IAM1337 – Entrepreneur Helps Businesses Feel Confident about their Sales Approach

An accomplished business professional and online entrepreneur, Natalie (Nat, to her friends and clients) brings insight, expertise, and energy to whatever she does. With over 15 years of experience, helping clients achieve million-dollar sales targets, Nat now focuses her expertise on helping heart-centered businesses and coaches feel as confident about their sales approach as the services they offer.

• CEO Story: It was the time freedom that inspired Natalie to quit her 9 to 5 job. To be with her children, because time goes quickly, and spark that learning and creativeness from within.
• Business Service: Doing sales for other people’s businesses. One-to-one training and mentoring with business owners.
• Secret Sauce: Meeting people where they are. Knowing that everybody matters.
• CEO Hack: Planning the day before you do the task. Review, reflect, and reset.
• CEO Nugget: Don’t get bogged down on what other people are doing comparing yourself. Surround yourself with positive people.
• CEO Defined: “Being in charge of my destiny…taking time out is when I can be most creative”

Website: www.lovesales.co

Facebook: nataliecarthew, lovesaleswithnat

Instagram: loveyoursales

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Transcription

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00:20 – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

00:47 – Gresham Harkless

Hello, Hello, Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Natalie Carthew of Love Sales. Natalie, it's great to have you on the show.

00:56 – Natalie Carthew

Yeah, thanks for having me Gresham. I'm excited to be here with you.

00:59 – Gresham Harkless

Yes, super excited to have you on and hear about all the awesome things that you're doing. Before, of course, we do that, I wanted to read a little bit more about Natalie so you'd hear about some of those awesome things and accomplish business professional and online entrepreneur Natalie Nat to her friends and clients brings insight, expertise, and energy to whatever she does.

With over 15 years of experience helping clients achieve million-dollar sales targets, Nat now focuses her expertise on helping heart-centered businesses and coaches feel as confident about their sales approach as the services energy to whatever she does of experience helping pli sales targets. Net now fo on helping Heart Center feel as confident about t as the services that they or net. Great to have you Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:35 – Natalie Carthew

I am. I really, really can't wait to share some nuggets and some wisdom to help everybody in their business and on their business journey wherever they are, whether that's just at the start or they are already established.

01:47 – Gresham Harkless

Yes, absolutely. Super excited to hear all the gems knowledge and expertise that you have. But speaking of Journey, what I wanted to do was rewind the clock a little bit, hear a little bit more about your journey, what I like to call your CEO story.

01:59 – Natalie Carthew

Okay, so Let's rewind the clock 23 years, which is half my life. And at the age of 23, I met my now husband and I didn't just fall in love with 1 human being. I fell in love with 4 because he had 3 children and they all lived with us. So I became a stepmom, very young at 23. And 5 years later I got married. And then, oh, say another sort of 10 years, maybe, I don't know, my maths isn't very good here, but we added a child of our own. So we have 4 children between us. And it was about 3 years when my son, my now son was probably coming up to 5.

I kind of just figured, you know what? I just don't want to be going and commuting every day and having all this time and life eaten up with even just getting to work, let alone being there in this 9 to 5 grind all the time. Love working. So it wasn't an option really for me to think, let's, you know, let's jack it in. It was more, what can I do and how can I be creative to be able to get what I ultimately wanted? And that was time for freedom. And for me, I saw the golden key as being my boss. So setting up my own business. It escalated because I promised to get my son when he was 5 a dog when he was 6 years old.

So as kids do, they grow, right? So he got older and my promise was going to have to deal with it. So I set up my own business and I was, oh gosh, I guess I'm going to say, I was, was I naive? Probably, I suppose, or I was very green. You know, I had always been an employee And I think we underestimated all the skills and knowledge and learning and education you need to do to be a successful business owner.

Because I don't know the actual statistics, Gresham, but I know there are a huge amount of businesses that are set up internationally, not just here in the UK where I am, but in the States and all over the globe that actually fail in the first year and even in the first 5 years. So I feel blessed that I've just had my 10th business anniversary this year. And I think it's 1 of those things that our journey never ends. And I think we're continually learning.

And I think as well, if you're not always learning and evolving and embracing change, that's probably the point you have to ask yourself what's going on. That's a little bit of a snapshot. And then to add another curveball, just to stay on the theme of age. I've given you all the way my age, so I am 46. And in 10 years, you can do the maths, I'm going to be 56. And that's the age that my father died. And I was 25 years old. And he said to me 2 weeks before he died that he never regretted anything he'd done in his life. And that's truly, truly inspiring.

