The "Not Knowing" way of Playing Small 3/5

Hello, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and coach. I'm here tonight in a rainy Cape Cod evening. I hope the rain isn't too loud and you can actually hear me. It is deafening over on this side, but hopefully my, my computer speakers are, you know, you know, game for it. Anyway, tonight I'm talking about another way in which people hold themselves small. They play that small game and they prevent themselves from growing their business, growing their income and their impact, and giving their gifts to the world. So far this week, my God, am I gonna remember what we've talked about so far? So far this week we've spoken about how people keep themselves small when it comes to money. And I'm forgetting what I talked about last night. How embarrassing. What was it? I don't. What did I talk about last night? Anyway, this is night three. Oh, my God. My short term memories is obviously taking a toll. The puppy was up last night not feeling well, with an upset tummy. So I think my lack of sleep is making me forget what I spoke about yesterday. If you remember and you're watching, please pop it in the comments. Speaking of comments, I am doing this through Streamyard as I normally do. We have some good signs that this is going to be an entertaining one already. I streamed this to both the facebooks, to my LinkedIn, to YouTube, and now to Twitter, which is a new thing that Streamyard does. So I'm excited about that. And something that I've noticed is that sometimes not all the comments come through. So if you comment, I like this to be interactive. I love to answer questions during this, but if I don't call you out or I don't acknowledge your comment unless you said something really rude, it's not you. It is just the technology that sometimes fails us, whatever reason. But welcome those of you who are tuning in tonight. I want to talk about one of the ways in which new up and coming business owners hold themselves and play that small game to limit how successful they can be. And I know that sounds crazy, but we all do it. I forget who said it, but we are far more afraid of our success than we are of our failures. Something like that. There's. I'm misquoting that dramatically. If you know the actual quote, please do, please do pop it in the chat. But yeah, we do it in a lot of clever ways because we're really creative beings. We are so creative that we can come up with a million different ways to sabotage our own success. And when we play that smaller game, when we hold Ourselves as small when we, you know, just stay within our comfort zone, Own. What we're doing is we're robbing ourselves of the income we could have if we actually, you know, stopped it, cut the bullshit and started putting ourselves out there. We rob our world of the impact we could have. And that's the most. That's the most heinous thing, I think, because we all have an amazing gift that we can give. And if you're not giving it and you're working a job that makes you miserable when you could be doing something for yourself, having that impact and making a really incredible income from it, like, oh, my God, what are you doing with your life? So tonight I want to talk about a way in which we keep ourselves small. And that's not knowing, okay? We hold on to this belief that we don't know how or we don't know what or we don't know who or we don't know why, okay? We play with this idea of, well, I don't know how to sell my service, or I don't know what my offer is, or I don't know who my ideal client is, and instead of actually doing something about it, we just stick with that. Well, I just don't know. I just don't know. I'm not sure. I don't know. And then we let that hold us up from ever actually doing something. And I want to. I want to normalize this. This happens to all of us, okay? Every single one of us. I do this all the time in my business, and I catch myself out. And one of the things that I do is, okay, cool. Who can I ask for help on this? Who knows? Who would be able to show me the way? Okay? It's one of the reasons that I myself invest in three separate coaches for my business. I have a coach who is very, very heavy on strategy. I have another coach who's very heavy on production. I have another coach who helps me with my book that I'm writing, which is way later. And I know I've talked about it for a long time, but it's coming. It's coming. But, see, I need a coach to hold me accountable to. I need a coach to show me what I don't know. And I'm not saying that you absolutely need to get a coach. Maybe you just need someone who's going to set this thing up for you. But if you don't acknowledge that you're playing the, I don't know, game to keep yourself small, you're never actually going to take that step and go and find someone to help you. So I'm going to go into a couple different ways that you might be using this and if I call you out, I'd love to hear it in the comments. And if you don't want to put it in the comments, then shoot me a dm because I would love to