Cathy Hay (00:02):

Welcome to permission to kick a podcast about leaving self-doubt in the dust, punching fear in the face and taking bold action toward your biggest dreams. I'm Angie Colee. Let's get to it. I'm so excited to have you with me today, Cathy. Cause we were talking a little bit before we started recording and I just love hearing your story. I've been a big fan of yours watching you behind the scenes for a little bit. And I've seen kind of the evolution of Cathy as you've grown your business. So first, can you tell us a little bit about what business you're in?

Cathy Hay (00:40):

Yes, I am in, well, let's see. I have an online business. I have a membership, um, and I've had that for about 13 years now and my membership teachers, a particular branch of sewing, particularly historical sewing and costume making. So a little bit unusual.

Cathy Hay (01:00):

All right. So we were talking a little bit earlier about this idea of personality or persona when you're creating a business. And I know for me personally, when I got started, I had this vision in my head of someone, you know, in a suit looking very professional and trusted in the slick hair and the perfectly done makeup. And, uh, I didn't really think that there was any room for my kind of rock and roll persona and colorful tattoos. So I almost felt like I had to be two different people, myself and a business person. Did you have any kind of similar experience?

Cathy Hay (01:35):

Yes, I did. In that when I first started out, I knew that I had this interest in historic clothing and was looking so hard for a way to make that marketable. Nobody went to that. How do I make this feel like something that people will want? So, um, and alongside that feeling like I'm a pathological introvert who needed to be more extroverted or needed to somehow get over that side of myself. So I'm very this, this very quiet geeky person who feels like, how do I make myself into what the market needs me to be? How do I make myself into what the world needs me to be? And it didn't work out so well. I started out, um, trying to, well, I first started out, um, being a math teacher in a school, which didn't work out for the introversion. Um, and then when it was a very overwhelming environment.

Cathy Hay (02:42):

Um, and then for you wanting to go into do, do more sewing and makes sewing into my career into my job or just what I wanted that to be, what I did every day. Um, I decided that the way to would probably be the only thing that people will commission nowadays is a wedding dress. So I have to make wedding dresses. Um, and I thought I might as well go into making historically themed wedding dresses because the law was just changing in the UK. So you could, you could marry in various historic venues, it didn't have to be a church or a registry office. So, and I thought that was my big opportunity. Um, it didn't work so well. Um, I found that again, the introversion just cut me off at the knees. Um, I was too scared to put myself out there. Um, didn't find many clients when I did find clients.

Cathy Hay (03:40):

I wasn't very good at, um, just connecting and interacting, doing with them and leading things and setting boundaries, um, looking at well at all. Um, and you know, brides can be challenging because that's trusting and they know exactly what they want. Yes. So I had some great clients. I had some not so great clients and all along, it was just fits and spurts of pocket money. It was very difficult to make any kind of living. So about 2006, about 10 years and trying to do that, um, I just thought there's gotta be a better way than this. Um, and I think I, that was when I got into, okay, maybe I can do something online because I get to hide behind my laptop because I got online and about 2003 and found other costume makers like me, other people who were interested in sewing and particularly other people who are interested in historic costume on the clothing of the past and how to make that, uh, you know, I'd watched costume dramas on TV and said, no, no, no, I want to make one of those.

Cathy Hay (04:54):

How do I make one of those? You know, this grand dress, whatever. Um, so I got online and when you're online, you get to build relationships through written word, what you did at the time. And that gave me time to relax and think about what I'd wanted to say. And I was able to bring my personality out because all the usual social anxiety was taken away. By the fact I was still on my own in my room and had time to think about what I was going to say. So I built some beautiful friendships through live journal. And after about four years of just building relationships realized, well, maybe there's something here. I mean, I went online in the first place to find, find more brides. Um, but soon realized that the people who were actually taking notice of me and the people who were interested were other dressmakers other seamstresses who wanted to know my secrets.

