Squirrel, squirrel, squirrel. In this episode, we're going to talk about the

stranger things we think are causing the problems in our business,

but that may not actually be the case. Hi, I'm

Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach, and welcome to the Weenie

cast Squirrel. One of

my favorite reviews I've ever gotten from someone who worked with me was

actually something that she hated about me and learned how to deal

with during our work together. And it was this that when she came to a

call with me and said, here's my problem,

I would jump ahead to something else that she didn't see was the problem.

But after about 5 minutes, I'd bring it back to her problem and

she'd understand that I had bypassed what she thought was the problem because it wasn't

actually the problem and figured out the seven other

things that are actually causing the issue and helped her see a

way to solve it. And the reason this is one of my favorite reviews is

because I didn't realize I was doing it. Now, I didn't stop doing

it because it's one of the most valuable things about working

with me. And I can say that because my clients have told me that when

they come to me with what they think is the problem, I

don't waste time on a problem that isn't actually a

problem. And because I do what I do, I understand on

a deeper level what's actually the problem. I ask you,

the listener, wherever you are in the world, think about

your business. Think about the problem as you see it.

And if you're somewhere where it's safe to do so, just write it down, put

it in your phone, write down what that problem is. And if

you can think of three different reasons why that problem might be coming

up, I want you to jot those down as well. Now, I bet you

it's all bullshit. I bet you the

problem as you see it and the reasons it's happening aren't actually your

biggest problem. There's probably something that is deeper

or in another sphere of your business that is

up right now. And I don't want you to feel like you're a

failure for not being able to identify what your problem is.

There's a reason why business coaches exist, because

honestly, I can't see my own problems myself.

I need outside eyes to take a look at what it is I'm

building and poke holes in it. Even though I do this every day.

You can be an expert at what you do. It's really hard to apply that

expertise to yourself. There's a reason why doctors

need their own primary care doctors. I don't see a whole

lot of gynecologists doing their own pap and pelvic exams. Ow. It's just

not going to work unless you're really flexible.

It's going to be really inconvenient to try to do that on your own. Do

you see a lot of proctologists giving themselves a prostate exam?

I don't think so. Not how it works. They need someone else

to do that. Thankfully, what I do is not as

invasive. Clothes stay on for my sessions. It's amazing.

I'm pro clothes on all the things. No speculums, no

stirrups, no bending over. Unless, like, going

into a yoga pose helps you ground. Then you can bend over during our session.

But anyway, I digress. Just because you're the expert

of your business doesn't mean you have to be the expert of all parts of

your business. It doesn't mean that there's something wrong with you. It doesn't mean you're

being a bad business owner. It doesn't mean that you're lost and you're going to

fail. It just means that you're a human

who's too close to what it is that you're building. So I want

to go through some examples of how this shows up with my

clients, how this can really bite them in the butt if they don't have someone

who can point out what the problem actually is. And for the

sake of privacy, all these names have been changed.

I'm not calling out any of my clients and identifying them,

saying they really suck at this and this thing is happening that wouldn't

be kind or ethical. And to make this fun,

while I rename them, we're going to go with names from the show stranger

things, which was a little scary for me last season. I'm not going to lie,

I'm pretty angry that my friends weren't all taken care of. And yes, I

do consider characters in shows my friends. If I spend enough time with you,

you just don't have the choice. Even if you're fictional.

Like, this just makes me so happy. Let's dive

in, shall we?

First and foremost was my client, Joyce. Yes,

Joyce with the Christmas lights. Joyce and I had been working together for just

over a year when she came to one of our sessions and she was really,

really upset. She'd had a string of sales calls that she

was pretty sure they were her ideal client. And when she

got to the yes no call, which is something I train on in my programs.

