From Pinball to Empowered Entrepreneur: Taking Charge of Your Life and Business

That whole I want to look like I did when I was 20. It's something that I've been going through lately as age and injuries and health are now preventing me from doing the things I used to do easily to get in shape and be in shape and stay in shape and feel good about myself. So obsessing over that I didn't have the ability to do those things anymore was not helping.

Right.

I wasn't feeling better about anything. And I say the same thing in my business. If what I'm trying to do only makes me feel like garbage, let's find a different way to do it.

Today's guest has some surprise tips in store for you. In less than two years, Erin went from referring to herself as the world's number one pinball. All of that pinging all over the place and barely making 10,000 to making multiple six figures in her business and having fun doing it. Erin talks about conquering your business. She's a Chicago business consulting specialist that offers a unique approach that enables you to triple your business in just a few months.

She'll bring you into an entirely new.

Way of succeeding in business through her workshops and training programs, giving you the foundations of success in a that's unique to you and immediately actionable. As we moved through this conversation and I was learning more about what Erin was doing and said and her journey, I thought, okay, there is someone listening and there is me, so myself. And maybe you might be curious about how to go from 10,000 from zero to six figures and then multiple six figures in your business. Maybe you are going from zero in your business. Maybe you are Going from zero with a new product line. But Aaron's got some ideas about how to go about that and how to accelerate your path to getting some ROI return on your investment. Whether that's an investment of your money or your time or your energy, this conversation with Aaron is special and I can't wait to hear what you think of it. Definitely let me know in the reviews, wherever you are listening, in the comments or on instagram @amber McHugh. Can't wait to see what you think. Here comes Erin.

Hey, Erin. Hello. Hello. So excited to hit record and keep going here, right?

Yeah, I know. So pumped to dive into our conversation and I have a question for you as we kick this off. You describe yourself as the world's number one pinball. I got to know what is this all about?

No, I used to describe myself big bit. This was the mistake. This was one of the mistakes. There's no singular mistake Here. This was one of the mistakes. As I left corporate and moved into my own business, I realized I was being the world's number one pinball. Meaning I was just bouncing thing to thing to thing to thing to thing. Like, right, just get me some points here and don't fall into the hole that is just looming below you.

Right.

Like, that's what I realized was the big mistake, that whole I call it reaction mode. Like, now that I can look back on it and I'm so careful not to fall back into it, because I think it's the default. Truthfully, I don't think people are doing anything wrong or being bad or being dumb or being whatever. I think it's our default because of neuroscience, because of humans being humans. And I literally. I said this to somebody the other day. I wore my ability to handle chaos like a badge of honor.

Yeah.

So I was proud of being the number one pinball before I realized that's the problem, not the thing to be excited about. So good.

I love that you're bringing up the neuroscience and our programming and our wiring. And the other thing that comes to mind is how media and social media have retrained us to show up everywhere, all the time. Whenever there's a ding. It's like we're walking through a living video game getting ping pulled everywhere.

And maybe that. You know, that's so funny that you say walking through a living video again, because I think I have a few years on you, so it kind of just ages me that I claim to be the pinball, not the whatever. Yeah. That's what I grew up playing was pinball.

I love it. Oh, yeah, I know. I remember playing some pinball. Oh, yeah. That's so fun.

Yeah, it is. We have. And it's. I catch myself. I have to catch myself because. So for me, I use social media for my business. It took me a while to embrace it because I didn't grow up with it. It's not. It wasn't how I was trained to interact in this world. In fact, I laugh. I was a professional juvenile delinquent in the 70s and 80s, so I spent a very long time. I spent the first 20 some odd years of my life making sure nobody knew what I was doing. So it was very weird to me when that whole thing became a thing. And you should let everyone know everything you're doing. But TikTok for me is where I play. I don't use it for business. And the algorithm is very, very aware of what I'm interested in. Baby goats Right. Mini cows that have nothing to do with my business. But what I found myself is I can't believe how much time can pass so fast. And you're just going, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, and all of a sudden you're late for something because you thought you were only there for three minutes. It's just reprogramming how our brains work and what we're used to and what we consider normal. And I'm all about the mini cows and the baby goats, but I gotta, you know, put it down. Right.

