5 Ways to Sabotage Your Business

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Hello and good evening and happy Memorial Day, everyone. I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and and money Mindset coach, coming to you live on the Facebooks, on LinkedIn, YouTube and Instagram to talk about five incredible ways to prevent any success from ever coming your way. These are also really helpful things to know if you want to avoid them and actually be successful in your business. A little housekeeping. I do love this to be interactive. So if you have any questions or if you have anything to contribute to the conversation, then please, please do pop your comments into the chat and any questions. There's no such thing as a dumb question in my world, okay? So if you're curious about anything that I'm talking about here, then please ask for clarity. I'm going to be going through the five most common ways that I see people sabotage themselves. There are so many more. We're very, very creative as a species. We find ways to prevent our own success everywhere. So if you have another. Another example and you want to throw it into the chat, please do. This is not a finite list. And this is actually just so you know, I don't. I don't often show you behind the scenes, but this is about the amount of notes that I take before I start alive. So if you're thinking about going live, I highly recommend getting comfortable improving a lot of stuff. It makes it a lot more human when you do, and it makes it a lot more fun because you're not, like, stuck with a script, right? This isn't a script. This is just like, a couple words. Anyway, so let's dive in. Let's talk about the five ways that people sabotage their own success. All right, so number one is not actually marketing themselves. And I wanted to start with this one because I tend to be guilty of this one more often than not. And let's just acknowledge, like, when you're creating content for social media, you know the name of the game is remind people that you exist, right? Reminding people that you exist is the bare minimum for people to be able to give you their money and hire you. That said, sometimes you can fall into kind of like the trap of just reminding people that you exist and posting consistently and forgetting to have actually market your services. And when I say marketing your services, I mean actually telling people what is the pain that you cure, what is the outcome that your clients get? With you and giving everyone, as they're reading this content a very clear step by step instruction as to how they can find out more, maybe throw their pen how they can find out more, how they can become your client. You know, that is one of the things that's going to drive people to your business, all right? People do not know that you're accepting clients unless you tell them. People don't know that you solve the problem that they have unless you're explicit about it, all right? People don't understand the success that your clients have unless you shine a spotlight on it. Okay? Oftentimes people are like, oh, well, you know, they can go to my website, they can go here, they can go there. But you know what? Like, no, it shouldn't be. It shouldn't be your potential client's responsibility to become a detective to suss out all the details about you and your work, all right? They're busy. They have bigger fish to fry, all right? You have to make their life easier. Not just when they hire you, but you have to make their life easier before they hire. You have to tell them, this is what I'm useful for, this is who I'm useful for. And you have to make it cut and dried, simple. Like brick to forehead simple. You know, how they can be in business with you? All right, so you have to actually market your services. This is something that I train in all of my group programs and my one on one. I actually have just rolled out this whole model where my clients are creating four months worth of content that they're just going to be able to recycle and reiterate and kind of like rewrite here and there. But basically it's written and it promotes their work all the time. But you know what? If you really, really like failing, if you really don't want to get clients and you don't want to make money, then don't market your services consistently. Like, don't do it at all. Just post pictures of your cat. That's fine. That's fine, too. Anyway, let me see. I'm just gonna check over on Instagram. It's always funny because there's not a. Sandra Van Gulick. Welcome. I haven't seen your name in a long time. Hello. Anyway, welcome. Over on Instagram. Anyway. So the second one is not learning how to sell. This is the second way people that, you know, this is the second way that people sell, sabotage their own success, is they refuse to learn how to sell because selling is gross. Ew. I don't want to Tell people that my stuff is amazing, they should probably buy it. No, this is honestly one of the biggest fears that I get. I was in sales for a really long time. My first few sales jobs. I like when you start selling something, you really have to believe in it. And even when you do believe in it, it's. It's weird to go and have these conversations that are very structured when you're not used to having structured conversations that you're leading someone to want to give you their money at the end, right. Because they're interested in your thing. It's not, it's not something that comes naturally to most of us. And, you know, it's not something that most people find naturally either. Right. Everyone thinks that there's people out there who are just natural born salespeople and they do really well. No, even people who are extremely extroverted, very talkative and gregarious, they need to be trained how to be a good salesperson. You know, even my clients who come to me from a sales background where they were selling something for other businesses, they have to be retrained on how to sell their own services because it is a very different process. There's a different mentality required. There's a different energetic exchange. It's also way fucking more vulnerable to sell your own services. Because if someone rejects, like