Please welcome to the show the DELIGHTFULLY unfiltered Erin Marcus of Conquer Your Business. Strap in folks, 'cause this one is all about embracing your own special brand of weird, leaving toxicity in the rearview, and writing your own damn rules. Tune in for inspiration on how to design your ideal life and career around your unique talents and interests.
Can't-Miss Moments from This Episode:
If I could sum this up in one pithy quote: permission to let your freak flag fly! Listen now!
Erin's bio:
Erin Marcus is the founder and CEO of Conquer Your Business, an international company helping driven entrepreneurs and small business owners get the financial and emotional freedom they need to build a business and a life they're proud of.
Having made the successful leap from corporate executive to entrepreneur, Erin uses that experience, along with her MBA education and street smart upbringing, to help her clients reach heights they never dreamed possible. And have fun doing it!
Erin is also an international speaker and the host of Ready Yet?! Podcast
Resources and links mentioned:
Let's collab:
Let's connect:
I find a lot of my guests via PodMatch. If you join via my link, I may get a small commission.
If you dig the show and want to help bring more episodes to the world, consider buying a coffee for the production team!
Please welcome to the show the DELIGHTFULLY unfiltered Erin Marcus of Conquer Your Business. Strap in folks, 'cause this one is all about embracing your own special brand of weird, leaving toxicity in the rearview, and writing your own damn rules. Tune in for inspiration on how to design your ideal life and career around your unique talents and interests.
Can't-Miss Moments from This Episode:
If I could sum this up in one pithy quote: permission to let your freak flag fly! Listen now!
Erin's bio:
Erin Marcus is the founder and CEO of Conquer Your Business, an international company helping driven entrepreneurs and small business owners get the financial and emotional freedom they need to build a business and a life they're proud of.
Having made the successful leap from corporate executive to entrepreneur, Erin uses that experience, along with her MBA education and street smart upbringing, to help her clients reach heights they never dreamed possible. And have fun doing it!
Erin is also an international speaker and the host of Ready Yet?! Podcast
Resources and links mentioned:
Let's collab:
Let's connect:
I find a lot of my guests via PodMatch. If you join via my link, I may get a small commission.
If you dig the show and want to help bring more episodes to the world, consider buying a coffee for the production team!
Welcome to Permission to Kick Ass, the show that gives you a virtual seat at the bar for the real conversations that happen between entrepreneurs. I'm interviewing all kinds of business owners, from those just a few years into freelancing to CEOs helming nine figure companies. If you've ever worried that everyone else just seems to get it and you're missing something or messing things up, this show is for you. I'm your host, angie Coley, and let's get to it and welcome back to Permission to Kick Ass. With me today is my new friend, erin Marcus. Say hi, hi.
Erin Marcus:So excited to be here. This is awesome.
Angie Colee:I'm excited to have you too. I have already lamented a couple of times how I really love your rocker style and I want to get more stylish like you. So like yes, let's connect, let's talk, tell us about your business.
Erin Marcus:Let's make it happen. So the fancy marketing one liner for my business is I am Erin Marcus, founder and CEO of Conquer your Business, where we create business and branding strategy that build multiple, six and seven figure businesses.
Angie Colee:Nice. How did you get into that line of work Kicking?
Erin Marcus:and screaming.
Angie Colee:Starting off winning.
Erin Marcus:Yay, like this is. So I've got a few years on you and certain things I have learned along the way, and I really don't think you can learn these without just experience. I don't know that it has to be years, it could just be experiences, right? Certain people, myself included, that have a life of experiences, and there are certain people that have like a smoother ride, right, I don't teach you this, experiences do.
Erin Marcus:And when you say, how did you get into this? And I say kicking and screaming, because it really is a journey of letting go of what everybody else wants you to do and, for me, more importantly, what I thought I was supposed to be doing, and here's and I don't even say that with a chip on my shoulder, I don't have the ooh, you have to just do this one thing in my background, with Tiger parents pushing me to be a doctor, like I didn't have that. But you grow up when you grow up, you grow up in the environment, you grow up in in the world. You grow up in whatever media you know, whatever media you engage with, and you get this story of how the world works. And so I got to where I am through a journey of letting go of the story of how the world works and learning a different story.
