The state of online business in 2023

A couple of weeks ago I put up an instagram post about the reality that many established online business owners are currently experiencing some of the most challenging months of their career right now, at the end of 2023.

I got a significant response to this post, so we are here to have an expanded conversation on the topic. And my hope is that you walk away from this with a a fresh perspective on how to approach problem solving in your business, and the understanding that this is actually a ripe opportunity for growth that, if approached creatively, could set us up for success in this changing landscape.

In this episode we talk about:

4:00 : What I am observing as a business coach with an established network of online business owners, and the current struggles faced by online business owners in 2023.

7:33 : Why I think it’s happening and how I’m personally choosing to respond

25:47 : Some of the discourse that has become commonplace in the business development world that is not helpful for this moment

39:00 What to focus on in Q4 of 2023 to successfully take advantage of this current growth opportunity


Links mentioned in this episode:
Being Boss Episode 357: THE END OF THE GOLDEN AGE OF ONLINE BUSINESS WITH ERICA COURDAE & TASHA L. HARRISON

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Transcript

Brooke Monaghan: 0:32

I think that if we don't start to really see them for what they are, we are going to find ourselves participating in this little micro economy of the online business development world in a way where we all get gaslit and then this small group of people at the top make a shitload of money. Hi friends, welcome to a solo episode of Make your Business Work For you. This was not planned. I did not plan on doing a solo episode, especially this early, but if you've been listening to the past few episodes, then you know that life has been life-ing hard over here and I had to put off a couple of recordings, and so that means that, as I was planning for the next week's episode, I was like I'm about to run out of recorded interviews. You know what? Here's a conversation that I really know we need to have. This is coming off of something that I posted on Instagram as of the time of recording this. I posted this last week. I got a big response to it. A lot of people thanked me for posting it, and I actually had a lot more to say on it, so I thought let's have the conversation here. Here's the thing I have many clients who are running their own businesses. I also have a lot of friends who run their own businesses and I have my own experience, and what I'm seeing right now is that a lot of established business owners are having some of the most challenging months of their entire business career right now, at the end of 2023.

Brooke Monaghan: 2:02

When I posted this on Instagram, there was a big response. People were feeling like I was finally talking about something that they had wanted to. They thought that they were alone on it, or maybe were talking about it in these small settings with friends of theirs, but weren't hearing it on this larger scale. By the way, I'm not the first person to talk about this. There's an episode of Being Boss that I reference in this episode. I'll link to it in the show notes. This was from June, where they posted an episode about. It was called the end of the golden age of the online business world, or something like that. So it's not just us. So here's what's going to happen in this conversation. I'm going to talk a bit about what's happening right now just the truth of the situation, why I think it's happening and how I'm personally choosing to respond to this and the smartest ways that I think we can respond right now, some of the discourse that has become commonplace in the business development world that I personally find even more unhelpful right now and potentially harmful right now than before. So I want to point this out so that we can see it for what it is. And then, just a takeaway, something that, if nothing else, I want you to remember as you're working on your business in Q4 2023, something that I feel like we can put our focus on to move forward differently.

Brooke Monaghan: 3:19

One thing I do want to tell you is that the doors to Fruition Growth Network are going to be opening very soon, and the lineup of events for November has been established and announced. It is available on the website at join fruition. com. The first one is going to be on Friday, November 3rd. We're going to be doing a coworking. We also are going to be doing a networking for people who hate networking in November, and Tristan Katz will also be teaching a workshop on creating effective, meaningful content, which is going to really tie into an episode that you heard a couple of episodes ago with Tristan. So if you want to put that into place, come and join us. All of those events are just the free events. There's also things that I'm doing with coaching groups in Fruition, but you can find out about that if you go to joinfruition. com. But the ones I just mentioned, they're all free, so you should come and hang out with us. Go to joinfruition. com, you can get on the wait list and you'll be the first to hear when doors open and I hope to see you there.

