You Don’t Need More Proof—You Need to Choose Yourself with samantha Kaye Harris

May 13

EPISODE: 46

The longer you’re in business, the more you realize—this isn’t just about strategy.

It’s about how you see yourself.

In this episode, I sit down with Samantha Kaye Harris, Workforce Retention and Confidence Strategist, to unpack what’s really happening beneath the surface for so many female founders and business owners. We get into the conditioning that keeps us second-guessing, waiting for validation, and holding back from fully owning our value—and how that shows up directly in our sales conversations and business growth.

Samantha shares her Brag Bag™ Strategy and TRUTH Method™ as practical tools to help you move from self-doubt to self-trust, so you can communicate your value clearly, confidently, and without hesitation.

In this episode, we cover:

Why “waiting to be chosen” is keeping you stuck in your business
How lack of confidence shows up in your sales process (and costs you opportunities)
The Brag Bag™ Strategy and how to use it to articulate your value
What it means to stand in your truth—and how that changes how you sell
The direct connection between clarity, confidence, and revenue

LISTEN TO THE EPISODE HERE 👇🏻

Samantha Kaye Harris: [00:00:00] Being able to stand in your truth means you have to treasure who you are. We haven't been taught that. We've been taught to make everyone else the treasure. And if they're treasuring us, then we get to treasure ourself. But I say treasure yourself first by getting to know you and allowing yourself to be seen and heard.
Because when we are understanding ourselves, we hold ourselves differently.
Tam Smith: Welcome to Sales as Service, the podcast designed to help you change your mind about sales, literally. I'm gonna help you change the way you think about selling. I'm Tam Smith, your host, sales bestie, and pitch partner next door. If you're tired of bros with biceps telling you how to crush a million dollars in your sleep or battling imposter syndrome on your own, you've come to the right place.
All you need to do is listen, then take action. No gym membership required. Let's get started.
Hey, Tam here. Most consultants and service-based founders are great at delivery. Referrals [00:01:00] prove it, but referrals aren't predictable. And you've avoided sales because you think you have to be something you're not. But sales isn't pressure or cringey tactics. It's connection, starting conversations, recognizing when you can actually help someone.
The hard part? Doing it consistently. That's why I built the VIP Lead Gen Pipeline system. It gives you a repeatable way to book three to five sales qualified meetings each week through relationship first outreach, not cold pitching. Ready to create opportunities on purpose? Book a free alignment call at studio349.com.
Sales is a practice. Let's make it consistent. The longer I'm in business, the more passionate I become about advocating for and championing my fellow female founders. Because being in business for yourself is already challenging enough. But when you layer on years, generations of conditioning, the fear, the second guessing, the need for approval, the habit of waiting to be chosen, it impacts how we show up, not just in our business, but in how we sell, how we communicate our value, how we decide whether or not we're, [00:02:00] quote-unquote, ready.
Hey there, Tam here, and welcome back to Sales as Service. Today's conversation really challenged me because regardless of how far I've come, I'm still guilty of chasing external validation and working to prove myself. And here's what I keep coming back to. The world is always ready to tell us what we're not.
It's up to us to decide and declare who we are, because if we don't establish our value, someone else will, and chances are they'll undervalue it. Today's guest is someone who has lived this work firsthand. Samantha K. Harris is a workforce retention and confidence strategist with over 25 years of experience leading in male-dominated industries, where she saw firsthand what happens when capable, qualified women slowly start shrinking, second-guessing, silencing themselves, and waiting for permission that never comes.
Now, she helps women rebuild that confidence, use their voice, and get paid for the impact they bring through her brag bag strategy, her truth method, and her book, Your Truth Changes Everything. And in this conversation, we're getting into what it [00:03:00] actually looks like to stop trying to be chosen and choose yourself instead.
Here's our conversation. Samantha K., thank you so much for joining me on Sales as Service. I'm so glad you're here. Thank you for having me. I'm so excited
Samantha Kaye Harris: to be here. I've been waiting for this for a few months, 'cause, for our schedules to align. Uh,
Tam Smith: yes. And they finally did, and this is gonna be such a great conversation.
Yes, yes, yes. I'm excited. Tell us, in your words,
