350. Why You're Afraid to Sell — with Nikki Rausch
The Game On Girlfriend Podcast
Release Date: 09/15/2026
350. Why You're Afraid to Sell — with Nikki Rausch
The Game On Girlfriend Podcast
If you run a business, you have to know how to sell — and yet so many of us do this thing I call the mom voice the second it’s time to say a price out loud. Something like, “It’s $300,” in this careful, coaxing tone, like we’re convincing a kid to tie their shoes. Meanwhile we’re talking to a fully capable adult who actually wants to work with us. This week I’m joined by Nikki Rausch, a sales strategist, speaker, and the founder of Sales Maven. Nikki spent 17 years in corporate sales, mostly in a male-dominated, technology-driven world, before she started coaching women...
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349. Why Strength Training in Midlife Isn’t Optional — with Mary Ellen Loranger
The Game On Girlfriend Podcast
My guest this week had a childhood nickname: Muscles. She wasn't the smallest kid on the block, but she could always outrun the boys and knock a softball clean out of the park. Somewhere along the way, that name got buried — and stayed that way for decades. Mary Ellen Loranger is a 56-year-old entrepreneur, author, and wellness leader who’s spent the past eight years, alongside her husband Wayne, coaching thousands of women through nutrition, health, and lifestyle transformation. A former Ironman athlete, she’s spent the last few years building Midlife Strong®, a strength training and...
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348. The Mother Line: The Real Block to Receiving — with Sabine O’Laughlin
The Game On Girlfriend Podcast
My guest this week spent forty years studying death — first as a pathologist doing autopsies, later coaching people from inside her own pathology office. What she found in that work wasn't morbid. She found more life force in the morgue than she usually found walking around on an ordinary day, and that contradiction sent her looking for why. Sabine O'Laughlin calls what she found the mother line: the idea that everybody has one mother, whatever your relationship with her looks like, and that mother gave you exactly one thing — your life. Until you can accept that fully, Sabine says, you...
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347. Finding Your Fit as an Entrepreneur — with Lindsey Busfield
The Game On Girlfriend Podcast
Lindsey Busfield’s resume doesn’t look like it belongs to one person. Starbucks barista. English teacher. Auditor of Amish chicken barns. Now she’s the vice president of one of the country’s top legal marketing firms. None of it was the plan. For years, Lindsey figured she’d eventually run her own business, the same way her entrepreneurial parents had. Then a two-day aptitude test told her something different: she wasn’t built to be the visionary founder. She was built to be the expert, the organizer, the person who makes the pieces actually run. In this episode, Lindsey and I talk...
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346. Certainty Is a Skill (And You Can Learn It)
The Game On Girlfriend Podcast
Most of us think certainty means confidence — that bold, "everything always works out for me" kind of energy. It doesn't. Confidence is built on evidence: you earn it by looking back at what you've already proven. Certainty is different. It's a deep inner knowing you can access before you have any proof at all, and it's one of the most important skills for building a genuinely wealthy life — not just a life with more money in it, but one where you trust your next move even when you can't yet explain why. In this solo episode, I break down the real difference between certainty and...
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345. Joy as a Default Setting — with Roberta Ravella, Founder of The Joy Experiment
The Game On Girlfriend Podcast
Roberta Ravella spent 25 years in mortgage origination. She was good at it. She was also, by her own account, a classic case of burnout. She tried coaching. She tried marketing. She even opened an AI business with a friend. Two months in, something in her said no, and she couldn't push past it the way she used to. So she stopped. Her mentor sent her on a six-week break with one rule: shut it all off. What Roberta found on the other side of that break is what she now calls The Joy Experiment. This conversation is about what it took to get there, and what her mornings look like now that she's...