Brooke Monaghan: 4:30

So here's what I'm seeing right now, and I'm recording this in the middle of October 2023. And what I'm talking about here, by the way, is anecdotal. This is from clients who I've been working with, clients who I've been working with for years, my own business, colleagues of mine who I regularly am talking with about their businesses and most of us are in some kind of either we're offering online programming or some kind of service, usually in the consulting field. Now here's what I'm seeing. First of all, sales are tough right now for lots of people, registrations are feeling low and it's challenging for a lot of people to bring in consistent, decent, like recurring revenue. Number two things that were working before to get registrations or to get people onto email lists or to even just get engagement. It are not really working the way that they used to. There used to be things that we could rely on as standard practice for launching a thing, putting out some kind of online training that really are not getting the same kinds of results as before. The third thing is people are really tired and frustrated. So I'm seeing a lot of people who are kind of like, all right, like this has been going on for a while at this point. I'm trying so many things, I'm not seeing the results that I was once seeing, and so I'm super frustrated. I like don't know how to get myself motivated again. And this is not something that I am only noticing, like it's just me in my corner of the Internet or with me and my friends.

Brooke Monaghan: 6:27

On June 6th, Being Boss which is a pretty large podcast kind of in the same field put out an episode titled the end of the golden age of online business. That podcast was running for years and they talked in that episode about how challenging things are right now, even as like a pretty big, established business with lots of people in their audience, lots of people watching, and you know it's. It's also something that when I put out some content on this recently, I got a pretty big response to, and so I know that this is not something that only I am noticing. It's something that people are starting to talk about, and I think that we need to understand that there's not -- We are disincentivized to talk about this right, because you're going to see these conversations in places where the person who's hosting the conversation is supposed to be some kind of authority on business, right? People who are just running their businesses and don't have a place in educating people on business are not really going to be the ones hosting these conversations. So we have to understand that there is a reason for people to not talk about this, and that reason is if you talk about, does it make you look like you're struggling and thus are not a source of information on this or not to be trusted on this right? So, whatever we're hearing people talk about, I think we should actually dial that up a few notches and that's probably a better indication of what's really happening. So here's some theories on why I think this is happening.

Brooke Monaghan: 8:07

This is by no means a comprehensive list. These are actually four things that I posted on Instagram and I got a big response to. I want to talk about them a bit more here because I think that it's worth remembering and, yeah, it's not a comprehensive list, it's just some of the things that I happen to be seeing that I think we need to take note of, and I'm going to also tell you a bit about how I'm choosing to respond to each of these things. The first thing is that, just as you are feeling overwhelmed or burnt out or like you're having a hard time focusing, your audience is having that same experience. To me, it makes total sense that people are not really paying that much attention to our marketing.

Brooke Monaghan: 8:45

Right now, right as of the time that I'm recording this, we're coming off of, like what? Almost two weeks of seeing constant imagery and updates of the conflict happening in Israel and Palestine. We are it's horrifying, right. So, on top of everything that we were already dealing with, it's like ever since 2020. You know, we keep talking about the fact that it feels like the hits just keep coming right. It's not like one thing happens and we're all devastated and then we move on and we recover and we get back to normal. It is now normal for us to be constantly bombarded with pretty devastating world events, and to me, it just, of course, people are paying attention to that stuff and not really quite as engaged in marketing, especially marketing in our field.

Brooke Monaghan: 9:45

Right, it's one thing when the ads that you're seeing are for a quick thing that you can buy, that are going to make you feel good. It's one thing when you're seeing ads for cool t shirts or when you're seeing ads for like I don't know, like something that you can just like, grab and it's going to ship to you and it's going to give you a dopamine hit, and then you move on. We are talking about in the online business space. We're oftentimes talking about things like trainings programs, where we're going to give people information and they're going to have to learn a thing and then apply it. This is, these are, this is marketing for stuff that is not just going to give people a quick like hit of dopamine. Right, we're making a big ask and so, yeah, people are burnt out, they're exhausted and their attention spans are pretty low.

