God Forbid I Sound Salesy
Nothing has meaning until you decide what it means. So why did you decide this word was a sin?
I paused on this a few days ago.
Salesy.
What does that word even mean?
When we hear someone say, “I don’t want to sound salesy,” it could mean a hundred different things. And yet we rarely stop to ask.
Through old lenses, through someone else’s experience, through beliefs we picked up somewhere, we decide what a thing is and we never check whether that decision is helping us or hurting us.
Because the charge was never in the thing. Sales, money, marketing — they all hold neutral energy.
The charge is in us.
And we sit so close to our own judgment that it stops looking like a judgment at all. It starts looking like reality.
But nothing has any meaning until you decide what it means.
You assign the meaning. And then that meaning becomes true for you, true enough to silently run behind the decisions you make in business, and true enough to shrink your life…
Whether or not it’s actually truth.
So the question was never “is it true?”
The real question: is it helping me? Is this belief contributing to building the life and the business that I actually want? Or is it quietly keeping me small in the name of so-called integrity?
Just notice the incoherence:
“I don’t want to sound like I’m selling… but I want to make the sale and get paid for it.”
Read it again.
You want the fruit and you’re at war with the tree. You want to receive, and you’ve made the giving wrong.
So let’s go back to the word. The origin of the word “sell” is to give.
That’s the original meaning before all the charge, before the eye-rolling, before “salesy,” it simply meant to give, to hand over, to offer. So if we rise above our opinion for one second, salesy isn’t a sin, isn’t bad, Salesy is just… eager to give.
I’d call it givy, just for fun :)
So maybe you won’t have a problem with sales if you change what sales means to you. What if sales is the most honorable act towards making a service available to someone who needs it?
And what if asking for money in exchange for that service was the most honorable act of allowing someone to pay for something they truly need and show their appreciation? Giving and receiving at its best.
Change the meaning you are assigning changes everything.
And forget about what others will think. Their opinion is their own movie, their own story, and so often doesn’t have any relationship to you at all.
Again, we need to pause here and ask are we going to allow other people’s beliefs to limit us from serving from our heart and sharing something that is truly important to us?
Why would you do that? I am sure this is not what your essence is guiding you towards.
I am becoming unapologetically salesy. In fact, I probably don’t sell nearly enough because I love what I’ve built, a business that feels good on the inside and that keeps feeding a life I am excited to live, and I want to help more and more people to do exactly that.
Why on earth would I not offer you that if that’s the help you need?
But I wasn’t always feeling this way.
I had a very strong negative opinion about marketing. I thought it was forceful, fake, and beneath me. I wanted my business to grow without it, purely on essence and good energy.
And then I hired a coach because my way wasn’t working, and I saw the truth: How I was operating wasn’t from integrity.
I was operating from my ego. I wanted the top of the mountain without walking up it. I wanted the result without doing the work. My opinion about sales and marketing was more important than my relationship with service.
I had watched people sell in ways that didn’t land for me, and instead of saying “that’s not my way,” I said “that’s the wrong way.” I judged these people as pushy, fake, and inauthentic.
I judged them from the top of my tower.
I wasn’t doing anything myself to move myself beyond my limitations, and I was judging the ones who were putting themselves out there, likely in the best way they knew how from their level of understanding. And in my judgement, I was making their actions so wrong in my head, that I didn’t want to be seen as looking or sounding anything like them. But on the inside? I was definitely desiring their results.
The one doing the judgement, standing in fear of being judged. Hmm …
But, in reality, who am I to cast judgement on others like that?
I don’t have the ability t see inside anyone’s internal landscape. I don’t know if they’re honest. I don’t know if they’re aching to help with every bone in their body.
I don’t know their heart. My condemnation told me nothing about them.
It only told me about me. And it was the wall I was hiding behind. “I’m not like those salesy people” was a very comfortable cage I built.
So let me say it softly, and then let me say it straight.
If someone out there decides you’re “salesy” and recoils, then that’s a scene in their personal movie.
It’s playing out on the screen in their head, not yours. And the only question that matters is: does living inside their opinion help me to offer up my gifts?
You already know it doesn’t.
Does avoiding sounding “salesy” help your financial situation? I invite you to reconsider and redefine the meaning that sales holds for you. Start showing up like someone who is eager to give, to serve, and to love unapologetically.
Almost with an obsession for it.
You can feel this in the body, by the way. That contraction right before you make an offer ,or the avoidance of writing the email altogether. Yeah - that one inviting people to discover what you do that you’ve been holding off on for three months.
Simply Notice it.
Then ask these questions directly: is this keeping me safe, keeping me small? Is this helping me to find more clients? to help more people? expand my life experience?
You don’t have to sell like anyone else. In fact, please don’t. Instead, do you.
But you do have to find your own way without apology, with clarity, in truth, to say: this is what I have to give, and this is what it’s worth.
Right now, someone has the exact problem you know how to solve, and they cannot find you. Because you decided you shouldn’t talk directly about your services, an that somehow people should just magically discover you on their own.
It feels so much safer to you in this moment, and its costing the people you care about everything.
So take the opinion that you hold - “I don’t want to be salesy” - and turn it back inward, where the real answers live.
Is it true? You can’t even know until you allow yourself to go there. What if there is a future version of your experience where “sales” feel naturals, with the same level of joy and satisfaction that you currently feel when you are helping someone.
Can you entertain this possibility?
If a belief is blocking your ability to give, it is not humility. It’s ego protection. And now you get to choose what you’re loyal to: the judgment, or the gift.
Then write the email. Make the offer. Say the price out loud.
Go Give.
And if you need help building your business from your heart, if you want to monetize something you hold close, then that’s exactly how we help. Phil and I help you with the structure, the order of operations, the foundation, everything that’s helpful to have in place if you want to get real results when you start sharing your message on Substack or social media.
We help you with your fears and your resistance. We help you build confidence and reconnect with the inner guidance that’s probably already telling you: go ask for help.
You don’t have to do this alone. If you need what we can offer you, we’re here.
With love,
Carolina
This essay was originally published on sacredbusiness.com on June 16, 2026. You can find the canonical version, along with related essays on sacred business and nervous system work, there.