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Teri Holland – Tips
- In NLP there is no failure, there is only feedback
- Letting go of limiting beliefs
- Overcoming avoidance and procrastination
- Fear prevents action and lack of action equals poor performance
Doug Morneau: Welcome back listeners, we’ve got another show ready to go for you here, and I’ve got a friend of mine joining me in the studio. I would like to introduce you to Teri Holland. She helps entrepreneurs to let go of their limiting decisions and beliefs that hold them back and helps them to create a compelling future that they want. Teri has studied peak performance and life enhancement for the past decade. She has over 15 years experience as an entrepreneur and has the number one self-help podcast on iTunes, The Empowered Life. Teri has trained with master trainer, Dr. Tad James, and is a certified trainer and master practitioner of NLP, hypnotherapy, and timeline therapy, as well as NLP coaching. Welcome to real marketing real fast.
Teri Holland: Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Doug Morneau: Is there anything that you would like to add to your introduction, any changes, or updates on your business and what direction you’re going these days?
Teri Holland: No, I think that pretty much sums it all up.
Doug Morneau: The question I often ask people is are you ready for a business breakthrough, or are you just willing to settle for the same? And you and had a quick chat before we fired up the recorder here to get going, can you share a major breakthrough or a success that you had with a client, or maybe it’s your own company with our listeners?
Teri Holland: Yeah, for sure. I work mainly with entrepreneurs, so often when they come to me they’re feeling stuck, they’re trapped, they don’t know what to do next. I had one in particular who came to my NLP practitioner training, not to be a practitioner, but to break through some challenges he was having in his own business. What was really holding him back was fear, because of past failures. He was sort of a typical entrepreneur who had had some major success, and then lost everything, and then had another success, lost it all. This time he was afraid of building up his business again for the risk that he might lose everything again, and what would happen if, and could he go through that again?
We let go of fear and some limiting beliefs that he had. We changed his strategies around business and doing what he did in the past. The biggest thing for him was letting go of procrastination because he was so afraid of not doing things perfectly and so afraid of failing that he just wouldn’t take any action. When he let go of all of that his business transformed, and now he’s having, that was five months ago now, and his business has tripled in that time. He has seen massive success from that.
Doug Morneau: That’s a really quick turnaround. I see a couple of things often, one is procrastination, and the other is just I guess is procrastination, but a different sort. You realize you need to do something for your business, which is sell stuff, and people typically aren’t comfortable selling, so they say, “Hey, I think I’ll work on my website. Hey, I think I’ll work on this,” and they fill in their calendar with all this marketing stuff and none of it produces sales.
Teri Holland: Yeah, oh, absolutely. I see that a lot. It’s a really common way to avoid things, and so many people say, “I don’t want to sell. I don’t want to be salesy, I hate sales.” Really, it’s looking at it differently, that until there is a transaction that happens, called a sale, then business can’t happen. If you really want to help people you can’t help them until there is some sort of transaction involved.
I encourage my clients to look at it as a sale is serving your client. You don’t get to serve them until you sell something. A lot of them do use things like avoidance, like this client I had mentioned his favorite one was cleaning his fridge. He would clean his fridge before making cold calls, and you’re pretty desperate when you’re cleaning your fridge, I think.
Doug Morneau: Yeah, absolutely. I had kind of an epiphany years ago I was down at Loral’s Big Table in Tahoe, and they had gone through this little exercise where everybody brings $10 and then you give $5 to the person who inspires you the most, and the $2 and they divvy up the money and then the rest is in ones. Then at the end of the exercise, you tally up the cash to see who has the most amount of money from the people in the room and they seat you in a certain order. It absolutely shocked me that I was sitting at the front of the line with a bunch of people I had never met.
Well, other than at that particular time and I sat there thinking and someone said, “Well, what are you thinking about?” I thought I think the reason a lot of us don’t sell is we’re just being selfish. If we really have a service and a product like you do that can help people then aren’t we being selfish if we don’t give them the opportunity to get better, fix their business, fix that relationship because we’re afraid they might say no. It just kind of changed my whole thinking, thinking it’s a selfish thing to not sell because you’re just thinking about yourself. You’re not thinking about the other person. That’s worse than being a salesperson.
