Redefine Success: Don't Let Google Decide for You
Are you constantly asking strangers on the internet to define your success?
Hi, I’m Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach.
On this episode of The Weeniecast, I’m asking if you're letting Google dictate what success should look like for you.
That needs to change.
It's time to break free from societal norms and craft your own definition of success.
Many of us have asked, "Why can't I be successful?"
Usually, after a setback or when the fear of even trying takes hold.
By relying on external benchmarks rather than defining success on our own terms, we set ourselves up for disappointment and confusion.
I’ll share my own journey of shifting from an “ideal self” to my “favorite self.”
This shift not only redefined my personal criteria for success but also amped up my happiness and fulfillment.
Listening to this episode, you'll pick up some actionable insights on redefining what success means to you personally, how to align it with your values and passions, and some myth-busting around wealth and doing good in the world.
Time to stop taking cues from Google searches and start crafting a path that resonates with who you truly are.
By the end of this episode, you’ll not only have the tools to define success on your terms but also feel more aligned and motivated to pursue your aspirations.
Make this the moment you shift from being dictated by societal norms to living by your own meaningful path.
Listen in and let’s redefine what it means to be successful, together.
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Links referenced in this episode:
Companies mentioned in this episode:
- answerthepublic.com
- Gay Birthday Club
Mentioned in this episode:
Go Vote Kamala Harris - 2024
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00:01:29
I'm going to ask you a question.
00:01:31
Why can't I be successful?
00:01:33
Hi, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset
00:01:36
coach, and welcome to the OUI cast.
00:01:40
There's this great tool that you can use for creating content,
00:01:43
and it's called answerthepublic.com you can pay for
00:01:46
a membership and you can do as many searches as you want, or you
00:01:49
can use their free membership.
00:01:50
It's fine.
00:01:51
You just are limited to how many searches you can do.
00:01:53
But basically what you can do is you can put in keywords like business
00:01:58
coach or social media or HR consultant, anything that has to
00:02:04
do with what you do for your clients, and it'll come up with the
00:02:09
most commonly asked questions on Google and how they're phrased
00:02:14
and what are the questions that are asked, and you can actually
00:02:18
take those questions and use them as content.
00:02:21
And this is actually not even the point of this episode, but I
00:02:24
shared this with you because I want to talk about this, because
00:02:26
I was using this tool to frame up some of the ways that we look
00:02:31
at success as a concept in the wrong way.
00:02:35
I was using this tool to see what kinds of questions get asked
00:02:39
about how to be successful.
00:02:41
So I put in the search criteria, be successful.
00:02:46
And some of the questions that came out that have a very, very high
00:02:51
score for being asked are, can I be successful in life?
00:02:56
Can you be successful without college?
00:02:59
How to be successful in life, how to be successful in business,
00:03:02
how to be successful in college, how to be successful in
00:03:05
school?
00:03:06
When will I be successful in life?
00:03:09
When will I be successful in general?
00:03:11
Oh, this one I love.
00:03:12
When will I be successful?
00:03:13
Astrology.
00:03:15
I don't know if that means that they're, like, wanting to be
00:03:17
an astrologer or if they're, like, wondering if, like, there's
00:03:21
something in their stars that are going to mean success coming
00:03:23
up.
00:03:24
And along that vein, which zodiac signs will be successful?
00:03:27
Why are businesses successful?
00:03:30
Why can't I be successful?
00:03:33
And I think we've all asked this question before.
00:03:37
Why can't I be successful?
00:03:39
And it's usually after a failure.
00:03:42
It's usually after something didn't work out, or maybe we were
00:03:46
even just too chicken to try.
00:03:48
And I think we're asking the wrong questions when we're asking
00:03:52
about success.
00:03:54
Because to ask how to be successful, you have to first understand
00:03:58
what the definition of success is.
00:04:00
And that's different from person to person.
00:04:02
And a lot of people have never actually thought about what their
00:04:06
own definition of success is.
00:04:08
We just Kind of take at face value that being successful, quote,
00:04:11
unquote, is about how much money you have or how big your house
00:04:15
is or how fancy a car you drive.
00:04:18
We connect being successful with, you know, what university did
00:04:23
you go to?
00:04:24
Was it an Ivy League?
00:04:26
Do you have an advanced degree in business?
00:04:30
We talk about how successful people are by how much money they
00:04:33
make and maybe what kinds of clients they have and how good their
00:04:37
branding is and all that jazz.
00:04:41
In relationships, we even assign success.
