Stop Planning- Start Working!

Okay, we're live. Hello, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and leadership coach. Welcome to my Monday Live. I didn't think I was going to be able to do it tonight because I don't know. I can't even talk. I don't know about you guys, but this time, change hit me hard this week. Hi, Cherry. Nice to see you. Welcome. I am going streaming to the facebooks, to, to LinkedIn, to YouTube, Twitter and Instagram. I am hitting everywhere. So I love this to be interactive. If you have any questions, please do pipe up. Put them in the comments. If I don't see you on Instagram, then just post them again because for some reason, Instagram doesn't allow you to scroll. But welcome. I. I'm inspired this evening for this live by a line I heard in the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel on Friday night. Now, I'm not going to do any, any, any, any blips where I, I spill the beans on what's happening there. So don't worry. I'm not going to ruin it. But there was one line. Hi, Bhakti. Hi, Lauren. There was one line in it that I just can't stop thinking about. And it's, you know, Midge is getting kind of yelled at by a friend of hers. She's getting called on her, and I'm not gonna ruin it. Don't worry. But someone tells her, stop planning, start working. And I think this is such a great lesson for so many of us. I personally remember when I started out in my coaching business, I wrote, I would write down, like, literally these charts of I'm going to get three new clients each month at this rate. And then as soon as I had enough clients at that rate, I was going to up it to another one. And I had, like, my income all added up at the bottom. And really, like, I planned, like, how my confidence would grow with these dollar amounts that I would charge my clients. And I found this when I, when I moved to Pennsylvania, when I moved to Philadelphia a few months ago, and I had the deepest belly laugh over it. And I also had, like, a little tear to my eye of like, oh, my God, who was this delusional young woman who thought that's how a business goes. And the reason I'm laughing at myself and, and hopefully I'm laughing with you and not at you. But if it's at you, I have some, some wisdom here. I hope that you'll, you'll stick around for. So there's this myth of having a plan, of having A business plan. Okay, and let's just talk about business plans for a moment. Business plans are required generally when you have the type of business that you need funding for. Okay? So you need a business plan if you want to start a bakery and you need to get a loan from the bank. Okay, you need a business plan if you're starting a landscaping business and you need a. A loan to buy a truck, okay? You need to show that you at least know some of the ways in which you're going to get business. You maybe have some clients already on board. You have a place already scoped out that you're going to rent. Basically the business plan is telling the people you're borrowing money from, hey, I already have some shit in my control. There's already some stuff happening here that I know how to monetize. I know how to make this work. Okay? I have the right people. I have maybe a little bit of funding already. I have the space already scoped out. Great. Okay. Now you know who I work with. I work with service based, mission driven entrepreneurs, right? And so my clients, my people, they don't need premises. They don't need premises. They. It's very hard to plan because here's the thing, we're offering like this brilliance that's in our brain, and we're basically selling that to, you know, whoever wants to buy it. Not whoever, but, you know, when you start out, you kind of take whoever's gonna give you some money. There's very little control that you have over that. So I want to speak to the myth of the plan. And I think Breaking Bad, the TV show, is a great example of this. And if you haven't seen this, you don't even have to watch the whole series. But I want you to watch one episode because I swear to God, every single episode. Walter White, the main character, starts off by saying, like, this is not something I'm ever going to do. This one thing, never gonna do it. It's too brutal, it's too crazy. Nah, not going there. He, like, is very adamant the plan is going to not include this one thing. And each episode unfolds that he gets closer and closer and closer and gets put in a situation where he has to not only do that thing, but do it far worse than what he initially, you know, said he wouldn't do. You know, blowing things up, killing people, all the things. And this is kind of what I think of when I hear people say, oh, I have a plan for my business and how successful it's going to be. You know, there's a reason why there's that saying that people plan and God laughs. I don't know if you believe in God, but I know someone's laughing somewhere, okay? So a plan, A plan is very hard within a business, like a service based business, because you don't have a lot of control over how things are going to go, okay? There's a difference between a plan and a strategy, okay? A strategy is an approach to the work because here's the thing that you do have control over. You do have control over how you do the work. When you do the work, doing the actual fucking work, that's the thing that you have control over, okay? When you have a strategy in place, when you have a way of doing the work that you've generally agreed is the right way for you, it's a lot less