Raising Your Business: For Moms Growing Their Business and Raising Their Family

112. Creating Sales Momentum After a Hard Season

• Yael Bendahan

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You don't need perfect conditions to make sales. You just need the right plan.

Easier said than done, I know. But hear me out.

Six weeks ago I was 27 weeks pregnant and coming off a long season of pulling way back on selling. And I decided it was time to get back into motion — not because everything was calm and perfect, but because I know something about sales that took me years to learn.

This episode is that thing.

I'm breaking down the three "marketing crops" I use to think about my sales ecosystem — herbs, vegetables, and trees — and sharing the real mindset shifts that got me back into selling momentum after a hard season. This framework works whether you have 10 hours a week or two. Whether it's summer, a holiday, a hard week, or all three at once.

If you've been telling yourself you'll sell more when things calm down... this one's for you.

In this episode:

  • The 3 types of marketing activities and which one to start with when you need cash NOW
  • Why motivation doesn't come before action (and what actually does)
  • The value of accountability in sales even if you technically KNOW what to do
  • The "conviction reset" I do every morning before I start working
  • What my client did on the last day of her launch that got her 10 sales — all from personal conversations
  • Why summer is actually the best time to plant (not pause)

Resources + Links Mentioned:

LINKS
📈The CEO MOMS Growth Matrix - feeling stuck or plateaued at your current revenue? Snag your custom roadmap for sustainable growth from $0 to multi-6-figures in this FREE training! >>> yaelbendahan.com/matrix

🔥Join my FREE 3-Day Program, LEVERAGE - the process that’s creating multi 6 figure years working nap times and being a full time mama of 6. Claim your spot here >>> https://yaelbendahan.com/leveragepod

💰Offers in Your Pocket - 11 Offers You Can Pull Out of Your Pocket and Sell This Week! Only $9 - yaelbendahan.com/pocketoffers

💃 Apply for the CEO Mom Mastermind if you're ready to scale sustainably to $15-20K+ months. Read more about the mastermind here OR go straight to the application here.
Want to chat about the mastermind before you join? DM me on Instagram - instagram.com/theyaelbendahan

Speaker 4

Sales do not require perfect conditions. They require the right plan for the conditions that you actually have, and that is what this episode is about.

Speaker 3

Welcome to the Raising Your Business podcast. I'm your host, Yael Bendahan, founder of CEO Mom Academy, mom of six, and lifelong reading addict. This podcast is here to empower moms to run their businesses and lives like the powerhouse CEO they are. I want you to believe that you can have the business success you desire and be present with your family, and to give you my best tips and strategies for how to make that happen. I'll be sharing the honest reality of balancing business and motherhood, biz models that work for you, marketing simplicity, and the mindset of a CEO mom. Now, let's dive in.

