Attrition anxiety: If you’re a social seller, you’ve experienced this before and it probably didn’t go very well. Kristen is breaking it all down discussing the thoughts that are helping to create anxiety around attrition and what you can think and do instead!
She covers:
- How all leaders need to address attrition WHEN, not if, it happens
- Why attrition is part of business growth and it’s a time when your leadership is needed most
- What you think about attrition will determine your experience with it: how long you stay in it, and how ‘bad’ it gets
- The useless thoughts that keep you in attrition
- Why leaders should be planning for attrition
- The exact action steps to create an attrition plan
- How to influence your team into caring
Your business growth isn’t linear-nothing has gone wrong in attrition and Kristen is sharing all of the mindset shifts you need to make in order to prepare for the inevitable season of attrition you and your team will face.
Thanks for listening! Do you have a question about network marketing? Kristen can help! Drop your question here, and she just might answer it live on the podcast: https://kristenboss.com/question
Connect with Kristen:
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If you’re ready to learn the simple process of running your social selling business online, you have to check out Kristen’s live group coaching program! The Social Selling Academy: www.thesocialsellingacademy.com
Interested in Kristen’s exclusive mastermind for six-figure earners in the network marketing industry? Get all the details and join the waitlist here.
Transcript of Episode 19 Attrition Anxiety:
Kristen Boss (00:05):
Welcome to Purposeful Social Selling with Kristen Boss. I’m your host, Kristen Boss. I’m a mindset and business coach with more than 15 years experience in both the product and service based industry. I believe that social selling is the best business model for people wanting to make an impact while they make serious income. This is the podcast for the social seller, who is tired of feeling and authentic in their business and desires to find a more purposeful and profitable way of growing their business in today’s social media landscape. In this podcast, you will learn what it takes to grow a sustainable business through impactful and social marketing. It’s time to ditch the hustle and lead from the heart. Let me show you the new way. Hey everyone. Welcome back to another week.
Kristen Boss (00:51):
Listen, I have been loving hearing your reviews. You guys sharing what you’re learning from this podcast and celebration. We have hit 10,000 downloads and this is not possible without you. So I want to take a moment and truly express a moment of gratitude for you as my listener, and just say, thank you. Thank you for listening. Thank you for sharing with people. And here’s why I appreciate you. I appreciate you because your coming to this podcast tells me you desire to serve in an authentic way in this industry, that you’re desiring to do things from a heart of service, from a place of not feeling gross or being gross. You are genuinely wanting to do things the right way, and I love that you’re here and I am so thankful for your continued support. So keep sharing, screenshot the podcast for today, share it in your Instagram stories.
Kristen Boss (01:53):
We’d love to shout you out. And another celebration on top of the 10,000 downloads here with the podcast. Seriously, you guys are amazing. I want to shout out one of my students in the social selling academy, she’s only been in there for three weeks and I want to share with you what she said. It’s been three weeks since I joined the social selling academy, and I want to share how it’s already working for me. I’m so moved. These results are still small in comparison to the big goals I have. But to me they mean progress. And if it’s one thing I learned and internalized already is to trust, enjoy and embrace the process. People started reaching out to me about my purpose and my products. I hit my rank again today it’s only the 15th of the month. My one teammate signed a new teammate.
Kristen Boss (02:43):
We’re growing our businesses. My weekly paycheck has doubled. I finally feel deeply connected to my customers for the first time ever. I have shown up consistently for three weeks. And that’s a first for me too. I love this is happening more and more inside the Social Selling Academy. People are learning to serve people authentically serve them. Well, they’re showing up consistently they’re embracing the process. It is so fun. Seeing people have their aha moments and their breakthroughs and learning to organically sell and market in the online space in a way that doesn’t feel gross to them. So I wanted to share those wins again. If you know, you want to be in there, stop waiting. We’ve got a spot for you. You just go to the socialsellingacademy.com. All right, let’s get to what I wanted to talk about today. Attrition, the big, scary thing.
