Stranger Things We Think Are Causing Problems In Our Business

Hey, new listener. Thanks so much for checking us out. And there's a good chance you have adhd, so I quickly wanted to ask you to please follow this podcast in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or whichever app you're listening to this on. Don't leave it until later because you will forget. Thank you. Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. In this episode, we're going to talk about the stranger things we think are causing the problems in our business. But that may not actually be the case. Hi, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach, and welcome to the weeniecast School. One of my favorite reviews I've ever gotten from someone who worked with me was actually something that she hated about me and learned how to deal with during our work together. And it was this. That when she came to a call with me and said, here's my problem, I would jump ahead to something else that she didn't see was the problem. But after about five minutes, I'd bring it back to her problem and she'd understand that I had bypassed what she thought was the problem because it wasn't actually the problem, and figured out the seven other things that are actually causing the issue and helped her see a way to solve it. And the reason this is one of my favorite reviews is because I didn't realize I was doing it. Now. I didn't stop doing it because it's one of the most valuable things about working with me. And I can say that because my clients have told me that when they come to me with what they think is the problem, I don't waste time on a problem that isn't actually a problem. And because I do what I do, I understand on a deeper level what's actually the problem. I ask you, the listener, wherever you are in the world, think about your business, think about the problem as you see it. And if you're somewhere where it's safe to do so, just write it down, put it in your phone, write down what that problem is, and if you can think of three different reasons why that problem might be coming up, I want you to jot those down as well. Now, I bet you it's all bull. I bet you the problem as you see it and the reasons it's happening aren't actually your biggest problem. There's probably something that is deeper or in another sphere of your business that is up right now. And I don't want you to feel like you're a failure for not being able to identify what your problem is. There's a Reason why business coaches exist because honestly, I can't see my own problems myself. I need outside eyes to take a look at what it is I'm building and poke holes in it, even though I do this every day. You can be an expert at what you do. It's really hard to apply that expertise to yourself. There's a reason why doctors need their own primary care doctors. I don't see a whole lot of gynecologists doing their own pap and pelvic exams. Ow. It's just not going to work unless you're really flexible. It's going to be really inconvenient to try to do that on your own. Do you see a lot of proctologists giving themselves a prostate exam? I don't think so. Not how it works. They need someone else to do that. Thankfully, what I do is not as invasive. Clothes stay on for my sessions. It's amazing. I'm pro clothes on all the things. No speculums, no stirrups, no bending over. Unless, like, going into a yoga pose helps you ground. Then you can bend over during our session. But anyway, I digress. Just because you're the expert of your business doesn't mean you have to be the expert of all parts of your business. It doesn't mean that there's something wrong with you. It doesn't mean you're being a bad business owner. It doesn't mean that you're lost in your gonna fail. It just means that you're a human who's too close to what it is that you're building. So I wanna go through some examples of how this shows up with my clients. How this can really bite them in the butt if they don't have someone who can point out what the problem actually is. And for the sake of privacy, all these names have been changed. I'm not calling out any of my clients and identifying them saying, they really suck at this and this thing is happening. That wouldn't be kind or ethical. And to make this fun, while I rename them, we're gonna go with names from the. From the show Stranger Things, which was a little scary for me last season. I'm not gonna lie. I'm pretty angry that my friends weren't all taken care of. And yes, I do consider characters in shows my friends. If I spend enough time with you, you just don't have the choice. Even if you're fictional. I don't like random shit like this. Just makes me so happy. Let's dive in, shall we? First and foremost was My client, Joyce. Yes, Joyce with the Christmas lights. Joyce and I had been working together for just over a year when she came to one of our sessions, and she was really, really upset. She'd had a string of sales calls that she was pretty sure they were her ideal client. And when she got to the end, yes, no call, which is something I train on in my programs, they were a no. And she couldn't figure out why, because when they filled out the intake form, they had all the problems of her ideal clients. When she got on the phone with them, they had all the issues and all the goals that her ideal clients typically have. But for some reason, after they'd thought about it for a bit, it