Stop Being A Secret!

Hello, everyone. I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and leadership coach. Happy Monday. So I just got some really great news just before I start because I am so excited about this. I got my call. I'm getting my vaccine on Thursday morning. I am over the moon. It's the Johnson Johnson one. If you saw my post today, I'm trying to figure out if I should cancel please appointments or whatever because I've been hearing people have been having, you know, reactions to their shots. But I'm so excited. It means I'm finally going to be able to get a haircut because this is getting way too long for me. All about it. But anyway, that's not what I wanted to talk about today. I wanted to talk about this thing that I talk about all the time. But it just, you know, it just is always so top of mind when I talk to potential new clients. It's this truth that you cannot be a secret and a success at the same time. Let me repeat that. If you want to be successful, you cannot be a secret, which means you need to come out of the closet. You see this little weird closet that I have, Just imagine yourself coming out on the screen and announcing what it is that you're up to in the world. What is it that you're putting out into the world. Owning that you have thought leadership in you and telling your friends and family and former colleagues and former classmates that, hello, I'm here and I'm open for business. This is one of the things that is so fear inducing for so many people when they first start their business. I had this as well when I first started off as a coach. My friend Orit Mazur. Hi, Orit, if you're watching, we were in our coach training class and I was having just this saboteur like voice of doubt moment and thinking, oh my God, I want to be a coach. I want clients, but how do I even do this? And she gave me a very simple challenge. And this challenge was to email. I think it was 30 people and I think I ended up emailing 60 because I was like, well, what the hell? If I'm doing it anyway, I might as well just completely out myself and tell them what I was up to and invite them to a one on one call if they were interested in seeing what coaching was about. Now I don't recommend this style. To out yourself as a coach and to start your coaching business. There are ways that are far more effective. And don't train people that your services are for free. But I Will say that outing myself and not letting my coaching be a secret anymore was transformative in my business. Actually getting off the ground. From those emails, I got my very first paying client. Okay, very first paying client. Granted, I was not set up for a paying client. You know anything about my history? When I started my coaching business, I thought I was going to be a dating coach for men. That was my niche that I had decided it was just, I don't know, I lived in the Bay Area, dating was hard, and I figured, I'm going to go out and fix these guys. I was like the Robin Hood, trying to right wrongs everywhere in the dating world. Obviously didn't work. I ended up getting mostly women clients. So this is one of the things that when people are starting their business, they get really freaked out about. Well, what do I say? Do I tell them what my title is? My an executive coach? Am I a consultant? What am I doing? You know, some of my clients, they're lawyers, it's a little easier for them, but for them, you still have to name. What niche do you focus on? What part of law do you focus on for coaches? You know, we could help so many people, especially those of us who have classical training like CoActive or iPac. We could help so many people. And so we have this fear around limiting ourselves. But then how do you explain what you do? I'm gonna. I'm gonna sit there on the phone with you and I'm gonna ask you a bunch of questions to help you go to where you need to go, wherever that is. That's not good marketing. That's not good spokesmanship, what you're up to. So you have to out yourself. You have to tell people what you're up to. And you also have to know who you're speaking to. Who are you trying to get to lean in and say, oh, that's interesting. Tell me more. Tell me about that. You have to know who your ideal client is. You have to also know what are the problems that they wake up in the morning thinking about, and what are the problems that keep them awake at night, keep them from actually getting some shut eye. So there, there are right and wrong things to getting out there and not being a secret, but really, you just have to get out there. And Leah Turner, who is my LinkedIn guru, I go to her for all things LinkedIn. If you haven't booked a session with her, I'm sorry, her prices have gone up. I've, you know, I've been cheering her on as she's been Raising her prices. It is totally worth it. You need to go talk to her if you're on LinkedIn at all. But she has this beautiful way of explaining to people that it's not the most profound things that you have to say that get people to notice you and see you for who you are and to even remember what it is that you do for work in the world. She trains in this very light way of just sharing something about yourself. And if you want to very lightly refer to the fact that you work from home or very lightly refer to the fact that you work with clients, you don't have to overthink these big announcements around who it is that you are and what it is that you're doing. It could be as simple as, oh, I had this really lovely day today. I was able to take the dog to the beach at 2 o' clock and, you know, run them for about an hour. I got to see like this beautiful, beautiful day and I got a little sunburn on my nose. I'm making this up, by the way. And by the way, I love that I own my own business coaching people, because that means that I have this freedom in my day. You've just told everyone a million things about you so they feel like they know you. Told them that you have a dog, that you like the beach, that you play with your dog so you're fun, that you have a coaching business. Like there's not a wrong way to share what you're up to. This book. So I love this book and I hate this book. Okay, so Steve Chandler, Richard Litvin, if you're watching, I love this book. I love a lot of the message that you