I love it. The cows and goats. My. I don't actually. I'm not on TikTok enough to have the algorithm working for me, but on Instagram, mine, if you open mine or you go to my Explore page, it's home design. I'm in that season of exploring.

Yeah.

And I don't really use Instagram a lot, so that's so funny that I've jumped that generation. So, I mean, think about, okay, so I'm 53 years old, so I know Facebook. I've jumped over Instagram, evidently, and reverted all the way down to TikTok. So I don't know what that says about me. I love it.

Well, you talk about this idea of being in charge and not living life by default. Can you explain this a bit?

Not living life by default, not living life in reaction mode. And being in charge. Like, the most important thing I tell people right up front is that doesn't mean in charge of anyone else.

Yeah.

You don't need to be in charge of other people. That will make you crazy, by the way, because they're not going to do what you want them to do. But it's this idea of being in charge of yourself. And it's my version of personal responsibility. And. But beyond personal responsibility to empowerment, because when you're in charge of yourself, what does that do? One of the things I've learned through experiences that have been told to me, the way I grew up, working in fields with families, with aging parents, working in all sorts of different industries, most people, they don't make the decisions for themselves. They don't choose to be in charge. It's much easier to blame somebody else.

Right.

When things don't work. But the problem with that approach is if you don't make the decisions for you, people who are not vested in you end up getting to make those decisions. It doesn't make those people wrong or bad. They can be doctors, they can be lawyers, they can be the government, whoever it is that just takes care of things will end up making your decisions for you if you don't make them for the, for yourself. In a business, in the business world, if you are not in charge of your business and if you're sitting back waiting, right, Waiting to receive what's just handed to you instead of stepping forward and making something happen, then you're basically living on leftovers, right? You're living on whatever somebody else decides to throw your way and we don't.

Right.

And I will eat the leftovers, but exactly right.

My whole life to look like. Yeah, that's good.

Like you're living on the throwaway from somebody else. You're living on somebody else being in charge of what it is you get to have what it is you get to experience. And this is not about having everything. It's not about making the most money. It's not about doing the most things. It's about choosing whatever is right for you. Period. Hard stop.

Right?

Choose it. So if you want a million dollar business, that's great. If you don't want a million dollar business and what you want is a hobby business, that's also great. As long as you've decided that that's what you want and didn't end up with it settling because you chose not to be in charge of your world.

I, this is, this is playing through my mind and I'm thinking through seasons of my life where I made decisions and then they were the right decisions and I was fully in charge and I was living by design. Then life, it's going like this, it's happening, things are moving and it's like the snowball effect. Right. Just start collecting and you. Oh, okay, okay. Yeah, throw that in. Yep. And then pause. And this year I have themed the year of the shift. A friend of mine joked and she's.

Like, oh, oh, shift. Oh, right. That is how that feels.

Yeah. Because this is very much what it feels like sometimes. Oh boy. But you know, we asked for these things. I asked for this because I'm ready for it. It's very uncomfortable, but I identified that. Okay, I'm ready to make some changes and reset my intentions. And so do you think that we go through these seasons then?

Yeah, I mean, I laugh. I'll give you a non business example. We bought a house about seven months ago. We have an acre and a half wooded lot in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. The trees aren't green yet, so I can see some of my neighbors. In another week or so, I won't even be able to see their houses. And I love it. It's exactly what I wanted. There were times in my life when a high rise apartment was what I wanted. There was times in my life when a nicely put together townhouse in a subdivision of townhouses was. I couldn't even imagine having, let alone getting right. So we iterate, we change, we age, we.

Right.

Life happens. But you said something that, to me is the key to it, where you reset. And I think where it falls apart for people is where they stay in reaction mode instead of setting. I call it setting my stage.

Yeah.

Doing it not just once a year, but am I living intentionally moving myself in the direction I said I wanted to be? Because what I've noticed is the default when we don't do that is always the things we don't want. Like, if I don't intentionally eat well, I eat garbage. If I don't intentionally go to the gym, I sit on the couch. Right? Like, why is the default the thing we don't want?