Speaker 4

Hello. Welcome back to the podcast, and this is brought to you by Vacation Yael, or almost about to go on vacation. My husband Izzy and I are going away later today for just a few days just to an Airbnb to just spend some quiet, restful time together, which, I, I remember like back in the day being like, "Oh, we gotta go places where there's stuff to do and activities and things to visit." And now we're just like, "We would just like some peace and quiet and restaurant food." That's literally all we want. So I'm really excited for this 'cause I'm gonna do the baby in about six and a half weeks, which is kinda nuts, and I really wanted to go away before we, before I start feeling really gigantic and hippopotamus-like and just unable to move. So that is what we are doing. The parents are kindly taking all of our children, which is really nice of them. And this week has actually been insane because I'm actually recording this late. I was planning on recording yesterday but it's Tuesday as I record this. On Sunday night, I ended up going with my husband to the emergency room. He thought there was something wrong with his eyes, and it was like a whole situation. Thank God it ended up not being an emergency. But until we figured that out, it was already 4:30 in the morning. We basically didn't sleep the whole night. I drove home, slept for an hour, and then had to turn around, get my kids off to school, and go back to Jerusalem to bring my son to an eye doctor appointment. It was like a whole situation. We apparently have something with eyes in our family. And it was so exhausting. Obviously, I was... it was Monday. I was completely, I was g- I was just, I was a mess. I was like a zombie and ended up just passing out. Like I, I couldn't get anything done, couldn't really think, couldn't work, and just ended up passing out early on the couch and sleeping the whole night. So I am much more rested today. But it was one of those things that was just like, thank God, I have, mostly a h- a very healthy family. And then when everything happens at once, it can feel very overwhelming. And I obviously, as a three, more than 33-week pregnant woman, I'm just really not up to skipping an entire night of sleep. So clearly it was not ideal. Either way I meant to record this yesterday, but I literally could not string two coherent words together. And as I've been looking back at the past few months or the year, past couple, two and a half years really, right? I'm 33 plus weeks pregnant. I have six children. We've been in and out of war in this country for two and a half years. And I took a really long season away from actively selling the way I used to, right? Everyone knew me as like the consistent seller. I was showing up. I was visible. I was the visibility queen. And and I just-- I ran out of the energy and the emotional, mental energy to do this. And about six weeks ago, I was like, "Okay, war, no war." We had a little break in between wars. There was a ceasefire with Iran here, and I was like, "I gotta get back into motion," And not because conditions were perfect, because they were not, and not because I felt like, I'm so ready and confident and amazing. I did not feel confident and amazing and ready. But because I know something about sales that took me years to learn, and I want to give it to you today as a gift. All right? Sales do not require perfect conditions. They require the right plan for the conditions that you actually have, and that is what this episode is about. So A very common misconception that we have about timing, especially as CEO moms, is we'll tell ourselves that we'll sell more when things calm down, when the kids are back in school, when the launch is perfect, when we have more time, when summer is over, when summer starts, when it's not the holidays, when nobody's sick. But here is what I know after seven summers in business, I think this is my eighth summer in business, three babies almost, and one very long war. The moms who make the most money are not the ones who wait for the perfect time. They're the ones who build a plan that fits the time that they actually have. I had a $110,000 year in 2020, which almost matched the amount of money I'd made the year before in 2019. It was almost-- It was about the same. I was pregnant. I had my four kids home all day from March onwards because of COVID. I worked seven months out of the 12 of the year because between COVID and the baby and Passover and things I did not work the whole year. I did not have a complicated funnel. I had one clear offer. I had an angle that made people want to buy now, and I showed up and had real conversations, and that was what I was committed to, okay? The plan matters more than the conditions. If you can set yourself up for something that works for you... And at the time, what was working for me was, because I had four small children who all went to bed by eight o'clock latest, I would show up for a s- for a Facebook Live every week in my Facebook group. I used that to grow my group. I promoted outside of my group. I promoted to my email list. I promoted on my Facebook profile and and I sold. I sold. I sold my face off, and it was-- Tho-those Facebook Lives were so valuable, and I've actually gone back now and I've been pulling out the gems as throwback podcast episodes for the summer that I'm gonna be dropping in here that they're so good and they're still relevant to what is now. So obviously, some of them might not be relevant 'cause some things maybe are not working anymore. They're not as popular, not as common, not as effective with AI. But But a lot of them are still totally valid, and that's how-- like they were amazing. They were fantastic. And that was what worked for me in that season. Now, in this season with children who are teenagers down to toddlers, and, I'm basically on for the majority of the day, right? The because I have my t- my teenagers who go to sleep like after I do, and they want my attention at night. And and I have my babies, who need... My baby, who-- gonna have my babies, who need my attention during the day. My, my toddler's only in, he's in day... He's in playgroup for like about until one thirty, and then that's it. A-and just a lot of life admin to do. 