What does faith have to do with it?

Good evening. I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and leadership coach. This evening, I want to dive into the part that faith plays in your business. And when I talk about faith, I don't mean religion. If religion is your. Your gateway to having faith, then great for you. But you don't have to have religion or any, you know, spiritual beliefs to follow this and to have this work for you and your business. So I also welcome you to ask questions and add to the conversation. I love these to be interactive, and I am streaming to the Facebook, to LinkedIn and to YouTube. I do this through Streamyard, which sometimes gets a little finicky. So if you comment and I don't call you out, it is not you. It is just our technology that's failing us. Anyway. Faith. Faith in your business, okay? If you don't have faith in your business, I don't know what you're doing. Faith is a necessary, critical cornerstone to creating a business that's successful, okay? No investor is going to invest in your business if you obviously have no faith in it succeeding, okay? So faith is super, super important. But what is faith? Okay. Oftentimes when I start with clients, there's this expectation. Hi, Gabriel. Nice to see you. There's this expectation that there's going to be like, one action, one action that, like, they're going to do this action, then they're going to get one client out of it, and they're going to do another action, and then they're getting another client out of it. This is not how this works, okay? Faith is very much a build it and they will come activity. Okay? So there are a couple aspects of faith, and I'm going to go through them this evening. So faith, on a very basic, like, fundamental level, faith is just showing up, okay? Faith is just showing up. Faith is having set work hours where you show up and you do the work. Faith is going live and being visible. I go live all the time, and I. I think you guys know this. I think you're aware that the point of me going live is to build my business. It's to build my audience. It's to get you to trust me. It's to give you an experience of me before we get on the phone so you can determine if you want to work with me or not, okay? It's a place where I get to say things that hopefully scare away the wrong people from working with me, okay? It's also a place where I get to say things that. That draw in the right people showing up as an act of faith in your business is your marketing, it is your hours, it is your operations, it is you knowing that you have something to offer. Okay? Showing up is the bare minimum that you could do to show faith in your business, okay? If you're not showing up to your business, you don't have a business that just, it doesn't exist, okay? You can't have a law firm and just not go and go to the office and not do any work. That's not a business, that's not being in law, okay? So showing up is the first most critical aspect of having faith in your business. Now you show up and what do you do? What do you do? You do. You do the next thing that you can think of, the next part of having faith in your business is trusting that you'll be shown the way. Okay? So so many times new business owners, and I'm talking to you, they overthink how they're supposed to show up on social media. They don't post, they don't post on LinkedIn, they don't post on Instagram, they don't post on Facebook, they don't post anywhere because they are not sure they're getting it right. They don't want to get it wrong. And I respect that. You know, you want to make sure that you're, you're protecting your reputation, you're looking smart and you're impressing people. Sure. But here's the thing. If you don't start off doing it badly, you're never going to improve and learn how to do it well. Okay? I'm sure if you look back like I'm. I post almost every day on LinkedIn. I love that platform. I like my content there and I get feedback that others do, too. If you go back in time and you look at my previous content from before, I got really serious about showing up consistently and, and was actively engaged in making myself better. I'm sure it really stinks, okay? I'm sure it's terrible, but I had to go through that to get to where I am today. And you have to do the same thing, okay? So trusting that you'll be shown the way, by the way, by simply showing up on LinkedIn and being a little more serious about it, I bumped into people like Leah Turner, who's incredible on LinkedIn, and she offered these training sessions and I bought one and she trained me on how to use LinkedIn really, really well. Now I make. Now I get most of my clients from LinkedIn and referrals. So just trusting that Even if you go out there and you start doing it wrong, the universe is paying attention to the fact that you're showing up and you're just doing something, and the universe loves that. The universe loves it when you show up and just do something, even if you're screwing it up. Okay? The universe will see that and be like, you know what? I want to show you this thing over here. This is a great resource for you, or this is a purpose person you need to talk to. Okay? I think most of my clients would refer like that to me. The universe put me in their world in some way, shape or form. They realized, oh, my gosh, like, this is the person who could help me do this thing better. Okay? That's why I get hired. So trusting that you will be shown the way. You don't have to know the perfect way to do stuff before you start doing it. Okay? As you start doing it, you'll see. Start seeing what works, what doesn't work, and you'll notice the resources that are available to you. Okay? Now next, being consistent. You cannot show up sporadically. You cannot start acting on stuff and doing it sporadically. You can't. You can't bop in and bop out of your business and expect to have regular growth. It doesn't work that way. Okay? This is kind of what happens with artists. Artists is that they. They produce a lot of work. They have so much work, but then they're. They're