In this episode, I’m sharing a tough but important lesson from my own business—what it looked like when I was getting all the engagement, support, and “love”… but barely any sales. I break down the three biggest mistakes I made that caused this disconnect, from unclear messaging and trying to speak to everyone, to avoiding proven marketing strategies, to not showing enough proof of results.
I also walk you through exactly how I turned things around. From niching down and getting crystal clear on who I help, to confidently using ethical sales strategies, to finally owning and sharing the results my clients were getting—these shifts completely changed my business. I also talk about what happened when I decided to fully commit to selling an offer I truly believe in, and how stepping into a “main character” mindset helped make this my best year yet.
3 Key Takeaways:
Clarity Converts, Confusion Doesn’t
When I tried to speak to everyone, I ended up resonating with no one. Getting specific about who I help and how I help them made my messaging stronger—and my sales followed.
Ethical Selling Still Requires Strategy
Avoiding tactics like deadlines, bonuses, or urgency didn’t make me more authentic—it just made it harder for people to take action. When used with honesty and integrity, these strategies actually serve my audience.
Proof Builds Trust and Drives Sales
People need to see what’s possible. When I started sharing testimonials, case studies, and real client wins (while being honest about expectations), it became much easier for people to say yes.
LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE
Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa’s email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook, Subscribe to my Youtube
Transcript
In today’s episode, I wanna share with you a story about how I was getting all the love, but none of the sales so that you don’t make the same mistakes as I did.
If we haven’t met, my name is Teresa Heath Wareing and I help course creators, membership owners, and coaches grow their online business. And I’ve been in business 11 years and about nine of them have been in the online space. I get to work with hundreds of business owners, not only in my program grow launch sale, but I also get to coach and consult for some really.
Big, impressive launches. So I get to see behind the scenes of many, many, many, many launches. But as well as helping lots of online business owners. I am an online business owner as well, and I made a big mistake that cost me a lot of money that hopefully I’m gonna share with you so you don’t make the same one.
So let’s talk about the problem. The problem I had was people loved what I was doing and they loved me. Which was awesome. I used to joke that people come and buy from me because they like me and I’m nice, which I really loved and I [00:01:00] still really do. But the problem was that people would want to be in my world and they would wanna listen to the podcast and they would want to come and see me speak or they would want to have me speak at their event.
And I love that. And I’m not saying that’s a bad thing ’cause it’s entirely not, however. The problem was when it then came to people spending money, they weren’t spending their money with me. So although they’d been in my world, although I would build a relationship with them and have conversations with them, and I would understand them and their business, when they actually went to buy some services, so let’s say coaching or join a program, they went and bought someone else’s.
And this was awful because it was like. I didn’t understand because they liked me. They liked the way I worked. Why weren’t they buying from me? Why were they then going and spending their money elsewhere? And in hindsight, I’m now able to share with you three things that I was doing really wrong in my business.
That meant people knew me and they liked me, but they weren’t spending money [00:02:00] with me. So problem number one was that my messaging was all off. When I first came into this space, and a little tiny background story on me, I actually have a degree in marketing, and prior to starting my own business, I spent 10 years in marketing, doing marketing for loads of different companies from big, massive international brands to teeny weenie companies where we did everything.
So there wasn’t. Much I didn’t know about marketing and helping small businesses market it themselves. And then as time grew and the longer I had my business, the more I could talk about running a business and what it was like running a business. And then I digressed slightly for a little while and became a certified coach so I could coach people properly and I could do the mindset thing.
So the problem I had, which is the main problem I tell other people not to do, but I didn’t listen to my own good advice, was I didn’t niche. At all. I could help any small business kind of with most things. So most things with running a business with how to market the business, I could help them with it because I had got [00:03:00] so much experience in all marketing and then in running a business.
So. I did the one thing that I told everybody else not to do, and I wanted to serve everybody. And because by nature I like to please people and I genuinely love helping people. I didn’t wanna turn away anybody, so if someone came to me who had a physical shop, I wanted to help them. If someone came to me who had an online business, I wanted to help them.