Teri Holland: Absolutely. I completely agree with that. When you have something that can change lives, or can make someone’s life better, or easier then you owe it to them to at least offer.
Doug Morneau: Yeah, absolutely.
Teri Holland: It doesn’t mean they have to say yes, but you at least to offer it to them and give them the opportunity.
Doug Morneau: I think the thing that I used for years is I ask what’s the worst thing that could happen? How likely is it that that worse thing could happen? Then am I willing to live with it if it did? To me it’s pretty simple, it’s like yeah, most things aren’t going to kill me and maybe some are a bit risky but am I willing to do that? Sure, okay. Why not?
Teri Holland: Yeah, that’s a great way to look at it.
Doug Morneau: I mean, a lot of the guests we’ve had on the show on the podcast have all talked about marketing and marketing products, and software, but I think what we’re talking about is a really big issue for entrepreneurs as well, because they sit there and they stare and they go, “I need an Email service. Should I use Infusionsoft, should li use GetResponse, should I use Drip? They go around and around looking at analyzing every piece of software that’s possible. What advice or suggestions would you give people that kind of in that stuck phase, where they’re analyzing one million things and they’re not executing?
Teri Holland: I would say a lot of the times when they’re stuck in that phase of analyzing things they’re waiting for something to be perfect, and they’re looking for how do I do this perfectly and not fail at it? They get stuck and trapped in all these little details and at the end of the day does it really matter? When you’re starting out does it really matter what Email service you use? Probably not. Just pick one and go with it, and you can change course later.
Doug Morneau: Yeah.
Teri Holland: The only way to truly get excellent at something, is to do it really, really well is to just start, and be willing to fail. We say in NLP there is no failure, there is only feedback, so you get the feedback of that’s not working and you can change direction, but until you get started you don’t get the feedback so how do you know what’s working or what’s not working? You can’t improve.
Doug Morneau: Yeah, that’s a fair comment. I mean, I’m in this space so I look at stuff every day, and I’ve got clients on every platform. I go into Facebook help groups and support groups and I see the discussion over and over and over again, so that’s good advice, and that’s basically what I said, pick one, and then get started. If it’s not the right one then we’ll change, because we export the data and you can upload it to somebody new and carry on.
Teri Holland: Exactly, but at least you’re starting something.
Doug Morneau: Tell me a little bit about how you scaled your business. I mean, looking at your background and your website, you obviously run a successful podcast, but then you mentioned how you tripled your income in a short period of time. Do you mind sharing some of the details of how you did that?
Teri Holland: Yeah, it was my client that tripled his income in a short period of time.
Doug Morneau: Oh, okay.
Teri Holland: I did as well. I did grow my business pretty quickly. I say I grew my business quickly I grew this business quickly, based on years and years of working in another business and learning from experience and growing that way. It’s all relative of course to experience and training and past feedback. What really helped me was getting clear on what it is I offer, who I help, and then getting really strategic in my marketing. Focusing on what do I do well, what’s the best way for me to get my message out to people, and what can I do consistently?
Doug Morneau: Right, that’s a good point, what can you do consistently, not I’m in the mood to do something today, I’m going to write 20 Tweets and then that’s the end of it for the month.
Teri Holland: Exactly. I think when I started in business I was more like that. I would do something, I would put out a bunch of posts somewhere, or I’d get really into my blog and then I wouldn’t touch it for months. That didn’t produce a great result, but when I started doing the podcast and I started doing videos as well and got really, really strategic in it, in what I was posting and when that’s when I started seeing a bigger result.
Doug Morneau: In terms of your podcast, so you’re saying you got strategic, I look back at a number of your episodes and I see at one point you’ve done some rebranding, which is always a good thing like you said, you update where are. I really love the new look and feel of your piece with your picture on it there.
