Here’s the transcript from Shelly Bortolotto’s presentation:
Ryan: Well, everybody I would like to introduce today, a very first for INSPIREsmall.biz, this is the first time we get to welcome a speaker from outside of the United States, and Shelly and I met on a meeting.
Ryan: I think it was last months Keystone Business Connections that we met and we quickly scheduled a follow up Zoom and that 30-minute appointment quickly went over and I just really picked up a sense that Shelly is incredibly passionate about what she does.
Ryan: And so, Claire, I’d like to extend a thank you for inviting Shelly to visit with us and introduce to everyone today, Shelly Bortolotto. I’m sorry if I mispronounced your name, but Shelly, you have the floor.
Shelly: Thank you. So, Ryan, you did a great job on your last name and thank you to Clair as well connecting us all in together. You just really have to put on an Italian accent and just go for it, Bortolotto.
Shelly: But what the accent you’re hearing is an Australian accent, so I’m an Aussie that moved to Canada that had to figure out winter for the very first time, my blood has literally thickened, 17 years later, and I’m doing just fine.
Shelly: Sorry, thank you Ryan for the introduction. I can see you’ve got about 20 minutes, so that’ll be 1:16 through to 1:36. I’m going to put in the chat what we’re going to talk through today, so it’s nice and simple for you.
Shelly: Did I copy and paste it, that is the question, here we go.
Shelly: I’m gonna pop a couple of things in the chat, as we’re going, because there’s going to be a couple of things you’re going to want to copy out of it as we go as well.
Shelly: So here’s what we’re doing today, we’re going to cover the three beliefs to know about in business. Now, this is going to give you a completely different perspective on your business and it’s going to be like, ‘What?! I never thought of it that way.’
Shelly: But it’s really fun and it’s really insightful for you to kind of think of it this way so that when you’re looking at how you’re thinking about your business, you’ll see why that’s important.
Shelly: We’ll gonna talk about 3 beliefs; I’m going to talk about the model, which it how I’m going to show you how it’s important.
Shelly: I’m going to actually go through those three questions to ask to look at those beliefs in your own brain, and we’re just going to go ahead and just talk about what’s coming up for people, which is really fun.
Shelly: So get ready to volunteer, otherwise, I will volunteer you, and we’ll go from there.
Speaker 3: Shelly, did you put something in the chat?
Shelly: I did it, did it go in? I didn’t push the button to make it go in. Thank you. You got me to cover 3 beliefs, the model, the three questions, and what it means.
Shelly: I’m copy- I’m alt-tabbing ’cause I’m keeping hold of my notes.
Shelly: There are three beliefs that we have in business. And they affect how we show up.
Shelly: Very simply, they are belief in yourself, belief in your product, service, solution; sounds like we’ve got a fair few service providers here, so that’s helpful. And the third one is belief in your clients. Potential clients. Now that’s very, very simple and you’re nodding and be like, yeah, they’re totally believing all these.
Shelly: But when it could actually dig in the questions you’re going to see, well, where is the wiggle room, where is it affecting how I show up, and how can I change that?
Shelly: You might already know in your gut, where your belief is falling short. And you might think, oh no, of course, I’m a 10 out of 10. But some of you might be looking around your business and thinking, yeah, that bit isn’t working or maybe it is working, and your thinking well, how am I gonna step it up and create an even better working or maybe at that like place where you’re ready to up level, which means a whole bunch of new thoughts are going to come up when you’re up leveling.
Shelly: Maybe you’re in that nice happy zone and like, yeah, but I think something can be even better.
Shelly: You just want to go in and check on these three beliefs. Now when we find the gap.
Shelly: So, there’s the three beliefs, which is you, your product or service, and your clients.
Shelly: Now when you find that gap, you going to know, kind of which one to work on. Whether me stuff is where your thoughts are you can start shift.
Shelly: Now when I talk about shifting your thoughts what I mean is we’re not moving stuff around in your business, you’re actually changing how you think about the business.
Shelly: When you change how you think about your business, it changes how you show up, which is really kind of like big and kind of hard to explain at first or maybe it’s hard to understand ’cause I haven’t explained it.
Shelly: Here’s what we’re doing, so we’re talking about a concept called the model.
Shelly: Now Leann is totally trained on the model so she’s going to know everything I’m talking about, but for the rest of you, the model is just a really easy way to look at, kind of, things happen out in the world, we call them circumstances. And then we have thoughts about those circumstances.