If someone came to me with a service business, I knew I could help them. So. I didn’t niche at all. And also I saw niching, I guess in the early days as I would have to tell some of those people, I’m not for you anymore. And I didn’t want them to think that. I didn’t want them to feel that, so I didn’t. I just basically kept my messaging really, really wide of I can just help you, like if you’re a small business owner, I can help you, and that did not help me one little bit.
The reason it didn’t help me is because no one was really sure what I could specifically help them with. So yes, the truth was if you came [00:04:00] to me and said, I need help with this thing, I could probably help you. I’d got a lot of experience. I’d done a lot of education. I’d had a lot of years in business.
People didn’t really know that. They didn’t really know what one thing could I help them do. So problem number one, my messaging was off and I was basically trying to help everyone with everything and that wasn’t working. Problem number two that I had, and I’m kind of laughing at myself now, but it’s really important for me to be honest about this, was I avoided certain.
Tactics. Okay, so bearing in mind I did a degree in marketing. I spent three years at university doing a degree. Then I spent 10 years in marketing for other people’s businesses and for agencies prior to starting my own. Somehow when I came into the online space and I saw some of the strategies and tactics that people were using, they felt horrible.
Because the truth was, some of the people using them were using them in a [00:05:00] horrible way. They were using these strategies in a sleazy, salesy, manipulative way that put me off so bad. But what it did is, instead of. I don’t like the way they’re using that particular tactic or particular strategy. I basically went, I’m not using them.
Right? Which was a really terrible mistake to make and kind of a wild one when you think about it. Because I had spent years in marketing. I knew the psychology behind these strategies. I knew why they worked. I knew how companies were using them way before the online space ever existed. However, when I saw the online space using them.
It just felt horrible and I just decided I’m not gonna use them, but very much to my detriment because instead of finding a way in which they worked for me and in a way in which I was aligned and comfortable with, I literally just threw them all out and when I’m not using them, and therefore I made it very, very difficult for people to actually buy from me.
And then the final thing or the final [00:06:00] mistake I made, which I. Still see lots of people making now is I didn’t tell people what I could actually do for them by sharing what I had done for others. Again, when I came into the online space, I saw people sharing wildly ridiculous testimonials of Do this one thing and you can end up rich.
This person just did this one email and they made millions, like I saw testimonials. That literally made me feel like this is horrible and yucky and awful. And being a smart marketer, I knew there was so much more to it than that. And therefore, I felt like there was an element of deceit because they were making out that people could have the same success.
Doing exactly the same thing when I knew it wasn’t just down to that thing. So when it came to sharing my own successes, IE with my clients and some of the huge launches I’d helped them have, I decided not to. I decided that actually there was so much more to the story than [00:07:00] just I helped that person with that launch and they made all this money because there was so much more to it.
It was down to the size of their audience. It was down to how their audience trusts them. It was down to the offer, the price, how they actually sold, how charismatic they were when they were doing their launch experience. So I knew it was never just down to me. But again, instead of kind of. Playing my part and saying, I had a big part in this launch, and therefore I can share how successful that launch was.
Again, I saw what other people were doing. It didn’t make me feel good, so I completely decided not to do it, and I didn’t share how people could actually have results with me. I didn’t show the transformation. And those three things basically meant that people liked what I did and they liked what I talked about, and they could see that I was good.
But when it came to actually buying from me, when it came to actually handing me money, I didn’t give them confidence because I didn’t show them that I could do [00:08:00] the thing that. I said I could do, I didn’t make it clear what I could actually do for them, and I didn’t make it easy for them to buy. So when we are using strategies like a deadline or strategies like a bonus, I wasn’t using any of them and how my opinion has changed very much now, but I wasn’t seeing them as a helpful tool to get people to help them make a decision.