have, but I have a major problem with one of the stories in it. Okay, so this is the prosperous coach. There is a story in here and I'm probably gonna butcher it. It's been a long time since I've read it. There's a story in here about this guy who is ex marine and he doesn't have a website, he doesn't have anything that he announces what he does, but he has a secret business card that gets passed around amongst the high echelon kinds of people who want really extreme experiences like climbing Mount Everest or skydiving or whatever. And he creates this whole program for them. I think he only accepts four clients a year and he charges $50,000 per client. Doesn't that sound nice? Doesn't that sound nice that you can just have your business card get passed secretly from person to person and you get $50,000 clients all the time. Sounds lovely but it's not realistic for most of us. For 99.99999% of people. No, that doesn't work. In my blurb teasing this video I talk about that movie the Game. I don't know if you guys have seen it. It's. I think it was in the 90s. I remember seeing it when I was way too young to really understand it. I'm a 90s kid. But anyway, Michael Douglas gets this gift experience from his brother and it's this whole thing that's supposed to like change his life and give him greater appreciation for life. And it's the secret society or something and they, their name gets passed around the uber, uber wealthy and they're able to buy these experiences for their loved ones. Again it's this myth of being able to run a super high end business that is so secretive that there's like no website, there's no, there's no way to find out more about them. And I swear to God, I think, I think a lot of new business owners and not a lot of new up and coming business owners who have an amazing service, who can change lives have real impact in their clients lives. I think they think that this is an actual business plan, that this can actually be a thing like that is Hollywood. And this is a book that is enrolling you into a program, a multi thousand dollar program. Those are not business strategies, they are not business plans. They are not ways for you to get out in the world and have real impact and actually get clients. They are one's fictional and one, I mean I assume it's true if they're putting in their book because otherwise I don't know if that opens them up to lawsuits. But if you think about it, this man was a marine. So he already has an exceptional background and probably has a network that's insane. And let me tell you the gold that is a proper network, okay? I've had clients in the past who had no network and of course were able to build their business but it takes a little while longer because you know, they don't know a lot of people where they live or whatever. And so they have to get out and they have to become known. And then I've had clients who have insane networks, you know, are they already hang out with C level executives, with board members, with people involved in government and they're able to get you know, 10, 12, $18,000 contracts like that, you know, because that is the world that they're already hanging out in and all of those people that have those amazing networks, they still, they still have to be known, they still have to out themselves. They still have to tell people what they're up to. Okay, so you're thinking that there's just going to be this word of mouth chain and it's somehow going to get back to, to someone who is your ideal client, that you are the coach for them. You got to stop that. It's not going to work. You're going to be very disappointed. And also you have to tell people for them to be able to do that word of mouth thing, you have to tell people that you're open for business. And generally that starts with your friends and your family. The people who it feels the most vulnerable to tell, hey, I'm starting my own business. And by the way, I'm starting my own business doing something coaching usually that you may not even heard of before, beyond sports coaching. And actually like I'm just talking to people for an hour like that. That's my, my new business. The beautiful thing about our loved ones, our friends and family is that they care about us so much. They care about us so much. They don't want anything bad to happen to us. They don't want us to fail. They don't want us to be embarrassed or laughed at. They don't want us to be broke and lose our homes and starve to death in the woods. The downside of all that is that when they hear that we're doing something scary and risky is that they can pipe up and they can. Their voices of doubt, their saboteurs get triggered for us and they'll start putting this down. So I know it's. And it happens like we know, we see it coming. You know, it's not a surprise when we tell them that we're doing something crazy like quitting our job and starting a company that, you know, they'll pipe in with that we know that. Oh, hi, Gabriel, welcome. Good evening. So we anticipate that. And it's one of the things that keeps us quiet, you know, because, you know, I think we can all imagine the backlash that would happen if you announce something on social media without telling your closest people that you're doing it first. But let me tell you, if you want a successful business, there is no way around it. You have to tell people that you're starting a successful business. You have to tell them that you're open. You have to tell them exactly who it is that you are looking to work with, because how are they supposed to introduce you to these people. How are they supposed to say, oh, that's me. I really want to work with you? Unless they know that you're looking for them. There's this mentality, especially in the coaching community, and I think you all know this. Like, I want to. I want to just, like, show you behind the curtain. I do most of my marketing, I do most of my social media awareness towards coaches because they are my ideal client. Okay? But I can't tell you how many times I've gotten messages from consultants, from dropshippers, from lawyers, from artists saying, hey, what about me? You know, you describe all these problems that coaches have, but it's very similar to what I go through. You know, could I talk to you maybe? And they end up being