Stuck Stuck

Sam. Hello and good evening, everyone. I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach. And I should probably mention this more often, host of the Weeniecast, which is my official podcast. This is not my podcast. It's funny. I have been going live a lot lately, and people are confusing my lives with my podcast. Now, my podcast is way more edited, way more professional. I promise. This is just me showing up with some thoughts that I hope are valuable to you, that help you wherever you are in your business and motivate you to, like, be brave in whatever way you need to be to take that next step. All right, tonight. Oh, and just a little housekeeping. I am going live to Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram. Hello, Derek. Welcome. Just want to let you know that sometimes not all the comments reach me on everything except for Instagram. So if you comment and I don't include it in the live, I don't call it out. It's not that I'm mad at you, it's just that I'm not seeing it. Okay, now tonight, I want to talk about that feeling that we all know, and it's that feeling of feeling stuck. Feeling stuck in your business, feeling stuck in your mindset, not knowing what to do to move forward, and also not being able to get yourself to do things to move forward. Okay. There are a few different flavors of this and how it shows up in your business as you start and as you evolve. Hello, welcome. And I want to go through them all, because if you're just starting out, being stuck is going to be different for you than if you're selling several years into it and you're in a season. All right? And I want you to know that being stuck is normal. You're not uniquely up if you're stuck in your business right now. If you find yourself unable to do the thing that you know you need to do, be gentle with yourself. You know, I've been hearing a lot of, like, chatter from the Hustle bros. I don't know, like, fall. They. They all seem to get activated. It's like back to school for them. But, you know, there's this mindset of work harder, push, like, make yourself suffer. And no, no, we're not doing that anymore. You know, whenever you hear a classic Hustle bro talking about their routine, it's punishing. It's punishing. It. It almost seems to come from a place of, like, self hatred, right? Making yourself go through, like, just suffering for the reason that of getting more stuff done. I don't know. I don't agree with it. I don't think it's healthy. I don't think it's kind to yourself. There are so many other models of how you can be with yourself when you're starting a business. Leah Turner is a dear friend of mine, and she has this beautiful way of, like, setting her intentions and her goals in her business from a place of, I know I can do this and I want to do it for me. Right? It's a. It's a attitude of self love. Right? And we need to start highlighting businesses like that more. We need to start highlighting businesses that focus in on doing things for the business and setting those high goals and setting those intentions for. For the sake of showing yourself that you give a damn about yourself, right? Not about proving anyone else wrong. Not about making more money, getting more followers, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's about showing yourself that you can do what you say you can do, right? And trusting yourself and really, like, leaning into your intuition and caring about yourself. You can still build a successful business doing that. This is something that I struggle with. All right? This is. I'm not saying this like I'm holier than thou and, you know, I'm so kind to myself all the time, and I don't punish myself and I don't, like, make myself feel like I'm not working hard enough. Absolutely not. Let's be real here, okay? But I just want to bring this to light because whenever we talk about being stuck, you know, there's so many voices out there that are like, well, just like, set a timer and in five minutes you have to start it, and it's like, no, no. I mean, that's. Yes, that can work. But if you're really genuinely stuck in your mindset, in your business, that is not going to get you over the hump. Right? It can get you over the hump for some things, but when you're genuinely stuck in who you believe you are and what you believe you can accomplish, yeah, we. We don't want to leave you there. We also don't want to gaslight you into you thinking that this is something that you should be able to push through. All right? So I want you to take a big, deep breath. If you're feeling stuck in your business right now, you're not alone. I talk to people every single day who feel stuck in some way or another, and I've been through it all myself, you know, so let's go through this chronologically. So there is this stuckness that happens Right. When you start a business, and this happens to pretty much everyone, and it's a phase of starting the business that we don't typically talk about. How I like to call, this is like the beginning pause. Right? And so it usually hits either right after you have announced to your inner circle or maybe your world that you're starting a business, or when you have, like, consciously decided to start this business, but you haven't necessarily told people yet. It can happen