hear how you're doing, doing this in your unique, special way. Because we're all creative AF and we can come up with really amazing ways to do this kind of stuff just to convince ourselves that we don't know something and that we shouldn't just go and do it. Okay? So not knowing how is a big one. It's a huge one. And I want to acknowledge here that starting a business is hard. There are a lot of hats that you have to wear. So many hats, all of the hats, okay? Especially if you're doing a service based business, you have to figure out how to do it on your own. Because there's no income in the beginning unless you have a lot of savings or you're independently wealthy. Congratulations to you. You have to figure it out yourself. You have to figure out how to market yourself, which is like very vulnerable and nerve wracking in the beginning and still like later on as you're, as you're scaling and growing and offering new things. Let's acknowledge the feelings of it as well. But there's also tactics that work and tactics that don't. You just don't know. In the beginning, most of my clients, when they start working with me, they have no idea how to run a sales call. Okay, here's the thing about businesses. You need clients and to get clients, you generally need to be able to run a sales call. That's effective. Okay? So if you don't know how to run a sales call, just know that there's me, there's a million other people out there who can show you. But if you're really committed to just not knowing, then you're just never going to get clients. I'm sorry to break it to you, not knowing how to do the technical stuff. Now, as someone who is kind of tech savvy, but then also gets really overwhelmed really quickly, I can totally relate to this. Okay? I got so freaked out. Everyone was telling me for the longest time I needed a lead magnet. You need a lead magnet and if you don't know what a lead magnet is, it is a PDF or video or something that people have to exchange their email and their for to receive it. Okay? So it's a way of building your list. And it's an invaluable thing, okay? Because it helps people start that relationship with you in a very low pressure environment for them so that they can start getting value from you and see that you're credible. But there's, like, a lot of back end stuff there. There's a lot of things that you don't know about it. So I was able to find a really amazing marketing person who's able to help me put this together. And. Oh, God. I mean, the list just goes on and on. And if you're starting a business, I'd love to hear what are the things that you don't know how to do, okay? Because here's the thing about our educational system. Our educational system sucks, okay? And I mean no disrespect to the teachers out there. You teach really incredible, valuable things. You teach kids how to think. You teach, you know, us how to read. You teach us how to do math. You teach us the basics of science. But there's no part of the curriculum nowadays that teaches people how to sell, how to run a business, how to even pay taxes. Like, there's just a lot of holes. It's all based towards, you know, let's get everyone prepared for college and this. And that's a whole nother conversation. But you've just never been taught this stuff, okay? So I want you to just give yourself a break, okay? If you don't know how to do this, that is totally normal, okay? Most people don't know how to do this. The only reason I know how to do this is because I come from a sales background, so I know sales. Sorry, my dog playing with a squeaky in the back in the background, if you can hear it. So I know sales. I read marketing books for fun. Okay? That is, like, on my nightstand. They're just marketing books and personal and professional development books. That is my passion, along with sci fi fantasy. So if you know of any sci fi fantasy books that you want to recommend, I will take those recommendations as well. And, you know, I. The rest I had to figure out. The rest I had to go to experts. I had to, you know, pick their brains. I had to hire them to show me that's all part of building a business. Okay, I'm sorry. That squeaky is driving me crazy. Luna. Luna, baby, I'm sorry. I'm gonna take your toy away, but I want to say hi to everyone. Hi. Yeah, I'm sorry. Okay. I got the moose. I got the moose. She can't have the moose anymore? No, I'm going to keep the moose. You can't have it. It's too loud. And you know how to squeak it too. Well, I'm sorry. You can have it back when I'm done, sweetie. Go find a ball. Anyway. I'm such a mean dog. Mom. So. So we use that excuse of not knowing how and it's a bullshit excuse. We're over it. Okay? I hope you're over it. I hope you're over yourself saying I don't know how. And that's what's holding me up. Because you can always figure out how. And there are always other things that you could focus on. Okay, so what? You don't have a lead magnet. Go out and network. Go out and introduce yourself to people. Go and speak at events, go and host webinars. I don't care. Like