Samantha Kaye Harris: who do you help and how do you serve? I help women step into their power, own who they are, show up for themselves, build unshakable self-trust, who work in male-dominated industries if they are working on a job site, if they're working as a entrepreneur, if they're working in corporate.
But I focus mainly on women, on who work on job sites every single day.
Tam Smith: And I always love hearing people's, I have to say, origin story. Like, w- what was your path to focusing on this work?
Samantha Kaye Harris: Well, I worked on, I worked in the trades for the past [00:04:00] 27-plus years. Plus is just plus, like, two or three months. And during that time, I faced a lot of challenges.
I worked with men, being the first woman, the only Black woman, and it was a difference from being in the office setting where I am now and being in the trades. The microaggressions I faced was people talking over me, doubting my abilities, telling me, "Huh, honey, just sit there and look pretty." And then I had the extreme other side, where men was like, "Hey, you wanna be here?
Then you have to lift the heavy equipment. You have to show me that you can actually do the job." And as I moved and I grew in the company and I grew in my position, I saw other women starting to come in now. I saw them facing the same challenges, but the difference is they had me. They had me to have the conversations, me to say, "It's going to be okay.
You don't have to be small. You don't [00:05:00] have to agree. They're not going to do anything to cause you to lose your job. You can still stand up." So that's what brought me to where I am today and who I serve.
Tam Smith: You say, and this, this has resonated so deeply with me, "Stop trying to be chosen and choose yourself instead."
What does that... Talk, talk a little about what that means, and what does that actually look like for a
Samantha Kaye Harris: founder
Tam Smith: and business
Samantha Kaye Harris: owner in practice? Meaning that you look within first. You're not looking around for everyone to validate you, stand up before you. You get to stand up for yourself. You get to depend on you.
You get to believe in you. You get to trust what you bring is enough without everyone saying, "Good job. You're an amazing human." You already know it, so you get to choose you before you choose anyone else, and it's okay, because we as women have been taught to let everyone choose us. That's what the patriarchal system has tell us and/or we're not [00:06:00] good women if we don't.
So I tell women it's okay to say, "I'm first, I'm foremost, and I get to show up just as I am."
Tam Smith: So good. Where do you see female founders and business owners, like, still trying to, quote-unquote, "earn the right to be in the room"? Where are some of the most obvious places that still shows up?
Samantha Kaye Harris: When we are walking in-- Honestly, when we're, as entrepreneurs, as women, when we're trying to do something outside of other women, we're s- going in to prove what we have is the right thing, to shove and to fight for it.
I start, I say move in rhythm of. We no longer have to continuously prove ourselves to show that we belong there. We can just show up, bring our knowledge, our competency, and our qualifying factors that we are there and we belong. We still show up to show people that we mean this, that, "Hey, look at me. I've done enough.
I've seen enough, so you c- you can choose me." I'm the exception to the rule [00:07:00] sometime, and I don't think we do it purposely, but it does happen unconsciously because no matter how m- we look at it, twist it, or turn it, entrepreneurs is male-dominated. That's another male-dominated field that no one really looks at because we spend so much time as women together as entrepreneurs.
So, but when you look at the scope of work and you look at your area of expertise, unless it's something women just dominate, entrepreneurs are men. That's true. Still
Tam Smith: the case. You know, I've, I talked to so many, you know, outrageously talented female founders and business owners, you know, that have years of experience, level of expertise, and there's still, you know, for all of our, you know, challenges and struggles in business, a lot of it, if you peel back all the layers, it, it kind of boils down to just, like, that lack of confidence.
What are some of the, like, real business consequences of that?
Samantha Kaye Harris: That's one of the things I help women do, is build that brag bag. I talk about it all the time. It helps women to build their confidence and [00:08:00] understand that they bring value to every job. If I can help them see that they are qualified by having them list their achievements, list their accolades, knowing what they have actually done, it's not as hard for them to walk into a room and say, "I belong here," because they already have it listed.