Brooke Monaghan: 10:36

To me, the way that I'm choosing to respond to this is I think that this is an invitation for us to just be more real, to be more human, to focus on being more connected with each other on, like, a more human level. So, instead of trying to push a sale right where in your marketing you might have, or what I'm starting to do right in my marketing, I might have before always been focused on okay, I'm leading up to selling this thing, right, and I really want to try to make sure that all of my content is focused on this thing and pushing the sale. Now, am I still gonna make sure that my content is aligned with what I'm selling? Yes, I am, because, at the end of the day, I'm not working for free, right, like even recording this podcast. Right, this is under the fruition umbrella because, ultimately, I'm promoting work on here that is going to that, ultimately, is like how I pay myself and pay to live.

Brooke Monaghan: 12:16

So, I'm still gonna make sure that my content is aligned, but, rather than focusing on trying to push people toward a sale, I'm really making sure and this is something I did before too but I think that we need to be even more focused on it now, really really thinking about what people need to hear from me today as, like, the number one thing. Right, as I said before, we are did we are? There is an incentive to not talk about how hard things are right now. Right, does me talking about how challenging it is to grow a business at the end of 2023 put me in a great position to sell you a membership to a community space for you to grow your business? I'm not sure. Do I know that we need to have a real conversation about this and, at the end of the day, this is ultimately going to build trust with me, with you, the listeners, because you can see that I'm talking about what we really need to talk about and not just the things that make me look good. Yeah, I believe. I believe that's true. I think that if I can be a source of conversations that are gonna make people feel seen and feel like they are in a better place than they were before they found me, that is a. That is the kind of thing that I want to be focusing on as a foundation for a more sustainable business, especially right now, when traditional marketing is just not going to do it right.

Brooke Monaghan: 13:41

Instead of pitching things right now, right, I am focusing much more on building relationships. I am and this is something again, I've been doing this. It's not like this is brand new for me, but it's something that I am putting even more effort into. I am really just not sending many pitches right now Any honestly, I can't think of aside from grant applications. I cannot think of a pitch that I sent recently, because instead, what I'm doing is I'm like thinking about who are the people who I want to know, who are the people that I want to have relationships with, and I'm focusing more on just connecting with those people and knowing that in the future, when opportunities come up, the more people I know, who know about my work and who trust me and who are in those rooms To put my name out there, the more opportunities I'm gonna have. Right, if I know a person well and they have some kind of opportunity coming up, it's much more likely they're gonna ask me if I have a relationship with them.

Brooke Monaghan: 14:40

So I'm saying that, not to say like that's the, that is the only reason for doing it, but just that it's also strategic. Right, it's not like we have to choose between one or the other, and instead of trying to, you know I am having a lot of conversations with clients right now who are trying to figure out how do I Get in front of a bigger audience, and I don't think that this is a bad thing to be thinking about. But I also keep saying to people like what about the people who are already in your audience, though, what about the people who you had calls with, who said they wanted to work with you and then you didn't hear from them again? What about the people who are in your orbit, who you just haven't connected with in a while? Those are the people who I would be focusing on reconnecting with right. I would be and I am. Instead of thinking about like how do I create like a real that's gonna get, you know, a hundred thousand views, I would be thinking instead about like, who are the people? You know, what's a list of like 20 people who are in my orbit, who I just haven't connected with in a while, who I can reach out to. You know, I think that now is a time for us to really be focusing on like Actual relationships and connection, especially given that you know what people might see your real, but are they seeing it because they're doom scrolling or are they seeing it because they're actually interested in what you have to say? You know what I mean. I just think actual relationships are like where it's at, and being as human as possible is where it's at right now.

Brooke Monaghan: 16:14

The second thing that I know is happening is people are on to the standard marketing bullshit, and you know this is true, like if you are listening to this, you already know. You know, the moment that you see an ad for something that what it really is is them trying to get you into some like free or low-cost things so they can follow up with a bunch of emails. You get sucked into their marketing funnel. Whatever people have seen it, people have been burned by hollow promises. People have been burned by being convinced to join a program or something and then getting in there and realizing that there's really not that much in there to help them, or that it's all stuff that they already knew before, or that the person isn't really qualified to help them. People have tried so much at this point and are skeptical as Fuck if you try to tell them that you have some kind of secret that no one else has. There was a time where people were waiting to find the person who had the secret. Now, if you tell people that you have the secret, they do not believe you. This is the reality of where we're at to me. I love this for us.