was just a flat no. And so when she came to this call, she was pretty upset. And. And in her mind, she thought that the problem was that she needed to be better at handling objections on that yes, no call. And if you're not familiar with that term, when you handle an objection in a sales process, it's like someone says, oh, well, that's really expensive. And instead of agreeing with them, yeah, it's really expensive, you help them see the logic of why it's not actually that expensive. Like, it might be expensive, but the alternative of not doing this thing is gonna be more expensive in the long run. And I'll be honest, like, the style of selling that I train on, yes, there are going to be some objections, but you're not really fighting with people. You're not trying to, like, convince them that this is the right thing. So it's not often that my clients have to do objection handling, because the way I train, you know, you're perfectly set up to determine if this is the perfect client for you or not in the first 20 minutes of that call. So as I'm talking through this, like, don't think, oh, God, like, I'm gonna have to convince people to hire me. That sounds miserable. You don't. You genuinely don't. But it is helpful to kind of know what your typical objections are gonna be and how you answer those questions. Joyce comes to this call. She's really upset. She was really, really excited to work with some of these people. And in that yes, no call, it was a no. And she was convinced there was something that she could have said in the yes, no call to change their minds. And so she was really determined to go through all the reasons that they gave that they didn't want to do it and how she could have rebutted them. And I said no, because that wasn't the problem. Typically, when you get to the point where an ideal client is saying absolutely no on a yes no call, it's a they've made their decision. They're not going to be changing their minds. That yes no call is a yes no call. If they have more questions that will help them make a decision from there, if there's still an unknown, if they're still in the deciding phase of everything, then yes, you can answer questions in a way that moves them closer to yes than to no. But generally, if they have decided no, there's no coming back. It's kind of like falling off a cliff and like holding onto dear life to, like, part of the rocks, you know, like in Princess Bride, but not having a rope thrown down. It's really hard to climb up to the top and haul yourself over the edge. It's not impossible, but it's unlikely. I'm glad that he survived in Princess Bright because that's a good movie and it wouldn't have been the same if he just died then. So it's Funny side story. So when I was in high school, there was this boy in my friend group who was obsessed with that movie. It was his favorite movie from childhood, and I'd never seen it. And he gifted it to me for my birthday. And it was the first time someone, like, did a test with me to see if I liked their movie, which I think is the weirdest thing that we do. Like, if we have a movie that we love and we're dating someone we like, make them watch it, and we watch them as they watch it to make sure that they laugh in the right places, that they get it. If you do this to people, can you stop? Just stop? It's awkward. I mean, yeah, watching a movie is fun, but it's awkward when, you know, you're being tested on how you're reacting to the movie. Like, it's very hard to get into the movie. You're actually ruining their experience. And if it's really a deal breaker for you, then just ask people if they've seen it and if they like it. Anyway, moving on. So, Joyce, it was clear that something was going wrong in the initial sales call. Because if a person who she thought was an ideal client was that dissonant with her offer that they were a flat no when they got to the yes no call, there was something going on from the very beginning. So what I insisted that we do, instead of going into objections, instead of talking through how she can convince them in the yes no call to Be her client. I insisted that we do a role play. If you've ever been in sales, if you do role play, like, you know, is the most awkward thing in the world, it is not fun. It is cringe worthy. You're pretending to sell your stuff to someone who's pretending to be your ideal client. It's a very artificial thing, but it's very helpful. So we start the sales call and Joyce starts going through the holistic selling manner, at least the way she's kind of recreated it's for herself. And I remember very distinctly at the end of our roleplay call where we pretended to hang up, I remember just thinking, where the did Joyce go? She disappeared. What I got was Joyce pretending to be an HR professional, like Joyce being the lady at a call center who's going to process your return for the jeans that you ordered. And Joyce, if you're listening, you know who you are and I love you and I'm so happy we had this conversation. And my feedback for her very cleanly was, where the did you go? Because I wasn't on a call with Joyce. I was on a call with someone who doesn't even exist. And to give you an idea of Joyce, like, Joyce is a prolific writer. She writes just the way she speaks. You know, you can read her content on social media and feel like you know her, feel like you are best buds with her and you understand kind of