We forget about it. We forget what we bring, and if we quantify it, meaning look at all the statistics behind what we have done and achieved, that validates us more than anything. So that right there is our self-love, our self-confidence, our self-worth, our self-value. When we're able to look at it completely, not through the eyes of other people, but through the eyes of ourselves.
When we look at it as, "Hey, this is list is of all my accomplishments, and I did all of this, and how has it served the people I work [00:09:00] with? How has it served the companies I work with? What did they achieve because of the work that I've done?" Now, we're not looking for them to tell us. We show up automatically knowing that we're supposed to be in the rooms.
We're supposed to get paid the big, the bucks. We're supposed to just be able to stand flat-footed, grounded, rooted in our confidence- That we belong there
Tam Smith: Talk a little bit about your brag bag strategy. Like, what, what is that specifically?
Samantha Kaye Harris: Brag bags teaches you not to have to be resilient because you're able to build on what you have, and you, you are anchored in yourself, and you're confident.
Now your nervous system isn't all over the place thinking, "Oh my goodness, what if I can't achieve it? What if I'm not able to?" You don't even have to be aggressive. You can be assertive. You can still show up without trying to push. Like I said before, we're moving in rhythm of with a brag bag. It gives us the [00:10:00] confidence that we need to move without upsetting our nervous system and looking for validation.
Tam Smith: How can folks listening create a brag bag of their own? Is it, is it simply just kinda sitting down to write a list of your accomplishments, or how do you walk your clients through that?
Samantha Kaye Harris: When my clients work with me, I use human design also, because understanding who we are and how we're made up, that helps us figure out how we want to create the brag bag.
And is it a list of accomplishment? Yes, it is. But understanding why we don't list these, why we don't pay attention enough to ourselves is part of building the brag bag. And when we build our brag bag, we're not just looking at areas of our careers. We're looking at four different areas of our lives: personal, social, and emotional, so that we can actually tap into each thing that you're creating for yourself, each area of [00:11:00] expertise, not thing, but each area of expertise, and then build on that.
And once we're able to build and understand why we don't, it's easier for to step into what's the next thing we wanna do and how we wanna conquer any thoughts that keep us from showing up fully as ourselves.
Tam Smith: Why, why do you think so many female founders and business owners struggle to articulate their own value, even when they are great at what they do?
Samantha Kaye Harris: It's conditioning. The system has conditioned all of us. The world has conditioned us. The patriarchist system has defined us forever, and we have unconsciously bought into exactly what they needed us to during that time. And for us to explore anything outside of what our norms are is scary. Yeah. Fear keeps us from showing up.
Fear keeps us stuck. It keeps us moving. We're, "No, I can't stay here. I'm going to do something else," instead of speaking up, instead of [00:12:00] using your voice, instead of stepping boldly into whatever area of expertise you want. You wanna be unshakable. Mm-hmm. You wanna be unapologetic. You wanna be unique. Mm-hmm.
But to be unique means that you stand out Mm-hmm It means that you have to walk different, look different, and allow yourself to be seen. So who actually wants that unless they do the work on themselves? Because, oh, what if... You know, men have defined us for years what a beautiful woman looks like, what a smart woman does, what a good mother is, what a good wife is, girlfriend, best friend.
They've never even had a best friend that was a woman. Many are men, but they tell us what is and what isn't. So us figuring out that we get to do something absolutely different than what has been despi- defined is the scariest thing for some women. That's why this work is so important every single day.
Absolutely. [00:13:00]
Tam Smith: If your pipeline feels inconsistent, it's usually the sign of an outreach gap. I created a free tool called the New Client Calculator to help you see exactly what it takes to land your next client. How many messages? How many conversations? How many follow-ups? No guessing, just clarity. If you've ever wondered, "Am I doing enough or just not doing the right things?"
This will show you. Head to studio349.com to download the New Client Calculator and find out just how close your next client really is. All right, let's get back to the episode. Talk to me a little bit about your truth method.
Samantha Kaye Harris: Ooh, I love my truth method. My truth my truth is what builds my brag bags.