either, but it's literally like you've made this decision and you can't move. You can't do the thing. You're. You're like, can talk about it. You can talk about the fact that you're starting a business, and you can talk about what you want to do. And yet, like, taking that actual first step where say you're sending an email to your. Your list of people telling them about this or setting up your LLC or doing any of the business stuff, like, you just. You have to pause for a moment. You know, there's that moment for. And you see it in videos when someone takes a video of them, like, about to, like, bungee jump or jump out of a plane or something. There's that moment of, am I really going to do this? Am I really going to do this? I know I signed up for this and I spent money on this, and I'm already in the gear and we're already up here, but am I actually going to do this? Sometimes the answer is no. We don't see those videos. We don't see the videos of the person chickening out of the bungee jump. Okay? It happens, though. And it's the same for starting a business. You know, you're. You're doing something that's so brave. You are breaking out of whatever corporate environment that you've been in. You are daring to believe that you can go out into the world and generate an income just by being you, just by giving your gifts to the world. Right. That is a really brave move. And yeah. Yeah, you know, brave moves like that, they deserve a pause. They deserve that moment of, am I seriously going to do this? Right? Because, you know, sometimes. Sometimes you're not actually that into it. Sometimes, like, you actually do need to check in with yourself and make sure that this is the right choice for you. Because sometimes it's not. Sometimes, you know, jumping out of a plane is not the thing that you need to do. So that pause, if you're just starting and you feel like, oh, my God, like, I just. I can't get myself to move forward. I want you to be gentle with yourself. I want you to be kind to yourself. And also know that happens to everyone that pause as you're just getting started. And I want you to be absolutely honest with yourself. You in that moment. If this is the right choice for you, there's nothing wrong if you decide that it's not. Okay? There's no like moral superiority to people who start their business versus people who work nine to fives. Okay? No, it, I mean, I know some people talk about it that way, but no, starting a business is really hard, you know, and you really have to care about what you do and about all the things that you'll get through entrepreneurship. You have to care about that more than the things you care about in your nine to five. And it's okay if you don't, if you don't. Like, you can absolutely change your mind after you announce that you're starting a business or instead of saying that you're going to do this as a full time business, you can absolutely start as a side hustle, right? But you're only going to know that in that moment of pause. Okay? So that is the first stuck that you can encounter in starting your business. The second stock that usually comes up is that I see the most often is the first year slump. Okay? So I want you to imagine you started like a little marketing agency last year when you launched. You emailed all of your friends, your former colleagues, you blasted it on LinkedIn, you made this major announcement, okay? It was really exciting. Everyone was so excited for you and they were super proud. And because everyone loves helping someone who's just starting, you got a lot of referrals, right? And this is really normal in the very beginning of a business because everyone wants to feed in to that person so that they can have their first round of business. You know, you can't keep announcing that you're starting a business though. It stops working after a while. Like, people like, calm down. You started this a year ago. It's not a new thing anymore, right? We were excited for you then. We're kind of tired of this now. Also, you know, if you were relying primarily on referrals, you know, you are getting referrals from a small group of people usually who really support you. And they were, you know, introducing you to all the people that they know who could potentially be your client. And they did, and you signed some clients and that's wonderful. But they can't refer anymore. Like, you know, it's not like they are out there Networking on behalf of you. They already know about you. They're excited to introduce more people to you. But if they don't have anyone new, it's going to be really hard to get more referrals from them. And I hear it a lot. I heard it from my group this week. You know, it's like, I can't email them anymore. Like, they're going to start, like, blocking me if I don't. I don't stop emailing them asking for referrals. It's totally normal when you start a business, what works to get your first wave of clients will not, and I repeat, it will not work to get your second wave and your third wave, okay? The first round of clients that you got, you're going to get them through, like, wonky ways. It is your responsibility as a business owner to start laying the foundation of how your next wave of clients are going to come your way. Now, I have my clients do this in byob, my build your