Kristen Boss (03:43):
Every network marketer faces. If they’ve been in this industry long enough, and if you think about the word attrition, you likely have anxiety, fear or a negative thought around attrition. And so we’re going to talk about what I believe is the most triggering problem network marketers face. And I say triggering because when we are deeply triggered by something, it causes us to spiral out, freak out and kind of go in a shame spiral. And we end up creating self-fulfilling prophecies. We end up getting stuck in these negative patterns. And I’m going to talk to you today about how to show up in attrition so that you are not plagued with anxiety when it happens or constantly fearing if it does happen or when it happens to you. So in this episode, I’m going to tell you how to address it. When it comes, it’s not an if it’s a when and how to get out of it sooner rather than later.
Kristen Boss (04:50):
So the first thing you need to know about attrition is it’s actually a natural law in any business. Just like a plateau is natural. When it comes to weight loss. I want you to think about that. Attrition is natural. It happens in business growth. Netflix has attrition. Amazon has attrition, truly any membership-based monthly reoccurring business is going to experience attrition on some level. This is normal. So the first thing I want you to identify or learn to see differently about attrition is that it’s normal. And what happens is, is I see a lot of network marketers freak out and think something’s wrong with me. This shouldn’t be happening. It’s not normal. I’m going to help you identify some thoughts that are not serving you. When attrition happens that are actually keeping you in attrition longer. What makes attrition problematic is not the fact that it happens.
Kristen Boss (05:53):
It’s how you respond to attrition. When it attrition can be devastating to your psyche, because you believe that growth is linear. I want you to realize that like, think about this. If you are devastated by attrition and you were freaking out when it happens, it’s because you have been programmed to believe on some level that your business growth is linear. But if you look at any company, any business and their revenue, you’re going to see it spikes. It has it spikes. It drops it, plateaus. It climbs. What you do want is a steady growth directory, but there’s going to be declines on the way there. So your growth isn’t linear. That’s never the case. It’s devastating to us. When we believe attrition, quote, shouldn’t be happening. Or if you’re believing that you’re doing something wrong, what you think about attrition will determine your entire experience bits of it.
Kristen Boss (07:04):
And that will directly affect how long you stay in it for and how bad it gets. So it’s going to happen. Let’s just all take a moment to realize it’s going to happen and you’re going to be okay, because I’m going to give you the thoughts to help you get out of it faster for it. Not to be devastating for you when it does happen. Okay? Here’s the truth. Yeah. Happens to everyone. And it’s not a bad thing. It’s a completely neutral thing to happen in business. It’s neutral until you have a thought about it.
Kristen Boss (07:44):
Okay? It is harmless until you have thoughts, that become self-destructive that turn you into a shame spiral and keep you in the river of misery. The valley of disappointment, the shame spiral, okay, who you are. And your attrition is more important than who you are in your growth. If you hear anything today, hear that our character is defined in our moments of resistance. When we’re challenged, when things are hard, hard, right? When do you see someone’s true colors? When everything seems to be going wrong, right? Everyone can be nice when life looks good. It’s who you are. When things aren’t going your way. That is when people will see your true colors of your leadership. Not when you’re in momentum. Anyone can lead with joy and a big old smile, their face and give motivational speeches. When they’re in momentum, you are defined by who you are in attrition, not who you are in momentum.
Kristen Boss (09:07):
The leaders rise to the top when they’re in a season of attrition, this is your time. Okay? So the first thing we’re going to do is I’m going to help you identify unhelpful thoughts that are actually keeping you in attrition longer when it happens. So the first one is this thought that it’s not supposed to happen. Anytime we have the thought this isn’t supposed to happen, then we think something’s wrong with us. We’ve done something wrong. We think we are failing. It creates a lot of feelings of judgment shame. And we go into panic. I want you to think of another season or a time in your life where you’ve had the thought this shouldn’t be happening. It immediately creates a feeling of anxiety and panic, because if it shouldn’t be happening, then the other side of that is then I should fix this. I should quickly figure out a way to go into this frantic panic of making sure I get out of this.
