Brave Biz Labs 2024 09 27

Hey all, how you doing?

Good morning or afternoon, wherever you are in the world.

5:00Pm Friday afternoon in Zurich.

Have a glass of wine. I. I won't blame you.

I would really love one.

Anyway, I wish there was a feature on Zoom where like, if you're on back to back Zoom calls, it just queues up the next link and you could just hop over instead of signing out, signing back in, signing out. Because there's always that lag time. If anyone has any poll with Zoom, can you please propose that I. I.

Know a workaround for that. I use a single. I use my personal Zoom link for all my meetings and I can't do.

That because I record stuff for. For clients and it's private and I can't. It's confidential. But anyway. But thank you. Yeah. For other stuff.

I'm.

Anyway, welcome everyone. Happy Friday. And if you are new to Brave Biz Labs and you're just coming for the fourth Friday thing that I open up to the public, here's how this goes. Any question you have about your business, no matter how beginner, even if you're not even sure how to phrase it as a question, and it's just like, here's mystery Katie to help me figure this out. I'm here for it. If you have something to offer other people, you know, I, I try to make sure that I'm going at a quick clip, so I answer as many questions as possible. So if you have something to offer to someone else in the group, please put in the chat and offer to. To share it offline. You know, sometimes we do tend to go down a rabbit hole and people pile on to answer one question with one person and then I'm not able to answer questions for everyone else and then I feel bad and then I. That's a bad start to my weekend. So just want to make sure that everyone is able to get the questions answered. You know, sometimes I start this off with a context setting, but I'm on my third back to back call. And Hendrick. Yeah? If you want to share LinkedIn links. Absolutely. Go for it. Yeah. Thank you. All right, so let's just open this up to open Q A. Actually, let's start with the celebration. Who wants to celebrate something today? Gonna change my mind three times in like 30 Friday.

So I'll celebrate that.

Yeah. TGIF. Who else wants to celebrate something?

I had an absolutely amazing event over the weekend that I had spent months working on and it was a success and I had lots of people showing up and the feedback was awesome. So, yay.

Congratulations. Well done. Yes. Thank you. Who else wants to celebrate something?

Love it. Hendrik.

I'll go. This week, I was interviewed for a Business Insider feature article, which makes me both excited and want to throw up, because you never know how a journalist is actually going to take the words you say and frame them. But either way, all press is good press. All press is good press. Yeah. You can just say, featured in Business Insider. No one's going to go look it up. Yeah, well, I mean, very few people will. Yeah. Congratulations. Who else? Monica. I'll celebrate again that also that it's Friday and the week's over.

I had two conferences that I presented.

At this week, so it was kind.

Of a very busy and stressful week.

So congratulations. Huge.

Thank you.

Thank you. Who else wants to go?

Anyone? Anyone?

Okay. Well, awesome. Well, let's take it into main questions. What questions do you have? Where can I support you in your business? What's going on? Anything and everything is. Is allowed here.

I think for me, it's. It's a. Still getting the point where I'm launching the. The first part, so it's getting to cash quickly. That's probably the. The. The main question, because I think there's a. A lot of ideas and ways that you can start to raise your profile and start to get people interested in what you're doing. But converting that from free conversations and kind of like free advice to paying customers is a. Is a question there.

Yeah. I mean, you have to stop giving free advice. Like. Like, you know, it's. There's no. There's no magical process where it's like, oh, I'm gonna, like, sprinkle dust on this, and then it's gonna go from free advice into paid advice. If you wanna be paid for it, you have to tell people, if you want my advice, you have to pay for it. Right. So, like, changing those conversations you're having. This is one of the things I train in, in my programs is holistic selling is. Instead of going into a call where you're going to be giving all of your advice away, you're saying, oh, cool. It sounds like you need someone who's going to give you advice on X, Y and Z. That is what I do with my clients. And it helps you go from here to here. Are you interested in that? Are you? Okay, great. Do you want to talk about working together? I mean, that's like the quick and dirty version of holistic selling. Right. But, you know, for those of us I have a sense that I. I tend to attract people with teacher energy. Anyone here a really good teacher of stuff? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cool. So one of the things that we have to learn how to do is hold back all of our wisdom. Not all of it, but like a good portion of it. Because that's what we get paid for. Right. And we don't owe someone who's, who's booked a free call with us. We don't owe them our knowledge. How many years did you take to develop all the knowledge that you have? I'm personally 36 years old. 36 years, that's a really long ass time, right? That's worth something, right? If someone wants access to that 36 years of banked knowledge, they get to pay for it. So, Hendrick, like, that's what you get to do.

You, you.

It's going to take you saying, awesome. It sounds like you have this problem and you need this outcome. I help people go from this problem to this outcome by teaching you how to do X, Y and Z. Do you want to talk about what that looks like? Right. The only way for you to go from free to paid is for you to start saying this is paid. As a quick answer to your question. Does that help?

Yeah, it does. It does. I don't want to dominate because it's.

No. Well, and I just want to say, I want to say, I want to add something. You know, early on in your business, it's really tempting to be like, well, I want to show people that I give value. I want to show, I want to prove. Right. People wouldn't book a call with you if they didn't think that what you.

Have to say is valuable.

Right. That's not, that's not why they would end up on a call with you. You know, I don't know about you guys, but I'm pretty busy. And I don't just think like, oh, cool, here's a weird stranger on the Internet that I think I should probably book some time with. No, tell me why it's worth my time. If I'm already showing up to a call with you, it's because I believe it's worth my time. Right. Anything else? Anything else on that?

