Playing Small: Under/Over Preparing 2/5

Hello, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and coach. So excited to be talking to you this evening. I know I say that every time, but I'm just equally excited every time I go live with you all. I wanted to talk to you this evening. I'm on this series this week about ways in which business owners play small and keep their businesses small and keep their lives small and keep their impact small and to keep their impact income small. If you can tell, I'm a little anti playing it small and there are a bunch of different ways in which we do this. Last night I went into how we play small with our money and how that screws us and our clients and the world over and how it's actually a very selfish game to play small with your money in your business. And tonight I want to talk about a different angle. I want to talk about how we use preparedness as a tactic to keep ourselves and our business and our impact and our income and all the things really, really minuscule small. You can tell I'm anti, anti playing small, and I'm going to keep saying that because I am, and you should be, too. It robs you of seeing how incredible your, your gifts are and how needed they are in the world. It robs your clients of accessing you in different ways, and it robs the world from actually benefiting from the gifts you have to offer. And a little, a little housekeeping. I am going live as I normally do through Streamyard. Sometimes not all the comments come through. I do love for this to be interactive, though, so if you have any questions, any comments, anything that you want to add to the conversation, please, please do pop it in the chat. And just know that sometimes Streamyard doesn't like to show me all the comments. So I don't want you to be worried that you said the wrong thing. If I don't call out your comment, it is not you. Sometimes the technology just fails us. I can tell you that if you try to sell Bitcoin or cryptocurrency in the comments, I will probably, you know, be displeased with you out loud. And then also if you say anything creepy or weird, I'm not going to talk to you. But, like, you guys are amazing. You're not going to say that. And Hi, Gabriel. And I didn't realize you were from Brazil. Welcome. Good evening. So I want to dive right in. Okay. So how we use preparedness to keep ourselves and our businesses small, there are two ways and they're, they're different Sides of the same coin. This is going to sound crazy, but people tend to over prepare. They use being over prepared as a way to delay actually launching their business, actually going out and getting clients, actually doing the thing, having impact and having income, what this looks like. And I come from the coaching world, okay? So I'm very, very familiar with this model I'm about to describe is someone wants to become a coach. They want to start a coaching business. And so they go to training and they become a trained coach and then they're like, oh, well, the next step is I'm going to become certified. And then they get their certification and they don't feel that internal click of, wow, now I'm ready to run a business. By the way, that internal click that tells you you're ready to run a business never fucking happens, okay? You're waiting for something that will never, ever happen. You're never going to feel ready. You just have to go and do it. And my dog is chewing on a chair. Hold on, Luna, Luna. We do not chew on chairs. Excuse you. Excuse you. Let me just show you the naughty girl. See, she's smiling. She doesn't know what she did wrong. She just loves chewing on chairs. She does not worry about being prepared at all for anything. Do you? No, no, don't go back to it. Anyway, so these coaches, they go, they are waiting to feel ready after getting this first set of certification, but because they don't feel ready, they're like, oh, well, I must need another certification. So they go for another certification, and again, they don't feel ready, so they don't start their business. And then they're like, oh, well, I probably need another certification. I'm just gonna put my foot on the chair so that she can't get it. And so on and on and on and on. They're pouring all this money, meanwhile, into all these different certification programs. They are learning incredible skills, but they're not actually doing anything with them because guess what? They don't have a business that they're starting. They don't have clients, okay? So it's like they're hoarding knowledge. They're just hoarding and hoarding and hoarding. And it gets to a point where they have sunk all this time, energy and money into this business that never actually became a business. It was really just a learning hobby. And they freak out and they have to go back and get, and get a job because they've run out of money or they're freaking out or whatever we use. And this happens across Industries. I'm just really, really close with the coaching industry. I, you know, by virtue of being a certified coach myself. This happens in the wine world. I used to be a certified sommelier. I guess I am still. It's not a certification that ever expires. Although my wine knowledge has gone down the drain like. Like if you poured wine down it. Dad joke. But I got offered a job, like an incredible job as an assistant sommelier after I passed the certified examination. I knew a lot about wine then and I didn't take the job because I was so worried that I wouldn't know enough. I was so worried I needed to prepare more. So, you know, I took instead. I took a bus girl job at a fancy restaurant, mind you. So I made a fair amount of money, but still I got offered that dream job that I thought I wanted and I turned it down because I wasn't prepared enough. Okay. Forgetting completely that I'm resourceful and smart and creative. And I learned really fast that I could have absolutely learned everything I needed to know on that job. Now I'm not speaking also against being certified, being trained. I'm not speaking against that at all. I think those are fabulous things. And I do think that there are certain