00:04:45
People who are married are deemed successful in their relationships,
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when I know a lot of married people who would not necessarily
00:04:52
agree with that.
00:04:53
We assign success in so many areas of our life.
00:04:56
But is it your definition of success or is it this kind of, like,
00:05:00
amorphous society definition that it looks a very particular way?
00:05:06
My definition of success recently changed.
00:05:09
And this has actually been almost like the North Pole shifted
00:05:13
in the world for me.
00:05:14
And it happened when I realized that I no longer wanted
00:05:18
to follow my ideal self.
00:05:20
I no longer wanted to turn to this idealized version of Katie in
00:05:25
my mind to see, okay, well, what's the next rung up for success?
00:05:30
Like, what's the next win I should be going for?
00:05:32
It shifted when I started looking at my favorite self.
00:05:37
What is my favorite self?
00:05:38
Who is she?
00:05:39
What does she like?
00:05:40
What does she enjoy being?
00:05:41
What does she enjoy doing, and how does she see success?
00:05:45
I want to go into that deeper in a moment.
00:05:48
But first and foremost, we need to bust a myth about success.
00:05:52
Oftentimes people think of success and they associate it with
00:05:55
how much money you make, and it becomes this.
00:05:58
Either or.
00:05:59
You can either be successful and wealthy, or you can do good in
00:06:05
the world.
00:06:06
It's almost like we've all internalized this whole model, you
00:06:09
know, created by the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages, where
00:06:12
if you wanted to become a nun or a priest or a monk, you know,
00:06:16
to enter the church, you had to give up all of your worldly possessions.
00:06:20
You had to release any claim, you had to property.
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You had to donate all of your clothes, all of the things that you
00:06:27
hold dear.
00:06:28
We've taken that model and we're like, yeah, absolutely, that's
00:06:32
how we should do it if we want to really be a good person in the
00:06:34
world.
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We want to make a difference.
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We want to help others.
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We also have to be poor, completely discounting the fact that
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the Catholic Church is like, what, a trillion dollar institution?
00:06:46
Like, in real estate, in money, in artifacts that they own.
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I mean, the paintings that are in the Vatican Museum alone create
00:07:12
a massive fortune.
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So if you were to give up all your possessions back in the day
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and go and essentially work for the Catholic Church, you'd have
00:07:22
your housing covered, you'd have food covered.
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You'd basically have all of the needs that you have as a human
00:07:27
being covered in the here and now.
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If you want to be a helper and you have this paradigm that you can
00:07:31
either be a good person and donate your time and have a real
00:07:34
impact on others and make a difference, we have this belief that
00:07:38
you have to do so while poor, you know, forgetting that we don't
00:07:42
have this institution taking care of us.
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And also, that's not true.
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Absolutely not true.
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You do not need to be poor.
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You do not need to struggle.
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Can you spare some change if you want to make a difference in
00:07:56
this world?
00:07:56
It's not an either or.
00:07:59
It can be both.
00:08:02
And actually, when you make it both, things get so much easier.
00:08:07
Few of the things that I've really explored with this whole model
00:08:10
of the favorite self is like, what does my favorite self love doing?
00:08:15
And what does she want more time to do?
00:08:18
And a few of the things that came up is running my nonprofit,
00:08:22
the Gay Birthday Club, which is about to launch.
00:08:24
I'm really excited for it and getting involved politically.
00:08:27
Not running for office, don't worry, I'm not.
00:08:30
I don't think I could handle that.
00:08:32
But supporting others who are.
00:08:33
Who are running for office, volunteering, helping them strategize,
00:08:37
doing marketing for them.
00:08:39
And let me tell you, when I first had the idea of my nonprofit,
00:08:44
I played small.
00:08:46
I talked to a bunch of people.
00:08:48
I felt out the idea.
00:08:50
I bought some books on Amazon on how to start a nonprofit.
00:08:54
I then felt really guilty that I had these books, books lying around
00:08:57
my house and I wasn't reading them.
00:09:00
And I started doing some research online.
00:09:02
I got really overwhelmed until I finally said, no, no, no, no.
00:09:06
Like, this is not working.
00:09:07
If I want to make this happen, I have to make this happen.
00:09:10
And I'm not making this happen by trying to figure it out on my
00:09:13
own.
00:09:14
So I did what I do best.
00:09:16
I threw some money at the problem.
00:09:18
I asked my incredible lawyer, David Freyman, to find an attorney
00:09:21
that he could refer me to because it's not his specialty, to
00:09:24
help me set up a nonprofit.
