5 Signs your business is a hobby

Hi, everyone. I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and leadership coach. So happy to talk to you tonight. And I just want to warn you, I have this fancy new mic. It's wonderful. Hopefully the sound quality is a lot better than just going off my computer, but I talk with my hands a lot. I'm very aware that I might whack it at some point during this, so if I do and it hurts your ears, I apologize in advance. I'm learning to have animated hands away from the mic. Anyway, tonight I wanted to talk about something that may be a little confronting for some of you. I know this would have been super confronting for me when I first started my business. So there's no shame in wherever you are. There's always room to grow. There's always ways to get better. But I want to talk about how are you treating your business? Are you treating it like an actual business? Like something you check into and check out of and has customers and the whole shebang? Or are you treating it like a hobby, like so many solopreneurs and up and coming business owners do? And I want to tell you the five ways that you may be treating your business like a hobby and how to cut them out because you don't want a hobby. I mean, hobbies are great. Don't get me wrong, I have a ton of hobbies. If to my best friend Jessica, she will tell you, my storage unit in California is full of hobbies that I started, got halfway through, and then abandoned. But that's what hobbies are. They are things that you start, you get halfway through and sometimes you abandon them. And that is not your business unless you make it that way. So here are the five ways in which you may be treating your business like a hobby. And as you're tuning in. Hi everyone. As you're tuning in, I am speaking to the Facebooks like LinkedIn and YouTube. Sometimes all the comments don't come through. So if you do comment and I don't call you out, I'm not ignoring you. I'm just not seeing it. Technology failure. And also, if you have any questions as I'm going through, please comment. I'm happy to answer them. I try. Sometimes I do get taken off track, but usually I find my my route back. So don't worry about distracting me. I love having this Be interactive. Okay, so the number one way in which you are treating your business like a hobby and not like the business it deserves to be treated as is you don't have set hours. And when I Say that many of you are like, oh well, I only have client calls from this time to this time each day. That's not what I mean. What I mean is you don't have client or you don't have business hours for yourself. Meaning you don't have hours of work that you check into and check out of. The reason this is so important. Hi Gabriel, welcome. Thanks for joining us. The reason that this is so critical to you having a successful business is that you cannot expect yourself to work in your business 24 7. And if you don't have set business hours for yourself to tune into your business and do the work and then check out, then you are going to be shoulding yourself to death. Should S H O U L D It is the worst word in the world for entrepreneurs because we should be doing so many things, it gets overwhelming. If you let that take over, then you are going to burn yourself out and your business is going to go nowhere fast. The other thing about it is there's something energetic that happens when you set business hours for yourself. You start taking your business more seriously. That's why it's so important. It gets communicated energetically to the types of clients that you attract. I know that when I did this for myself, I. I was making the transition at the same time from doing just one on one work to group work. Hi David, welcome. Thanks for joining us. And it was so much easier to enroll people when I energetically knew that I was going into work and leaving work. Granted, we're all working from home, it's been that kind of year. But you know, it's just something. And also I wasn't getting as burnt out. And granted, again, we're all living at work right now. It's very easy to go overboard. What on the hours. Steve, nice to see you. Yes, you're finally in. Great to see you. But please set hours. Okay. Don't burn yourself out. Treat your business like a business, not a hobby. Okay, Number two. So that's number one. Number two, you are busy doing all the busy work that doesn't actually generate revenue. You know I'm talking to you. You have a million emails to do. You have all these projects, but there's no clear path to you actually making money from any of those activities. You have a hobby. You do not have a business. You have a hobby. If you're spending all your time on busy work that doesn't actually service clients or get new clients, that is not a business. That is a hobby. Congratulations. Hobbies are wonderful. However, if you Want this business to pay the bills, then you need to cut the crap on the stuff that isn't generating income. Okay? So if you are spending all of your time writing a blog, guess what? And that blog is not making money. It's not drawing in paying clients. Guess what? You're no longer writing the blog. Or maybe you're outsourcing it to someone else. Unless you really enjoy it, and that is your hobby. I'm not making hobbies. Wrong again. I want to be very clear about that. The other thing. Oh, my gosh. I mean, like creating content for your. Your audience. If it's generating leads and. And business for you and you're making money, go have at it. It's one of the reasons I go live as much as I do, because this is the number one thing that drives new clients to me. So if you're. If you're interested in working with me, this is an invitation to book a