Brave Business Model

Katie McManus, business strategist and leadership coach. Happy New Year, everyone. I have fallen off the live wagon for the last week or so. Just getting life ramped back up from the New Year's, from being a little sick, from ramping up byob. It's been a really exciting start to the year and so much more to come. Today I wanted to dive back into the live world with some of my core beliefs around how life should be lived. To have no regrets. The end of it. In my eyes, there are only two modes that we get to live in. There's being a weenie, which sucks, and nothing exciting happens. And then there's being brave, which is where all the good, juicy, exciting, fulfilling things happen in our lives. It's where we get to the end and we're like, well, shit, that was an amazing ride. I did a lot. I loved a lot of people. That was great. Can I. I go again. So I wanted to break down. I love making a good acronym. You know, why not? So I wanted to break down what I actually believe living a bright, a brave life is and what it means to create a brave business model. So I'm going to be speaking to this from the life side of it, and I'm also going to be speaking to it from the business side of it, okay? So brave has five letters. It starts with B. The most critical thing that you have to have going on for you if you want to live a brave life or have a brave business is you have to believe in yourself, okay? You can't do any of this if you don't believe in yourself, okay? You cannot ask the person out. You cannot go and start the business. You cannot get funding. You cannot put yourself out there if you don't believe that you can do it. So I'm really sick and tired of all these. I'm not ready. I'm not sure if it'll work. Really need a guarantee on this. Because here's the thing. If you believe in yourself, then you know in your core that you are a solid bet. And, honey, if you don't count yourself as a solid bet, you need to get yourself into therapy. You need to get yourself into a treatment plan. You need to fix something fundamental about yourself, okay? You need to do some personal work, okay? Because the only. I can tell you, the only bet I've ever made that has worked out every single time is when I bet on myself. Everything outside of us is completely out of our control, okay? But when we bet on ourselves, that's what makes a difference. And when we have the audacity to go out and say, hey, I believe in myself and this is what I stand for and this is what I'm up to, and this is the thing that I'm doing in the world and isn't that exciting, and I know it's going to work for me. That's when people like, oh, let's watch this person. Let's keep an eye on them, because that's exciting. And I might not be their. Their customer or their client right now, but the fact that they believe in themselves to that degree, that they're even putting themselves out there, they have my attention. And eventually that attention turns into, I think I need to work with you. That's just how it happens. So you have to believe in yourself, okay? And if you're. Thank you. For those of you who are tuning in to watch, you know, I. If you have any examples of a moment where you just believed in yourself and it worked out, I'd love to hear them in the comments. Or if you. If it's personal, DM it to me, okay? Because I know this is fundamental to having any success in your life. And let's look at every single movie that has to do with someone accomplishing something, okay? If we go to the Disney Channel, I'm sure, or Disney plus, we can find any single. A million different, you know, examples of this. You know, every great story of every great hero they had to start out with just believing in themselves. And it doesn't have to be like a big belief. You don't have to believe that you're going to make $3 million a year right now when you're only making like 20. Okay? You can believe in yourself incrementally. You can up the stakes for yourself over and over and over again. But it has to start with you believing in yourself right now. Okay? It can't start anywhere else. And thank you ever like that. Oh, and I forgot to say, you know, I'm doing this live to the facebooks today, to LinkedIn and to YouTube. Sometimes I don't see all comments. So if you're commenting and I'm not seeing it, then I apologize. Sometimes the technology just fails us in that way. Okay, so we're doing an acronym. We're talking about what being brave actually means. And the first thing is be believe in yourself. Okay? Next are the reality check. Okay, so the reality check. So here's the thing. When you're being brave, if you have the bravery of the courage to look under the hood to see what's missing to see where you could use some help, to see where you're lacking the skills to actually make this thing happen. I could absolutely say I'm gonna join an Ironman competition, and I go to the gym every single day for six months. And I could go to the competition, all the things, but here's thing. I'm not doing the right workouts, if I'm not getting the right guidance, if I'm not eating the right things, if I'm not sleeping well enough, if I'm not hydrating, if I'm not training towards that goal, if I don't have a specific action plan and strategy. Do you think I'm gonna, like, even qualify for the Ironman competition once I get there? It's never going to happen. Okay? And here's where our weenie selves like to sneak in. They like to sneak in, like, okay, cool. You're gonna convince yourself you believe in yourself, and you're gonna put yourself out there and you're gonna make all these amazing, huge, ginormous goals that are completely unrealistic. And the reason your weenie self wants to do that is because it actually saves you, keeps you safe. Because if it's guaranteed to fail, it's guaranteed to fail. There's no chance it'll work