In this episode, I'm going to ask you,

are you a shark or are you smart enough to be a humpback

whale? Hi, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset

coach. And welcome to the Weeniecast.

One of the core tenets of

successful manifestation is knowing that you don't chase, you

attract. And I would argue one of the core tenets of

building a successful business that supports you living

your ideal life is that you do not chase, you

attract. There's so much noise online for

chasing methodologies and this is really at its heart, hustle

culture. And I want to name right off the bat, because I know some of

you are going to be like, but Katie, like, I work hard and I do

hustle. Like, what's wrong with that? There's nothing wrong with that. I hustle

as well. I work very hard in my business and I train my

clients. I don't even have to train them on this. They work very hard in

their business as well. One of the things that I have to work on with

them is get them to work a little less honestly because they burn

themselves out. I attract a lot of workaholics in my business,

but when we think about hustle culture

and what is being taught to new business owners and to business owners who

want to scale into seven figures is

there's this idea that if you just work harder, if you just work

an extra 5 hours a day, if you just kill yourself

a little bit more, then you're going to be more successful.

And I think that's bullshit. And actually I don't think it's bullshit. I know

it's bullshit because it's not sustainable. If you

build a business where you are working twelve

hour days, cold dming people, chasing people

down, being really aggressive in order to get clients,

guess what? Your business is always going to require

you to work twelve hour days where you cold dm

people and chase them down and be really aggressive to get

clients. It's never going to get easier. And while

sure like you might get some clients who are really happy, who

may give you some referrals, you can't count on referrals to build your business.

One of the things I always tell my clients is you want to have the

ball in your court, okay? And this is a tennis metaphor. I actually do know

a little bit about tennis, okay. I played it for a very short time

in high school. I quit the team, however, because my partner didn't like that

I was playing to have fun and not playing to win.

Jackie Blut, I didn't understand you back then. I still don't really understand

you now. But I kind of get it, actually. There was one

moment during a tennis tournament that I realized, like, I was not

meant to be in team sports. And it was when one of our

best players, she was playing singles and she lost a game. She was crying, and

I'm like, why is she crying? I don't understand. What's the big deal?

Like, our school had, my graduating class had 79 people in it.

It's not like our school was getting visits from people

who are going to give scholarships out for tennis playing. We

barely had enough people for a team. So here's the thing about tennis. When you

have the ball in your court, you're able to hit it back. You're able to

score. When you're building a business, if you're trying to build a

business around getting referrals, the ball is always in the other person's court.

It requires them to do something. They have the power, and they

can either hit it back or not. It's kind of like playing fetch with Luna.

She doesn't understand the concept. She thinks the concept is, you throw the

ball, I go catch the ball, I go get other balls, I cram them all

in my mouth and I hold them and I try to keep them away from

you, which makes it really hard to continue to throw because she has all of

them anyway. We're not building

a business that requires you to work 12 hours a day if that's your

dream. If you love work so much that you've always dreamed of working

twelve hour days and burning yourself the out and always being exhausted,

I'm not here to take that away from you. Go do your thing.

However, if your dream is to have some freedom and

flexibility, and by that, I mean you want to be able to

wake up at a reasonable hour, like 07:00 a.m. in the morning and have a

healthy breakfast and maybe work out and

have time to meditate or do whatever it is that

gets you on the right foot to have the perfect day and

then log into work for a couple hours, meet with clients, have

a nice lunch where you get to sit outside and maybe play

fetch with your dog. If they actually know how to play fetch, go back and

do a few more hours of work, and then maybe go for a walk with

a friend if you feel like it and actually be able to

plan life in a way that you get to enjoy

it rather than what can I fit into my workday? If you

want to follow the advice of the hustle bros and you want to hustle and

grind, as they call it, be my guest. But if you want

freedom and flexibility, then you need to invest your time

in developing an attraction culture in your business.