call with me. But this is an example of only spend your time on stuff that actually generates business for you. Okay? If you're not doing that, you're not running a business. You're running a hobby. Okay? So that's number two. Number three, you're not investing in help to help you grow. Okay? If this is your first business, you've never run a business before. You've never started one. Okay? There's nothing wrong with that. Absolutely nothing wrong with that. We all have to start somewhere. Steve says likes. Oh, thanks, Steve. I appreciate that. Oh, we have two Steve's in the audience tonight. Oh, my gosh. Getting a name crossover. Anyway, you're not investing in help. There's no shame in never having done something before. Okay. I've never done a handstand before. Okay. If I wanted to learn how to do a handstand, I'd probably go to someone who knows how to do a handstand and has taught people before. Okay, so if you're not investing in helping yourself grow in your business, then you're treating your business like a hobby. Yes. Steve Lewis, welcome. Oh, and you're from Facebook. Wonderful. Okay. I'm always worried, you know, the comments don't always come through from all the places. So thank you for verifying that the Facebook comments are coming through. Thanks, Steve. So what does help look like? If you're going to invest in your business, you're going to invest in your own success. Steve Foley. Get busyness not busyness. Or get business not busyness mispronouncing. All of that. Okay, so back to the point. Thank you. Guys. So if you are investing in help, what does that look like? Okay, it could look like outsourcing stuff that you no longer want on your plate. Okay. Number two, hit you hard, and you realize that you're filling up your plate with a ton of business busy work that doesn't actually result in business, as Steve Foley just said. So that could be one element of hiring help. Another element could be hiring a coach like myself who knows how to do the thing and can save you a ton of time and guesswork and wasted energy in just telling you, here's what you do next, and here's what you do next, and here's what you do next, and. Oh, you don't know how to do that. Here's how you're going to do that step by step. Okay. Help could also be a mentor, you know, there or some kind of business course. It doesn't matter. But let me tell you, if you are trying to start a business and you are not getting guidance and you're not investing in all that stuff, I'm telling you, you are not running a business. You have a really cool hobby. That's it. That's it. You need to invest in your business. Um, to make. There's a saying, to make money, you gotta spend money. And to a certain degree, I agree with it. And, you know, sometimes I think people use it as a manipulation tactic to get people to buy stuff. So, yes, spend money. Spend money smartly. That saves you time and energy and grief. And knowledge is power. Knowledge is power. And if you don't have the knowledge, get the knowledge. You'll be more powerful. Okay, so those are the first three. Number four. Oh, my God. This is. I feel like every single client that I get, you know, we go through this phase where, especially if they've already gotten paying clients before, it's so normal. You have clients that aren't paying you anything. They're or they're paying you a pittance for what you do. Let me see Brad Burchell. Before I dive right into this, I want to read the comments. I have coaches, and they are vital to my business development in my upcoming mentoring business. Yes, Brad. Oh, my gosh. I have coaches, too. I will share. I spend about $4,500 a month on my coaches because it is that critical to show me the next steps of my business. Okay. If I didn't do that, I would be stagnant at the level that I'm at. The level that I'm at is fine, but it's not where I want to be. I have bigger goals and I've never gotten to that. I've never built a business to that level before. So you need mentors. Hi, Rick, welcome. Yes, Rick. Speaking of investing, Rick is my coach. He is an incredible mentor, an incredible coach and he also invests in his business in that way. Steve Foley, if the ROI is there, spend it. Yep, yep. And for those of you who don't know roi, it's return on investment. Okay? So if you're going to make your money back, you can spend it. Okay, so let's go back to number four. Okay, so you're spending your time chasing bargain clients, okay? No shame in this. We all start somewhere. We all start off charging too little. That is absolutely normal. But there has to be a point where you call BS on it, where you say, no more. I'm charging what I'm worth. I'm charging what my transformation I offer is worth. And I'm not going to waste my time pandering to budget clients. Okay? It's really normal when you start out, you just want anyone to pay you for your service. And you get so excited when someone's willing to pay you some kind of currency. You know, it could be, it could be dollars, it could be, I'm getting a notification, could be dollars, it could be, you know, pesos, whatever. You are just so excited for just a few scraps of money to come into your world and then you're afraid you're not going to get it anymore or you're afraid you're going to lose this client. That's only $20 a month for your two hours of work. Let me tell you the amount of time I've spent with my clients telling them, no, I don't want to help you feel. Figure out how you are going to retain this client at $20 a month. It is so normal, people, it is so normal to get attached to this because at least someone is paying you. But let me tell you, if you continue to do business on that level, that is the business that you're going to be