Why embarrassment is the way to business success

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. In this episode, I'm going to tell you why embarrassment is the way. I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach, and welcome to the Weeniecast. Squirrel. People have a whole bunch of beliefs about what it takes to be successful as a business owner. Lots of people believe that you have to be good at talking about yourself. Others believe that you have to be good at selling. While more will think that you have to have an advanced degree, like an MBA or something, none of that's true. Here's the number one most important quality that will lead to your business success, and it's the willingness to look stupid. It is the willingness to embarrass the f Ck out of yourself. And I'm not just talking, like, using the wrong word occasionally in a conversation. I'm talking full on Bridget Jones Humiliation. Which, by the way, I can't even watch those movies. I get so much secondhand embarrassment for her that, like, as it's playing, I have to, like, get up and walk it off. It's like my. I get so anxious in my body for her in those movies that I'm like, ah, I gotta go make popcorn. Gotta go. Can't sit still. Still can't do this. That is what it takes to run a business, which I will say is incredibly hard for people in general and is harder for people with adhd because we all have had experiences growing up where we didn't understand the instructions or not that we didn't understand the instructions. We stopped paying attention to what the instructions were about two minutes in. And then we did the activity wrong. And then we did it differently than everyone else, and everyone looked at us funny. Growing up, I did so many assignments wrong. I remember I watched the wrong French movie and wrote a paper on it. I still got credit for it because I wrote a paper on a movie, but I definitely miswrote down what the movie was. There were projects that I had to present to the class that I did it on the wrong thing. And every person with ADHD has some variation of this, you know, and it could be something from school. It could be showing up to a party and wearing the wrong thing, or showing up late, showing up at the wrong time. I had a friend who once showed up to my birthday party the day before it happened. Like, we jived on that. We were buddies. We both had adhd. But it's that attention to detail that we sometimes just kind of gloss over. We're busy paying attention to other things, and it doesn't really jump out at us. And it's embarrassing because it points out that there was a moment where you weren't 100% like everyone else was able to do it right, and you didn't do it right. And kids are f cking mean. When you do something wrong as a kid or you do something that's different, other kids can make fun of you. Sometimes teachers and adults can make fun of you as well. So we grow up being extra sensitive to doing things wrong, being extra sensitive to making mistakes and looking stupid. Because sincerely growing up, when you make a mistake publicly, you're made fun of for it as a child. It does kind of undercut your sense of safety because it is a form of rejection. It is a form of ostracization. Squirrel. Okay, right. That's the word. Squirrel. I'm just going to say that again so I don't mispronounce it. It's a form of being ostracized. Speaking of embarrassing yourself and making mistakes, Squirrel. Squirrel. And growing up, it really can affect your sense of worthiness. So it's completely understandable that you're sensitive to embarrassing yourself. Right? Because in your mind, even though you know it's not logical, when you embarrass yourself, you're showing the world that you're not capable. You're showing the world that you make mistakes, that you weren't paying attention, that you do stuff wrong. And your subconscious takes that as, oh, my God, they're gonna kick us out of the tribe, and then we're gonna have to go and survive alone in the woods with the bears and the lions and the tigers. And we're gonna have to be sure not to eat the mushrooms that'll kill us. And if we have pets or children, we're gonna have to take care of them, too. And that's really scary for us. That kicks in a whole bunch of survival instincts. But here's the thing about starting a business and reinventing your life and doing something that you've never done before, you're going to get it wrong. You're gonna make mistakes. Those mistakes will often be publicly viewable. And there's no way of building a business without doing that. There's no way of doing something you've never done before without it up. So in 2019, I decided that I wanted to upgrade my business. So I invested money I did not have in a coach that was way more expensive than anything I'd ever invested in in my life. And at the same time, I went to Italy for the month of October. I was doing a nomad year. It was fabulous. I highly recommend if you run a business that is virtual, go and do this whenever you can. It really changes your perspective on life, but just setting the stage. So I just started this program. It was all about putting yourself out there and like producing yourself in the world. And I remember I was doing this zoom call with the cohort from my little kitchen in my Roman apartment that I had gotten for my stay. And behind me there was this mural, this beautiful mural of like an agora. And there are just people, like milling around this fountain, this square. And my coach pointed to it because I had asked a question, said, write a post about that. Write a post about that painting in your kitchen in your little Roman apartment. And he said this just as an example of, like, anything can be content. And I was just getting my feet wet with