Cathy Hay (05:56):

Um, I mean, me off to start off with, I mean, what is it mean anybody, my secrets. Um, but after a while I realized that I've got the hardest thing of all is to get people's attention, you know, on the internet, even back in ought six, you're like that one little product on the top shelf at the top of our 16 in this supermarket. And you know how to get people to notice you and pay attention to you is arguably the most challenging part. So I've got the attention of these people. I've got people who are interested in me, interested in what I'm doing, who want to learn something from me. Oh, wait, maybe they're my audience. And that was when everything changed. And that was when it started to come together.

Cathy Hay (06:50):

Oh, that's so interesting too. And I'm glad that you brought up the fact that you found yourself with the written word in particular. Of course, I, I love it because I'm a writer, but I noticed something similar in my own journey too. 'Cause like in meetings I was like face to face networking. Of course, you know, we're recording this in the time where a pandemic is still raging and face-to-face, isn't really as much of a thing, so much as video meetings, but you know, I go to in-person events and stuff like that. I, I tried to blend in and the funny thing is looking back at some of the writing I would do, like I genuinely had an audience and a following because we might've been on live journal at the same time before I moved to a different journal. I've been writing online since 2002, I think. Okay. Um, and had convinced myself that I hated writing, but, but I learned that I really hated when people told me what to write or how to write, but I just wanted to be me and say what I wanted. And thankfully I found this field after many, many years of copywriting and marketing, where being yourself actually like you are the product in a way. And I love that.

Cathy Hay (08:01):

Um, the, the gift of the internet is really, I, I realized early on that, on the internet, people organize themselves by interests, not by geography. So your interest can be, you know, breeding pink hamsters and somewhere out there on the internet, there will be some other people who are interested in breeding pink hamsters. So, you know, you've got this amazing opportunity to actually be yourself and actually find other people in this huge pool of other humans that are easier than ever to find. There are going to be people out there like you so enormously freeing. It makes it a great time in history to be alive.

Cathy Hay (08:45):

Yeah. I think it's interesting that we meet so many people online these days, that it's more normal to know more about them before you meet them, then meeting a complete stranger. Uh, so tell me a little bit about how this helped you to find your own voice in your own style. Because I loved when you were telling me that, you know, you're going after the brides, but then you keep discovering that these other sewing, the, these other seamstresses, these other artisans really are interested in your skills. Uh, and I remember having a similar experience in writing where people wanted to, to hear what I knew about writing. And I was like, no, you can't have my, this is mine. Like, let me have it, The switch for you and led you to, to follow the path that you're currently on.

Cathy Hay (09:38):

Um, I think it was, it was really, I started getting interested in what might be possible online in terms of business. Um, and I, I read a report that talked about attention and that attention is the most scarce resource now. And um, if you have, if you have the attention of an audience you're halfway there, so you just figure out figuring out who your audience are, first, what they want, and perhaps look at the community as a whole and think, what do these people need? And if you can be the person to provide it, you know, it was, it was a shift in starting to think more like an entrepreneur. So, um, I realized that many people around me, we were all hobbyists. We were all figuring this out as we go. And we were all reading each other's blogs, um, live journals each trying to figure it out on our own each reinventing the wheel, each buying the same books in the same 10 books at the time that there were about costume making.

Cathy Hay (10:45):

Um, and all, you know, we were, we were doing this in a very inefficient way. So there was room for that to be a central place where people actually taught each other how to do this and where people might be effectively, why we might all pass a hat around and collect some money together to pay somebody, to actually write a very in-depth article on how they did this. Step one, step two, step three, because people would give some of the details of how they made the thing that just made, but they wouldn't necessarily tell you the whole story because they didn't have time or they didn't have the interest or whatever. So that was, that went alongside the idea. But one of the possibilities was a membership site and, you know, I put two and two together and thought, well, can I get my friends to write something about how they work?

