Public Mistakes

Hello and good evening. I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach. Coming to you live on the Instagram, the Facebooks, the LinkedIn, YouTube and Twitter. And just so you guys know, I'm balancing my phone on my computer. It's really the only way I've. I've figured out so that I can actually look into the camera while I'm doing this. Any other system, like, I'm just like, I'm looking over here, I'm looking over here in either way and I hate that. Anyway, but I'm so excited to come live with you today, so I just felt a little embarrassing. I was playing with my email marketing system this weekend, just going to rearrange because like to fidget and move when I'm uncomfortable. I was playing with my email marketing system this weekend and I was like trying some stuff. I was like playing with automations and I was like, cool. Like this is a practice thing. Just, you know, I know how to do this now. Don't get cocky, Katie. Don't get cocky. Like, why did I say that to myself? So anyway, I get. I was in a hypnotherapy session and my phone was going off and I finally like, the session ended and I felt really good and I look at my phone and it's someone who is in one of my group programs. It's like, hey, just checking in, are you okay? Like, do we need to send like a rescue team? And apparently the automation that I had set up that I thought was, wasn't live was live. And so it literally just had like a rando email that had subject line edit me and then the body just said me and then it had like my signature and anyway, I wanted to share this because. Oh, hi Ang, welcome. I wanted to share this because here's how this used to go, okay? Because this is not my first time messing up my email marketing system and having a rando email that like doesn't make sense or like isn't even editing edited go out. So when this happened the first time I had like a full on like panic mode set in and you know that feeling when like the blood both rushes to your face and also sinks to the bottom of your gut and you're just like, oh, what just happened? And like you have to stand up and you kind of have to like walk it off because you're so freaked out that that thing just happened. You're gonna look like an idiot. Yeah, that happens like the first five or six times you do this. It Stops happening after a while. So I like sharing whenever I make a mistake because I remember being early on in my business and being so afraid of maybe potentially, what if I make a mistake, right? And I think this is really common for folks with ADHD as well. Right? We have this, like, level of perfectionism that is just unrealistic. Right? And so I like to share this with everyone because I want you to know if you are holding yourself back from starting a business because you are afraid that something is going to go wrong. Well, I have some good news and some bad news. Let's start with the bad news first. Things will always go wrong, okay? There will always be a mistake that's made. You will always have something that's slightly embarrassing. You know, when humans and technology mix, things go awry. When humans and other humans mix, things go awry. Like, there's no way to prevent mistakes from happening. If you are holding out on starting a business until you can, like, guarantee that no mistakes will be made, then here's the thing. You're never going to have a business. You're never going to have a business. It's never going to happen because there's no way for you to prevent all mistakes from happening. Right? It doesn't matter how type A anal you are, like, you're gonna make mistakes. It's going to happen. So the good news, that's the bad news. The good news is that if mistakes are guaranteed, you have nothing to worry about. You literally have nothing to worry about. If you're guaranteed to make a few dozen mistakes a month, a year, a week, you know, depending on what kind of work you do, you can have mistakes happen all the time. If it's guaranteed, then you no longer have to use that to hold yourself back. Right? So if you're one of those people who's been holding themselves back and not starting their business or not growing their business in a very specific way because you're terrified a mistake is going to happen. You know, you're free, you're free. I release you. Mistakes will absolutely happen. It's just, you're. You're gonna deal with it now. One of the ways that I deal with mistakes, when they happen. So I'll use the example of this evening. Okay? So I'm in my hypnotherapy session. My phone is going off. I ignore it because I'm being hypnotized, right? It was great. My friend Kelsey let go. Side note, my friend Kelsey let go is getting trained as a hypnotherapist. I Was her first practice client. And guys, she's incredible. Like, just one session end as a hypnotherapist, it was incredible. It was a great experience. If you're looking for. For hypnotherapy, I can't even say if you're looking for hypnotherapy. I highly recommend her. I should have tagged her or something in the air anyway. But anyway, so I come out, we complete the session, I'm like, okay, cool, now I'm going to look at my phone. And it's messages from a client who, you know, saw this email and was jokingly asking me if, like, I had kidnapped and if I needed, like, a rescue team or something. Because it just kind of seemed like a very bizarre email to get from me. And I was like, oh, God, what happened? So I opened up my email and sure enough, I'm on my own email list. So I had it too. And, you know, at this point, this has happened so many times, right? This kind of stuff happens all the time when you run a business, Especially when you're in that awkward stage where, like, you kind of outsource stuff to other people, but you're still doing a lot of stuff yourself and you're wearing a lot of hats, right? It just. It's gonna happen because you're busy and you're managing a lot of different things. Honestly, I went from having that, like, complete inner meltdown, like, shame spiral, like things are going wrong to, you know, just kind of laughing it off. Like I. And just to be clarified, that shame spiral is in the past. That didn't happen today. Today it was just like, oh, God, not again. You know, laughed it off, wrote a funny email with, like, a spongebob, you know, bury himself in the sand. Gif in there, owned it, you know, cleaned it up with people. The funny thing about this about sending, like, mistaken emails is that honestly, like, the responses I get to the apology email afterwards are always so kind. They're so kind, they're so nice, they're so warm, they're so understanding, you know, And I want to share this with you. And I think I've already said this, but I'm going to say it again. I want to share this with you because I want you to know that it's okay to make mistakes publicly. It's okay. World, like, if I do it, you can do it, right? I mess up all the time. And I mean, that's the beauty of starting your own business, right? You don't have a boss is, like, yelling at you that it wasn't perfect. No. You're the boss and you get to choose to yell at yourself or not. I very consciously