Angie Colee:I'm writing that down, a warped story of how the world works. I feel like that's the recurring theme of the episodes that I'm making today is that you get to decide your story, and another guest basically described like the way life works is that there are events and experiences and then there are narratives and like. So it's things that happen and meaning that you attach to it and you get to change the meaning.
Erin Marcus:You get to change the meaning and my whole thing, like going back to the business, conquer your business. The tagline is be in charge, take action, get results. And my weirdness somewhere along the way, early, early, early, I knew I didn't decide this. I've just always known that the rules don't apply to me.
Angie Colee:Nice, I like it. I like it.
Erin Marcus:We're rebellious over here and not from an entire like. Here's the key to feeling that way though you can't stand up and say the rules don't apply to me, I get whatever I want, and then have the entitlement and think someone has to hand it to you. Those don't go together. If you're going to decide or think or feel that the rules don't apply to you and you don't want to be in prison, like, those aren't the rules I'm talking about. Let's just get that real clear. Those aren't the rules. The be a good person aren't. That's not the rules I'm talking about. I'm talking about the rules of what's possible, what I'm allowed to do, what I want to do, what I don't want to do, how I want to live my life. Like those rules, mm hmm. I've never felt those rules apply to me Because, even though I had this external story, I did always carve my own path within that story.
Erin Marcus:I was very much allowed to let my freak flag fly. Even incorporate, mm hmm. Even incorporate, I like that, and the only reason you get to do that, the only way you get to do that, is to deliver. Hmm, is to deliver. Like one of the things that I, the P, one of the pieces of advice I got a long time ago. It's very true the weirder you are, the better you have to be at what you do. Let's just call it what it is the weirder you are, the better you have to be at what you do.
Angie Colee:That's so fun. Well, because of course, everybody that's listening is not going to see what just happened, but when the video comes out I'm sure people are going to laugh. I took a sip right at the moment that Erin said that the first time, the weirder you are, the better you have to be, and almost choked. But it's such.
Erin Marcus:Right. So if I want to be my weird ass self, I have to deliver at an at the next level. Now there's what weird is changes. What's acceptable changes, right, I can have purple hair. Now, I can have thing I can have. You know, the tattoos that I have now are more visible than the tattoos I had in corporate. Yes, right, there's just certain and in certain worlds, there's right, there's certain ranges of. But in general, if you are going to embrace your self, yeah, you have to be good at what you do, to break through the story and you can, if you want, claim that that's not fair, and you can, and that in your be 100% right. But it doesn't matter what's fair, it matters what is.
Angie Colee:It matters what gets results. I heard that for a long time and I didn't feel and I don't mean that in a results at all cost money at all, cost context, because that's not what I'm about but I do remember how things changed for me in terms of breaking this. I call it the employee filter, like, and that's really the only filter that most of us grow up with is we are raised and we are socialized to be good workers and to follow the directions and to follow the steps right, and so this path like that you and I are on, becomes a breaking of those social norms and those expectations. But there's a lot of hard learning there because you've only got the one life filter to look through. So there was one instance for me in particular that changed that I had such a hard time divorcing hours in a chair from dollars earned. Oh my.
Erin Marcus:God, the longest time, the interesting way I teach my clients this. That hits home very quickly. The problem with charging dollars for hours means the better you are at what you do, the less money you make.
Angie Colee:How back ass words is that?
Erin Marcus:right, but it's not. It's not backwards, it's fine until it's not fine. It works for full time employee companies that are large enough to have multiple like overlap. When you have a job and you don't do the work there, it doesn't really matter, because the work is still there, it's just waiting for you or someone else picks up the ball. Right, there's all these safety nets that doesn't exist in small businesses because we're not big enough to have that. I mean, that is got an upside and a downside to it, like anything else. But right. So when you go to carve your own path, when you go to do you have to take all these things into account and say it's so much more of an unlearning than it is a learning.
Angie Colee:Right.