It's good insights. I think I've got some ideas already. I think it's shifting what I'm doing regularly because we run this accelerator each week and for the four we run accelerator four months and this graduates from that become quite often some amazing startups that graduate from this during the cohort. Of course, they're our customers. We don't charge them because they're in there for free. But then afterwards there's a transition from free to.

Yeah.

To basically carry on helping. And like you suggested, there's this tendency we make to keep giving for free because it's what we do and it's kind of what we love doing. It's helping. And you get that dopamine hit when you do something good for people. Yeah, but it's kind of. Yeah. It's not a bad thing to ask to be paid back for the wisdom you're sharing with somebody.

Yeah, yeah. You know, in the Western world, I have this theory that we were trained from a very young age to think, oh, well, if you're going to do good for the world, you shouldn't benefit from it. You know, and it's kind of like this, this Catholic concept of like, okay, well, if you're going to be, if you're going to devote yourself to helping humanity, you have to give up all of your belongings. You have to go and wear a burlap sack as clothes and like pray 10 hours a day and be really uncomfortable and eat porridge. Right. Which, I mean, sure, for people who want to join a religion and, and do that work. Absolutely. But you know what else they have? They have a billion dollar organization that's taking care of them, that's covering their housing and their food and their clothing, and that's employing them essentially. They're, they're doing this for a job as individuals. Like, yeah, we can do stuff for free, but like, there's no organization that's paying for our homes, that's keeping the lights on, that's feeding our kids or dogs or cats. You know, we have to make sure that we're doing that for ourselves. And also the fact that we charge for our good work where we help others doesn't negate the work we're doing. Right? It doesn't. Absolutely not. You're still doing good work even if you're charging for it.

If you don't charge for it, you can't do the good work. And if you can't do the good work, then you're actually stopping people that would otherwise benefit from getting your help. And that's, it's amazing, especially working here where people are sort of impact entrepreneurs, quite often they feel really guilty about giving back and about being paid for it. So when you ask them in a room of 100 people who he wants to make a billion bucks, very, very few hands go up. And that's kind of surprising because they're entrepreneurs and startups and that's the reason I reached out to you as well, Katie, because I heard you say this and you were really focused on the cash. I'm like, yeah, we shouldn't be worried about that. We're doing this because we love people with helping them, etcetera, Too.

Yeah.

And we get paid. Every mining company executive, most of them have a family and needs to pay, put money on the table to pay those kids as well.

Well, and there's a difference between saying, hey, you want to have impact on the world, I want to help you have impact on the world. But you know, I need to be paid for that advice to help you make impact in the world and also have a living. It's not like you're taking the, the source of water and saying, this is my water. You want a bottle of water, that'll be $10. Like you need this resource that's going to keep you alive. No, no, no, no. Like you got to pay me money for it. Like our brains go from like, I'm either going to give it away for free or I'm evil and I'm, I'm holding stuff back that's going to keep them alive. That's not the case at all. You know, there's, there's so much gray area in between and it's not even gray area, it's like where you're going to be most impactful. Because I don't know about you guys, but I download, you know, freebies all the time. You know, like, like advice on how like the seven ways to, you know, build stronger legs or to do X, Y and Z. Do I ever do any of it? No. I never do anything that I got told to do for free. I barely do the stuff that I read in all the self help books I read. I'll think about it, but I'll never actually take action on it. Right. And I paid $11 for that book. You know the stuff that my coach and my copywriter and my team tells me to do that I pay thousands of dollars for. I act on that and it actually helps.

100%.

Yeah.

Lori, working on setting up pricing for a new program. I'm upping the price. Yeah. 100%. I'm so happy to hear that. Yeah. Okay, awesome. Good enough. Hendrick?

Yeah, absolutely.

I always want to pronounce your name Hondrick, but I'm sure I think it's Hendrick because you're from Australia.

It's like Jimi Hendrix, but just one Hendrik.

Okay, good. Singular Hendrix. Okay, great. Awesome. Who would like to ask a question next.

Was that from Yvonne? Was that a question that you asked to add to what we were talking about? Because I see your message. The next one's from Lori, right? Is that the same point or is it. They're comments, right? They're not so much a question.

Yeah, it's. Yeah, comments. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. But such a great point. Yes. Orzala.

So I'm not sure if this is to be for the coaching session or for today what we talked about last time. I still have this fear and I haven't taken action on any of it. I literally made a list of stuff that I need to make decision on to let go of, but I haven't pulled the trigger yet. So this is why I'm here today to see.

Do you wanna. Because I know what you're talking about, but no one else does. Do you want to give a little more context? Sure, that makes sense.

So basically the two things that I need to do is let go of the B and I chapter that I'm a part of. Because it's not bringing the amount of like based on the amount of time that I'm investing, it's not bringing that financially. And then also let go of my va, who's really good at one area. But I need somebody that kind of more is passionate about marketing, especially online marketing. That's what I do. So there is fear around both of them. I don't think there's fear about the VA aspect of it. I think a little bit as if, like I'm going to feel like I'm going to be behind with my bookkeeping again. There's definitely a big fear with the, the BNI because there's two clients that are current members. So I am afraid that I may lose those two clients. It's interesting because just that this past week another member left after a long time from the chapter. So because obviously they're not bringing. The chapter is bringing a million dollars, but I am not like for the year. They made a million dollars, but I did not get not even 10,000 of that for the year.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean this is essentially what it is to be an entrepreneur, is making decisions that may have negative impact in the short term but will be better long term. And being able to make those decisions with the fear, because the fear is not going to go away. You're that like good news, bad news. Like that voice of fear that like comes in and tells you, like, oh, you might do it wrong. Like you're, you're going to Screw it up. This could be the bad decision. The only people who don't have that fear are sociopaths. Right? That, like, voice of doubt that tells them, like, oh, my God, you're gonna screw everything up. Like, they don't have that, Right. So congratulations, you're not a sociopath. But also bad news. It's never going away. Right? So that. Which means you have to start building the muscle of taking action even when you're scared shitless. Right? You and I both know that your time is maxed out right now. You can't take more clients. Right? We both know that those two clients that you got through BNI are paying less than what you charge now. So if you do lose them, good riddance. You have time, and you have people who are inquiring about your work. You have people who are interested that you could start a sales conversation with. Right. Because of the Instagram challenge you're doing. Right. It would free you up to make more money. Yeah.