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344. Why You Struggle to Receive Money (Even When You're Good at Making It)
The Game On Girlfriend Podcast
Most of us don't actually have trouble making money. It's the keeping of it — the receiving of it — that's the problem. If you added up how much money has passed through your hands over your lifetime, the number would probably surprise you. It comes in, you manage it, you pay bills, and then it's "gone," so you never really see how much you're circulating. That's not a money-making problem. That's a receiving problem, and most women were never taught the skill. In this solo episode, I break down what receiving actually is, why we were never taught to do it, and how you can start practicing...
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343. Real Estate Investing One Step at a Time — with Abi Horton, Founder of Aros
The Game On Girlfriend Podcast
For years, Abi Horton believed real estate investing wasn't for her. Not enough money, not enough experience, not the right background. So she stayed on the sidelines and told herself it was something for later. Then things shifted, not through one big moment, but through a lot of small, unplanned ones. Voice acting taught her she was capable of running a business. That confidence opened a door she hadn't been looking for, and stepping through it eventually led to Aros, a real estate investment technology company built around mid-term rentals. Abi is candid about what that process actually...
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342. The Energy Drains for Women Entrepreneurs No One Warns You About
The Game On Girlfriend Podcast
Some days you do everything right, and by 3 p.m. you're still completely wiped out. That's not burnout from working too hard. It's the specific exhaustion of doing tasks that were never yours to carry in the first place. In this solo episode, I walk through the exact questions I ask my own clients when they tell me they should be further along by now, or that something feels harder for them than it looks for everyone else online. Grab a journal, because I want you to actually answer these questions as you listen. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN The exact question to ask when a task drains you,...
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341. How to Increase Your Capacity for Happiness — with Dr. Peggy DeLong, The Gratitude Psychologist™
The Game On Girlfriend Podcast
Most of us have been told, at some point or another, to just be happy. Just let it go. Just choose joy. And if you've tried that and found it completely unhelpful, you are in very good company. Dr. Peggy DeLong is back on the podcast for her third visit, and what she shares in this episode about how to increase your capacity for happiness is not what most people are teaching. It's not about ignoring what's hard. It's not about thinking positively until the feeling kicks in. And it has nothing to do with luck or your current circumstances. Peggy discovered the power of gratitude while sitting...
info_outlineIf you run a business, you have to know how to sell — and yet so many of us do this thing I call the mom voice the second it’s time to say a price out loud. Something like, “It’s $300,” in this careful, coaxing tone, like we’re convincing a kid to tie their shoes. Meanwhile we’re talking to a fully capable adult who actually wants to work with us.
This week I’m joined by Nikki Rausch, a sales strategist, speaker, and the founder of Sales Maven. Nikki spent 17 years in corporate sales, mostly in a male-dominated, technology-driven world, before she started coaching women entrepreneurs on exactly what she’d learned along the way. Now, with more than 25 years of sales experience and a background as a Master Certified Practitioner of Neuro-Linguistic Programming, she teaches service-based entrepreneurs how to have sales conversations that lead to yeses, without feeling pushy or fake.
Nikki and I get into why so many of us freeze up, get weird, or avoid the conversation altogether the moment sales comes up, and what actually shifts once you stop treating selling as something you do to a person and start treating it as something you do with them. I loved hearing her real client examples throughout this one, including a story about a client who pictured her ideal buyer as a polished, highly paid professional, while the people actually showing up to hire her were moms in hoodies with their hair in a bun — herself included. If you’ve ever felt weird about naming your price, or wondered why some sales conversations feel so much harder than others, this episode is for you.