specific instances where a couple different certifications will serve you. For instance, if you are a leadership coach who's working with very high top level leaders, you, you should probably have some kind of 360 certification like leadership Circle in addition to your coaching, training and certification. Okay. I find that super helpful if you want to become a coach who coaches individuals and groups or couples. ORC by CRR Global is an amazing training program for that I will share. I went through. It is like conflict resolution kind of stuff which I find very uncomfortable. I went through the first class and I appreciate what they teach. It was not for me. So here I am. I only work with individuals. I don't work with teams anymore. What else you know? Any really? I mean, learn the basics. Just remember that you can ask questions along the way. You can admit to not knowing. You can make it up as you go. Basically, that's how everyone lives life. We just make it up as we go. You know, why does that not also work for your business? You know, knowing with. With knowing that you are in full integrity and you're not selling something that you can't provide. Okay. So we use over preparing in all these awful insidious ways. Another way a lot of new business owners use over preparing to delay actually going out and getting clients. Is there websites? Yes. You. I'm talking to you. I know you're watching and I know you see this. You're spending all this time and energy and maybe money devoted to building out this website when you don't even really know who your ideal client is. You don't know what their top problems are. You don't know what they're frustrated with. You don't know what their deepest, darkest desires are. You're building out a website that's all about you. It's about where you went to school and what your hobbies are and what you're certified in, where you worked and what your favorite food is, and this is your pet and all these things. And I'm not. I'm not, you know, putting those things down. Those are all lovely facts about you. But you need to remember that if you actually want to start a business, you need paying clients. And for people out there in the world to come across you or your website and think, damn, I want to give this person my money. I want to give them my money and I want what they're selling. They have to know that you are relevant to them, which means that you have to speak to them, which means that your. Your website is not about you. It is all about them. It is all about them. If your website is about you, the dogs even agree with me. We have oodles of dogs. Oodles of oodles that agree with me. Right? If your website is all about you. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry to be the person to break this to you, but you've wasted some time and energy and money, and that's not a big deal, okay? That's just the nature of life. Okay? We. We go a little bit this direction, we go a little bit this direction, and then we course correct and we make it right. But your website is not for you. It's not highlighting where you went to school or what you studied, because how is someone out there in the world going to connect where you went to school and what you studied to? Oh, this person's useful to me. Okay? I went to UMass Dartmouth. I majored in French and philosophy. Would anyone be able to connect that with me helping them set up their business? No, not at all. But that's what I do. If my website were about where I went to school and all stuff, no one would have any idea. And Ron Joseph. Oh, Ron Joseph has a great memory here. No. So when you're marketing your service, you always want to connect it to how it helps your client. Either get Laid, get paid or live longer. Okay? Those are the three core things that people generally spend money on. Okay? Go out and look at any kind of marketing. See, Charlie agrees with me. If you go out and look at any kind of marketing, you can very easily tell, like the soap commercial. Oh, it's projecting how much more confident you'll feel in your body and how much more comfortable, which speaks to getting laid. Okay? My marketing, you can look at that. It's all about building a business that will make you more money, okay. Which also feeds into living longer because the more resources and money you have, the more access you'll have to good health care, to a stable living environment, to healthy food, to preventative care stuff. Also, if you make a lot of money and you're getting laid, chances are you have high status. Okay? So if you have high status, there are people around you that give a damn. So if something happens, if you get wounded, if you become ill, they will do what they can to make sure that you live longer. Okay? Side tangent. Thanks for bringing that up, Ron Joseph. And I, I love your name. I just love how it rolls. Ron Joseph. I'm never just going to call you Ron, just so you know. I'm so glad you brought that up. Yes. Like I said, I love this to be interactive. But anyway, so if, if you spent all this time and energy building a website and it's all about you and not about your client, just know, you just, you just practices. You, you just practiced making a website, congratulations, you know how to do it again. And that's good news because you're gonna have to do it again and you're gonna have to make it all about your ideal client. Okay. Because they need to see why you're useful to them. Okay. Buying business cards. Yes, you. Yes, you. I know, I know you bought some business cards. Yep, those. I mean, no, no, no, you don't need business cards. You don't need business cards at all. I like to phrase it that I don't like the environmental impact. Oh my God, what is going on outside? The dogs are just going crazy. And I would rather just, you know, exchange emails or exchange phone numbers with someone you know, because then you have the balls in your court. You can follow up with them anyway. Okay? So that is over preparing and there are a bunch of other ways that we over prepare and if you can think of some ways that you have over prepared in your past or you've seen