Right?

Yeah.

It's like, I know all of this, but it's just somehow.

It's like.

It's like, literally, I have a paralysis going on.

Yeah. So what is it that you need to hear from me that'll help you?

I don't know. That's why I'm, like, here. I just. It's like my husband has been telling me every day, asking me if I have done those two things, because I.

Have to him, and it's just. Yeah.

I don't know if I just need to, like, rip the band aid, like, schedule an email and let it, you know, schedule this weekend and let it go first thing Monday morning.

Well, what if you did that during this call? What if we all held you accountable to writing that email right now and sending it?

Do it.

Oh, God. I am not gonna Tony Robbins. You are gonna be like, you have to do this right now. It's your consent that I'm asking for. But if you want use the next 41 minutes where you're working in the background, I'm answering questions, and we check in with you towards the end, and you've sent it.

Okay.

I could.

I could. Yeah, I could try that.

Yeah, sure. Well, someone in the group volunteered to be emotional support for Rosala so that, like, if she's having a little mini panic while we're answering other questions, she can reach out to you and be like, oh, my God, tell me I'm not a terrible person. Well, someone. Will someone volunteer to be? Okay. Hendrik is going to be your emotional support. You can dm him directly. Okay.

Cool.

Like, feel like the hardest thing I'm.

Going to be doing.

I just saw. So there's a setting you have in Zoom that doesn't let people DM directly normally.

Okay. So never mind. I forgot I have that set up. Okay, so you're just going to dm, like, open to the chat, but I don't think anyone is going to be fussed about it, so.

Or we could even, like, ping me on LinkedIn. It's also.

Also cool.

And I'll.

Yeah, whatever.

Circle back in later on.

Yeah, yeah, cool. Cool. All right, so that's. That's what you're going to be working on for the next 40 minutes.

Okay.

The countdown is on.

Okay.

Okay, great.

Awesome.

All right, what other questions do we have? Oh, and I just want to plant a little seed. Or Zala, if you don't know, Jessica Sanchez, she actually helps people with social media. She's a. She's a VA who helps coaches with that. So you guys might want to connect at some point, you know? Thank you, Katie. Thank you. Yeah.

Thank you.

Of course. All right, what other questions do we have today? And I just want to give it a shout out to Paul.

Welcome.

I'm so happy to see you back. We had a scheduling snafu last week and he showed up to one of the closed meetings and I was like, oh, no. Like, this is the wrong day. So I'm so happy you came back this week.

Thanks.

Yeah.

Good to see you. Awesome. Who wants to go next with a question?

I have a question.

Yes, Nicole.

Yeah. So what do you do? This is going to sound so ridiculous, but I know it's Safe Place when you just struggle to do exactly what you're supposed to do and you just can't seem to do what you're supposed to do. You know, like call people or email people and ask for the work or any.

Anything like that. Yeah. And those are the things that you're struggling to get yourself to do. Yeah. So. And you have adhd, I'm guessing.

Not that I know of, but maybe.

So this is an executive dysfunction kind of thing. And it can happen because of adhd. It can also happen because of a lot of other stuff. There are a few things I do. I'm a big fan of checking in with my favorite self, you know, so my favorite self. And let me talk you through this because, like, we all have, like, this ideal self that we have in our minds, and, like, our ideal self, like, dresses perfectly every day, always has great hair, eats healthy every single meal Works out, you know, the appropriate amount of times per week, meditates, spends time with friends, has hobbies, you know, does everything perfectly in their business and is making a ton more money than we are. Right. We all have that version of ourselves in our brains. Cool. That person's not helpful to us. We've been sold this idea that. That should be inspirational to us. But what it does is it actually creates a ton of shame and weight to what we need to do and then makes us feel bad when we can't do it because we're not that person, and we'll never be that person because that person doesn't exist. Right. So for one, shifting out of that and thinking about who's your favorite version of yourself, who's the version of Nicole that, like, when you show up as that version of Nicole, you just love every moment. You so enjoy every moment that you get to be with the people you're with. You get to be in your home, you get to be drinking your coffee, like, whatever activity it is that you're doing, as exciting or as banal as they are.

Who.

Who is that person? Right. So. So I'm asking you this right now. Do you have a kind of an image of who that is?

No.

No. Okay, so tell me, like, what do you enjoy about when you're in flow, when you're getting stuff done and you're really enjoying your work? Can you describe that person?

That's more. You know, I feel like I'm making an impact, and I'm having really good conversations with people, and they're paying clients, not just anyone, but, you know, actually working with my paying clients.

So, yeah. Okay, cool. So. But you have that feeling in your body right now. Okay, cool. So tap into that feeling. And what does that feeling feel like you should do? And it might not be the list that you have in front of you.

Well, if I had a few more clients to talk to, then I'd be talking to them. I need clients talking to them. So that's why I want to be reaching out and setting up meetings with people. And for some reason, I can't make myself do it.

Yeah. Okay, so. So where did you get assigned the. I need to reach out to people to set up meetings.

Well, I have success when I do it, so I've assigned it to myself.

