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with KISS and Disruptors, where we bring you tools and strategies and insightful perspectives on business growth, revealing both the humanness of success and challenge. For those that are new to the show, I'm Sally A. Curtis of Content Repurposing Whiz. We work with brilliant individuals to help them leverage their content to engage their audience through the power of emotive visuals. We're best known for turning books into 2 years' worth of content and social media posts for our clients. We have a done-for-you service where we amplify your impact because you stand out, because you connect deeply, and because your message is heard and you reach more people. And today we're going to be talking about what it takes to be successful. Now, our guest today is Erin Marcus. who has over 20 years of coaching experience under her belt, from both a corporate career, from being a franchise owner, as well as a business consultant. And she likes to say that she meets at the intersection of helping people be who they are, but also do what they need to do in order to build a business and a lifestyle that they're proud of. So without any further ado, are you ready yet? Please help me. Ready? Yeah, please welcome to the show Erin Marcus.

Well, thank you, thank you. I'm so excited. This is awesome. We've had such great conversations. Now we just get to share it with everybody else.

Absolutely. And, uh, from an insight perspective, I know when we spoke the first time, and we've only just had 5 seconds talking to each other, and I've already written 3 notes down already. So I'm super excited.

Get ready.

Get ready. So can I ask you to a little bit of, a little bit of your background and what brought you to where you are now with the insights that you have?

Oh dear. Um,

all right, tough one to start with.

So it's so interesting that I've been on my personal development journey, and then you start to look back and you realize that things happen for a reason. They make zero sense at the time, but I, I'll just give some examples of my background and why I think it lends itself to what I do now. So grew up in Chicago, public schools in the '70s and '80s. My mom was a hairdresser and then an apartment manager, and my dad was a cop. And public schools in the '70s and '80s. However, I went to school with people from 22 different countries.

Hmm.

So nobody spoke English and nobody had any money, and we were kids. So we also had no judgments. And you just learn how to talk to everybody. You figure it out. Like, I always laugh, my brother's bar mitzvah album looked like baby United Nations. Like, we just participated as children. We participated in everybody's world. So you learn that people are just people, but you learn and appreciate The differences. And I think that set the stage for a lot because I was comfortable. It allowed me to be comfortable in a very wide variety of situations. It allowed me to be comfortable immersed in an atmosphere where I didn't know what was going on around me. Because every time I was with my friends, I never knew what their families were talking about.

Yes.

Right. And I didn't realize that that's unnerving to people because I've never not had it.

Yeah, that's that. I love the, the way you've highlighted being comfortable because one of my favorite things is being curious. But there's a difference between curiosity and being comfortable in the, in potentially the uncomfortable.

Yeah, and the curious is so true. And I'm very excited for my brother's family because he now lives right kind of on the south side of Chicago and his kids are growing up the same way. Where regardless of the culture, the religion, the whatever you— however you want to describe it, when kids want to play with each other, they just go do all the other things with each other.

Yeah.

Right? So I've been immersed in other cultures, in other ways of thinking, in other ways of communicating, and you just learn how to navigate that. And I think what it did for me, in conjunction with my own StrengthsFinders and the way my brain thinks, is my— I'm just intrigued by people. The honest curiosity. Why do people do what they do? Not from a judgment, not like, why the hell did you do that? Not that version of it. But why do people do what they do? And when you can approach with honest curiosity about why people can do— why are they doing what they do? And then you meet them where they are.

Yeah.

It makes so many things possible and just fun. So like, that was great. And that was the beginning of it. And then later, when I went to college and decided, well, maybe I should get an— maybe there needs to be an education somewhere in here, as opposed to high school, where I just didn't bother with it.

Yeah,

I have a degree in journalism, which taught me how to ask questions and how to listen for answers and non-answers. Yes. And again, with the curiosity about the people. Yeah. And the communication background. And then later in life, business, business, business. I don't know where that came from. Like, the overdrive of success and achievement— couldn't tell you how, why that showed up. Don't know. I'm thinking it was something to do with, like, I knew I had to only depend on me. And if I wanted— my parents are great, but they weren't going to be able to afford a lifestyle for me, right?