Brooke Monaghan: 17:21

I think this is great news because If you're listening to this, I think that you will probably are in that bucket of people who never enjoyed that kind of marketing right. Those proven kind of marketing Tactics probably always felt a little bit gross. The big promises Probably always felt a little bit gross and dishonest right. So I see this as permission to just like break all of the marketing rules, like anything that's that you're doing, just because someone said that you have to do it. Or someone said, well, you have to do this because it works. If it's not actively working for you, I say throw it in the trash, like immediately, because if it is not working and it feels like shit, there is no reason to keep doing it. At least before we were in a situation where it was like, well, yeah, it works, but it feels like crap, it doesn't even work anymore. So I'm like great, like this is like permission, right Now. The third thing I'm gonna say is I think and this is something that was pointed out to me by a previous coach of mine Whose name is Lena West, months ago, and then I came to it again recently and after I wrote it down, I was like, oh, this is what Lena was talking about a few months ago.

Brooke Monaghan: 18:35

People are right now are not in like dream about what's possible mode. They are in survival mode. People right now are tightening budgets. They're trying to do more with less. They're trying to conserve, they're trying to be smarter with what they have. They're trying to take things off of their plate. Right, people right now are not clamoring to add more to their schedules, and this has me curious about how I can shift my offers to either fit a more accessible price point or To, if I am gonna really charge for something, to really take significant burden off of people. So this is one of the reasons why in my group coaching program, I had a group coaching program that was running for years called the rule breakers crew, with fruition opening. I have kind of changed that a bit and it is now called fruit, and this is like a small group of people who are my core clients. We meet in a group setting and we do much more intensive group coaching than any of the other group coaching programs I've ever done.

Brooke Monaghan: 19:36

But one of the things that I'm now including in that is actually Advertising like you are gonna start hearing ads on this podcast for my clients, and the reason that I am doing that is because, first of all, I only want people in that space who I really, really believe in and who I believe in enough that I would push their work, and so it's a great like. When I first came up with that idea, I Was like, oh, what an amazing way for me to make sure that I am actually Like putting my money where my mouth is when I say I only work with people in this setting that I really believe in. You know what I mean. Like to me, that's a way to back that up. But also, to this point of like either making things really accessible or taking something significant off of people's plates, I'm seeing people in that space looking for opportunities to get in front of a new audience, right. I'm seeing people in that space thinking about, like what are the ways that I get in front of new people? And so, like Plot putting their work on my podcast is one way that I can not just say like I'm gonna teach you how to navigate this thing, but also say like I'm gonna give you like a tangible thing, right.

Brooke Monaghan: 20:51

In addition to that, another example would be something like if you are, if you typically teach a thing, and you just have like a DIY kind of thing like maybe you have a course or maybe you just do consulting. Is there some opportunity for you to do a done for you version of that or a done with you version of that? If you're gonna charge for something like, make it so that it is going to at least take a significant amount of work off of people's plates, because right now, people are just there I'm I, at least. I'm seeing a lot less. You teach me and I'll go ahead and implement it. And instead, like this is such a burden, I need someone who is going to do this with me and help me get shit done like right now. Right, and I think that so. So there's a couple of ways that we can think about this, right. So, like I just said, instead of thinking about like you, I teach and you implement, I would be thinking more about like what if you didn't have to do this thing that's such a burden for you all on your own right? That would be the way that I would be thinking about offers and marketing. Way that I am thinking about offers and marketing right now. I also would be thinking about like instead of things like.

