Ditching the Dreaded Artist Boom and Bust Cycle!
Are you trapped in the artist boom and bust cycle in your business? You know, the one that feels like you're endlessly chasing your tail, crafting offerings that are masterpieces, then hustling like mad to sell 'em?
Totally draining and far from a sustainable hustle, right?
Well, in this episode we're looking into smart strategies that'll flip the script on your creative biz and keep your bank account just as joyous as your creative spirit.
In case you prefer watching me talk about the Boom and bust cycle that can impact our business.. video version's above!☝️
Finding the Magic Beyond the Price Tag
Alright, deep breath now, we're going deep - like lost city of Atlantis deep - into the true essence of our creative services.
Slapping a price on creativity feels icky, right? But here's the kicker: our true value isn't just about the cashola.
Ever scratch your head wondering why one artist's fees are sky-high compared to another's?
I guess it's time for busting myths and tackling the emotional whirlpool of pricing, from the freak-out of financial shame to the highs and lows it brings to both creators and clients.
Do you feel icky about charging what you're worth? time to vent.
Leave me a voice note with your story around money and I'll give you my thoughts in a future episode.
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the Secrets of High-End Market Mastery
Aiming for the stars in the high-end market isn't about flaunting your ego – it's about savvy biz smarts.
And market research is the queen bee of business strategies.
Dream of being the crème de la crème in your niche?
It's all about understanding your clients' value perception.
I spilled the tea on why being top dog is more than just jacking up your prices, and why the martyrdom mentality of service doesn't have to mean peanuts for pay.
Your fastest path to cash is always going to be one-on-one clients who are paying out of their own pocket to work with you one on one.
Once you have enough money coming in monthly from one on one clients, that's when you can start rolling out a group that is at a lower ticket, that's more affordable to people who can't afford to work with you one on one.
Now, the reason we don't go there first is because if you're just starting out, you don't have the audience for it yet.
Unless you're independently wealthy and you can manage to just kind of hang out and promote your list and post to TikTok and post to Instagram and to LinkedIn all the time and build that audience, you need to be making money along the way.
Enjoying this episode about the boom and bust in business? Great! Would you Please review it?
Or choose your favorite app:
Marketing Mastery: The Secret Sauce for Longevity
Let's talk visibility, peeps, because being seen is the lifeblood of enduring success. It ain't just about the what; it's the how that can make or break you.
Getting into the heart of marketing mastery requires dissecting strategies for the economic whirlwind we're all caught up in.
Thinking of slashing that marketing budget during downturns?
Whoa, Nelly – think again!
A lot of companies, when hard economic times fall on us, which happens fairly regularly because that's how the world works, they panic and they think, okay, cool, where can we cut money?
Where can we cut expenditure within our budget?
Oh, cool, marketing.
We're going to cut marketing.
It seems like kind of a fluffy thing.
And so executives in their panic mode will think, okay, anything that's not delivering a clear return on investment gets cut.
Well, what happens?
They cut the marketing and then the sales team starts struggling because they don't have as many leads. They don't have as many people coming in and buying their stuff.
So then they have to start working harder and harder and harder and then they start not making quota.
Dancing the 'Scale, Fail, Bail' Tango
Scaling fast feels like the dream until you hit a snag – then it's decision time: stick it out or cut and run?
Truth bomb: not every golden idea pans out.
In the episode, I'm talking about embracing the flop as part of the biz journey.
Think of it as business detox – clearing out the duds makes space for the gems.
earning to bow out gracefully without the guilt trip? Pure freedom, baby.
Ever experienced that?
Oh, it's a game-changer.
Read enough and just want to get my help? Contact me here!
Money Talks: Crafting Your Pricing Like a Pro
Who knew squashing bugs could enlighten us on pricing services? But it's true.
Let's take the pest control service that you want to pay thousands of dollars per year to, so you can have a bug free house.
Now compare them with the kids that will take a magnifying glass and burn ants on the sidewalk.
Not saying I agree with them. Yet, essentially, they're doing the same thing, but with different impact.
Now let's ponder – how's your relationship with moolah influencing your pricing moves?
Are you playing small because you're just happy to be here?
Time to unpack how embracing your creative joy in business can become the ultimate client magnet.
Let's get real about valuing our 'art' and ourselves.
Click play on the episode, and I'll talk you through all the ways you, too, can avoid the boom and bust cycle in your business!
