Last year, when I was eight and a half months pregnant, I built a 12-module sales course.

I started recording it even though I couldn’t breathe halfway through any sentence. I essentially went into labor while recording module four. Four months postpartum, I came back to those videos, watched ten minutes of myself, and scrapped the entire thing.

And instead, I hosted a workshop last week for The Jefa in Training Circle. It was important for me to debut this framework in that space because as one of our community members said last night “we are not taught how to sell, only to consume”. And that hit. And consumer habits run deep, which is why I also am developing a talk on Latine consumer trust for any brand that wants to tap into our community - the ethical and culturally relevant way.

But I digress.

I wanted to find a way to teach sales differently because I have never felt that the “traditional” coach/consultant sales tactics were for me. The constant emails from a coach you only hear from when they want to launch a new program. The 45-min fluff webinar with almost as much of the same time pitching to you to spend thousands of dollars and take a second mortgage on your house.

I sat with this for a year.

And what I kept coming back to is this: most sales advice fails people not because the advice is wrong, but because it skips the part that actually matters.

It skips the experience.

Sales is an experience, not a transaction.

I will die on this hill.

The sales call isn’t where sales happens. By the time someone is on a call with you, the sale has already been decided — or it hasn’t — by everything that came before. Their first impression of your Instagram. The way your newsletter made them feel. Whether the language on your services page made them think yes, that’s me in three seconds, or whether they bounced because they couldn’t tell who it was for.

The same feeling you want people to have when they’re working with you is the same feeling they should have at that very first interaction.

That realization is what TEK came from. Trust. Engage. Keep. Three stages, and a sales process that finally felt like mine. I hope it feels like yours too.

Trust

The buyer recognizes themselves in your offer in three seconds. If they can’t tell who it’s for, what transformation it delivers, and where it fits in their life — they’re not going to trust it. You have to create a safe space for them. They have to know their time, energy and funds are going to something that will add value to their life, not take away from it.

Most people think this is a content problem. I’m not posting enough. I’m not visible enough. I need to be on more platforms.

It’s almost never a content problem. It’s a clarity problem. And no amount of content fixes a clarity problem. It just buries it deeper.

Engage

Your Instagram following is not the same as your buyer personas. The people who like your posts are not always the people who will hire you, and that’s fine — but you need somewhere else for the people who will hire you to find you.

Build an owned audience. A newsletter. A membership. A recurring event series. Somewhere you have direct access to people without an algorithm in the way.

Rented land introduces. Owned land converts.

Keep

Once a client, always a client. Past clients are gold mines for referrals and re-engagement. Communities show up. Followings scroll past.

Build recurring formats — office hours, quarterly check-ins, referral systems — that give people a reason to come back. Not because you’re chasing them. Because you’ve made it easy for them to keep choosing you.

And the part most people miss: not yet doesn’t mean no. A lot of sales come from long leads — people who’ve been quietly reading your newsletter for two years and finally make the move because you stayed in their inbox.

If you delete everyone who’s said “not yet,” you’d have nobody.

Three questions to sit with this week

1. Can your buyer recognize themselves in your offer in three seconds?

2. If your most-used social platform disappeared tomorrow, would you still have direct contact with your people?

3. When somebody works with you once, do they have a clear path to work with you again — directly or through referrals?

If any of those is a no, that’s where the work is. Not in more content. Not in a new platform. In the part you’ve been avoiding because it requires you to get specific.

Want the full workshop?

Last week I taught all of this in a live workshop, and the clip above is just one piece of it.

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Going deeper: Sales Summer Camp

For those of you ready to spend four weeks actually applying TEK to your business — not just thinking about it — I’m running Sales Summer Camp this June.

Four Thursdays starting June 15, 4:00–5:30pm PT. Live sessions, workbook, WhatsApp access, group office hours, and a 1:1 voice note check-in with me during the sprint.

What you’ll walk away with: A sales process that feels like you. An offer your buyer recognizes themselves in within three seconds. An audience strategy that doesn’t depend on going viral. The confidence to talk about pricing without flinching. And a plan for keeping past clients in your orbit so they keep referring, keep buying, keep showing up.