I was seeing them as. It’s forcing them into a sale that they might not want because that’s how I’d seen other people use them. So those three things stopped people buying when it came to them actually handing money. Now I do wanna say I did sell to people and sometimes I sold to people because they were like, I just really like you and I wanna work with you.
Then they worked out later the stuff I could actually help them with. But I actually lost so many clients because of those three problems I had. So what did I actually do about it? And how can you learn by my mistakes? And what can you do to make sure that this doesn’t [00:09:00] happen to you? So the very first thing I did was I went further down in a niche.
Now I nearly said I niched. Now I’d have niched, but some people would argue it’s still not a very strong niche in the sense of I still work with any online business owners to help them. Grow their online business. That is still quite wide. However, what I would say that I am known for now is launching and basically how you are actually selling your online offers and if you want to grow your online offers.
So I often work with online business owners that have already started an online business, and then we take what they’ve already done and we help accelerate their growth and make their online business grow further. So I have niched down much more than I ever was. But some people would still argue probably not enough.
So people finally understood what I could help them with. If they weren’t an online business and they didn’t want to grow their online business and they didn’t wanna do launches or sell online, then I am not for you. It’s not gonna [00:10:00] work If they are just getting started and want to know what this online business world is, again, I’m not for them.
So. By having a message that was much stronger and by niching down, I was able to get much clearer about what can I actually help you with. The next thing I did is I actually bought back those strategies that I throw out the window because I finally realized, and it took a bit of work with a coach to do this, that it wasn’t the strategies that were inherently bad.
It was the intent behind them and actually. When I gave it some thought, I had been using these strategies way before the online world even existed. By this point, I’ve been in marketing about 23 years-ish, I think. And these strategies existed when I did my degree 20 odd years ago. It’s not that the strategies are wrong, it’s that sometimes the intent behind them is horrible and uh, my intent behind them is never horrible.
And when you use these strategies truthfully and [00:11:00] honestly, they do really work. So when I have a deadline of the car closes because. I am not taking anybody else on that program or the program date starts. That is a genuine, real strategy that A will help someone make a buying decision, but also is real because I’m not then going to go, oh no, actually the week later, come on, we’ll have more people coming in.
So when you are using them truthfully, honestly, and with real good intent, they are great strategies. So I bought. Back the strategies that I teach on, and I now talk much better about them and feel much better about them when I teach them, because I know my intent behind them is completely different to the intent of some of the people that I had witnessed back in the day.
And some of those people are still using those horrible, intense strategies and they feel yucky and awful. And I am still trying really hard to educate people about how to see what is real and what is not. But for me, I brought back [00:12:00] some of those strategies that I thought. Well, horrible. ’cause they weren’t, it was the intent behind.
And then the final one is I actually started demonstrating, look, I get results of people. And I have to say that was a big mindset shift that I had to get past because like I said, I had. Seen testimonials be talked about and shared where I knew there was so much more to the story. Me back then felt that that was maybe a little bit dishonest and I think some, in some cases it probably is still a bit dishonest of going.
You can have exactly what they have. You can’t, I can’t guarantee that, and neither can anybody else. What I can guarantee is that the work I did with that person and the strategy that I helped them form worked. Brilliantly for them ’cause they got the results. I can guarantee that I have the knowledge and the understanding of the online space, and I will get to understand you and your business to help you come up and work out the best strategy that will work for you.
What I can’t guarantee are results, and no one can. [00:13:00] So if they’re telling you, they can guarantee them they are lying and that is not true. But the mindset shift when it came to sharing testimonials and sharing stories and case studies was very much a round of. Actually, I did play a part in that, and I will always honestly say that there was other parts and other factors to have.
There’s one testimonial I share a lot where I talk about working with the two Lauras and I helped them set up and launch their very first membership and within their very first membership, they opened the doors and ended up closing them with 300 plus members, which is in. An amazing amount of people to have in a membership, and they bought in a huge amount of recurring income.
