Feeling ready is a myth

Foreign. Hello and welcome. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach. Welcome to my live. I'm doing this a little earlier in the day because I'm going to trivia this evening. I'm a little worried because the trivia theme tonight is sports. We all know how much I know about sports, but I'm gonna go and I'm gonna have fun, and I might know something. I honestly can't think of a single thing that I would know, but I'm gonna do it anyway. Which kind of goes along with today's theme of today's live. And we're like, the myth of feeling ready. The. The myth of feeling prepared to do something for the very first time. So here's what I hear a lot from people who, you know, are in my world, and they follow me and, you know, sometimes they'll book a call with me and they have a business idea and they're really intent that they want to do it someday, and they're convinced that they just need to wait. They just need to wait until they feel ready. And it's not. They're not qualified. It's not that, like, they don't have the certifications that are required. It's not that they don't have the experience. It's. It's none of those things. It's literally that, like, they've never done this before, and they just don't feel ready. They don't have the confidence to go and do it. Hi, Jason. Hi, David. Welcome. And let me tell you something. You're never going to feel ready to do something you've never done, okay? That's a myth. It's a myth. The first time you post about your business, you're going to want to vomit. Like, I wanted to vomit. I wanted to vomit for, like, the first couple dozen times I posted about my business. Sometimes I still want to vomit. Okay? Sometimes I'm like, oh, my God, am I really, like, gonna post something this salesy? Like, it takes bravery for a reason to start a business. Okay? You are never going to feel ready to go and do the thing you've never done before. Okay? We imagine, like, we're all just walking around with this big circle around us, and that's our comfort zone, right? And it's like the topics we're comfortable talking on. It's the people we're comfortable being around. It's the clothes that we're comfortable wearing. It's the places we're willing to travel to, and it's the things that we're willing to do. Like, in your comfort zone, you might be comfortable riding bikes, going for a run, but you're not comfortable jumping out of the plane. Right? That's beyond a comfort zone. I mean, Jason, you're watching. You lead people up Mount Kilimanjaro and forget the other mountains, but you lead people up mountains. That takes. That takes bravery. Right? No one's gonna feel ready to do that until they've done it a bunch. Right. But there are still people who go and take those first few steps. They sign up for one of your programs, they get to the mountain, and they just start climbing before they feel ready. Okay. Now, like, your comfort zone is there for a reason. It's absolutely there for a reason. It's there to keep you safe, there to keep you alive. Our brains have not. Oh, no. Reconnecting. Oh, yeah. Don't think. Just do Maverick. I think that's a Top Gun reference. If you're watching on Instagram, why is this. No. Okay. Are we back? Okay, cool. Yeah, don't think. Just do. I think that's a Top Gun reference. I don't know why my service on Instagram is being shitty. But anyway, if you're watching on Instagram, Instagram, and it's bad connection, I'm also going live on Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and Twitter. So feel free to jump over there. But yeah, don't think. Just do. You know, you're never going to feel ready. That that comfort zone is there for a reason. Is there to keep you alive. Right. Our brains have not evolved as fast as our society has, as fast as our world has. Right. Our brains are still operating as if, like, any berry on any bush could be poisonous. So you want to be careful not to eat them. Right? You want to, like, make sure that this is a raspberry and it's not the other berry that, like, looks like a raspberry, but it's not. And you can end up dead. You don't want to walk through certain parts of the forest because you don't know, like, where they're going to be. Sinkholes or, you know, cougars or, I don't know, other, like, bears, other dangerous thing. Hi, Uncle Joe. Hi. And telly. Welcome. You know, your brain is designed to identify dangerous things in the world to help keep you alive. Right. That part of your brain does not care if you do something that lights you up. It doesn't care if you want to start a business. And it's going to make you so, so happy. And it's going to like, show you, you know, what grit you have. Doesn't give a damn. Okay. That's dangerous to that part of your brain. It's absolutely dangerous. You're going to tell the whole world that you can help them do a certain thing. What if you fail? What if they call you out on it? You could get kicked out of the tribe. Yes. Don't eat the mushroom. Yes, exactly like they're. And also that's really good advice. Okay. Mushrooms are pretty dangerous unless