Founding rate (first 5 applications): $397 public, $297 for Reframe Room subscribers. Standard rate kicks in May 16: $497 / $397.

Application-only. No direct checkout.

Apply Here

Until next time,

xx, Ashley

P.S. — An open invitation:

If you came to The Reframe through my work in the Latina entrepreneurship space, you might want to know that the Jefa in Training Circle has its own newsletter now — it’s called Entre Nosotras and it lives on Kit. Latina-only entrepreneurship resources, events, and insights specifically for the comunidad.

Subscribe to Entre Nosotras here.

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If you’re subscribed to both this and the Awesome Latinas Substack, you already know: Tuesday was pub day. My co-author Mirtle and I are still processing it, honestly. Two years, one pregnancy, and approximately one million late nights went into that book. And last night we were finally able to celebrate here in Portland at Annie Bloom’s Books. The Jefas PDX and ALPFA PDX community showed up along with so many allies, and what happened in that room was nothing short of magical. We talked about the women in the book, the fights they fought, the legacies they left. And we all walked out feeling exactly what I had hoped for: hopeful.

The takeaway that kept coming up, in conversation after conversation, was this: everyone can create impact. And one of the most powerful ways to do it is to share more of your story. Because uno nunca sabe (you never know) what can happen when you do.

That has always been my belief. And it started with my love for music.

Before I was a strategist or an author, I was a songwriter. And if you have ever heard a song that made you feel like the artist crawled inside your brain and wrote down exactly what you couldn’t say, you already understand what I’m talking about. That feeling of being truly seen is why we become ride-or-die fans. Not because someone did a trend or had the best production budget. Because they told the truth and it happened to be our truth too.

I’m a lyric girlie through and through. And I have learned through the years that somehow - business is not so different.

That’s what I brought to Jefa in Training, and to The Reframe, and to years of building content online. I haven’t grow trust by chasing trends. I’ve done it by keeping it real, sharing what’s worked in my business, what hasn’t, and everything in between. And slowly, consistently, the right people found me. Clients came in already trusting me, already feeling like they knew me. My story became the thing that differentiated my consultancy and helped me build a six-figure business.

And I don’t say this to brag. I say it because I know how many of you are sitting on stories you haven’t shared yet, waiting until you have more credentials, more followers, more confidence, more something. And I just want to lovingly tell you: that’s not how it works.

Don’t Wait For The Book

Last night I shared something vulnerable from my own journey. I told the room that last year, when I was pitching a memoir, a literary agent told me something that stopped me in my tracks: don’t wait for the book to start sharing your story. She pointed out that a video of you talking straight to camera on Instagram or TikTok will reach more people than most books ever do. Everyone nodded. A few people smiled like something had just clicked.

And that’s the thing about vulnerability. It’s not a weakness. - in fact, quite the opposite. When you share the real parts of your journey, people don’t think less of you. They trust you more. They feel seen. That is exactly how stories create impact.

Vulnerability is power. It makes people feel seen, and it makes people trust you.

I know it can feel like you don’t know where to start, or that your story isn’t “big” enough, or that someone else has already told it better. None of that is true. But I also know that no amount of me saying that will make the fear go away. The only thing that does is starting anyway.

So here’s where I’d begin: think about the experiences that have most shaped who you are. The ones that changed how you see the world. Then ask yourself why your perspective on this might be different from what someone else would say. That gap is your story. That’s where you start.

It doesn’t have to be a book. It can be a post, a video, a newsletter, a talk. The format is secondary. What matters is deciding that your story is worth telling.

Because here’s what last night reminded me: history is just stories. The women in The Book of Awesome Latinas didn’t just survive their moments in history. They made history. And they did it by refusing to be invisible. Our community is going through something hard right now. People are scared. Joy, visibility, and the reminder that we have always been here, that we have always fought and won, that’s not a small thing.

Your story is part of that legacy too. Uno nunca sabe who is waiting to hear it.

Are you sitting on a story you’re not sure what to do with? I’m building ways to help people use their stories as real business assets: thought leadership strategy, book proposals, and 1:1 sessions to figure out where to start. Hit reply and tell me where you are with it. I’m here to be your thought partner + guide on this journey.

Until next time,

xx

Ashley

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