the car that you want to sell them, like, it hurts, like hearing no always feels bad. Okay? If they reject the car that you're trying to sell them, though, it's not. It's the car, it's not you. But if they reject working with you, that hurts. It's like, it's like getting turned down for a date. It's like telling someone that you love them for the first time and not hearing it back. It's awful, awkward. And it, and it can be made into a lot of meaning. We're meaning making machines. Like, there's a reason why we have music and art and poetry and all the things we love. Making meaning out of things. All right. I mean, I have a symbol on my sweatshirt. Okay. That is meaning. Let's see, what else do I have? Trying to find other stuff with symbols. Yeah, I don't really find anything. Anyway, we have symbols all around us. I'm just not noticing anything in my space right now. But like, when someone says no to us, we can make that no either data about, like, oh, they just didn't want the thing, or we can make it all about ourselves. And when you're selling your own time and when you're Selling your own expertise and the transformation that you offer your clients, it can feel like they're saying no to you. And just know that's normal. The fact that you feel that means you're not a sociopath. So congratulations, you have empathy. That's great. But it's not an excuse. It's not an excuse just because it feels gross right now. That's not an excuse to not learn how to sell. Because here's the thing. If you're going to be in business, if you're going to have clients, and if you're going to make any money doing this, you're gonna have to sell. You're gonna have to have that enrollment conversation to get people to sign up with you. If you want to sabotage your own success, then do not learn how to sell. Okay? Selling is something that will absolutely help people be successful. If you don't want to be successful, then don't learn how to sell, okay? Simple, simple. It's one of the most easy ways to guarantee your own failure in your business is just avoid learning how to sell. You know, it's 100 up to you. So so far, on our list of ways to sabotage your own business, we have you don't actually learn how to market yourself. You don't learn how to sell your services. And number three, you negotiate against yourself. Now, what this looks like is you're on a sales call with someone and they're really interested in signing up for your thing or hiring you, whatever. And you get to the conversation about the money and bef. And this can happen either before you name your price or after you name your price. But you start lowering your own price. They're telling you they're stressed out about money. You're like, oh, God, like, I'll knock like, $500 off a month. Or you share your price and like, wow, it's expensive. And you say, okay, well, I'll give you 20% off, right? You just negotiate against yourself constantly. Now, a. This is bad for the obvious reason, right? Because you're not making as much money as you could, okay? We don't want that. I mean, we do want that if you don't want to be successful. But if you do want to be successful, that's a bad thing, right? We want you making as much money as possible. But there's a. There's a more, like, insidious way this sabotages your business is when you become the discount club and start slashing prices for. Or your work. You actually tell people, you know, your clients that you're signing up who are paying you the money. You're telling them that your service isn't that good. You're telling them that you actually don't have much faith in what you do and that they, you know, don't necessarily have to take it that seriously. I remember signing up with a health coach a couple years ago. Really nice human being. Really, like, nice human being. I'm sure they know exactly what they're doing, but I remember the sales conversation very well, and they didn't understand that I was making a decision that day. And they thought, okay, well, I'll try to push Katie into making decisions today. And so they cut their rate by like 500 pounds because we're out of the UK and yeah, I signed up, but even as I paid the money, even as I filled out the credit card form, I just felt. Felt like, okay, well, I don't take this seriously because they cut their rate, okay? I would have happily paid full price and paid for it right then and there, except, you know, they discounted without me even asking. I never, you know, I don't ask people to discount their rates for me because I'm a business owner and I understand, like, your rate is your rate. But yeah, it really does under undercut the credibility that you have with your own clients. And I'll be honest, like, I didn't stick with the plan. I really like it completely undercut all of the integrity this person had built with me over years of me following their stuff. So when you negotiate yourself against yourself and lower your rates for people who didn't even ask you to lower your rates, you don't get the best clients, okay? You just don't. So if you don't want to be successful, don't do that. Like, find ways to undercut your own credibility and make less money. You know, it's a great tactic to prevent your own success. Number four in ways to prevent your own success is can do ITIs. Now, this is a very serious disease that businesses catch all the time, especially in the early years. And basically where someone asks you, you, hey, I know you do X, Y and Z, but I need the help with M and L, O, P. Can you help me with that? And you say, yeah, I can do that. And then someone else comes to you and they're like, hey, I know you do stuff with X, Y and Z, but I need help with abc. And you say, yeah, absolutely, I can do that. And it gets to the point where you have like 17 different clients, all where you're doing 17 different things they might be slightly related, but a, the expectations are wildly different across the board. You constantly feel like you're failing because you're doing so many different things that you probably aren't, aren't an expert at. Let's be real. Just when you, when you say, oh, yeah, I can do that, doesn't necessarily mean that you're the pro at it, right? And oftentimes