just go and do stuff that will get you in front of people. Okay? Because once you're able to talk to them and explain to them what you do, that is where the magic happens. And you're just inviting them to a call to continue the conversation. Okay? So all the particles of running a business, yeah, it's nice when you have it and you're gonna get big enough that you can build that stuff or hire someone to do it, but you have to build the groundwork first. You need paying clients, okay? So do money generating activities before you worry about all the bells and whistles, okay? And if you don't know how to do the sales and you don't know how to do the marketing and you don't know how to do, you know, the payment systems, that's what I'm here for. Okay? If you're in that position, you really want to start this business, send me a dm, okay? That's exactly what I'm here for. That's my sweet spot. That is what I'm so effective at it. Ask my clients. The other thing that we use to keep ourselves small is not knowing what. And here's. Here's the double edged sword of being a solopreneur, of running your own service based business is that you can do whatever you want. You can create whatever offer you want, but that also means you can create whatever offer you want. So it can be totally overwhelming because you're not sure until you get out there and you start selling. You know, whether this is a good offer, this is what people want to buy, or is there a need for this? Okay, Figuring out what you're offering, what you're even doing here, my Story around this. I shared it last night on Instagram. If you want to follow me, it's Katie, the coach on Instagram. But I shared my journey about trying to figure out what the fuck, fuck my niche was. And I say niche because I speak French, but if you say niche, I have no judgment here. It rhymes with. A lot more things say niche. But anyway, so I didn't know what my niche was going to be. I started off, I lived in San Francisco, and I was single, and I was dating. And dating in San Francisco is miserable. It is awful. Is one of the worst things in the world. No offense to the guys of date. Actually, you know what? You can take offense to the guys I've dated in San Francisco. Okay? It was hard. And so my whole. My whole thing was, now I'm like, oh, no. Am I offending anyone? See, I just want to be open about, like, the emotional thing that happens when you're going live and you say something and you put it out there and you immediately have this reaction to what you just said. It happens. So if you're afraid of going live because of that, just know that it happens and it's no big deal. Okay? You can always clean stuff up later. Anyway, so I thought I was going to be a dating coach for men. I was like, you know, these guys need my help. They need my help. They don't understand how to ask a girl out. They don't understand how to date. Their apartments are disasters. Oh, I can fix them. And so I went out into the world and I announced to everyone that I was a dating coach for men. And this was the beginning of a very long journey for me to figure out what my niche was. Because the universe was basically like, no, you're not. Here are eight female clients and one dude. And those eight. Those eight female clients, only one of them wanted to actually talk about dating. The rest really just wanted to talk about work. They wanted to talk about boundaries and how to communicate better and how to have better work life balance and all stuff. Because how they were showing up at work was directly getting in the way of how they could actually have a personal life. And so then I was like, okay, well, I'll be a dating coach for women. But then, like, none of them wanted dating coaching except for that one person. So then I was like, okay, I'll be an executive coach. I'll do leadership development. And I really liked that. I really liked that. Okay. I had a fair amount of clients that were, you know, executives, and I worked for a few different companies. Doing internal training, and it was really enjoyable. But then a lot of my friends who had gone through coach training with turned to me and said, how did you do that? How do you have clients? Like, what's this whole process? You know, I want clients, what do I do? And so I started showing them, and I realized I loved that so much more than doing executive coaching. It just. It lit me up in a completely different way. You know, finding a niche is not just finding the most profitable option, it's finding the thing that you really enjoy doing. Because remember, you're going to build this business up to be super successful. And when it's super successful, you have to keep it going. You have to continue to provide the service. If you're providing the service and you start getting bored with the conversations you're having, I mean, that's not what we want. That's not what you want. You want a sustainable business, and if you end up getting bored and wanting to run away from it, that doesn't help. So not knowing what you offer or who you