Your next steps after listening
Realising it's time to work with me? Book your free intial strategy call with me - weeniecast.com/strategycall
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Katie [00:00:00]:
In this episode, let's talk about the three things you need to do to avoid the artist boom and bust cycle in your business. Hi, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach. And welcome to the Weeniecast!. As someone who has benefited from a gratitude practice many times in my life, I can tell you from lots of experience working with clients that sometimes you it actually you up. Going into your business and operating it from a position of I'm so grateful that I have work can be one of the worst things that happens to you, because when you become so enamored with the fact that you have work, you set yourself up for what I call the artist boom and bust cycle. Now, this is a business model that will burn you out, prevent you from ever saving for retirement, keep you constantly stressed and freaked out that you're going to go broke. And it's something that happens to a lot of people.
Katie [00:01:06]:
So I want you to picture an artist. And they've spent the last three months creating a whole bunch of paintings. They're beautiful, spend a lot of time, they do a lot of detail. Their work is phenomenal. But in the last three months, they haven't been selling anything. So as you can imagine, they're a human that live in a human meat suit, that needs shelter and water and food and occasionally to go out and have fun with friends and might make the occasional impulsive purchase because they probably have adhd as well. Now, unless they are independently wealthy, all that costs money. And if they're not bringing money in, it means it's eating away at their savings.
Katie [00:01:49]:
So the artist now has a lot of inventory, but they don't have a lot of money. So they go to market. They perhaps do a partnership with a gallery, and they start selling their pieces now because they're focused on selling. They have money coming in. It's really cool. They start being so grateful that people are interested in their work, and they get so invested in selling their pieces that what are they not doing? They're not producing more art. So they're so grateful. They're ecstatic that people are coming into the gallery, they're viewing their work, they're putting bids in pieces, are going out the door, money is coming into their bank account, but what happens? At a certain point, they run out of inventory, and so they have a full bank account, but they have nothing more to sell.
Katie [00:02:37]:
So all that gratitude, all that excitement about, oh, my God, people actually want to buy what I make kind of fucked them up. Because they got so invested in it that they stopped creating art. So what do they have to do now? They have to go back into their studio. They have to start cranking out art like crazy. All the while they're living off the savings that they just made, and that money starts dwindling. And then again, they have to take all the inventory that they've created and they have to go and put it up in a gallery and start selling it. And this cycle can continue forever. And as you can imagine, it doesn't create a sustainable life.
Katie [00:03:19]:
It's feast or famine. And if you're creative, which, I mean, most of us with ADHD have some element of creativity, even if we're not in the art space, it's really hard to be creative. When you're so stressed about surviving, when there's that massive money stress hanging over your head that you might not be able to afford rent next month, how are you supposed to come up with something creative that people actually want to buy? It creates way too much pressure. There's an author that people have either very strong opinions for or against. Elizabeth Gilbert. She wrote eat, pray, love. One of her books that I absolutely love is actually about her creative process. And the book is big magic.
Katie [00:04:02]:
And in this book, she actually talks about how she waited tables until her third bestseller because she never wanted to put the pressure on her creative work to pay the bills because she knew that nothing would be more stifling to her creativity than having that pressure. Let's look at it from a pretty basic point of view. When you really enjoy being creative in your business, that's where you have the most juice, the most energy. That's where you attract people like crazy. When you're having fun, when you're invested, but when it starts feeling like really tough work, that's when things just become so much harder. That's when you stop having fun. That's when you feel like you're having to struggle for each new client, for each post that you put on social media, it takes so much more work, so much more energy, and it becomes exhausting. And sure, if you want to run your business like that, you absolutely can.
Katie [00:05:04]:
But I think there's a better way. So to be able to break out of the artist boom and bust cycle, we need to look at three different areas of how you are managing your business. And some of these are logistical. Here's what you need to focus on in your day to day. And some of them are energetic, some of them are the inner work that you have to do as an individual to be able to run this business and have it be successful in a sustainable, fun way. The number one place that might seem like a backwards way to start is you have to work on your money story. Your relationship with money will either support your success or completely you up. On the more mild side of this, when you have a shitty relationship with money, you're not charging enough, so you're underselling your services.