Kristen Boss (10:11):
When you say this isn’t supposed to happen to actually shuts down your creative and critical thinking, because this isn’t supposed to happen. You, it creates a lot of negative emotions. And it’s really hard to think clearly, objectively and critically when you’re over there in a shame, spiral thinking, whoa, something’s wrong with me? This isn’t supposed to happen. Why me? It’s not happening to them. It’s not happening over there. Why is my team in attrition and not teams in momentum? First of all, stop comparing. Every team has its own growth season. So do not be in a season of comparing your team with someone else’s team. You started the race at different times. You have different teams and that’s okay. Another thing that happens when you have the thought of this isn’t supposed to happen, it creates a lot of anxiety. Can you lead your best from anxiety and scarcity?
Kristen Boss (11:16):
And when we’re in our mentally in a place of scarcity, we become very graspy. It creates a narrative of failure. I failed. My team is failing. We start looking for things that are failing, or we create the story of something scaling. And we blame a lot of things that are causing it. It’s the company, it’s the product. It’s the customers. It’s my leaders. Attrition happens and that’s attrition is neutral. You get to decide what you’re going to do about it. Actually, it’s supposed to happen. That’s normal. It’s a natural phase of business in any business. So this is a time when you’re looking at attrition, instead of all of your alarm bells, going to all my gosh, this isn’t supposed to happen. Judgment, judgment, judgment, and you being in your anxious state and you freaking out because you are equating attrition with a reduced paycheck and you start bringing your energy to that team.
Kristen Boss (12:32):
I want you to really think about how you talk to your team when you were freaking out over your paycheck. What are your conversations like with them? Are you connecting with them? Are you pressuring them? Are you shaming them? Are you shutting down completely? Are you hiding and watching Netflix and doing laundry? Are you completely in emotional despair? Who are you when you are in scarcity? And it’s really hard to lead? Well, when you’re freaking out about your paycheck, okay? So separate attrition from your paycheck. You need to look at it as a business owner and say, okay, what is the work for me here? This is actually a great time for you to focus on customer care. Evaluate how did we onboard people? How did we sell the product? What did we promise? Where is the leak go exploring, look for where there’s a leak in the boat.
Kristen Boss (13:42):
That’s how I kind of view attrition. It’s natural. It’s normal. There is a leak in the boat. Find it don’t freak out, freaking out, shuts down the critical thinking process. Okay? The second thought that’s not serving you is something’s gone wrong. When you are automatically assuming something’s gone wrong, we are doing something wrong. The problem with that is you aren’t able to actually see what you were doing, right? So here’s what happened because you assume things are going wrong and you get into the quick fix scramble mode because I have to fix this because my, I feel my paycheck is at stake here. You might end up throwing the baby out with the bath water, essentially throwing out all your strategy because you think something’s wrong and you can’t see what’s going, right. So you’re just kind of taking a sledgehammer to the area and being like, we have to demo this whole thing something’s wrong. And when you do that, you actually stopped doing the very things that created success in the first place, because in a panic, just trying to fix something, anything, we just got to fix it. And that never helps.
Kristen Boss (15:01):
The third thought, that’s not serving you as I’m doing something wrong. I’m wrong. I’m a bad leader. You view attrition as a leadership problem. The belief that somehow your leadership or lack of leadership, or that you have some fatal flaw that created the attrition. Now I want you to think what that thought does. You’re sitting there thinking I’m a bad leader. I did something wrong. I can’t seem to motivate my team. It’s me. I can’t motivate my team. That’s what this is. You’re sitting with that thought again. What does that do? It creates judgment and shame. And we as creatures of habit, when in judgment and shame, we’re not able to show up, enjoy and service when we’re so busy judging ourselves, right? And that’s when you start to shut down, you’re showing up with the energy. You could still be showing up and doing the things posting, checking on the team page, checking in with your leaders, checking in with your customers. But it’s from this energy. Do you feel the energy I’m bringing here? I call it the energy of obligation of like, I’m doing this because I have to, your energy shifts, everything. When you’re in a defeated place where you feel like a broken leader, you are bringing that energy to your team and your team reflects that back to you.