Teri Holland: Thanks.
Doug Morneau: In terms of doing a little bit each day, a story from my listeners that have heard this before, but the best book I’ve read on this topic recently has been the Slight Edge.
Teri Holland: Oh, yeah.
Doug Morneau: It just talks about that very thing, just doing a little bit every day. I don’t have to do 100 posts a day, you can do one post a week, just consistently once a week do a post.
Teri Holland: Yeah. I think that’s such great advice. That’s what I try to do is what can I do each day and not get lost in the social media rabbit hole where it eats up my time, but what can I do that’s strategic, that makes sense, and is going to give the best value that I could offer at that moment?
Doug Morneau: Could you walk us through a little bit of how you might engage and work with a client with some of your training? If I came to you, or one of my listeners came to you and said, “Hey, we’re small, we’re the entrepreneur, we want to grow our business.” What are the first things you would look at to uncover what the issues are?
Teri Holland: Yeah. I start with what we call detailed personal history, so if I’m working one-on-one with an entrepreneur that’s what I start with. It’s a process I take them through to uncover what is the root problem. Typically, when someone comes to me with a problem or a challenge in their business what they present is the surface structure. The tip of the iceberg.
Doug Morneau: That’s funny.
Teri Holland: They’ll say all the symptoms of the problem like I’m not making money, or they’ll say, “I’m just not motivated anymore. I’ve lost my passion for my business.” Underneath that is the whole root structure of what’s really going on with them. First, we uncover that.
Then I take them through a personal breakthrough session, which is I use everything that I know; NLP, timeline therapy, hypnosis to get into that root structure and undo the problem. By the end of that, we blow out the boundaries of the problems that there is no problem. Often what they’ll say to me by the end of it is, “I don’t even remember why I came.”
Doug Morneau: Wow.
Teri Holland: Because there is no problem.
Doug Morneau: That’s so cool.
Teri Holland: Yeah.
Doug Morneau: You mentioned that you uncover the very beginning of the problem, and I’ve had that same issue where you talk to somebody about their marketing and what you find is that they’re not honest with you. I guess for someone to have a good relationship with you and expect a good result they need to be honest.
Teri Holland: Absolutely. One of the great things about NLP is we really train in repour, so that helps somebody when you get into really great repour with somebody it helps them to open up and to be honest. The other great thing about NLP is I can usually detect pretty quickly when a person is lying. I know how to uncover what’s actually going on.
Doug Morneau: I should learn that because I often talk to people and I say, “What’s the issue?” And they say, “Well, I need more sales,” and so we go through this whole process of sales and they forget to mention a whole bunch of things, like I’m not able to pay my rent on my retail store, and the mall is going to kick me out at the end of the week so I need your ads to not only produce, but produce within two days, or I had my credit card shut off from Google because I was noncompliant with advertising. I forgot to tell you that.
Teri Holland: Oh, wow.
Doug Morneau: It would be helpful to know the whole story before you get going.
Teri Holland: Absolutely and being able to ask the right questions to uncover that. That’s a big part of it.
Doug Morneau: A bit of a consulting question, feel free to answer, or say I’m not interested in answering that. I’m interested and curious because of the type of work that you do, I haven’t worked with someone at your level before, so I’m interested about people’s belief system. What are their limiting beliefs when it comes to sales, and more particularly attracting clients? I’ll give you a specific example, we have had a salesperson saying, “Hey we should go out,” and this is kind of our minimum engagement for our client, and after a long time, it’s like why can’t I achieve that? I found that people sell to their comfort zone and what they think is within their economic history.
Teri Holland: Yeah.
Doug Morneau: Is that something you’d agree with, or you’ve seen as well?
Teri Holland: Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I definitely agree with that. People have all kinds of limiting beliefs around what they can do, what’s possible for them. They have limiting beliefs around sales, around money, around their own value and worth, and when we talk about limiting beliefs in NLP we talk about limiting decisions, because before someone can believe something they have to have decided to believe it.