Katie [00:05:55]:
You're probably attracting clients who aren't your sole clients, who maybe don't respect your time as much as people who would be paying more would. And in the worst case scenario, you are so drastically undercharging that you are living at the poverty level. You're barely able to feed yourself and your family. And when I start working with clients and we talk through what their pricing is and how much they think they can get away with charging, there are a few things that come up. Now. There's a huge conversation around your belief in your personal worth and what you deserve to make and what your work is worth paying for. And to this, I would argue, there's no price that can be put on you. You cannot attach worth to yourself.
Katie [00:06:46]:
You are priceless. There's no one like you. There's no one who does work the way you do work. And quite frankly, your clients, when they come to buy your service, to buy whatever it is that you're providing, they don't give a fuck. They genuinely do not care. What they care about is what your service is going to provide them. On the other side, at the basic level, let's talk about a service that people can actually pay for, right? It's bug killing. If you have termites in your house, chances are you've hired a company to come and terminate the termites.
Katie [00:07:24]:
Now it's important to do this because termites can cause extensive damage to the structure of your home. And if there's extensive damage to the structure of your home, guess what? You're going to have to move out because it's not safe to live in. And what happens when a house is not safe to live in? The resale value plummets, because whoever is going to move into that house next has to either do extensive renovations and reinforcing, or they have to just tear it down and rebuild. Different value than moving into a house that is fully functional and move in ready. You're going to pay to have someone come and kill the bugs. Now, the same service, I want you to think of like the kids that will take a magnifying glass and burn ants on the sidewalk. Not saying I agree with them. Essentially, they're doing the same thing, but with different impact.
Katie [00:08:19]:
The ants aren't harming anyone. The ants are just going about their day. They're enjoying the sunshine all of a sudden, like, wow, this spot is kind of warm. A little warmer than it was over there. Wow, it's really, really hot. This is my impersonation of an ant. I don't know if they're that articulate, but there you go. Now, you wouldn't go down the street and ask little Johnny if he was willing to come over and use a magnifying glass on your termite.
Katie [00:08:43]:
That's not going to be the scale. So when you think about your service, I want you to think about what is the greater impact it has. Are you the equivalent of seven year old Johnny who's kind of a dick with a magnifying glass? Or are you actually protecting the integrity of someone's house? Are you saving them money? Are you saving them time? Are you saving them heartache? Maybe this house was built by their great great grandfather. It's been the family for a really long time. And it would be a failure on a massive level to their whole family if they were the one to let it disintegrate. Now, chances are, when you think about the terminator, the guy who's going to come around and kill the termites, you're not looking at him and being like, what's your inherent value as a person? What's your hour worth? What do you deserve? You're not asking the guy to sit down and tell you about all the good deeds he does and what organizations he volunteers for and how many kids he has and what his hobbies were growing up and genuinely like. Is he a funny person? Is he a kind person? Is he the kind of person that returns his shopping cart at the grocery store? Because we know those people are worth more. No, you're not asking that.
Katie [00:09:52]:
You're asking how soon will the bugs be gone, and also how much damage is already done. How much are you saving me from? Your worth has nothing to do with the price of your services. And I know it feels like it does. I know it feels like you have to justify every dollar you charge your clients. If it feels that way, you have some serious money work to do. Now, this is one of the things that I do in all of my programs, to varying degrees. Because if you don't feel comfortable charging a certain amount for your work, then guess what? You're never going to be successful. There's nothing.
Katie [00:10:33]:
There's no tactics, there's no strategy that is going to fix your business if you inherently don't believe that you deserve to make enough money to live. Now, the other side of this that can happen is when you think about raising your rates, you start feeling an immense amount of shame on behalf of your clientele. Because if you have a lot of experience of not being able to afford the things that you want and feeling a lot of shame around not being able to afford it, then guess what? You're going to project onto your ideal clients. You're going to project that awful, shameful bad feeling that bubbles up in your stomach every time you look at a price tag and think, oh, my God, I can't even afford this. I don't have enough money. I don't have enough resources to be able to get the thing that I really want. People think about this as if it's not a big deal when we can't afford something. It's actually a moment that can be incredibly traumatizing to the human spirit.