Cathy Hay (11:39):

I started in the first month with, I think, six articles. I wrote myself just to get it off the ground. And I knew enough people well enough that I was just, I was selling it to my friends. It was just, let's, let's make something that's useful to all of us. Um, so I don't know whether I was really thinking of myself as an entrepreneur at that stage, starting a business, but I did have, I did have a sense that it would be nice to have something that would quote unquote, take care of the money. So I could just go back. And so I wouldn't have to take commissions because I wasn't enjoying what I was making for these brides, I had bigger ideas and very ambitious ideas about what I wanted to make. Um, and I wanted something to enable me to do that. So I love that. I love it.

Cathy Hay (12:26):

Uh, and I, I love it for a couple of different reasons too, because I think it shows, um, like entrepreneurs, we have a lot of noise and we tend to think about a whole bunch of different things and it, it gets overwhelming. Like what's going to make the money, where are my opportunities? Who should I be talking to? What should I offer? And it can be easy to just kind of spiral the drain. But what I love about what you did was you saw an opportunity and instead of kind of belaboring it or, or thinking a whole bunch about it, like, is this going to be a serious business? You were like, all right, I'm going to do this thing. And that'll be nice because it'll bring some money in and it'll let me work on what I really want to be doing. Which like, I think the fact that you had that awareness of like, here's the market I'm pursuing and I'm not really excited about it, here's this other thing over here that I really love. And I really want to be doing more of that, that I think is critical in entrepreneurship.

Cathy Hay (13:20):

Yeah. It was just, it was just a great opportunity to be around the people that I liked and the people who were like me and, you know, I, I never expected it to be a huge thing, but it seemed like, okay, in our little weird little corner of the internet, maybe we can do a thing and make a couple of bucks, you know, I think that's great.

Angie Colee (13:41):

And you've grown to how big now.

Cathy Hay (13:44):

we have approximately two and a half thousand members.

Angie Colee (13:46):

Oh, wow. Oh my gosh. That's so great. I love it. When you can find your people like that and everybody geeks out over the same kind of thing. Oh yes. Going back to, to kind of, it's almost like putting on a mask, you know, when you think you have to have some sort of persona in order to attract people and yes. You know, I would go to those in-person meetings, all buttoned down, my tattoos covered trying to be professional. And what I was really doing was blending in and being forgettable. And I exactly, I didn't realize that until years later, when, you know, I started getting more of a reputation in copywriting and people knew me personally, behind the scenes and they would hear me get all fired up and ranty and really passionate about something. And they would be like, you don't really write like that though. You don't really present like that. And, uh, you know, eventually I was invited to coach copywriters and the one thing I started hearing over and over again from them was more rants.

Angie Colee (14:47):

Wow. It was the weirdest thing. I love it. And, and it's real, it's super strange because my style of rant too, is not really angry. Like I'm not railing against the establishment, but I'm like, I'm so frustrated when people don't believe in themselves or when they've got a story in their head about why they can't achieve something or, you know, they're, they're frustrated with a client and they can't figure out a way to speak to them and salvage that relationship. And I get like, so frustrated about you can do the thing that I want on this big rant. So, um, I think one of my students at one point was trying to make hashtag Angie rants a thing I haven't checked to see if that was actually achieved. But, um, yeah, it, it all clicked one day. They do, they really, and they love hearing that other people are excited about the same things that they're excited about. It's, it's really reassuring to know that you're not the only person in the world geeking out over this thing.

Cathy Hay (15:48):

Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, this is, this has been a cultural journey for me too, because when I got online, 90% of the people I was interacting with were Americans and continue to be Americans. And so part of my fascination through this journey and through the personal growth, this journey, because you don't grow as an entrepreneur without growing personally as well, has been the process of breaking out of my cultural identity as a Brit and actually being myself and actually connecting with people and opening up and being vulnerable. And that's a journey for me that now I spend as much time as I possibly can in the company of Americans, because compared to the culture I come from, I just feel myself open up around you guys. Oh, wow. That's so exciting, scary and dangerous to me, it's it feels like doing the thing you're scared of every day. So, um, that's, that's been a big part of the journey as well, but I was geeking out amongst a bunch of people who weren't afraid to geek out about what they were into and to go deeper into it than anybody around me would have done. So that's been, that's been an element of journey as well for me, you know,