own business group program. And when they work with me one on one, if they're starting from scratch, is to do market research interviews, right? Because you can guess. You can spend all the time in the world guessing what your ideal clients want, need to hear in order to decide to work with you. You know, ensure you can guess and get it right. But more often than not, you're gonna just be throwing spaghetti at the wall constantly and not really knowing what works to bring clients in, right? Because it's not like someone will see one post of yours. You're like, I need to hire this person. They're going to see a whole sequence of posts and it's all going to compound. It's going to build trust with them over time. They're going to, like, you know, you don't. You see like an advertisement for a pair of shoes that you really want. You're like, I'm going to bookmark this. Like, I don't want to buy them right now, but, like, I want to explore them later and I need to look at the reviews and I need to, you know, do all my due diligence on shoes. And you end up, like, kind of tracking them and seeing if they go on sale or whatever. And you might end up buying them two months later and you might not. Right? The shoe company is very consciously trying to stay in front of you, right? You need to very consciously stay in front of your audience, right? Your, your, you know, beginning audience that's just starting to form because you just started this business. Um, that is where your next round of clients are going to come from, right? And it is normal, you know, after you get that first wave of clients and they start completing and you're, you know, trying to fill up your business, it is so normal to experience that slump. Because what worked for the first round won't work for the second, right? This is one of the reasons why I've created like a whole sequence of programs for my clients. Because, you know, like, you know, build your own business. Beginner is that foundational point, you know, where you're really building that. Hi John, welcome. Where you're really building that foundation, you're understanding who your ideal client is. You're building a marketing strategy, all that stuff. And then Advanced is a year long incubator that helps you move through that year one slump, right? That helps you move through like, okay, what got me my first round of clients stopped working. Now I need different strategies, right? So if you're in this slump, if you're in the first year slump and you're like there's something wrong with me all of a sudden, no one wants to work with me. It's not you, it's not you. I mean, it might be you. I don't know you, I'm just talking to strangers on the Internet, it might be you. But more likely than not, you're just in the first year slump, okay? And that happens to so many business owners. And I don't want you getting freaked out about it, okay? Now I wish I could say that those are the only slumps that'll happen to you, but I've been in this game for a while and I'm like, it's uncomfortable to talk about the seasons, right? Because how you, how you get through these, how you get through the slumps and how you get through feeling like stuck, stuck in the business is really the make it or break it for your business, right? If you have the wherewithal to stick through it and be with the discomfort and the fear of the unknown and lean into a strategy that will bring in clients, you're going to get through it. You will. You know, unless, unless like you don't actually have a decent market for it. But, you know, rarely will you get that first round of clients if you don't. So let's talk about seasons because they can happen at any point in your business. You know, I went through a season last spring in my business and it was one of those situations. So when you run a business and you've been around for a while like I have, you start noticing like different Patterns, Right. So summer tends to be a little slower for me. Right. I was shocked in my first few years. Like December, January are when a lot of people sign up for programs because they're like dreaming of how they want to start the new year. Right. I assumed that the holidays would be absolutely dead for me. But no, they're. They're one of the busiest times, especially that week between December and New Year. So, you know, as a business owner, you're going to learn what the trends are. You're going to learn when your busy season is and when your slow season is, but then there's going to be a time where something happens, right? Something happens. It could be a pandemic. It could be what happened for me last spring as I realized I had brought the wrong fractional COO into my business and things were just breaking left and right. And I realized too late that what she and her team were spending time on was really just playing whack a mole with all the problems that they had created because they didn't understand the systems that they were doing. These seasons, these kinds of instances that happen in your business, they take their toll on you, right? Because you are a human and you have to deal with this and you have to clean it up and you want to keep providing an amazing service for your paying clients. And also it impacts how you can go out and really drum up business. Right. So