Shelly: So those thoughts might be things like ah, well, the one I’ve been working on lately is, we’ve done most recently, I might have thoughts about a client. Or I might have thoughts about myself or I might have thoughts about, you know, if this particular thing is going to work for my business or not.
Shelly: We have thoughts in the world. And then that thought generates a feeling in our body. Happy, sad, scared, creative, anxious, frustrated, annoyed, anything off that feeling list.
Shelly: The thought creates the feeling in your body. Now when we have that feeling in our body, it drives the actions that we take. It drives how we show up in the world. Essentially, those actions will add up to create ourselves.
Shelly: So I’ve got an example for you, probably something we’ve all done or all think about doing which is going live on social media.
Shelly: So that might be a very neutral way that’s [unintelligable].
Shelly: A neutral circumstance might just be social media, and we actually write these models down, so we put them down on paper so we can take them out of our brain and look at them in a very neutral, factual way.
Shelly: So you might write down social media as your circumstance.
Shelly: And then you might have a thought about it. You might think, wow, I have to share this with my audience, they’re gonna love it.
Shelly: Those thoughts, that thought might be comfort, might create, if you’re confident or inspired or ready or willing.
Speaker 3: Anything like that, that just has that get up and go umph to it. And then, you push the live button and you talk on social media. And you do it clearly and simply. And easily and it’s fun and people engage, ’cause they feel your energy. And then you push the stop button.
Shelly: And the result is I created a social media thing that was fun. I showed up to myself on social media. But, that didn’t happen because you were on social media, that happened because you had this sort of, I have to go up and I want to tell my audiences. I have to share this with my audience.
Shelly: But that’s just one example, you might have a completely different thought about social media. You might be thinking ‘I have to do a Live Today to Meet my social media goal’. And you’re feeling pretty nervous.
Shelly: What’s gonna happen when you push the start button? You’re gonna show up nervous. And it’s not happening because you’re on social media. It’s happening because of the thought that was in your head at the moment you pushed that button. That thought created that feeling of nervousness.
Shelly: So when you push the button and you start talking on social media and you talk really fast and then there’s really long pauses and then you talk really fast again. And then there’s this awkward pause and you don’t know what to say.
Shelly: And then you push this stop button and you notice that no one engaged and that you didn’t feel good and you think about deleting it off your page. The result is I met my social media goal, I did it today. But there’s nothing like I showed up fun, creative, and I connected with my audience.
Shelly: Now that lack of audience connection doesn’t happen because your own social media, it happens ’cause you had those thoughts of nervousness. And then you showed up nervous. And then that’s just all you get.
Shelly: How’s everyone doing? Is this kind of landing with you that you? That you have the thought about the world, that thought drives a feeling in your body and visceral emotion.
Shelly: You could sometimes can even feel your heart racing.
Shelly: Dona’s giving me a thumbs up.
Shelly: And then you take actions from that visceral emotion in your body. And maybe it’s just smiling, happy, excited, can’t wait to tell you this stuff that clearly I’m in right now, or maybe it’s that nervous, anxious, scared, worried kind of emotion that often shows up as the tent slip, the tightness, the rough beating of the chest.
Speaker 3: So that’s a really, really simple breakdown of the model and all that tells us is that we have thoughts in our head. Those thoughts create our feelings, those feelings, stronger actions and all those actions add up together to create the result that we created, that we had to control over, in our world.
Shelly: And what do we have control over the most? It’s our thoughts. So, if our thoughts control our feelings and ultimately end up with our results, what are we having our thoughts about in our business?
Shelly: Let’s talk about it. So, let’s go back to those three beliefs.
Shelly: Now I want you to grab a pen and paper. And checked my timer, about halfway through, perfect.
Shelly: I’m gonna copy and paste the questions into the chat at the end. But first I’m gonna get you to answer them one by one.
Shelly: So, I want you to score yourself one to 10. One is no belief and 10 is full belief. You’re going to write down a number, then you can write down some other stuff. On a scale of 1 to 10, how confident do you feel in your ability to help your clients?
Shelly: Did everybody get the first number in your head? No scratching it out and putting a different one, you gotta unscratch that number and put the first one that came into your head. That really gut, initial number.
Shelly: Now why that number? What are your thoughts about it? I want you to write down two or three thoughts that come to mind, why you scored it that number. Give me a wave or a thumbs up when you’re done.