social media. I was just getting my feet wet with posting online because I'd really built my business up until that point by networking in person, by going to happy hours and networking events and talking to people through LinkedIn, really connecting with people one on one. I hadn't really promoted myself on social media yet. And so this is a whole new thing for me. And I was terrified. I was terrified of posting something stupid. I was terrified of writing something and having people react badly to it. And so my coach really pushed me. He said, you know what? Like, as soon as this call is over, I want you to sit down, I want you to take a picture of that thing and I want you to write a post about it. And so I did. And I had just arrived in Rome, so I was really jet lagged. I'll also own that I was in Rome and I was cooking, I was drinking some wine, so I wasn't drunk, but I also was not really sober. And so I wrote this post and like, it was a very like, abstract painting and there were like these symbols around it that I didn't recognize. And I kind of like made an offhand remark in this post about the symbols meaning something, whatever. And one of my old professors from college commented on the post and said, those are letters from the Greek Alphabet, like the symbols, like calling out that I'd made this really stupid, dumb mistake. And I Remember this woman, Sharon, who was also in the cohort with me, DMed me. As soon as she saw it, she's like, are you okay? Because I'm sure she saw that, and she was like, oh, my God, I would die. I would die if one of my former professors came in and called out such a stupid mistake, right? And in hindsight, I'm like, oh, my God, of course that's the Greek Alphabet. But my brain was not on the level at that moment. And I realized in that moment that this was just the first of many embarrassing moments that were going to happen if I wanted to have a business, if I wanted to be sharing stuff online, if I wanted to promote myself and put myself out there. And it really desensitized me to future mistakes. Now, of course, there have been many embarrassing moments since then. There are endless ways to embarrass yourself as a business owner, especially when you get into email marketing, let me tell you. Because when you post something on social media, you have the control to go in and either edit it if you had a typo or delete it if it's just a huge mistake. Embarrassment is the way you live to win another day if you accept that. Imagine if you have an email list of about a thousand people and you send out an email blast and you do something wrong in that email. Like you copied and pasted some stuff and you have, like, the same sentence three times in a row. Or maybe you had a really dumb misspelling, or maybe you, like, left in some lorem ipsum language from the filler. I've done it all, let me tell you. And there's nothing like that sinking feeling and the heat just rising in your face as you realize, oh, my God, what did I just send people? Like, a thousand people just got an email with me that makes me look like an idiot. Oh, my God. And I remember the first couple times this happened, I would call one of my business besties, Kelsey Letko, and I'd be freaking out, and she's like, dude, it's fine. Absolutely fine. You're going to send them, like, a funny gif. You're going to make fun of yourself. You're going to own it and laugh it off. And honestly, every single time I did that, I got better responses because people, like, appreciated that I was a human who made mistakes. And what's funny about this is that Kelsey has done this, too. She's done something embarrassing along those lines, sending out the wrong thing. And she calls me freaking out. So we can remind someone else that it's okay. It's not a big deal. But when it happens to us, it's still humiliating. It still triggers all that for us. So I just want to share this because there's no way of avoiding it. Something that you're going to have to be comfortable with as you grow your business. And really embarrassment is the way I want you as a business owner. If you really want to be successful, if you want to be a public figure, if you want to grow this business to multiple seven figures, then I'm sorry to break it to you, but you're going to have to embarrass yourself to that point. There's this really unfortunate truth about starting a business. Your level of success will always cap at your level of shame. If you're too ashamed to post on social media, if you're too embarrassed, guess what? That's going to be a really low level of success, because that's the bare minimum. You know, if you're too ashamed to pitch yourself to new segments, then guess what? You're not getting on tv, okay? That's going to be the cap of your success. If you're too embarrassed to ask people for referrals, guess what? You're not getting referrals. Your success will be capped there. So let's talk through all the embarrassing. Well, not all of them. There are just endless embarrassing situations. But let's talk through some of the most popular embarrassing situations that you will find yourself in as a business owner, especially if you're a business owner who's offering a service and promoting yourself online. Let's start at the very beginning when you decide you want to start this business. Oftentimes when you decide to start a business, it's a big jump. You're usually starting something that is different from what you've done all along. I know when I started off as a coach, like, I was coming from sales and I had jumped jobs so often, like, I was so convinced that people were going to see that I was announcing that I was a coach. And they'd have this whole judgment about, like, oh, my God, like, she changes her job every year. Like, how