Right.

If I don't intentionally step into the next iteration of the thing that I consciously know I want, even if it scares me, the default is to retreat.

How do you catch yourself when you're in. Right. The snowball's going. What are signs to watch for? Like, whoa, wait, you're building, you know, right, Here we go. Yeah. We are not intentional right now. How do you catch yourself?

I think I catch myself now by having a series of questions that I ask myself every day. Not waiting, not waiting. So I catch myself by trying my best to stay ahead of it. So I have my goals, right? And I hate the word goals because it's just personal preference. I don't think there's inherently a problem with it. But to me, and this is, you can't tell by zoom, but I'm five feet tall, I am not a large person. And yeah, I've been a competitive power lifter since I was 19 years old. So a goal, like a personal record in my brain, is something that's hard to achieve and an anomaly. So it's hard to achieve and you don't stay there. So I don't like goals because then I give myself this definition that the thing I'm trying to do is hard to get to and an anomaly, not a new level.

Right.

So I just call it things I'm making happen. Things I'm creating. Yes, I want to do this, like whatever is off the top of my head. But I figure that out, and then every single day I set my stage with those things and they become a litmus test for me, These are the 5, 6 things, 3 things, however many you can handle at any given time that I'm working on creating intentionally in my life. Did I do this yesterday? Did I. Am I doing this today? Look at my calendar. This week. Is what's on my calendar moving me towards it or away from it? And if it's away from it, okay, sometimes that happens. But let's make sure next week. You know, let's make sure that's a week, not a month and a month, not a year. Because, you know, there's external things that happen in our lives with families and with. With just natural disasters lately. You know, things that happen that move us away from moving towards what we want to create. But the best way to catch yourself is to prevent it.

Mm.

By setting, you know, and set yourself up for that success. Instead of waiting till you're right. It's kind of like, what's the number on the scale that you're not allowed to move beyond?

Right.

Yeah.

Oh. You know, though, sometimes my body just doesn't listen. It's like, oh, what's happening? Where did this come from? Okay, I don't know.

And it's the age thing. Wait, that gets more interesting as we get older. How did I get here? But again, it's about being proact, Right? How does that make me feel? What do I. And I guess that's a really good point. Like, what do I really want?

Yeah.

Do I want to look like I was when I was 20? Sure. Can I have that? No. So what is it that I really want? And having what I call, like the hardest conversation you can have is an honest conversation with yourself.

Yeah.

What do I actually want that I can achieve? And then what am I doing?

And you tied in. I can achieve to it. So as you're thinking through, do you go through, like a process where, like, oh, this is. I don't know if I can achieve that or not. Or, oh, I know. How do you balance the. The knowing and the unknown?

If the thing that you're trying to achieve, that's. This one is. Gets a little more woo. I guess now that I've learned these terms, if the thing you're trying to achieve has an uplifting, I call mine buzzy roller coaster feeling to it, then that's my growth edge. And yes, we should move in that direction. Even if I don't see how it's attainable right now. If the thing you're trying to achieve is heavy on your shoulders and weighs you down, then that's Coming from a place of fear, desperation, negative. And that's something that's holding you back.

So good.

That's that honest conversation with yourself.

Right?

Yeah.

And.

And really listening and feeling going sort of the embodiment of. All right, how does this feel? Which is why it's part of our weekly reflection process. How do I feel?

How does all this feel?

Because that's giving you.

I mean, and to use that as a. That whole. I want to look like I did when I was 20. It's something that I've been going through lately as age and injuries and health are now preventing me from doing the things I used to do easily to get in shape and be in shape and stay in shape and feel good about myself. So obsessing over that I didn't have the ability to do those things anymore was not helping.

Right.

I wasn't feeling better about anything. And I say the same thing in my business. If what I'm trying to do only makes me feel like garbage, let's find a different way to do it.

Yeah.

It doesn't have to feel like garbage.

No.

Good.

I refuse. What did I say? I refuse to bang my head against. I refuse to do the bang my head against the wall way of doing business.