Attraction culture means you do the least amount of

work, that gets you the most amount of

results, and you set up systems so that once you do

the initial groundwork, you don't have to do it again,

and you let people come to you. This is also called inbound

marketing. And this is exactly how I've built my business, to

multiple six figures by creating content,

sharing it on LinkedIn and now TikTok and Instagram.

And I create this content speaking to my ideal clients, talking about their

problems, the things that are really going on for them, the fears they

have, the frustrations they're experiencing in starting or growing their

businesses by creating content, talking about what they want more than

anything, that maybe they haven't even told their best friend

about because they don't think it's actually a realistic desire.

And by sharing my own story, sharing the struggles that I

overcome, sharing how I designed my approach to running my

business, that makes the way I live my life possible. Not that I'm

hopping on private jets or driving a fancy car.

I drive a 2012 Fiat 500. Okay, it's not

fancy, but I get to live life on my terms. I get to spend time

with the people that I love. I get to play fetch with my dog

who doesn't understand fetch whenever I want.

And because I've designed my business in this way, the more work

I put in, the less work I'll have to do in the future. And this

is possible for you, too. So let's break down some of the advice that the

hustle bros are giving you, and then let's talk about what the alternative

is. How you can lean more into attraction culture in

your business and inbound marketing so that you can

get more results in less time. So I recently did a test

about how long it actually takes to cold DM

people. And so. Oh, what am I going to say next? Well, you'll

have to keep listening to find out. But first, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel,

squirrel, squirrel.

So I recently did a test about how long it actually

takes to cold DM people. And so I

scripted out a cold DM that made it very clear that this was an

experiment that I was not actually trying to sell anything. And as

a proof, do not buy anything. That's one of the instructions I gave to everyone

I cold DM'd and then I made an ask, if you want to

respond, just send me a picture of your pet or your favorite animal. I got

so many pictures of people's pets. I was delighted. It made my

day. But I set a stopwatch and my

goal was to cold DM this message, this cut and paste

message to 20 people as fast as possible. And I was going to

customize just a little bit. So instead of just having it be a cold message

with no name, I needed to go in and type out manually

hi and then enter their first name. Bare minimum of work. It took

me nine minutes to cold DM 20

people without any further

customization. Now these cold DM's were

so basic. When you're cold dming, you like, you

have to know that you're not going to get a response if it's obviously a

cut and paste message. And if you're not investigating their profile and seeing

what's relevant to them, they're not going to buy. So

what I did was never going to be effective. Even if I was trying to

sell something. I did the math and it took me minimum of two

minutes to go and examine someone's profile and get the general gist

of what they care about, what they talk about, what their focus

is, and to then put in like a simple little sentence that kind

of makes the thing sound like I'm directing it towards them specifically.

Still not great, still not a specific message to

them and what their pain points might be. So if it took nine minutes for

me to actually copy and paste and put their name in and let's just say

I'm really efficient, two minutes per person to scan their

profile, see their content and customize that message a little

further, that means to reach 20 people, it would take me

49 minutes. Okay, I have ADHD,

so we know that. Just trying to gear myself

up to sit at my computer and do something that's that boring and that

repetitive, let's add another 30 minutes just to get into the

flow of that. Now, I looked up the return on

investment of cold Dming, and typically to get one

appointment you need to cold DM 100 people, which

means that 20 people is not going to get me

an appointment. Maybe if I did 20 people a day for one week, I might

expect to get one sales call, but that's 5 hours

just for one sales call. If your closing percentage is

25%, which is a good closing percentage, that's

one client a month. For some people that might be good enough. But

if you're trying to ramp up to full time. And you want to

have a full book of business as fast as possible. That's not enough. Which means

you're going to have to do 100 people a day, which means that's close to

4 hours of cold dming. And that's only if you are

your most efficient. If you are just focusing and not getting

distracted. And that's not even counting the angry messages,

you're going to get back with people being pissed off that you're cold dming them.

That's not factoring in the Dave Harlands of the world who are going

to try to f with you. If you don't know who Dave Harland is, you

have to go and look him up on LinkedIn. He's hysterical. He messes with skin

cameras all the time. It is so entertaining. And because this

is what you're spending time on, this is how you're going to get clients forever.