long is she gonna stick with this one? I projected that people are gonna be way meaner about it than they actually were. But announcing who you are now, changing the narrative, explaining to people what you're up to now, that can be incredibly embarrassing. That can trigger a whole bunch of negative projection on other people. And the biggest thing that I hear, the most common thing that I hear from people in my world, my clients, people who come to brave biz labs, which, if you haven't come, I open up this group coaching call every fourth Friday of the month to my whole network. So you can come and ask any question you have about your business, how to get clients, how to market yourself, so on and so forth. And if you wanted to join, I want you to go to weeniecast.com brave biz. And we have that link in the show notes as well. But it's the most common fear that people will look at you and look at your announcement about the thing that you're doing now and say, who the did they think they are? Like, is this a joke? No, they can't do that. They've never done that before. Well, guess what? If you don't push past that embarrassment, if you don't, like, announce that this is the thing that you're doing and let people think, whatever they're gonna think about it, you're never going to have a business. Right? Because people can't hire you if they don't know that you exist and who you help and what you help them do. And if you're not even willing to tell the people in your life that this is what you do, I mean, you're not going to have any clients. It's impossible. Who do you think you are, Batman? Let's talk about Batman for a second. Implausible and not implausible that this guy, like, is rich, has all these gadgets and does a butler who sets him up to go and fight crime. And let's not even talk about the implausibility of all the villains and the weirdo they do and how organized they seem to be. Also, what is the property value in. What is it? Gotham? Who would want to live there? It sounds like a terrible place to set up home and have a family. And also, like, the looting that happens. Who would want to start a business there? Okay, so all that aside, here you have Bruce Wayne, Very wealthy, prominent individual in the community. His big secret is that he's Batman. What marketing campaign did they do for Batman? How lucky did he have to be the first couple times that he just so happened to show up where bad was happening and he stopped it. And then people were like, oh, that's Batman. Cool, let's call him. And then they made, like, a bat light and stuff, and then he shows up. I don't buy it. That's not a plausible way of things happening. Right? Unless he's, like, hanging out in his Batmobile dressed as Batman, listening to a police scanner every night. And then like maybe like slipping little flyers under the police officers, like doors, like, hey, you got a problem you can't handle? Call Batman. Yeah, I'm just not buying it. By the way, Batman was my favorite superhero and is to this day. But not because of like how rich he is or how cool he is or anything. It's because bats are my favorite animal. And I thought it would be so cool to just design your identity around bats because they're my favorite. Anyway, just in case you wanted to know that about me. So the baseline of embarrassment that you have to be okay with, you have to be okay with people knowing what your business is. You have to be okay with the weird judgments that you're going to get from family members and from loved ones and from friends and from former colleagues and former classmates from your third grade. They're all going to have thoughts about it. And none of those thoughts are your business. Your business is growing the business. Your business is putting yourself out there and making sure people know who you are, who you help and what you help them do. And that's it. The next level of embarrassment is cringe. Social media. And I know when you think of social media, especially if you haven't done it yet, and even if you have been doing it for a while, I bet you're thinking about like posting selfies and sharing reels of you talking while you're sitting in your house, that might be a little messy. Or people sharing really vulnerable things on social media, all of that can give you that sensation of wanting to like, not just crawl out of your skin, but rip your skin off and like, crawl under a rock. Now, of course you're going to get better at social media as you go, but it doesn't matter what it is that you're posting. The first few months where you're posting about your business and you're posting to social media and you're sharing about yourself are going to be the most embarrassing months of your life. You're going to post something that years later you're going to go back and be like, that wasn't anything like big whoop. But you're going to post something and five minutes later you're going to have this sinking feeling in your stomach and you think, oh my God, I can't believe I shared that. Oh my God, what are people going to think? And you're going to have a full on shame spiral about it. That is the cost of doing business. If you're not willing to walk through that fire, you're not going to get any clients, you're not going to start making money and you're not going to have a business. Embarrassment is the way. And as you start growing your business, there are going to be so many embarrassing moments where maybe you don't have any clients. One of the most common questions I get around the holiday season is what do I say to family members when they ask me how my little business is going? My cute little side hustle's going to and it's going bad because you're not making any money yet. And but you don't want to tell them that