Okay, cool. What has worked for you in the past to get yourself to do it?

Well, just doing it.

Just doing it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Is there any fear around doing it?

Yeah, I mean, there's always, you know, what happens if they say yes, what happens if they say no, what happens if I work this hard? Nothing happens, you know, so.

Yeah.

Yeah. So what happens if they say yes?

Well, then I might have a lot more work to do, and it might not be the fun work that I want to do.

Ah, yeah. Okay. So if they say yes to the conversation, you feel like you're automatically beholden to taking them on as clients?

No, it might be that they want all the free stuff, like what we're talking about, or I put all the work and effort into it and stress about it working and not working and all that, and then they just ditch me Right. When they're, you know, there's. There's a lot of. Lot of stuff.

Yeah. Okay. So. So from what I'm hearing, it sounds like there's some. Some sinkholes, some potential sinkholes in your sales process that are opening you up to that. So you and I might want to hop on a separate call to talk through all that, because it's not something that we like. We could absolutely dig into it here. Here. But it would take up the rest of the call. Right. So. Because I don't want you ever. I don't want any of you to ever set yourself up that, like, if someone says they're interested you're doing, you're potentially doing work for free. That's never going to happen. Right. You deserve to be paid for every single moment of work you do for someone. Right.

Always that work. It's like getting a statement of work together and it's, you know, putting all of the ducks to make sure.

Yeah, yeah, totally. But I mean, still, like, you know, there's ways for us to streamline your sales process that make sure that it mitigates the risk of you doing that and not getting an answer or having them disappear or them saying no. Yeah, right. I think right now you're facing, oh, wow, this is a lot of work. I'm, you know, worried about it going here. So you're actually. You're preventing your own success. Yes. Yes. Yeah, yeah. How many of us do that? How many of us know, like, what we can do to be successful? Then we get worried about being successful. Right. Because we get worried about the success turning into something nasty. Yeah. So you're not alone. And also, there's so many ways to mitigate it. Okay, so let's. Let's book a time. I'll email you after this with a link. Let's book a time. We'll talk through, like, what's happening in your business and I can give you some pointers. Okay. Okay. Awesome. Who else would like to ask a question?

I don't know if I have a question.

Yeah.

Because it's almost like I want to say, like, where I'm. Where am I. Where I'm at and, like, why. I asked to. For the link to this, because this is first time joining this, but I kind of just had. So I don't. I don't own my own business or anything like that, but I had this sort of thing click in my head. I'm, you know, I'm a. I'm a lawyer, I work in a firm, and. Something kind of just clicked into place where it's just like, I realized that even though sort of structurally, legally, whatever, I'm part of another business that, like, I kind of still am, like, the owner of my business, which is my time. So there's some things that, like, I know that probably most of the people on this call maybe have to deal with things that I don't have to deal with. And, you know, you guys are rock stars for taking that on, in addition to the actual, like, you know, the work that people pay you for. But, like, I'm also just kind of thinking of, like, how do I. How do I focus on the thing that is my business?

Uhhuh.

You know, providing a particular, like, niche legal service and doing that in a way that's kind of like, all right, I'm going to do this here right now. This is where I'm at. This is the. You know, I already have these. Basically operates like, I have agreements in place for all of these support services and association with all of these other people that I can delegate work to all. That's great. But, like, my practice is still my practice in a sense. And, like, how do I focus on, like, that part of it? Like, the part that I own and treat that like it's a thing that, you know, I could keep doing it where I'm at. I could go do it somewhere else on my own. I could go do it, you know, so.

Yeah, so. So I'm. I'm pulling out questions for you. So there's like, the building, the personal brand. They're sourcing your own deal, essentially. Right, right. And, like, setting. Yeah. Setting things up so that, like, if you did choose to walk from the practice you're in, you could set up your own. And what's your. What's the specific area of law that you're in?

So I work in patent litigation, and even within that, like. Like particular sort of subsets of, of that, you know, you know, agency. Agency challenges that. The uspto, you know, appeals to the Federal Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Yeah, like, certain things that I, that I'm like, I'm really good at this stuff.

Yeah.

I'm less good at other things that people do, but like this.

I mean, great. So. So. Okay, so. And question. Another question. Do you get rewarded within your. The business you're working for, for bringing in new business right now?

Well, I'm, I am not bringing in new business right now.

But if you did business, would you get like a bonus? Would you get recognition of some sort of.

There, there would be. Yeah, it would. It would be. There would be some benefit to it for me if I was.

What I'm looking for is like, you know, will you, will you send up red flags if you start now promoting trying to bring in business? Like, I don't want you getting fired. Cause I think that you're trying to start your own practice, so. Yes, absolutely. And I've actually had several lawyers go through my, my group program to learn how to do just this for the practices that they work for. So, you know, several things you can start doing is like creating content. And I would create content on LinkedIn because that's where a lot of your clients will be around, like, the problems that they can run into, the scary outcomes, the good outcomes. Case studies, things like this, like, like stories of how things have gone good and bad in the world of patents in your area of expertise because. And, and also building your personal brand, talking about who you are, like, what are your weirdo hobbies, you know, what do you do on the weekends? What's your favorite kind of beverage to enjoy it at the end of a long day, you know, because what we want is we want people online to start seeing you as, as Kyle, their friend, you know, who also happens to. To be a lawyer who specializes in this very specific area of law that they now understand a little bit more of because you've taught them a bit, right? And if they happen, because the human brain, without consciously doing it, always scans for how. Are you useful to me? Right? Are you useful to me because you feel like a friend and I, I can relate to you? Are you useful to me because you do something that might at some point be useful to me because I'm developing a patent? Do I have friends who have patents who I could potentially connect you with? Because I want to up my social standing. And when we connect people, we naturally up our social standing, right? We want to Give people, like, here's how Kyle is useful to you in. In every sense so that you become memorable. Right. Because it's not like people just randomly one day are like, cool. I think I'd like to get sued about my pan today. I should probably hire Kyle to help me with that because that's just how kind of what I felt like focusing on today. No, no, no, no. It has to happen first. Like, there is a very specific set of circumstances that requires them to think of you. Right. So we need to make sure that in. In their brain hole, there's like a little file that is Kyle the patent lawyer. Right.