Katie [00:11:30]:
Because when you're in a position financially, when you can't afford the things that you want and you look at a price tag and it's too much, and it makes you have to think about how few resources you have, what it actually activates for you is your survival mode. Because money and our access to money is survival in the here and now. If you don't have enough money for shelter, you don't have shelter. If you don't have enough money for food, you don't have food. And if you're a person who is living in the world, who wants things, which we all do, and you're bumping against these things that you want, and you're thinking, okay, well, I'd like to buy this, and you're seeing the price tag and it's beyond what you can afford. You're constantly being reminded that you barely have enough to live. You're constantly being reminded that you can't live life the way you want because you're not powerful enough to have the resources to do what you want. That is crushing to the human spirit.
Katie [00:12:25]:
And also, it's not true for everyone. If you're running a business and you are selling something that you're spending time producing or providing, you do not owe anyone affordability. Just because you've had that experience of looking at a price tag and feeling that shame, just that sinking, hot feeling in your stomach of, oh, no, I can't have this, doesn't mean other people feel that. People when they see that they can't afford something, for some of them, it becomes a vision board item. I can't tell you how many times I've gotten off a sales call with someone and the call ended with them saying, oh, my God, this is so inspiring. I know. I want to work with you. I absolutely want to work with you one on one.
Katie [00:13:13]:
It's outside of my budget right now, but this is my goal now. The fact that I can't work with you, that has lit a fire under my ass. I want to work with you in the next six months, and I'm going to make it happen. Just because you feel shame around not being able to afford something and just because you have some trauma tied in there doesn't mean that it happens for everyone else. If you've done the work and you've done the proper market research, and you know that there are buyers for what you do, there's always going to be a price range. There's always going to be the most affordable and also the most high end. The only thing that's keeping you from being high end is your pricing and your attitude towards it. And sure, it'll be so sad for someone if they really want to work with you or they really want to buy your thing if they can't afford to get it right now.
Katie [00:14:02]:
But that's not your problem. That is not your responsibility. Your responsibility, first and foremost, is to fill your own damn cup. And if you can't fill your own damn cup first, why are you making your stuff so affordable to everyone else? We have this belief, especially in industries where we're helping other people, to actually offer, like, a spirit level transformation to people, that we also have to be poor. It happens in the creative industries as well. To be a true creative, to be a true artist, you have to starve. There's only honor in creating if you're also starving. I think we get this poverty mindset and this sense of it's honorable to be poor when you're helping other people from religious systems.
Katie [00:14:52]:
If you were to look at the church throughout the middle ages in Europe, one of the requirements to be part of the church is you had to give up all of your earthly belongings if you wanted to be a priest, if you wanted to be a nun, if you wanted to be a monk, I'm sorry, you can't keep your family castle and all the horses and the art collection and all the silver and gold and be a priest at the same time. Or at least technically, you weren't supposed to. People did it. But we've been taught this model that you have to give up all of your earthly goods in order to do really good work. I mean, sure, if you want to make that noble, you can. But let's also look at the business of the church. It's a multi billion dollar company, essentially, okay? You're not going to be a priest or a nun or a monk in the catholic church, especially back then, and go starving. I mean, unless you were on a fast or something, which is something people did by choice.
Katie [00:15:40]:
But it's not like the church is going to be like, oh, sorry, we just don't have any money to feed you right now. No, it's one of the reasons why people joined the church. They believed in the whole God thing, too. But that's an aside. It's a model. It's essentially a model to make sure that your needs are being met. And there's nothing wrong with that. But you looking at that and saying, okay, well, there's something noble about not having anything, about being broke, being poor and helping people.
Katie [00:16:08]:
Unless you belong to a greater organization that's covering your basic needs of your meat suit, it's not noble, it's just stupid. At its heart, it's caring more about what other people think of you than about taking care of yourself. I know this sounds kind of pessimistic, but there's no one out there who's spending as much time worrying about you taking care of yourself than you. No one is going to make sure that you have food on the table like you will. No one is going to make sure that you have enough money for retirement. That's your job. If you choose to prioritize other people thinking you're noble and thinking you're this good person and all this stuff over having those things, that is on you. And if there's deeper money work to be done here, that is also on you.
Katie [00:16:55]:
But the beautiful thing is you just heard this bit of this podcast, I just called you out on some bullshit and now you're aware of the problem, which means you can go fix the problem. Congratulations. And I know there are many coaches and consultants out there who genuinely want to help people who cannot afford to work with them at their current rate. You might think that you're being elitist by only working with people who can pay a higher amount. At its core, you don't have a greedy problem, you don't have an elitist problem. You have a business model problem. Especially when I work with coaches and they want to be able to work with people who can't afford like $1,000 a month or more on coaching. One of the things that we prioritize, first and foremost is their one on one business.