Okay. So. And actually I wanted to transition there a little bit because you built, you went from right pinball to not making.

A lot of money to thousand dollars.

To being multi six figure business.

It was.

Tell us about that.

So a couple of things happened and what I, you know, I tease and I laugh and I'm very blunt in general and direct. And I call that Aaron's year of failure. When I went from a very good corporate level job with the expense account in the whole nine yards to a franchise that I had own owned, which is, you know, easily half a million dollars a year. I had 15 employees, like big. We were in the top 10 out of 200 offices. I'd gotten there in what, like 18 months. And then when I left those structured situations. Yeah, when I left those structured situations to create what I now have the year that someone very generously said, well, it was just a transition year. I call it Aaron's year of failure. Like, nothing worked. Nothing worked. And I went from all that to like making $11,000.

And.

Now looking at it through the kinder eyes of a year of transition, what I was really doing was figuring out where was my space, what was my way of approaching it, how did I want to talk about it. And it I didn't give myself because I was so Used to being that pinball. I didn't give myself the time and space and opportunity I needed to really get everything together where it needed to be in order to be successful. The horrible truth that we have to come to grips with. I say a lot of things that I work with a lot of former C suite level executives who now have their own businesses. And the horrible, horrible truth, because it was my story as well is you leave, leave corporate. I had accolades and promotions and raises and bonuses and yay, Aaron. And you think you're so wonderful and then what you realize is you were wonderful on a very narrow path that somebody else created somebody else laid out. Yeah, right. Was all you did was. All I did was follow the path. And I had a lot of leeway, but let's face it, I had a lot of support too.

Yeah.

And so it happened. Once the bumpers are out of my gutters, once I was completely on my own, it got crazy. I just felt like I couldn't get it together. And in truth, what I did and then how I went into multiple six figures. Literally went from 11,018 months later over the six figure mark. Not even six 12 months later. It wasn't a year of failure, it was finding my spot. And I just happened to do the work without a net. So you don't have to do it that way.

Right.

I am not intend to do things a little drastically, but I just did that work in real time instead of in preparation time. And the big change for me, especially coming out of corporate, coming out of a franchise which is effectively a structure, was not understanding that even though I knew what to do, how much my thinking played into it, how much how I thought about the business, how much I thought about what was possible for me, how much I would, how much that mindset piece was going to play a role. Because in corporate you, you're kind of automatically in reaction mode and it works just fine. Yeah, but the entrepreneur world is the opposite. It's completely right. It's completely opposite. Okay.

You're in reactive mode. It works fine in corporate. Why doesn't that work in the entrepreneurial space?

Because you don't have the time to wait. You don't have the time to wait. You know, corporate is completely risk adverse. You do so much work to make sure that by the day you go to market with whatever product you have, all risk has been removed from the process. The entrepreneurial world is completely different. So I tell people it's not just about making, being able to take the risks. It's about automating the risks. So when you pass out from fear, it still happens. Right.

I love it.

Best to let someone else press the button, right?

Exactly.

Yes. Get out of your own way. Even if that means literally let someone else press go. Yeah. Perfectly fine. I say it's your business, not your mother. You just need it to work. You don't need closure. Right.

Oh, good.

Make it work. So the flexibility, the fluidity, the ability to repositioning in the entrepreneurial world that makes it so amazing and makes things able to happen so quickly is also what gives us the biggest risk of getting ourselves stuck in that reaction mode.

Right.

You can react to every little squirrel, shiny object, pinball opportunity and you'll never get very far.

Yeah.

So you talk about Insta tactics.

I made that word up. I know it.

Yeah. It's good and it immediately resonates for me. But what is it in your words?

In my word and Insta tactic is a one size fits all. Just do this one thing, flavor of the month, you know, send this email, make $1,000,000. And here's the thing. None of these tactics are bad. None of them are wrong. None of them don't work. But. But most people's businesses aren't ready for those tactics. Most people haven't done the work in order to go to work. Right. So they haven't done the strategy, they haven't done the background work. Can you send an email and make a million dollars? Sure. But you can also send a million emails and make $0 in the process. So you will run out of money and you will run out of time figuring it out. And so I call them Insta tactics because they're marketed with the promise of just do this one thing one time. And a lot of them don't actually even say that. We infer it.