They were a no. And she couldn't figure out why, because when

they filled out the intake form, they had all the problems of her

ideal clients. When she got on the phone with them, they had

all the issues and all the goals that her ideal clients

typically have. But for some reason, after they'd thought

about it for a bit, it was just a flat no. And so when she

came to this call, she was pretty upset. And in her mind, she thought that

the problem was that she needs to be better at handling

objections on that yes no call. And if you're not familiar with that term,

when you handle an objection in a sales process, it's like someone

says, oh, well, that's really expensive. And instead of agreeing with them,

yeah, it's really expensive, you help them see the

logic of why it's not actually that expensive. Like, it

might be expensive, but the alternative of not doing this thing is

going to be more expensive in the long run. And I'll

be honest, the scale of selling that I train on,

yes, there are going to be some objections, but you're not really fighting with people.

You're not trying to convince them that this is the right thing. So

it's not often that my clients have to do

objection handling, because the way I train, you're

perfectly set up to determine if this is the perfect client for you or

not in the first 20 minutes of that call. So as I'm talking

through this, don't think, oh, God, I'm going to have to convince people to hire

me. That sounds miserable. You don't. You genuinely don't, but it is

helpful to kind of know what your typical objections are going to be

and how you answer those questions. Joyce comes to this call.

She's really upset. She was really, really excited to work with some of these people.

And in that yes no call, it was a no. And she was convinced

there was something that she could have said in the yes no call to

change their minds. And so she was really determined

to go through all the reasons that they gave that they didn't want to do

it and how she could have rebutted them. And I said no, because

that wasn't the problem. Typically, when you get to the point where an ideal

client is saying absolutely no on a yes no call, it's a, they've

made their decision, they're not going to be changing their minds. That yes no call

is a yes no call. If they have more questions, that will

help them make a decision from there. If they're still an unknown. If

they're still in the deciding phase of everything, then yes. You can answer questions in

a way that moves them closer to yes than to no. But

generally, if they have decided no, there's no coming

back. It's kind of like falling off a cliff and holding

on to dear life, to part of the rocks, like in Princess Bride,

but not having a rope thrown down. It's really hard to climb

up to the top and haul yourself over the edge. It's not impossible, but it's

unlikely. I'm glad that he survived in Princess Bride because that's a good movie.

And it wouldn't have been the same if he just died then. So it's funny.

Side story. So when I was in high school, there was this

boy in my friend group who was obsessed with that movie. It was his favorite

movie from childhood, and I'd never seen it. And he gifted it to me for

my birthday. And it was the first time

someone did a test with me to see

if I liked their movie, which I think is the weirdest thing that we

do. If we have a movie that we love and we're dating someone,

we make them watch it. We watch them as they watch it to

make sure that they laugh in the right places, that they get it. If you

do this to people, can you stop? Just stop.

It's awkward. I mean, yeah, watching a movie is fun, but it's

awkward when you know you're being tested on how you're reacting to the movie.

It's very hard to get into the movie. You're actually ruining their experience.

And if it's really a deal breaker for you, then just ask people if they've

seen it and if they like it anyway. Moving on. So,

Joyce, it was clear that something was going wrong in the

initial sales call, because if a person who she thought was

an ideal client was that dissonant with her

offer that they were a flat no when they got to the yes no call,

there was something going on from the very beginning. So what I insisted that we

do, instead of going into objections, instead of talking through

how she can convince them in the yes no call to be her client, I

insisted that we do a role play. If you've ever been in sales, if you

do role play, like, you know, is the most awkward thing in the world, it

is not fun. It is cringeworthy. You're pretending

to sell your stuff to someone who's pretending to be your ideal client. It's a

very artificial thing, but it's very helpful. So we start the

sales call, and Joyce starts going through the holistic

selling manner, at least the way she's kind of recreated it for

herself. And I remember very

distinctly at the end of our role play call

where we pretended to hang up. I remember just thinking,

where the did Joyce go? She

disappeared. What I got was Joyce pretending to

be an HR professional, like Joyce being the lady at a

call center who's going to process your return for the jeans that you

ordered. And Joyce, if you're listening, you know who you are, and I love you,

and I'm so happy we had this conversation. And my feedback for her,

very cleanly was, where the did you go? Because I wasn't on

a call with Joyce. I was on a call with someone who doesn't even

exist. And to give you an idea of Joyce,

like, Joyce is a prolific writer. She

writes just the way she know you can read

her content on social media and feel like you know

her, feel like you are best buds with her, and

you understand kind of what's going on in her life, what she values, what drives

her nuts. So when you get on a call with someone like Joyce, who's such

a strong writer that they can portray themselves in the written

word and they're not there, or they're pretending to be someone

else, it's jolting. It undercuts all the know.

