Going Live in 1 hour!

Hello, everyone. I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and leadership coach. It is Tuesday, March 9th. We're coming up on an anniversary, and it's been top of mind for most of my clients. And so I do want to touch upon that during this live. But I also want to talk to you about burning bridges. And for those of you who read my description of this live and you're like, oh, but Katie, you shouldn't burn bridges. You should never burn bridges. You should always nurture relationship. Know that. I'm not talking about actually burning bridges. You know, I don't advocate for anyone ever, like, quitting a job, kicking over the waste basket and setting fire to the building on the way out. Absolutely not. I don't advocate for, you know, ruining relationships that shouldn't be ruined ever. What I'm talking about is there's something that happens when you're starting a business. There's this fear that, oh my gosh, if I start a business, if I go out on my own, I'm never going to be able to get a job again if I fail. And this fear is complete BS in my opinion. Starting a business, if you do it with guidance, if you do it well, if you do it with proof of concept before you jump ship from your company, there's. I mean, if you're offering a service and you're invested in it, I don't see there being an opportunity for failure. Of course startups fail. I know I'm going to get a lot of slack for that. But here's the thing. You're going to end up burning your own bridges when you start a business and you start seeing what is possible for you outside of the 9 to 5, outside of working for a company. This is one of the things that happened for me. And I realized today I had the most beautiful day today. It was just a Tuesday. I saw clients or I talked to clients. I didn't see them. You know, I did a lot of work on my business, but, you know, I planned on getting up at 7am and hi, everyone who's joining, welcome. Oh, awkward virtual wave. Welcome. Happy Tuesday. We're talking about burning, like the burning of bridges that happens when you start a business and see what's possible there. So I had planned this morning to get up at 7 and work out and do all this stuff, but I Woke up at 7 and I was tired and so I went back to sleep until 9 and I started client calls at 10 and I had client calls until about just past noon. And then it Was a beautiful day. And so I took the dogs for a car ride because they love going on car rides to go get fish. And then while I was getting fish, I thought, okay, well, I'll be taking the dogs to the beach, obviously, because I have the freedom to do so. So I took them to the beach and I came home. And then I was doing some work on my business. I had a group call with my coach and the support group there. Hi, Sam. Welcome. Then I had my evening coaching calls with my clients, and then I had a networking event, and here I am. But it was the most lovely day. I was able to make a really healthy dinner for my family. I can never, ever go back to working for someone else. I am unemployable in my eyes. I have burned every single bridge in my body that could ever tie me to a job again. A, J, O, B. I have a job. I have a career. I have a company. I have work that I do in the world that has actual impact. Hi, Steve. Welcome. Good evening. I could never go back to work again. My VA who has been going through all of my social media shares over the last year and has categorized everything. Hi. Hi, Mary. Welcome. She categorized everything by color, and so she has categories like Katie's writing on money, how to get clients, personal disclosures, which I think is so funny. I do disclose a lot on social media, and Harry Potter made the list for one. I don't think I'm in the Glen. The Glennon Doyle category of personal disclosures for the purpose of building awareness of my business. She got to the point she's a recovering alcoholic and drug addict, and she's very open about that and very open about a lot of her, you know, quirkiness, quirky things that she does. She turned to her husband very famously in her book and said, you know, I don't think I'm gonna get hired again. You know, do you think that's a possibility? He's like, yeah, you're never gonna get hired again. No one's gonna want to hire you after they've read your book. And she's like. She was like, oh, my God, that's the best news ever. Thankfully, I haven't had to go through that. I haven't had to share anything that would make me unhirable, but I'm just not willing to do it. And this is the thing that I see so often with new clients. They come to me and they are so worried about starting this business because they are worried that they're going to start it Jump ship from their job which pays the bills, have their company pay the bills and then have it fail and then never be able to be hired again. Steve, I need an admin for all that stuff too. Oh, Steve. You know, if she had the bandwidth, and maybe she will, and I can't get give her enough hours, I'm happy to send her your way. She's incredible. Complete. I don't know how I'll live without her. I mean, I've been working with her for I think two months now. She's absolutely incredible. Anyway, the. Kevin, the curious thing about burning bridges is it was meant solely to keep you from going back. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, here's the thing. There's this mentality when someone is about to do something really scary. They want to keep the security of the original place. They want to, they want to keep one foot in this boat and also get in this boat. And so there's this fear that if you get out of this boat, and I've changed the metaphor, it's now boats. If you get out of this boat and go to this boat, you're never going to be able to go back. And there's nothing wrong with that because the person who was brave enough and strong enough and resourceful and creative enough to jump into that boat in the first place is always going to find another boat to jump into. You know, if that boat is not the boat they want to be in, if that business they're building actually isn't the thing that lights them up, guess what? There's going to be a million other opportunities for them. The thing that I laugh about when my clients finally start getting high paying clients and are able to start paying the bills with this business is they realize they have this key to freedom. They have this key to freedom. There's no longer this cage around them. There's no longer this ball and chain of the 9 to 5 where you have to do an arbitrary to do list that was dictated to you by someone else. And you have to do things that you don't really understand the purpose for in support of your business. Like, you just get to spend time on the things that really matter to you. You get to spend time on stuff that you really see moving the needle and that feeds your soul. And you just, you can't give that up once you have a taste of it. There's just no way. It sounds silly. I love going live. I love, I love being live with you all every single, not every single evening. Some evenings I need a break. No offense. To you, it's just me. But some like. I couldn't imagine not being able to go on and represent myself and my business every single evening if I choose to. Steve Foley. I just jumped into real estate. Wish I did it years ago. Yeah. Oh, my God. Real estate is one of those jobs that you can really make your own and design it in a way that serves you best. And it doesn't have to be a certain formula. It can be a whole. A whole mishmash of different things that you choose work for you. Kirvin, the curious thing about. Oh, you know what? The curious thing about burning bridges solely to keep you from going back. Burning bridges kept you from moving forward, to leave you no longer, leave you no other choice but to achieve your goal. Yeah, absolutely. You know, there's. There are a few schools of thought, thought around this. So you can jump ship, you can burn the bridge, you can burn your ship. Whatever metaphor we're playing with at this point to push you into making it happen, to make it impossible for you to go back. And for some people, that works. For other people, that's too much pressure. It's a little too much pressure for a lot of people in the coaching world. I kind of think of coaches and content creators as the cousins of creatives. Okay, they might not be artists, they might not be writing plays or doing paintings or making sculptures, but there's a similar type of work. It requires you to feel really grounded. It requires you to feel connected and safe. And not always. There's plenty of content I've come out of from moments of complete meltdown. But it doesn't always. The burning the ship before you do the thing or whatever doesn't always serve. There are a few different ways to do it. Steve, I'm just curious, what are you having for dinner that's so good that you're going to leave us? Come on. This seems to be your dinner time, too. I'm wondering what part of the world you're in if you're just a late dinner eater or if you're super early. Weird things. I wonder about people online. But, you know, the thing that my clients want, you know, they don't want to be. I mean, some of them want to be millionaires, but a lot of them just want to make a couple hundred thousand dollars a year. They want to be able to take their dog for a walk in the middle of the day, maybe meet a friend for lunch. Once the world is open, they want to be able to take a couple weeks off here and there without Having to ask for it. Oh, Taco Tuesday. We had tacos too. We had fish tacos. I make this really healthy purple cabbage coleslaw that just has olive oil and it doesn't have any mayonnaise, but it has a bunch of healthy stuff. I'll have to send it to you. It's great. It's great on tacos. Anyway, enjoy your dinner. But where was I going with that? I completely lost the point of that. What was I saying? I got so excited about tacos and remembering my taco dinner that I completely forgot my point. Oh, so they don't want. They don't want like millions of dollars in their business? Some of them do, but most of them don't. They just want to have freedom. They want to be able to take a couple weeks off without having to ask the overlords of corporate life if it's okay. They want to be able to choose the clients that they want to work with. They want to be able to sleep in some mornings when they're feeling a little extra tired. Yeah, Steve, I'll DM you the recipe. It's amazing. And anyone else who wants a healthy coleslaw recipe, I will say this. It is a lot easier to make if you have a robocoo or something that chops automatically because it is intense on the chopping or on the grading, but really, really delicious. But anyway, so when my clients, you know, start their businesses and get to that point where they actually get to do those things, there's no way in hell they're going to give that up and go back to working for someone else. No way in hell. Because when you design a business that is designed around the things that you enjoy doing, that's designed around the people you like serving, that's designed around the activities you want to spend your time on and you learn how to offload the stuff that really doesn't fill you up, there