There's never going to be a time where you don't have to do

this. Now imagine also instead you were

invested in doing an attraction marketing

method. And let's just say to write a sales post

for LinkedIn, it takes you an hour, you know, because you're starting and you're

not a good writer yet, and you really have to think things through, through and

you have to edit as you go. Takes a little longer. So let's

say instead of using 4 hours a day for a week

to just cold Dm a bunch of people who are mostly going to be annoyed

with you and then vow to never, ever work with you and they block you.

Let's say you devoted 4 hours a day to

writing posts for LinkedIn, posts that speak to your ideal

client, that name, what they're struggling with, that talk about

what they want more than anything, that invites them to book a call with

you. And let's say each day you're doing 4 hours, and in

those 4 hours you're just writing four posts because it takes you a while.

You realize that's a month of content, right? If you were to write

four posts a day for five days

in a row, that's a month of content. And

as you continuously post to social media, it could be LinkedIn, it could

be TikTok, it could be Instagram. You're building your audience, you're

building credibility with people because you are being consistent. So

you might not get a ton of sales calls in the first month you post

these. You might not get a ton of sales calls in the second

month you post these. But people are watching. Thousands

of people are watching. Not just a measly hundred people a day who are getting

your cold DM and your clients. They may not be the ones who

comment. They may not be the ones who like that post. Actually, they're probably

not, because oftentimes our clients don't want anyone else

to see that they need this help. They have some shame around having this

problem, but they're paying attention. And every single

time your name pops up, their brain will light up and think, oh my gosh,

this is the person I think I want to work with. Let me see their

post. And even if the post doesn't resonate with them, even if it's not about

what they're struggling with, you've still reminded them that you exist.

So let's weigh the impact here. Okay? So

if you want to cold DM 100 people a day for a week,

you will reach 500 people, most of which will vow to never work with

you. A good chunk will probably block you. Some people

will be rude to you, others will with you. And probably

one, two, five people will book a sales call. So you might get a

client. Or you could do 4

hours of work a day for five days, create 20 pieces of content.

Those 20 pieces of content will each get thousands

of views, and they will be repurposable, so you won't have to

ever write them again. You'll just have to do a quick little update, make it

relevant to the moment. Which would you prefer? If you

prefer to only reach 500 people by cold dming and having all that bad

juju, then you need to stop listening to my podcast right now. I cannot help

you. But if you want to work smart and not hard, you

have found your people.

When you have ADHD, you know that what

you're interested in right now will not last. How many times have you gotten

a new hobby, found a new hyper focus, and then gotten bored of

it two months later? Unfortunately, for my little stint as a

screen printer, it's not like the screen printing could just be

forever generating after I did it once.

But with content. When you create attraction content to get new clients,

it can work for you forever. Until you want to update it, until you want

to evolve it, and then you just have to do it one more time. The

hustle bros don't know how to do this. They know how to work hard, not

smart. They're also going to tell you you need to get up at 05:00 a.m.

you need to get up before anyone else is up because your competition's out there

and you need to beat them to the punch. When you're focused on an

attractive methodology for getting clients, you're not worried about the

competition. In fact, they're not even competition. They're your

colleagues. When someone books a sales call with you, if

they're not the right fit, you have all these incredible humans that you can

say, hey, you know what? I know and trust and, like, this person, and I

think they'll be a better fit for what you're needing. That's the beauty.

It's not an ocean full of sharks. It's a beautiful,

symbiotic environment where everyone kind of supports everyone

else. Fun fact, did you know that humpback whales will actually

protect gray whales and their babies from killer whales on the

coast of California? Like, literally, they will intervene, and they will

protect these pods of whales from other whales. And

also, humpback whales are the only mammal that we have identified

that will organize across species to go hunting. They will get

dolphins and seals and elephant seals and all

other kinds of mammals who eat sardines. And

they will organize them to swirl around these massive schools of

sardines off the coast of Monterey, California, and they

will all just be able to pass through with their mouths open and get a

full belly full. Like, how incredible is that?