We just say that’s a more empowering position to come from. We look at what is the root cause of that belief? When did you decide to believe that? Then from there we can unravel that belief and in place put in a new belief that is more beneficial. One that supports what they want. A limiting belief or a limiting decision could be something like I’m not good enough, which I have yet to meet a person who comes to me who doesn’t have form of that belief. If you have that, if you’re unconsciously running a belief that I’m not good enough, or what I’m doing is not valuable, I’m not worthy, I can’t be successful, anything like that affects your behavior unconsciously.
We say that all behavior is unconscious so you might not consciously you might be able to say I know what I do is of value, and of worth, but if unconsciously you don’t believe that it affects your behavior. It’ll affect your communication with a prospect, with a new client. It will affect how you do your sales calls, how you do your marketing, and then the end result of that is that I’m not making sales, I’m not making money, I’m not successful in my marketing.
Doug Morneau: Do you think people cycle thorough that, or is it kind of like an on or off switch?
Teri Holland: Well, it could be either way. Sometimes people have a limiting decision or a limiting belief that is in every part of their lives. It’s all the time, they believe it 100%, all the time. Then sometimes people have, in NLP we call it apart, which is a part of the personality believes this. It’s not something they believe all the time, but sometimes they believe it. An example would be if someone is really indecisive. Sometimes I think I want to do this with my career, and sometimes I think it should be this way, and they can’t decide between the two. That’s what we call apart.
Doug Morneau: Okay.
Teri Holland: That part is just a part of you that disagrees.
Doug Morneau: Oh, I thought that was the shiny new object. I’m always looking at new stuff going, “Hey, that’s really cool. We should add that.”
Teri Holland: That could be part of it.
Doug Morneau: Oh, no. Yeah, I think that I find that I cycle through different levels of energy during the day. I’ve tried really to rearrange my calendar to use my highest energy level at the optimal time when I’m working with clients and then schedule, what I would consider, in my business less meaningful tasks in off hours, where I know my energy is low and its just stuff I can kind of grind through to get it done.
Teri Holland: That’s a great strategy.
Doug Morneau: Do you work, or have you worked with sales teams within larger organizations, or do you focus primarily on smaller entrepreneurs, or what size of company do you typically like to work with?
Teri Holland: I work with everything from the solo entrepreneur to small businesses, and where I’m branching into now is more into corporate training, so getting into bigger businesses. I have worked with sales teams and those are always really interesting.
Doug Morneau: I guess, because you’re in a group setting, so it’s a little bit hard to do a deep dive when everybody is peers, and maybe their boss is in the room.
Teri Holland: It can be, for sure. Some of the ways I deal with that is we do some individual work and then some group work. When I’m working with a team I work a lot with their values, so values are deeply unconscious filters that determine what motivates people, what demotivates them, what they’ll put energy into, or not put energy into.
If I have a sales team that isn’t performing well, typically their values aren’t in alignment with what they’re doing. That’s the first thing I start with; what are their values now, what are the value of the team leader, or the boss, and where do they need to be to get the best result? Then I take them each through a process of realigning their values until their all in alignment and moving in the same direction.
Doug Morneau: That’s really cool. I understand a bit about your process, but I can also see why it’s valuable for people, so for people who are listening going I don’t know, I don’t know if this is all true, or if this is, so what’s the biggest myth about the type of work that you do? Obviously, the people that you’ve had success with you can’t deny that that’s a fact.
Teri Holland: Yeah. I would say the biggest myth, well there’s a big myth out there that NLP is manipulation. I don’t know if you heard that before, but that’s a big myth I come up against a lot. What I say to that is that NLP is a series of techniques and tools, and they can be used for manipulation and they can also be used to create massive change and impact, and it’s just how you use it. It’s no more manipulative than a hammer. A hammer could be used as a weapon, or it could be used to build a house.
Doug Morneau: Yeah, that’s true.