Angie Colee (17:17):

I love that too. I had never really thought about it in terms of cultural differences. And I mean, you can't hear it from the accent, all that. Well, although I can break out my Southern, if I ever really feel like it, but I'm from Texas and from the deep South. And I think we had a similar approach growing up, which is that, you know, you don't share your business with people. You don't go around gossiping or spreading drama. We have a, you might laugh at this. If you ever hear somebody from the United States say, bless your heart, you have to stop and think about whether they mean it with a positive, Oh my God, I love you. Bless your heart. Or if it's, uh, uh, I don't think that's very smart. Bless your heart. Um, and I remember like growing up that I would have con I would geek out about something.

Angie Colee (18:09):

I was super, I've always been a pretty passionate person, but I do remember hearing that from like my parents, my grandparents, it would be like, not so loud, tone it down. Not everybody needs to know your business. So that's, I grew up thinking that I had to keep all that to myself, which so it was almost an unlearning stumbling into the world of entrepreneurship that like, no, no, no share. You are the thing that people want to hear from. And I think that the light bulb moment for me was realizing, I could say the same thing somebody has said, like hundreds of people have said before me, but the particular way that I'm saying it and the lens, I'm the stories that I'm telling to make this point are what made it click for someone for the first time, even though they've heard it before? Yes.

Cathy Hay (18:50):

Yes. Very much

Angie Colee (18:52):

So. Is it similar in sewing?

Cathy Hay (18:55):

Yes. I mean, that journey is, it sounds as though from what I've said so far, there was this one moment when I realized that I had to be myself and everything worked out from there, but it has been an iterative process. It's been like layers in an onion that the deeper I go and the more I become myself, the better it works. And the more I find my people and the more passionate I am and the more it connects with people. So more recently, much more recently I've started a YouTube channel and I just started naturally. I almost couldn't help myself from store talking about mindset issues about personal development, which I had been keeping to myself as much as I could for as long as I could, because people are just sewing on into that. You know, they don't want to hear about, you know, all that Tony Robbins stuff I've been in TV years.

Cathy Hay (19:50):

But in fact, the more I talked about that the more interested people were, and the more people wrote comments in paragraphs, because nobody's talking about this stuff, not in the way that I am in my space. Lots of people talk about sewing. Nobody's talking about how that connects into personal growth. I'm I really think of my sewing and creativity as a vehicle for learning to be more of myself and learning to be a better, a better person, a more effective person, a happier person, a more connected person. So the more I started talking about that stuff, and the more that I started talking about my journey in that and how really in a way, the personal growth is a deeper passion for me than the sewing and bringing those two together has created something very unique that is just taking it a step deeper for me now. So it's, it keeps going as you just, you know, you, you go through your whole life growing deeper and deeper and finding out more and more about yourself and the same happens in an entrepreneurial journey. It all connects in together. There isn't, there isn't a separation between personal and business. As you go deeper as a person, you go deeper in your business and make a deeper connection with an audience who's more and more who more and more aligned with you.

Angie Colee (21:09):

Oh, that's so amazing. Especially because in entrepreneurship, there can be this, this, like we, we, and I say this, you know, including myself in this group too, like sometimes we set a goal for ourselves and then everything becomes about the goal. And if we hit that goal amazing. And if we don't hit that goal, it's kind of still the journey to get there and to figure out all the things, all the pieces that need to fall into place to get there. But we don't often talk about the fact that the goal and the finish line are two separate things. Like, so that's why I loved that. You talked about that it's, it's layers of an onion and it's constant and it's iterative because I think there's this, you know, target mentality in entrepreneurship where it's like, I'm going to get there and I'm going to be happy and all my problems will be solved and it'll be easiest to leave. Nope. That's not the case.