Brooke Monaghan: 22:06

Imagine if your life were like radically different, right, because that was a way that we were all taught to market like a few years ago, we were taught to do this like blue sky kind of thing, where it was like imagine a world where you are, you know, a Millionaire and you only have to work three hours a week. I mean, listen, are some people still gonna like Be into that? Sure, I guess. I think most people are gonna be pretty fucking skeptical and I think that most people are more in the. You're gonna have a better time relating to them and building trust with them if, instead of thinking about Imagine how different things could be, you're thinking about like I see you and where you are right now and I can help you, and here are the ways that I can help you, and like I really understand what you're going through, I'd be thinking much more about that. I am thinking much more about that right now. I think the days of you know, imagine this radically different version of your life Right now are kind of on pause for most people.

Brooke Monaghan: 23:10

The fourth thing that I do think is happening right now is this is a time for creative solutions, because so much of what you're taught, so many of the best practices, are just not doing it anymore and many of us are Absolutely out of creative energy right Before you Jump into this like, oh my gosh, I need to fix this, this isn't working, I need to figure this out. It is really important that you check in with yourself on how much creative energy you actually have available to fix this, because the thing is, anxiety Does not create new solutions. Anxiety creates familiarity. Anxiety is a fear of the unknown. So when you are fueled by anxiety, what you're going to do is you're gonna double down on things that you've already done before and you're gonna try to recreate familiar situations, right? So, while I totally understand how annoying it is for someone to tell you that you need to slow down when you're like no, no, no, look at my bank account, I cannot slow down. I get that.

Brooke Monaghan: 24:23

And also, if you keep pushing yourself, despite the fact that you are like totally depleted and fried and running on empty, you are going to be so Fabulously unproductive. I cannot even tell you like, if you are giving into the I need to figure this out kind of anxious loop, probably what's gonna happen is you are going to go back to things that you've already done before that have not worked, and pour a whole bunch of extra energy into them, as opposed to and this is one of the things that I said in this post that I put up like you could spend the next hour doing the same shit that you've been doing because you don't know what else to do, which is what you're gonna do if you're like fried, or you could take a nap. You're gonna be like fried or you could take a nap and at least have a shot of a fresh idea when you wake up, because you actually have some amount of brain power to figure this thing out. So if you are convinced that you cannot slow down, but the data is showing you that the things that you are doing are not working, that is like a telltale sign that you really need to slow down, like you need a nap. Bad, because that is not even solid reasoning, right, so it's a time for creative solutions. It's not the time to double down on shit. Right now is not the time to say, oh well, this shit was really working in 2020. So I'm just going to do more of that, or oh, but I was working so hard in 2020 and 2020 was such a good year, I guess I'm not working enough.

Brooke Monaghan: 25:58

No, no, no, things are different. We need to come at this in a more creative way, and the best way to do that is you are going to have to do what you need to do to resource yourself. You're going to have to do what you need to do to manage your mental health. You are going to have to take like prioritizing your capacity and like well-being and creative energy, like you're going to have to take maintaining that really seriously right now. And I think that when we, like I was saying before, like when we focus on what do people really need to hear from me today and how can I make, like go back and actually create a connection with these people or reach back out to these people or nurture this relationship with people and have real conversations, that's going to give you some information that can then allow you to like use your creative energy to solve it.

Brooke Monaghan: 26:50

But this is not the kind of thing that is going to be solved by just isolating yourself and working harder in a vacuum. It's just not so. A few things that I really would like for us to just point out are really unhelpful right now, because we're going to see it come up. It always fucking comes up. It is just so common and it's so tired, and I just want to say it and, like, put it out there that like none of this stuff is going to be helping us right now in the situation that we're in.

Brooke Monaghan: 27:24

So the first thing is, the business development world and the coaching world will tell you that literally every problem that you were facing is because of your mindset. Why, why is it going to keep telling you that? Because it makes it so much easier to just keep selling the same shit than it is to come up with a new solution. Those of us who are in this industry right now coaches, service providers in the business development industry, social media managers, marketing professionals like those of us who are in this industry we have a obligation to get way more fucking creative, to just tell people that it's their headspace. And this is, by the way, why fruition is happening, because a few months ago, I saw this happening and I was like, oh, I need to stop just telling people how to navigate this and come up with some actual solutions to this fucking problem.