WHAT YOU'LL LEARN:
- The one condition that has to be in place before you ever try to sell to someone, and why most people skip it entirely
- The two habits Nikki sees that quietly sabotage sales conversations, including one she calls “hallucinating” what the other person is thinking
- How a simple “softening phrase” makes it so much easier to ask the budget question everyone’s afraid to ask
- What a “rapport bank account” is, and why every early interaction is either a deposit or a withdrawal
- Nikki’s “cat calling versus dog calling” framework for creating curiosity without coming on too strong
- Why your first 10 seconds, and the next two minutes, decide whether someone trusts you, and what that means for how you show up
NIKKI’S GIFT TO YOU
As her gift to Girlfriends, Nikki is sharing her Sales Follow-Up Made Easy Guide — proven follow-up strategies, ready-to-use scripts, and techniques to build trust and stay top-of-mind with your leads, so you’re never stuck wondering what to say or when to send it. Get it → https://yoursalesmaven.com/easyfollowup
CONNECT WITH NIKKI RAUSCH:
- Website: https://www.yoursalesmaven.com
- Podcast: Sales Maven Podcast — https://www.yoursalesmaven.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/your_sales_maven/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/yoursalesmaven/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikkirausch/
ABOUT NIKKI RAUSCH
Nikki Rausch is a sales strategist, speaker, and founder of Sales Maven. With more than 25 years of sales experience and over a decade as a business owner, she teaches service-based entrepreneurs how to have confident sales conversations that lead to yeses, without feeling pushy or fake.
As a Master Certified Practitioner of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), Nikki focuses on the language and communication behind selling. Her approach is rooted in building rapport, recognizing buying signals, and guiding conversations in a way that feels natural for both you and the client.
She is the author of three books, including The Selling Staircase, and host of the Sales Maven Podcast, ranked in the top 1% globally.
Through her coaching, programs, and speaking, Nikki supports women entrepreneurs in turning sales into a skill they can rely on, so they can grow their business with clarity and confidence.
READY TO STOP GUESSING IN YOUR SALES CONVERSATIONS?
This episode might have you thinking about where you’ve been going quiet in your own sales conversations, or where you’ve been guessing instead of asking. If so, let’s talk about it. As my gift to Girlfriends, I offer a 30-minute discovery call. We’ll talk about where you are right now and what might be getting in the way.
Book here: https://app.acuityscheduling.com/schedule.php?owner=13047670&appointmentType=2244195
FREE GIFT FROM SARAH
Get Sarah's Freedom Calculator and discover how much your business needs to make to finally be free. Download at https://sarahwalton.com/freedom
LEARN FROM SARAH
Explore Sarah's online courses and free resources to start building your business with confidence.
- Online Courses: https://sarahwalton.com/online-courses
- Free Resources: https://sarahwalton.com/free-resources
CONNECT WITH SARAH:
- Website: https://sarahwalton.com/podcast
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheSarahWalton
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/thesarahwalton
ABOUT SARAH WALTON
Sarah Walton is a wealth consciousness coach, strategic advisor, podcast host, and mentor who helps women entrepreneurs build businesses they love.
Her mission is simple: to put more money in the hands of more women.
She's the creator of the Abundance Academy, The Art of Receiving, and the Game On Girlfriend® podcast.
Sarah teaches authentic, heart-centered business strategies because when women have more financial power, they don't just keep it — they use it to take care of their families, support their communities, and build something bigger than themselves.
RELATED GAME ON GIRLFRIEND® EPISODES YOU'LL LOVE:
- Episode 211: 3 Easy Tips for Your Sales Conversations, with Jamie Gulino Davis — Jamie’s tips on building rapport and asking better questions in a sales conversation are the tactical follow-up to the “with” versus “to” framework Nikki lays out in this episode — https://sarahwalton.com/sales-conversations/
- Episode 336: How to Sell Without Feeling Slimy — Sales Tools That Actually Work — This solo episode on using sales tools ethically, supporting people who already want what you’re offering instead of pushing reluctant prospects, is the same “with, not to” distinction Nikki draws in this episode — https://sarahwalton.com/how-to-sell-without-feeling-slimy/
- Episode 216: How I Made $1 Million in a Year, with Kendall SummerHawk — Kendall’s own journey through fear and tears around money is the deeper dive into the complicated relationship with money that Nikki and I talk about in this episode — https://sarahwalton.com/make-one-million-a-year/
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