Erin Marcus:There's a self discovery and it's really so many times. It's a relearning and unlearning, and I one of the things that I caution people against is if you do it with a chip on your shoulder, you're setting yourself up for failure. Mm, hmm, right, if you run away from your job in a huff, blaming everyone and their mother about how horrible it was, you're going to have a harder time creating something. Yeah, and if you are driven to create something not because, by the way, there aren't things that need to change in the world, there's a million things that need to change Like I 100% agree, there's a million things that need to change in the world about how companies run about, who gets what opportunity Absolutely, but you as an individual don't have to sit and wait for that to happen to dictate the life you get to live.
Erin Marcus:And I laugh because maybe it's. I feel like part of me is turning into the grumpy old lady when I say things like this, like I didn't wait for a social movement called quiet quitting to tell me to leave jobs. I didn't like Mm, hmm, I just left. I didn't have to label it, you suck, I'm out of here Until until I got jobs. I did like that supported me and we're amazing. But you can't right. You can't leave the job you hate because they suck and go into the next job with a chip on your shoulder and say to them prove to me, you don't suck.
Erin Marcus:Yeah, it's not how that works. And the other problem that's associated with this in once you get in a small business, if you've left your job in order to open a business, is if you are behaving, if you are doing what you're doing to avoid pain, which is very normal, yeah. The problem with that is, as soon as you alleviate a little bit of the pain, you stop Mm hmm, because your goal is to avoid pain. So, as soon as the like my hip hurts because I'm old, I took an leave. It stopped hurting. I'm not still taking a leave. I stopped, I solved the pain. Yeah. Now, conversely, if you're doing what you're doing to create something, Mm, hmm.
Erin Marcus:Right Now you don't stop. If you're driven to create, you're going to behave very, very, very differently than if you're driven to avoid pain.
Angie Colee:Mm-hmm, I really like that. I've heard that phrased as running away versus running toward.
Erin Marcus:Absolutely. I like the feeling Like if we want to get a physical feeling around it. I like the idea of being pulled forward instead of pushed, being pulled forward by desire instead of being pushed away from something.
Angie Colee:Mm-hmm, I really, really like that and I really want to highlight the fact that you talked about not going into it with a chip on your shoulder. I feel like I've coached so many, especially solopreneurs, that are getting to like overwhelmed. Or maybe their systems are breaking down and somebody has made it through that might have been screened out otherwise, or I needed money, so I took a job that I already knew was kind of on the fence, but now they're making me miserable and I'm angry at things. That makes you have a tendency to go to the pitchfork mob, aka all of your peers, and asking them for opinions on what you should do with your clients, and, unfortunately, the only person that can give you clarity on a situation that you are struggling with is the clients, right, they're the only one that can answer what they meant, whether they were trying to insult you or whether they had a bad day.
Erin Marcus:Who the hell cares. Like, yeah, so here's the horrible. Like, put your safety bubble seriously. When this was said to me, I had to take a deep breath and this is like a self-reflection moment. But on, now I know it, I can look out for it. Yeah, resentment, because that's what you're describing so relationship killer is 100%, every single time, a lack of personal responsibility. Interesting Resent, think about it. You're mad at the client that you said yes to because you didn't charge enough, and now you're working for less money than you want to. You're mad at the client because of scope creep on the project, but you're the one without boundaries. You're mad at the family member whose dinner you're going to because you didn't want to go, but you didn't have the guts to say no.
Angie Colee:Like there's zero times.
Erin Marcus:There is zero times that resentment is nothing less than a lack of personal responsibility. So here's the thing this is really good information. So it's really good information because resentment has a physical feeling. Sentment has a physical feeling and it's much easier to catch a physical feeling than a thought. Right, you'll feel the clench and your mind will have way run away with you so fast, so it's much easier to catch the physical feeling. So the next time you're in the mode, we all get that we're human. It's not about never feeling this the way, it's about catching it faster and doing something productive with it. So next time you're feeling the resentment, how does it feel physically? Let's make it easy to catch. And then the question to ask is what did I do as first cause to create this effect? And, even more importantly, how can I show up differently to create a different effect? Because the beautiful, beautiful truth is you have complete power over the situation.