choose not to yell at myself. Hi, Noor. I choose not to yell at myself when I make a mistake, right. Because I, I'm here. I'm, I'm doing the best I can. I'm doing the best I can. And I, I know that my people, you, you who are watching my people, like, don't expect perfection from me because I'm very open about not being perfect. Right? And that's the beauty of, of having your own business and being open with your brand. You know, being open about who you are is that you get to set the expectation of whether or not you're going to be perfect or not. And when you screw up, it will feel like the end of the world. The first few times you do it, especially if it's like to your email list or if it's on social media or it's something really embarrassing, it will feel like the end of the world, guaranteed. But here's the thing, it's not. It's the furthest thing from it. The cleanup is usually where the most trust is built. The funny thing. So here's, here's a statistic from, from one of my previous jobs. So I worked at Cisco Systems and I worked for one of the Internet technology or Internet security divisions of Cisco, right. And we worked in cloud security. So big tech words, right? I don't know if you're watching and you're familiar with Internet security, you know, you might get this. Anyway, so they did a survey and like did a bunch of studies on like who are most loyal clients were. Right. And it was a SaaS. So software as a service. So people would pay monthly to have access to our program. And so everyone assumed that the most loyal clients would be the people who went through a trial, had a perfect experience, chose to buy, had a perfect onboarding experience, and then has never, ever had a glitch. And it wasn't, it wasn't them by something like 30, 33%. Maybe it was 33 or 36%. I believe I could. This is a long time time ago that I learned this and I'm not going to go back them and I'm not going to go back to them and ask. But anyway, it wasn't the people that we were perfect with who were the most loyal. It was the clients who we royally screwed up with when they're trying out the technology or in their initial onboarding. And I mean like the wrong things got put in the wrong places, we messed up their system. All this stuff, like the worst kind of mistakes that you can make on someone's network, those are the ones that were the most loyal because we made it right. Because after like the shit hit the fan and we realized, oh my God, this is a mistake, this is all messed up. We did this. This is our fault. We'd go in and we'd fix it and we'd manage the relationship and we'd be open with them and honest with them and they were the ones that referred us the most business. They were the ones that stayed with us for the longest amount of time. They were the ones that like, wouldn't leave even if our competitors were offering them like a half off deal from what they were paying us. They were the most loyal. And so I know, I know it feels good to be perfect. I know it feels good to like, have everything go the way that you want it to. And also know that you actually build a lot more trust with your audience when you screw up sometimes. But the key here is you can't just screw up and not clean it up. You have to clean it up. So, And. Hi, Gabriel. Good evening. Where's my mouse? Gotta show you. Hi. So you're gonna clean. So here the areas that you're gonna mess up, right? You're gonna mess up with your technology, okay? Like I did with my email marketing. So here's what I do when I mess up with my technology. If it's an email, it goes out to people. I, as soon as possible, I send out another email apologizing for the, the gif. I make it funny. Or for the, the, the gaff, the gaffe, not the gif. I make it funny. I put a GIF in there. And you know, I make it relatable, right? Because we've all been there. If it's on social media, then you can also clean that up. You know, you, you either go and apologize to someone if you came across the wrong way, if maybe your, your comment was misread in the wrong tone or whatever. You, you go and apologize for the impact, right? Because your intention doesn't mean anything, right? If you accidentally stepped on someone's toes, you stepped on their toes, like their toes are bruised. Bruised. Or their toe. I can't speak tonight. They, their toes are bruised because you stepped on them, right? There's no. I'm so sorry if you got hurt. I'm so sorry if you misunderstood. That's not an apology. You go and say I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry I did that. It was not my intention, but the impact is still there. And I'm sorry I did it. Right? And of course, like, you're a human working with clients, right? Like, let's look at human history for a little bit. How many wars have been fought in human history? How many misunderstandings? How many, like, political, like, downfalls have happened? A lot, all right? And that's just on the grand stage that made the history books, all right? People just have misunderstandings all the time, okay? It's. It's part of being a human. And you're a human working with other humans, you, your clients. And sometimes there will be misunderstandings. Sometimes things will go wrong in your business. And guess what? Your response is going to be the same. You're going to own it. You're going to apologize, and you're going to clean it up if you can, and that's that. So. And I want you to think back to, like, the last time you did something wrong, maybe you said something to a friend that came out, like, way more harsh than you meant to. Or maybe you were hangry one day and you kind of snapped at one of your loved ones and then he had to go back and apologize, you know, and clean it up. It's a basic life skill. You already have it, right? So don't worry about occasionally screwing up in your business. It's going to happen, but you already have the skills to clean it up, to make it right. Okay? So for those of you who have been holding yourself back because you're afraid you're going to make a mistake in your business, you have no more excuses now. I've just taken away that one. It's not yours anymore. You can't have it. It's mine, and I'm throwing it away. Mistakes are going to happen there guarantee. If you have ever had a mistake in your business, made a mistake. Hi, Stephen, Welcome. I would love it if you either put in the comments here, if you're brave enough or if you DM it to me. Because you know, what good are mistakes if we can't laugh about them afterwards, right? So with that and sorry, Stephen, you're joining just as I'm wrapping up. To Stephen and Gabriel and Nor and Ange, thank you all for joining and go make mistakes. Go screw up royally. Go embarrass yourself, okay? The life that you want is on the other side of all of that. I'm a firm believer of that. Anyway. I love you all so much. I hope you have an amazing rest of your week. I will be going live every single day. It's Monday, so we have four more days of the official work week that you'll see me and I. Yeah, that's all. I'm gonna go. Hopefully not make too many more mistakes today, and that's that. Have a good night, everyone.