out. There's no chance that it'll crash and burn. It's already, like, predestined to fail, okay? So if you're just starting a business and you want to make $3 million this year, I'm sorry, unless you have funding, unless you have backing, unless you have a lot of stuff going on, you're in this category of you need to be a little braver and you need to give yourself a reality check, okay? If you're starting a business and you're just thinking, okay, well, I'll just figure it out as I go without any guidance whatsoever, oftentimes that is requiring a reality check, okay? If you think you're gonna find the love of your life and live happily ever after, but you never leave your living room, okay, I'm sorry, but unless you're really active on the dating sites, you're not. It's just not a realistic goal. So you need a reality check, okay? The bravest people look at this information, they look at the data and they see, how is this actually going to work out, okay? So you need to give yourself a reality check. The bravest people do weenies. The sneaky weenie part of you. Sneaky weenie part of you. I love. I love having Weenie being part of my life because stuff like that comes out of my mouth. A sneaky weeny part of you will bypass this step to guarantee failure for you. Because failure, you know, if it didn't work out, then you just go back to whatever it was that was safe before. And we don't want to live like that, okay? We want to know exactly what our capabilities are, our strengths and our weaknesses are so we can compensate for anything that needs help, okay? So that's the second one is your reality check. Finally. So there's an A in brave, right? So what does A stand for? It stands for action, okay? Shouldn't have to say this, but nothing fucking happens without action, okay? To make something happen, you have to take action. If you don't take action, nothing will happen, okay? Very straightforward. An action is, is not the getting ready to get ready to get ready to maybe be ready to eventually be ready to maybe be ready to do the thing that is not action, okay? You know, reading a lot of self help books and doing all that inner work, yes, it's important. But if you really want. I'm just going to use relationships as the example here. If you really want to find a partner, you just have to get out there and start kissing frogs, okay? That's just what you gotta do, okay? If you want to start a business, you can read all the business books that you want. You can download every free PDF, you can go to every single free little mastermind or masterclass that you see advertised on Facebook. But until you actually get out there and start working to get clients, you're not doing shit for your business, okay? You have to actually take action, okay? It's critical. It's the only thing that anything is ever going to move forward, you know, can you imagine being on your Deathbed? You know, 40, 50 years from now? I plan on living forever. So it's like 80 years from now for me and, you know, laying there and having the people around you and being like, oh, you know, I really thought really hard about doing this thing once. That was great. No, no one ever says that on their deathbed. They say, oh, I regret not doing it, I regret not doing it. Not, oh, I feel so good that I thought really hard about doing that thing once. Like, that's so take action. If there's something you're not taking action on right now, put it in the comments DM me and just go do it. Okay? I'm over this. Finally. Okay, so brave. The next letter is V, which stands for vulnerable. Okay? And I know, vulnerable is a big word right now. Everyone's throwing it around. It's like vulnerable this, vulnerable that. But let's talk about what it means in your life. Because it's so easy to try to be someone that you think will make other people happy, right? It's so easy to just do and be the thing that you think other people want you to be. It's so easy to get trapped in. I need to appear perfect. I need to seem like I have all my shit together. I need to do this, I need to do that. And here's the thing. No one gives a damn. No one gives a damn. And in fact, you trying to cover up the things that are imperfect about you makes you super creepy to the people around you. Okay? You know. You know, I don't know if you've seen that movie Stepford Wives, but it's like they move to this neighborhood or this town where everything's just a little too perfect and it's creepy and it's a war movie and all the. All the wives are robots, okay? Like, they've been murdered and replaced by robots, okay? When you try to be anything other than who you actually are, which is allowed to be a hot mess, which is allowed to have, you know, hair that's kind of messed up from wearing a hat all day, if you try to cover all that stuff, you come across as inauthentic. You come across as untrustworthy. If you actually want to have a successful business, you. You need to be vulnerable. Now, I'm not saying you have to bear your soul and share all the details of your life to everyone on the Internet. But I am saying you have to. You have to bring the heat, you have to bring the thunder, you have to bring the emotion that's going on. You know, you do have to share a bit of yourself, okay? As this is true in your business and this is true in your life. You know, could you imagine trying to have any friendships with anyone where you're pretending to be perfect and, like, everything's hunky dory all the time? Like, forget the fact that you wouldn't have these real relationships like that. You wouldn't be able to count on these people, but that would be soul crushingly lonely, okay? We're not living our life like that. We're not running our businesses like that. That model is done with. It's over. It was tried for a little bit. It doesn't work. So stop it, okay? Now the