because you don't want them to say, oh well, maybe you should give up. Oh, that's too bad. Like maybe you should just go back to having a real job. Yes, of course, that is a really hard conversation to have. There are definitely ways that you can answer that question, but you're not going to be able to avoid the question. You're going to have to face down the embarrassment of loved ones, well intentioned, mostly well intentioned loved ones asking, how's your little thing going? And you're going to have to find a way to answer as it grows, as you build up your business with one on one clients, maybe you're consulting, maybe you decide that you want to launch some kind of workshop or group program. Guess what? 50% of the time when you launch a group program or a workshop, no one's going to sign up. Another 20% of the time, only one or two people are going to sign up for a group thing. And if you think no one signing up is embarrassing, try showing up to your first session with your quote unquote group and there's only one person there. And then what do you say when you go to talk about it? Oh, the one participant that I had joined, my group is doing really great. They're having success in whatever it is that you're teaching them. All that is part and parcel of growing a business. And in a moment, I'm going to tell you a little bit more about some of the really embarrassing things I've done. Hey, quick question. Did you follow this podcast on your favorite podcast app yet? It takes just a few seconds. I personally love Apple podcasts, but you can find us anywhere, even on YouTube. So as the kids say, smash that button and make sure you never miss an episode. So I'm the type of person that I lay the track as the train is coming. So sometimes when I have an email campaign, I set up all the logic in my email marketing so that there was a campaign. And I'd have, like, blank emails or emails that had, like, instructions for what the email should be. And then I'd go and write them, like, right before they were supposed to go out. And this one time, I don't know, I got distracted and I didn't do it. And what got sent out was like, email seven, write about this, this, this and this. And it wasn't the. It was like, instruction for me for what I needed to write. And it went out to my whole list. And it was just like, oh, my God, I can't believe I did that. And it was all my fault. It was literally that I just forgot to do it. And it just didn't play into any of my awareness for what I need to do in that day. And I got several unsubscribes, obviously, because that's. That obviously is incredibly sloppy. But you know, it's funny, you'd think that would be enough to push me to pre write all of my emails. I still don't write all of my emails in advance. You know, I just can't. It's just like, it doesn't work for me. Like, I have to do it as the train is coming. Now that I have more support, that helps me, like, get everything organized. I have things done more in advance, but that was honestly probably the most embarrassing thing that I've done with my emails. I think we all kind of walk that line as we're learning how to be vulnerable on social media and as we're trying to figure out what vulnerability we're okay with. There have definitely been times where I shared too much, where I shared something that I wasn't ready to share, and people wanted to take care of me and they wanted to check in on me and make sure that I was good. And I've always just gone back and edited those, but those are easier to fix. Like, once you send an email to a thousand people, there's no taking it back. And, like, these are minor embarrassments, but they still hit me like a load of bricks. They still made me feel that shame spiral. They still made me kind of jump into this panic mode of, oh, my God, I can't believe I just did that. Everything's going to crash and burn. People are going to hate me. They're gonna think I'm an idiot. All this stuff. If you don't have the stomach for that stuff, there's way worse things that can happen. There's this great book by Shonda Rhimes, who's the writer, creator of Grey's Anatomy and How to Get Away with Murder and Bridgerton on one of my favorite shows. And it's this book called the Year of Yes. And she decided that she was just being too much of a wimp in her life. And she decided that for a year she was just gonna say yes, whatever people asked of her. And her alma mater, Dartmouth College, which is an Ivy League college here in the United States, if you're not from the US Asked her to do a commencement speech. And she hated public speaking. She was so terrified of it. And going into it, she was convinced that she would have fierce knot. Like, this is what she talked about in her book. So she was convinced that she would get up on stage and breathe out of her nose and a bunch of, like, boogers and snot would just come flying out of her nostrils in front of thousands of people. And while it was being recorded, because she was a writer, creator of Grey's Anatomy, and highly successful person who people would want to see the commencement speech for, that absolutely can happen. We're all humans. We all have snot. Like, it can come out of your face unexpectedly when you don't want it to. It didn't happen for her, but it could have. There are some. So many embarrassing things, especially if you have a female body, can happen while you're out in the world promoting your business. If you're too embarrassed to potentially make a mistake in your email or potentially make a mistake in social media, how are you ever going to handle it when something bigger happens? The Queen of Shame herself, Brene Brown, her TED Talk that went viral, her original TED Talk was where she owned having an emotional breakdown or a