Brooke Monaghan: 28:21

But for people who don't want to come up with new solutions and who want to just keep selling the same thing, it really the best way to do that is to convince you that it's all because of your mindset, and the thing is that if you are currently feeling this like nothing is working-ness of 2023, you are not making it up. This is not because of your vibes you're not low vibe and it's not because you're thinking small. I do think that managing your mindset is absolutely critical right now, but anyone who's saying that a mindset shift alone is going to do it is going to somehow change the situation. That, to me, is gaslighting, and it's probably gaslighting for profit, to be honest, and I don't even believe in laziness, but the best word that I can come up with for that is lazy. So that's the first thing I'm going to say. This is not a mindset issue as far as I'm concerned.

Brooke Monaghan: 29:14

Now, forever, right, the business, the online business world and the coaching world have wanted to tell us that if we aren't making money, it's because we are undercharging. And right now, I think it's gotten really fucking out of hand. I think it's gotten very out of hand, my friends, this idea that if you're not making money, you need to just raise your prices. It wasn't helpful before, but it's a special thing. It wasn't helpful before, but it's especially unhelpful now. Here's the thing Can you charge a lot, absolutely.

Brooke Monaghan: 29:51

Are there people who will pay it? Absolutely, 100% there are. You can charge way more than you are currently telling yourself. You can charge, almost guaranteed. Do you have to charge more for your work than you did as an hourly employee? Yes, let me tell you, my friend, if you are still taking your hourly rate for like a consulting call and comparing it to what you made at your day job and somehow think that that's a fair comparison, it is not, because at your day job you get paid for all of your work, and in your job, where you work for yourself, you only get paid for what you can bill your clients. And what you get paid from billing your clients has to cover you for all of the other activities taking place in your business. In a normal business, that would be coming in as top line sales and then it would be distributed out across a whole bunch of people on an hourly basis. That's essentially what's happening in your business. So you cannot compare your hourly rate now to your hourly rate when you are working. A job Period Okay, and if your ideal client cannot afford your work, you have a major problem on your hands.

Brooke Monaghan: 31:05

I'm not saying that to freak you out or make you feel bad about anything. I'm just saying, like this idea that you can just raise your prices, that everyone's solution is to just raise their prices, not if your ideal client can't fucking afford it. It's not the solution. Okay, if they can't afford it, then you need to come up with a different solution, and that's going to come down to your business model, right? So this is not to say that you have to raise or lower your prices. It's not to say that you can't sell high ticket services. You definitely can. It's just to say that this fantasy that every one of us out here in the online business world should be charging tens of thousands of dollars for our work and just like rolling around in a bathtub of cash, like it is so 2019 and it's also gaslighting it just doesn't. That's not the way that it works.

Brooke Monaghan: 31:55

You need to look at your business model and you need to decide how you're going to create high ticket offers for an ideal client who can pay for them, which means how you're going to get yourself in front of and create relationships with, those people who can pay for them. Right? And affordable, accessible offers for ideal clients who can't. So, if you have an audience of people who cannot afford high ticket services and you need to make an immediate sale. My friend, charging a bunch of money for a thing is not going to do it, because you've got to go and create the relationships with, and get in front of the people who can afford that before you're going to be able to put out that high ticket offer right? Now. What I will say is if you have been doing this for a long time and you've never sold something high ticket and you have a relatively big audience, there's probably some people in your audience who could pay for it and you just don't even know that because you've never sold the high ticket thing. Right, and there's just some people chilling out there who will say yes to it, but, like as an ongoing solution. Right, you're going to need to form more of those relationships before you can do that. So if your ideal client is somebody who can pay a bunch of money for a thing and you don't have those people in your audience right now, right, you need to go and find them. But if your ideal client is somebody who cannot afford that, then you do.