is nothing like it. There's nothing like feeling on purpose in that way. Justin Pickering. Autonomy equals happiness. Yeah. And also, this isn't everyone. This is not everyone. My best friend in the world, she doesn't understand how I do it. She loves the structure of her job. She does sales for Better Place Forests. She is so good at her job. We actually met at Equinox when we sold membership. Equinox Fitness. Clarissa. Hi, Katie. I'm a pharmacist in training but got into freelance writing and would love to be successfully self employed like yourself. Oh, Clarissa, send me a damn dm. Let's set up a time to talk because it is so. It's so easy to do. Well, it's simple. It's not easy. It's so simple to set it up. And I would love to point you in the right direction. Freelance writing is one of those things. There are so many ways you can go with it. You could write books for you do gross writing. You could do content creation for social media and you could really specialize. And in pharma, oh my gosh, you could write content for pharma companies. They need it and they need pharma stuff that doesn't scare the crap out of everyone. Like who, who, who's watching has seen one of those commercials just today that it's like, oh yeah, we'll fix this minor problem and then all these bad life threatening side effects might happen. I know, I know legally they have to say that stuff, but I feel like there could be a better messaging anyway. Yeah, but Clarissa, message me. Yeah, please do. Awesome. I'm really excited to talk to you. Yeah. Writing, I mean, my va, she is a brilliant writer and she's going to be a therapist and I totally support that. But you know, I just, I see this business in her and I just want to just magic it out of her. And hopefully, hopefully I'll be able to convince her, Ray, if you're watching, I'll be able to convince her to do both. Because here's the magic thing about owning your own business is that you can name how much money you want to make. You know, everything is figureoutable, everything is reverse engineer able. If you want to make a million dollars a year, there is a way to reverse engineer that. It requires a lot of work. You know, don't get me wrong, but there is a way to reverse engineer it and figure that out. But the beautiful thing about owning your own business is that you get to turn around and have whatever impact you want to have on the world. So if you want to donate $100,000 a year to your local food bank and make sure that no child in your area goes hungry, guess what? You can do that. If you want to open up an animal rescue or donate to an animal rescue, guess what, you get to do that. My dream recently, I am very passionate about giving people who don't have a, don't have a second chance. A second chance I would love. And I've been scouring Zillow like, like I could afford it right now. I'm not at that point yet, but I would love to be able to buy like a huge house in a major metropolitan area and turn it into a home for single mothers who've escaped abusive relationships. For them to go and live and get back on their feet with their kids in a safe environment where, you know, they're able to lock their rooms, they're able to have meals in the kitchen and all the things and address, maybe provide some training for them. This is. I mean, this is my absolute dream. Whenever I think of winning the lottery, this is the thing that I just get so fired up about. I would create a whole foundation. Oh, my gosh. That's just what I want to do. If I ever did, if I ever win or make that amount of money, which. It's in the plants, don't get me wrong, it is in the plants, But I want to do it right now. But, you know, you don't have that freedom when you work for someone. You don't. I mean, unless you make a lot of money, unless you're CEO or president or on multiple boards and you're making multiple millions dollars a year, Most of us aren't. Aren't at that level. Most of us are making maybe 100, $150,000 a year. And. And it's enough to live on. You have all the. The benefits that get you through. You have stability, all that stuff. And yet you could have far more impact if you took the pen and started writing your own narrative for your life. What else did I want to tell you? There's so. Oh, my gosh and part of today. So I got on my peloton and decided I was just going to listen to the soundtrack. The Greatest Showman and the two songs that I kept playing were just all about letting yourself be seen. Just letting yourself be seen. Once. Once you start a business and you realize that you can do that and not have the world explode and actually have people lean in further and say, I want to hear more. I want to talk to you offline. I want to hire you. You know, that is, once you have that, that's just magic. You have the ability to then just reach out to the universe and say, I want resources. I want money. I want to be able to provide for myself and create an incredible income. And it happens. Now, that's really simple. It's not easy. There are some really awesome ways to get there, and it's one of the things I work on with my clients. But could you imagine realizing you have this power and then just saying, oh, never mind, I'm gonna go back to my day job? It just doesn't happen. It just doesn't happen. And you know, if you're creative, resourceful, and an empathetic human being who has emotions and like, isn't a sociopath, I guarantee you you're always gonna have relationships with people who, if anything did happen, if, you know, your business goes belly up, if there's a pandemic and it completely, you know, blows everything to hell that you'd