Yeah.

So there was a self Reliability that had to happen. Um, and I just think when you mix all those things together is what I draw on now to connect to people where they are, period.

Yeah. Can I also ask you, because that adds beautifully into the conversation that we had a little, little minute ago around the failing forward fast and the power lift, uh, the powerlifting. So I can understand where everything's brought you to where you are now and why you're able to really help people with that, what I'm going to call that transformation piece of being, you know, becoming more and achieving what they actually set out because they've removed or understand what's holding them back. But so many people get bent up on, oh, I can't do that because I might fail. Whereas I've always loved the principle of failing forward faster. Because I know for me, I learn through doing so. We all do.

We're humans. That is how we learn. It is how that works.

Yeah, good call. So talk to, talk to us and share us the— Sure. Powerlifting.

So first, I will tell you that my boyfriend is highly supportive of me. He is curious, however, when are we going to learn to fail cheaper? If we could just learn to fail cheaper, he would be a little bit more in favor of it. He's all about failing faster and failing forward, but when do we get to fail cheaper? But one of the things I know that helps me. And, and I'm weird. Like, I'll tell you, I'm a little bit off. I'm 5 feet tall. I'm bigger now because I'm older now, but I was like 100 pounds soaking wet for most of my life. And here I was in the '80s in powerlifting competitions. Girls were not in the gym yet.

Right.

But that was my world. And the thing that came out of that that helps me now is when you are lifting weights as a sport, not just in support of something else, but as the goal. Failure's the goal. Like, if you don't hit failure, you didn't try hard enough. And when it— it's so— failure is not bad. Failure's the objective.

Yeah, you— such a different insight, isn't it? When you can feel the difference of that when you explain it.

Completely different. And I remember being in the gym with different people and different personality traits and different dating over the years. And I had one boyfriend who was very— he was a statistician, he was very, you know, ducks in a row. And he would ask me before we would start doing any particular exercise, how many of these are we going to do? And I'd say, I don't know.

Yes.

I don't know the answer. Right? I don't know the answer to how many times am I going to have to try this before it works? I don't know that answer. I never know that answer. I can tell you it ain't one. I'll tell you that, right? It's not one. We're not gonna do one, right? Like, the objective— I won't even use the word goal because I don't like the word goal. I hate the word goal, and I'm trying to get it out of my nomenclature, but it is a habit. But I hate the word goal because it inherently implies something hard to achieve.

Hmm.

When you set goals, you're telling yourself, look, Again, going back to the powerlifting, we would talk about a PR, a personal record. What's your goal? What's your PR? So there's this inherent definition to a goal that it's something that's going to be really hard to achieve, and it's going to be a one-off if I get it.

Yeah, very true.

Right. So I don't— I use the word initiatives. It's funny, in my journal, when I write what I'm working on, I used to have goals and I'd write them down. Now it's like, Crap I'm doing, things I'm making happen, you know, whatever. Yes, more of this, please. Like, whatever strikes you that day.

Yeah.

But if you can combine the idea that the objective— not the goal, but the objective— is failure, and you have no idea how many times you're gonna have to try until you hit it, it takes so much pressure off. Because now we're just doing the work.

Yeah,

now we're just doing the work.

Yeah, creates possibilities, doesn't it? And the continuation of possibilities.

Yeah, I'll also tell you, on some days failure was 3, and the next week you eat better, you do something more, you know, your ducks are more aligned, and failure was 12. We don't know,

and that's okay.

Don't get hung up on it.

Yeah.

Except that you don't know, which means it doesn't matter. Just doesn't matter. Now, you've got to have some data in there, right? You don't want to— I'll tell you here, I'll tell you another story. This is, this is my exact approach. And this is where it comes from. So my father, who is now 80, has been a competitive powerlifter since I was born. And that's where this comes from.

Comes from— I was just gonna ask you that. Yeah.