This is one of the reasons why I advise people when they're first starting out.

Don't hire a copywriter. Don't hire someone to write your

content for you. Because even

squirrel, squirrel. Oh, Joyce is actually texting me now.

Oh. It's a picture of her dog taking a little

snooze. I love my clients anyway. Squirrel. Squirrel.

Squirrel. But one of the reasons why I advise my clients when they're first starting

out, instead of hiring a copywriter or someone to write their content for

them, write it yourself. Even if English is your second language,

even if you're not good, even if there can

be all the reasons in the world why you shouldn't write your own content. Here's

the thing. If you're bad, writing content and putting it out there

will make you get better. If English is your second language, guess

what? Writing content and putting it out there will help you learn

English better. If you're a chicken and you're just afraid of putting your

written word out there, guess what? Doing it over and over and over

again will show your nervous system that you're not going to die and

you'll stop being afraid of it. But the most important thing here is

that even if you're a bad writer, you're probably writing in

your voice. There's probably phrases you're putting in

your post that you say out loud. And when someone

books a call with you to learn about working with you,

subconsciously they will notice this. Subconsciously

there will be resonance between the stuff they've read that you've put out there

and the words that are coming out of your face hole while you're on the

phone with them. So what was happening for Joyce was she

was writing in her beautiful, eloquent voice on social

media, but when people got on the call, she was pretending to be someone

else. She was like putting on this air of

professionalism. And the reason she was doing it is because she was nervous. It's

scary to sell your services. It can feel good to kind of like

put on a Persona to get through the call,

but you have to understand that they may not realize why they don't

trust you, but it sows a ton of distrust

because where did my friend Joyce go? Where did the lady who wrote

all those prolific, beautiful things that really spoke to my soul and

all the problems I'm experiencing at work, where did she go? I wanted

to talk to her on the phone and I might be misremembering this, so

don't quote me on this. When we hung up, she had two sales calls that

were on the calendar for the following week and one of them closed. One of

them said yes. The point is that once she realized that she

wasn't being herself and she just made that small change

and took off this Persona, it made a

world of difference. Now, the next example, I've renamed Steve,

but I will out his real identity.

So

the next person I want to talk about and the problem that they think that

they have, I've renamed this person because I'm excited about the stranger

things theme. But to be real, it's Neal. He's my

producer. It's something that I've talked to him about before and he's very comfortable with

me sharing. So don't think, like, I'm just throwing him under the bus and he's

awkwardly having to put this episode together. Be like, oh, my God, I can't believe

Katie told everyone about this. She's so mean. He gave

me permission. He gave me permission to out him. So thank you, Neal. Who I'm

going to call Steve for the rest of this episode Steve from

Stranger Things. Anyway, do you like that intro? I really

did. Thank you. So, Steve,

when he's on a sales call with someone who wants to start a

podcast and they're looking to hire him to help them get it up

and running, one of his biggest fears is that they don't have

a clear enough idea of what the podcast is going to be around

who it's for. A podcast that's successful,

there are a couple of different kinds of success when it comes to a podcast.

You can have a podcast that has massive appeal

and millions of people listen to it, and you're basically

monetizing it by getting people to buy ads and to sponsor it.

And maybe you're selling a book on the back end, but really, it's

about getting a really high listenership. Or you could have something

more niche. But if you have something more niche, like, what is it that you're

leading them to? So, for instance, if you listen to my

podcast, you'll notice I often talk about my programs.

I refer to my programs. I refer to working with me one on one. There's

a reason for that. Because if you are my

ideal listener, chances are you're also my ideal client.

And at some point you may realize, hey, I could use some

help. If you're hearing my episode where I'm lightly

referring to my programs, you may have that seed planted in your

mind of, oh, Katie has a program. If I want help with this,

I should reach out to her first because I have established trust

with her. I've listened to her podcast for x amount of months.

