Stop Using the M-Word

Hello, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and leadership coach. Happy Monday. I'm so excited to be talking to you this evening about one of my favorite topics. I want to, first and foremost, some housekeeping. So I do these lives through streamyard most of the time and I'm going live to both of my Facebooks, to LinkedIn and to YouTube. I love for this to be interactive, but I do find into that sometimes, just sometimes, the technology revolts against me and I don't get to see everyone's comment. So if you comment and I don't call you out, please don't take it personally. I'm not mad at you unless he says something really inappropriate. Let's be real, I'm probably going to call you out if you say something really inappropriate. So anyway, regardless of what you say, if I don't call you out and say hi, it's just that the technology has failed us. So welcome. Thank you for joining me tonight. I want to talk about the word that I think needs to be stricken from the record. We should no longer use it. We should no longer wait for it. We should no, ever no longer say that we don't have enough of it. That word, my friends, is motivation. Motivation is the biggest myth that has been sold to us in the history of time. I know it's a big statement, but just go with me here. Okay, so motivation. Let's talk about what it looks like. Like, okay, so who here has been to a motivational talk? I know I have. Okay, so this motivational talk is designed to get you all amped up and excited and super stoked for whatever change or thing you're about to go do? Right? So here's the thing. Has anyone ever left a motivational talk and had that excitement and that drive and that energy to go do the thing and kept it for more than, I don't know, half a day, if that. I don't think so. And if, if you have, then please put it in the comments because you're an anomaly to me. So I don't believe in motivation. I think motivation is okay. I think motivation is a great cop out for people who aren't actually committed to doing the work. Okay, I'm sorry if I'm calling you out on this, but listen to me, hear me out. Okay? So if you're one of those people who says, oh, you know, I'm just not motivated, or I'm just waiting for motivation to strike, or any other, like motivational saying, here's what you're Actually telling me is that the thing that I committed to doing is not actually important enough for me to make it a regular practice in my day. Okay? And that's fine, but stop saying you want to do it, okay? If you don't want to build a business because you're just waiting for motivation to strike to do a thing, okay? You, obviously, there's something going on there. You either don't actually want it or you have some mental blocks going on. And both are okay. Like, not all of us have to be entrepreneurs. And obviously mental blocks are meant to be worked through. That's why coaches are here. Hello. So motivation just doesn't work. And the example I like to use is like, motivation is the flame on a pumpkin spice candle from Yankee Candle, okay. Versus the magma that spews from an erupting volcano. That is momentum. Okay? So I want to start subbing out. Like, what are you waiting for? Momentum around versus what are you. I'm sorry, what are you waiting for? A motivation around versus what are you creating momentum around? Okay, so I want to talk for a minute about momentum. So I don't know about you, but I. When the pandemic hit, I got on a peloton streak. I have a peloton at my parents house and I did like 10 days with a friend. And at day 10, we were like, oh, my God, well, should we keep going? And we were like, yeah, so, okay, so we went for another 10 days and we hit 20. And then Bridget and I, you know, had a little chat and we're like, hey, well, let's go for 30. And at that point, like, this momentum that we had built up around riding every single day. By the way, this is the best thing I did for my mental health during that time dark period for all of us. But building up that momentum of riding for 30 days in a row, at that point, we didn't want to put the ball down, okay? We were so in it. We had gotten to day 30 and beyond that. We ended up going for day 50 and then day 75 and we hit 100 days in a row. Now, granted, I will admit that like eight of those rides out of the hundred were the five minute rides that I got on the bike. Was wearing my flip flops, wasn't really putting that much effort into it. But I showed up, I got on the bike, I got that recorded in my account so that Bridget wouldn't yell at me. And she did the same thing, I think, a few times. But the key here is momentum. Now, if we had waited for each one of those hundred days to feel the motivation to strike us, to go and hop on our pelotons and take a ride. It never would have happened. It might have happened a few times, but, you know, is the depths of the pandemic. You know, we were depressed. It's very dark time, like I said. So here's what is happening in your business. If you are waiting for motivation to strike, your business is never going to take off. It's in fact, never going to get up and running, okay? Because when you wait for motivation, you're just not doing the work. Okay? Being in a business does not mean that you're motivated every single day. No, it means that you have a finite set of things that you are committed to doing that propel your business forward. Okay? Now, I want to talk about this in really literal terms, okay? Because working out is fine, but let's talk about money. All right? We all really understand money, hopefully. So say the motivated person hears about mutual funds or an index funds, and they hear, okay, cool. An index fund generally returns 9% per year. And so they're super motivated. They're like, oh, my God, Well, I just got a $5,000 bonus. I'll just put that in a mutual fund, okay? And it'll make 9%. So let me just do the math for you. I did it before this because, you know, I can't be trusted with math. So $5,000 invested in index fund and left there untouched for 30 years at 9% interest equals $73,652.88 at the end of 30 years. Okay? So the motivated person who took $5,000 from their bonus and put it in index fund or mutual fund now has close to $75,000 that they can play with. Great. After 30 years. Now that is motivation. Okay, let's talk momentum. The client or the person who realizes that they want to save money and realizes, you know, this isn't necessarily going to be easy every month, but I'm going to make it happen. Now, this person goes for a more conservative number. Instead of 5,000, they start with 500 and they commit to paying $500 into their index or mutual fund every single month for 30 years. Again, at 9% interest, they, at the end of 30 years, end up with 922,737. Wait, no. Yeah, $922,737.03. Okay, so almost a million dollars and $75,000. $75,000 is motivation. Almost a million is momentum. Okay, now here's the thing that I see most business owners struggling with when they start their business is that the motivation is usually around showing up and being visible out there in the world for what they're