Angie Colee:Yes, if you choose to step on it. You can always do things differently and you can always find your piece in just about any situation that's gone wrong. Right, there's all kinds of exceptions where you can't really control anything that happened to you. You didn't invite something to happen to you. I'm talking about like crime in public or something like that?
Erin Marcus:Right, we're talking about normal human nature, right? This conversation is about the normal scope of reality, not the exceptions that are just brutal.
Angie Colee:I mean exactly. And when things go wrong, there's almost always something that we contributed to that, whether through omission or intention, like we can always find something that we can do better for next time. So if you go into that with the, the winner learn mentality is what I love about that, but it's going to be some hard lessons.
Erin Marcus:I could tell you right now when was I not clear, right?
Angie Colee:Where was?
Erin Marcus:I not clear on my expectations? Where was I? Where did I say yes when I wanted to say no? Yes, All of those things we create in our lives and then we make ourselves. The other problem with the resentment is then we make ourselves bad or wrong for even doing like maybe you are able to catch the fact that you did this to yourself. But then we make ourselves bad or wrong for screwing up quote, unquote when the truth is you're just human, having a human moment. Yes, you get to be human, Were you surprised.
Erin Marcus:I mean, I had a meltdown last night. I had an absolute meltdown last night with my you know, my thoughts were running away with me because there was a few things going on that I felt were out of control and I felt like I didn't like a couple of things that were going on, and none of the beauty is I'm very lucky and none of this was a big deal. Yeah, but it took me time to figure out. Why am I feeling this way? Why am I thinking about this? Why am I feeling this way? What's really wrong? What do I, what do I think is actually at risk here? Separating right, separating the feeling that I am in creating from the reality of the situation. Once I have the reality, the situation, okay, great. Once that, you can't. The only way to solve a problem is to understand the problem, because once you get that, there's a problem that is not so hard to find a solution.
Angie Colee:Well, and I think what you've said perfectly, I've heard it said as feelings aren't facts, and I think that is so, so true, they can clue you into something that needs to change, something that needs addressing, but are they necessarily true? I don't know, and as a recovering hothead, as I like to call myself, recovering jerk, I can attest firsthand to the power of the spiral, which is why I now have a freak out timer, like I get to feel these feelings, however intense they need to be, for 15 minutes, and after that we are letting go and we are moving on.
Erin Marcus:Yeah, because the trick is not to suppress the feeling, the trick is not to pretend there's no feeling. The trick is learning how to be in charge of yourself instead of trapped in reaction mode.
Angie Colee:Yes, yes, yes, not being hijacked by the chemical dump. That happens with whatever feelings. Yeah, I'm going to do an abrupt left turn here because I know that beforehand we were talking a little bit about what got you here, and I know that you said kicking and screaming. I am curious about whether kicking and screaming involves the year of failure that you mentioned to me before we started recording.
Erin Marcus:So the Cliff Notes version is I had a very fancy corporate career and a very fancy job and the adjoining very fancy income and it was awesome. I mean, I really was very, very lucky in two different corporate situations to have mentors who brought me into rooms that were above my pre grade and taught me all sorts of things that led me to the next opportunities, took personal interests in me. So I didn't have negative. I didn't leave because of a negative feeling. I left my corporate job because I was late 30s, getting into my 40s, and started to think like there's something else out here. I'm missing something. I'm missing something. I love the people that I'm work with. I could care less about the work that I'm actually doing. It's not interesting anymore, right and there. So, and that was a couple of years of process, because one of those years was I'm like, okay, I don't get it, I don't get it. So what did I do? I decided to go get an MBA.
Angie Colee:I've done that before too, I thought I was missing something.