So my daddy-daughter experiences were traveling around the world in powerlifting competitions. We would do bench press competitions together. And the way that it works is you submit your lift, like you submit how much you're going to try to lift, and then if you get it or you don't get it, you submit the number for your next lift. Yeah. And so here was my dad, we were at a competition, and here was my dad, and I think— I forget how much he lifted, though, so we'll just say it was like 350 pounds. And he missed it. And so normally, normally you would submit that you were going to do that again because you didn't get it, because you're gonna try again. My dad walks up to the table and puts in a bid for— he's gonna go for £375, which is £25 more than what he missed.

Yeah.

And the guy at the table said, but you— why did you do this? And my dad looked at him right in the eye, goes, well, I already know I can't do £350. I already know I can't do that.

Yeah,

I don't know that I can't do 375.

Yeah, wow, very powerful.

And, and I'll attach it to this because this is me and my adrenaline junkie personality. I mean, if you want to get me to do something, all you have to say is, I bet you can't, you know, fill in the blank, right? So with that in mind, if my objectives aren't ridiculously high, I'm not interested in them.

Yeah.

So if you're gonna tell me— I remember, you know, this came out in a coaching relationship that I had where my coach was like, we were— I don't know, we were talking about making $100,000 in the year. And she said, well, what if you— and I'm like, okay, you know. And she's like, well, what if you made it in the next 30 days? Okay, now you have my attention.

Yeah.

Now you have my attention.

Yeah. Yeah. And isn't that— and that, that level of attention and curiosity, isn't that in actual fact how humans like to work? You know, are we not tapping into some unsung magic in that, you know, if we just get to that next benchmark objective, and we just tweak it very slightly, we just bring in all of this Extra oomph.

Yeah, and I warn people ahead of time, you don't have to do it my way. You don't have to— you know, the fact that my hair is all one color right now is very normal. It's winter, so I have a sweater on, you can't see all the tattoos. Like, you don't have to be crazy loud, onstage purple hair version of this. The universe's objective is more life.

Yeah.

Period. Hard stop. It could be quiet, it could be loud, it could be chaotic, it could be smooth sailing, but underlying it all, the objective is more life. All you have to do is watch what happens in an empty field that stops getting mowed, in a building that is abandoned, even in the city. Nature will take it right back, right? Right. The law, universal law, nature, you know, we're all in this environment is more life. It's not stagnation. It's more life. It could be teeny. It could be huge. It could be whatever version works for you. My version works for me. It is universal.

Yeah. And continuous. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Brilliant. So with the work that you do and, and helping people break through, what sound like, and if I look at my own experience, self-imposed barriers at the time. What are some of the common things that you find in the work that you do that really are holding them back that we can highlight for people today?

So I talk about working at the— and I'll give you a tactical one and then a mindset one, because I work at the intersection where what you need to do meets who you need to be to do it, right? So it's a lot of business strategy, it's a lot of messaging, it's a lot of marketing. But then it's also that success mindset. So one of the things that hold people back is they just don't know. They just don't know.

And isn't that so simple but so complex at the same time, which is why we need to elaborate. Yeah,

right. My current favorite story right now, because this just happened, is I have a client who— he's amazing. He's just like such an awesome human, right? And he is in the employee engagement space. He's a coach and trainer for employee engagement and leadership in blue-collar manufacturing type environments. He's fantastic at what he does. And he was walking around to his prospects with a list of 15, 20-some-odd workshops that they could pick from. And he was charging a certain amount for it. Okay, fine. And then we finally got together. He's a private client. We sat down and looked at what he was doing and how he was doing it. And we didn't change anything about what he did. He's fantastic at what he did. But he doesn't know marketing. That's not his world.

Yeah.

And so all we did was look at what he already had. We created a package out of it instead of a menu. We created a—

I

mean, as a thought leader, not a vendor. We created a package. We created a marketing message around it that was outcome-based from the perspective of his prospect.

Yeah.

As opposed to what he already knew and thought. And in the course of a day, went from $2,500 per sale situation to a $25,000 offer that 3 people jumped on.

Yeah. Yeah.