I like the way she explains things, and maybe she's not even the right coach

for me, but maybe she knows someone who could fit me

better where I am. Sometimes some of you book with me, even though you

make jewelry or you want to start a restaurant. Two things that I am not

interested in coaching on. I can if you want to take it from

an ADHD angle, and you don't need me to advise on the business

model. But it is a sign of success for me

to get those calls booked on my calendar, because it means that

I was your first choice. So when Neil. I'm sorry.

Damn it. I.

He wants to make sure that they have a very clear idea of who

their audience is. And so what he has done up

until now, until I just told him how he's going to fix it, what he's

done up until now is when he gets to the end of the call, he

says, okay, great, I want you to go away, and I want you to think

about this. And let me tell you, when he did that to me, I basically

told him, shut up and take my money. I decided to hire you a year

ago. Like, I've already thought about it. Just where do I input my

credit card information? And we have a mutual friend who had also

booked a sales call with Steve. And she walked away

from the call after Steve told her to go away and think about it, thinking

that Steve didn't want to work with her, thinking that he didn't believe

in her podcast. And the beautiful thing about

this particular scenario is it comes from such a place of integrity,

right? Because Steve doesn't want to take someone's money to start a podcast

that he doesn't think will be successful. But he's also

shooting himself in the foot, right? Because he's sending these people away

and they think that he doesn't want to work with them. So they're either going

to start a podcast with someone else, or they're not going to start the

podcast at all, or they may also start it on

their own and not be as successful. None of those are good for

Steve. So what I literally just told him is

when he gets to that point in a sales conversation where he thinks that

their idea needs to be fleshed out a little bit more, instead of telling people

to go and think about it, there is an interim offer.

There's a new thing that he does where he books in a half

day idea session or a planning session, charges something like

500 pounds for it, and goes through

exactly all the steps and all the questions that this person needs

to be able to answer to have a really strong

proposal for a podcast, all stuff that he wants them to do on

their own anyway, but they're probably not going to do because they don't know what

they don't know. And honestly, it's stuff that he's going to have

to do with them anyway when they sign up, because he's going to have

to know all this information before they can launch.

There's no point where this is a wasted exercise, but they're far

more likely at the end of that to be like, oh, cool. Now I'm

so crystal clear on what I want this to be, so crystal clear on

the voice I want it to have. I know exactly who it's speaking to and

where I'm trying to lead them. Now, I'm ready to get started with you.

And if they decide at the end of the session that they don't want to

hire Neal, I'm sorry if they don't want to hire Steve. I promise

I'm going to be better with this. With the other ones where I'm more serious

about changing their names, it's because I'm looking at you like, your face

is just right there and I'm talking about you, and it's weird. And then I'm

calling you by a different name. Like, why do I think this is a good

idea? I don't know. Anyway, shall I leave you to it and come

back

later?Worst

case scenario, they decide that they don't want to work with Steve.

He hasn't completely lost any business. He provided a

service that helped them get to where they needed to be, and he made

some money from it. It's a win win for everyone.

So often the solution to the problem you have

is sometimes a completely different solution, and it's hard to see

that on your own. Sometimes it helps to have another set of eyes

in your business, to be able to point these things out

and come up with ideas that you can run with. And I'm just saying, I

would not be opposed to, like, a 10% kickback on those

sessions. Steve, no worries. Email me your

venmo. Or I could just send you another water container.

I do want, like, a light blue one. That would be nice. They can match

different outfits.

The next problem, that's not actually a problem. We're going to

refer to this person as Hopper. And Hopper is actually an

amalgamation of a bunch of different clients that I've had. The

problem that Hopper has in his business is he

is doing all the things that he's supposed to be doing.