Shelly: I’ll just try to figure out who’s the slowest writer here and I’ll go by that. It’s probably me.
Shelly: James is good. Jim and Ryan have both got their thoughts down, that’s helpful. So that’s belief question number one, we’re going to do it again. On a scale of 1 to 10, how confident do you feel in your product, service or tools that you use to help your clients?
Shelly: When you grab that number, go ahead and write down just two or three thoughts that come to mind about that number. Why that number? And we’re not looking for all the best thoughts, we’re not looking for all the worst thoughts.
Shelly: We might like to get a nice balance of both, but this isn’t like a race in daisies and it’s not like a kick the can down the road kind of thing. Either it’s just what your brain is offering you, why you scored it that number.
Shelly: So here’s the third one. On a scale of 1 to 10, how confident do you feel in your client’s capacity to show up and create change for themselves?
Shelly: OK, and you’re going to get your two or three thoughts or whatever comes to mind. Still why you scored at that number? How confident do you feel in your client’s capacity to show up and create change for themselves.
Shelly: While you finish that up, I’m just going to pop these into the chat so that you can grab them out of the chat. Because this is a lovely exercise to do, anytime you’re feeling a bit stuck in your business or any time you’re sitting down Monday morning thinking what I’m going to plan to do this week.
Shelly: Yeah, OK.
Shelly: OK, now I think everyone’s kind of had that time to do that, let’s match them up.
Shelly: So that first one, what we were really looking to ask is what’s your belief in yourself, as an individual and a business owner.
Shelly: And that second one was, more simply, your belief in your tools and your ability to do the work.
Shelly: The third one is your belief in your clients. Just as they are, humans that you are trying to connect with.
Shelly: Now let’s look at some examples. Do I have a volunteer? Ah, James was willing to chat. Thank you James.
Shelly: I’d like to hear your 3 scores and then some of the thoughts that you want to pick up about them?
James: Now my scores were 10, 10, and 6.
Shelly: OK.
James: And then my thought for the first one, first of all, our team is independent, which means we literally have access to everything. We have a great team and we’ve got a lot of experience and those things make me feel confident that we can help anybody, anywhere.
Shelly: Ok, which belief does that respond to? Our team is independent. Is that the belief in you? The belief in your tools? Or, belief in your clients?
James: That’s my belief in me, because I don’t have to be the absolute best in every situation. What I get to do is be very good at talking to my client, and then I have a team around me that helps me look good when we come back with recommendations.
James: Which allows me to be good at what I need to be good at and it allows my team to be good at what they need to be good at. And together, we do a good job.
Shelly: So let’s hone in on, just tell me what you were thinking for the middle one, for the 10, about your chosen services.
James: For that one, it overlapped a little bit. The reason I feel good about our services is because I have very good training and then I have very good software which really allows me to create financial plans, but then once again we are independent.
James: And I’ve got access to everything in the market, so when I sit down, you know if you work with one of the big companies that a lot of people have recognized, they’ve got products in mind when they sit down with the client, they would like to sell because those companies pay them more. When you sit down with somebody like me, I’m able to do the best solution for each individual person because I have access to every solution and my company doesn’t have any proprietary products that pay us more or we get more benefits for selling those. I always get to do what’s best for the client.
Shelly: Keep going.
James : And I was going to say a lot of times I don’t even know what I’m going to get paid in different situations because I don’t want that to influence any recommendations that I make. Sometimes I do, but a lot of insurance products and other things we do, I don’t even know what the pay is.
James: I know what the best policy is or the best solution is and we go with that before I even know how I’m going to benefit from it, ’cause that’s what’s most important to me is to be that fiduciary that’s going to be able to help people and that gives me confidence that what we come up with is going to be best.
Shelly: Now when I first met Ryan and got introduced this group, James was speaking and that came across so clearly in his presentation that he was just 100% solid on this is what he does for people, and this is why it’s amazing what he does because his tools, his services, his access to the programs, and the research, and the knowledge and the contacts are just spot on.
Shelly: There’s no wavering of belief there. There’s no thought of ‘Oh, am I suggesting the right thing for them, or this’, it’s just solid.
Shelly: So it’s a perfect 10 for James, which is fantastic because it means we can hone in on that 6.
Shelly: James tell me what the six was about.