up to, because it's vulnerable and scary to show up. Even just writing a text post for Facebook, for all of your Facebook friends, that's vulnerable work. And usually it takes a spark of motivation to make that happen. Now, when you wait for motivation to happen, for you to post about your business and be visible and invite people to book calls with you to find out more, it doesn't happen that often. You know, it just doesn't because we're not motivated every day. The difference that motivation and momentum make in your business is that when you have momentum, when you've committed to just doing a few simple things in your business every single day, it. It's compounded. It's compounded. That's where we get that near million dollars is that when you show up every single day, people don't have a chance to miss you. Whereas when you're just showing up and posting, when you have some motivation, you know they're not seeing it. The algorithm isn't showing it to them. You're not being committed there. You're not showing up in the space. And even if they do see it, it's just kind of like a blip. You know, the worst thing and the best thing about going out and starting a business, that no one is paying attention. Okay? So if you're going out and creating visibility and you do something stupid, the beautiful thing here is that no one's paying attention. Now, if you're trying to create awareness on your brand and what you're up to, it's bad news because no one's paying att. You have to post a lot. You have to be in people's face. You have to show up. You have to create momentum. You can't drop the ball. Now, if you are having trouble in creating momentum in your business, you're going to want to stay tuned for the rest of this week because I am going to be talking about different ways that you can build momentum in your business. Stop waiting for motivation so that you can start seeing actual income going up or increasing in your. In your work and also see your impact improve. One thing that I have noticed over the last year especially, is that my clients are, you know, they want to make money, but more so than that, they realize that they have been a worker bee for way too long. They've been a worker bee, they have shown up every day they've done the worker gone home and felt like a cog in a machine, and they're over it. Okay? They are done with it. What they want now is they want to have a beautiful, solid income. And they also want to have a lasting, real impact on their world. And so I'm going to be talking this week a lot about how you can create some real momentum, do some tactical small things that will help you grow your impact and also grow your income, because the two go hand in hand. There is an example we used on the being brave call, which, by the way, if you haven't come to one before, it's amazing. It's one of my favorite calls of the week. I do it every Friday at 11:00am Eastern Time. And it's basically an open Q and A forum where you can show up and ask me any question on your business about money, mindset marketing, holistic selling, whatever, and I will answer it and give you some guidance. But anyway, and last week's call, we were talking about, you know, having a higher purpose in your business. Okay, so imagine, imagine there's the expert lawn cutter, you know, this, this person who is an expert in lawns. And they, you know, go around and they knock on people's doors and say, hey, you know, I'm an expert in your lawn. I'd love it if you hired me to mow your lawn, you know, once or twice a week. Sure. Great. You're an expert. Please come on in. Now, that's the expert. So they know the basics and all the things. But imagine someone else comes to your door, maybe not comes to your door, because that's kind of creepy. So you see someone's ad and they're saying, hey, listen, like, I know all the things about your lawn. I know like how tall it needs to be cut in the winter, in the fall and the summer. I know the, the got the brands, the species that do really well in the shade and the ones that do really well in bright sunlight, all that stuff. But here's what I actually believe about your lawn. I believe that your yard is a sacred place for family memories to be made. And I am honored that my clients entrust me with taking care of such a sacred space. And I am so attentive to making sure that this lawn is, is taken care of well enough that you get to have the most magical memories there. You know, it speaks to this higher purpose. And a lot of people would actually go for that second person because it's this bigger purpose. It speaks to a greater impact and it makes them feel like they're consciously investing not only in getting their lawn care, but in taking care of their families. Okay? So I'm going to be talking about creating momentum, but I'm also going to be talking about ways that you can implement and incorporate the impact that you want to have on the world in your business. Okay. Because usually not for everyone, but for a lot of people, we're not selfish beings. We're actually incredibly generous beings. And when we are driven for something, usually our own personal wants don't matter that much. Usually it's wanting stuff for our loved ones or wanting stuff for our community or our world. That's the kind of stuff that drives us, and that's the kind of stuff that we don't forget about. I. I may get excited about, like a fancy new car. Well, I'm not really a car person. I might get fancy about something. I'm not really a materialistic person. I'm a bad example. Anyway, a hypothetical person might get motivated to buy a fancy car for themselves, but they may forget about it. However, if they have a grandma who has never been to Italy and she was brought up Italian in the United States and has always, always wanted to go to see her roots, like being able to take her on a vacation of her lifetime might be the driving factor. Or being really passionate about climate change or about LGBTQ plus rights, anything that could be the driving force that creates that extra momentum that keeps you going to higher and higher success. So I'm going to be talking about all that this week in different little snippets. So some days we'll be more tactical, other days we'll be a little more strategic and that high end. And my, my dog has a squeaky toy. I hope it's not too distracting. Anyway, we're at 15 minutes and I am tired. It's 9pm so I'm going to go to bed. Thank you so much. For those of you who've tuned in, I hope you found this useful. And if you're waiting for motivation to strike, please stop it. Like, stop it. Just recognize that maybe you don't want to actually do the thing or realize that you're being a fucking weenie about it. And that's okay. We support weenies here. You know, there are many ways to step into your brave ass pants. And if you want some support in that, you know, I'm here. But like I said, the being brave call on Fridays at 11am Eastern is a great option for you. Anyway, I'm Katie McManus. Business strategist and leadership coach. Thank you so much for tuning in. I can't wait to see you later this week. Bye.