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