Katie [00:17:37]:
Right. Your fastest path to cash is always going to be one on one clients who are paying out of their own pocket to work with you one on one. Once you have enough money coming in monthly from one on one clients, that's when you can start rolling out a group that is at a lower ticket, that's more affordable to people who can't afford to work with you one on one. Now, the reason we don't go there first is because if you're just starting out, you don't have the audience for it yet. Okay? Unless you're independently wealthy and you can manage to just kind of hang out and promote your list and post to TikTok and post to Instagram and to LinkedIn all the time and build that audience, you need to be making money along the way. But if you don't have enough followers, if you don't have enough people on your email list, you're never going to be able to fill up a group. It's just not going to happen. And I know some of you are probably thinking about that business grew that you saw online.
Katie [00:18:29]:
That's like, well, what about creating a digital course? What about creating a PDF that I could sell on Instagram? Your fastest path to cash is always going to be one on one clients. Jumping to a digital course, jumping to a PDF that you're going to sell, sounds sexy, but the failure rate is extraordinary. There's no proof of concept when you jump into that. One of the best things that you can do to save time and money and frustration is to start off by building your one on one client list. Take the common lessons that you're working on with all of those clients. Turn that into a group program. Now, you want to run this group multiple times so you can test it, make sure there's actually a market for it. Understand frontwards, backwards and inside and out, what kinds of questions come up throughout the group.
Katie [00:19:20]:
If there's anything you need to add to the curriculum, if there's anything you need to take away from it, and then, and only then, after you've done the one on one work and the group work, can you turn it into a successful course. And even then, you're going to have to change some things. You're going to have to tweak it. You're going to have to fine tune it along the way. You're going to have to also work on a different marketing plan because the marketing for a digital course is very different than it is for one on one coaching. The sales process is also different. There are a lot of things that you're going to have to figure out, but I'd rather you make money along the way than put all your eggs in a basket that is very highly likely to disintegrate and fall apart. You can absolutely offer affordable things in your business, but do it after you're already paying the bills.
Katie [00:20:06]:
Do it after you've already created sustainable money coming in. So your money mindset is one of the most important things that you need to work on if you want to avoid that artist boom and bust cycle. The second one is a priority shift. And I know for those of us with ADHD, prioritizing things is one of the hardest things that we have to figure out every single day. So I'm going to make this so easy for you. Your mind is going to say, oh my God, I'm so grateful for these clients. I'm going to prioritize them above everything else. Your clients who are already signed up with you, who are already paying you are absolutely important.
Katie [00:20:43]:
Of course you're going to prioritize them, but they do not hold the number one spot. You know what does? Visibility marketing. One of the reasons why the artist is constantly going broke is because they run out of inventory to sell. If you're a coach and you fill up your practice with ten clients and you're working on those ten clients and you kind of ignore your marketing, what happens when those clients start finishing? If you haven't been marketing the whole time, you start panicking. There's no pipeline. There's no list of people who are waiting to work with you. So you're kind of starting from scratch in your marketing and you're probably going to dip down into like four or five clients before you start backfilling them, which means you're going to dip below your cost of living and it's going to stop being fun. It's going to start being scary.
Katie [00:21:34]:
Your number one priority every damn day is to be visible because people can't hire you if they don't know that you exist. And remember that you cannot have consistent cash flow or a consistent business without consistent marketing. One of the saddest parts about recessions is that a lot of companies go out of business. And I know you're probably thinking, well, duh, it's a recession. Of course they're going out of business, not necessarily it's how they react to the recession that actually puts them out of business. A lot of companies, when hard economic times fall on us, which happens fairly regularly because that's how the world works, they panic and they think, okay, cool, where can we cut money? Where can we cut expenditure within our budget? Oh, cool, marketing. We're going to cut marketing. It seems like kind of a fluffy thing.
Katie [00:22:23]:
I mean, of course they know that marketing works. They wouldn't be spending money on it before if it didn't. But it's really hard to say, okay, well, this ad campaign or this marketing strategy is delivering x amount of dollars to us. There's no clear delineation between the two. And so executives in their panic mode will think, okay, anything that's not delivering a clear return on investment gets cut. Well, what happens? They cut the marketing and then the sales team starts struggling because they don't have as many leads. They don't have as many people coming in and buying their stuff. So then they have to start working harder and harder and harder and then they start not making quota.