running at that level. You need to level up. You need to charge more. You need to pursue clients that are willing to pay the rate that you that supports the ideal life that you are building your business to support, okay? If you are chasing down budget clients all the time, you're not going to have time, resources or energy to find those high paying clients. And if you did have the time to find them, you wouldn't have the bandwidth to even serve them. Okay? So don't do it if someone's not willing to pay your rate, wonderful. They're not your client. Move on to the next person. Rick Tamlin spends almost 10,000amonth in his business. He runs an honest to goodness business, people. Okay? It is out there and let me tell you, Rick is growing his business every single year and he's growing in different ways that is possible for you, but you do have to invest in someone to show you the way. I, I mean, Rick is endlessly creative and resourceful and intelligent and also, you know, there's only so much a person can learn and trial and error and do in their day. It saves you so much time and energy to invest in help to invest in someone to guide the way. Brad Birchnell. Absolutely right. If you have no skin in it, then you're not looking at your future. Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, I think that's, it's true in my business. Like I charge a lot because I want my clients to have skin in the game because I used to charge still a lot, but less than I do now. And people would sign up, they would pay me and they wouldn't do the work. And that's absolutely crazy to me. But you know, there's something about having some skin in the game realizing, oh my God, I've just ponied up something. I have to make it worth it. And in business as in life. So thank you for that, Brad. Steve Foley, 5x minimum. I think you're speaking to ROI. If it's return on investment, it has to return five times. I would say every single coach that I've worked with has had at least that. At least that. And Rick, any new business needs investing. That's what stocks are. Many people easily invest in others businesses. I prefer investing in my own. Yeah, 100%. Same here. And scared half the time too. Oh yeah. And being scared about your business is totally normal. Totally normal. I, you know, I get on here and I talk about, you know, what it takes to run a business and what's important. Like it's easy. It's not easy. It's not easy. Building a business is a brave ass thing to do. Okay? And let me tell you about bravery. I talked about this last night. It doesn't feel good when you're in it. You're second guessing yourself. You're looking around, you're wondering if people are laughing at you. That is totally normal. Move through the fear. The fear doesn't have to stop you. Let me see. Steve Foley. This happens all the time in real estate. Downward pressure on commissions with many times cost the client more in the end with lower selling price and added miscellaneous fees. Yeah, yeah, a hundred percent. And Rick, it's not easy yet. It's wildly interesting, compelling. Yeah, Rick, it is wildly interesting, compelling. And I will say, once you start a business, there's something powerful that happens with your identity. When you start a business and you realize, oh, my gosh, I can actually generate my income just by doing the things that I love, there's something that shifts in you. It's like this magnetic shift in your bones, in your. In your DNA and your infrastructure and in your soul. You could no longer. No longer be employable to someone else. It just. It just doesn't happen once you realize, oh, my gosh, I have. I'm an alchemist. I can generate gold, you know, just by going out and doing this thing. You figure out that form formula. Oh, my God, that's amazing. I feel like. And I feel like this every day when I'm talking to my clients and I'm hearing about them signing their clients and growing their businesses and making more money. I'm like, oh, my God, I'm training a bunch of alchemists right now. They're all learning how to create gold. The fountain of life is a different thing. If we could just find a youth serum that keeps us young and beautiful forever, that would be another story. Not working on that. But if you are working on that, I would like to invest in your business anyway. Okay, so that was number four and a whole little side tangent with my lovely audience here about do not chase bargain clients. They are not worth it. Know your worth and know that you can create a business that is going to generate income that supports you. And finally, finally, if you do not have systems that will consistently create clients for you, meaning you have no idea where your next client is coming from. You have no idea how you can tap into it, how you can create it, how you can enroll people. You are not running a business. You are running a hobby. You are doing your service for fun on the side. There's nothing wrong with that if you're trying to have a hobby. But if you're trying to run a business, let me tell you, this is the number one most important thing that you need to know how to do. And it's one of the things that I work with on my. Where I work on with my clients is finding their authentic way to create this. Because let me tell you, there are a million ways out there for you to create a system to generate clients. If it doesn't work for you. If it's not authentic to you, it's not going to work. If you don't feel good doing it, you're not going to do it consistently. And if you don't do it consistently, guess what? You're never going to have consistent income of clients. That's just never going to happen. You know, when I started my business, I didn't have this, you know, I