00:09:26
By the way, there are very few lawyers who do this.
00:09:29
It took him months to find someone.
00:09:32
And not.
00:09:32
Not because he wasn't doing it, because literally there are so
00:09:35
few attorneys who do this.
00:09:36
So if you're an attorney and you want to do something that there's
00:09:39
need for, you know, you might think about that niche, but money
00:09:44
made it easier to get started, right?
00:09:47
Because attorneys cost money, and especially for a nonprofit that's
00:09:51
not designed to make money.
00:09:52
And I will be able to pay myself back for what I've invested
00:09:55
so far.
00:09:56
It's not, it's probably not going to happen anytime soon, but
00:09:59
I'm, I'm years ahead of where I would be if I were trying to figure
00:10:03
it out on my own.
00:10:05
And actually, like, let's talk about this.
00:10:07
My favorite self wants to make a difference.
00:10:10
She wants to make sure that everyone knows that they are loved
00:10:13
and celebrated, especially on their birthdays.
00:10:16
And she's so excited for this idea of the gay Birthday club, where
00:10:20
folks in the LGBTQ community can sign up to get a phone call on
00:10:25
their birthday singing them Happy birthday, Happy birthday to
00:10:29
you.
00:10:30
And I could have absolutely spent another six months to a year
00:10:34
trying to figure it out on my own, second guessing myself, trying
00:10:38
stuff, getting it wrong, filling out forms, having them sent
00:10:41
back.
00:10:42
And here's what would have happened.
00:10:45
Most likely, I would have given up.
00:10:48
In business, you'll hear this phrase kicked around a lot, because
00:10:51
it's true.
00:10:52
Time kills deals.
00:10:54
If you're in a sales process with someone and too much time goes
00:10:57
by, the chance that they are going to say yes and sign on the
00:11:02
dotted line and pay, the money goes down dramatically.
00:11:09
And just like time kills deals, time also kills ideas.
00:11:14
You may have an incredible idea for some kind of good initiative
00:11:19
that you want to put out in the world, but if too much time goes
00:11:23
by from having the idea to actually making it real, you're going
00:11:28
to lose interest, you're going to lose the energy in it.
00:11:31
You're not like the goose is going to get juiced and there's not
00:11:34
going to be any left.
00:11:35
Love that saying.
00:11:36
Again, my Canadian listeners, if you know if that's a Canadian
00:11:39
saying or just that one person who shows up to my Brave Biz lab
00:11:43
calls who says it from time to time, I want to know.
00:11:46
It's easier to have a massive impact on the world and to help people
00:11:50
and to really make a difference when you have money, when
00:11:55
you make lots of money.
00:11:57
When I did some reflection with my favorite self on what I really
00:12:04
want my business to be, this podcast to be, and the rest of my
00:12:07
life to be, everything revolved around being the help that
00:12:12
others need.
00:12:13
And here's the beauty of it.
00:12:15
You can have a business that helps other people that makes you
00:12:19
lots of money.
00:12:20
You could then use some of that money to start a nonprofit that
00:12:24
helps lots of people and has an impact and hopefully at some point
00:12:29
become something that exists separate from you so you don't have
00:12:32
to put too much time and effort into it long term unless.
00:12:35
Unless you really want to.
00:12:37
When you make more money, you also have more freedom and flexibility
00:12:41
to go and do other passion projects, like, for instance, getting
00:12:46
involved in your community, maybe running for school board, or
00:12:50
helping certain elected officials get elected in the first
00:12:53
place.
00:12:54
Because you believe in what they stand for, you can donate to
00:12:58
causes that matter to you.
00:13:00
Hell, I mean, if your idea of success is you want to go to Costa
00:13:04
Rica for two months out of the year and go surfing, guess what makes
00:13:08
that a lot easier?
00:13:09
Having a business that is successful in making lots of money.
00:13:14
So all those people who are Googling, how do I be successful
00:13:18
in my business?
00:13:19
How do I be successful in my life?
00:13:21
The answers they're getting are not useful.
00:13:24
Right?
00:13:24
Because how does Google know what your definition of success is?
00:13:28
It doesn't.
00:13:29
It has no way of knowing that at the point that artificial intelligence
00:13:33
gets to the stage where it can read your mind and understand what
00:13:35
you mean.
00:13:37
I mean, I think we have some bigger things to worry about.
00:13:39
But when we ask questions like that, when we ask for guidance without
00:13:45
understanding what we're trying to get to, we're actually
00:13:49
keeping ourselves small.
