3 things I've started doing in my business!

Hello and good. Good evening, afternoon. Good morning. I'm Katie McManus is business strategist, leadership coach. Happy Monday or Tuesday if you're on the other side of the world. Today is day two of me spending pretty much all day working on my book. Hence why I have crazy hair and look a little disheveled. It's amazing how much writing takes it out of you physically taking a little break. Because, you know, I. I do have a goal of going live every single day in September. So thank you for joining me today. I want. And actually, I screwed up. I wrote down what I was going live on, and I forget kind of what I was talking about. I do this all the time, so I don't pre plan what I go live on. I literally just write it up and think of it as I'm publishing the event. So hold on. I just got to write a note to myself because I think I remember, and I can always spy on myself. I think I forgot what number three was. I remember number one, number two, number three, but I wrote it down, and now I don't remember. But anyway, we're gonna figure it out. It's gonna be a mystery. We're gonna just improv this, guys. So I wanted to share a little bit about how I keep things fresh in my business. Just like a relationship, you have to keep things fresh in your business, or else things can get a little stale. And I do that by finding different ways to inspire myself and inspire my clients and my world. Something that I have been opening up a little bit more about is my use of different card decks to inspire ideas for stuff of what I want to go live on. I really love the Mystic Mondays tarot deck. I like it because, a, the cards are really pretty, and I love beautiful things. And B, the. The information on it, like, the. The descriptions of the cards are all in, like, real language that I understand. It's not all mystical. I have a lot of fun with that. This deck, this is called the therapy game. Made the mistake of taking this to a beer garden the beginning of the summer and got real, guys. Got real. So it comes with. If you actually play the therapy game, it comes with a little, you know, timekeeper, and it has all these different cards where you can ask someone a question. So this one's about relationships. How might you be too romantic for your own good? Or not romantic enough? I just love this shit. I think this is so much fun to try to figure out, you know, how this all relates to business. And I guarantee you, whatever industry you're in. If you get card decks like this, you can find a way to relate this to your business. So, like, let's just take that card right there. So say you're a lawyer. Like, how might you be too litigious for your own good? Or not litigious enough? Or how may you be too lax in your legal documents? Or not lax enough. There are so many ways you can make this. This one's about sexual fantasies. I think that one we're gonna leave to people who work in. In the sex. Whoa. These are all sex. Never mind. It's a little. It's a little weird if you use. Oh, here's one on. What did you learn about anxiety from each of your parents? This one I love because. What did you learn about anxiety from your business mentors? What did you learn about anxiety from previous jobs you've had? LinkedIn user. You love using Tarot and Oracle cards. I'd love to know what your name is. I think your privacy settings are on. So anyway, I just love this stuff. Stuff. I think it's so much fun to jump in and just create meeting right off the bat here. Let's just. Let's play this. Let's do this. So I'm gonna pull a card from the Monday deck and I don't know what it is. I got the Princess of Cups. So Princess of Cups. I have to find the Cups chapter. Okay, so Princess of Cups. I got it right side up. That means something. I guess it says so in the book. So this stands for flow, synchronicity, miss and mystic messages. So subconscious messages swim through your conscious mind, receiving intuitive messages from within. The Princess of Cups brings you inspiration to create, to trust your insight and listen to your intuition. She asks you to be open minded about new experiences. Oh, my God. Guys, this fits. This fits so perfectly with this live, doesn't this? She asks you to be open minded about new experiences, emotions, and how messages can take form. Holy shit, I'm getting chills. This news can be subtle or extreme, so trust your gut instincts on what it's trying to tell you. Pay attention to synchronistic events and symbols and dreams, for it is your guide, delivering you a message. Let your emotions come out to play with free reign. Vulnerability is your strength, so wear your open heart on your sleeve. Express yourself freely, as open and innocent as a curious child. Answers to questions may appear in surprising and playful ways. Oh, my God, guys, this is exactly what I'm talking about. Kristin, you're totally getting this. Oh, amazing. I think you're Talking about the therapy cards, but you might be talking about this also. Oh, and Shannon. Hi. Nice to see you. Yeah. So, I mean, this is literally what we're talking about today is finding inspiration all over and being open to it and just playing with it when it arrives and trusting it. Okay, that was like a really weird card to pull. Do I have links for these, Kristin? I don't, but I'm happy to if you shoot me a dm. I'm happy to send you links to find them and I bought most of them in small shops, but I think you could probably get them online. I'm gonna pull an affirmator card. I love this deck. It is like the most sweet, playful, kind one. And it's just like affirmations that you get to, you know, play with for a day. And they have the cutest little pictures. So we got a giraffe wearing headphones in the clouds. The rainbow. And it's the ultimate potential card. I choose to live life of my fullest potential. I trust that this will draw me towards experiences and people that support my growth and accomplishment. Tuning into this frequency, I now reach higher heights than I ever thought before. Hence the giraffe in the clouds. Knowing that's an option, why would I ever have ever tuned into anything else? I'm looking at you. Smooth jazz and talk radio. I just love this. Yes, of course, Kristen. Happy to so this honestly. So you're running a business, you have all the hats to wear. You have to figure out smart stuff to market, you have to sell your services, you have to serve your clients, you have to do all the back end shit as well. Sometimes you just need something to help you out. And I wanted to share this part of my business. This is how I have