Being able to stand in your truth means you have to treasure who you are And again, we don't. We haven't been taught that. We've been taught to make everyone else the treasure, and if they're treasuring us, then we get to treasure ourself. But I say treasure yourself first by getting to know you and allowing yourself to be [00:14:00] seen and heard, to have an opinion all of your own, to understand, to get to the root of, to the core of whatever is going on that's not allowing you to understand you.
Because when we are understanding ourselves, we hold ourselves differently. We allow ourselves to be seen. We allow ourselves to be worth the thing that we were born with from the very beginning. We don't make our worth someone loving us, the jobs that we have, the people that we serve. We make our worth just who we are, and we know the value of what we bring when we stand in our truth, and that allows us to be bold, to be strong, you know, and to ask for what we want, even if it's the money, the positions.
That's what we do.
Tam Smith: Do you have a success story that comes to mind of someone you've worked with? You know, not necessarily... You don't need to name anybody, but just kinda talking about the, the transformative power of this work [00:15:00] and the impact that it had on, the impact that it's had on, on
Samantha Kaye Harris: lives. Yes. I had a...
It's not many women who do certain things as far in the boxing arena. So she came to me. She was looking to advance in her career, but she was holding herself back. She wasn't stepping fully into it because she was worried about being everything to everyone outside of her career. She was married. She had children.
Well, not even a baby, but a teenager, 16 years old, but she was still wanting to be everything because if not, everyone, her sisters, her nieces, everyone was going to judge her. But she was judging herself before she even stepped out. She was the one judging herself. She recognized that through understanding her brag bag, understanding that why she wasn't speaking up, getting to the root of why.
That why is so important, 'cause we can list them all day, but if we're not understanding the why behind why we're doing what we're [00:16:00] doing and why we aren't, that slows down the process. So as her and I worked together, and she was able to build her brag bag every week that we worked together a little bit more, she felt a little more confident.
She trusted herself a little bit more every single day because now she could actually see it. She could taste that stepping out and then making calendars, making other people accountable for themselves. When she learned to stand up for herself, to use her voice to speak and ask for what she want, and to say it without feeling bad about wanting something, now she could help them become accountable.
She held them to keep up with themselves. And she still loved them, and they still felt that love from her. But now she was able to actually teach them as well as she learned. Pour into you and we come back together and we're growing as a family. And not only did [00:17:00] she achieve her goal for the state of New Jersey, she achieved her goal for the state of Delaware.
She achieved her s- goal for Pennsylvania, and she's still growing because this is a path that she wanted, that she had put on hold because she didn't want people to think of her anything else but as a good wife, a good mother. But was she being good to herself?
Tam Smith: I think the thing I struggle with is that I've been searching for that external validation, you know, for someone else to decide that I have value and that I'm worth it, that I don't get the same gratification from me that I do when it comes from someone else.
Does that make sense?
Samantha Kaye Harris: I get it completely, and it's funny, I have a, a business owner, she struggled with the same thing, looking for everyone else, and she felt she had to be in charge of everything to make sure it was perfect so everyone else knew that the work that she was doing, that her company was ru- running well, so she wanted to [00:18:00] control it all.
Yeah. Being able to control it doesn't mean that everything has to be perfect, and everyone looking at us does not have to think that we are perfect. We get to decide what's perfect. We get to d- look at ourselves and say, "Hey, I'm enough. My business is enough." That validation that we get from other people, why do we need it so much?
And her understanding that she needed it to say that she was good because that was what she was used to knowing and needing your entire life. As we grow up, we look for that from children. Like, "Hey, see me, I did a good job. I, I, I was able to color in the lines. What do I get?" You know, you- Right ... from that good job.
But why isn't good enough enough just from ourselves? It's because we've been conditioned.
Tam Smith: Yes. I was think- thinking about the t- tension between, like, again, we've been conditioned that to be grateful for what's offered versus actually [00:19:00] asking for what we all want. And, like, it's not a... Like, both can be true.