'Cause the older your kids get and the more kids you have, the more just logistics you have to manage, right? And since I'm the one who is home and I am the primary parent, which I'm fine with, right? This is my role, and I embrace it, 'cause this is all I wanted was just to be a full-time mom, But my husband works outside the home, and so I am the primary administrator, right? Who manages the appointments and therapy and studying with my son for his matriculation exams. Or letting him just teach me everything he's learning, so I can be like, "Oh, wow. And have him, and have him like, that, that's how he learns best. So my conditions now are different than the conditions then, and I've had to adjust and update and fix. And I've been combing through my funnels. I've actually rebuilding my funnels because I moved to Kit. So it's actually a really great opportunity to only recreate the funnels that I, I feel speak to where my business is now and what makes sense for me now. But that's what I'm working on. I'm working on the stuff, like the things that make sense for where I am now. I decided that I had to get back into the habit of selling. Like I discussed this in the past, right? The habit of selling is like the habit of working out where, you could be out of practice and out of shape, so to speak, and you have to get back into it. And at first it feels awkward and you're like, "Oh my God, I should know this. I know what to do. I know the I know the exercise to do, my body won't cooperate." That's where I, that's for me, it's more the mind, right? Your mind might not cooperate because you are not in that mental sales momentum, right? Which is fine, but you can always choose to get back into the momentum. So I wanted to talk about, number one, the three crops that I call them the three marketing crops or the marketing kind of ecosystem that I think I, that I think of in terms of my business. And then I wanna share a few mindsets that I had around sales in the past month as I've been doing this, as I've been showing up more consistently and selling my face off. And even this past week I couldn't do it as much. We had a holiday and things were going on, which is fine, but as long as I have something I can go back to and pick up where I left off, that's all that matters, right? So let's talk about the three the, I call the three crops, like the marketing ecosystem which I compare to planting, First we have the herbs, And but I always talk about this idea of planting seeds, right? Like even if you're planting seeds, some of them take longer to sprout than others, but they all eventually sprout and as long as you continue consistently planting the seeds, you will have consistent crops, right? So what I call the herbs are those fast immi- immediate sort of plant and harvest in a few weeks sort of activities. These are your personal conversations, your DMs, your direct outreach to warm leads, the people who are already in your world who just need a personal nudge because you can see they're interested in your offer, Now these sales/marketing herbs are uncomfortable for most people because they feel salesy And people don't like to feel salesy. They don't wanna feel naggy. They don't wanna feel annoying. But here's what I discovered when I got back into motion about six weeks ago. The people you think have forgotten about you have not, The people you think would never be interested, some of them raise their hand first. You genuinely do not know until you reach out. And I have some money maps that I'm finishing up today. I had three different people book money map audits with me in the same week, all independently, all wanting help scaling their memberships, which I thought was so interesting, and I thought was I'm like, wow, like memberships seem to be like a thing now, right? And I never would've known that was their problem if I hadn't started these conversations. I'm like, okay, this is interesting. This is an interesting angle to take. I love these money maps. I love doing these money maps because it enables me to see where people are at right now in their business, what they're really focusing on, what their goals are. And the herbs are like the ones that like you can plant, and they are... they're the fast, they're the fast turnaround, right? This is if you need a cash injection, right? If you need you need you need money now in your pocket in the next few weeks, you need the next, your next one to two, one to three clients, right? You wanna start with the herbs, right? Who is already in your orbit that you can reach out to and connect with and collaborate with and whatever. Like those, that to me is that's gonna be like your primary sort of like money-making activities, those needle movers that really can happen much faster than planning a launch or doing something longer, Then you have your vegetable-- I say, you can say your vegetables, you can say your wheat, your crops, right? That's gonna be the consistent, the consistent stuff that has a medium timeline, and you're gonna be planting consistently, These are your social platforms and your emails, That's like planting a field of grain, right? You're taking time to nurture your people, you're planting. It's not gonna be a quick turnaround. It might take a season. It might take a few months. But over time, those seeds are gonna sprout into a beautiful, bountiful crop. It is not as fast as herbs, but it's the kind of food that's gonna be that, that bread and butter of the business, that consistent selling, right? Putting yourself out there. That content you put out consistently keeps warm, leads warm, and it builds trust over weeks and months, right? You wanna make sure that your email list is being consistently nurtured. You're putting out social media content if you do social media. And the keyword is consistently, right? Not perfectly, not brilliantly, consistently, When I got back into showing up face to camera after years I had not shown up face to camera in literally years. I was not feeling good about myself and I just wasn't feeling very great about showing up in general because of the political climate here in the world towards Jewish people online. I was just kind of-- I really pulled back a lot, and I know that and I'm not proud of it, but I know why I did it. And it was uncomfortable, and it felt freaky, and it felt like I had stage fright. But by day four or five, it started feeling natural again, all right? And people started responding. They're like, "Oh my God, this is so good." And here's what I want you to understand about these vegetables, right? Yeah these crops these fields of wheat. Your audience is watching. E-even if they're not necessarily engaging, they are still watching. They are reading your emails even when they don't reply. Every single time you show up, you're making a deposit in their trust bank, so to speak, and trust is what makes people buy over time. This stuff compounds over