00:13:51
Right.
00:13:51
It's kind of like imagine you live in Boston and you want to drive
00:13:55
to California and you go up to someone and you say, hi, can you
00:13:58
give me directions?
00:14:00
I'd like to go somewhere.
00:14:02
They may think that you want to go to New York.
00:14:04
They'll give you directions to New York, you'll get to New York
00:14:07
and you'll go up to someone else and say, hi, can you give me
00:14:10
directions?
00:14:12
And they'll give you directions to their favorite bagel
00:14:14
shop.
00:14:15
Because it's New York.
00:14:15
Why the fuck would you want to go anywhere else?
00:14:17
This is the greatest city in the world.
00:14:18
That's how New Yorkers think.
00:14:20
They're not wrong.
00:14:21
Also, who doesn't love a good bagel?
00:14:24
But when you explicitly understand, I want to go to California,
00:14:27
I need to start asking about going to California.
00:14:30
You start asking and some people won't know.
00:14:33
Some people didn't pay attention in geography class.
00:14:35
They didn't have a geography teacher who was as strict as Mrs.
00:14:38
Barker was.
00:14:39
Bingo.
00:14:39
It's funny, I still see her power walking sometimes in my hometown.
00:14:44
She wasn't one of the most traumatizing teachers, but she wasn't
00:14:47
not one of the traumatizing teachers that I had.
00:14:57
I think one of the main reasons why we don't get specific
00:15:01
about how we want to be successful is because we're secretly
00:15:03
ashamed of what our definition of success is.
00:15:08
And.
00:15:08
And a lot of this goes into what have we been taught to believe
00:15:11
about money.
00:15:12
We've been given so many different examples of how people
00:15:15
who have lots of monies are actually the villains.
00:15:19
I mean, let's talk about Cruella Deville for a second.
00:15:22
She's massively successful.
00:15:24
She is a fashion icon.
00:15:27
And while I'm sure she could have afforded to buy 101 purebred
00:15:32
Dalmatians if she wanted, she instead opted to pay two gangsters
00:15:38
to go and steal them and hide them out in a house that I abandoned,
00:15:43
house that I'm sure she owns.
00:15:45
And she's a terrible driver.
00:15:46
She can afford the insurance costs for her terrible driving and
00:15:51
for repairing her own car all the time.
00:15:54
And I imagine there's also some paying off of the police, because
00:15:57
really, I mean, with the amount of accidents that she for
00:15:59
sure has, there's no way her insurance would actually keep her
00:16:04
insured if the police were actually telling them that she was
00:16:07
getting driving points.
00:16:08
For a real life example, Elon Musk.
00:16:11
If we're looking for a real life villain, you don't really have
00:16:15
to look much further than him.
00:16:24
He screwed over most of his employees and every single business
00:16:29
he has ever owned.
00:16:30
He's claimed that he founded businesses that he actually did not
00:16:34
found.
00:16:34
He just bought them after they'd already been started.
00:16:38
And he's dug a lot of them into the ground, claiming that he's
00:16:42
trying to do better for the world.
00:16:45
But there's been scant evidence that that's true.
00:16:51
Just leave it there.
00:16:53
When we have these models of people who are really wealthy who
00:16:56
are doing terrible things, who are just terrible people, we start
00:16:59
associating.
00:17:00
Oh, my God.
00:17:00
If you have money, you must be terrible, right?
00:17:03
And so our subconscious learns this from a very, very young age.
00:17:07
And we start associating.
00:17:08
Okay, well, you know, I don't want to be like that.
00:17:11
So what are the attributes of someone who is truly evil?
00:17:14
Oh, well, they all seem to have a lot of money.
00:17:16
Cool.
00:17:17
So I won't do that.
00:17:18
I also, you know, won't do this thing and this thing and this
00:17:21
thing and this thing.
00:17:22
And our moral guidance system kind of gets confused, right?
00:17:26
We start associating stuff with evil that isn't necessarily
00:17:30
evil.
00:17:31
It's just kind of a coincidence that this evil person
00:17:34
also happens to be wealthy, you know, in my very first sales
00:17:38
job, I had to learn how to ask for a lot of money, right?
00:17:43
More money than I had ever asked for in my life because I'd
00:17:46
never worked in sales before.
00:17:48
And I'll never forget my now best friend, then just plain old
00:17:52
coworker, Jessica Nobriga.
00:17:53
We were talking about money and like, our beliefs around it.
00:17:56
And she said, you know, money at its heart just makes you more
00:17:59
of who you are.