Now there are so many factors to play. They had a really good sized audience and a really loyal audience. That was a massive factor. So yes, I will happily share the testimonial and I’ll happily talk about the fact of I was a big part to play in their success, but I wasn’t the only part, and I had to get really comfortable with that.
I also had to [00:14:00] understand that these are real. Testimonials. These aren’t made up. These are genuine people that I’ve worked with and they wouldn’t have given me the testimonial if they hadn’t have had value from me. And I need to share them to let people understand how I can help them in their business.
And by sharing those testimonials, those case studies, I am giving people proof. And what people need to make a buying decision is proof that you can actually help them do the thing that they can do. Then finally the last thing I did was I got serious about selling. Once I had niched. Once I understood who I wanted to serve, I created an offer, which I am so passionate about and I am so confident about.
I have a program called Grow Launch Sale, where you have a complete course that talks about. Every single way of launching and selling and how to sell and what to do and how to do it. But I offer that with six months support, where I get to know you, get to understand your business, and I get to help you look at that course and go, these are the parts that you [00:15:00] need from it.
These are the things that I think are gonna work for you and your business. And I’ve created something. So passionate about and I am so confident and happy to sell and talk about like I just did. So for me that was a huge part of it. And I now talk about my offer a lot. I now talk about how you can get into my programs, how you can join my bootcamps.
I talk about these things ’cause I’m so passionate and we have a saying in the business that all roads lead to grow, launch, sale. Everything I do, I want you to go check out the Grow Launch Sale program. Every talk I do. It should be a natural step towards my program because the program really is the offer that is going to help online business owners take their business from one point to the next point to where they want to go, to grow their audience, to have a launch that works for them and doesn’t burn them out and help them sell confidently online without them feeling sleazy and salesy and horrible, and all of those four things compounded having a clear message and niche.
[00:16:00] Using strategies that work, having testimonials and case studies that I am not afraid to share, and I am confident in saying that I played my part in their success and then having an offer that I am so passionate about because I know it works and I know the people who go through the program get great results.
All of those things compounded to me in 2025, having my best year ever in business. If you feel like you are playing the supporting role in your own business, then now is to step into that main character. It’s time to be the main person in your business and do those things. So have a look at your messaging and niche.
Is it really clear how you can help people? Yes, I want to be liked and yes, I want people to think I’m lovely and do a good job, and I can still do those things. I can still be that person, but also be clear in how I can help people. Am I using the strategies that work for me in my business? Am I actually demonstrating to people I can get results for them?
And [00:17:00] do I have an offer? I am so passionate about that I am not afraid at any point to talk about it and share it. When you are not doing those things, when you are not confidently showing up and. Demonstrating to people how you can help them and asking them for the sale. We feel like we’re being humble and kind.
The truth is we are really not, we’re doing them a disservice because what happens is they go to other people and you know, the truth is so many people who I watched go to another expert to get help and now coming to me. Wishing they’d come to me in the first place because that other expert didn’t maybe live up to the hype that they were delivering.
So what will happen is someone when you are not confidently selling and you are not out there saying, this is what I can do and how I can do it, they’re going to someone else and they’re spending money that isn’t going to be as effective if they came and spend it with you. So even though we think we’re being nice and kind, which I always want to be, we’re kind of doing them a disservice as well.
So I really hope this episode was a little bit different, but I really [00:18:00] hope it resonated and landed with some of you that maybe I’m making the same mistakes that I made, and I promise you it has made the world a difference to my business to show up and be confident in. Our own abilities. ’cause the truth was I was always that good.
I could always get those results. I just wasn’t telling people. Okay. I really hope you enjoyed this episode. If you are watching this on YouTube and you liked it and you are not yet subscribed, I would really appreciate if you do that. Please also drop me a comment. I would love to hear from you if this resonated.
If you are doing any of those mistakes that I made. If you are listening on the podcast, please make sure that you’ve hit that subscribe button. If you want to go ahead and gimme a five star review. I would be so very grateful. I will be back next week with another episode.