Yeah, well, and it's like, oh, God. The. The. There's this one book that I read is almost like just a pamphlet, but it was like, in law school and they said, like, business development. Like, there's two steps of business development. Step one, get famous. Step two, Step two, ask for work, essentially. I mean, like, but how you get famous? Like, the question is, who do you need to be famous to? Right. Like, car accident lawyers put their names on billboards on high on busy highways because that's where people drive. Those are their customers at some point in the future. And it's like, my customers are also lawyers who work. Who happen to work inside of a company.

Ah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. So who. Who is the person that you're trying to get to remember? You. You have to start talking about stuff that they're going to find interesting. Yeah. And that they're going to be like, oh, my God, how does he know that? That's what I'm thinking right now, you know? So like, I train all my clients on empathetic marketing. Right. Because we don't want to, like, just throw legal jargon at our people because they're not going to understand it. You know, even lawyers don't necessarily understand legal jargon from another type of law. Right. It means different things depending on, like, if you're an estate attorney versus a patent attorney. Right. We want to speak about it in the ways that they're describing it to their best friends when they're at brunch and they're complaining about their week. Right. Because we want that referral business as well, and we want them to think like, oh, my God, how. How does he know what's in my brain? How does he know what I was saying to my best friend last night? Was, he tapped my phone. So, a, it's creating content. B, you know. Yeah, getting visible. You know, you could absolutely speak at conferences. You could create relationships with Certain journalists who write about patent law stuff and be like their go to resource. There are so many different ways to develop this. Right. And then you also have to have a very clear way for people to book a call with you. Right. Can you. This is going to sound like a random side tangent. It kind of is, but it has a point. How do you buy a banana? If you wanted to acquire a banana to get like, walk me through, step by step, how you would do it?

Well, I mean, if I'm only getting one banana or if I'm getting several.

We'Re just getting one. We're not getting greedy.

All right. Probably walk to the closest grocery store because it's. There's a Whole Foods. They'll take a block away from my house and I'm not gonna drive for a banana. And then walk in through the door, skip the baskets, go to the place where the bananas are, find one that's probably already separated from a bunch because again, why am I going to spoil the nice little wrapping on the top of it? I'm just going to take the one, it's already been separated, you know, and then walk with it over to the self checkout because I don't really want to have a conversation with anybody, you know, Right then, right there. And yeah. You put the banana on the scale.

Yep.

Type in.

I mean, so, yeah, so you know how to buy a banana. So if, if I were to ask someone on the street, how. How do you buy time from Kyle, would they be able to describe it in just as clear language? Or they'd be like, I don't, I don't know.

Fascinating question.

Yeah.

Because I mean, like, so here's the thing is, like, I actually know a lot of people in, like my local community who do. Who do what I do, including people who are working, like, in legal departments at companies that potentially could hire me. Do they know how to get a hold of me? Yeah, I mean, if you point, point blank ask them, how would you get a hold of, Of Kyle?

Yeah.

Be like, if I needed to get a hold of him, like, if I don't have his email address, I would probably go look him up on the firm website.

Totally. But you're, you're requiring them to do so much thinking and then what do they write in the subject line?

What.

How do they explain, hey, I need 15 minutes of your time. Yeah, right. We want to have it so people know if they're curious about how they can get support from you, they know there's a link somewhere and it's Easy to get to where they can go and book 15 minutes. Like, we want to take all the thinking. Like, if you. If you had to, like, think about, like, well, I don't know, maybe they put the bananas in the baking aisle because it's. It's baking season. You know, that creates enough. Enough confusion for the human brain where, like, we're having to make so many decisions a day and we're having to figure stuff out so much that's like, I can do without the banana. I don't want to go searching for it in the grocery store. Right. If I don't know how to get in touch with Kyle, like, maybe there's not a link on his LinkedIn to just go and book a call quick. Like, okay, I know I have his email somewhere. I'll do it later. And then later turns into two months later and then they've hired someone else. Right, right. That's so clear. And so that's going to be a part of the puzzle for you, is creating that.

Okay.

Right. And this goes for everyone. Everyone could be dirty. Everyone should know how to buy your banana. Okay, Deal. Does that answer the questions that you weren't sure were questions?

I mean, it's. At least it gives me kind of a, like, a framework for asking the next questions that I can, like, try to figure out myself. And, like, okay, yeah, I know all of these people. I know, like, and I think what you were talking about to sort of, like, say, you know, what is it that they're thinking about? What is it that they're worrying about? So that I can put myself in their, like, in their headspace and say, all right, what would they find useful? What kind of insight can I give to that question that they're having?

Yeah.

And then focus some, like, effort on, like, LinkedIn content.

Yeah.

To say, yeah, this is, like, this is something that maybe you haven't thought about. This is something that, you know, if you find yourself in this situation, you probably want to think about this.

Yep. 100%. And. And also, just, like, it's. It's normal to be scared. It's scary to face anything legal.

Yeah.