be able to reach out to and they would, they would refer you to an opening for a job. I guarantee you always have that. You're never going to burn those bridges. But the bridges that you are going to burn are the ones that are inside yourself. They're the ones that you. They're the limiting beliefs that you have about how it's possible for you to make money. The number one problem that I see up and coming business owners have when they go to start their business is they have a fucked up relationship with money. They don't believe they deserve enough of it. They believe that they have to struggle for every dollar. They don't believe that they've achieved enough in their lifetime to be able to ask for a certain amount. And what happens is they set up a business that, that mathematically can never make them enough money to survive on, much less thrive on. It's just impossible. The math doesn't work. And then they have to quit their dream and they have to go back. The number one thing that my clients need to work on early on is this relationship with money owning. And what's amazing, when you start working on your relationship with money, you know, money is not a thing. Money is just energy. The magic thing that I see is once you start working on your relationship with money, it actually fixes other parts of your life. So if you're bad at making friends and you're also bad at money, start working on your money story. It'll actually start making you better at making friends. Likewise, if you always settle for less in your romantic relationships. Hello. Working on your money story, you stop doing that. Your belief in what you're worth just up levels across all areas of your life. I'm having a little bit of a vulnerability moment here that I just shared that, but it's completely true. So if you're starting business, my number one piece of advice for you is to look at your relationship with money. And if it is crap, if you're having a hard time, if you think that there's never enough, if you do everything to save every single dollar and still have unexpected expenses that completely derail you babes, you got to Clean that up. Okay? Because a bad relationship with money is like having a fertile, like an over fertilized garden right next to a pond. You know what happens then it rains and all this shit goes into the pond and it makes it poisonous and it kills everything there. You can't have that. A bad relationship with money will poison every, not just your business, but everything in your life. I know it's really common that, you know, kids grow up and their parents have a hard time with money. There are fights about money. And one of the top three reasons people get divorced is because of money. Those children then grow up to think, oh well, money causes problems, so I don't want to have a lot of it. You know, we get past these relationships with money from our parents who got them from their parents who got them from their parents. So basically we're all walking around with a relationship to money that started in the 12th century. In the 12th century where there was famine and plague and granted we have kind of plague right now. Different story, you know. And there were overlords that could come by on their horse at any point and demand more money and rent. We don't really have a lot of those things right now. We have a lot more security. You get to design what your relationship with money is. And I'm going to be releasing a program coming in April. So if you're curious about this, DM me because I want to get you on the list to alert when this is ready. But some books I want to put in your awareness if this whole money conversation is grabbing you is the Soul of Money by Lynne Twist. This version of Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill with Joel Fatinos and August Gold specifically. I love this version. It's a little abridged, but I like it because it has questions after each chapter that really help you deepen your learning. Ramit Sethi. Call out to my boy, Ramit Sethi. He's amazing. I've been following him for about 10 years. He When I was young and really, really, really bad with money, he was the reason I got out of credit card debt. He's incredible. There's a. Oh, I have a doctor still in here. That's funny. I definitely paid this though because I'm out of debt right now. That's fine. Anyway, those are the three books that I would recommend that you take a look at. Hi, Jennifer. I'm hearing you. I'm seeing you say yes. Not sure what you said yes to, but I will take it. Anyway, if you're thinking about starting a business. Just go do it. Just go do it. The worst thing, the worst thing that can happen is, I mean, think of all the reasons, of all the, all the made up reasons that you have in your mind of the worst things that are going to happen. They're not as scary as you think. As someone who has hit rock bottom, it's not as bad as you think. Anyway, if anyone wants to talk about this further, DM me, I think I've said there are a few things. So the money program that comes out in April, you can DM me for that. If you want to be a reminder of the books, DM me for that. And also, Clarissa, you're in DM me. Okay. Just want to make sure I'm covering everything. Anyway, it is Tuesday evening. It is almost 9pm I'm trying to go to bed earlier and so I think I'm going to end it here. Thank you everyone for joining this evening. It has been lovely. Honestly is one of my favorite parts of the day is getting to go live with you all. So thank you for tuning in and I can't wait to talk to you later this week. All right, Happy Tuesday and I'll talk to you soon. Bye.