serve can absolutely be a big thing that holds people back. I see it every single day. But here's the thing. Picking a niche, figuring out what your offer is, all that stuff is a dance with the universe, okay? But here's the thing. You have to get on the dance floor first, okay? The universe can't course correct, can't change the music can't spin, you can't dip, you can't pass you off to a different partner unless you actually get up out of your seat and just get on the dance floor and start dancing. You have to pick something. It's going to tell you, yes, this is perfect. No, this is not. And there you go. I just reminded myself of that movie, My Big Fat Greek Wedding. And there you go. Anyway, I forget the. The scene of that. This is a very add live. I apologize for you guys watching. But, you know, there's a lot of freedom in running your own business. But because there's a lot of freedom, there's not a lot of structure. And that's. That's. That can be overwhelming for a lot of people. It's one of the things that I offer to a lot of my clients. We create some structure around it. So just know if you're in this and you really want to start a business and you're letting yourself get hung up on any of these things, there's me, there's Colleen Wurtak, there is Rick Tamlin, who's one of my coaches, there's James Roche. There is Suzanne Evans. There's a million different business strategists and coaches out there, you know, who can help you get past these things. There are talented virtual assistants who could set up a lot of stuff that you don't know. There are online business managers who can help you scale you. Not knowing is not a good enough excuse for you to not grow. You need to grow not just for yourself, not just for your bank account, not just for the sake of having good vacations, but you need to grow for the benefit of the world, okay? Because for you to have impact, you need to be in business. You need to be offering your service and your gift. And if you're not doing that, you're robbing the world of your gift, because they're never going to get it. They're never going to get it from you. There may be a million people out there who do what you do, but no one does it the way you do it. With your personality and your sense of humor and your pizzazz. You know, the world needs that. That's one of the things that makes the world such a rich place to live, is the diversity of all the different people doing all the different things and the choice to work with people who really light you up. So here's my. Here's my call for you today is make a list. Make a list of everything you do not know how to do that is holding you back, okay? Anything from getting fund funding to how to set up your CRM to how to get clients, how to run a sales call, all those things. And there's going to be some things on there that you're like, oh, my God, this is super basic. I could just. I could figure this out, okay? So those you're going to cross off. But if there are things on that list that you have no idea where to start and you don't know what's good and what's bad, then you're going to reach out to me. You're going to reach out to me. Are you going to reach out to another business coach or strategist? I don't care who you reach out to. You're going to say, hey, these are the places I'm getting stuck. These are the places I'm getting stuck. And I really want to make this happen. I want to get past this. What do you recommend? And they may recommend to work together. They may recommend books for you to read. It doesn't matter. Depending on what your list says. And if you send me one of these messages and you say, this is where I'm getting stuck. I will give you resources. I will tell you. This is a book you need to read. Here's an online video if it's relevant to you or let's hop on a call. There's no reason to stop this from happening beyond this. Stop letting the I don't knows get in the way of your success. Oh, I have an email. Anyway, I have a dog chewing on my shoe right now. It's raining really hard, and I think she's mad because I took her moose away. So I'm feeling guilty about that. So I'm going to end this here. If you've watched the whole thing. Thank you. I'm sorry. It's a little ADD today, but anyway, I hope you're having a lovely Wednesday evening. Wherever you are in the world, be gentle with yourself. If you have held yourself up because you've bought into the. Oh, well, I don't know. So I'm not going to do it. Be gentle with yourself. It's fine. You have learned things in the past before you went from not walking to walking at one point. Okay. That's a big thing. That's an accomplishment. You figured out how to use a fork to transport food from a plate into your mouth. Okay. If you can figure that out, you can figure anything out. Okay. Anyway, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and coach. Thank you for watching, and I look forward to talking to you tomorrow and Friday about the two other ways in which we play small and hold ourselves back. Anyway, have a great night. Bye.