Right. Especially when you've poured how many years and tons of energy and probably a lot of money into creating something. And then here's, like, a threat that I might be taking away. Like, that's, that's horrifying. You know, a lot of what we do with our marketing is just taking the shame out of stuff and, and reminding people, like, you're not the only one who's Freaked out by this. You know, like it's normal to be terrified when you get like a demand letter or whatever. It's normal to be afraid on a sales call when you've never done sales before. It's normal for this, it's normal for that. Like, we all just want to. Generally, people just want to know that they're not fucked up beyond repair. Right. That is often enough for them to feel safe enough to get on a call with you and ask you some dumb questions. Right.

Okay.

Because who here would be afraid to call a lawyer? And I have a lawyer. Sometimes I'm nervous to call him. Right. Kyle, for you, the biggest thing is going to be like, don't be afraid to call me.

Yeah.

Right. Deal.

Yeah, no, that sounds cool.

Okay, good enough.

I'm going to make some notes now. Yeah. Because I'm going to. Otherwise just forget half of what said.

Awesome. All right. And what other questions do we have today?

These bananas you're talking about, where do I find them? Bad quote from Orphan Black about the peaches.

I don't know if it's done differently in Switzerland, so I can't help you there.

Katie, I have one.

Yes, Jason.

Just for context, I'm building my business on the side of my 9 to 5. This has been maybe the worst week of my professional career. In my 9 to 5, it's. It's a dumpster fire. It's so bad that my HR rep is helping people figure out how to leave because the ship is sinking.

Oh, okay.

So essentially I'm in this situation where I have one of three options. Option number one, I can try to hang on as long as I can while I'm searching for another job and building my business, but the energy's not there. I've had zero energy to put into my business this week because of what's happening at work.

Yeah.

Option number two, I can jump and see if I put all of my full time effort into building my business, if it would grow, which feels absolutely terrifying. Or option number three, I can look for another job, which I don't want, but need and continue to try to build business on the side with hopefully less stress if the new environment is better. I'm just really struggling to figure out where I'm going to find the energy to do the right thing.

Yeah. So, okay, so you, you answered my question that I was going to have is like, do you need a job? Do you need full time income? Right. Because unfortunately the universe does not follow our timelines with our businesses. Right. Sometimes we can Say, oh my God, like things are going to hell in a handbasket. I need to generate $10,000 a month. And sometimes it happens, but it's not a guarantee. It's not a guarantee that that pressure is going to be helpful. Right. For, for most folks, that level of pressure is actually crushing to your creativity. And unfortunately for being an entrepreneur, like I, I call entrepreneurs like the cousins of artists. Right. Because we do, we are required to have a lot of creativity to, to go out and get business. Right. Creating content, you know, having conversations with folks. Like, we need that level of sense certitude that like we're fine. We don't necessarily need this because when we need it, we get desperate and it gets communicated. Like, even though we're not saying it and then it gets weird, then we don't. It takes longer for us to build it. Right. So there's no shame in pausing the work on your business and focusing on finding a new job. Like a lot of folks see it as a failure of like, oh, like I wasn't able to continue. Like I had to take a break from building my business for a few weeks while I like, looked for another role. Right. Failure. It's, it's part of plan A. Plan A has always been that you're gonna work full time and build this on the side until you get to the point where you can afford to go full time. Right. Plan A has had a little leak in the boat. Cool. Right? Yeah, cool. So we just need to get you a new boat.

Yeah.

It's like, it's, it's not the end of your business. Right. It's a, it's a little delay, but there are gonna be delays. There's always going to be delays in building a business. Right. And, and like, who knows, like in the networking you're going to be doing to find a new job so that you can have that full time income. Who's to say you're not going to talk to people who, who need your coaching? Right, Right. And who's to say you like, you might end up with a role where they actually need part of your stuff to be like internal coaching. Right, Right. And then you're doing more of what you love for the paycheck that you needed.

That's right.

Right. Especially in sales management. Right?

Yeah.

So what do you want to do?

What do I want to do?

Yeah.

If I had, if I had the resources, I would want to just go all in, but I don't. So I think I have to. What I want to do is get off of the sinking ship because it's taking all of my energy. It was. It's bad. So I think I need to get out and then figure out, like, take a breath and then figure out what's next.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I'm not whining and complaining. That's just the reality of the situation.

I love whining. I'm a big fan of whining. Sometimes you have to complain to get it out of your system. I'm not hearing what complaining, though. I'm hearing, here's the dilemma I find myself in. And it sucks because. Yeah, the dilemma. And it sucks. It does, right? That's not whining and complaining. If you're coming here and be like, what was me? My life is terrible. Everyone kidding me. That would be whining, complaining, right? Like, chill, Jason. You're fine. Anyway, I just had a whole conversation between us.

You.

You weren't even there anyway, But. So you're going to look for a new role. I've had so many clients who've had to look for new roles while they were also building your business. You're not the first. Okay, okay. It's. Oh, my God. I've had. I've had clients change jobs multiple times in building their business. It's. It's a part of it sometimes.

Okay, that helps.

Yeah. Yeah. Like, you're going to be fine. Your business is going to be fine. And. And think of how much better it's going to be to build a business when you're not freaking out about all the terrible things that are happening in your 9 to 5.

Yeah, that's gonna be nice.

Yeah.

I've even had clients who, like, changed jobs a couple times and got paid more in their 9 to 5. Like, don't. Don't think that you have to go out and settle for something. Don't. Don't think that you're, like, desperate. Right, Right. You know, what do you want your 9 to 5 to be while you're building this business? Okay.

Yeah. I haven't really had space to actually think about that because of just the chaos this week, but I. I have like, four days now before I have to go back to work, so I have some space to actually, like, work that out.

Yeah. Yeah. And you know what, like, throwing this out there, not advising it, but, like, what if you got laid off? What if there was severance? What if. What if you got to. I don't know what the unemployment thing is in Canada, but, like, what if that were a part of it?