it happen, I'd love to see it in the comments or DM it to me, but let's talk about under preparing, okay? And when I say under preparing, I don't mean that the person is not actually qualified to go and do the thing, okay? Generally, people are far more qualified than they give themselves credit for. When I say under preparing, what I mean is, and I say this from experience, in helping people build their businesses, one of the best ways to sabotage your own success, to make sure that you don't get paying clients to shoot yourself in the foot in every single sales call you have, is to not have any of the back end stuff built out for when someone says, yes, I want to give you my money and I want to be your client. Okay? The back end stuff includes your link to set billing or payment, having client agreements, knowing back to front, front to back, your sales call, okay? You don't know your sales call. This is a nail in the coffin. A big one. A big one that's really hard to undo. You're going to sabotage ever getting clients because in the back of your mind, when you're talking to someone who's perfect, perfect for you, you can help them, you know, you could change their life. But in the back of your mind, there's this voice that's going to be running like, I hope they don't say yes. Because if they say yes, you have to scramble. You have to throw together an agreement. You've never done that before. You've never put a client agreement together. What if you screw it up? What if it looks unprofessional? What if you embarrass yourself by writing something that's completely mediocre and they see right through you because you're a fraud? Hmm. And I'm. I'm saying this, and I know there, there are some of you watching who are like, yeah, that's me. Yeah, that's me. That's exactly what I do to myself, Margaret. Oh, I came through as someone else. I don't know who I came through as, but welcome. Popkin. I love that last name, Popkin. That's fun to say, but I hope you're enjoying the show, Ron Joseph. Yeah. In other words, don't be a weenie. Exactly. That is exactly my point, Ron. How did you know? That is exactly. The point here is don't be a weenie. But do you see how easy it is for us to set ourselves up for failure? And the reason we do it is because if we know that it's going to fail from the beginning, then we're not as devastated when we don't get the client. We are not as devastated when it doesn't work out or when we fail because we were set up for failure anyway. We didn't have the things built, we weren't fully invested, we didn't have the billing set up so that our clients could have an easy way to give us their money. And it's cruel. It's a cruel thing that we do to ourselves. Because the thing is, we go around, we have this story in our mind, we're going to go out and start a business, we tell people about it, and in the back of our minds we're sabotaging ourselves the entire way, the entire way from beginning to end. And there's always an end in these scenarios because if you're over preparing, you're never actually starting. If you're under preparing, you're kind of half assed starting, but it never goes anywhere. So you have just created your own failure there. And maybe that reaffirms some kind of contract or belief you have about yourself that you can never see through things through, that everything always fails for you. Whatever. You know, I want to be a little harsh right now and be like, oh, a little baby violins because I'm tired of this. I'm tired of people giving up on themselves in this way before they even start. Okay? It is cruel to you, but it's also cruel to the people who could potentially be your clients and get immense value from you. Like you could literally change people's lives if you just got out of your own head, got out of your way, stopped being a weenie, stopped playing a small game and just prepared the normal amount that gets you out the door and running, okay? And I know a lot of this is subconscious, so I may be calling you out right now. You might be like, I didn't realize I was doing that. Oh man, like now I have to change and blah, blah. And here's what I want you to do, is I just want you to build that one thing that is going to make it easier for you to get clients, whether you're an over preparer or an under preparer, okay? If you're an over preparer, look at the things you've committed to and really get honest with yourself about which ones of those activities actually generate clients. And I will bet you 50 bucks that nothing you're actually doing is generating clients if you don't have any. Let me see. Ron Joseph, in all seriousness, I always sell myself short. I don't see what other people see in me. Ron, can I just tell you, I do this to myself. All the time. This is the reason I have not one, but two business coach strategists working with me in tandem, along with the person who's helping me write my book. Write my book and all the things. It's really hard to see the forest for the trees when you're in your own business. You're in it. You can't see the impact you're going to have. This is one of the reasons my clients work with me is because they realize that they cannot see what they're capable of. They can't see the impact they have or what they should charge or what they're offering should be because they're too close to it. Okay? It is so normal. And I do this to myself as well. That's why I have to pay for help as well. So just know you're not alone. And Adam, getting systems and processes set up has led to crazy quicker client kickoffs, speeds past the logistics, and connects their yes to your specialty. Faster, 100%. Oh, my God. I. I can't tell you how many times I've come across someone on LinkedIn who was maybe a writer or a VA or something. And I just loved their personality. Love their personality, love their posts, loved their stories, how they said things like just clicked, like, wanted to be friends with them, wanted to be in business with them, and have reached out and said, hey, I want to hire you. I don't know what for, and I need to figure this out. But what. How do I do this? Like, what