a lot of fun with this because I just want to normalize finding inspiration and guidance and marketing from weird ass places. Okay? It is totally fine. And the cool thing about you doing this, about you leaning into whatever it is that you find inspiration from, if you want to share about it, your clients are going to love hearing about that from you. Because if you love that, I want you to remember we all attract who we are, right? If you love that, chances are your clients are going to find it kind of cool. Okay? Hence I haven't had one person in the comments call me a freak for using tarot cards in my business. So I am just going to point that out to you, tell you you get to be brave and out yourself, tell for this. And also I just want to remind you anything, anything that Makes you feel good or reminds you that you're on the right path or makes you feel centered. Any practice you do is okay. It's okay. You get to make that part of your business. This is your business. Okay. This is one of the reasons I think a lot of people want to become entrepreneurs, they want to start their own business is because in their jobs, when they had to go to a place and be hired by other people, they had to hide this stuff. This was like, there was this messaging, like, bring your whole self to work, but only the normal and happy parts. Right. But you absolutely get to bring these parts into your business as well. That is totally welcome. Okay. Now, Kristen or Shannon, one of you could do me a favor and read the description under this live. I'd really appreciate it. Tell me what number three three is. Because I wrote the description, I forgot to write it down on my little note of what I'm supposed to be talking about today. You could tell me what number three is. I would really appreciate it. Anyway, so I spent. I have been diving into doing more of this to get inspiration for the content that I post. It's really amazing. When I do do this stuff, the responses are really spot on and I get a lot of engagement from this stuff. So I highly recommend it if this is your thing. Moving on. So one of my favorite LinkedIn people is Leah Turner. I'm sure you've heard me talk about her ad nauseam. I think I still have a video on her website of me giving a testimonial. She's amazing. I started working with her early on in my business and it's really transformational. She knows her shit. Oh, continue my education. Thank you, Shannon. I so appreciate you. Okay. Anyway, so, yeah, so she posted something last week and it was just a quick tip for people who want to get more engagement on LinkedIn. And she said that the algorithm pays attention to who we message who are sending dms to and that even if you're not comfortable writing a message, you could send a little voice message. And that works. So here's how I made this my own. So I get really suspicious of people who are sending me DMs. Um, it's just because there are so many people who are cold messaging. Unless you're obviously just being conversational and going off something that I posted or something that I wrote in the comments somewhere. I'm always waiting for that cold pitch slap. And so I feel bad sending text messages to people in the DMs unless I'm specifically talking about Something so. And I also get a little bit of anxiety at voice memos. I do not know why. I am so much more comfortable going live, being here on camera, even with crazy hair than I am on on platforms like Clubhouse or audio only formats. Those just make me super nervous. So instead I have started sending little welcome messages in video form to my new contacts on LinkedIn and guys and gals and everyone. It is so much fun. It is so much fun to send a quick little hello video that has no purpose except to, you know, tell this person I'm really happy to be connected to them and if I have something in common with them, to like mention that. It's so much fun. And I have gotten so many messages back from people who are like, oh my God, this made my day. And if I'm doing nothing else in my day, if I'm working hard in my business and I'm doing all this stuff and I can just make a few people's day, like, why wouldn't I, why wouldn't I go above and beyond and try to like make people feel happy and, you know, make them smile? It's so much fun. And so just want to share this tip with you, Leah Turner. If you're trying to figure out how to hack LinkedIn, she's the go to person. But this simple, simple tip is to just DM with people that you generally like, you know, or you think you might have something in common with. I just started doing this, so no, no results yet. As to if it gets creepy if I send a video to a man versus a woman, I hope not. But of course it's the interwebs. We can't always control that. But anyway, I'm having so much fun with it. And it was so funny at one point today I was sending a little video and literally my notifications came up from a dating app and the person I was sending the video to because at the moment when I was recording it, I was like, oh, there's a notification. Oh, it's from my dating app. Oh, I might have a date. Cool. Anyway, great to talk to you. This woman responded back telling me that she met her husband on a dating app and we got to have this really cute little conversation. And it was just so much more special than just the normal connect and ignore or the connect and hey, nice to connect with you. Anyway, that's how I'm having fun in my business. Finally. I am so excited about this part. I have been trying to figure out the right venue or journey to take to continue My own education as a coach, as a money worker, as a business strategist. And I was. I had a couple ideas. I knew I wanted to be in trauma of some kind because a lot of my clients come to me that, you know, they have trauma that they experienced from their previous jobs. They have trauma in their money, they have trauma in their relationships, and they end up working with me, I think, because they can sense that I have a lot of that, too. And I also have the training as a coach to be able to coach on that stuff. But here's what I was missing is I didn't have that training to really step in and take it to that next level. And so one of the things I'm really excited for is I signed up for the Trauma of Money course and certification after I saw Kirsten Granados. And I hope I'm pronouncing her last name correctly, she's our TikTok aficionado over here on LinkedIn. She posted about signing up for it, and I checked it out. And I am so excited for this, guys, because here's. Here's the thing. The trauma of money is one thing for