you're with a pro. Do not go out into the woods and get mushrooms and try to eat them. Can end badly. I mean, it could also be kind of fun, right? If you get the right one, can be delicious, but the risk is too high. But I just want to normalize that fear, okay? That fear of posting for the first time, that fear of getting on your first sales call with someone who's interested in working with you. Oh, like I come from a background in sales. Let me tell you, every single time I started a new job and I was selling a new thing, that first phone call, that first, like first 10 phone calls were terrifying. They were scary because it's a new thing. And like, what if they ask me a question that I don't know and, and what if I blank out and what if I forget the price and this and that and the other thing? Like, there are so many things that can go wrong and yet you're not going to get good at it. You're not going to get to the point where you feel totally ready to take this on until you've done it several dozen times. Okay. Working with clients for the first time. I know it's super nerve wracking when you're working, when you're in consulting or coaching or being a lawyer or copywriter. Like, this is your show, right? So someone's going to have a call with you, consultation or a session, and you're going to be expected to kind of lead how it goes. And that's scary because what if you do it wrong? What if they're like, not impressed with you? I want you to remember in those instances that you're the owner of this business, right? You make the rules, okay? So you get to determine how those sessions go. Right. They're not going to know the difference. They're not going to know, like, if you're doing it the wrong way than you planned. Right. This is just you showing up on a call with them, you know? And also you're allowed to be different from your competitors, you know, if someone's worked with one coach and then they switched to working with you, you're allowed to be different. You don't have to be exactly like everyone else. In fact, that helps differentiate you further. It helps, you know, people remember you and maybe they're going to like your style better than the other people. Who knows? The example I always like to use for this is riding a bike. You know, there was no moment when I was learning how to ride a bike that I was feeling super confident. Like, yeah, I'm ready to do this. Don't worry about me. I got this. No, I was scared to death. I was terrified. I was a very wimpy child. I didn't like going too fast on things I didn't like, like running downhill. That was dangerous. You know, I was not into anything that I could potentially get hurt with. Like, I'm not into climbing trees, nothing. So when I started learning how to ride a bike, it was, it was really nerve wracking for me. And I only got confident riding a bike after I had like done it, tried it, fallen, gone back up, built myself back up, tried it again, kind of fell, but not, not in a way that I hurt myself. And then, you know, slowly but surely I built up confidence. I was in a panto once, was petrified. We agreed that nobody in the audience knew our plan. So if we went off piste, then to roll with it, it's only me who knows. Exactly. Okay, so if you have a fear around public sports speaking or being in front of people, one of the best things you can do is to take an improv class. Okay? One of the best things. You may hate improv, you may think it's really stupid comedy. I personally love improv. However, you know, your ability to roll with the punches and take whatever you're given and yes, and it is going to be. Im getting the word invaluable. Thank you. That's the word. I don't know why that word just didn't come to me. It's going to be invaluable. You are going to be able to handle absolutely anything. I'm convinced that improv is the reason why I am comfortable going live. Right? Because like, I forgot a word just then and I kind of just went with it. It happens, right? Your ability to roll with things only improves the more you do it. Right there. There are so many stories of like, athletes who go and they try to do something that they've done a gazillion times and something goes wrong. Like, I don't know Their shoe breaks or. I don't know. I don't, I don't really listen to sports. This is a bad metaphor. But they make it work, right? Because they're pro. They've done this a gazillion times. They know how to kind of jerry rig it to make it happen. You're only going to get to that point in your business when you've done it a lot. You know, there's also beginners forgiveness. You know, when you're first starting out, people are far more forgiving of, you know, what you're trying. And if it works, it works. And if it doesn't, like, they're going to forgive you for it. Are there any free snacks at this event? Unfortunately, it's, it's self provided. Snacks battles. You know, I encourage you to eat snacks during my lives. You know, I'm a big snack fan. Into them all, all day. It's just, it's weird. It's difficult in a virtual environment when it's very impromptu