James: Well the 6 is because no matter how good my recommendations are, I’m still at the mercy of clients to get me their statements in a reasonable amount of time to be able to know where to access those statements. If we do electronic signatures to actually sign those signatures.
James: If we have a meeting schedule to get me the information ahead of time that I would need to give them a good review of their situation.
James : Uhm, and you know, I mean I, I give you a good example, I had some clients that I’ve been working with for about a year and we’re helping them get out of debt and they’re a little behind saving for retirement. And one of the first things I said was we need to build up your emergency fund, especially in this COVID environment in case something goes wrong.
James : She was off work. He pushed back on it and just a couple of weeks ago she lost her job. And now they’re talking about having to, not cancel, but maybe delayed my services for a while because they need to find a job, and before they can afford to do that again.
James: And in that situation, if they would have put some money towards their emergency fund, we wouldn’t even have to have this conversation. Her losing her job would just be a blip in their life, but now it’s become a big ordeal and it didn’t have to.
Shelly: I’m going to call you out there ’cause I want to bring you back to the very first thing you said, which was I’m still at the mercy of clients to give me their statements.
Shelly: Now that feels like the headline at the 6:00 O’clock news, right, but?
Shelly: It’s also a thought that is running in your head, and if that’s a thought running in your head, it’s creating a feeling in your body.
Shelly: So how do you feel when you’re thinking about your clients and you’re thinking I’m still at the mercy of my clients to give me their statements.
James: We don’t just… when I’m working with a new client it gives me a little bit of uneasiness. I’ve got several people that send me the information as soon as I ask for it, and some people take their sweet time so.
Shelly: We’re going to grab that feeling of uneasiness, and we’re going to look at what, and you may need to go away and sort of think about this, is how do you show up from a feeling of uneasiness that’s different from when you show up with a feeling of immense confidence and you can maybe think about two different clients in your head.
Shelly: Well, when I felt uneasy about that client, what was I doing and when I felt really confident about that client what they’re doing. And it’s not about what the client was doing, it’s about how you would, what you’re doing, and also how you’re showing up.
Shelly: So think of that example I gave in the social media one where one of them you show up super confident and you’re trusting and you just get stuff done and you show up easy, and the other one you show up to this space of nervous anxiety.
Shelly: And you can think about that in your head.
Shelly: But essentially what’s happening is, you have a belief at level of 6. Notice how the other two are of belief level of a 10 and when you gave that conversation when you spoke last session, you were so compelling.
Shelly: I knew I was gonna text Leanne in the chat this afternoon, saying if you have any, you know people with aging parents in your life, do connect them with James, because he will 100% tell you, tell you what to do and give you the advice. I felt that belief from you so strongly that I would already refer people to you.
James : Well, thank you for that.
Shelly: The part of your business that you’re struggling in is having that same level of belief with your clients.
Shelly: And that shift, that shift from going to a 6 to 10, isn’t anything they have to do. It’s just the way you think about them, and then you shift how you show up from a different feeling.
Shelly: And I’m gonna just talk a little bit more about that so that we identified with James is that it’s a low belief in clients, not necessarily super low, but just low in relation to the other two.
Shelly: Now this can, depending on how low it is, look like neediness and scarcity and belief in failure. When you believe that you have to get stuff from your clients rather than create stuff for your clients, it gives away your power.
Shelly: When you think your clients don’t, this isn’t necessarily relation to James, but in more generally when you think your clients don’t want what you have to offer, there’s just no motivation to show up and be ready to serve them.
Shelly: It feels like the worst. When you’re thinking no one needs this, no one wants this. No one is listening to me, and I’m not perhaps talking to any of you in the room, but I’m for sure you know entrepreneurs where you’re getting this vibe off them and there’s nothing they’ve done wrong.
Shelly: They just have that third score super low right now that’s all.
Shelly: It feels like they’re doing all the wrong things and you’re getting all the worst vibes of them.
Shelly: That’s all that’s happening, right?
Shelly: It’s their thoughts in their head. They’re creating those feelings of just, uncomfortable neediness.
Shelly: We have a saying that needy is creepy and it always is.
Shelly: But the reason is showing up as needy or creepy is just because this score is lowered.
Shelly: So during this activity, during these three scores, and you can see I’m getting into it ’cause I’m getting my colored pens out.
Shelly: Doing these three scores is just going to show you, give you a clue as to how you’re showing up in your business that week, that day, that month, those last three months.