Wouldn't you prefer to be a humpback whale to a shark? Wouldn't you

prefer to have, like, dolphin friends and elephant seal friends and, like, little

harbor seal friends, then be the kind of animal that when you swim

through, everyone skedaddles and gets out of your way, who is constantly looking over

your shoulder? Well, I don't know if sharks can actually look over their shoulder. I

don't think their necks work that way. But I imagine if you're a

shark and you understand your job as a shark, you're aware that there are other

sharks who might be bigger than you, who might see you and think, mmm, that

looks tasty. This is what I spend a lot of time thinking about.

If you're listening to this and you're like, okay, cool, Katie, that is obviously your

roman empire. I have a different roman empire. Please

perplex everyone and put that in a review for this

podcast. Just share the random shit you think about. That would be

hysterical, and it will confuse everyone on Apple

podcasts. Spotify, what have you. They'll think, what the fuck is this person

talking about? It will make my day. I don't know about you, but

I'd prefer to have the humpback whale vibe than the shark

vibe. Some other bad advice that the hustle bros will tell you

is to go and like comment for hours on other people's

content because then they owe you and they will comment on your stuff

back. They'll tell you all these strategies to

get thousands of followers, which by the way, those thousands of

followers are usually fake. They'll get you joining their

group to increase your followership and increase engagement. These are called

pods and over time they actually hurt you.

And actually, when you're involved in pod behavior,

you're not getting your ideal clients seeing your content. You're only getting other

people who are also desperate for clients seeing your content

versus if you're just creating content that's specifically geared to

your ideal clients to build trust and empathy and a

relationship. Who's going to see that? Your ideal

clients. People who are desperate for clients probably aren't gonna be

commenting on your stuff cause it's not gonna be relevant to them. Unless of course,

you're a business coach and you help people get clients. Then they might be a

client who entered my world just by seeing my content. And

she joined a challenge in December and has just been in the

periphery, circling and circling and circling. She just joined BYOB,

my build your own business beginner program last month. And right

away she feels more focused. Right away she is hitting the ground running.

She's having incredible conversations with her ideal client. She's sending out

proposals and she's getting super hyper clear about what she's been doing

that's been ineffective in the last year. This beautiful human

Dena Vince just this morning sent me an AI generated

song about me. It actually made me highly uncomfortable

because when people do thoughtful and nice things for me, I get uncomfortable. And when

I get uncomfortable, I laugh. But it was genuinely a really sweet

gesture for her to do. But this is the kind of client that you

attract when you are invested in attraction culture in your

business. So here's a little snippet. Now Katie make a

minus she's a. Strategy just queen knows how

to make that money machine with her business

mindset she is on top teaching

us all never gonna stop stop being

a weenie take control.

Katie's here to help body and soul.

No more excuses. Just take the lead,

start your business,

don't go to sleep.

Squirrel and music about you aside, don't you want to

have people in your business who are so excited to work with

you that they do thoughtful things like this? The hustle bros, I promise

you they don't have people who are working for them that are doing this kind

of stuff anyway. The point of this is work smart,

not hard.

If you like the idea of this, if you're like, yeah, absolutely. I don't want

to work four to 12 hours a day dming people who don't want to

hear from me, and I want to do the work once and I want

it to be able to attract high paying clients who are perfect for me, who

might serenade me with some music at one point. Know that this is what I

develop with my clients. I literally have a whole

framework that walks you through step by step how you

develop a good four months worth of content that's

designed to attract your ideal high paying client,

that you can write once, and every four months you just go and

reschedule it. I even have a whole ClickUp tip

templates that you can store everything in that will

automatically remind you when a piece of content has had

enough time to be reposted again. And if you're curious about

how you can get access to this framework, then I urge you to book a

generate income strategy call with me where we can talk through if one of

my programs might be a good fit for you and your business. And if you

want to book that, then go to

weeniecast.com/strategycall. But for

now, remember to be a humpback whale and not a shark.