mental breakdown. She got off stage, had a complete shame hangover, called her friends, panicked at them. They were like, oh, but like, how many people are actually gonna watch this? Over the next few days, this video went viral online. And in the like, she wants to say that she didn't look at any of the comments. She read every single comment, every single comment that called her fat, that criticized her outfit, that called her stupid. And then of course, like, she had to then reconcile. Like, oh, my God, I just admitted to millions of people on the Internet that I had a mental breakdown. I can't remember which book she talks about this, but she talks about, like, how she deals with most catastrophic things. She just binge watched Downton Abbey and ate a lot of snacks. Which relatable, yeah, been there, done that. But also, look at where she is now. She is a household name. I doubt anyone who's listening to this podcast has to go and look her up. Most of you probably have her book on your bookshelf or in your Audible account if you want that level of success. Like, it's not just sometimes the fire you have to walk through. That is the fire you have to walk through. You have to walk through being seen by people as you are. There's no avoiding that. I want you to think of every single celebrity that you've. You've seen, like, have a bad moment in public. Maybe they were drinking, maybe something bad just happened to them and think about how they had to move through it. Some celebrities don't recover from it and they go into hiding and they give up. Others they push through. And that's really indicative of, like, how successful they're going to be in the long term. Alec Baldwin, who's had so many embarrassing situations and like, awful situations in his life that like, are very shame inducing, he's about to have a reality TV show with his wife who got called out for having a fake Spanish accent. The lady's from Boston, her name is Hillary, and she had us all fooled thinking she was the Spanish lady named Hilaria from Estana. Like, they have a reality TV show, they have the capability to withstand a ton of embarrassment and they're making money off of it. Like, come on. If they can get through the embarrassing things that they've done and still be successful, you can do anything. If you're not embarrassing yourself daily, if you're not doing something that's outside your comfort zone, if you're not putting yourself out there in a way that, like, you might get it wrong, you're not trying hard enough. There's no way to grow a successful business without embarrassing yourself, without making stupid mistakes, without public failure. So if you're not willing to fail publicly, if you're not willing to embarrass yourself, there's nothing wrong with that. But I highly recommend you do not spend the time, money and energy on trying to start a business. If you are willing to embarrass yourself, but you want to be productive with your embarrassment, you don't just want to embarrass yourself willy nilly all over the place and not have it get you anything, and you're not sure what's going to help you get from where you are now to actually being successful in this business, then I invite you to book a generate income strategy call with me. Because one of the things that I do with my clients is I will not only help you identify what is your fastest path to cash. I help you come up with what are the things that can put you out there that will communicate as elegantly and as quickly as possible who you are, who you help and what you help them do. I also edit content for my clients so you're less likely to make a mistake. I don't guarantee no mistakes in my edits, but you're less likely to embarrass yourself with my eyeballs and stuff. And I'm going to show you the best ways for you to launch your business, for you to enroll clients, for you to start a group. So your ratio of public failure to public success is hopefully more in your favor. And if you want to book a generate income strategy, call with me. Then I want you to go to weenicast.com strategycall and remember, doesn't matter what you felt like as a child, it doesn't matter what you felt like growing up. It doesn't matter how you were made to feel in former work environments. No one is doing things perfectly. And when you do make a mistake, it's not a sign that you're less worthy. It's not a sign that you're stupid. It's not a sign that you're a fuck up. It's not a sign that you can't do this. It's a sign that you do not have the correct support for how your brain operates. This is one of the reasons why I've evolved my business consultancy business from just helping people start businesses to helping people with ADHD starting businesses. Right? Because there's so much neurotypical support out there that is great for neurotypicals who have an easy time following all the instructions and can check off the list and do all the things. My clients with adhd, they need something different. I needed something different when I started. When you have someone who understands how your brain operates and what it needs to be able to be successful, you're able to let go of all the what ifs. Maybe not all of the what ifs. The what ifs will always come up, but you're able to let go of more of them so that you can actually push yourself to take action, even though you might embarrass the crap out of yourself. Oh my God, I'm so freaking embarrassed. No way. Cut that out of the podcast. Just kidding. Keep it in. Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. If you're enjoying this episode, would you do me a small favor? Will you please leave me a review? Don't worry, it's super easy to do and it only takes a few minutes. 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