00:18:00
And I love that because, you know, if you're a truly good person,
00:18:03
money just makes you a better person.
00:18:04
It makes you better able to do things that makes a real difference
00:18:08
in the world.
00:18:57
So as you're thinking about your definition of success, if there's
00:19:03
any ickiness around money, a, that's a sign that you need to do
00:19:07
some really serious money work.
00:19:09
And I hope you have fun with that.
00:19:11
And if you need any guidance, that's one of the things that I work
00:19:13
on with my clients.
00:19:15
You also have to start finding better models for people who have
00:19:20
lots of money, who are doing good things.
00:19:24
And yes, I am talking about Taylor Swift.
00:19:26
I've lost count of how much money she has donated to different
00:19:31
food banks, every, in every location she's done, her ERAS tour,
00:19:35
the amount of money she's given to hurricane victims, and just
00:19:39
the general good work that she does and how kind she is in her work
00:19:44
and in her interactions with her fans.
00:19:47
Because once you start unpacking what your beliefs are around
00:19:50
money and your fears about what having lots of money will mean
00:19:53
about you, and you start shifting the narrative that having
00:19:58
more money will allow you to be a better, more influential person
00:20:02
who makes a bigger difference in the world, the shame around your
00:20:06
own definition of success starts dissipating.
00:20:09
Right?
00:20:10
Imagine, and maybe you don't have to imagine.
00:20:13
Maybe this is absolutely true for you.
00:20:14
You have a definition of success that says you need to make
00:20:18
lots of money, you need to have a big house, you need to have
00:20:20
all these things, and you secretly think, well, that would
00:20:23
make me a terrible person.
00:20:24
Are you actually going to go for it?
00:20:26
Probably not, because it's going to be completely incongruent
00:20:30
with who you see yourself as.
00:20:33
You're not going to feel aligned to it because that's not
00:20:36
who you are.
00:20:37
But when you shift it to say, okay, yeah, I want lots of money
00:20:41
and I want a big house so that I can host really amazing fundraising
00:20:46
parties for the causes that I care about.
00:20:49
And with the money that I have, I want to be able to donate
00:20:52
to these causes.
00:20:53
I want to be able to start my own nonprofit.
00:20:55
I want to be able to do this and this and this and this and really
00:20:58
make a difference in the world.
00:21:00
And that feels in alignment with who you are at your core.
00:21:05
Now, that's a definition of success that you will be fearless
00:21:09
in going after.
00:21:10
But babes, it's not an either or.
00:21:14
You don't have to set sacrifice having what you want to
00:21:20
be who you want.
00:21:21
You can have them both.
00:21:23
And actually, when you give yourself permission to go after them
00:21:27
both, they both become a ton easier to get to.
00:21:33
And if you're not sure what your definition of success is, if
00:21:36
you've just taken the definition as it's been given to
00:21:40
you from the world around you, and this is kind of your first foray
00:21:43
into even questioning if that's right for you, here's a great
00:21:48
journal question to ask yourself, and it is a little morbid.
00:21:52
I want you to write your own eulogy.
00:21:54
I want you to imagine that you are dead as a doornail maybe, and
00:21:59
hopefully this is in the future.
00:22:00
It's not right now.
00:22:00
So I want you to imagine we are in the future.
00:22:03
You've lived a long life.
00:22:05
You've done all the things that you wanted to do.
00:22:07
You've had the impact that you wanted to have.
00:22:09
You've had really, really incredible relationships.
00:22:12
And then you died.
00:22:14
You're dead.
00:22:15
And everyone who's ever known you is showing up at the funeral
00:22:21
and someone stands up and gives a eulogy.
00:22:24
What are they saying about you?
00:22:27
What are the key moments that they remember that they want to bring
00:22:31
up in this final conversation about you?
00:22:35
What's the impact they want to acknowledge?
00:22:38
Or what are the quirky, fun loving bits that you want them to
00:22:40
highlight?
00:22:41
It may not make sense right away, but buried in there is your
00:22:48
definition of success.
00:22:50
And once you have that answer of what you want people to say about
00:22:53
you after you're dead, you can reverse engineer it into what your
00:22:56
definition for success is, which then you can reverse engineer
00:23:00
that into what you need to be doing right now to make sure that
00:23:04
that eulogy gets read.
00:23:06
And please, for the love of dog, stop asking Google for life
00:23:10
advice.
00:23:14
I'm having so much more fun.
00:23:16
I'm feeling like more energy in this.