my client. Oh, hi, Ron. Welcome. Good evening. They end up being my client because, yes, I'm speaking to coaches. I'm choosing a niche and I'm talking to it constantly. But I'm describing things that everyone who's starting a business are going through, and it doesn't rule them out. It actually makes them lean in and, like, want to ask me if they can work with me as well, you know? So if you're thinking about picking a niche and you're holding back for that, just know that your niche is actually not going to rule anyone out. It's just going to help people rule themselves in a little clean a little more cleanly. I've lost my train of thought. I was going somewhere else with that. I hate it when that happens. This is the problem with doing lives. At the end of the day, I get on a really smart track and then I want to make, like, a side point, and then I lose the original track, and I've made this side point that I'm not really sure what to do with, and it's live, so it's not like I can pause this video. You guys just get to dance with me. Oh, Ron, I'm glad you're enjoying this. You tuned in for just the right moment where I lost my train of thought. Oh, the other thing. Oh, that's what I was gonna say. Okay, I found it again. All right. All that laughing helped me get back on track. Okay? So here's the thing, is that, like, when you're talking about what you're doing, no one knows what an executive coach is or a leadership coach or whatever. No one cares about those titles, okay? They've heard them, like, bandied about, whatever. No one has any idea how it is useful to them. And let me tell you Something about the human race. Every single one of us, every single one of us is scanning the world constantly for are you useful to me? Are you useful to me? Are you useful to me? Is this useful to me? Is this useful to me? If it's not useful to us, guess what? Our brains don't have the capacity to remember a bunch of junk, so it just throws it out. Okay, so if I'm talking to you and you're telling me something that I don't really understand, or like your corporate tax finance, guess what? Am I going to remember what you do for work? Absolutely not. Because I have no context to attach it to. Useful to me. No. Now remember, you don't have to be useful to everyone that you speak to. If you're speaking about your ideal client and you're describing the problems and the desires that they have and you're using it in the terms that they use, and when they're a little drunk, like they've had a glass of wine, they're bitching to their best friend and then you end up talking to their best friend. Guess what? Their best friend is going to understand that she needs to connect you too. Because we're scanning the world for are you useful to me? And are you useful to me? But if you're not useful to me, you could still be like an ancillary useful to me if I can connect you with someone in my community. Because guess what? If I can connect resources and people together, that ups my social capital. Okay? So you need to out yourself. You can't be a secret and a success at the same time. I'm going to keep saying that, and I'm going to keep saying it until I'm dead. There is a reason why I go live, you know, at the end of the day when I'm a little tapped, because guess what? You guys need to know. I need to tell you what I'm up to. I need to tell you a little bit about my work. I need you to give. To give you an experience of me, you know, if I'm annoying to you, I want you to know it. Because I don't want to waste my time on the phone with you if you're going to think that I'm annoying on the phone. Also, if you like what I say, you know, if I'm going to, like, give myself that leeway, I want you to be able to know that from go. And you need to do this too. And I want you, if you've been watching from the very beginning, know that I've screwed up multiple times. I forgot my train of thought. It doesn't have to be perfect. I'm wearing a sweatshirt, for heaven's sake. My hair, the only reason it's combed is because I found a comb in my. In my desk. You know, today's been a rough day. Basically, you don't have to be perfect. Is my. Is my point here. You don't have to be perfect. You do have to let people know what you're up to, okay? You do have to let them know that you're open for business. If you want to start a business and you want to be successful and you want to have impact, you want to have impact on the world, meaning you want to make other people's lives better and more sustainable and more in. Align with their values so when they get to the end of their life and they're on their deathbed in hospice, they don't have any regrets. If you want to have an impact like that, if you don't want to get to the end of your life without any regrets, I know it takes bravery. I know it's scary as all hell, but you have to out yourself for whatever it is that you want to do, for whatever business you want to create, for whatever impact you want to have. You have to out yourself. You have to tell people. Greta. I always mispronounce her last name. Greta Thunberg. Thunberg. Thunberg, the Swedish teenager. Okay? She is a thought leader for climate change. I mean, she's a kid. She's a kid. She doesn't have any advanced degrees. I'm sure she knows a lot about it because it's one of her primary interests in life. It matters to her so deeply, and yet she just sat out of school on Friday and started talking about climate change. You know, literally. She became a thought leader by pointing to an issue and saying, hey, guys, this matters. I need you to pay attention over here. This matters. Pay attention over here. Climate change. Yes, over here. I mean, I just want you to imagine what she could do with her career. I don't think she's even gotten gone to college yet. I think she's still in secondary school. If she can do that and open that many doors for her. She's spoken at the un. Okay. I don't think there's a world leader she hasn't met who, you know is at the forefront of solving climate change. If she can do that as a kid, imagine what you could do if you just open your mouth and started talking about something. Okay? I'm a firm believer. This is one of my core beliefs, is that everyone deserves to make a living from doing work that they love. Okay? So I talk about it