Brooke Monaghan: 33:17

This advice of just way raising your prices does not apply to you. So I'm saying this again, not because I want to make you feel bad, but because if you've heard the advice like, oh, just raise your prices, you need to be charging more. You're not charging enough and you're like, wait a second, but no one can afford that. Sometimes that can be a mindset thing if you're telling yourself like there's no way anyone would ever afford that, so I'm not even going to try. But also you might be right. So I just want to tell you, you know your business better than anybody else does and like this is it's going to be, you're going to need to be more creative than just raising your prices right? Now one of the reasons why you will see when Fruition Growth Network, when the doors to this open, you're going to see that, like, my prices are pretty low for this. One of the tiers, there's a program: Training Camp.

Brooke Monaghan: 34:11

I used to call it Transcend Your Dichotomy Training Camp. I used to sell that program alone for $1,500. You can now access that program for $20 to $30 a month. Now, Brooke from 2020 would be like hi, Brooke from 2023, what the fuck are you doing? Like let's not. Can we not just give everything away? And I get it. And also, I'm looking around at the people who I really wanna help and I'm noticing, like, for the people who I really want to help, I need to make things accessible and affordable. And that means that it's on me to get more people.

Brooke Monaghan: 34:47

I once had a business model that was a handful of people paying me a good amount on a recurring basis. I'm maintaining some of that, but also to serve this huge group of people who I really wanna serve, that's gonna have to be lots of people at a lower price. You know what I mean. So there is such a thing as overcharging. This is what I'm saying, like you're gonna know it, because you're not getting clients at those rates. And if someone wants to tell you like, oh, that's all just because of your mindset, it probably actually has a lot more to do with who you're putting those offers in front of and who your ideal clients actually are and whether or not your pricing actually makes sense for your clients. And, as a side note, this is why I have gotten pretty fed up with some of the coaching programs that I'm seeing, because to me it just makes no sense to charge people who aren't even making any money yet like thousands of dollars you know, five, $10,000 when you haven't even made any money yet. I'm like that pricing does not make sense and I think that we're approaching the end of this fantasy.

Brooke Monaghan: 35:56

The third thing in the discourse in the online business world, the coaching world, that I really wanna draw our attention to right now being in survival mode, where you are like looking at your situation and you're realizing all right, here's where we are. There's not as much money coming in, or everything is more expensive. Groceries are twice as expensive as they were before Holy shit, by the way. Or maybe you have, like you know, new expenses that have been added. Like maybe your kids are like in daycare now, or something like that, I don't know right, whatever the situation is. Being in survival mode where you're just like I am holding shit together right now, right, that is not the same thing as scarcity. Do not make yourself wrong for being in a very real, actually challenging situation.

Brooke Monaghan: 36:49

Scarcity mindset is a mindset that is built around the belief that there is never enough. Right, an abundance mindset says that there's more than enough for all of us. You hear people come back to this all the time, because scarcity is like this thing that you know. Being in a scarcity mindset is like super not fucking helpful. Ask me how I know. And also, it's again one of those things that's easier to blame than the actual situation that many of us have found ourselves in.

Brooke Monaghan: 37:18

Right, dealing with the reality of your current situation by adjusting your budget or deciding not to push a particular offer, that's a decision that can come from either a scarcity or an abundance mindset, and it's probably informed by a whole bunch of other realities that simply just are. They just are the reality that you are living in right now, and that is fine. You know your situation better than anybody else, right? Don't make yourself wrong for just having to make some like real, human fucking decisions right now. It is really important to allow yourself to see the facts of your current situation and make decisions accordingly, and if that means that right now is for maintenance and bare minimum and not for going all in on some big, huge like new thing, don't let anyone make you wrong for that.