Just not because he didn't change anything about what he did. You— it's not everybody's zone of genius to know how to do that. I will tell you, there's so many things I don't know how to do.

Yeah,

I like seriously, like crazy numbers of things I don't. That's what I know how to do.

Yeah.

So it's not about knowing all the things. People don't do it the way— people don't do it the way that would optimize it for them because they just don't know.

Yeah. Yeah. And isn't it, isn't, isn't it curious how we, uh, we get— we go through a process that feels right, sounds right to us. But in actual, in reality, because we're in it so much, and I use the phrase, you know, we don't, we can't read our own label when we sit inside our own jar, is that he would have been going through the process. And I love that analogy of, you know, a thought leader versus a vendor, because yet, with a shopping list, it's sort of, you're overloading. And I used to love, you know, fire hosing people with information. Let's just give you the fire hose versus, and Yep, laugh at that. We've all done it.

We've all done it.

Strip it back to the essence of being easy to buy. But then when you say that to somebody, it's sort of like, but how do I be easy to buy? And that's— they're the things that make a huge difference in business, but they're the critical things that we don't know if we don't know them, which is why we need an expert to come along and go, I'm not going to turn you into a cardboard cutout of the, you know, the guru at the front of the room. I love who you are and how you do it. But let's just make the tools a bit more simple.

Right? Exactly. Exactly.

Yeah.

And so we don't know. And then on the flip side, though, I like to let people off the hook, which I mean, it doesn't give you an excuse for not doing the work. Don't get me wrong. But you can stop beating yourself up. Because on the success mindset, especially when you get into entrepreneur situation, thought leader, author, coach, like you're putting yourself out there, you are up against neuroscience.

Yeah.

Like, you just are. So let yourself off the hook. Again, not from doing the work, got to do the work, but stop beating yourself up for the fear that you have. It's normal. That's how your brain works. The stories that you tell yourself that keep you back, it's normal. That's how your brain works. There's nothing wrong with you. You're doing exactly— your brain is working the exact way it's supposed to work. It is keeping you alive. Your brain's job is to keep you alive. It's not to make you rich. It's not to make you skinny. It's not to make you happy. It's to keep you alive, right? So because that's what it does.

Yeah.

He's everything— it's got a little bit of a bias. It's everything's a threat. And there's no black, there's no gray. It's either, oh cool, we've done this before, or oh my God, we're all gonna die.

Yes.

Right? So if that's what your brain is telling

you,

oh my God, like you and I in our roles are telling our clients, you know, get out on social media, go live on video, post this, make outbound calls. And the poor person on the receiving end of that is going, oh my God, we're all gonna die,

right?

I get it. That's how— but that's how it works. So it's about understanding that fact, right? Again, let yourself off the hook. Stop making yourself wrong. Understand that that's what's going on. And now what do we have to do to break it down into the pieces needed to allow you to move forward?

Yeah.

Which Make it easy. Exactly. And the thing that does not make that easy is when you buy into a Facebook ad that says just do this one thing and you'll make millions, because what happens is it wasn't authentic to you.

Yeah.

And then you just feel like a failure for not letting— not allowing someone else's processes to work for you.

Yeah, that didn't feel right in the first place and gave you an icky feeling and made you feel stressed. Yeah.

Right. And so it's, it's really meet people where they are, connect as a human first, understand what we're up against, have the honest curiosity and servant leadership, you know, come from a place of service first.

Yeah. Yeah.

And go from there. I make it sound so easy, right? It's just, just, just, just do that.

Yeah. Just do that. What

could possibly go wrong?

But isn't that the truth? Don't— as humans, and I believe as humans, we have this fabulous gift of overcomplicating everything for ourselves. We can make it really easy for somebody else, but for ourselves, we make it really complex. And I think that's a— is a human trait, because if I ask, you know, if I ask a client to help another client if we're in, if we're in a group situation. Oh, what would you do? They'll go, oh, you just do blah, blah, and blah. But if I ask them that, they go, oh, it's blah, it's blah, it's blah, it's blah, blah. And then we'll sprinkle some more stuff over the top and it's overcomplicated.