a lot. I talk about it because I want people to know that. I want for someone to hear me say that and think, yeah, yeah, I deserve to do work that I love and make a living from it. Screw this. And then they quit their job and go and do something that they really love. That is the impact I want to have. But guess what? I'm never going to have that impact unless I start saying that. Unless I say it a lot, unless I shout it from the rooftops, unless I go live, unless I get on stages and I say that, oh, my God. So whatever impact you want to have, whatever business you want to create, and they go hand in hand. I know. We think that if you're going to create impact, if you're going to help people, you also have to be poor. I know. It's a fun little money story we like to tell ourselves. Not true, not true. You can have huge impact and you can change lives for the better and you can have huge income side by side. They work together. Um, gosh, what else do I want to tell you tonight, now? Like, I love going live. I don't know what it is. I just get excited, I think, because I've been locked away for so long. I'm like, I'm talking to people even though I can't see you guys. You're just somewhere out there in the universe and I don't know, maybe some aliens are tuning in. Who knows? Maybe I'm inspiring, you know, whole swaths of entrepreneurship in some space spaceship somewhere. I don't know. That would be really funny to imagine, like Galaxy Quest, but for, you know, Etsy businesses. I don't know. I think that's all I want to say tonight. You can't be a secret and a success. I'm going to say it again and again. Secret success do not go together, okay? You have to out yourself. Okay? I don't care how weird you think your idea is. I don't care how scary it is. You have a brain and you have discretion. You know, if it's going to get you fired from your job and you really need your income. I trust that. But there are always people in your world you can tell. There are always friends and confidants that you can reach out to and say, hey, listen, I can't come out with this publicly yet, but I need to tell you this is my dream. This is What I really want to do and I'm starting to take action on it. If there's something like that that you have in your heart, please go and do it. Please. Like, because you're not doing anyone any favors by not doing it, by not talking about it. Anyway, that's all. Thank you, Ron, and thank you, Gabriel, for commenting. I'm on Streamyard, only LinkedIn comments came through. Sometimes they don't show me comments from the facebooks or from YouTube. And also it's Monday at 8pm Eastern time, so this might be a weird time for people. But anyway, thank you all for joining me. And if you're watching the replay, I'd love to hear your comments and what your thoughts are on this topic. Ron Joseph. In other words, don't be a weenie. Absolutely. I can't believe I forgot to say my tagline. Don't be a weenie. The other thing I want to remind you of, and thank you, Ron, for pointing to that, is that I talk about bravery a lot. And you know, we kind of have this, this notion that bravery is like this really cool thing. Like you walk into the arena and you're super confident, your shoulders are back and your chest is puffed out and you're like ready to take on whatever, you know, battle you have to do. No, no, that's not bravery at all. Bravery feels like fucking shit when you're in it. And I know I'm gonna get censored in the captions for that one. It feels awful. Like a truly brave moment. You are sweating out of every gland you have. You're looking around, you're double thinking it. You're. Oh my God. You're thinking about what like the perfect version of you might do. You're thinking about what your friends and family might say if they were there right then. You're already prepared to be humiliated, embarrassed, and to feel bad. You're second guessing yourself. You just. It doesn't feel good. And I think we wait for bravery to feel good before we do the brave thing. And I have to tell you, it's killing us if we wait to feel brave, to feel puffed up and confident, to go and do stuff. It's never gonna happen. It's never going to happen, okay? Because bravery doesn't feel good. But five minutes, even five seconds of bravery, Five seconds or five minutes, whatever. Whatever you know you need in that moment. It feels like garbage. But it's the only thing that moves you closer to your dreams. Okay? Five seconds to tell someone who you have feelings for. That you have feelings for them. How are they going to know otherwise? You know? And maybe they don't have feelings for you back, but you'll never know. You'll just be suffering unless you tell them. Asking for a promotion at work, you know, that is vulnerable. But you're never gonna know if you're gonna get it unless you put yourself forward for it. Starting a business, oh, my God. And going live and doing all the things and being on social media and daring to have professional pictures taken of you where you're, like, posing against walls and pointing to weird things and whatever. I've been there. I've done it all. Like, yeah, it takes some bravery and there's, like, silliness. You know, you don't feel like it's you. You don't feel confident to be doing it when you're doing it. The good news is that if you're doubting yourself in those ways, guess what? You're not a sociopath or psychopath because they don't feel those things. But the bad news is that, like, honestly, it's probably going to take you doing it half a dozen times for you to feel confident about it. So you just have to stop waiting to feel confident and just go do it anyway. On that note, I'm signing out. I'm finishing my day today. And stay tuned. I do plan on going live every day this week. Last week, I went off the rails. These are not goals, they are intentions. So I would love, if you have any things that you want to hear me talk about this week or any discussions, or if you want to come on with me, mention in the comments or send me a direct message, I would love to host you and to talk about anything that you guys are interested in. Anyway, that's it for me. I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and leadership coach. Thank you for joining me this evening, and I will talk to you tomorrow. Bye.