Kristen Boss (16:40):
It is your job to not see attrition as the equivalent of you as a human being. You as a leader, remove yourself from the equation and look at the organization as a whole and start asking, what can we do better? What can be done differently here? But when you’re wallowing thinking something’s wrong with me or you’re wallowing over the attrition, oh no, something’s gone wrong. This isn’t supposed to happen. This is when I see people as a leader, they get into the pool of their team’s emotions and they start swimming in the misery with them. It’s just a big misery mess with everybody. Everybody feels stuck. The whole team feels stuck. The whole team feels discouraged. The whole team is putting on the identity of, oh no, we’re stuck. Your thought of this. Isn’t supposed to happen. Now your team has this. Isn’t supposed to happen in their minds. Now everybody feels defeated. Like, oh my gosh, all this hard work. And now it’s, now it means nothing. Now you have a team of people feel your misery. And they’re reflecting that back to you. Do you see how this is a problem?
Kristen Boss (17:56):
The next really harmful thought an unhelpful thought I see people have is the moment they go to, I don’t know how to fix this. I want you to catch yourself this week. And from now on how many times you say, I don’t know to yourself, to your team, to your upline, to a friend. How often are you saying, I don’t know. As soon as you say that, what happens again? Your brain shuts down. It sends you into a frenzy of analysis paralysis. You feel doubt you indulge in confusion. I want you to hear what I just said about confusion. You’re indulging in confusion. You are choosing to feel confused because you are not choosing to be clear about what needs doing. You can decide. I know how to fix this. Even if it feels in your brain, I don’t know how to fix this. As long as you keep saying, I don’t know, your brain is going to say, okay, we don’t know we’re going to stop looking for solutions.
Kristen Boss (19:08):
And when you say, I don’t know, you’re a stuck in analysis, browse lists, doubt, confusion, or you throw way too much at your team. You, you throw a fire hose of strategy at them. Let’s try this, let’s try this. Let’s try this. And that ends up creating more overwhelm for your team. And they shut down. They’re confused. They don’t know where to go. They don’t know where to start. You have to stop saying, I don’t know about anything and decide in that moment. What if I do know what if the answer is in me, what would I do?
Kristen Boss (19:48):
It brings your brain to a state of calm. It removes you out of this panic, anxious energy, where you’re freaking out. And that allows you to come into a state of calm. And you’re able to assess, learning to assess and evaluate is critical during attrition. So now that I’ve told you all the unhelpful thoughts that are, that are keeping you stuck in attrition, and now you know why they’re unhelpful and they’re not serving you. Maybe you’re an attrition right now. I’m going to give you the thoughts that you could be having instead. Okay? Ready? This is when your leadership is needed. Most, this is your time to step up. As a leader, leaders are needed in a crisis. Now attrition is not a crisis, but it is a time for you to step up. This is your time to shine. Leaders are made in attrition.
Kristen Boss (20:55):
And a lot of you have the belief that leaders are lost in it. That attrition is what takes the leaders down. It’s what knocks people off. No, it’s the thoughts that destroy people. It’s the thoughts that send leaders in to self-destruct mode. This is your chance. It is your job. As a leader, to help your team. See that attrition is normal. Removing the alarming feelings, the anxiousness that’s collectively experienced by the team and your job is to help them manage their own thoughts and expectations about their personal businesses and get them back into taking simple action.
Kristen Boss (21:48):
A lot of times in attrition it’s the team is in overwhelm or they’re defeated and they’re shut down. So your number one priority is not to overcompensate by getting them back into massive action. The goal is actually to get them back into simple action and build confidence by them taking one baby step. This is when you need to be celebrating inches over miles. It is critical. This is when you need to be celebrating the process more than metrics or numerical progress. This is a great time to help your team start embracing that and trust that results will follow.
Kristen Boss (22:35):
This is when you need to be evaluating. It’s an opportunity to care for your customers. How can you improve customer care? Ask yourself, who’s slipping them between the cracks. What system, what process do we need to create to patch this up? You got a hole in the boat, patch it up. The goal is not to add more water in the boat or whatever else. That’s where I see people go is they see attrition happening. They freak out and they go into pressuring their team or self pressure into like, okay, we got to recruit like crazy right now. That’s actually not what you want to be doing. Your team feels defeated. They’re not motivated to go out and recruit. The goal is to go figure out where the leak is and patch it up. And then you go and recruit.