didn't understand and I came from this whole background in sales. It's crazy. I, I so easily could have just tapped into all of my expertise and I didn't, I didn't. For a little while, I just kind of floundered trying to make this business, this coaching business, you know, by trying new things instead of tried and true methods that come from, came from my sales background. It wasn't until I decided, okay, this is the system that works for me and tested it several cycles and realize, okay, great, this is how I'm going to enroll people. Well, wonderful. And then went with that. Like, that's when my business became a business and shifted from being a hobby. If you don't have systems in place to generate new clients, to tend to existing clients, all that stuff, you don't have a business, you have a hobby. And let me say this again, because I say this with so much love. There's nothing wrong with having a hobby. And wherever you are in starting your business, you are right on time. Okay? There is no rush to get anywhere. You are right on time. You're right where you're supposed to be. But if you don't want to be running a hobby, if you want to be running a business, and you want that business to be wildly successful, you want it to have incredible impact. You want it to make a decent, reliable income that not only pays the bills, but pays for your vacations, pays for your retirement, allows for you to have some fun in your life. Life, then if you're, if you're not creating that, what are you doing? What are you doing? What are you spending your time on? I, I firmly believe this is one of my core beliefs, that everyone deserves to make a living from doing work that they love. So do you. If you're watching this, I want you to know that you do too. It takes leveling up. It takes knowing that you're treating your business like a hobby. The first, the first step to solving any problem is realizing that there's a problem. So realizing where you're treating your business like a hobby and changing it, setting hours, charging more hiring help, hiring support, Learning how to move forward, all those things, you're fine right where you are, but if this is not where you want to be, there are a million ways to move you forward, okay? It can be overwhelming. There are a lot of choices out there, but find the things that you feel magnetically drawn to. You know, if. If you notice that there's a coach out there in the world who you just. You want to hang out with and you really like what they say and you just, you know, the way they explain things makes sense to you. DM them right now. I want you to go and DM them right now and see if they can book a call with you to see if it's a fit and find out what their program is. Okay? And I'm not like, this is. Obviously, I would love that. If you're watching me and thinking, oh, I should hire Katie, let me DM her. But not just me, not just me. There are a million people out there who do exactly what I do. Find the one that you're. That you resonate with, who will teach you in a way that is authentic to you how to create this. Brad, if you're. If you're scared about doing something that you desire, do it. Scared. Yes. Yes. So here's the thing. We can't wait to not be scared, okay? Scared doesn't go away. There's no like, preparing ourselves to not be scared, okay? If you've never done something before, let me out myself, okay? There's a place in my life that I'm being a complete frickin weenie, okay? And, you know, that's my byline. That's my tagline on LinkedIn. Stop being a weenie. I am trying to. The reason I have this stupid big microphone is because I'm trying to start a blog. Or not a blog, a podcast. Can you remember the name of it? And I'm being a complete weenie because I've never done it before. I've hired a person who is managing it for me even, and I'm still like, oh, my God, I haven't done that before, you know, voice only recording. It's amazing how I'm so much more comfortable being on camera and speaking to my computer than I am just speaking to this big old microphone with no camera involved. What a crazy thing to be afraid of. But I had to have this talk with myself this weekend that I just have to do it scared, okay? Because it's not going to feel comfortable until I've done it like a half dozen times. And even then if I have a lapse of time in between, I might actually get scared again and have to get over it again. Being scared is a normal thing, but it does not have to stop you. And I want to be a little harsh with you. If you're letting being scared stop you, you're being a complete weenie. You need to cut it out. Okay? We don't tolerate weenies here. We don't tolerate weeniness here. Weeniness is not cool. Bravery is cool, but bravery also doesn't feel good. Bravery feels like you're doing it scared. Anyway, that is my, that is my little spiel today about the five ways in which you are treating your business like a hobby and the things that you need to do to start treating it like an actual honest to goodness business. Thank you all of you. Rick, Brad, both sweet Steve's Let me see who else was here. David and Gabriel, thank you all for tuning in. For those of you who haven't commented but have been watching, I hope you have a wonderful night. I am going to be going live every weekday this week with different topics and different things, so I hope you'll tune in soon. I may give you warning ahead of time or I may just pop up. Who knows? I'm. I'm being a little flexible this week, but tune in and as always, I'll be saving it to all of my pages. Anyway, that's all for me. I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and leadership coach, and I look forward to seeing you all tomorrow. Have a great night.