Teri Holland: I would say that. Then the other myth I come up against a lot, because I do hypnotherapy is that it’s whew whew, it doesn’t work, it’s not real. I say, “I work with imagination, so if you could imagine that what I’m saying is real and that it works you’ll get a better result, and if you don’t, and if you don’t follow my instructions then you’re not going to get a great result. At the end of the day, whether it’s real or not real if you’re getting the results you want does that matter?”
Doug Morneau: That’s so funny. I’m just thinking back of times we’ve had conversations with people, and it’s like, “Well, I’m not happy with the result.” It’s like, “Well, did you execute what we told you?” “Well, no.” “Well, then how can you be unhappy with the result? You didn’t do what we laid out for you.” “Well, we thought it would be better to do it this way.” “Well, how is that working for you?” “Well, it’s not. I’m unhappy.” It’s like well, why don’t you try it my way? You paid me to tell you how to do it, why don’t you try it this way?
Teri Holland: Yeah. Yeah, exactly, and in hypnosis, what I always tell people is, people say I can’t be hypnotized, or not everyone can be hypnotized. I say everyone can be hypnotized to the degree that they can follow instructions. If you follow my instructions you go into a trance, if you don’t follow them you won’t go into a trance. Either one is fine with me, but you came to me for a purpose so why not follow instructions?
Doug Morneau: I don’t even want to have that conversation. That’s a really long conversation. We sat with a really large company in the Loral [inaudible 00:20:31], which I won’t mention, that is a member-based company, they have about 750 thousand members, and we sat one day revealing some analytic data of how people were finding them online, and their VP said, “That’s not right.” “What do you mean it’s not right?” “Well, our audience doesn’t, they would not think of looking for us that way online.” It’s like, “Well, I’m not theorizing. This is what Google Analytics is saying.” “Well, that’s not true. I don’t believe the data.” It’s like okay. We probably can’t help you anymore.
Teri Holland: Yeah. People want to believe what they want to believe and then sometimes when you go up against that, they have a hard time hearing it.
Doug Morneau: You weren’t always in this business, as you mentioned before, you transitioned, or pivoted into the business that you’re in now. Looking back on time for entrepreneurs that are listening, and the reason I want to cover this is everyone has heard of Gary Vaynerchuk, and people love him or hate him. I happen to like him. It took my wife about a year to get used to him, but I think one of the things that I like that he talks about is he talks about the fact that you need to work, and you need to work hard. That these Instagram pictures of people standing in front of Lamborghinis and boats and all that at 16 is just not true. That being said, and I believe that business is a long game. What advice would you have given yourself back 10 years ago that you think would have had a super big impact on your business at that time?
Teri Holland: I would say work harder. I think a lot of us get into business, I know I did, thinking that I’ll work for myself, I’ll have all this freedom, and I can set my own hours, and we have this illusion of the laptop lifestyle on the beach. That takes a lot of work to get there, so it’s not the … I don’t know. It wasn’t a quick fix for me to get into self-employment. I thought it would be. I thought I’d have all this free time, and I didn’t. I learned really quickly that I had to work a lot harder, and looking back I still could have worked a lot harder than I did.
Doug Morneau: Yeah, it’s interesting. It’s interesting what I see from people who are not entrepreneurs, who are employees and what they think. “Oh, you guys make all this money and you do this, and you do that, and you don’t work,” and it’s like, “Dude, we work more than eight or nine hours in a day.”
Teri Holland: Yeah, for sure. I don’t begrudge it. I don’t begrudge any of the work that I do because I love it, so it doesn’t feel hard to me, it doesn’t feel like I’m struggling through a work day the way I used to when I was an employee, but it is a lot of work, and it does require effort for the reward.
Doug Morneau: Absolutely. Well, I have to, I don’t have a choice because I’m unemployable. I get in some place and it’s like, “How come you’re doing it that way? Why don’t we do it this way so we can improve results and go faster and bigger?” It’s like, “Well, we’ve never done it that way before.” Yeah, I don’t make a very good employee. I’m better of on my own.