Kristen Boss (23:24):
This is a season where you grow as the person you need to become in order to reach the next level. I had someone in one of my group programs. I was coaching and she had sat at a certain rank for a number of years. And over the summer she hit next rank. It was a huge milestone. She was thrilled. It was great. Her team had momentum and it started to slow down. And I asked her her thoughts on this. And she started to shut down. She was freaking out. She’s like, oh no. In her brain, she thought there’s going to be attrition again. I’m going to slide back to my old rank. I’m not going to be able to keep this. And I helped her see how her thoughts weren’t serving her. She was literally starting to shut down as a leader because she was bracing herself for scarcity.
Kristen Boss (24:19):
And I asked her, I said, are you the same person that experienced attrition two years ago? And she said, naughty, no, not at all, not even close. So I said, so is this possible? You’re going to get out of it exponentially faster because you’re a completely different leader this time around and her energy Lee changed with that thought. And she’s like, yeah, I’m going to be able to get out of this. This is fine. And I have helped point her to, okay. Now, how do you want to work on your systems? How do you want to stabilize this season of growth you recently had? How do you want to make sure you have a firm foundation before you go into a massive season of momentum? Again, nothing’s gone wrong here. Just go and evaluate.
Kristen Boss (25:14):
But I told her the same thing that I just said. This is a season where she has to grow as a person in order to hit that next two drank in her company who she is and this attrition or in this plateau will determine whether or not she will reach the next rank you were defined. And in your seasons, we’re thinking or exciting. That is when your leadership is defined. This is when the cream rises to the top friends. I heard this really great quote by Amy Porterfield. And she was talking about launches and caring for your list and nurturing your customers. And she said this about launches. And she said, who you are outside of your launch is far more important than who you are during a lunch. And I think that is so profound. If you’re only showing up when the getting’s good, when you’re in momentum, when you’re in a good mood, when you’re selling something, that’s not going to serve your audience or your team well in the end.
Kristen Boss (26:32):
So ask yourself or tell yourself right now who you are as a team. And as a leader in attrition is far more important than who you are as a team momentum. Take that to the bank, put it on a t-shirt. Okay. So what are the action steps for attrition? What do you need to think and feel and do about attrition? Number one, plan for it. I talk about creating fail plan. So create an attrition plan, write it down. When we have attrition, look, I’m going to look at onboarding customer service, how we recruited. I’m going to check in with the mindset of my leaders. We’re going to work on our personal growth, come up with a plan so that when it happens, you’re not in this alarmed state of panic. You’re simply going to the plan that you made. And you’re like, okay, this is the plan. Here’s where we’re going to go. Number two, manage the expectations of your result oriented team members.
Kristen Boss (27:45):
It is your job as a leader who is a couple steps ahead of those people to look back at those team members and say, Hey, it’s not linear. Your job is to tell them it’s not linear. There are people are going to quit. People are going to turn off their orders and we’re going to work on that. You have to get them to embrace the process. So you have to help them find wins outside of results, of hitting that rank, that paycheck. So you really need to care for your, you know, who they are, your result oriented team members, get them to embrace the process. Teach that to them. Number three is you need to prepare for highs and lows of business. Ask your team members. What do you want your goals to look like in a non-growth season? You cannot assume that they will always be growing and hitting their numbers.
Kristen Boss (28:46):
It is not possible. That’s not business. Prepare them for it, say, okay, what do you want to focus on in that season? And as a leader, when it happens, you’re going to say, Hey, remember we talked about this. Now we’re going to focus on this. Number four, you, as a leader, you need to emotionally detach from the performance of your team so that you can evaluate the process so that you can evaluate, how was the onboarding? What’s our customer service. Like, how are we recruiting? How are we selling? How are we showing up? Are we adding value? When you are emotionally attached to your team’s performance, you were going to have a hard time assessing and evaluate what you need to in order to your team, back into momentum.