when you feel stuck in your business, you're going through a season, you know, it's usually there's something going on that you need to focus your, your attention on, right. There's something that is legitimately calling your attention away from your business. And what ends up happening is you kind of pay for it over the next few months, you know, so over the next few months, because you haven't been marketing as, as consistently, you know, you're going to start feeling stuck and like, I don't know how I'm going to get clients. Right. Even though you've done this before, even though, like, you know exactly what works do to, to get clients, seasons are really scary because whereas when you're stuck in the beginning stages of your business and it's not like a tried and true income that you're used to having when you hit a season in a business that you've had for 5, 10, 15 years, like I want you to remember, you've been generating your income from this business all this time. When you hit a stuck period, that's like, that income goes away. It's not like you don't have it yet you have it, and then all of a sudden it goes away. So this is one of the. One of the most important reasons for why you need to work on your relationship with money, right? Because if you don't have a good relationship with money, whatever money you have socked away, you're not going to feel good about when you have a season, right? Or if you, you know, have a relationship with money where you're not good at saving. If you hit a season, you know, things can get bad really fast now. I wish. I wish. Oh, my God. I. I wish I could tell you how to avoid these completely, because then I could tell me how to avoid these completely. I can't because we really. A lot of the things that happen to cause seasons, that first year slump and that beginner's pause, like, they are just a part of running a business, right? There are a lot of factors that go into it. There's stuff that's outside of our control, of course. There's stuff that we can do to mitigate. It's not make it not as bad, but there's no way to avoid them completely. The thing that will make the most difference to you in your business is how quickly you get back up, how quickly you get your mindset out of the gutter and move through that stuck in the muck kind of energy and just get back to work, right? Not in a punishing way. Anna. I care about myself and I love my business and I want it to be successful. And the dogs are barking. I don't know if you can hear that from that. That generative energy and not that scarcity energy. When you're stuck or in a season in your business and you get sucked into that pessimistic, scarcity, fearful kind of angry energy, what that does is it just creates more stuck, right? And I know it's like. It's like trying to tell someone who's in a bad mood, like, you're in a bad mood, stop being in a bad mood. It's hard, okay? There's a reason why there's such a high burnout rate in the sales industry, right? People in sales, like, if you go through a slump, if you feel stuck in your sales. Sales. And you're not hitting goal. Oh, it takes a toll on your mental health. It really does. Your belief in yourself can take an absolute nose dive. And, you know, especially if you're starting a business and you've never been in sales before, it can be extra hard because you don't understand, you know, how to get yourself out of it. Right? So here's what you can do to move through these steps. Stack these stuck stages of your business a little faster. Get support. And I'm saying this because obviously, like, if you need support from a business strategist, I would love for you to work with me. But beyond that, get support from your community. Right? I've talked about this a lot, and I haven't really talked about it recently. You need business besties. You need people who are also building their businesses who are in kind of similar, if not further ahead stages that than you, who you can turn to and talk to and commiserate and joke around with and celebrate with. Right. I have several of these. I, you know, very conscious about creating these relationships because I realized for myself, like, I cannot build this in a vacuum. There's no way I can do this on my own. You know, as you grow your business and as you bring in more money, this can be in the form of a team. You can absolutely bring in a fractional coo. I have an amazing one in my business right now, and I am so grateful every single day for her and her whole team. You, you know, you have to find the right support for you. Right? This could also be a mastermind. It could be working with a coach one on one. It could be working with a group. It could be getting marketing support. You cannot do this alone. All right? The old saying that it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to raise a business. Okay? And not just because you need customers. It takes a village because the village needs to hold you up while you're doing this. The village needs to remind you that you are worthy and you are a hard worker and you've got this right. The village needs to be able to believe in you when you can't believe in yourself. All right? The other side of this is you have to. And this sounds crazy, like when you're. When you're stuck and you feel