for me to have a delivery mechanism to deliver snacks to you. So. But please, like, whatever snack you are enjoying at this moment, please, you know, share about it in the comments to inspire other people to find tasty snacks. But great question. I love that cooks. Okay. That's actually a great example. Okay, so chefs, you know, if a chef is making something and they, they realize they're missing an ingredient, you know, the fact that they've been making this thing for forever, they're going to be able to figure out what to sub in for it. Whereas someone who is just starting out, no one's going to expect that chef to know exactly what to sub out for. Okay. They're just gonna have to alter the recipe at that point. And that is. Okay. Let's see. Great. Saying Internet counts more than technique. Internet. If people believe you have the right intent. Oh, intent, not Internet. Intent counts more than technique. If people believe you have the right intent, they'll forgive little errors. Mahan Khalsa. Not claiming it. Yeah, yeah, I got that. Not. Not Internet intent. Yeah. You know, you may screw up. You're definitely, I mean, you're definitely gonna screw up. Let's not even make it a possibility. It is a guarantee. You are absolutely going to screw up. Okay. You're gonna write a post that people don't understand. Okay. You're gonna write a post that you know is a little too pushy. You're gonna write another post that's a little too vulnerable and people want to check in on how you're doing. You're going to learn through doing, right. There's. This is author Seth Godin. He's kind of in the marketing space. He's one of my idols. I emailed him once and he emailed me back. Big, big moment in my life. Anyway, he has this whole philosophy around create and ship. Create and ship and create and ship, okay? He does not believe in practice. Practice, practice, practice, practice until you're perfect, and then ship it to the world. No, no, no, no, no. He's all about create the thing. Don't, don't even think about it before you put it out into the world, okay? Then create the next thing and put that out into the world. And really, I mean, you're never going to figure out what works for your business or what works for your life unless you do it. And then you put it out there and you kind of see what the reaction is, right? When my clients work with me to figure out, you know, their marketing plan and what their offer is and their niche, they, you know, we can guess all we want. We can spend hours and days and weeks and months kind of in our own little echo chamber together, guessing at what's going to work to attract their ideal clients, right? It's only. It's only at the point where they go out and they start marketing it and they start saying, hey, listen, if you want to work with me, you know, here's how this goes. And they see if it works or if it doesn't. Like, that's the only way to test it. It really is. You know, we can think that you have the best idea ever, but once we go out and, like, launch it into the world, if it doesn't attract anyone or if it tracks a different. Attracts a different person than who you want, like, that is the data that you need to be able to correct. Great answer. No serious questions. What do I think of Elon Musk? He worked in Tesla. I think he is probably a sociopath. He has no problem with screwing over his own workers to make himself look good. And the case in point here, we're switching gears right now. The case in point here is when Puerto Rico got hit by that hurricane years and years ago, forgetting when that was Tesla, you know, Elon Musk said, you know, he said, I'm going to donate all these Tesla batteries to Puerto Rico. So they have, you know, energy storage system, okay, Those batteries. There were like hundreds, if not thousands of salespeople in North America who worked for Tesla, who were selling solar, solar systems for people's roofs, who were waiting on those batteries to have the solar systems installed in the home, in the homes they'd sold to. And here's how it works. When you work in sales for Tesla, say you work with a homeowner and they buy a solar system for their roof and they buy a battery. Both those things have to be installed on the same day. They're not coming back two different times to install them both. Okay, so you had people who've been waiting for months for their solar panels to be installed and for their battery to be installed. All of a sudden the batteries have been donated to island across the World, which, I mean, they needed them absolutely, but do it responsibly. So they were told, okay, you have to wait another few months. Many of those homeowners said, well, fuck it, nevermind, we'll go with someone else. So all my friends who had spent hours and hours and hours making these sales, building these relationships, signing the contract, maintaining them, lost out on hundreds of, I mean, a gazillion amount of dollars. Like that's an exaggeration. But I had friends who couldn't pay their bills, literally, because their boss, Elon Musk, decided to fuck them