what's going on in her life, what she values, what drives her nuts. So when you get on a call with someone like Joyce, who's such a strong writer, that they can portray themselves in the written word and they're not there or they're pretending to be someone else, it's jolting. It undercuts all the trust. You know, this is one of the reasons why I advise people when they're first starting out, don't hire a copywriter. Don't hire someone to write your content for you. Because even Squirrel, Squirrel. Oh, Joyce is actually texting me now. Oh, it's a picture of her dog taking a little snooze. I love my clients anyway. Squirrel, Squirrel, Squirrel. But one of the reasons why I advise my clients when they're first starting out, instead of hiring a copywriter or someone to write their content for them, write it yourself. Even if English is your second language, even if you're not good, even, even if, even if, like, there can be all the reasons in the world why you shouldn't write your own content. Here's the thing, like, if you're bad writing Content and putting it out there will make you get better. If English is your second language, guess what? Writing content and putting it out there will help you learn English better. If you're a chicken and you're just afraid of putting your written word out there, guess what? Doing it over and over and over again will show your nervous system that you're not going to die and you'll stop being afraid of it. But the most important thing here is that even if you're a bad writer, you're probably writing in your voice. There's probably phrases you're putting in your posts that you say out loud. And when someone books a call with you to learn about working with you, subconsciously, they will notice this. Subconsciously, there will be resonance between the stuff they've read that you've put out there and the words that are coming out of your face hole while you're on the phone with them. So what was happening for Joyce was she was writing in her beautiful, eloquent voice on social media, but when people got on the call, she was pretending to be someone else. She was, like, putting on this air of professionalism. And the reason she was doing it is because she was nervous. It's scary to sell your services. It can feel good to kind of like, put on our Persona to get through the call. But you have to understand that they may not realize why they don't trust you, but it sows a ton of distrust. Because where did my friend Joyce go? Where did the lady who wrote all those prolific, beautiful things that really spoke to my soul and all the problems I'm experiencing at work, where did she go? I wanted to talk to her on the phone. And I might be misremembering this, so don't quote me on this. When we hung up, she had two sales calls that were on the calendar for the following week, and one of them closed. One of them said yes. The point is that once she realized that she wasn't being herself and she just made that small change and, like, took off this Persona, it made a world of difference. Now, the next example, I've renamed Steve, but I will out his real identity. Ooh, what am I going to say next? Well, you'll have to keep listening to find out. But first. Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. One of the biggest challenges I hear from new business owners is how hard it is to figure out what to post on social media and to stick to consistent schedule with it, because it's hard. And so in the month of May, I'm actually launching a challenge to help you build that muscle of posting every single day, each participant will get their own customizable content plan for or the month of May, an extensive list of content prompts so you have an endless bank of ideas of things you can post that work with your content plan. Every Monday through Friday we will have a 45 minute Zoom call at 9am Eastern where you will create your content and one lucky person per day will be able to volunteer for the coaching hot seat where I will help you fine tune your messaging so that your content can help you attract high paying clients. If you can prove that you posted every single day for the 31 days, you will win a 30 minute one on one coaching call with me. Normally I charge $497 for this, but for the whole challenge for your content plan, for the content prompts for those 23 daily calls that you're going to get throughout the month, it's only $197. This is my birthday gift to you this year and I'm so excited to hold your feet to the fire and make you post every day about your business and get more clients. If you're down for a challenge and you want to join us, then go to weanedcast.com challenge. I can't wait to see you there. So the next person I want to talk about and the problem that they think that they have, I've renamed this person because I'm excited about the Stranger Things theme. But to be real, it's Neil. He's my producer. You know, it's something that I've talked to him about before and he's very comfortable with me sharing. So don't think like I'm just throwing him under the bus and he's awkwardly having to put this episode together. Be like, oh my God, I can't believe Katie told everyone about this. She's so mean. He gave me permission. He gave me permission to out him. So thank you Neil, who I'm going to call Steve for the rest of this episode. Steve from Stranger Things. Anyway, do you like that intro?

I really did.