Well, and I really think that overcomplication is the manifestation of the fear.

Yeah. Okay, cool.

The manifestation of the fear. It's no different than distraction. I could either post on social media or suddenly all of the Tupperware lids have to match all of the Tupperware bodies because, right, like suddenly that becomes the priority for life, right? It's— so that's one way it manifests. One way it manifests is confusion. I don't know what to do because what is— what happens when you don't know what to do? Nothing. Zero things happen when you don't know what to do, right? So complication, overcomplication is just a different manifestation of the same core problem. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's mostly to avoid talking to other human beings.

Do you know what? I'm so glad you said that because that's one of the Sally rants is just go and speak to people. Everyone

goes, oh my God, I have so many clients, like they want to be a speaker and they want to get on podcasts and they want to do that. I'm like, great, I'm a fan of all that. They're like, well, I can't because I have to have a one sheet and I have to do this. And I have— I had 30 speaking gigs last year. I don't have a one sheet. I think we finally made one. They're like, oh my God, I don't know, I just call. They're like, how did you get it? I'm like, I talked to people.

Talk to people.

It's this crazy idea. Just call them, message them, hey, what do you think?

Yeah, I've got one of my speaker buddies from several, from several years ago that's run a multi, multi-million dollar business and has done for many, many years. He's never, never had a website. He's lucky if he's on social media. But everybody knows who he is and all the rest of it. And he's got a great network because he gets on the phone and talks to people.

Right.

End of story. And/or his team does. And he's never had to have all of those things. So I love when somebody just comes up and takes success by the horns and just does the activity because they've gone through whatever they've needed to go through from a mindset perspective and know what they need to do. To achieve the level of success that they look for.

And as I'm listening to you, all I'm thinking about is, oh my God, can you imagine the profit margin on his business? Because he doesn't have all of the expenses, right, of their subscriptions and all of the things.

Yeah, but what he— and that's actually interesting because that's why he's probably just— that's just given me a huge light bulb moment. His events, he used to spend probably that money that he would have spent on all those things on the experience of his events, which is why the word of mouth and, you know, his business grew because experientially the events were amazing. The food was amazing. It was just like you go to one and you want to go to the next one.

Money on service on other people.

Yeah. There's a little lesson. Well, there's a great little tip for everybody, isn't there? Excellent. So let's have a talk now about what the 3 tips that you would generally share with people to help give them forward movement. Obviously, we've just highlighted a number. And I'd love you to talk about some of the work that you do and how you can help people so people can get in contact with you as well.

So tips on how— why don't we frame it this way?

Right? Yeah. Love how you make it simple.

So I do something that I call the Forward Momentum Method. And because it's step by step, one of my big soapboxes around the coaching industry, coaching and consulting, is there's all these people out there with lists telling you what to do. But if they can't break it down to teach you how to do it, that's just parroting a great experience they had. I'm not saying they're coming at this in any malicious intent. So my big thing is, okay, how do we break it down so that you can do it?

Yeah.

So if we were to be like, okay, step by step, and I do this process for everything, and it starts with the dreaded coaching question that makes my clients want to stab me in the eye. What do you want? What do you want? Nobody knows. Like, we don't spend time thinking about this because we go out into the world and we do random acts of marketing, we do random acts of business, we have no idea why. Like, the entire world has to be reverse engineered in order to work.

Yeah.

What do you want?

Yeah,

because you can't make decisions if you don't know. The book, I don't know if it's the same by you, like Good to Great was a— it's a very big book here. You know, they In my MBA, they case studied the whole thing about put the right people on the bus.

Bus. Yeah, right people in the right spot.

But they won't get on the bus if we don't know where it's going.

That's exactly— yes, very true.

So what do you want?

Yeah,

what do you want? So that's where we start, like, what do we want? And then you have to break that down into the action steps, break it down into the smallest— I call it actionable, maintainable.

Oh, nice.