Katie [00:23:00]:
And then because they're not making quota, there's not as much cash coming into the business. The business starts having to lay other people off. Maybe in the product side or in the customer service side, the clients you have start getting unhappy because the quality of the products have gone down. Maybe the support has gone down. Getting through to someone to re up your plan or whatever it is you're buying starts getting harder and before you know it, you are flirting with bankruptcy. Like I said before, gratitude can fuck you up. Yes, be grateful for the people who are working with you, who've hired you, who are buying your stuff, and also, they are not going to quit. They are not going to ask for their money back.
Katie [00:23:40]:
If you prioritize visibility, it's the difference between the mindset of a business owner and an employee. If you are constantly prioritizing serving the client as your number one and neglecting the greater needs of your business, you are not operating like a business owner. You are operating like an employee, which to your credit, you've only been trained to be an employee up until now. If you've worked any other job, that has been the training. Here's how you plug in and do the thing. No strategist thinking, you don't have to plan the greater path, but business owners have to do that. Your number one priority is always going to be visibility and never forget it. And of course, a close second is your paying clients.
Katie [00:24:26]:
Now, the third thing that will help you overcome the artist boom and bust business model. Ooh, what am I going to say next? Well, you'll have to keep listening to find out. But first, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel. Now, the third thing that will help you overcome the artist's boom and bust business model, that ugly cycle that will keep you constantly stressed out and freaking out about money, is that you need to scale, fail, and bail fast. And I know I made sure that that rhymed. I was really excited about the scale and fail because everyone knows about failing fast. And of course, scaling is important. But then I went through my brain hole of all the other things that rhyme with those things, and I figured out that bail fits in perfectly with this model.
Katie [00:25:15]:
I'm inappropriately proud of this. Okay. Anyway, so, scaling fast, you need to set up your business in a way that you will be able to step away from the day to day running as fast as possible. You are a human. You exist in this meat suit. Meat suits are not consistent. Sometimes they get sick. Sometimes they get injured.
Katie [00:25:36]:
Sometimes they get burnt out and tired and need a rest. Sometimes beings in other meat suits have demands on you, like children and spouses and family members. They need you to show up for shit. And that means you can't necessarily be in your business that day. So as soon as humanly possible, as you're growing this business, set it up so you're not the one who has to do every damn thing every single day. If you do that, you are literally setting your business up for failure because your business is solely dependent on your meat suit needing to show up and do the things every damn day. And that's just for people who don't have executive dysfunction. If you have adhd, like we talk about here a lot, your executive dysfunction can absolutely get in the way of you doing things every single day.
Katie [00:26:26]:
Even if you're not sick, even if your kids aren't home with the flu or need you to come and pick them up from basketball practice. We all know that feeling of sitting at our desk with our eyes completely disassociated, thinking, I know what I need to do. Why can't I do it? Damn it, I'm going to fail. And just running ourselves ragged and exhausting ourselves by not even doing the thing. Set your business up so that can happen in the background so that other people can do that when you can't. You need to scale as fast as possible. Now, along with that, you're going to fail. One of the biggest red flags that I see with people who book a sales call with me, who talk about joining my programs or signing up to work with me one on one, is this immense fear that they have around failure.
Katie [00:27:14]:
They're so terrified to fail. Those are the clients that I've started turning away. Because if you're so afraid to fail, you're never going to try anything. And if you never try anything, you're never going to succeed. Failure is the only thing that is guaranteed when you start a business. I failed a gazillion times. I fail every single day in a million different ways, and I have the choice of saying, oh, wow, I failed. Oh, well, I better just quit now, because failure sucks, and I don't want to do this anymore.
Katie [00:27:43]:
If I'm going to fail, it's absolutely a choice I can make, or I could stick with my mindset and say, cool. That's one way not to do know kind of like how Edison, what did he do? He invented the light bulb, which, I mean, I have light bulbs all around me. I'm very grateful for this man, for inventing light bulbs. They make a lot possible for me and for you. But to get there, he failed a gazillion times, and his whole mindset was, I didn't fail. I found a thousand different ways to not make a working light bulb. You are on this massive adventure to find a gazillion different ways to not be successful. It is a wild ride, and it's one that you can either make fun, make part of the process, or you can have it be a big, scary forest that you don't want to step foot in.