broke, right? And so then they have to sell all of their product and they make money, but then they have no product, so then they have to produce more product, and they work through all their money, and then they're broke again, and then they have to sell it. And so it's this boomer bust cycle, okay? So. But that's what happens naturally when you're inconsistent in building awareness and showing up in your business. Artists and all of us would be far better served if we just produced a certain amount of work and marketed along the same time. So we're producing and we're selling. We're producing, we're selling, we're producing our. We're selling. You know, that's where we get to save money for retirement. That's where we get to save for vacations. That's where we actually get to, you know, enjoy our lives. Hi, Steven. Nice to see you. So you have to be consistent. And here's the thing about consistency is don't. Don't create this big, huge, complicated plan that you have to do every single day, and you have to do it perfectly. Don't do that. I tell my clients, like, you want to be consistently present on a social media platform. Pick one. Pick one social media platform that you're going to use for an entire year when you're starting your business. Just one. You're not, you're not trying to show up anywhere. You're just showing up in one place really well. And in that one place you're going to spend 10 minutes in the morning and you're going to engage in other people's content and then you're going to post, you're going to post something and some days it's going to be crap, it's going to be boring, it's going to be crap, it's not going to be good. And, but at least it'll get you out there. At least it'll let people get to know you a bit. Other days you are going to post like the most awe inspiring piece of social media. Oh my God, if they gave Pulitzer prizes for social media posts, like you would be on that list. But you're far more likely to have more of those if you just post every day, okay? But you need to get the crap out, okay? And you need to be consistent because here's the thing, your audience needs to get used to seeing you every day. They need to get used to having you show up in their world, okay? If you just bop in a little bit, like if you bop in hardcore for two months and then disappear for three, what's going on with you? Like, how am I supposed to trust you if you can't even show consistently in my world, okay? Consistency is so critical, okay? So pick one and show up every day, okay? And for those of you who don't like social media, you're watching this on social media, by the way. I'm sorry, but it is a necessary evil in the greater scheme of building a business in these, in these times. It used to be that you could open up a shop and just hang a sign and that would be that. But even shops now have to have social media, okay? Because everyone's online, okay? So you are showing up, you are trusting that you'll be shown the way. You're being consistent. The next piece is a tough pill for people to swallow. And this is that you cannot have any expectations of it working out a particular way. You just, you can't have any expectations, okay? You cannot post a really brilliant LinkedIn post and expect that you're going to get two clients out of it. No, they may not see the post. You have no control there. You cannot share a lead magnet. Expect to get 100 people on your email list. You can hope for it, you can be ready for it. You can set up all the software on the back end to handle those 100 people who want to enroll in your email list. But you cannot expect it. If you constantly put stuff out there, expecting a certain return from the universe. A, you're going to burn yourself out, okay? You are going to get so tired and so frustrated and so discouraged. That's not going the way you want, that you're just going to want to quit. And you're going to have to go through these ups and downs and you have to get over the emotion of it. It's going to be all this drama for nothing because there's nothing you can expect of your business. You can have vast amounts of expectancy, though. You can have vast amounts of just being open to whatever comes to you. Because here's the thing. When I first hit my very first $20,000 month, I, I had strategized it. It was a goal. The, the month before, I said, next month I'm hitting $20,000. You know, I'm making it happen. And so I rolled out a group program. I rolled out a group program and I was like, I'm gonna fill up the group program. This is how I'm gonna make $20,000. This month. I only sold two seats in that group program. Only two. That was nowhere near $20,000. However, by surprise, I got a bunch of referrals that month and I made my $20,000 through signing a new one on one clients. Now, I could not have planned on that. Hi, Lisa, welcome. Oh, let me see. I'm gonna share this message rings true. But you have thousands of connections. How do you stay connected and like their post without it being every month or month or so? Lisa, that's a great question. So, yeah, you can't like everyone's posts, but here's the beautiful thing. You're, you're commenting from LinkedIn, so I think you're talking about LinkedIn LinkedIn creators. There is a very, very small population of people who actually regularly post on LinkedIn. The vast majority of people on LinkedIn are lurkers. Okay? They might hit the like button from time to time, but for the most part, they never post. Okay? So this is the beautiful thing of, of posting consistently on LinkedIn is that you are going to get so much attention because no one else is doing it. I know it looks like everyone is doing it, but the vast Majority of people, your ideal clients are not posting. They are just lurking. They are just reading. They are just watching, and they need to see you pop up in their world. And. Hi, Mark. Welcome. From Rochester, New York. A little north of me. Welcome. I think we're all getting a storm in a couple days, but what we're talking about, we were talking about no expectations. Oh. So, anyway, so