like you can't move, you have to do things for yourself. You have to do things for self care, to have fun, to laugh. Right. You know, it's amazing. I just picked up reading again. It's like I lost the ability to read for a while. I've literally read eight, eight and a half novels. No, wait. Yeah. Eight and a half novels in the last five weeks. Okay. And what's absolutely insane to me is I've actually seen a massive uptick in my business. Right? And I think part of that has to do with, like, the time of year we're getting to my busy season, like I said. And I've been doing a lot of conscious promoting, but I've been doing a lot of conscious promoting because I felt really good, right? Because I felt inspired and like, I'm having fun and like I'm doing something that lights me up every single day outside of my business. It sounds silly, but, like, really investing your time in hobbies, in learning in, you know, different things that put your brain into flow so that you're not like, constantly just like, wheels turning about your business in the back of your mind. That is the key that. That is absolutely the key to having a successful business. It's funny, I was pulling cards this morning trying to get some inspiration for what I should have posted on LinkedIn. I didn't actually post yet today, but the card that I got was the snail, which I think is so perfect for this topic because. Because, you know, the snail goes slow. The snail goes slow, you know, but the snail also gets places. Like, it gets into gardens when gardeners don't want them there, right? The snail. I remember when I was a little kid, like, our garden used to get snails, like, hundreds of snails whenever it rained. And my sister and I are like, let's collect the snails. They'll be our pets. So we collected them. We put them all on a thing. And I remember waking up at like 2:00 in the morning, morning and running out to the backyard because I was, like, worried about them because we covered, like, our red wagon that we'd put them all in with Saran Wrap. And I was like, oh, my God, like, it's raining. Like, what if they drown? Whatever. Go out. All the snails were gone, right? They weren't hanging out. They can move. They. They did it slowly, but they got out of the red wagon. They. They did not stay our pets for long. And I love this, and I wanted to bring this into tonight's live because I wanted to remind you it's okay to go slow. Like, slow wins the race sometimes, right? The tortoise and the hare. We know this. We've learned this from childhood. And yet we see all these influencers and business coaches and gurus online who are saying, make a hundred thousand, a hundred thousand dollars in 90 days. It's easy if you just sign up for my shit. No, no, absolutely not. I guarantee you. Maybe they had one client who did that and that's how they're able to market that. Or they're a complete charlatan. But it's not everyone. It's for the vast majority of people building your business and growing it is a slow but steady process, okay? If you find it's going too slow, if you're in a stuck and you're like, I don't even know what I should be doing now, that's. Those are the two signs. You need support, okay? And you need support from someone who knows what they're doing, okay? So I specialize with adhd. I feel like, remember with adhd, business owners who provide a high level service, okay? If you're starting a restaurant, you don't want me. If you're starting a retail thing, you don't want me, okay? If you're doing anything outside of that, you don't want me. But find the support that's going to be the most helpful, helpful for you where you are, okay? And there's no perfect way to do this. There's absolutely no perfect way to do this. There are a gazillion business gurus out there who are all saying, this is the right way, it is a right way, right? You get to choose one and you get to empower it to be the thing that you're going to devote your time to and you're going to make it work, okay? Don't stress out about getting the absolute right program. You're going to make it your own, all right? But get help, get support, okay? Because you've never done this before, right? You being stuck because you've never done this before and you don't, you genuinely do not know what to do next. To take things off the ground like that's very self punishing and we're not into that here, right? We're all for self love, being kind to ourselves, being gentle with ourselves and setting ourselves up for success, right? And not for failure. Okay? So if you're stuck, my heart goes out to you. I've been there. I hope this has been reassuring to you. If you have any questions for me, you know where my DMS are. If you want to book a call with me, you can go to my bio or you can DM me. I'll send you the link. Other than that, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach and host of the Weeniecast podcast. I will be going live. This is day seven, seven eight of me going live every day for 30 days, Monday through Fridays. If there are any topics you'd like me to go live on in the future, please DM me, okay? There will come a point in about a week where I start running slim on ideas because I've done them all. Anyway, thank you so much for joining tonight, and I will see you all tomorrow. Okay, bye.