And I think it's only this year it's made me realize that I think that was the true inspiration behind me setting up my business to know that I would be able to be in the same position as him, hopefully not at 56 saying that, but in the years to come and doing full circle back to having my son, I didn't want to miss out because time goes so quickly. And that doesn't matter whether it's for a child or family members or friends, just occasions, or events. I wanted to be present.

And for me, I think that having my own business, that's always been at the core of it. So recently I asked myself, Why did I go into business and what do I want to get from being my boss? And I used to have a Friday off and through lockdown, slowly, slowly, it crept back in. And I've now taken it back and said, no, let's make changes. Again, you've got to keep yourself in check. Why are we doing it, right? Well, you know, it's like you, Gretchen, Why are you doing the podcast? Because it brings you loads of joy, right?

And the second it doesn't do that, you've got to think, okay, hang on. What can I do to get it in the right gear again? So that's kind of where I'm at. Is your activity adding value to you or your business? Yeah. And it doesn't have to be monetary value either, you know, value comes in all different ways, shapes, and sizes. And you have to say every day, you know, has my day brought value to me and or my business, you know, 1 the other or both? And that's 1 of the questions I ask myself daily, you know.

06:40 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, that's so powerful. I appreciate you sharing that so much because I think it's something that, you know, we do want to go through that filter regularly. Because I think, like we talked about that journey, using that word over and over again, and we sometimes forget that our interests and our circumstances obviously can change as well.

And it's so important to continue to kind of ask those questions and drill down and make sure that you are getting those right answers to lead you to ultimately where you want to be. So I wanted to drill down a little bit. I know you mentioned that's 1 of the questions that you ask your clients, but I wanted to get a kind of holistic view of how you're serving your clients, how you're working with them, and how are you making that impact and providing value.

07:16 – Natalie Carthew

Okay, so I guess a little, the great place to start is where I started with Love Sales and that was doing done-for-you sales in other people's businesses. So I have for almost a decade now been doing sales for people in their business, showing up as their director of sales, being the face of their business and loving it, and selling it with as much passion as they have as business owners. I decided about 18 months ago that I needed to step out of my client's businesses and having had great success for them, I needed to find a way.

I could serve more business owners because I was only ever able to work for 3 businesses at 1 time doing the service for them. After all, it is so consuming. And if you're going to do a great job, you don't want to spread yourself too thin. And so I made a big decision again, coming back in lockdown and going on my lockdown walks and thinking to myself, was I still getting the joy from my business? And I wasn't. And I did some soul-searching and I realized that what was going to bring me joy was being able to help more business owners than I was. And how can I do it? So that was kind of then my conundrum.

And so I had always done my one-to-one work and I'm going to now step away from the done-for-you sales and I'm stepping into my one-to-one training and mentoring. My one-to-one work helps me meet that business owner where they're at at that time in their business to get them to be brilliant at sales because no sales equals no business. It's as simple as that. It doesn't matter what you do, but it doesn't mean that everybody finds it easy, natural, or a joy to do. They don't. My most recent venture in my business was setting up the Supercharged Sales School. And that meant that I would be able to help many more business owners by doing it in a group membership.

09:16 – Gresham Harkless

I almost wonder, is this part of like your secret sauce, the thing you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique is your ability to, I think, just meet people where you where they are, like you said, and to be able to demystify and maybe even simplify and help people to get at the end of the day, what it sounds like to have in a conversation and leading them to, you know, yes for their products and services. Do you feel like that's such a part of Make Sure Unique?

09:37 – Natalie Carthew

I do. And I think the other part for me is knowing that everybody knows that they matter. You know, everybody has to start somewhere, right? You do. And I think as well, it's human nature to have comparison creeping. And we especially in this really noisy online world we live in. And, you know, it's You're scrolling through, you're on LinkedIn, you're on your Facebook, you're on your Insta, all of these social media platforms, and you're just consuming other people's content.

And that can be dangerous as well because you consume all this content, you then compare yourself, and it's just a lot of smoke and mirrors because I have met a lot of people that to meet them, they talk a really good story, but they can't deliver. Or when you look a little bit under the surface, they're not doing what they say they do. And I think the online has made that easy to happen. You're unique. Nobody does what you do. So don't get bogged down with thinking about what are other people doing, comparing yourself. But I think probably that would be 1 of my big bits of advice.