restrictive than having a plan, okay? What I, what I see happen with my clients is that when there's a plan of how the business is going to work, it feels awful when something doesn't work, okay? It, it not only doesn't work, it like gets them down in the dumps that, oh, woe is me. Like, I failed. And, and now the plan is, is like busted to shit. And we're just, we're out here in the wilderness and it's all just gonna end. Yeah, plans fall apart. And here's the thing about plans is they're generally not as dynamic. As a strategist, this is one of the reasons I call myself a business strategist, not a business planner, okay? Because I used to be a planner and none of my plans ever came to fruition, okay? It's just not the nature of plans. They, they go sideways. So, so a strategy. I want to talk about strategies. Because the strategies that I work on with my clients are, are the reason why they are so successful that because they are able to do the work and trial and error things in a way that doesn't feel high stakes, okay? When, when a diet plan, when you fall off a diet plan, oh my gosh, it's like you, you throw the baby out with the bath water. You're just like, okay, well, cool, I had cake at lunch. This means I'm gonna go crazy at dinner. I'm gonna have dessert and then the rest of the week is ruined. I'm just gonna go hog wild and eat all the things. Whereas when you have an eating strategy, you're like, cool. So I veered off the strategy for lunch, but I'm going to come back to it, okay? So there's a structure yet a flexibility when you have a strategy. Okay? And here's the thing, plans can work if you have all the factors under your control. Okay. It's rare in a business, you know, if you have a business where everything is in your control plan, please don't change anything. That's amazing. Congratulations. But starting a business, there are no factors that are in your control. My clients who come from a sales background particularly have a hard time with this because in sales you're given a quota, right? You're given a quota and you're told this is how many sales you should be able to make an X amount of time. And usually it's bimonthly or monthly or quarterly. And if you don't hit the quota, then you're pretty much fired. And if you do and you over achieve, then you get a bonus. Now they have a really hard time, these people who come from sales when they come into their own business because they think they should be able to set quotas for themselves. They think that they should be able to set a budget for how much money they should be able to bring in in a certain amount of time. And if you're in this position right now, if you're starting a business and you're holding yourself to this expectation, I want you to take a big deep breath and I want you to let it go. Doesn't work that way. The control you have is only around the work you do. And for those of you who are watching, thank you for joining me. If you're a regular poster on social media, I'm going to ask you a question here. If you're a regular poster on social media, you write stuff or take pictures of stuff and you post it. Let me ask you this, is there ever post where you're sure, like 100% sure this is going to get so much traction. Thousands of people are going to see it, hundreds are going to like it. You know, tens of tens of people are going to comment on it and it's going to get me all these clients. And then you post it and you get crickets versus sometimes you just slap somebody, gather. Like I have to post today, I just have to get something up. And that silly post that you didn't put any thought into like gets just like nearly goes viral. And then you also get some messages from people saying, hey, I think I need to work with you. Relaunch your career. Who I know is Lauren. Yes. And I'm always wrong. Yes, we're always wrong about it. This is a Small way in which planning can really. With our heads, okay? We plan for that success. We're planning on the results. Results cannot be planned. Okay? There's no Olympic athlete. Athlete. I can say words. I can not. I'm so not athletic that I can't even say the word athlete. There's no Olympic athletes who go into their competition planning on winning. Hi, David. Welcome. They don't. They can't plan on winning. They're up against the top talent from around the world who worked so hard to be there. There are so many factors that are outside of their control. Of course they're going to work as hard as they possibly can to get the result that they want, but they just can't plan on winning. Okay. It's not something that you can plan for. You know, yesterday I. I drove. I like grocery shopping in New Jersey. It's just a lot less stressful than going into, like, the center of Philadelphia. It's just across the. The Ben Franklin Bridge across the Delaware River. I'm learning all the GEOGR week and I'm really excited about it. Are you? Can you tell? So I, you know, have worked it down to be like an hour and 10 minutes, you know, because it's 25 minutes there. You know, you shop for a few minutes and I'm a really fast shopper. Like, I know where my stuff is, and then it's 25 minutes back. And you always. I'm really good at finding the, like, the right line, too, so it doesn't take me too long to check out. Yesterday, my whole plan went to. Because I forgot. I. There's something outside of my control. I forgot that St. Patrick's Day is this week and there was a parade yesterday. Now, the city of Philadelphia is also pretty bad at planning and