Yeah. I'm, I'm. Trust me, like, I have. I have thought about that multiple times. Like, what would I need to do to make that happen?

So it's.

It. The thought has crossed my mind.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, don't do anything egregious where, you know, you could have criminal charges brought against you, you know.

Sure.

Jason, I'm in the very same boat. Although it's not. It's a dumpster fire, the ship isn't sinking, but it's just kind of floating along and I'm just kind of gauging how much BS I can eat that doesn't take up my mental space and energy so I can build my business on the side. So I, I feel for you very strongly.

Thank you.

I'm hanging on for severance. I'm not doing anything egregious. I'm just hanging on to the ship as I. As I build everything else in my spare time.

Yeah, yeah. You know, for both of you. If there's any kind of practice you can do to, like, guard your energy, you know, I'm pretty woo. So, like, I'm. I'm all about, like, throwing a braid in my hair and. Jason, you can't do this. Your hair is too short. But, like, throwing a braid.

You're smoking.

Yeah. Do cloaking.

Like.

Yeah, wear. Wear something that, like, is thicker over your. Your heart and your gut. You know, like, while you're engaging with it, do something that, like, you know, you could even like, put a fork in between you and. And your computer.

Your computer. Yeah.

You know, to have, like, as if metal barriers between you, you know, whatever. Whatever will help you, like, mentally stay separate from the bullshit. Right. If you need to do a circle of salt around your computer, if you want to get witchy with it, like, go for it, you know, just, you know, you might have a cat who comes and looks your. Looks, your desk at some point, but that'll be. That's content. You write content about that.

Yeah.

Deal.

Thank you.

Yeah, of course. All right, we probably have time for like, one or two more questions. Who would like to go next?

Oh, last one. This may be way too basic, but do you have any, like, good strategies for time management for ADHD folks that are entrepreneurs? It's kind of related to the, like, not doing what you're supposed to do question.

Yeah, so tell me, because it's different for everyone with adhd, depending on what their flavor is. What have you tried so far that hasn't worked?

I kind of just make a list of, like, stuff I Need to do that day.

Yeah.

And try and fit it into the available hours.

Okay, cool. So this is one of the things I have everyone in my community do on Mondays. They come to the sprint call is don't assign more than three things, like an ongoing to do list to someone with adhd. It's like you want to just max out your ram, right? Because, yeah, you have that. You've done, like, the thinking of what needs to be done, but now you have to do the thinking of, like, well, what's the most important? What's the most urgent? Like, what's this? What's that? Right. And so that's where we get stalled out, because what. What happens to our brains is it all seems important. If it's on the list, it's important and it needs to happen. Right. So there are a few ways you can tackle it. You can do the, like, the matrix. I forget what the term is, and I'm sure someone here remembers. It's the matrix of, like, the four quadrants of, like, important, urgent, and then, like, how important it is and how urgent. The Eisenhower matrix. Yeah. If you look that up, it's kind of boring to do, but it is worth it because you can really discern, you know, what's the thing that is going to be the, like, the best ROI for your time, Right?

Yeah.

And here's the trick. When we're assigning three things to ourselves per day. Realistic things. Okay, Realistic. Because, like, you know, I can absolutely assign that. I have to develop a whole course along with doing laundry and going to work out that course could take three months. Why am I assigning it to myself in one day? Right? So we have to delay our tasks. So for an example, for this. So delaying a task. So, like, meal prepping is something that I like to do, right? Because I don't want to have to think about what I'm going to eat all week. And I want to try to eat healthy, right? So I'll go to the grocery store. So I'll think, okay, so I have to go to the grocery store, I have to shop, and then I have to come back and I have to cook, right? Two. Two layers, right? So I go shopping, I come back, I get to my kitchen, I'm like, oh, there's still dishes in the sink from last night and from like two days ago because I'm lazy and I don't like putting things in the dishwasher. Crap. Now I have to do this, and now it's three layers. Then I open the dishwasher Crap. The reason I didn't put stuff in the dishwasher is because the stuff in the dishwasher is clean, right? So now it's four layers because I have to unload the dishwasher, right? So I unload the dishwasher. And then of course, like, as I'm unloading the dishwasher, I'm like, well, this is going to take me a while. I should put stuff in the refrigerator that needs to be in the refrigerator so it doesn't spoil while I'm busy doing this stuff. So now it's five layers, right? So I unload the dishwasher, I reload it. I wash all the dishes that can't go in the dishwasher because some can't. Nonstick pans should not go in the dishwasher. My people, sharp knives. No, no, no, no, no. You're going to ruin them. So do all that stuff. Stuff is in the refrigerator. Now I have to unload it from the dish, from the refrigerator. I'm honestly tired. So now I need a little break. Now I need to go scroll on my phone for 20 minutes. Now we have six layers we're working with. Or seven. I've lost count. Right. So when we're thinking about a task, what we have to do is we have to get really realistic with what are all the layers that it's going to require me to do. Right. Because sometimes you're like, oh, cool, I want a meal prep. What are the layers? Look at the kitchen. Okay, cool. First two layers, I need to empty the dishwasher and I need to load the dishwasher. Cool. Maybe that's enough for today. Maybe I order takeout tonight and I go and meal prep tomorrow. Right. So. So for time management, that's part of it is you have to kind of delayer and get realistic about what's on your to do list. The other part is, are you, like, a deep focuser where you require big blocks of time for certain things, or do you have to do things consistently every day in little spurts?

Probably more the big blocks of time.

Yeah. So now you have to block out time for you to work on one thing, right?

Yeah.