He's interviewing his ideal clients. He's designed an

offer that he can actually make money from. He's showing up on

social media, and Hopper's frustrated because he's not getting

clients from social media. Now. Hopper tends to

think, oh, well, this social media platform sucks. I should move to another

one. And then when he moves to another one, he gives it a couple of

months, and then he's like, oh, well, this social media platform sucks. I should move

to another one. So Hopper tends to think, okay, well, it's a social

media platform. There's just, like, my ideal clients aren't here. The

algorithm sucks. It's punishing me for weird things I

don't get. Like, the problem is outside of my sphere. It's

outside of my control. So what I'm going to do is I'm just going to

keep changing social media platforms. Don't be

like Hopper. And actually, it works out perfectly because Hopper's

hopping from platform to platform. Get it? But I'll be here all

night, folks. That wasn't even planned

anyway. The thing that Hopper doesn't want to hear is that it's not the social

media platform, it's his content.

It's him. There's no shame in being bad at writing

for the first couple of months of creating content. There's no

shame in having a learning curve of writing

sales copy. People spend years learning how to do that.

One of the things that my one on one clients really appreciate about it working

with me is that as they're learning to do this, they can send me

absolutely anything that they write and I will edit it and mark it up for

them. And in early days there are portions that I will actually rewrite for them

so they can see how their idea can be translated

into a sales post that will attract clients. If you don't

have that kind of feedback, if you don't have that kind of guidance

and you're trying to do it on your own, the thing that's going to help

you get better is just by doing it for longer, being

consistent, posting every day, seeing which posts get more

engagement, seeing which posts actually attract your ideal clients,

recreating that model over and over and over and over

again. No one likes to be told that their

content sucks, but it's actually one of the best

pieces of feedback you can get. Because guess what? If you're creating the

content and it sucks, you can make changes

to make it suck less. You can work on it and

improve your writing so that it actually starts getting better and

starts being more effective. Now, hoppers

are quintessential ADHD, right? We want results

now. We don't like waiting for results. We want to be

able to post one post and get five clients out of it and get

that dopamine hit and have three of those people sign up and then be

rolling in money and then be able to go out and buy a bunch of

things on impulse because it gives us more dopamine, and then be able to post

something tomorrow and get five more clients out of it. It's not how it

works. What I tend to tell my hopper clients is

that social media is not a gumball machine. You don't put one quarter

in and get one gumball out. It's like a

real warped gumball machine where you have to sit there with a whole bucket full

of quarters and just keep feeding the machine and feed

the machine. You could put 47 different

quarters in this machine and then one gumball comes out and

then you put in like 18 more and three come

out and then you put in two more and another one comes

out. It is sporadic and it takes time, it

takes consistency, but it's not tip for

tap. Squirrel, squirrel, squirrel. Had a whole

moment in my head where I'm like, where did that saying come from? Does it

mean what I think it means? Not sure. Anyway,

in my mind when I hear tit for tat, I'm thinking like

someone's giving their boob in exchange for a tattoo, but

that doesn't make sense. Is it? You're showing a

boob for a tattoo? I just don't understand. I'm going to have to look this

up. And also, what kind of tattoo artist is like, taking

payment in one boob? Flash? No,

tattoos are expensive. If they use up a whole day

doing a tattoo for just to see one boob, they're not going to be

able to pay the rent with that unless it's a great boob.

It could be an amazing boob. I haven't seen a boob that is that impressive,

but there could be those out there anyway.

And the cool thing about being a hopper is that you can

call bullshit on yourself at any point. If you realize you're

being a hopper and you're jumping from platform to platform and you're

blaming the algorithm and you're blaming the platform for not having your

ideal clients, you're 100% in control of that.

If you get real with yourself and you look at your content and say, oh,

this actually kind of sucks, this isn't going to get clients. You

can reach out for help, you can book a call with me, you can go

and sign up for a copywriting course. There are so many options for

you. But rarely, rarely

is it the platform's fault. And I say rarely because

Facebook sucks unless you have a really specific Facebook

strategy that is aligned with your ideal clients.

There are some of my clients who I do coach through a proper Facebook

strategy, but not for everyone.