Katie [00:28:26]:
Totally up to you. But I can tell you what you'll be doing a year from now if you're not willing to fail and it's working for someone else. And, of course, bailing. No one wants to bail on a project. No one wants to bail on a business. No one wants to bail on an idea that you were convinced was going to work. But sometimes you have to. Sometimes we have to look at the definition of insanity, which is trying the same thing over and over and over again, expecting different results, especially in business.
Katie [00:28:55]:
If you're trying to create a service and you have tried all the different ways to make work, and it's just not working, it's probably a sign that you need to bail. Now, of course, a lot of people bail too soon. This is one of the benefits of having a coach in your corner who can help you poke holes in all the stories you're telling yourself about why it's failing, who can help you really look at the data and see? Is there something wrong with your marketing? Is there something wrong with your sales process? Is there something wrong with the value proposition of what you're putting together? But one of the best qualities you can have as a business owner is knowing when to walk away, knowing when to quit. When I was in college, I lived in a basement apartment in this house, and the family that lived upstairs was so nice. And the mom was from Indonesia, and she was really into feng shui. And she'd always lend me books on feng shui. And she would tell me, like, if you want a boyfriend, you're going to have to clear out half of your closet, because in feng shui, if you want someone to come into your life, you need to have space for them in your life. Now, I had a lot of clothes that wasn't going to happen.
Katie [00:29:58]:
I wasn't leaving half of my closet empty. But I want you to think about feng shui in your life, okay? If your life is full of something that's just not working, is there going to be room for a more profitable opportunity to come in? Probably not. If you are working and grinding 60 hours a week on a business that isn't working, no one else can really understand that it's not working to that degree. So there may be people out there who are like, oh, my God, I would love to partner with this person, but they're too busy. They would never be able to be available for money making opportunities. You need to have space for those opportunities to come in. And sometimes that means you have to quit stuff that doesn't work. And I know as someone with ADHD who starts a lot of things and doesn't finish them and then holds a lot of guilt and shame around all the things that are left half done, like the 27 knitting projects that I'm still in the middle of that I probably will never finish, but I will continue to pack up every time I move and take it to my new place and then unpack them and put them in just the right spot in my apartment so that when I do feel like finishing them, because I am still convinced, even though I know better, that there's going to be, like, this magic moment where the motivation just kind of pops up and I'm like, yes, that scarf that I gave up on seven years ago, now is the time I'm going to finish this.
Katie [00:31:28]:
I know we can have a little bit of shame around quitting things, because in our minds, we have this story that we're not finishers, and we get so latched on to this idea. Like, I got to finish this. I got to see it through. Because we don't want that story to be true. I know it can feel really icky for us to quit shit. Because every time we quit something, that voice just gets stronger and stronger. There's more evidence that we can't see things through, that we're not finishers. But that's the beauty of having ADHD, is our minds move so quickly.
Katie [00:31:59]:
And sure, sometimes it means that you start a sweater and then you buy all the equipment for it and you don't finish it. And sure, that's unfortunate, but it's not the end of the world. Now, it might put you in the position where you own more yarn than your car is worth, kind of like where I am. But it doesn't diminish you as a person. It doesn't diminish your worth, doesn't diminish how much you deserve, and it's not proof that a business isn't going to be ultimately successful for you. So remember, scale fail and bail as fast as you can. Squirrel. Squirrel.
Katie [00:32:30]:
If you're ready to stop being a weenie and actually run a business that makes money, then go ahead and book a generate income strategy call with me by going to weeniecast.com/strategycall. On this call, we will talk about your goals, your dreams, and your frustrations in getting there. And if it's a fit for both of us, then we can talk about different ways to work together. My hair is so staticy when I was a kid, so I have, like, fine hair, but I have a lot of it. And when I was a kid in our minivan, I used to walk in. All of a sudden, my hair would just be static, like, sticking into the roof. And I'd start screaming bloody murder and crying. Like, my hair is electrocuted and, like, freaking out.
Katie [00:33:16]:
And my mom had to keep a squirt bottle in the the car, and she just turned around, like, squirt my head, and I feel like crying. My hair is electrocuted. Anyway.