over. I'm not a fan. You know, I think he's probably very intelligent, but he also knows, because he's intelligent, he knows how to bend the rules to get away with stuff. And he's, he gets away with a lot of really shady shit. And I think he's kind of spiraling right now. There's something going on with him. But I, I genuinely think there's going to be something that happens that's his downfall. But, you know, who knows, who knows what's going to happen with X and all that jazz. But yeah, to answer your friend Valdez, not a fan of Elon Musk. Gotta go. Birthday celebrations. Happy birthday, Jason. Bye. But anyway, but you know what? Like, to, like, to the point of this live, he's someone who doesn't wait until he's ready, he just jumps right in. Now, not saying he's a great example of this, right? But like, there's something in that that like, we all need to learn from. There's this excellent documentary, it's called Exit through the Gift Shop. It's actually a documentary that's done by Banksy, that street artist. If you need a boost of confidence, if you need to see that, like, if he can do it, I can do it. I want you to go and watch this documentary, okay? It's about this weird guy. He's like this Frenchman who owns a Secondhand clothing store. And he films everything. It's almost like an impulse or an impulsive thing that he can't help. He started going around at night to, like, hang out with the street artists, and he would film them, and they got really suspicious of him because, you know, like, kind of illegal what they do. You know, they're vandalizing stuff. And he started just telling them, no, no, like, I'm making a documentary on street artists. I will, you know, protect your identity. Don't worry about it. But I'm just collecting footage for this documentary. And so they're like, oh, okay. And so they let him film them. Occasionally he'd, like, help them, like, you know, by passing buckets of paint up the ladder, you know. And through this whole journey, he actually became friends with Banksy, who is, like, still a mystery to this day. And so he, you know, is filming and filming and filming and getting closer and closer and closer with all these street artists. And Banksy finally turns to me, he's like, dude, you have so much footage. When are you going to make your documentary? And he's like, oh, okay. And so he goes away and he puts together some of the footage and he shows it to Banksy and Banksy, who, you know, put the documentary together at the end. Hi, Steve. Welcome. He's like, that is the point when I realized he wasn't actually documentarian. Like, this video that he put together of all the footage was like two second little blips of random footage. It didn't have a storyline. He said it was absolutely unwatchable. Okay? And Banksy was like, whoa, okay, hold on. You know, why don't you do this? Why don't you give me the footage and I will put it together and we'll make a movie and. And we'll just do it that way. And the guy's like, oh, yeah, okay, cool, sure, yeah, here's the footage. But what do I do? And Banksy was like, well, go create street art. You know, go do that. This guy had no doubt, no doubt of his abilities. Like, didn't question anything. He just went and started creating street art. He started promoting a whole street art show. Made $2 million in his first show. It was a fucking shit show. It was a nightmare. There were people who were working for this event who swore on, like, their parents, graves, that they would never work for this guy again. He did not know his ass from his elbows, okay? But he was massively successful. He was so successful that actually one of his pieces of art was Madonna's Album cover at some point. I don't know which album. I'm not very up on music or sports, so. But anyway, if you need a boost, if you need to see that, like, you can just kind of believe in yourself and go and make things happen, go and watch this. Now, obviously this guy kind. I mean, he made art. Let's be real. He made art. But, like, was it art or was it just kind of like templated stuff that he kind of figured out just that he could sell, who knows? But if people like that can do work like that and be successful like that and be celebrated like that, you can do anything. Like you're an ethical human being. You know, you're not going to go and sell snake oil. You are trained, you are certified, you are competent. The only reason successful right now is because you're doubting yourself and you're waiting to feel ready. And that feeling of feeling ready is never going to come, right? So while you're waiting for the readiness feeling to hit you, there are other people who are less competent than you, who aren't waiting to feel ready, who are going and selling to your ideal clients, delivering less qualified services to your ideal clients than you would, and being massively successful at it, just because they're not letting their fear get in the way of them going and doing the thing that they want to do. Okay, that's on you. That's on you. The only person to blame here for you not having a successful