Thank you. So Steve, when he's on a sales call with someone who wants to start a podcast and they're looking to hire him to help them get it up and running, one of his biggest fears is that they don't have a clear enough idea of what the podcast is going to be around, who it's for. A podcast that's successful, like there, there are a couple different kinds of success when it comes to a podcast. You can have a Podcast that has massive appeal and, you know, millions of people listen to it, and you're basically monetizing it by getting people to buy ads and to sponsor it. And maybe you're selling a book on the back end, but really it's about getting a really high listenership. Or you could have something more niche. But if you have something more niche, like, what is it that you're leading them to? So, for instance, you know, if you listen to my podcast, you'll notice I often talk about my programs. I refer to my programs. I refer to working with me one on one. There's a reason for that, because if you are my ideal listener, chances are you're also my ideal client. And at some point, you may realize, hey, I could use some help. If you're hearing my episode where I'm lightly referring to my programs, you may have that seed planted in your mind of, oh, Katie has a program. If I want help with this, I should reach out to her first, because I have established trust with her. I've listened to her podcast for X amount of months. I like the way she explains things. And maybe she's not even the right coach for me, but maybe she knows someone who could fit me better where I am. You know, sometimes some of you book with me even though you make jewelry or you want to start a restaurant. Two things that I am not interested in coaching on. You know, I can if you want to take it from a ADHD angle and you don't need me to advise on the business model. But it is a sign of success for me to get those calls booked on my calendar because it means that I was your first choice. So when Neil's. I'm sorry. Damn it, I it up. So when Steve gets on a phone call with a potential client, he wants to make sure that they have a very clear idea of who their audience is. And so what he has done up until now is until I just told him how he's gonna fix it. What he's done up until now is when he gets to the end of the call, he says, okay, great, I want you to go away, and I want you to think about this. And let me tell you, when he did that to me, I basically told him, shut up and take my money. I decided to hire you a year ago. Like, I've already thought about it. Just where do I input my credit card information? And we have a mutual friend who had also booked a sales call with Steve, and she walked away from the call after Steve told her to go away. And Think about it. Thinking that Steve didn't want to work with her. Oh. Thinking that he didn't believe in her podcast idea. So. And the beautiful thing about this particular scenario is it comes from such a place of integrity, right? Because Steve doesn't want to take someone's money to start a podcast that he doesn't think will be successful. But he's also shooting himself in the foot, right, because he's sending these people away and they think that he doesn't want to work with them. So they're either going to start a podcast with someone else or they're not going to start the podcast at all, or they may also start it on their own and not be as successful. None of those are good for Steve. So what I literally just told him is when he gets to that point in a sales conversation where he thinks that their idea needs to be fleshed out a little bit more, instead of telling people to go and think about it, you know, there is an interim offer. There's a new thing that he does where, you know, he books in a half day idea session or planning session, charges something like £500 for it, and goes through exactly all the steps and all the questions that this person needs to be able to answer to have a really strong proposal for a podcast. All stuff that he wants them to do on their own anyway, but they're probably not going to do because they don't know what they don't know. And honestly, like, it's stuff that he's going to have to do with them anyway when they sign up because you know he's gonna have to know all this information before they can launch. It's like, there's no point where this is a wasted exercise, but they're far more likely at the end of that to be like, oh, cool, now I'm so crystal clear on what I want this to be, so crystal clear on the voice I want it to have. I know exactly who it's speaking to and where I'm trying to lead them. Now I'm ready to get started with you. And if they decide at the end of the session that they don't want to hire Neil, I'm sorry, if they don't want to hire Steve, I promise I'm going to be better with this. With the other ones where I'm more serious about changing their names, it's because I'm looking at you like your face is just right there and I'm talking about you and it's weird. And then I'm calling you by a different name. Like, why did I think this is a good idea? I don't know.

Anyway, shall I leave you to it and come back later?

You know, worst case scenario, they decide that they don't want to work with Steve. He hasn't completely lost any business. He provided a service that helped them get to where they needed to be, and he made some money from it. It's a win win for everyone. So often the solution to the problem you have is sometimes a completely different solution, and it's hard to see that on your own. Sometimes it helps to have another set of eyes in your business to be able to point these things out and come up with ideas that you can run with. And I'm just saying I would not be opposed to like a 10% kickback on those sessions. Steve.

No worries. Email me your Venmo. Or I could just send you another water container.