Brooke Monaghan: 38:09

So these are things that are really present in the business development world, in the coaching world, and I think that if we don't start to really see them for what they are, we are gonna find ourselves participating in this little like micro economy of the online business development world in a way, where we all get gaslit and then this small group of people at the top make a shitload of money. So I am personally really keeping a lookout right now for who's making a shift to meet the moment that we're in and who is continuing to teach the same shit that worked for them in 2019. Because those are gonna be the people who will use this discourse to pull you into their bullshit, and most of that is gonna be stuff that doesn't really replicate, it doesn't meet the moment that we're in right now. It's not up to date. I'm really like I really try not to cast like broad generalizations about people's intentions or whatever, but what I will say is that people who have had these really big businesses for a long time and are a major influence on what we have been told is the right way to run a business, or whatever. Those people if they are still teaching "This is what allowed me to grow my business to a million dollars, and that growth happened in like 2019, 2020,

Brooke Monaghan: 39:41

I'm really not interested, because the fact is, the landscape is just so different that, like I don't want to learn your outdated strategies, right? And so I think some of those people are adjusting and saying, okay, it's my job not just to teach what I did in 2020, it's my job to help these people get that result now. So how can I shift things? I think other people are not making that shift and, to get out of not making that shift, they're explaining away why it isn't working by using these kinds of things that are going to make you blame yourself and tell you that you're wrong. So, finally, here's what I want to leave you with. Something I want you to remember, a takeaway from today. As you hear all of this, you know that you're not alone and you go into your business and you're like, okay, what do I do now? Right, because I just heard a whole bunch of reasons that things aren't working. Well, first of all, I mean go back and listen to, or you can go on Instagram, too, and I have a carousel up with a breakdown of this and it gives you kind of those different ways of responding to these four things that I see happening. But the other thing is that I really want you to remember and I said this before, I'm going to reiterate. Anxiety does not create new ideas.

Brooke Monaghan: 40:53

Anxiety seeks familiarity. The function of anxiety is to get you back in a situation that feels familiar and like you can predict the outcome. So it's not just your mindset right, and it's not all in your head, and I stand by all of that. And you cannot make business decisions from a place of anxiety, because it will keep you in the same patterns and the same cycles. It will have you doubling down on the same things that have not worked well for you in the past.

Brooke Monaghan: 41:22

So right now, here is the work for all of us. We need to figure out what works for us to regulate our nervous systems, to remind ourselves that we are physically safe. We need to figure out ways that we can get some distance from our situation so that we can kind of interrupt this "I just need to figure this out. I just need to figure this out. I just need to figure this out like anxious kind of thought spiral. We've got to take some deep breaths and manage our anxiety before we make decisions Because, like I said before, creative solutions are where it is at right now and that kind of spiraling is only going to drain your creative energy and lead you back to the same kinds of decisions you've made before.

Brooke Monaghan: 42:10

Right so anxiety is totally understandable at a time like this and it also isn't helpful, right so it's time for creative solutions. So I'm not saying it's easy, but I am saying that it is your job and it is my job to manage our mental health right now so that we can conserve creative energy, because that might be the one resource that we have the most control over right now. And what I'm going to tell you is this: the people who are able to do that right now and respond creatively at a time like this are going to be the ones who are going to see massive gain, and I truly believe that. I think that we are in a situation right now where we've got a choice on how we respond. I think that it's totally understandable that some people are just kind of shutting things down, deciding to stop doing things because they're just not as lucrative anymore. And I also think that for those of us who kind of stick this out and can figure out how to not get too caught up in the anxiety but see the reality of the situation that we're in and see the people who we're here to serve and get really creative about how to meet those people and serve those people right now, there's actually a huge advantage for those of us who can manage to do that. It's not going to be easy. Some of us are going to have an easier time doing it than others, just because of circumstances that none of us have any fucking control over.

Brooke Monaghan: 43:40

And what you can control is what you can control. That's all we can focus on. I am personally, and I would advise that you too, focus on keeping myself out of that anxious thought spiral as much as possible and trying to find ways to resource myself, replenish my creative energy, get some distance from the situation and come back to things when I'm fresh. On the days when you cannot manage to do that, do the stuff that doesn't require strategic decision making. Do the admin, the client, work, right. Don't give into that spiral on dates when you're going to make strategic decisions. Keep going. Forward momentum. You're going to figure things out as you move. Some things aren't going to work. You're going to learn from it. I promise you that you are. One foot in front of the other is sometimes all that we can manage, and keep doing what you're doing. Your work is important. You're important. I see you.