The last client that I will go over, we're going to go for

eleven. And the eleven that I'm thinking of, this one client

like eleven, well, I mean, eleven actually did have magic

powers. This client thought that she could magically

create content on a platform and speak to her ideal

clients there. Her ideal clients were not on that platform,

but because, and I'm talking about LinkedIn. So this one client,

her ideal clients are not the types of people who are going to

spend a lot of time on LinkedIn. It just doesn't have a whole lot to

do with their nine to five. Their social life is not going to be

there. It's not like a relaxing place where they're going to go and hang out

after work, after they have a gin and tonic and they are watching the

television with their spouse. LinkedIn's not the hangout

place. But eleven was convinced,

because she was seeing all these other coaches be successful

on LinkedIn and successfully selling to people who had

money, that she'd be able to reach her clients

there. She, unlike Hopper, who's the

exact opposite, really. I mean, she was so convinced

that she would be able to get clients from LinkedIn that even though

I was advising her to give up on it and transfer all of her attention

to another platform, she refused. And she

still, I don't think, to this day, has gotten a client from it, and we

haven't worked together in a long time. So I may be wrong, and this is

something that I think happens for those of us with ADHD who feel

like we have to prove that we can stick with stuff because we have

this fear that people are going to think that we're flighty and we just jump

from thing to thing, and when we see it working for other people, we're convinced,

well, if it works for them, it'll work for me. And so we can kind

of misplace our commitment and our momentum.

And it comes from a place of feeling like you need to

prove that you can be consistent, feeling

like you need to prove that you can fit in with the

cool crowd. And I'm not saying people on LinkedIn are cool, but

if you're in the coaching space and you're

constantly hanging out with other executive coaches that are charging

$20,000 for six months of work with one client where

they're only doing two sessions a month, and they're getting those clients through LinkedIn,

it can feel like, oh my God, I'm missing something there.

I'm absolutely missing out on business that is existing on LinkedIn. I have

to be there. And even eleven, from

stranger things, like her magic, isn't going to work there. That'd be

like a really, really powerful mind control thing to control

gazillions of people all over the world to be on LinkedIn when they don't want

to be there. And I wanted to bring up hopper and eleven

back to back, because I want you to see that the problem is not

always going to be one way or the other. It's not black and white.

If you see that there's a problem in your business, that's preventing you from making

money, and you're not doing anything to fix it. You are

choosing to not make money. You are choosing to suffer.

You are choosing to struggle. And while that can be a

trauma response, that can absolutely be something that your nervous system

seeks out because it feels familiar, and because it's familiar,

it feels safe. It's not going to do shit for your business long

term. It's not going to do anything for your self esteem.

It's just gonna keep you in struggle. It's gonna keep you thinking that

there's something wrong with you, and there's not. I mean, unless you're a

dick like Eddie Munson, it depends on you.

It depends on your business. It depends on your ideal.

Know, you can't listen to one part of any of this

advice and think, oh, that's exactly what I need to do in my business.

Because your business is going to be completely different. The problems you see in

your business are going to be wrong in a whole different set of ways. And

if you're stuck, if you're at this point where you're like, I feel like this

thing is going wrong, and I've been doing everything I can to fix it,

and it's just not writing itself, and I'm still not getting clients, and

I'm having trouble getting attention and growing my audience, and blah, blah,

blah, blah, blah. Then, dude, book a call with me. Book

a generate income strategy call. The link is in the show notes. Go to

weeniecast.com strategy.

And what we'll do is we will talk about what your big dream is

for this business. We'll go through what you think the

problem is, and I'll help you identify what the problem actually is.

If it's super obvious, which it usually is, and

then if it's a fit for both of us, if you're really

looking for help, then we can talk about different ways to work together

to help you move through the problem as I see it. And maybe the

problem as you see it, you might actually be on point, but oftentimes people have

a very hard time seeing what the problem actually is.

What does tip for tap stand for? Oh, it was originally tip for

tap. It recorded in 1558, but it evolved

into tip for tat. It's a really interesting

linguistic thing, is that vowel pronunciation

is always like, flip, flop,

tic, tac, toe. It'll always go with the eh and then

the a and then the o. It'll never be flop, flip,

or tat for tit, but that's true. Across languages.

Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel, squirrel.