I do want, like, a light blue one. That would be nice. We can match different outfits. The next problem, that's not actually a problem, we're gonna refer to this person as Hopper. And Hopper is actually an amalgamation of a bunch of different clients that I've had. The problem that Hopper has in his business is he is doing all the things that he's supposed to be doing. You know, he's interviewing his ideal clients. He's designed an offer that he can actually make money from. He's showing up on social media. And Hopper's frustrated because he's not getting clients from social media. Now Hopper tends to think, oh, well, this social media platform sucks. I should move to another one. And then when he moves to another one, he gives it a couple months and then he's like, oh, well, this social media platform sucks. I should move to another one. So Hopper tends to think, okay, well, it's a social media platform. There's just like, my ideal clients aren't here. The algorithm sucks. It's punishing me for weird things. I don't get it. Like, the problem is outside of my sphere. It's outside of my control. So what I'm going to do is I'm just going to keep changing social media platforms. Don't be like Hopper. And actually, it works out perfectly because Hopper's popping from platform to platform. Get it? But I'll be here all night, folks. That wasn't even planned. Anyway, the thing that Hopper doesn't want to hear is that it's not the social media platform. It's his content. It's him. There's no shame in being bad at writing for the first couple months of creating content, there's no shame in having a learning curve of writing. Sales copy people spend years learning how to do that. One of the things that my one on one clients really appreciate about working with me is that as they're learning to do this, they can send me absolutely anything that they write and I will edit it and mark it up for them. And in early days, there are portions that I will actually rewrite for them so they can see how their idea can be translated into a sales post that will attract clients. If you don't have that kind of feedback, if you don't have that kind of guidance and you're trying to do it on your own, the thing that's going to help you get better is just by doing it for longer, being consistent, posting every day, seeing which posts get more engagement, seeing which posts actually attract your ideal clients, recreating that model over and over and over and over again. No one likes to be told that their content sucks, but it's actually one of the best pieces of feedback you can get. Because guess what, if you're creating the content and it sucks, you can make changes to make it suck less. You can work on it and improve your writing so that it actually starts getting better and starts being more effective. Now, hoppers are our quintessential adhd, right? We want results. Now, we don't like waiting for results. We want to be able to post one post and get five clients out of it and get that dopamine hit and have three of those people sign up and then be rolling in money and then be able to go out and buy a bunch of things on impulse because it gives us more dopamine and then be able to post something tomorrow and get five more clients out of it. It's not how it works. What I tend to tell my hopper clients is that social media is not a gumball machine. You don't put one quarter in and get one gumball out. It's like a real warped gumball machine where you have to sit there with a whole bucket full of quarters and just keep feeding the machine and feed the machine and like you could put, you know, 47 different quarters in this machine and then one gumball comes out and then you put in like 18 more and three come out and then you put in two more and another one comes out. It is sporadic and it takes time, it takes consistency, but it's not tit for tap. Squirrel, squirrel, squirrel. Had a whole moment in my head where I'm like, where did that saying come from? Does it mean what I think it means? Not sure. Anyway, in my mind, when I hear tit for tat, I'm thinking, like, someone's giving their boob in exchange for a tattoo. But that doesn't make sense. Is it you're showing a boob for a tattoo. I just don't understand. I'm gonna have to look this up and also, like, what kind of tattoo artist. It's like taking payment and like, one boob flash. No, like, tattoos are expensive. If they. If they use up a whole day doing a tattoo for just to see one boob like that, they're not be able to pay the rent with that. Unless it's a great boob. It could be an amazing boob. I haven't seen a boob that is that impressive. But, you know, there could be those out there anyway. And the cool thing about being a hopper is that you can call bullshit on yourself at any point. If you realize you're being a hopper and you're jumping from platform to platform and you're blaming the algorithm and you're blaming the platform for not having your ideal clients, you're 100% in control of that. If you get real with yourself and you look at your content and say, oh, this actually kind of sucks. This isn't going to get clients. You can reach out for help. You can book a call with me, you can go and sign up for a copywriting course. There are so many options for you. But rarely, rarely is it the platform's fault. And I say rarely because Facebook sucks. Unless you have, like, a really specific Facebook strategy that is aligned with your ideal clients. There are some of my clients who I do coach through a proper Facebook strategy, but. But it's not for everyone. The last client that I will go over, we're gonna go for 11. And the 11 that I'm thinking of, this one client, like 11. Well, I mean, 11 actually did have magic powers. This