Black Friday FOMO

Oh, I can taste. I can taste. Y. Hello and good evening, my friends. I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach. Coming to you live in a few different places. Let me tell you all about it. Okay? Oh, hold on. Am I on the right one? Yes, I am. Okay. Just, I have a couple Instagram accounts and sometimes I freak myself out in the very beginning because I'm like, oh, no, what if I'm on the wrong one? Because I've done it before? Anyway, going live this evening on Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, and of course Instagram. Over here on my phone, talking tonight about Black Friday fomo. And I know this happens for so many business owners this time of year. It feels like you aren't doing enough to promote your business. Right. And what kind of what creates this is generally that we see all this promotion, all these social media posts, all these ads done by our quote unquote competitors, and it gets us feeling like we did something wrong. Right? It gets us feeling like we dropped the ball, we're not good enough. Like we were not. We weren't organized enough, we didn't plan well enough. There's so much that goes on. Hello and welcome. And it's really important to remind yourself that you're only one person. Okay? You have not been sitting around not doing shit for the last three months. Okay? You have been working, you've been hustling to grow this business, you've been serving clients, you've been promoting yourself. You've been doing some really brave things. And yeah, sure, like you could absolutely have added to that list and created some kind of Black Friday promotion and rolled it out. And also, it's completely okay that you didn't. All right? I actually have a very anti discount mentality when it comes to service based businesses. And. Hi, Justin, welcome from YouTube. Discount is a dirty word. I agree. Yeah, huh? So here's I'm gonna tell a story about something that's retail related, but it relates to pretty much every business you can think of. Okay. So during the 08 recession, so I used to be a big Banana Republic person and J. Crew. They were my two favorite retailers. Okay. I loved going to both places for my clothes. I would spend a lot of money. I was young. What are you going to do? Anyway, so the recession hits. I actually, like, for the next six months I was living in France. I came back and Banana Republic during that recession when as soon as the economy went to shit, they just started slice. Slashing their prices. They cut their prices down so dramatically that what they ended up doing is training their entire clientele, all of their customers, that you never buy anything full price at Banana Republic. No, you just wait a week and then it'll be in the, in the sales section. Right. What happened then is their quality started going down, right. Because they weren't able to get as much money for the clothes that they were selling because they had trained everyone so well to wait for the sale, to wait for that discount. And so ultimately I no longer shop there. I. It's no longer a store that has any interest for me. The quality is no longer as good. And you know, frankly, like, I'm not really into digging through sales sections. It doesn't really light me up and inspire me. Right. So when you discount your services, when. Hi Raz. Welcome. When you discount your services and when you do promotions like Black Friday and Cyber Monday and you announced to the whole world, by the way, I'm like giving a 20% discount, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. What you're doing is you're training your potential clients out there that your rate is negotiable. You're training them that if they don't like your prices when they potentially sign up with you. I love you too, rh. Then they should just wait until like another Black Friday rolls around, right? Which completely screws you over. If you're really trying to start and grow this business, right? What you don't want to have happen is that you get on a like a deal chasing cycle with your ideal clients, right. You don't want them waiting until like the two times a year that you do some kind of wild promotion. No, no, no, no, no. And hi, Alpha Flyer. Welcome. You want to train them that if they have the need, if they are struggling with a problem, if they have a desire for something, some kind of outcome that you provide, that as soon as that pain or that desire gets hot enough that they need to just jump right in and hire you then. Okay. Not wait until there's a deal. Okay. The other thing that discounting communicates to your ideal clients is, is that like you're not full. It trains them that you're actually not very good at business. This is what it communicates. It means I don't have enough clients in my business right now and I'm desperate. So I'm going to do this little promotion thing. Now. There are a few ways you can like avoid giving that impression, right? If you're offering something that's not your typical offer or something like that, but you want to be really careful. And there's no way for you to really control what people's perceptions are. Right. So you really want to be careful when you're thinking about discounting your work. When someone asks, can I get a discount? I ask. I reply with quote, discount. It's like, it's like when someone. I used to work at Equinox in San Francisco and we had a parking garage that was not too far away. And on the weekends we offered validation, you know, and so guys would come up and they'd be like, hi, can you validate me? And I'd be like, you look really handsome today. You know, I bet you parked your car really well. So cheesy. But yeah, like, there are so many people out there who want to sign up with you. They want to hire you and they are going to be willing to pay full price for it. If you fill your business up with discount chasers, with freebie chasers, you're not going to have space for the full praying the full paying clients. It's just not going to happen. So you need to make a very conscious decision here. Are you going to be the discount