cisgendered white people, and it's another thing for. For marginalized groups. It's just. It's a completely other experience. And I. I don't want to be the naive, you know, cisgendered white woman who's just kind of sweet skating by the circumstances that other people go through. And I also don't want to be. I don't want to create the situation where I'm putting the mental and emotional work on other people who aren't being paid for this work. So I'm so happy for this program that has done the mental and emotional work, has put it into this curriculum, who's going to be guiding everyone through their own money trauma. And then to be in this other group where I'm going to get certified to be a facilitator of this kind of work, because I think it's so important if you want to build wealth in your life, like having a savings plan is important and working with a financial planner is important, and making enough money is also important. But I know this from experience. If you don't deal with your relationship with money with that mindset, you're never going to hold onto it, or you are, but something else is going to go wonky. And I don't want that for anyone. And so I'm so freaking excited to be able to do this work with people. I also just love learning I will say I signed up for it. I take client calls on Tuesday mornings and there are two options. There's a Tuesday morning course and there's a Wednesday night course and the Wednesday night goes from 7 to 10pm Eastern Standard Time. And I typically go to bed at 8:30. So this is going to be a push for me time wise. I'm really, really excited for the recordings of the second half because I can just see myself kind of dozing. But just want to remind you that you do not need all the education out there to be able to start a business. Okay? You don't need to go for every single certification. You don't have to prove to anyone that you have 17 certifications and you're ready to go, okay? You can have one, you can have the training, you can, you can start your business now. And also if you have a love of learning, you're also allowed to go back and get other certifications. You're allowed to go for training. You know, we, we have very binary brains, right? We have binary brains where there's like there's right and wrong, there's yes and there's no, and there's white and there's black. And what I don't want people to take when I tell you like, don't go for more certifications, I don't want you to take that it's wrong to continue your education. I never, I'm never meaning that. I mean, I don't want you to hold yourself back from actually starting this business thinking that you need more certifications, right? I want you starting the business, working with clients now, making money so that you can go and pay for whatever continued education that you want that'll make you happy. And of course, as you add these new certifications, these new trainings, you get to fold that into your pre existing business. You get to make it relevant or you get to start something completely different that's totally okay too. So these are the three ways that I'm keeping things fresh in my business. I'm over here pulling cards and sending video messages and learning and this is my way. You know, if you're feeling a little stale in your business and everything I've just listed to you, you're like, that's not for me. That's okay too. But I want to give you free reign and full permission to just go and play around, go and try different things. Go. And you know, you don't have to commit to like, let's just use sending video messages as an example. So say I started doing that and I hated it. Just because I started doing it doesn't mean that I'm committed to it, doesn't mean that I have to continue doing it. And let's be real, I'm sure there will become come a time in my connection history where I just have too many people I'm connecting with every day and it's not going to be possible. But for right now it's bringing me great joy and you get to find those things in your work as well. Otherwise I. What's been going on? I've been writing my book. It's going really well. I'm really, really excited for it, guys. I talked to my publisher today. She's really excited to get the manuscript. She's. I mean she's been waiting for it for like a year and a half. She has an editor who's going to be helping me fill in some gaps because I know there are some gaps there. I bought a new teapot. Let me just show you. So here's a story. So I bought this teapot because I thought it would be so sophisticated for me to have a pot of tea while I was writing. And I made some BlackBerry tea yesterday in the afternoon because I was like, you know, it's. I have my air conditioning on to, you know, pretend it's actually fall weather. And I was like, you know, it'll just be cozy for me to have some tea. Well, I didn't read if it was caffeinated or not. I thought it wasn't. And I was up until midnight. I drank this whole pot. This, this pot is about a liter of liquid. I think it's giant and actually I think it might be a Harry Potter pot because it holds way more than it looks like it could. But anyway, I over caffeinated myself yesterday and it was not good. But today all the writing is going really well. I haven't had too much caffeine, which is good. And I have one more full day of writing and then I'm sending whatever it is that I have to my editor. I'm practicing what I preach, which is half assed is better than perfect. Your first draft of something is going to be half assed. I have to remind myself of this. I always used to leave all of my papers to the last minute when I was in school. And I think that's just like the ADHD brain, which is work better to a deadline and we can also do massive amounts of work in one sitting. And so I would make just green tea and have some ritalin and a snack and then just work all night and then sleep all day. Trying not to do that right now because I'm an old lady now who goes to bed at 8:30. Anyway, with that, I see my dog is just finishing up her treat and she's gonna start going nuts at me because we have to go for a walk. Kristen and Shannon and anyone else who has tuned in and not commented, thank you all for joining. I hope this has been inspir, educational, helpful, or at least just entertaining. I look forward to going live with you again tomorrow and every single day for the rest of this month, because that's the goal. And I appreciate you all for being in my world. Anyway, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and leadership coach. Happy Monday and we'll see you tomorrow. Bye.