Right? Everything you do has to be actionable and maintainable. If it's not, if it's too big, it's not actionable. You'll sit down and, you know, I need to post more on social media. That's not actionable. What does that even mean? And it's not maintainable because what's going to happen is you're going to have a block of time, you're going to sit down, you're going to do a bunch of work, and then tomorrow you have appointments, which means you'll do zero of it.

Yeah.

Yeah. Right. So it's what do you want? Step 1. Step 2, break down the way to get there into actionable and maintainable parts. Now step 3 is where it gets a little bit confusing or concerning, because what happens when you go to do the work? Do you avoid doing the work? Do you just do the work? Like, You have to start learning how to interpret your physical responses. And I divide it into a couple different categories. One of them I call dread. Dread is don't go down that alley, don't take that job, don't marry that man. You know all these things. And we do it anyway because you didn't listen to the dread. Yes. Dread in me is a sinking feeling. Yeah. It's the, I'd rather poke myself in the eye with a stick than do that.

Yeah.

That's dread. Listen to that and don't go that way.

Yeah.

And then there's another reaction that you'll have to the work, and I call it teenage eye rolling. Right? I don't have them, but I was one, and I was a bad one, right? So

yeah,

teenage eye rolling means you know it has to happen, but you hate it.

Yeah,

outsource that. Yes, that's somebody else's work. You know it has to happen, but you shouldn't spend your energy on it because it's gonna suck the life out of

you. Out of you. Yeah.

Right? And so my third response, the one that I'm looking for I call it buzzy roller coaster.

Yeah,

buzzy roller coaster is personally in my chest. It's how I feel. I'm fine in line for the roller coaster. I'm fine on the roller coaster. My moment of abject terror is when they put you into the slots and you're next. Yeah, I'm scared and excited at the same time.

Same time. Yeah.

If I'm scared and excited at the same time, that's the direction I'm supposed to be going.

Yeah, absolutely. Right.

So step 1, what do you want? Step 2, break it down into actionable, maintainable pieces. Step 3, interpret how you feel about those pieces. So you know if A, you should be doing them, B, if you should be outsourcing them, or C, if it's the right path.

Yeah.

And then it's, it's get results. It's collect the data. What happened? People ask me, how do I learn how to make better decisions? You learn how to make better decisions by making decisions and then figuring out How did that go? How's that working for you?

Yeah, I think— sorry, no, keep going.

I think you go through the debrief.

Um,

you go through the debrief on all of it. How did it work out? Well, I didn't listen to the dread. I married the guy. And here we are, right? Like, whatever it is. And then the process starts over.

Yeah.

Right, you take that data and you go back to the top and you go, what do you want? But now you're gonna do better because you're now making data-driven decisions as well. And it's just a loop.

And you're working to your own— you're understanding yourself and getting to understand what works for you and why it works, which is— which then forms and creates consistency, which adds to leverage. That's something that I, that I love when we talk, when talking to groups is everyone goes, but don't I need to do this? And I have to do that. And I must do this and I must do that. And it's like, okay, business is, you know, relationships, it's business development, and it's marketing, however you want to say that. But there is 4 things in each of those buckets that are going to uniquely work for you. It doesn't mean you have to do all 12. You just need to find the 4 that work for you. And pass over what doesn't— what you don't want to do, as you've articulated so beautifully.

Well, and if in that taking action is where you figure out, I know I have buzzy roller coaster, that's my thing. Wait a minute, I don't actually know how to do that thing. Let me go find someone who does, who can teach me.

Yeah, exactly. Leverage.

Get the resources, right? The resources to Follow that path.

Yeah. And it's almost that, um, the, the, the step-by-step helps you form the strategy to continue of that continuous improvement of understanding yourself. And I almost, I, I hear myself saying it's almost you're tricking yourself into success because you're creating the habit. So you've sort of almost got to play the trickery game initially.

But I'm a big fan of the trickery game. Like, please, you buy the outfit that you only wear to the gym. So you'll go to the gym because you want to wear the outfit.

It's—

I have zero— I said, this is my business, not my mother. I don't need closure, I just need it to work.

Yeah.