Teri Holland: Yeah, I’m the same way. I was a terrible employee.
Doug Morneau: What advice would you give listeners who, they’ve listened in a bit and they say this is kind of interesting, but I’m not sure what the next step would be. What would the next step be for an entrepreneur or business owner to saying this sounds kind of interesting?
Teri Holland: The next step in terms of …
Doug Morneau: What would you advise them to do? I’m assuming because you’re in business and you like to serve people it would be, would they call you and have a consultation, would they set some time aside as some homework that they would do before they would talk to you? What would be the next step that somebody would want to take that wants to make this change to have a better life and better lifestyle and a bigger business?
Teri Holland: Yeah, well I would definitely suggest connecting with me. The first step for that is on my website I have, you can opt-in for an appointment. I do a 30-minute consultation with people, just see where they’re at, and strategize what needs to happen next for them. I don’t really have homework beforehand because I don’t know where they are, but that’s the next step is to just have a conversation and see where it is that they’re at, where they want to get to, and then what has to happen in between.
Doug Morneau: Okay. That may be a good place to start, know where you’re at and where you want to go. That’s what I tell people. They say, “What do you do?” I say, “Well, we look at where you’re at, where you want to go, what tools you have to get you there, in terms of time, money, people, all those things, and then we look for the gap and we try to fill in the gap.”
Teri Holland: Yeah, absolutely.
Doug Morneau: Where do people find you online?
Teri Holland: They can find me on my website Teriholland.CA, and on Facebook Teri Holland Coaching, and I’m pretty much on every platform.
Doug Morneau: Hey, I hear your friend in the background.
Teri Holland: Yeah.
Doug Morneau: That’s cool.
Teri Holland: My dog.
Doug Morneau: Dogs are cool. They’re better than cats. I will post all of your information in our show notes. Who is one guest that you think I should invite on the show?
Teri Holland: Oh, that is a great question.
Doug Morneau: It always thumps everybody. I’m thinking this has got to be the easiest question and people go oh, that’s so tough.
Teri Holland: It is. That’s tough. I don’t know. I would love to see, maybe Jonathan Christian.
Doug Morneau: That’s a great pick. I’ve had Jonathan on the show.
Teri Holland: Oh, you have.
Doug Morneau: That was a great selection. I’m sure Jonathan will be happy to hear that he’s getting an endorsement. He’s an awesome guy. Met him years ago in the self-employment program at Douglas College.
Teri Holland: Yeah, he’s great. He really opened my eyes to social media and got me going. I would say him, or if you want to aim big, I would say Frank Kern would be really cool.
Doug Morneau: Yeah, there we go. Yeah. I have reached out to Frank. I’m part of his mastermind, and Heather and I went and spent a weekend down at his place in La Jolla and hung out with those guys. There is a guy who brings a lot of value.
Teri Holland: Yeah.
Doug Morneau: Have you been to any of his events?
Teri Holland: I haven’t. I’ve gone through a lot of his programs online.
Doug Morneau: It’s pretty amazing. For him to stand up there and say, “I’m an introvert so I’m not going to hang around and talk to you after I get off the stage, but ask me any questions you want.” Then he brings out his ledger book and says, “Hey, this is how I set up this ad campaign. This is how much money I spent for Facebook advertising. This is my conversion, this is how much money I made, any other questions?” He just lays it all out there. Frank is definitely on the list.
Teri Holland: Awesome.
Doug Morneau: Well, thanks so much for taking time out of your day to share with our listeners. Listeners, we will post all of Teri’s information on our website, on the show notes, so make sure to check the show notes. If you’re there subscribe to our Email list, you’ll get updates on upcoming episodes, if you’re on iTunes subscribe to iTunes. I’ll also make sure that the line to Teri’s show is there on iTunes as well. Thanks so much. Thanks for listening and have a great week.
Resources Mentioned
Connect with Teri Holland
https://twitter.com/TeriHCoaching