You know, we can be grateful and we can still want more, and that doesn't make us... You know, I think as women, like, we're, we are, you know, just taught that we're just supposed to be grateful for what someone's willing to give us versus asking for the opportunity and asking for what we really want. How do you encourage women to ask
Samantha Kaye Harris: for the opportunity and ask for what they want?
By telling them and telling them to ask themselves, "What do you want?" That's the first thing. We gotta figure out what we want, 'cause a lot of times we don't know We get to looking around and we see everything. We know it's something missing. We have that deep desire for more. But to honestly figure it out and to say, "Yep, this is what I want.
This is how I wanna show up." And then figuring out why you are not showing up. Because we attach ourselves to what we're supposed to look like, what we're supposed to be, how we're supposed to look, [00:20:00] what jobs we're supposed to have. And even when we figure out, no, I don't have to do that, now it's time for what steps is it going to take to get me to that next level?
Is it going to be me asking for it? Is it going to be me just taking full credit for what I own and what I know? For me, it was me owning who I was. It was me owning the positions that I had and not looking for the validation from anyone else. That's the key. When we stop looking for the validation, and that's what I teach clients, not to look for validation from anyone, because as long as we're looking for it, we're going to be disappointed.
Because it's not anyone else's responsibility to validate us, to tell us, "Good job. You're a good girl. You're an amazing woman." It's you to know who you are. And in knowing who you are, that's part of that truth method, knowing who you are, that itself puts you in a different category [00:21:00] from most because now you're moving for you.
You're moving for what you want, what you believe in, how you wanna show up. You're trusting that everything inside of you is enough. Your abilities that you know that you have, your capabilities that you know that you have because of this brag bag that you built is enough. And if they see it or not, you know you can stand in that.
You know that you can put your feet grounded on flat ground. You can put your feet flat down and stand in that. And it's my entire career, I did not always move like that. I waited. I waited for someone to say, "Good job, Samantha. You're amazing." But when I turned it around and I allowed myself to stand up for me, meaning you're not gonna do and say anything that you want to me, I'm going to be able to list to you what I do and how I show up no matter what you think.
I'm not trusting that you know better than me because I know that I'm qualified. That's when life changed for me because I wasn't waiting and that's why I teach women that every day. [00:22:00] You don't have to wait. We've been told to wait our turn. It's going to happen someday. Someday is the day that you choose to do it, regardless if it's in that job or in this business that you have, if it's in a corner office or if it's on a job site.
You get to walk in it, own it, believe it before it's actually happening. And if no one else validates you, so what? Validate yourself and that's in just your knowing of you. That's the key. And I recently received from, 'cause I retired In 15 days. So I just recently received the Martin Luther King Leadership Award Congratulations Thank you.
From the company that I've worked for for 32 years, and I wasn't expecting it because I didn't see anyone. No one was saying, "Good job." So for me to receive it, it landed different, it felt different because I was just showing up trusting me. I was standing up every day, standing in my truth, speaking up.
That's when the wins happen, when we're not looking [00:23:00] around, like who peeking around the corner looking at me? Am I still cute? Um, am I still showing up? You know, am I still, hair still in place? I've had s- a client that said to me, "Well, Samantha, what if I'm not dressed appropriately and the guys think..." Who cares?
When we start showing up for what we know to be our truth, what makes us feel good, that's when we show up differently. That's when we switch and change the world from the world telling us who to be to becoming who we choose to be.
Tam Smith: I love that. If someone takes, I mean, that may be it, but if someone takes one thing from this conversation, what do you hope it is?
Samantha Kaye Harris: I hope that they understand that they can stand in their truth, that they trust themselves more than they trust anyone or anything around them. And I know sometimes that it's challenging when you don't know who you are, but when you do, trust that more than anything else. It will carry you when you don't think you can carry on anymore.