And if that means I have to put bumpers in my gutters so that I can play trick-or-treat, I don't care. Whatever tool that works for you is perfectly fine, as long as it works.

As long as— exactly, as long as it works. Yep. Beautifully beautiful. Um, one of the things that we did talk about also at the beginning of the show was one of your free resources that you have for the audience. I'm just gonna pop that up on the ticker so people can see that as well. Can you explain what that is and how that might be able to help people and they can download it?

So absolutely. So one of the things that's been making me nuts is this whole multiple streams of income.

Yeah,

I get it, I get it. If you're saying I have multiple streams of income, you need multiple streams of income, you need— okay, fine. If you're talking about your rental property, your business, and your investment portfolio, go for it. What I'm watching happen over and over and over again in the entrepreneurial space is they— people think they need 4 different businesses.

Yeah.

And if you haven't mastered growing one, I promise you, 4 is not easier. 4 is not easy. You're confusing the marketplace. Nobody knows what you do for a living. And so they smile and grin at you and they nod and they walk away slowly.

Yeah.

Now, that being said, I do believe in not putting all your eggs in one basket, right? So if you have a business, first of all, you have the best asset you could have because you have complete control over it. So what I did was I created a— and it's a workbook because it has the teaching points and then questions that you can go through and answer. What about building multiple streams of income within your

business?

Within your business.

Yeah.

Right. So we still have the focus. And I'll tell you, this is not for like, if you're under $50K, $75K, build your first 6 figures. Like, don't make yourself crazy. Don't go out and do all 5. Pick one.

Yeah.

Again.

Yeah.

Keep it simple. Start with number 5. Any business can do number 5. That's finding the money that you're— it's hidden in your business because we lose track of it so fast. But it's the idea of start by building multiple streams of income within your business.

Yeah.

So again, I come from marketing, business strategy and marketing. So as soon as I hear, well, I do this, this, and the other thing, I'm going, market confusion, you know, Danger Will Robinson does not work. Do not recommend.

Yeah.

So that's what that is. I've created a workbook about creating multiple streams of income within a business that satisfies the don't put all your eggs in one basket, but at the same time doesn't create confusion and overwhelm that might just derail the whole thing.

Yeah. And isn't that so easy when you take— when you do diversify and look at other things, you get— end up in that bright shiny objects and your focus is And if you chase 2 rabbits, you're not going to feed yourself and all those sorts of things that we've heard before. So I love the fact that the multiple income streams are from within the one business. So, and for those that are watching the show, you can actually see that going across the ticker. For those that are going to watch this replay later, that'll be up on all of the social media platforms as well. One of the other things I'd love to ask you is, what's your favorite one-liner?

All right, I'm gonna age myself here a little bit. Not that much. It's from The Matrix. It's from The Matrix, and the line is, there is no spoon.

There is no spoon.

Yes. So in The Matrix, if you know the story, it's a make-believe world that's being fed into their brain. And the people who understand that— there's a kid at some point in the movie, and he's holding a spoon and he's bending it with his mind because he knows it's not real.

Yeah.

And later in the movie, you've got Neo and he's on an elevator. It's very dramatic. And Trinity, he's got her like— it's kind of like right out of Star Wars, or they've got her around the arm and he's going to cut the wire on the elevator to let the elevator drop and save himself, right? But he's scared. And so the thing that he says right before he does that is, there is no spoon. Like, it's all made up. And for me, my tagline in my business is be in charge, take action, get results. And the be in charge thing means there is no spoon. I get to decide. I get to create what I want. Don't live on leftovers. If you don't make the decisions for you, if you don't create what you want, you're literally giving— someone else is. Someone else is. There's no— you get to do whatever you want.

And enjoy every moment of it. Yeah,

if you choose, absolutely.

And isn't it a choice? I'm going to— there's a phrase that keeps coming up to mind. I've been umming and ahhing whether it's appropriate to say it. So I'm just going to say it.

Always. It's me. It's always appropriate.

And one of my friends refers to that roller coaster essence that you talked about as shit-cited.