time. Now, do you need to be consistent in term, oh, like I show up on social media all the time, every day, every second? No. But I do I love this kind of creating a habit of showing up and telling my stories daily, and it was great for me, right? I'm gonna share why I did it and how and what I use to really give myself that kick in the butt in a minute. But That trust is what you build to get people to be like, "Okay, yeah, like I, I trust her to show up and I trust her to show up for me." Then there are the trees, right? These are the longer timeline stuff. Now, again if you're planting a tree, let's say you're not planting a tree from scratch, maybe you're planting a sapling, And so you... That might already be giving fruit, but it's probably not giving a lot of fruit, right? It might make sales right away, it might not make sales right away. These are your podcasts, your YouTube, your summits, your evergreen sequences, the things you build once that keep paying you. The, what I call the anchor content, your blogs, right? Every time you pr- you, you plant that tree or you plant that sapling, and every time you prove pro- prove, prune and fertilize and improve adds more longevity to the tree, and then you have something that continues to bear fruit year after year without having to keep planting more and more, right? When we planted our trees in our garden, it was like a lemon tree. We we planted we planted two lemon trees and a couple, and then an orange tree and a clementine tree, and now we have a lime tree. Our lime tree gave two limes last year, right? This year it's gonna be blooming more, right? And next year it's gonna be blooming even more. And very, my podcast episodes from two years ago still get downloaded every week. In fact, I just saw on my Buzzsprout like on my podcast stats that last week my podcast got 100 and s- oh my God, what was it? 139 downloads. And these things that people listen to were not were not new podcast episodes, They were simply like they were like episodes that were back from like my my, what was it? Gosh, my, all the way down to, all the way down to the beginning of my podcast, right? There's someone that had come into my world and found my podcast episodes and started binging, which is really cool, right? And so the podcast episodes that from two years ago still got downloaded, right? That is a tree that I planted in 2022 that is still bearing fruit today. And a lot of people give up on trees and feel like, "Oh my God, what was the point?" Because they don't see immediate fruit. But that is like planting an oak in spring and complaining in the summer that it's not providing shade. The trees may not pay you this month, they might. Depends. Depends how established the tree is. Depends how old the tree is when you plant it. Maybe if you're planting it from an acorn, it's gonna take a lot longer than if you plant it from a sapling. But these are the kind of things that pay you for years, all right? And right, the best time to plant a tree was two years ago, 10 years ago, but the next second best time is today, right? So same thing goes with this kind of stuff. So have at least one sort of long form search-based content. I recommend if you can, YouTube or a podcast because it helps you connect with your audience better and you can turn those into blogs very easily. I just find that your voice, your face tend to just connect with people. I I have a client, I have a money client right now who's making between 13 to 21K a month strictly with traffic from YouTube. Okay? Just YouTube. And it's a B... She's a B2C business owner, meaning she's not selling to businesses, she's selling to homeschooling moms. All right? So I personally feel that makes the most sense as far as an anchor piece of content for moms. As a mom, I found podcasting to be the simplest 'cause it's, it doesn't require me to show up with my face, and sometimes I just wanna be able to record a podcast episode and not have to show my face. But have something that is a long form piece of content that you can, number one, repurpose into smaller pieces of content to use as your crops, right? In social platforms, your emails, things like that. But also it enables you to kind of plant those seeds that will keep giving over and over again, year after year, month after month. So here are a few mindset shifts and things that I've learned about getting back into motion after a quiet season or a full season or a hard season, right? So knowing the framework of sa- sales and marketing is not enough. You have to actually move. You have to take action. So here, the first thing is external accountability really helps. All right? I joined two different sales challenges this month in May. One pushed me into more personal outreach, and one pushed me into showing up publicly every day. Both of them mattered. Neither alone, I feel like, would've been enough. I needed that push to show up with my face on stories and those prompts and the journaling and like taking the action every day and the daily sales. Can I do daily sales all the time? No, I'm having a baby in six plus weeks. I don't think I'll be doing daily showing up on stories every single day selling. That's totally fine. But building that habit again also re-inspired me to think about what I was selling and how, and the thing I was selling and it just, I really enjoyed that process So the fact is that motivation does not come before action, it comes after. You take the action to create motivation, and the more you show up, the more that momentum compounds over time. The second thing I learned is that you really need a conviction reset constantly, And in the mornings when I wake up like before I get started working, I say to myself, I'm like, "You have..." I will hype myself up. I'm like, "Here's what you've done. Here's the results your clients have had. Someone's gonna find me today, and it's gonna be the best decision they ever made." Not because it's magical, but because it sets the energy from which everything else flows, right? If you are selling from certainty, you're gonna sell much better than if you're selling from scarcity. So that conviction reset makes a huge difference, right? And if you feel like... and I actually discussed this in my in my journal in my journaling audio, which I spoke about in my CEO Mom Diaries. I'll link it over here. And I talk about like my c- my, my journaling my journaling process like the reframe process and And and doing that journaling in the morning, even if it's just quick or it's just visualization or it's look- even looking at my previous