Tam Smith: Well, we're gonna jump into our fast five. Your I can't live without it software or app. I can't live without Voxer. Best advice you've ever [00:24:00] received about sales and business development.
Samantha Kaye Harris: To go out for what I want. That means going out, being in the DMs, having conversations.
Tam Smith: Morning routine must-have. Right now,
Samantha Kaye Harris: it's changing every month, and right now I'm doing meditation every single month, every single morning before I get into my business every day to set my tone, set my mind, and it's working.
I feel more in tune with my business than ever before. Your walk-on song, the one song that always pumps you up. Oh my goodness. I made a song in Juno, that new thing. So I made my own song. If you got time, yeah, it's, it's amazing. It's talking about the power of women and how we show up and how we stand up.
So it's my own song that I wrote the lyrics for, but they kinda put the music to it. But yes, it's for every woman who's ever been in a place where they were not wanted, we get to show up. And if you only had
Tam Smith: one hour each day for business growth, how would you spend it? Networking. Yep. [00:25:00] Relationship, relationship, relationship.
Building them every day. You have a new book coming out. It may be out by the time this is
Samantha Kaye Harris: published. Tell us a little bit about that. Yes, yes, yes. My new book, Your Truth Changes Everything, is for women to step boldly, to speak, to own who they are so they can be strong enough no matter what. It has some of my frameworks in it.
It allows you to see how you showed up when you were younger, how it allowed you to show up now, and how we shift and change, and we own who we are. So I invite every woman If you're ready to own who you are and love on yourself more so that you can just self-heal, self-love, self-respect, self-trust more than anything, get Your Truth Changes Things.
Tam Smith: Yeah. Well, where can people find and connect with
Samantha Kaye Harris: you online? Oh my goodness. You can find me at, on LinkedIn at Samantha K. Harris. The K is spelled out, K-A-Y-E, or at www.theskhsolutions.com. And you can find me on Instagram as samanthakofficial. Thanks again so much [00:26:00] for being here. Thank you for having me.
I'm so glad we did this. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you so much, Samantha. I tell you,
Tam Smith: this was one of those conversations I'm still sitting with and will continue to sit with. And I think the message here is this. You don't need more proof. You don't need more validation. And you definitely don't need to wait for someone else to decide you're ready.
You get to choose yourself. Because the way you see yourself shows up in every part of your business, in your messaging, in your pricing, in your sales conversations, and in the opportunities you either go after or you talk yourself out of. And when you're clear on your value, when you trust what you bring to the table, everything gets easier.
Not effortless, but clearer, more direct, more confident, and that's what people respond to. And that brings me to this week's Sales as Service challenge. I want you to build your first version of a brag bag. Set a timer for 15 minutes and write down five problems you've solved for [00:27:00] clients, five results or outcomes you've helped create, and five reasons someone chooses to work with you.
Write it down. Print it out. Post it where you can see it. Add it to the notes app on your phone for those moments when you need a reminder of just how capable and accomplished you are. And if this episode resonated with you, I'd love to hear from you. Send me a message, share what came up, or tell me what you're putting into action this week.
And if you know another female founder who needs to hear this, someone who's been doing the work but still holding back, send this episode their way. And I'll see you right back here next week on Sales as Service.
You've just listened to the Sales as Service podcast, the podcast to help you shift your mindset around selling. If you liked what you heard, be sure to hit subscribe and share it with a friend, because we're all about more sales awesome and less sales awkward. See you next
episode.

✦ YOUR SALES AS SERVICE CHALLENGE

Build your first version of a Brag Bag.

Set a timer for 15 minutes and write down:

5 problems you’ve solved for clients
5 results or outcomes you’ve helped create
5 reasons someone chooses to work with you

Write it down, print it out, post it where you can see it. Add it to the notes app on your phone for the moments when you need a reminder of just how capable and accomplished you are.

RESOURCES & LINKS

Learn more about Samantha Kaye Harris
Connect with Samantha on LinkedIn and Instagram
Your next client - calculate what it takes
Simply sales with the VIP Power Hour - download the FREE guide
Learn how to consistently book 3–5 sales-qualified meetings each week -book an Alignment Call

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