Oh,

yeah.

Absolutely.

That kept coming up in my— Absolutely.

I have to use that. That's fantastic.

Yeah, we need more of those shit-tight moments, right? That's what propels us forward, that fear and that excitement. And I think that's been the highlight for me, is recognizing and being able to acknowledge the difference between the dread and when that bubbles up and how we can tap into that and use that, uh, for good in our business and for the leverage.

And I always

say what they say,

And when I feel it, my response now is always, all right, here we go.

Yeah, exactly. You can play along with it. Yes. Yeah, exactly. And what's one of your tips or the favorite thing that you also like to do as it relates to engaging with your audience?

I'm gonna— I thought about this and I kind of flip it a little bit because I don't think it matters. Here's— I, I think it all works.

Yeah.

The thing that people miss that makes all the difference in the world is what I call doing the work before you go to work. Who are you talking to? Who— like, who is your— they call it an avatar, you can call it whatever you want— ideal client? If you don't know who you're talking to, it waters down everything.

Every, every message. Yeah.

So, I say it's kind of like '80s ab machines. They all work. You got— you just do it consistently. It works. Some works better than others. There's no more magic bullet. We're past the golden age of build it and they will come online. They will, I promise you. I promise you without fail, as soon as you figure it out, they will change the algorithm. So, it doesn't totally matter. To me, those are insta tactics. Yeah. Who are you talking to?

Yeah.

If you figure that out, the rest comes.

Does it? Does. Yeah.

Who are you talking to? How do they receive information? Not how do you want to put it out there. How do they want to receive it?

Yeah. Which ties beautifully back into the gentleman you talked about who turned his business around with your help because he went from being a— he became the thought leader that he was in a demonstrative form versus the vendor that he was being. So he actually became, which is exactly what you do, more of himself and found that the processes—

I didn't change anything about what he delivered. He's fantastic at what he does.

Yeah.

It's just, can you package it in a way That puts the other person's priority front and center.

Yeah.

Whether it's their pain point, what they want, their priority.

Yeah. In their everyday language, in, in a way that they need to, to, to see it, read it, feel it, whatever, um, that resonates with them. And then they can have that. They can have one of those roller coaster moments.

They can get buzzed on roller coaster. They can go, all right, here we go.

Yeah, and isn't that exactly the, the essence and the experience that his clients had in the moment of him delivering that?

Absolutely.

Because of him being able to achieve those 3 large sales in a row.

It's the reason I love marketing so much. To me, out of the whole thing, out of the whole whatever category for client fulfillment, all the different things, marketing is the aha moment. Marketing is when you give somebody the opportunity to see something's possible that they didn't think was possible, to have a different thought that they didn't have before. Marketing properly is when you create those situations for people.

Yeah, we refer to that as the resonance of, of a client being able to envision themselves because of the vision That you've displayed, that they go, wow, that's me, or that's the transformation I seek.

Can you imagine getting to do that for people?

Yeah, it's exciting. I'm getting goosebumps thinking about it. Yeah. As we come to the close of the show, and I knew we'd get to the end really, really quickly once we got on our roller coaster ride.

Our own personal roller coaster with each other.

Is there any closing, anything closing-wise that that we haven't covered that you'd like to cover in this last little bit?

I would tell you that whatever it is that you think you want, go for more. Oh, go for more. Because when I ask people what they want, they think about it, they get a hit, and then they lower it, and that's what they say to me.

Yeah, don't

lower it.

Go with what resonates first. Don't lower it. Thank you, Erin. Incredibly insightful. It's been an absolute pleasure talking with you. Thank you very, very much. Just for the people that are listening and want to know what's happening in our next episode, our next episode is going to be on Tame the Dragons of Distraction and Reclaim Your Self-Worth. So a nice add-on to the very insightful conversation that we've had today. So again, thank you very, very much, Erin, for sharing so much with us. It's been a pleasure speaking to you. Thank you very much, and we'll look forward to sharing with you again on another episode of Success Secrets Exposed. See you for now.

Thank you.

Thank you.