Cathy Hay (22:06):

I mean, early on, there's a second, there's it, there's a sense of that because you're trying to hit a financial goal where you can pay your bills, um, and free yourself from a day job. Um, but the deeper, the further you go, I mean, that becomes a point once, once you, once you have your, your basic needs met, it's it more and more becomes? Well, I kind of won the game in terms of numbers. The rest is just, it becomes a, the goal becomes different. And I think the goal for me is becoming, um, impact. But at the same time, I feel like it's how not? How far can I go? But how deep can I go? How deep a connection can I make with people? How, how much of an impact can I make in the world? But not necessarily how many people can I impact, but how deeply can I impact the individual? Um, and how much can I affect their life positively.

Angie Colee (23:06):

I love that distinction because I think, you know, for, for a lot of people starting out, it really, like you said, it is about the money. It's about making sure that you hit your targets and that your basic needs are met. You can pay all the bills. And I love that you've got a distinction between, I don't want to make all the money in the world. I don't like when I hit five bazillion dollars, I'll be satisfied, but it's like, how do I reach my people? How do I connect with them? How do I help them? And, and what does that look like? I love that as a focus. 'Cause I think I've long been an advocate of find your passion and the money will follow I'm. I'm one of those weirdos. Yeah. But like, you can always find a way to make an, make a living and a nice living from doing something that you love, but it's hard to sustain interest in something when you're just chasing the money for me.

Cathy Hay (24:07):

Oh yeah. Yeah. It is. I mean, the money has to be in a sense, a side effect and that's, that's really challenging when you're starting out and the money is your main focus by, by necessity. And there's nothing wrong with that. Um, but the, uh, the, yeah, the further you go, and I don't know whether it's even about finding your passion and following it, because I know plenty of dressmakers who are following their passion, like crazy. And I've been friends for 20 years and they're still not making a living. I think, um, it's not necessarily that you follow your passion and the money follows, but you follow where the connection is. Where can you make the deepest connection with people because where you're going to make the deepest connection that's, where you'll find their real needs and the things you can really help them with, but they need the most, and they need the most deeply and will be most willing to pay for. Um, so I feel, I feel like, I feel like I've reached a point where it's about as the same depth rather than distance. Does that make sense? How far I can go? How much I can do, but how deep I can go.

Angie Colee (25:26):

I like that because it feels like disconnecting from, from that finish line mentality, right? Like what does,

Cathy Hay (25:35):

Because you don't always get to eat,

Angie Colee (25:36):

but yeah, you can always go for goals.

Cathy Hay (25:38):

The goals aren't necessarily what you think. My I'm I, um, last year I went to, I happened to find myself in Paris, as you do. And I was on a trip with a group of friends. And while I was there, I went to this one particular address because I have this ongoing obsession with this one particular Victorian dress designer. And he had his shop in a particular street in the middle of Paris. And I wanted to go and see whether it was still there because the address was always on the labels, on the dresses. So I wondered just what if I could go that, you know, would them, what the magic still were there somehow, if I went to that street and found the building and it was, and the building was still there and I made this little video standing across the street, getting all emotional teary about this is where it all happened.

Cathy Hay (26:32):

If there, if the spirit of worth that, that was the name of the design. If the spirit of worth is anywhere, it's in the street in this building. And I, there were people going in and out of the building, there was no plaque on the building saying what it wants. What is, I mean, in England, you'll see blue circular plaques on important historic buildings saying what they were or who lived there. There was no plaque, but people were going in and out this building, like, what is this building now? And do these people realize what it is. And I discovered Googling around a bit, but it's now a business center and you can get a virtual address there. You can get a virtual office. So obviously how could I not get a virtual address that matched my heroes, you know, to get his address as my address was just, it was the most possibly the most ridiculous thing I've ever done in terms of spending money every month, just so I can have this virtual address.