Erin Marcus:So the beauty of it is I now have an MBA focused in marketing and executive leadership, which has come in very handy in my business, right. So it's all for purpose, it's all laid out for purpose. So I leave my corporate job and I start a franchise and I got my office to the top 10 out of 200 offices in about 18 months. Nice. So why? Because I know how to grow business, because I have an MBA in marketing and leadership and I come out of corporate C suite where I was taught by mentors how to grow business, right, so great. And I had that business for six years. And during that time the franchise owner, the franchise zore, would hire me to come train new franchises and I would speak at their annual conventions and I would speak at their regional meetings about how to grow this business. And when it was my turn out the networking event for the spotlight and I wanted to talk about my business, all of my associates were like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we know you have that business, but why are you making money? Why? How come this is working for you? Like what, do you know that we don't Just tell me what to do, right?
Erin Marcus:So I was finding myself doing that more and more and more and at the same time, the business, the franchise that I had was I was getting caregiver burnout. It was an amazing. It was working with families, with aging parents, not in healthcare, but in senior relocation and downsizing. We were helping people in their upper 80s and 90s move out of their houses that they've been in for 50 years. Like this is brutally traumatic. It's horribly traumatic, and so there's a million moving logistical parts to it and very low margins and meanwhile, socioeconomically, there's no barrier to entry.
Erin Marcus:And here I am with a big business with 15 employees and taxes and insurance and workers comp, and my competition is working under the table. So there was just from a socioeconomic standpoint and from a caregiver burnout standpoint and from an exhaustion standpoint, there was a lot of different reasons why I'm like, okay, I need to not be doing. And from the message I'm getting from the universe, like people don't even care about that damn business. They want to know why you're making money. And so finally, at the end of 2017, I'm like, okay, that's it, that's what I want to do. But I didn't really know what it looked like and every time I tried to take a step away from my franchise, the universe would pull me back for the franchise, because the universe just absolutely hates a vacuum.
Angie Colee:It's constantly testing you. How do you want it? Are you sure you want it, do you really?
Erin Marcus:want this Right. So I finally had to, like, make a hard cut, and it probably made it a little bit prematurely, but I don't do the safe version. I have friends. My one friend once put it you really like it out there on the thin branches, I don't do. I'm very much all or nothing. I don't do things halfway. I make this massive action Right. It is what it is. You don't have to do it my way for it to work, but it is one way Right. Burn the boats, we're doing the thing.
Erin Marcus:So, 2018, I now find myself with a business that at the time, I called conquer the conversation, because my background is in communication, marketing, messaging. You know why am I able to give you that one line sentence when you said you know, tell me about your business? Well, it's because it's what I know how to do. Right, that's what I know how to do. So I really was playing in that space, but it wasn't working, because I come out of corporate and then I had a franchise and so when I launched my own business, there was a difference between the $3 million deal I could close as a parting gift to my corporate job and how do I price myself when I'm the product. How do I talk about this thing that I do? That's not really tangible.
Erin Marcus:The way my franchise was and what does it look like, how do I put it together? Like there was so much more to it that it took me the year to figure out, right. So I went from big, fancy corporate senior vice president of business development, blah blah, blah, blah blah, to top 10 franchise out, 200 offices nationwide to $11,000. Which if you've ever done taxes, you know and had a business and expenses that an $11,000 gross is a negative net, right. So a very nice, lovely friend of mine has helped me since reframe. It really wasn't a year of failure. It feels like a year of failure, it certainly felt at the time, but it really was the year of reflection. It's the year of figuring this out, what I like, that Great, what was. And most people do this while they have a job. I just didn't. I just quit my day job in order to do this.
Angie Colee:One of my mentors called that. I had a similar experience with a partnership that dissolved and my mentor said think of this as the better than business school with less than half the cost.
Erin Marcus:Exactly, totally Be grateful for the lesson. Right Be grateful, and I've since learned how to be grateful for the lesson. Didn't feel like it in a moment.
Angie Colee:It was hard to have that gratitude in the moment. I can definitely attest to that.