service provider, the discount lawyer, the discount copywriter, the discount coach, or are you going to be the high quality coach that people go to when they need to solve their problems? I would vote for the latter. Personally, I have a couple things, a few things that I would suggest you do. Instead of doing a Black Friday or a Cyber Monday promotion, the number one thing is raise your rates. Like, raise your rates not necessarily on the day after Thanksgiving, but say, hey, listen, my rates are going up December 1st. If you want to lock in this year's pricing, then you have to sign up by November 30th. Okay. Because the rates are going up December 1st, you're not discounting. You are letting them lock in a lower rate, though. You are letting them feel like they've kind of won something. Right? Let me see. Justin. My favorite bumper sticker reads, cash, ass or grass. No one rides for free. Same in business. And for the love of God, no more trade of labor products. Oh, my God, I know. The trades are so bad. Like, there's only been one trade I've ever done. It was with a Pilates instructor for coaching that was ever worth anything. I've done trades in other situations and like, I've always regretted it. It's always been like I got not scammed, but like I never got what I wanted out of the relationship. Yeah. No, no trades. No trades, no discounts. Okay? We are offering top tier services. And as such we charge top tier prices. That's how we do it here. So. Yeah. So option number one is you're going to raise your rates December 1st and you can do this next year. Just like put this in the calendar. Remember this? Hold this back for next year, okay? Don't worry about this year. I don't want to like tell you this stuff and make you feel like you have to jump in and completely rework your marketing plan and do anything last minute right now. Do not worry about it, okay? Stick with whatever plan you are working with right now and just keep going. Next year you can do something along these lines. Okay? So raising your rates. Number two, you know, you want to remind people this, I mean, this is the season of giving, right? And so oftentimes when people are shopping for deals, what they're doing is they're shopping for Christmas presents, right? And I don't know about you, but when I go and shop for Christmas presents, it's like one for you, one for me, one for you, one for me,. One for you and two for me. Like that Abbott and Costello movie, hold that ghost at the very end when they're counting up the money. You know, when someone's in a shopping mood, they're gonna do some shopping. Like it's just going to happen, right? So someone has already been thinking about working with you and it's been in the back of their mind and they keep thinking about it and they keep thinking about it and they're in a money spending mentality anyway. You know, one of the things that you can point out to them, especially if you're in some kind of transformative service like coaching consulting, if you're training them on something really specific, you can remind them that like hiring you, like no one can buy you as a Christmas present for them. Like no one's gonna know to hire you as a Christmas present for them. You know, that's a very personal investment and the only person who can invest in working with you is them. And they get to make that decision. Like they can, they can choose to buy all the things that they want, you know, the actual items that they want to see for themselves that they don't think anyone else is going to buy from them. But you know, the thing that's really going to make a difference in their lives is working with someone like you. And why don't they just invest in one of the greatest gifts that they can give themselves this year and that's to commit to something that's going to completely change their lives, right? Like, no one's spouse is going to go and hire a coach for them. That's weird. You know, just. And very few coaches would allow that, right? They would want to talk to the person first, all the things. So you get to like, full permission to just remind your clients, hey, if you want to buy shit, you can. But if you want to invest in something that's going to completely transform your life, hello, I'm here and I'm for hire and I would love to work with you, right? Like, stop wasting your money on shit that like, is going to make you happy for five minutes when really we can get down to work and as soon as possible before the new year and set you up for whatever success you want to create in the next six months to a year. Like, that's super powerful. That reminds them exactly what they care about, right? It brings them out of the frenzy of like, gotta get it all deals, deal chasing, which the best of us can get sucked into. Believe me, I do it all the time. And then third, you know, just because it's the holidays and just because they're in like a buying mood doesn't mean that their problems went away. It doesn't mean that the desires they have for their life went away, right? You know, just because, like, what's something that I really want? God, I don't, I don't know if I have any. Just because, like I really want like fancy skin care serums this, this Christmas doesn't mean that I don't also want to have my business hit seven figures next year. Year. Like that is the thing I care more about than serums, right? Serums are like the easy, simple dopamine hit. Like I can buy them and have them and be happy about it for a day or two and then it would just like disappear into the whole pile of cosmetics that I have on my counter that I never use because I'm lazy. Or I could save the money and I could invest in something that's actually going to help me reach my goals next year. You know, we, we forget when we see everyone else discounting, we see everyone else like really chasing that sale mentality of like, you know, 30 off, 40 off, 50 off. We think, oh God, well, they're doing it. I have to do it too. You know, it's. If everyone's doing this, then that's what's expected of me. And it's so far from the