I. I got my $20,000 month, but here's the thing. Like, I set the. I set the intention, and I showed up. I showed up, you know, promoting that group program that I was sure I was going to fill up. I was promoting that group program every single day. I was showing up. But while I was showing up, people in my world were like, oh, yeah, that's right. Katie helps people start their businesses. I have a friend who's starting her business. I need to refer her to Katie. There's Katie again. Oh, that's right. I wanted to refer that person. I should do it now. Oh, distracted. Oh, Katie showing up again. Boom. Okay, now I'm going to do it now. I keep meaning to introduce these two people. I'm going to make it happen. And then they introduced us. Okay. You have to keep showing up. It is. It is the only way for your world to realize that you're there, you're open for business, and that they can either hire you themselves or refer people in their community to you. The last thing I want to say about this is a little. Little spiritual. I'm a big believer of divine timing. I'm a big believer of divine timing. You know, I get deja vu a lot. And then when I get deja vu, the. The meaning I attach to it is, oh, my God, I'm in the right place at the right time. This is the right place at the right time. And I. And I know, like, there's science that's like your eyes have processed something faster than your brain or whatever, but I take it as that meaning I'm in the right place at the right time. And everything has its own divine timing. Everything is meant to work just the way it works, and nothing. Nothing's going to happen faster than it's going to happen. And this is really a frustrating concept for new business owners, especially as they're trying to get their business off the ground and they need to make a certain amount of money. And so all I can say is trust in the divine time timing of stuff. There's a. There's a portion of your business when you're first starting out where you just have to Say yes to everything. Any. Any offer of money in any form. You're just saying yes to anything. Okay? There comes a moment where it clicks and you no longer have to. There comes a moment where you get to start saying no to people, and that's a really magical moment, okay? But that moment never comes unless you do everything that we've discussed so far this evening. Unless you show up, unless you trust that you'll be shown the way and act however you know how. Until you're shown that way, unless you are consistent with your actions. Divine timing doesn't happen if you're doing actions and have expectations for certain things to come out of it. My dog's chewing a toy right now if you can hear it in the background. And so I know it's frustrating. I know it's hard to not have the universe operate to your timeline. Believe me, I was there. I had so many phone calls with my coach where I was crying that it wasn't happening fast enough. And he just had to remind me that my timeline doesn't mean shit to the universe. The universe runs on its own timeline. And I just had to keep showing up and keep being consistent and find the better way. And I wanted to share that with you tonight because I know a lot of people out there are struggling to make their businesses happen right now. And it's a grueling journey in the beginning because you just don't know what you don't know. So you don't know if you're getting it wrong, you don't know if you're getting it right. Do I keep going? And if you walk away from this, this. Live with anything, I want you to, A, keep going. You got this. B, if you're realizing there's a better way and it might have something to do with me, reach out to me. I'm a very nice person. Okay? I'm pretty friendly. Send me a DM and just ask me the question, like, what is the piece of the puzzle that you're missing that you feel like you're screwing up here? Okay? I have no judgment for that. I help people all the time with this stuff. Come on. And three, practice having faith in your business. Practice believing in it before you have any proof that it is going to work. Okay. I know it's hard to do when you have friends and family members who are like, what are you, nuts? You're starting a business. We're in a pandemic. Are you crazy? Just breathe it out and center yourself back in your chest by your heart. That's where your inner leader lives. And breathe into that and tap back into that faith because you know that the work you're here to do is going to help a lot of people. And you know that there are a lot of people who are hungry for that very particular kind of help. All you need is the know how and the skills and some tools to be able to turn that into a business. Okay. Anyway, that's all I've got for tonight. It is 7:30 here. I am doing I forgot to plug my webinar. I'm doing a pop up training tomorrow evening on how to charge your worth. It's I shared it in one of my other posts today on LinkedIn. I'll try to remember to go and share it in the comments here. If you're undercharging, and I guarantee most of you are, if you're undercharging and you need to be charging more, which I think is a fair assumption of most people, come to this webinar because I'm going to be covering exactly how you determine what you should be charging, how to actually believe it without and say it without throwing up. And I'll be giving some other pointers. I haven't decided what my bonuses are going to be in that, in that training, but it's going to be a lot of fun. Hi Leslie, nice to see you. I'm just wrapping up though, so you'll have to go and watch the replay. Anyway, Leslie, Mark, Lisa, Stephen, Gabriel, thank you all so much for joining and for anyone who didn't comment that I, I don't know you're here, thank you for watching. It's been a pleasure. I plan on going live a couple more times this week, so I hope to see you there. And like I said, if you want to learn how to charge your worth, sign up for my pop up training tomorrow evening. Okay. All right, bye everyone and don't forget to have faith in your business. Okay, bye.