we disappoint our clients this way, right? Because we're not the expert at it. And their expectations are going to be here because it wasn't one of your services that you offered. So they basically designed the service that they wanted in their head. They asked for it, and people aren't great at asking for what they want, right? They get very squirrely around the details. So their expectations are here. Your expectations for what you need to deliver is here. But you're constantly feeling like you're delivering lower, like down here, and it never works out well. And it also becomes incredibly confusing for you to go out and describe what it is you actually do because you stop even knowing after a certain point. Okay? So if you don't want to be successful, you know, really keeping your business in a state of can do itis is going to be one of the best ways to prevent success from coming to you. Okay? Last but not least, there are a lot of things that you can do in your business that feel so good. They feel like you're getting so much done. They feel like you are just like the boss of all bosses getting it in. Designing your website, fine tuning your offer, building out templates for your clients, all the things, all things that like, are helpful once you're actually making money, but these are things that are major, major time wasters. And ultimately when you're first starting a business, you don't need to do them. Okay? You do not need to do them. I actually don't encourage my clients to do a website until a year into offering their service. And the reason for this is that like, if they start a website right off the bat, chances are they're going to change it, right? Because they're not going to stick with their first offer or they're going to fine tune their niche in a different direction, right? Or, you know, they might change their business completely, right? The website that you start before you have a solid niche, you really understand what your offer is and you understand how your business functions is always going to have to be thrown out, right? So you're basically doing a whole crap ton of busy work and maybe spending a Lot of money and maybe, you know, doing a lot of, lot of work for something that's ultimately going to have to be thrown out. And let me tell you this, like, no one is going to discover your website and then decide they want to hire you. It doesn't work that way. They're going to discover you on social media or in the real world or on a podcast. And they will go to your website or your social media accounts to verify that you're a real person. And whether you have a website or not is not going to stop them from hiring you. All right? Websites just add like a little extra layer of credibility that you are who you say you are. And I always joke that, like, I could put up a website tomorrow that says that I'm the best neurosurgeon in the whole world. And sure, there'll be a few people who, you know, who see that and like, well, she must be really good. She has a website about it. But most of the time no one's going to hire a neurosurgeon or someone just because they have a website about it. Right. They're going to need to see other stuff and that's what you need to be spending time on anyway. So. Yeah. So the top five things to do if you want to prevent success from coming to you in all ways. Just going to reiterate quickly. Don't actually market your services. Don't make it clean. Clear the problems that you solve and the outcomes you help people achieve. And don't make it clear how people can become your client. Okay. Just make it really mysterious across the board. Number two, don't learn how to sell your services. Like, really just continue having really awkward conversations where you're not even sure what the you're talking about. That is a great way to prevent yourself from getting clients. All right, Number three, negotiate against yourself. Like, start lowering, lowering your pricing before anyone ever asks you to to do it. This is going to make sure that you a, don't make a whole lot of money from your work and be that you get really not great, not committed clients. Awesome. Awesome way to guarantee that. Number four, commit to Candidis. Okay? Commit to just doing whatever it is that you are remotely capable of doing. This will lower your self esteem, esteem, your confidence. This will make you feel like you're constantly behind the eight ball, feel really overwhelmed by all the different things that you're having to do in your business. Yeah. And it'll really, like, undercut any trust you have with your audience. And number five, like spend all of your time doing behind the scenes stuff that isn't actually going to get you clients. Those are. Those are the top five best ways to prevent yourself from having success in your business. I'm just going to check over on Instagram. Let me see. There we go. Awesome. Everyone. I just got a text from my family that they got my favorite ice cream, so I was gonna go a little longer tonight, but I just. I really want my ice cream. It's a salted peanut butter Oreo. It is delicious. It is so good. And they went to my favorite ice cream place and. And they picked me up some, and I really want to go downstairs and eat it because it's in the kitchen right now. Anyway, thank you all for being here. I hope this is really helpful if you want to find other ways to be a failure in your business. I always have stuff. And if you also want to find ways to be successful in your business, I have even more stuff for that. So I. I cannot wait to share more with you. Today is, let me see. 1, 2, 3. Day. 10 of me going live every single day for 30 days. Okay, so we're one third of the way through. The consequence if I fail one of these days is that I have to actually sing a song and record it and post the video, and I don't get to pick the song. Lauren Lefkowitz gets to pick the song. Because we have consequences in this little challenge we're doing here, which is not fun. But anyway, we're gonna roll with it. But Anyway. I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach for ADHD business owners. Thank you for being here. I look forward to being live with you tomorrow. Bye.