is the process? I've never done this before, and they don't really help you with anything. They don't say, oh, well, here's the process. We either get on a call and figure out what your needs are. I generally get this response and so, so awful. If you're doing this, please stop. Please stop. Because there are people like me who are impulsive buyers and want to give you their money. The response I get when I inquire about how to hire them for whatever is. Oh, well, it depends. It depends. No other information. No other information about, like, what kind of projects they accept, how many word count they write for, or what kind of tasks they undertake when they're being a VA for businesses. Nothing. And it's exhausting because I then have to turn into a detective to ask a million questions. Guys, shush, shush. What are you barking at? There's nothing. Stop. So Charlie's barking, and then Lily the poodle is barking at Charlie. Where you going, Lil? Well, that's just her butt. You don't need to see her butt. But there's like a whole bark chain here. But it's so frustrating. It's like, make it easy for me to understand how to be in business with you. And like Adam said, once you have your systems and processes in place and you make it super easy for people to understand what services you provide, and you're able to run that sales call and tell them exactly like, we're a good fit or we're not, and then you're able to collect their money, get their client agreement out to them. It makes it so, so much easier and such a better client experience. And let me tell you, if you're trying to build a business and you don't have any of those things in place. I know. Right now, I'm so sorry, you need to quit. You need to go back for a job if you're not willing to actually do that work, okay? Because that is what running a business is anyway. This. I hope I wasn't too mean in this one. I'm very passionate about this. I hope you could just see that. I. I hate seeing people play small because it is just a theft from the world. It is a theft. That's exactly what it is. It's robbing everyone who could potentially benefit from your work, from getting your work. And there's only one you who knows exactly what you know, who does it in exactly the way you do it, who has your sense of humor, who has your values, who has your work ethic, and who can deliver that specific product. Okay? If you're not going out there and actually offering it, you are robbing the world of that gift. And I'm going to end on this weird, weird, wacky note in college. There. I'm forgetting the exact name of the theory. It was in my. One of the first philosophy classes I ever had. It was a philosophy English class. And I'm giving you way too much background information before I actually get to the point. I'm sorry. So there's this theory that if you put a typewriter in a room with a bunch of monkeys for infinite amount of times, at some point the monkeys playing with the typewriter are going to produce Shakespeare. They're gonna produce all of his works, you know, and. Oh, Ron, Joseph. Me? No way. Oh, thank God. Good. I don't believe that. I don't believe that there was only one Shakespeare and he had all those circumstances of his life. No, there's nothing like. Yes, randomness. The power of random is powerful, and it does work in very mysterious ways. But There was only one Shakespeare. There was only one dude who lived his life, saw the world from his eyes, saw the beauty and the ugliness and. And was able to frame it in an incredibly beautiful way, a way that has lasted the test of time, unlike many, many other pieces of art have not. And so I'm going to leave you with that this evening. So you are your own version of Shakespeare. Your stuff may or may not have as long a shelf life. Let's own that. But still, the world deserves to have that gift. And if you keep playing small and wasting all your time on energy, on over preparing or under preparing before you actually get off your ass and start this business, you are robbing the world of that gift anyway. If you're sick of this, if you're sick of this and you want to stop this whole pattern that you have going on, because it is a pattern. It's something that you relive over and over and over and over again ad nauseam until you actually work it out. But if you're ready to break that cycle and you want to work with a business coach and strategist like myself, shoot me a dm. I may or may not be the right fit for you, but what we can do is we can hop on a call, we can talk about what you're trying to build, where you're getting stuck, and where you would want some help from a strategist. And if it's a fit, we can talk about what it looks like to work together. And if it's not, I know so many incredible business strategists, okay? There are tons of us, okay? And we're all really fun to hang out with, and I can absolutely refer you to someone great who will be a great fit for you. But anyway, if you're curious about that, just shoot me a dm. I'm right here. I'm not scary. I don't bite often. And there you go. So, yeah, if you're ready for that, if you're not ready for it, then don't waste my time, okay? Just. Can we make that deal right now? If you're. If you're really committed to being over prepared or under prepared or playing the small game, don't waste my time, okay? I'm a busy lady. I have dogs to take care of and, you know, outdoors to explore and work to do and clients to help, you know, make hundreds of thousands of dollars and. Yeah, but I'm more than happy to help if you're ready to make this change. Anyway, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and coach. Thank you so much for joining me this evening. I will be going live tomorrow Wednesday and then Thursday and Friday talking about different other aspects of how we play small and keep our lives and our income and our impact super small and rob the world of our gifts. And you won't want to miss it if you're playing small because I'm going to call you out. Anyway, hope you all have a great evening. Hope I was gentle enough on you and look forward to seeing you later this week. Bye.