Kristen Boss (29:45):
Number five, you cannot force your team to care, but you can certainly influence them. If you are really defeated in your season of I’m going to call the river of misery, the valley of disappointment. Maybe you’ve been there for quite some time and maybe you keep telling yourself, I can’t make them show up. I can’t make them want this. I can’t force them to do the things. No, but you can certainly influence them. A leader is influential on and off their social media. So let me ask you this. While you were in this valley of disappointment, are you still showing up to team calls? Are you prioritizing them? Even if one person shows up, are you showing up? What’s your belief again, if you have all those unhelpful thoughts, I mentioned at the beginning of the episode, if you’re living in that your energy reflects that and your team is responding to your energy.
Kristen Boss (30:55):
Your team responds to your energy more than your words. They can feel the difference in how you show up. And lastly, keep the long-term in your sights. This is an infinite game. I was telling one of the teams I’m coaching that is fluid. And I see a lot of network marketers. They don’t have this fluid mentality about their business. It’s very first of month, end of month. So there’s the first of month. It’s like everyone naps the first to the 10th. And then they decide to wake up and they panic about the 15th. They hustle exhaust themselves to hit a month end goal. And then they’re tired again. But if you actually saw everything in your business fluid, there was no month. Beginning. There was no month end. And all of your efforts were always compounding. You’d be like some of my clients were ranking in the middle of the month without a push.
Kristen Boss (32:06):
You’d be hitting your goals with ease. Your team would be protected from burnout. There’d be less high and low emotional points in this game. It would feel way less like an emotional roller coaster. Think about that emotional high at the beginning of the month, all the possibility moving belief at the end of the month in a state of panic, trying to hit your goals has that the vicious cycle you’ve been in, embrace the process and realize your business is fluid. And it’s infinite. I had this one team that was, that was feeling really defeated with how they were working this before. And when I taught them how to think like this, that their business is fluid and infinite, it is amazing. The leader of the team just reported to me. She’s like, you’re not going to believe this it’s mid month. And I’ve already surpassed what I hit at the end of the month, last month. And no one on my team is freaking out because the team believes in fluid efforts, I feel like I’m giving you million dollar strategy right now.
Kristen Boss (33:18):
So again, if you are in that season, were you were in the valley of disappointment. It’s your thoughts. You have about attrition that are keeping you there. It’s your energy that has your team reflecting that back to you. All of it starts with your thoughts and from your thoughts, you take the right action that is aligned from a healthy energy. I tell people I’m like, you could be doing the things, but if your energy sucks, it doesn’t matter. I joke. It’s kind of like, it’s kind of like marriage, where if I were to tell my husband, Hey, can you, can you do this for me? And he kind of, he does it, but he’ll like stop his feet and be like, man, fine. Okay. Like, I don’t feel loved in that. Sure. He’s doing the thing by the way, this isn’t, my husband is like an amazing servant.
Kristen Boss (34:15):
He’s so good to beat, but I’m giving an example. If he was to stop his feet and throw an attitude and give me the side eye while he’s doing what I asked him to, you know, I’ll be like, well, I don’t feel loved in this moment. And he can say to me, well, I’m doing the things I feel loved and the energy behind how he does the things, your customers, your team responds exactly the same way. How many of you are in the robot mode of doing the things it’s like, you’re force feeding yourself or forced action. I call it robot action when you’re in checklist mode, but your energy is not there at all. Fix your thoughts and your actions follow all right, friends until next week. As always, if you are wanting to learn how to get out of your river of misery a lot faster, with more joy and embrace a fluid business and getting to your goals
Kristen Boss (35:20):
With more, ease, more joy, more purpose, better results. I might you inside the social selling challenge. We’ll see you there until next week. That wraps up episode. Hey, if you love today’s show, I would love for you to take a minute and give a rating with a review. If you desire to elevate the social selling industry, that means we need more people listening to this message so that they can know it can be done a different way. And if you’re ready to join me, it’s time for you to step into the social selling academy, where I give you all the tools, training, and support to help you realize your goals in the academy. You get weekly live coaching so that you are never lost or stuck in confusion. Whether you are new in the business or been in the industry for awhile. This is the premier coaching program for the modern network marketer. Go to www.thesocialsellingacademy.com to learn more.