You know, surround yourself with really positive people who will tell you to stop that mind chatter because we all have it as business owners. Whether we're going to admit we do or we don't, we do. And I think we have that little, you know, the devil on our shoulder feeding that to us. And when you're in business, you need to have people around you who are gonna lift you and help you keep that momentum because I believe success comes from consistent action.

And you just have to keep doing it. And you know what? It's tough to keep yourself motivated sometimes. So build, build, you know, attract the right clients and they will give you the energy and motivation to keep going, but also hang out with other like-minded business owners.

11:44 – Gresham Harkless

That's extremely powerful. And I think it kind of sounds like that might be your CEO nugget, which is to make sure that you are, you know, building that environment. Because I think a lot of times, you know, the altitude that you reach is based on the environment that you have, the people that you have around you. And even in the days where you don't feel quite 100% or things aren't going the way you want them to go, it's often that environment that you built kind of in the future will allow you to kind of, you know, lift yourself and be able to do that.

So would you have what I like to call more of a CEO hack, which is a little bit more of an Apple book? It could be a habit that you have, but it's something that makes you more effective and efficient. Is there something that you use a lot that you consider to be a CEO hack?

12:23 – Natalie Carthew

Yes, I think it's I think it's about plan planning. OK, and You don't do it on the day of, you do it the day before. So I don't plan the day of, it's always the day before. So I would say that's probably my atomic habit, which is no longer a habit. It's just part of the fabric of what I do in my day and my week. And I think for me, I'd say the 3 Rs. So like I say, review, reflect, and then reset because not everything goes great all the time.

And this sort of reset piece comes down to actually knowing when to walk away from things as well that aren't serving you. And whether that's people or it's events or it's certain types of clients as well, you know, it's not just necessarily about your fellow business owner. Sometimes you need to make those brave decisions and they will serve you, but you have to be in tune and reflecting because if you're not reviewing and reflecting, I think that's probably when you can run into trouble.

13:30 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. I almost think that if you don't do the 3 R's review, reflect, reset, sometimes you might have the fourth R crop up, which is regretting. And you know, a lot of times you regret that you didn't do those things because you didn't take care.

13:41 – Natalie Carthew

I'm okay, I'm changing that for my mom.

13:44 – Gresham Harkless

There you go, that's yours. And I think it's just so important because just as you talked about, you know, your dad and you know, not having that regret, we want to make sure that we're setting ourselves up for success as much as possible. And by planning and making sure we're not just doing things, We're also reviewing those things. We're reflecting on them to say, hey, did they work? Did we need to do anything?

Did we need to do something to reset? I think that's when you again, you know, just increase your likelihood of being successful. And so I want to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping that different quote-unquote CEOs are on there. So, Nat, what does being a CEO mean to you?

14:21 – Natalie Carthew

It's being in charge of my destiny.

14:24 – Gresham Harkless

I love that.

14:24 – Natalie Carthew

And I think on that point as well, Gresham, I would just say that sometimes people will say, I can't take time out of my business. If I'm not in it, you know, I'm not gonna get the rewards. And I find taking time out is when I can be my most creative. So even though you're taking time away from your business, that's actually what you need to do as a leader give yourself that time and space because that is, I think, when the magic will happen.

14:54 – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely. I just wanted to pass you the mic 1 more time to see if there's anything additional that you want to let our readers and listeners know and then of course how best people can get a hold of you, and find out about all the awesome things you're working on.

15:04 – Natalie Carthew

Believe in yourself, surround yourself with others who will lift you and who you can lift. Every relationship and every opportunity that comes my way, there is value for my business. It may be in collaboration, it may be in a partnership, it may be me connecting with somebody else. Right, and keep it simple and stupid and if you do that with your sales, clarity sells. Yeah, and thank you so, so much for having me on.

I will say I'd love to connect with you on LinkedIn. So it is just my name, Natalie Carthy. You can see there. I'm sure in the blurb bits or the comments or whatever you do Gresham. So yes, Natalie Carthy is on LinkedIn. I also have my supercharged sales school and my once-in-1 mentoring work, which you can find out more about at www.lovesales.co. And yeah, I would just love to hear from you and hang out.

15:59 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, Thank you so much again, Nat. I appreciate you tremendously and hanging out with us today. We will, of course, like you said, have the links and information in the show notes so that everybody can follow up with you. Thank you so much for doing that with us today. And I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

16:11 – Natalie Carthew

You too, Gresham. And you're amazing followers. So yeah, Thanks for having me.

16:16 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Please tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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