journaling and saying, here are the beliefs that are not serving me. How can I reframe those into beliefs that do serve me?" Makes a huge difference, So I highly recommend getting back into journaling. It's made such a difference for me, and it's been like, it's been life-changing, honestly. And I've had so... I've had people raising their hands. I've had so many sales conversations. I've had people buying money maps, so many I'm, I can barely keep up, And and I have to like, I have to put people on a wait list almost like to get their money map delivered because because it's just been so great, which is exciting. But I re- I really enjoy it. I love digging in people's businesses and just see what's going on in there and how we can optimize and make it better and make it... and create a plan that works. It's so much fun. And the last kind of mindset shift that I had, which it's not a mindset shift as much as something I already knew, but maybe it's a mindset shift for you, is you have to stop waiting for people just to come to you, It is 2026. AI is everywhere. People are used to automated this and automated that and automated messages and even automated voices, You can literally automate your voice with AI using Descript. I know this 'cause Descript has a robot voice. If I give it something to say, it will say it in my voice, but it's not going to have my emotion. It's not gonna have my intonation. My client, Catherine we, which we discussed in a previous episode she tracked who was clicking her sales page, who was raising their hand for her sales page, and sent every single one of them a personal voice note in Instagram DMs asking what their biggest sticking points were, and she made 10 sales on the final day of her launch, all from those conversations. In 2026, I really feel strongly that the personal touch is not optional. It is the strategy. Yes, we need more eyeballs because conversions are lower because people are paying less attention, for sure. Per- that personal touch is everything. It makes such a difference, And now here's why this is es- especially important right now in May, end of May Summer is coming. Now, that does not sound as ominous as winter is coming, but to moms it might. CEO moms it definitely might, because most mom entrepreneurs are about to do one of two things. They're either going to grind their way through it, burning themselves out, trying to maintain a pace that does not fit their season, or they're gonna go quiet and convince themselves that nobody buys in summer and just check out for three months. And both those things are a trap, and I do not think either of those things is necessary. The ones who make money in summer are the ones planting the right crops in May, So your herbs, right? Who can you reach out to personally this week? Your vegetables. What is your consistent content plan that you can actually maintain with your kids home? The trees. What system can you set up now that runs in the background all summer? Evergreen funnels pre-loaded podcast episodes. That is your summer sales plan. You are planting the right things in the right ecosystem. You're tending them consistently in a way that is very low-key, and you will harvest all summer and fall and winter, So here's what I want you to take away from this episode. You do not need perfect conditions to make sales. You need the right plan for the conditions that you actually have, and you need to be willing to start before you feel ready, Pick one herb today, one personal conversation, one DM to somebody you've been meaning to reach out to. That's th-the best way to start, That is it. That is how momentum starts, with one outreach and a follow-up, 'cause you should follow up, right? That is how momentum starts. And if you want me to help you figure out exactly what your herbs, your crops, your trees are for the summer, specifically what offer to lead with, which summer angle makes it absolutely irresistible right now, and what system set up so your sales can compound while you're living your summer life, that is the Summer Sales Intensive. I have a couple of spots left. You will leave this intensive with your offer positioned for the clients who are ready to buy right now, your summer sales strategy all mapped o-out around your real capacity, and your fall sales ready to execute the moment September hits. That is my goal for you in the Summer Sales Intensive. All right? So I hope you enjoyed this. I'm really excited about this episode. I think it was important. I think it was something that I, it was... I was like I have to share this. I have to share this." When I feel like I have to share this, it turns into a podcast episode. I just feel like I really... and I was like, "I don't know if I'm gonna create sales, or maybe I've lost it," whatever it is. Maybe I just don't have what it takes anymore. Maybe I just ran out of get up and go, right? But I, that's not true, right? Because the question is, literally the question is, are you willing to commit to showing up and start showing up and letting that momentum compound from the action, not waiting for momentum to happen and then going into action? That is the most important thing. That is the most important thing. So I hope you enjoyed this episode. DM me at Summer Instagram if you want to check out the Summer Sales Intensive. I will link it below. And if you want just a quick little dip into your business, you want me to have a look at your business and at your sales ecosystem before investing in the Intensive, you can grab a money map. It is now $97, but seriously totally worth it. I cannot emphasize how much it is worth it. And if you choose to invest in the Intensive within a couple of weeks, then you will apply that towards the Intensive. So if you want a money map first and then a deeper dive with the Intensive, then by all means go for it. But honestly, there are only a couple of spots left, so I would jump on this if you feel like this is the right thing for you. So have a wonderful rest of your day and I'll see you next week

Speaker 2

I can't thank you enough for listening to Raising Your Business. I hope this episode has inspired you to take another step towards building a business and life that you love and growing your income in a way that works for you and your family. If you enjoyed this episode, please take a second to rate and review, and let's connect on Instagram. Screenshot and share it on Instagram stories so we can get the word out to more mom business owners like you. Tag me at theyaelbendahan and share your biggest breakthrough from today. See you next week.