other element of being vulnerable is making the ask, you know, not just Asking for what you can justify that you need. Okay, I can. You know, we can all go around and say, you know what? I can justify that I need a place to sleep and I need some food and I need water. Okay? Those are our needs. But what do you want? That's. That's where vulnerability comes in, when you start asking for what you want. You know, and maybe it's. You want a really fulfilling relationship. Maybe it's you want the cutest puppy in the world. Mine is over there on the kitchen floor. Maybe you want to be paid more. Maybe you really want to speak on stages. You really want to get out there, and you want to be in the spotlight and you want to share your message. But to get there, you actually have to ask for it. And you have to ask for it and just ask for it because you want it so badly. Okay? Any. Any solid relationship, friendship, romantic, familial. It's only healthy when everyone involved can ask for the things they want from their relationship. So you have to make the ask. You have to be vulnerable to make any of this work for you. And finally, brave ends with an E. And this E stands for empathetic. Now, you know, we can talk about empathetic marketing. Absolutely. That is a super solid strategy. It's a. It's a beautiful way to do business and to market your services because you're basically just saying, hey, you, I see you and I get you, and I know what your life is like. And, you know, this is happening and this is happening, and this is happening. And by the way, if you want to shift any of this, I offer this service, but just know, like, where you're at is pretty normal. A lot of people go through that, and there's nothing wrong with that. But if you want to change it, you know, here's this other thing. You know, it's really kind. It's kind. It's pointing out the things that are not working, but it's also making that person feel a little ashamed because they're being told, oh, other people go through this. It's not just me. I'm not nuts. I'm not a complete failure. And this person understands me. And, oh, wow, like, I should. I should really go and talk to that person because they seem to know something about my life. But on a greater scale, you know, I think I talk to a lot of people who want to do good in the world, who want to stand for something. How the fuck do you stand for doing good in the world and in your business if you can't empathize with where other people are if you can't see what their lives are like and understand their perspective. How can you make everything better? How can you make anything better if you can't empathize with this other person? And to ensure your client success, back to your business. You have to stay see it from their point of view, okay? You're, you're never gonna stay in business if you can't see it from their point of view. And you see it from their point of view so that you can communicate that you understand how painful it is to be stuck where they are. And I know I'm talking about your business, but this goes to your life as well. This goes to injustices that we see in the world. This goes to the inequality that we need to be fixing. We cannot fix any problem in the world without being able to empathize with what is actually going on the other side with other people's experiences. So this is your 17 and 3 minute guide, or 17 minute and 3 second guide. Now it's 7 seconds. I'm not going to get hung up on the time. But here's your guide to your brave business model, but also how to break out of being weenie in your life and start being a little braver in your life as well, you know? And let me just recap. You have to believe in yourself. If you don't believe in yourself, what are you here for? Like, the least you can do is believe in yourself. You need to give yourself reality checks, okay? You have to make sure that you actually have an action plan and a strategy that's gonna work. And if you don't, you have to go and ask for one, okay? You have to take action. Nothing changes that action. Nothing happens with that action, okay? You have and you have to do it. You can't wait for other people to do it, okay? It's up to you, okay? You have to be vulnerable. Be yourself. And know that yourself, just as you are right now, is perfect. You are fine. You are great. You don't need to change a thing about how you are right now to be able to show up and create the life that you want. And you need to have empathy. And when I say empathy, I mean for everyone in the world. Everyone, Every single person, for your clients, for past you, who fucked shit up, who got it wrong, who made a mess of things. You have to have empathy for that person in particular, okay? Because if you continue to punish yourself for getting it wrong before, you're never going to give yourself another chance to get it right, you're never going to actually allow yourself to believe in you. Okay? Like I said, that's where everything starts. So anyway, that is my 2 cents or 5 cents on what living a brave life is like and the things that you have to do to make that real. If you have any questions on this or you have had a thought or you wanted to share something with me, please put in the comments or shoot me a dm. I always appreciate the conversations that happen after these lives and you'll be seeing me going live a lot more this week. I'm not going to make any more commitments because that was a whole mess over the holidays. I swear I got the booster, but I also. I don't know if I was sick or not, but I had no energy. It was insane. Anyway, I hope you're well and I hope you're happy. And I hope you're making some moves to be a little braver this year. Anyway, I'll be here in your corner as always. I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and leadership coach. I will talk to you all soon.