strategizing how to make these things go well for everyone. My dad's calling. It's funny. Anyway, I'll. I'll finish my story before I talk about that. So. Ended up taking, instead of 25 minutes to come home, two hours to come home from New Jersey, and it was absolutely miserable. I was in traffic with people who also didn't plan on this. And I actually had to phone a friend because I don't know Philadelphia well enough to even figure out, like, what my best route home would have been. I would have been just doing circles in northern Philadelphia for hours anyway. But we can. We can have a plan, but we can. It's always better to have a strategy. So, you know, future me, having gone through that experience, is always going to know like what are the right ways for you to get south of certain streets if there's something going on? I'm also going to be looking at maps to see and calendars to see what kinds of events and permits are being pulled for this beautiful city. On Sundays when I like to do my shopping because it makes my life very inconvenient when I have an extra two hours pull pulled from my day. So, okay, so sorry, my dad was calling so I don't know if you know this. I have to go to be able to go live on Instagram and on the facebooks and on LinkedIn and on YouTube and on Twitter. I have stream yard on my computer, my little laptop and to do Instagram also I just have my, my little phone here propped up against the screen of my laptop and my dad just called, so it just started vibrating and falling forward. Anyway, hi, the Gazelle. I actually don't know your first name. I forget it. Anyway, so my point here, my point here, strategies are better than plants, okay? Because you have so much more flexibility with them. You can walk away from them and come back and you do not ever have control over the results that you want. And hi Chris and hi Gabby, nice to see you both. You never have control over those things. They are just, they are just out there, you know, starting a business. There's this image that I always get when I talk to new clients, new business owners who are starting a business and they're just starting to put stuff out there on social media, you know, building awareness for what they're up to. Because there's always like this, this expectation. Even if I tell them not to have it, there's always this little expectation of, okay, I'm going to put one post out there and then I'm going to get a client back and then I'll put another post out there and I'm going to get another client back. And I just have this, this image of like, you know, the us grown ass adults sitting on the grocery, the grocery store floor by one of those old gumdrop machines and we're putting in quarters and we're just getting a gumdrop and then there's someone in the corner who has like the entrepreneur gumdrop machine. And this gumdrop machine like you put in quarter and nothing, quarter and nothing and quarter and nothing, and so on and so forth until you've like used up a whole pile of quarters and then you get like three gumballs and then you put in a few more quarters and then you get like five gumballs and Then you keep putting quarters in. All of a sudden you get all the gumballs out of this machine right at the same time, and it bowls you over and you just have gumballs all around you. This is. This is the work. The work is showing up. The work is putting things out there. The work is having faith that you're going to figure it out and knowing and holding the faith that the right people are paying attention to you, even if they're not commenting, even if they're not liking, and especially even if they're not booking a call with you and giving you their money right away. Okay? It is an iterative process. Oh, no, David. My. My volume's not working. I hope not. I hope. I mean, I hope it is. Gabby, what about a planned strategy? Well, okay, so I love this question, because a planned strategy, so what I'm guessing you mean by this is that you have like a first set strategy for, like the first stage of your business, and then you have another strategy for the next set of your business. You can absolutely plan different strategies. But here's the thing about having a planned strategy is like the strategy for that first stage of business may or may not work. You may have to like, adjust or throw it out and get a new strategy for that first wave of business. Okay? There's no one strategy that works for absolute everyone. Okay? So yeah, you can kind of plan, this is my first stage, you know, strategy, and then this is my second stage. But if that first stage doesn't go well, you just wasted a whole bunch of time planning that second stage strategy. I am assuming my volume is working. David, I think it might be you. Sorry. Sorry to call you out like that. That's harsh. But, Gabby, does that helped that answer the question? Um, I really, really don't want people wasting time because here's the thing. Here's the thing. We're watching death and destruction on the news every single day. We are. We are immensely aware of how short life is right now. Okay? Life is so precious. We all have these gifts to give, and I don't want anyone wasting any energy or time or money trying to figure out like, the what if steps of what if this works And I'll do this and what if this works and what, I'll do that. No, just be in the here and now and do the work. And Gabe. So an exit strategy when scaling your business isn't always necessary. So not necessarily so for a business like