truth, right? While they're selling the discount, while they're selling, like, you don't have to pay as much. You get to continue to position your service as one of the top tier services. You get to keep highlighting your testimonials. You get to keep sharing case studies. You get to keep talking about the fears, the problems, the frustrations that your ideal clients have. And in addition to that, you get to point to all of the biggest dreams and goals that they have that they almost don't believe is possible for them. And you get to say, hey, listen, I help people go from here to here. And if you're ready to do this, then book a call with me. Let's talk, let's see if it's a fit, right? You're going to stick out from the crowd so much more if you're not chasing after people you know, who are after deals, right? You know, one of the things that I see new business owners do a lot when they first start is they have like baby pricing for their baby business because they feel really insecure charging higher prices for something that they're just starting out doing. Right. And fair. I get it, sure, I did it, we all do it. But there's a line, there's a line of how much you want to discount, right? Because the mentality that a lot of new business owners have is okay, cool. And hello, welcome. Hi Morgan. The mentality that a lot of new business owners have is that they're going to charge really, really cheap for their first like handful of clients, like barely any money. And then those clients are going to be so happy about working with them, they're going to have all these results, they're going to write beautiful testimonials and then with those testimonials, they're going to turn around and they're going to sell to like this higher tier market that's going to pay a lot more. And let me tell you, that doesn't work that way, right? Because the clients that you attract from for baby money get are there for baby goals and get baby results because they're really not that committed. They don't have enough skin in the game, right? So whatever testimonial you get from them is going to be about these really small wins, right? And it's going to be more about like how nice you are and blah, blah, and you know, how fun you were to talk to someone who's looking to spend thousands of dollars on a coach or a consultant or someone to help them do something really transformative in their lives. They don't give a fuck how nice you are. Like they really don't. Like, sure they want to make sure that they like you and that there's chemistry. But, like, they're after results. They want to see that you have a track record of working with clients who are really successful in reaching their goals with you, Right? They're looking to see themselves in those testimonials. You know, when I think about hiring someone, I see stalk the crap out of their former clients. I will look up their names, I'll look up their websites. I'll, you know, stalk their LinkedIn. Because, I mean, on one end, like, there's. It's so easy to fake all this stuff right? Now there are some people out there selling stuff, and, like, their testimonials are all fake, right? They're made up people, made up Facebook accounts, all that jazz. So you really do have to do your homework. But when I am stalking all these people, and, like, not in a creepy way, in a, you know, I'm curious if you're actually a real person who had real results kind of way. What I'm looking for is, do I see myself in you? Right? Because we're social buyers. You know, one of the ways that restaurants get people to buy a certain thing on the menu is they tell you this is the most popular thing on the menu, right? And so, like, if other people who enjoy that type of cuisine really like that one dish, great. You probably like it too, right? If I were going around and stalking, like, say a copywriter. Copywriter was trying to sell to me to do a whole email campaign for me, I'm just gonna do that because Morgan's here and it's reminding me of that. Anyway, if I were to, like, go and talk to someone and they're like, yeah, I have a lot of really happy clients. And I was like, oh, cool, let me go check them out. I went and checked them out, and they're all like, absolute beginner kind of Etsy store people who are, you know, making jewelry and pottery and really, really cool stuff. But it's a completely different business model. It's a completely different way to, you know, engage with your ideal clients. And also highly visual, whereas my work isn't visual. Like, I talk to people for a living. That's not very interesting. It's not as interesting as someone like, you know, being at a wheel with. With some. Some ceramics and everything. So, uh, that's gonna tell me a lot if this person is the right person for me, right? So when you're thinking about discounting your services, this is a very long tangent. I went on. I'm Gonna bring it back, I promise. So when you're discounting your services early on in your business to try to attract those early on clients that you can get those testimonials. Remember, those testimonials, if you're charging too little, will never attract your ideal client. They won't never attract those high, high paying, high tier people who really want a major transformation with you. Let me see. Justin. Oh, my gosh. Me to someone. I'm going to hand a lot of money. Yeah. I'm going to need to see receipts of success. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. You know, it's scary for people who are just starting their business, right? Because you have a lot of people who have a ton of testimonials and they have receipts of success and yeah, absolutely. That's going to help you as you grow your business early on, though. No one's going to expect you to have testimonials and reviews if you're just starting. Right. But it doesn't mean that you have to charge $10 an hour when the going rate is like 300 to $1,000 an hour. Okay, charge 300 an hour. Charge on the lower end. Okay, that's perfect. Perfectly fine. But remember, you have to value your service. If you don't value your service, no one else will. Right. Everyone takes their cue about how you want to be treated from you. And if you're training everyone that you're Kmart, then guess how they're going to treat you. They're going to treat you like Kmart. Now, the bonus thing here is I like, the other thing that you can do around Black Friday and Cyber Monday is jack squat. Like, you don't have to do anything around Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Let everyone else discount. Let everyone else do their promotions and all that stuff. Like, you're busy. You're. You're serving clients. You have your marketing campaign. Maybe you have something coming up in the new year that you're really ramping up to. Maybe you don't want to tire out your audience and your list trying to sell them something that is okay. That's absolutely okay. Maybe wild concept here. Maybe you actually value spending time with family on Thanksgiving weekend and you don't want to have to dive right into work right after you finish your turkey dinner. That is okay. Right? We're not designing businesses here that run our lives that require us to sacrifice so much of ourselves in order to be successful. We're designing businesses that specifically support whatever ideal life we have in mind for ourselves. All right? That has to be intentionally Created. It's one of the things I do with my clients. There's no one size fits all plan that I do with all of my clients because everyone is so different. How many hours they want to work per week is different. Their work style and their personalities are different. Their audiences are different. The things that they do for their people are different. Right? There's no one size fits all. There's what works best for you and your business and your life, right? That's it. Okay. If doing Cyber Monday and Black Friday is something that you're really excited for and you really want to go for it, my advice to you is make it something besides your normal offer, right? Something that's outside of your norm. So people aren't going to expect to have a deal at some point with your normal offer or. Or have it be something that, like, there's only, like a finite amount of them, right? You're only doing this one thing, one time, or you're raising your rates on December 1st. That is. That is how I would approach it anyway. Oh, my gosh. Joe Kane. Hello. I raise my weights rates to weed out the Muggles. Yes, yes. We have to weed out the Muggles. The Muggles, I mean, they're nice enough, right? And they deserve help and they deserve all the support, but they can't see the magic. They can't do it. They just don't have the capabilities. They don't have the lens for it. Right? And if you're a top tier service provider, you're magic, right? Hold yourself to that standard. All right, everyone. I will be going live again tomorrow. I want to own that. I had set myself a 30 day goal of going live Monday through Friday. Completely dropped off last week. And I always like to be open about what's going on in my life because I think that's really important as a business owner and as business coach. To show you that there's no part of your life that you have to hide, right? Like, it doesn't harm anything. My family lost someone, my Aunt Ange, two weeks ago, Friday. And you know, it's funny. One of the things that I've. I mean, I'm very. I'm very lucky. I haven't lost a whole lot of people in my life and I really haven't lost anyone in my adulthood. Um, and so it was funny, but not funny. The first week. It was like, shock, you know, I continued doing everything in my business. I was working really hard. Um, it was just something that was like, oh, wow. Yeah. Crazy that that happened. And Then last week, it just. And you know, in addition to that, it was her birthday on Thanksgiving. And so I gave myself some grace and forgiveness and compassion and just like, let myself off the hook for the things that. That require a certain amount of energy and emotional. What is it? Emotional presence to be able to do well. But yeah, you know, as. As you human, as you continue to live your life and have people you love in your life and grow your business, we want to be really conscious that you have time to spend with those people you love. I was really lucky that I, you know, had a lot of time to call her and check in with her, you know, over the last few years and that we lived close together for nine years when I lived in San Francisco. But I would really, really regret a whole lot more if I hadn't had that free time to spend with her. Hi, Sarah Louise. And to spend, you know, talking to her on the phone. As you're building your business, I want you to remember, yes, money's great and yes, clients are great, and yes, like, success is awesome, but none of that is a replacement for the people you love. And I. I don't want anyone who ever builds a business with me or, you know, on their own to ever devote so much time to building this business that they miss out on being with the people they love. Right. It's one of the core principles of what I do with my clients. So just want to share that with you, you know, and I'm going to continue having grace for myself. My intention is to go live every single day this week, week, Monday through Friday, and just to continue this through the rest of the year. And also, like, grief hits you like a mofo sometimes just like a weird thing will hit you and you just start crying. And like, you guys don't need to see me that way. I'm not a pretty crier. So anyway, thank you for being here and thank you for engaging Justin and Joe Kane and Raz and. What is it, Lacena? I can't. I'm sorry, I don't know how to pronounce that. And Alpha Flyer and Morgan and Sarah Louise, thank you all for being here. I hope this is super useful for you. Two songs that are my litmus of am I spending too much time away from family? Cat in the Cradle and Lose My Soul by Toby Mack. Oh, such great songs. I'm gonna have to go listen to those. Anyway, I love you all so much. I hope you have an amazing rest of your Monday and I will see you tomorrow. Okay, bye. Katie. Out.