business if you're just waiting to feel ready is you. There's no readiness fairy who's going to come around and like, bop you on the head with their magic wand and say, okay, cool, now you're ready. Now you feel confident. Now you can go do the thing. No, you are the fairy. You have the magic wand. And the magic wand is not actually like magic fairy dust. It's you just going and doing the damn thing already over and over and over and over again until you feel really comfortable doing it. That's it. That's it. There are some really valid reasons why you're. You're slowing yourself down to start a business. You know, you may not know what you don't know, in which case, hello, hi, I'm a business coach and I help people do that. There are a lot of me out there. Find the right mentor. Mentor who can show you what you need to do and show you what the questions you need to ask, because you probably don't even know what you don't even know at this point. But still, you're never going to feel ready to sign up for that business coach. You're never going to feel ready to invest in those kinds of mentors. You have to do it all before you feel ready. Let me see. We're back to Elon Musk. Okay. I've never heard a positive review of him. From any ex employees to what are the five most important lessons you've learned from working in sales? Ooh, that's such a great question. Number one. Okay, so number one is you can't. You can't assume how much money people have, right? You just can't. When I worked, when I worked for SolarCity, which is now Tesla, I did a ride along with one of my colleagues because their training was pretty garbage. So I was like really kind of struggling. And they also long. I won't even get into it. But anyway, I was doing this right along with my friend Joe, colleague of mine. And we went to two house calls that day. We went to one first that was like at this mega mansion. It was gorgeous. I mean, it's kind of gaudy. I'll be real, real, but it was gorgeous. And we walk in and the husband is like a surgeon and he's like, really buff. You know, you tell. He spends a lot of time at the, at the gym. Really well put together. You know, like, you can tell he had a skincare routine for a guy, which is kind of rare. You know, his wife was wearing really beautiful clothes. Clothing. She'd had some work done, which, I mean, if your husband's a plastic surgeon, like, of course you're getting work done. I would too. Absolutely. They had all these beautiful purebred dogs. I know, I know people have feelings about that. Like rescue don't buy. I get it. But like, just to paint the picture of these people had money, right? Or visibly they did, right? So we went through the whole thing, we showed them the whole process, you know, told them how much it would cost, all this stuff. And then my colleague mentioned that there'd be a credit check. And these people, like, were like, oh, we won't pass that. We've both had to declare bankruptcy twice. No money, like there. No way that they would ever get approved for anything. And I was shocked. I was shook. There's no way. These people can't do this. And he's like, yeah, you can't assume how much money people have. The second house call that we went to was kind of like rough and tumble house that's kind of in the woods. Like, they had a small roof. So. So getting Solar was going to save them maybe $10. Okay? So it wasn't a big thing. We walk in the house and like, you know when you walk into a house and you can tell like all of the furniture was bought at Costco or one of those box stores. You know, the walls hadn't been repainted in a long time. They had old art. You know, they weren't, they really didn't care about appearance. You know, the guy's parents lived with him, his daughter lived with him, and his daughter's kids lived with him. So it's four generations in one house. Really nice people. And I was like, oh God, there's no way these people are going to be able to afford to get solar. This guy was worth millions. This guy had so much money, his portfolio, like my friend Joe was just drooling at this guy's portfolio because, like, they ran the credit check and his credit was higher than anything Joe had ever seen. So first lesson is you cannot, you cannot guess how much money people have. Don't even try to make up a story there. You also don't know what people value, right? So these people, like, they really value doing something good for the environment, right? The reason they didn't change over their furniture all the time is because they cared about the environment. Like, why throw out something that's perfectly good for something that looks new when you're just going to be adding to landfill? So that was number one. Number two, is that like rejection? When you get rejected in sales, people aren't rejecting you, they're reject, rejecting the thing, right? And when you're providing a service, they're not actually rejecting you, they're rejecting who they imagine they're going to be on the other side of working you with you. So I know it feels really icky to get rejected, but