Because. Because what we do to ourselves, we're like, cool, here's my list. I'm going to get to it at some point, and then we don't get to it because we didn't plan out time for us to get to it, and then we feel like we failed, and then we've robbed ourselves of dopamine and now we're behind on it. And so now even if we get to it the next day or the next day or the next day, it doesn't count because we were already behind. We already failed. Right. And so an added element to this is, like, we have to forgive ourselves, like, and also recognize that, like, the only person who made the deadline for the thing was us. Right? We, if we make the rules, we also get to determine what failure looks like and what success looks like. Does that help? Does it help for. For everyone? Yeah.

Yep.

Yeah. This, this is like one of the hardest things you're gonna know about this. And then you're gonna catch yourself in the old paradigm and punishing yourself. And then you're like, I'm failing at not failing. And, and it's a process. It's. It's a journey. But the key is, like, you make the rules you're the boss of.

Sent an email, by the way. So that was done.

Amazing. Congratulations. I get to brag to your husband.

So it was the VA and the lesson learned today. She sends me a reply back saying that she was gonna let me know next week that she was increasing her rates because I'm on her, like, lower rate and. Yeah.

So great. Perfect. Awesome.

It works out on both sides.

Does it? Does she's freed up as well? Awesome. We're right at noon. I want to do main takeaways. So how I like to do this is who, like whoever goes first is going to volunteer. The next person volunteers the next person. And just like a one liner main takeaway from today's call and then we'll wrap up for today. Who would like to start us off? Yes.

Just get started. Bite the elephant. Eat the elephant. One bite at a time.

Yeah.

Same with pricing.

Yeah.

Cool.

And who would like. Who are you picking next?

Jessica. That's next on the screen.

Thank you. I'll double down on that. That, that really hit for me too. Just to kind of eat the cake first sometimes is a good way to kind of move it forward. And the course really resonated with me because I signed up for a course that I can't possibly finish in two days, but I have it on my list and I keep MFG myself every time I don't do it at the.

End of the day.

So.

Yeah.

Oh, I'll pick Paul.

Three things on the list for a day. I'm not sure how I'm going to do that. That's a tough one, but I think that's important.

And who are you picking next, Paul?

Monica.

You?

I like the perspective of the layers.

Thinking about things in layers because I'm constantly doing the same thing where I'm like, oh no, I have to do this. Oh, but I have to do this before I could do this. So thinking in layers is good to do.

Thank you.

And I'll pick Eric.

I knew, I knew I was going to be next. Well, the one how to eat an elephant one body at a time is what I was going to say, but Hendrik took that from me. So what I was going. What I would take away from it is forward progress can even be a single step. You don't have to take 20 steps in one day or anything like that. You can say, okay, today I'm going to accomplish step one of 50 or something like that and just kind of keep the ball rolling and be consistent in your progress and think about things as you go. And if you find yourself going, okay, this really worked out. But this different approach that I thought of later might help for next time. Make a note of that. And then next time you have to approach that task or something similar, try and incorporate that. Become more efficient and just always keep moving forward. It doesn't matter how much. Just continuous progress.

Yeah. Thank you, Eric. And who are you picking next?

Nicole.

Okay. Yeah, so I think forgive myself if I've missed a self imposed deadline. It's probably a pretty big one. Right. And is that Orzala?

Yes.

For me it's just make the decision quickly instead of sitting on it because I like every time I have approve, every time I, I, I'm scared of something, I do it, but I'm okay. Anyways, making that decision afterwards is just listening to that and, and keeping that in mind when making decisions.

Thank you. And who are you picking next? Rosella?

Sorry, I, I lost track. Who's the, who's left?

Oh, if you want to raise your hands if you haven't gone yet. All right, Kyle.

Okay, so yeah, picking one main takeaway. I, I think my, my main takeaway from this is to, I think, come up with like a, a schedule for myself to do like content. Because I've been thinking about it for a while and it's just like, I don't know, like I didn't know what to focus on or what to do with it. And, and this kind of helped crystallize, like what's the goal?

Right.

Knowing. Knowing what the goal goal is will help identify, like, what to do with it. And so now I, I know a little bit better that it's, you know, sort of twofold, like make myself like, you know, appear as my authentic self and make myself appear human and approachable, but then, like, also giving people just a little bit of a taste of, like, hey, I'm already thinking about problems like this, and if you have a problem like this, then maybe you can, you know, come talk to me.

Yeah. Thank you. And I think, Laurie, you're the last one, right? Last but not least.

So it's hard to pick one because I have a page full of notes here, but I'm just gonna go with this. You know, the ideal me doesn't exist. And so it's finding and really focusing on that favorite version of myself. And I really. I mean, just thinking about that, I was able to kind of list some things that when I feel alive and when I feel really great. And so, you know, just remembering and being that person and not worrying about being this ideal person.

Thank you. Awesome. I'm popping a strategy call link in the chat because I know there were a few folks that I. Nicole was one. I think someone else. I've lost track because I forgot to write them down. So if you wanted to grab time to talk about anything that we touched upon but couldn't go deeper into, then go ahead and grab time on my calendar. But otherwise, everyone, thank you for being here. This call is open to the public every fourth Friday of the month, so come to as many as you want. There's no limit. I'm never going to be like, oh, my God, they're only coming to my free stuff. No, no, no. This is for you. If you did want to come to this every Friday. All of my programs have access to this. So from Hyper Focus to my one on one. If you have any questions on any of that, then just reach out. You know how to get in touch with me. But otherwise, I cannot wait to see you all very, very soon. And I wish you all the best of luck with what you're building and have a great weekend.

All right, thanks.

Bye, everyone.

Thank you.

Thank you.