Yeah.

Because we want some relief. And. And so we believe other people's marketing when all they're doing is marketing. I'm a big fan of not making a lot of people wrong and bad. I mean, it just not a lot.

Of good content to do what they're supposed to be doing.

They're doing their job. Yeah.

And tapping into a message that you.

Are prepared to receive that you are just dying here.

Yeah.

Please tell me it doesn't always have to be this hard. And truthfully, there's a lot of those tactics that I end up using that I do recommend for clients, but only once a business is ready for them. And the other part that people don't realize is most Insta tactics that I'M referring to. To are very passive in nature. They're very passive in nature. And the truth is most people will not spend thousands and thousands of dollars with you without talking to you. They just won't. And if you start your business with a 47 offer trying to make a million dollars, you're gonna run out of time and you're gonna run out of money before you figure out how to do that. That's. That's not service.

This. That's retell.

Yeah.

This is good. Which is a very. This is an option. Right. So it comes back to strategy. What's your strategy? What's your list? What's your marketing budget?

What do you want?

So there is someone listening to this. Heck, I'll take another product line. And I would like this also. So there is like, there is, there is. There are many people saying, okay, you went from zero, you know. Right. Or 11,000 in a different business.

Essentially zero. Which by the way, In a business, $11,000 is a net negative number on your taxes. Okay.

Because there are some expenses in there. I love it. I love that you called that. That's good. We got to talk about the profitability. So you went from 0.11,000 in revenue to six figures in 12 to 18 months. For someone who's listening and saying, I want to. I want another product line to do that for me. I want another six figure product line or I am starting from that scratch place.

Yeah.

What is the path that you would be like, all right, here we go.

You're talking to other human beings.

Yeah.

People will tell you everything you need to know about how to help them. Okay. You just have to ask them. So from a marketing perspective, because that's what I do.

Right.

My MBA is in marketing and executive leadership. This is what I know how to do. So I'm very big proponent of active short term strategies. Meaning I have influence over the process and my chance of getting a return on my investment is sooner rather than later.

Yeah.

Start there.

Speak to that a little bit more because that it could be a little buzzy influence over the process and it's going to get me there sooner rather than later. How do I get influence over that process?

By not sitting back and waiting for somebody to come to you and say, take my money. Sorry, no.

At the same time, for anyone who's watching, I also just spilled coffee on myself. I should not listen and drink coffee at the same time.

The way that I did this. And there's a little caveat here that I will a post pandemic Shift that I would add. I was a speaker, I spoke and I networked. If you're going to be in the room, be in the front of the room. If you're going to be in the room, be in the front of the room. So I sponsored other people's events because I know how hard it is to fill an event. I am more than happy to commit to cost sharing with the people who are willing to do that work.

Love it.

Right.

Sponsor and speaking at other events is a credential. And then I network. So that puts me in charge of my behavior. I can walk up to you and have a two second conversation and can tell by what you ask me, especially if I'm the speaker, if it makes sense for me to try to create a relationship with you. And then I'm just of service. This is not by the way about chasing people because what happens when we chase people, they run away. This is about creating relationships. If you're selling a 47 product, you don't have time to create relationships. So this is why in these service based businesses you have to start out with something that will make you enough money to reinvest in the business. And everything you learn by doing this, by speaking in front of room, seeing what resonates with people and then in initiating relationships and follow up conversations, all that activity is what gives you the language to use in your more passive marketing. That's how you know it's going to land because actual human beings told it to you. And we all have, you know, there's like five problems in the world and we all have a mix of them. So if you can usually extrapolate that if one person is talking to you about how they feel and what they're frustrated with, there's an another hundred people behind them with that, you know, raising their hands going, me too. Right. Because that's how we are, that's how we are. Not quite as unique snowflakes as we think, right? Yeah.

Yeah.