Shelly: Now the good news is, and I can talk more about what’s happening for when you have low belief in yourself that leads to maybe not going for it, not feeling like you can put your hand up and be out there and saying, yeah, I can do that presentation or you know, asking for the sale.
Shelly: When you have low belief in tools, your product, in your service. It can show up two ways. It can show up as that obvious gap in confidence in when someone’s pitching a product for the first time or pitching a service and you can kinda tell they’ve never actually done the service – ‘if we work together, I would do this’, not I am doing this with my clients. It can sharpen like that gap of confidence or it can show us overconfidence.
Shelly: You know the sales people that can sell anything but underneath you can almost see that needy-creepiness.
Shelly: Either way, nothings gone wrong any other time, it’s just – which one have you got lower belief on and how is that showing up?
Shelly: Now, the reason I wanted to kind of pick this apart – and Ryan, you’ve totally nailed me, I’m going over time, but too bad, so sad – is because if you have low belief in one, it can start to affect the other two.
Shelly: So if you’ve got low belief in two or three, you may have to kind of think in your head, well, where did it start? Which we were really, really needing to work on here, and it doesn’t matter which one you start with, All roads lead to Rome in the world of coaching.
Shelly: It’s just, know that if you work on one, it will unlock or bring back up one of the others as well, if you’ve got a couple of other ones that.
Shelly: Now the really, really good news, and clearly I love, love, love love helping clients shift and create new thoughts and also I love helping clients bring themselves back to the new thought.
Shelly: Maybe they used to think they have great tools and then suddenly they have worked with one client and it felt like a flop and then suddenly they think oh maybe my tools aren’t so good.
Shelly: But that’s just a thought in their head ’cause that last client was a flop for whatever reason, so we just bring them back to like, well, what did you use to think?
Shelly: How can you think that again?
Shelly: Let’s do that. I’m clearly very passionate about it.
Shelly: The point is, the good news is that you can understand that you can change your thoughts.
Shelly: You see the gap, so you do these three questions. You see the gap, you know which one you [focus on] on that day that week, that event, whatever. You can do it around anything really.
Shelly: And then you do the work to build your belief. I haven’t really shown you that here.
Shelly: All I’ve shown James is that he’s thinking, “I’m at the mercy of my clients” and that feels like a feeling.
Shelly: And then he’s acting from that feeling. I haven’t shown him how to have the new thought of I can influence my clients. I can motivate them to do XYZ, which creates a different feeling and then he does different things.
Shelly: But when you do that work, taking the feeling, the thought you used to have with the feeling and then moving to the new thought and the new feeling. You get your results. And that’s the best part, is you do it long enough over and over and little bits add up and you get new results in business.
Shelly: And like I said, it doesn’t have to just be when your business is struggling, it could be when your business is like ready to step up or ready to like, you’re doing great, you’re like, yeah, but if I just tweaked that, maybe I could just do even better in this area.
Shelly: So, we’ve covered the three beliefs belief in yourself, belief in your tools, and belief in your clients.
Shelly: We’ve looked at how they show up in your business, and we’ve looked at the effects of that so what happens it turns into a thought. You have a feeling you take some actions and then you move on and then you get a result. So those are the two big tools I’ve got.
Shelly: Do your three questions, know where you’re at. Figure out where you want to shift, and if you want help shifting, I am here to help, because clearly it’s the thing to do in my world.
Shelly: And you can always reach out to me for a consult. I offer a free consult for an hour. Which is specifically designed to know exactly where you’re at, we do a version of this exercise. Whether it’s for your business or into our life.
Shelly: Where’s your gaps? Where do we want to get to? Where do we shift you to? What does that look like?
Shelly: What is that amazing person that James shows up as when he fully believes his clients are going to come with the party and do their thing and then he can influence them coming to the party. And not waiting. How is that different?
Shelly: So in that concept, that’s what we do is we figure out where you’re at, that gap, at how to get there, what it looks like. And then you make that decision, is working with a coach, like me, part of that journey and it is for some people and it isn’t for some people, and that’s totally fine.
Shelly: This that’s just the conversation we have and we figure it out at the end together.
Shelly: And I’m going to let Ryan unmute himself or James, most likely whoever’s gonna take over for me. And if you’ve got questions, I’d love to hear them.
James: Absolutely you got questions, definitely say. Ask them now.
James: Let’s give her a round of applause real quick.
Shelly: Thank you.