you know, it's not about you. Don't take it personally. Number three. Gosh, this is such a good question. Number three, best lesson in sales is, you know, consistency pays off. You know, you're going to feel like you're being super fucking annoying. But remember, your ideal clients are out there and they're busy. They're not seeing everything that you're posting, they're not seeing every email from you. Your job is to keep them remembering who you are, and that requires consistent follow up. Number four is an answer is better than getting ghosted, right? So there's a reason why I train my clients on the yes, no call. So, you know, you're never wondering or waiting by the phone or by Your email, wondering if someone's going to say yes to working with you. You have a call scheduled with them to find out. Either way, that's number four and number five. It is all mindset. It is all mindset. Like, if you are having a bad month and you are in the gutter and you feel like everything you do is just not being effective, you're right. You're right. Everything you do from that energy is not going to be effective. And you have to pull yourself out of that. And if you can't pull yourself out of it, then you need to find the right people who can help you kind of level out so you can start having better energy and. And have better results. Those are my five things that I learned from working in sales. Great question. Thank you. But, yeah, so, I mean, starting a business is scary. Like, I just want. I just want to acknowledge that if you're waiting for it to not be scary, you're never going to start your business. I've been on this morbid kick lately where I, like, kind of play out what your last minutes are going to look like, right? You imagine it's the end of your life if you stay being a weenie and not doing the brave thing that you want to do. Those last few hours on your deathbed with your family and your loved ones and friends and neighbors and the hospice workers, they are going to be so annoyed with you if you're just talking about all the shit that you regret not doing. Like, come on, that's so boring. Right? Here are people who love you, who want to talk about all these beautiful memories they had with you. They want to laugh about funny things. They want to cry about the people that you've already said goodbye to. And here you are whining about the shit that you were fully in control of doing, and yet you still didn't do it. Like, ew, no, I don't want to be at your deathbed. That's what you're going to talk about. Be more interesting on your deathbed. Talk about, like, oh, I'm so excited. I'm so happy that I went for that. Even though it crashed and burned. Like, it really taught me something about myself, and it showed me the value of spending time with people like you because I love you all so much. Yeah, don't be. Don't be boring on your deathbed. Like, be the person that people are. Like, oh, my God. Being at their death, at their side while they were dying was one of the, like, best moments of my life because I got to say goodbye to this incredible human being. And they were so funny and poignant and like we shared these beautiful moments. Not. Oh, God, they were so sad, you know, they were just talking about all the shit they regretted. No, no, don't be that person. Sorry. That was really judgy. Judgy about people on their deathbed. Thankfully, anyone who's been on that in that scenario is already gone, so they're not going to see that anyway. A little morbid, but you know what I'm talking about. And I hope. I hope this is that fire that gets you off your ass and gets you working on what you want to do in your life, right? No one's going to do it for you, okay? Like I said, there's no magic fairy who's going to come over, wave her wand and make you ready, right? You're the only one who can get to that ready point. And it's after you've done it a bunch of times, okay? So just get to work. All right with that. I have a sales call in a few minutes, so I have to hop off. Thank you so, so much for being here, Steve and Jason and David and Telly and. Who else? Oh, and Uncle Joe. Hello. And Vitus. Oh, Vitus, I'm sorry I was calling you Valdis. I thought that I was an L. My. It's. The computer's too far away. My apologies, Vitus. I hope I'm pronouncing your name correctly. Thank you for being here. Great questions, everyone. I am going to be going live again tomorrow. And let me see. David, note to self, die with enough advance notice to be interesting. Yes, I'm glad you're taking that away from your tape. Precisely the point. Anyway, I hope you have an amazing rest of your Thursday. Wish me luck. If you missed it. I'm going to be doing trivia tonight. That's why I'm doing this live so early. And it's on sports. That's the theme. And I don't know anything about sports, so if you want to just send me, like, like, I don't know, magical messages of sports knowledge, I will appreciate it on that. I will see you all in my life tomorrow. Have a great day. I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach. Have a good one. By.