrive.com/wings and you’ll be able to get a free digital download of our book so you can read it and get tons of value. In the book, there’s also a full scholarship ticket to our client attraction summit, a live, three-day, in-person event.

If you resonate with me, and you resonate with what you read in the book, and you think coming out to California, spending a few days with us to really go deep with this … I would love to invite you on full scholarship. You can go ahead and get that at giftfromthrive.com/wings.

Melinda Wittstock:         Oh, that’s beautiful and generous. Thank you so much. Our listeners tend to be women and men who are conscious and who really want to step up in that and walk their talk. What a beautiful gift.

Sharla Jacobs:                    Yeah, my absolute pleasure. Thank you so much, Melinda.

Melinda Wittstock:         Sharla, thank you so much for putting on your wings and flying with us today. Are you going to say goodbye?