client thought that she could magically create content on a platform and speak to her ideal clients there. Her ideal clients were not on that platform, but because. And I'm talking about LinkedIn. So this one client, her ideal clients are not the types of people who are going to spend a lot of time on LinkedIn. It just doesn't have a whole lot to do with their nine to five. Their social life's not going to be there. It's not like a relaxing place where they're going to go and hang out after work after they have a gin tonic and they are watching the television with their spouse. Like, if LinkedIn's not the hangout place. But 11 was convinced because she was seeing all these other coaches be successful on LinkedIn and successfully selling to people who had money that she'd be able to reach her clients there. She, unlike Hopper, it was the exact opposite, really. I mean, she was so convinced that she would be able to get clients from LinkedIn that even though I was advising her to give up on it and transfer all. All of her attention to another platform, she refused. And she still, I don't think to this day, has gotten a client from it. And we haven't worked together in a long time, so I may be wrong. And this is something that I think happens for those of us with ADHD who feel like we have to prove that we can stick with stuff because we have this fear that people are going to think that we're flighty and we just jump from thing to thing. And when we see it working for other people, we're convinced, well, if it works for them, it'll work for me. And so we can kind of misplace our commitment and our momentum. And it comes from a place of feeling like, you need to prove that you can be consistent, feeling like you need to prove that you can, like, fit in with the cool crowd. And I'm not saying people on LinkedIn are cool, but, like, if you're in the coaching space and you're constantly hanging out with other executive coaches that are charging $20,000 for six months, months of work with one client where they're only doing two sessions a month, and they're getting those clients through LinkedIn, it can feel like, oh, my God, I'm missing something there. I'm absolutely missing out on business that is existing on LinkedIn. I have to be there. And even 11 from Stranger Things, like, her magic isn't going to work there. That'd be like a really, really powerful mind control thing to control gazillions of people all over the world to be on LinkedIn when they don't want to be there. And I wanted to bring up hopper and 11 back to back, because I want you to see that the problem is not always going to be one way or the other. It's not black and white. If you see that there's a problem in your business that's preventing you from making money and you're not doing anything to fix it. You are choosing to not make money, you are choosing to suffer, you are choosing to struggle. And while that can be a trauma response that can absolutely be something that your nervous system seeks out because it feels familiar. And because it's familiar, it feels safe. It's not gonna do shit for your business long term. It's not gonna do anything for your self esteem. It's just gonna keep you in struggle. It's gonna keep you thinking that there's something wrong with you and there's not. I mean, unless you're a dick like Eddie Munson. It depends on you. It depends on your business. It depends on your ideal client. You know, you can't listen to one part of any of this advice and think, oh, that's exactly what I need to do in my business. Because your business is going to be completely different. The problems you see in your business are going to be wrong in a whole different set of ways. And if you're stuck, if, if you're at this point where you're like, I feel like this thing is going wrong and I've been doing everything I can to fix it and it's just not writing itself and I'm still not getting clients and I'm having trouble getting attention and growing my audience and blah, blah, blah, blah. Then, dude, book a call with me. Book a generate income strategy call. The link is in the show notes. Go to weeniecast.com forward/strategy call. And what we'll do is we will talk about what your big dream is for this business. We'll go through what you think the problem is, and I'll help you identify what the problem actually is. If it's super obvious, which it usually is, and then if, if it's a fit for both of us, if you're really looking for help, then we can talk about different ways to work together to help you move through the problem as I see it, and maybe the problem as you see it, you might actually be on point. But oftentimes people have a very hard time seeing what the problem actually is. What does tip for tat stand for? Oh, it was originally tip for tap. It recorded in 1558, but it evolved into tit for tat. You know what's a really interesting linguistic thing is that vowel pronunciation is always like flip, flop, tic, tac, toe. It'll always go with the eh and then the ah and the oh. It'll never be flop, flip or tat for tit, but that's true across languages. Squirrel, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel. Join the weeniecast hyper focused community and unlock a whole world of support. Get direct access to me in exclusive calls. Turbocharge your network with unlimited referrals and boost your productivity with Sprint calls and accountability sessions. But that's not all. We're talking expert talks, masterclasses, and more. Register now to get in front of the line for this at the introductory price of just $77 per month, it's time to elevate your entrepreneurial game. Let's do this together. Go to weeniecast.com hyperfocus all one word. That's weeniecast.com hyperFocus.