Cathy Hay (27:33):

That's not even in my country, so they have to forward mail internationally to me, but I made a video about it. My audience loved it. I get mail all the time from people who love to write to me at the address. And it is the most beautiful, deep connection. And I see it as one of my biggest successes because when people write to me, it's more than a message and more than a, an email when people write to me on a piece of paper with a pen and, you know, being in my crowd, they're in there with the stickers and the wax seals and the calligraphy and the whole nine. And they write to me what they're really feeling. They write to me like, you know, they would write to an agony art in a magazine and it has come full circle because they write to me, like I used to write to that one musician 20 years ago, who I looked up to as my big hero.

Cathy Hay (28:35):

And I kind of saw in her who I wanted to be because she had all this confidence and this success. And now people write to me, like I wrote to her or how can I feel like, regardless of what I created with my business, I feel like the letters people write to me. And the fact that I got the address is probably my biggest and most authentic success because that's where the deepest connections are made. And I have people writing to me or in the sixties and seventies, I have kids as young, as 10 writing to me from all over the world. And I mean, this is, this is, don't imagine a huge mailbag I'm, you know, I'm not, you know, a Hollywood movie star, but I get two or three letters a week from people really telling me what's really bothering them and what they really want to do with their lives. And, you know, kids in high school telling me I want to go into historical sewing, how do I become address this store? Um, it's just the most wonderful connection I end up in tears all the time over it. I feel like that's in a way, my greatest success to have made a connection with people where people are making changes in their lives, because something I've done or said, or a video I've made. Um, that's my greatest success.

Angie Colee (29:48):

I feel like I'm, I'm like a broken record. Cause I'm like, I love that. I love that everything you're saying, I'm saying I love, but it's so sad that people can't see my facial reaction. 'Cause you were telling this story about Paris and I could, I was getting a sense of where it was going. And when you were like, I had the opportunity to get the, my draw, my jaw almost hit the floor. I was like, but I didn't want to interrupt your flow. I was loving that story so much.

Cathy Hay (30:17):

Ooh. I love it. It's a bit of time travel as well. I love creating a bit of a, a bit of magic in the world. So to connect back to the address of make people feel like they could write to the house of worth, um, yeah, that's, that's a bit of magic for me

Angie Colee (30:32):

I love that, Creating more magic in the world. Well, Kathy, this has been broken record time, an amazing conversation, and I loved every bit of it. Um, do you want to tell people where they can find out more about you?

Cathy Hay (30:46):

Um, they can find out more about me on, well, the best place is my YouTube channel. That's where I'm hanging out most of these days. Um, so I'm on there under my own name Cathy Hay, and also I'm an Instagram at Cathy dot Hay, um, my membership is foundations revealed. Um, and yeah, those are the, those are the main places you can find me.

Cathy Hay (31:07):

Excellent. I'll make sure that they've got links to all of those in the show notes to that, that, uh, I think you're going to connect with a lot more passionate people. I imagine there's some overlap between writing and entrepreneurship and people who love historical sewing.

Cathy Hay (31:20):

Oh yes.

Angie Colee (31:21):

All right. Thank you so much for being with me today and we have to do this again.

Cathy Hay (31:25):

I would love to, that would be wonderful. Thank you, Angie. This has been so much,

Angie Colee (31:32):

So that is it another awesome episode of permission to kick on the books. If you want to know more about the show, if you want to know more about me, Angie Colee and the mission I'm on to help entrepreneurs punch fear in the face and do big bold things, then head on over to permission to kick ass.com. That is all one word together, permission to kick ass.com, make sure to sign up for my email list so that, you know, whenever there's a hot, fresh and ready podcast episode out for you. And also on Mondays, I like to send out a little newsletter called kick Mondays as I'm sure you're totally, totally surprised by that. So thank you for being here with me today. I'm Angie Colee. Make sure that you share this with a friend that needs to hear this message today. Like it, share it. Comment wherever you're listening to this today and let's go kick some ass.