I love that you're talking about the differences on that. Like a what, what we refer to oftentimes in, in our business world, especially online, is the low ticket offer, like a $47 and a high ticket. And, and what I'm inferring, and correct me if I'm wrong here is start with service. Yeah, start in service and high tickets so you can get the revenue to invest.

And now here's the other, here's the trick because we were talking before we hit record about where we're from. I'm from the Midwest, we're very nice here. Very nice. And when I have my nice Midwest clients, getting them to ask people for money is like pulling teeth because we're very, we're, we're very nice here. I don't know if you've been here. We're very nice here in the Midwest. I don't want to bother anybody. So while you're busy not wanting to bother them about asking them to work with you, they're busy not wanting to bother you and then nothing happens.

Oh, that's so true. Nobody wants to bother anybody.

Here's my approach to solving that. I decided from the beginning that if I was going to charge less than a thousand dollars in my business for something, I'm just going to give it away.

Oh, interesting.

Who's going to give it away? If I'm going to charge less than $1,000 for something, I would rather give it away and be of service to all the amazing, amazing people out there who have no business hiring me because I'm not the low cost leader of coaching. I'm not the $47 product. But there's some wonderful, amazing people out there who would like my help. But it doesn't make sense for them to pay me for it because they'll never get their return on investment. Great. Take all the free stuff you want. That's what it's for. That's what it's for.

Right.

And now I'm covering my Midwest values of not bothering anybody. I'm being of service. I'm offering free multiple opportunity taste tests for the right person to know like and trust me before they make a buying decision. And the beauty of this education based marketing approach is by the time I have a sales conversation, by the way, I love sales. That was my corporate world, so. But by the time you, if you, if it makes you nervous, would have a sales conversation, my goal, it's that 75% of my sales conversations are really confirmation conversations, not consideration conversations. Yeah, not convince me conversations. And then when you work that way you can backfill your product portfolio if you want with the lower priced items. That being said, I'm still a fan of giving it away.

Yeah, you might not want to after you get it going right.

Or the beauty of it is when you do it this way you can just hire someone else to go create, take all your content, take all your genius and you can just hire someone else to do that because odds are if you are a service based entrepreneur that is delivering for the people who you know at those four figure investments and beyond you're not the person who should be like, doing the tech work, right? Like, I have no business doing that. You want something to suck really bad, make me do that stuff.

Not good at it.

Have no business selling it. I promise it won't be the worth the 47 you paid for.

Stay in the zone. Stay in the zone.

Oh, Aaron, this is so good.

I love the aha's. The mindset shifts as well as the very practical. Like, let's focus on what's going to get you to faster return on your investment.

That's one of the promises I made myself when I like, I didn't know what coaching was, by the way. So I do coaching and consulting. I come out of corporate. I didn't know what that was. You needed something, you went into. You needed to learn something. You went and got another class, right? You took, got another degree. And one of the things I saw in the industry when I was first exposed to it were people selling expensive programs to someone who didn't have a good idea. They didn't really have a good idea, so they were never going to make their money back. And I promised myself I would never do that. Don't be that person. Because odds are if you just ask that person a couple questions, you can help them make the tweaks that they needed to have a much more viable offer and a more viable business.

Oh, good.

All right, Aaron, anything? We're missing any final. We covered a lot. That was good.

We did cover a lot. I think my biggest thing is, you know, listen for your nugget. If you enjoyed the conversation, listen for your nugget. You can't change the world in a day. You can't change your business in a day. But we might have said one thing, two things that made a difference for you. Like, just go deep on that. Don't try to do everything at once.

Yeah, don't boil the ocean. We are going to want to stay connected. Where do people find you?

We make it really easy. It's all@conqueryourbusiness.com so whether you're looking for the next free thing, we're doing the podcast. Get a hold of me links on socials. I promise I'm not hiding. All you have to do is go to conquer your business dot com.

Oh my gosh. Go find Aaron at conquer your business dot com. Give us a shout out on Instagram or wherever you are hanging out. TikTok for Aaron. If you like this episode, want to.

Share with me, I love it.

And let us know in the reviews as well, wherever you are, listening what you think. We're so glad to be here with you. Thank you, Aaron.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.