mine, like, it is dependent on me being in the business, of course. Okay. It's Katie McManus coaching. You know, like no one else is going to be able to come in and take over. Katie McManus coaching. It's not a business I'm going to be able to like sell at any point. A different thing might be if you're starting like a massive construction company and you had a plan to make it pretty self reliant so that at some point you could sell it to the highest bidder and they could run it and make money off of it. But you could have, you know, a nice chunk of change to either go and invest or retire with. So if you're thinking about having an exit strategy in that sense, it should be because it is based on a goal you have of selling the business and making making a profit from it. But the business has to be handoffable to someone who is, you know, wanting. Oh no, that the volume is not working on Instagram. Hmm, that's a bummer. I don't know what to do about it right now, so I'm gonna figure it out later. But watch me. I'm over on the Facebooks and on, on LinkedIn and YouTube and Twitter. So you have a lot of options. But anyway, I hope that answers the question because, you know, if you're wanting that kind of life, that's completely doable. That's absolutely doable. I mean, heck, I could probably start a construction company. I wouldn't want to not. It's not the business that I want to work. My dream business, my dream business. I was, I was sharing on Ariel Lee's post today. She's asking everyone, you know, what kind of businesses they want to start. And I just really love businesses that have amenities. Okay. I'm an amenity whore. Like I, I go crazy for like nice, well thought out amenities, not garbage ones. And I have this idea. I want to start like a chain of, not inner city, but you know, like city center garages that are geared towards women. Because here's something that if you're a guy, you probably don't know women. I'm just going to end this on, on Instagram if it's not working. So anyway, I'm going to discard it and we'll do it later. Anyway, so for women, it's a little scary to go into a parking garage late at night or even during the day because there are a lot of places to hide. They can be dark, they can be creepy. People get attacked there. People get their car stolen. You know, they get their keys stolen, which has keys to their home. So I want to create a garage that has, like, all the lights and all the cameras and it has security, so it's safer. It'll be a little more expensive, but. But it'll also have some fun amenities. It'll have like, a detailer who will come in once or twice, once a month or once a quarter, who will wash everyone's cars. There'll be a mechanic that swings by who checks tire pressure and oil and maybe changes the oil as well. And then there'll be storage for, like, outdoor gear, you know, like, so if you're a skier or a kayaker, you don't have to worry about carrying those things back into your apartment. You just have them in the garage. Then this is like, I would want this for myself and I want this for all the women who are active and really, really enjoy being safe and also having that stuff taken care of for us. Gabby, you want to interview me? Yeah, I'm down any of the things I'm down to talk if there are amenity whores, are they amenity pimps? I don't know, but I mean, like, I hope to be one one day. I want. I want businesses that have all the amenities. Yeah, that's. That's going to be me. And I don't know if I'm going to have that as my LinkedIn bio, but I like that term. I can't say it. Amenity pimp. Anyway, we kind of veered off topic there, but those are all examples, like, you know, doing a parking garage or a construction business or even a nail salon. Those are all examples of businesses that you could absolutely have a strategy for exiting sitting at some point in mind. You don't necessarily have to plan everything around it, you know, from go, because you can always adjust things as you go, but you can absolutely do that. So not every business needs to answer that question. Very long winded. You absolutely can have a strategy for exiting. Anyway, I think that's enough of me talking. I'm a little thrown by the fact that the volume I think of my dad called while I was going live. It kicked off the volume. That's probably what happened anyway. So I'm gonna have to problem solve how to prevent that from happening again. You know, factor that into my strategy for you all tonight, though. Agave, David, Chris, and whoever else is watching, because sometimes I don't see everyone showing up. I want you to get to work. I want you to stop planning. I want you to stop thinking that you have control over things that you do not have control over. Okay? All you have control over is using your time and doing the things. That's it. That's absolutely it. You don't even have control over whether you fall asleep fast tonight. Okay. And I know I just made you overthink it, so now you're going to have a hard time falling asleep. I apologize. But I'm doing this to prove a point, that you don't have control in a lot of areas. Okay. You do have controls of the actions you take. Okay. So go do those actions. All right. Love you all. Happy Monday. And happy time change. Hopefully we adjust really quickly. I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and leadership coach. I will talk to you all soon. Have a fabulous rest of the week. And I would love to hear any ahas that you had from tonight's live. All right. Good night.