Erin Marcus:You learn how to get through the process faster and faster, but the process doesn't really change. So in 2018, I was mired in inauthentic problems because I was still functioning under too much of what I thought should be, instead of who I am and what I'm great at. I hadn't yet really discovered Aaron's genius song and how do we build around it Right. But by the other thing I learned that year is when you call your business, conquer the conversation and you really talk about communication, I realized I hadn't solved my traumatic problem of being. You know the franchise I had. I was involved in everybody's trauma. Well, when you do workshops for intergenerational communication in the workplace, you're still in the middle of everybody's trauma it's just different trauma and do I really want to be in the middle of everybody's difficult conversation for the rest of my career and, yeah, and I said oh, that one
Erin Marcus:sounds like a rough one and, at the same time, what I was learning as my clients were coming to me to talk about what they wanted to. You know how do I put this messaging together. Help me with my message. What I realized is most of them don't know how to grow a business. Messaging is not your problem. Messaging is your seventh step. Like you got a lot of ducks that are not in a row before we can dial in your message. The reason you can't talk about what you do is because you don't actually know what you do. So I backed it up because of my business experience, because of my education, because of all of the things you know. I come out of corporate. I have C-suite level experience. I come out of franchise, small business, 15 employee experience, and now we've got the solopreneur entrepreneur crossing the bridge in a business owner experience, combined with the education, combined with the way my brain just works. We stopped fighting that. Hmm, I love it. I riled around it. What am I good at? And for your listeners who are in this journey, I just. Why do you not give up? Hmm, here's why you don't give up, and I've this has come up in conversations it's not about the money. That's different. That's great, that's different.
Erin Marcus:There's two things right now in my life that have just become obvious through observation that are only a result because I didn't give up on figuring this out. Number one it has been probably five years since I've worked with someone I don't like Interacted in any way. It has been at least five years since I have kind of interacted almost in any way with someone I don't like. That's just not in my world. I don't have coworkers I don't like. I don't have clients that I don't like. I don't have team members that I don't like. I don't have mentors that I don't like. If we're at a networking event and I don't like you, I will just go sit somewhere else. I still have that. And when you listen to people who are saying yes to clients they shouldn't take on like that's one of the benefits that figuring this out has given me.
Erin Marcus:And the other thing in my world is I don't do things I suck at. I don't bang my head against the wall because I don't do things I suck at I don't. My job has gotten more and more and more based around the things that I'm great at doing and that I love doing that provide the most benefit to my clients. And then we've built the team to do all the other things. I mean, I don't give you a stupid example. I've got a bunch of doctor's appointments that have come up. You know the dentist, they know checkups, and now in my world my calendar is often booked like three months in advance with podcasts and speaking and right client comments and stuff. So when those doctor's appointments finally get scheduled because we know how much fun that is right now I had to reschedule a bunch of things. That is the bane of my I won't. I, I don't want to.
Angie Colee:I will just cancel things because I'm not going to play that game.
Erin Marcus:I can't do it. I can't handle it. I hate it with the force of the thousand sons. And so, when it happened, I apologize profusely to my assistant who is in charge of my calendar. She could care less. This is nothing to her, she. This doesn't bother her, this is nothing but a click of a button to her. She is fantastic at it, right. So imagine that. Imagine surrounding yourself with people who are fantastic at what they do. So you get to be fantastic at what you do, and we all like each other. Holy fuck it, right. Like, how great for pie she's like. Holy fuck it. Yes, I don't know where I came up with that years ago. I don't know. I say that all the time. That's what am I? I don't know where that came from, but, yes, I've been saying that for years. So wonderful, I was so unexpected.
Angie Colee:I told you I was weird. We were shocked, me and my weirdo business friends. This is what I love the most about it, I think, because I had. I had a very similar struggle to in business, particularly around I felt told in a couple of different directions, being myself, which is sweary, has been in multiple mosh pit fights, has visible tattoos and piercings and, you know, right now have super bright red hair, and then was always told that that was too much Like don't.
Erin Marcus:I got the best line for that. I finally gave me the best line. For that I want it. I'm writing it down Ready. The fact that I am too much in real life makes me just enough for the internet.
Angie Colee:Yes, the internet is where you find your weirdo track. Now I understand.
Erin Marcus:Now I get it Right Exactly, though. But yeah, you're too loud, you're too this, you're too that. You know, I don't have color here right now, but most of my hair is shaved, most of my head is shaved. I have all the tattoos, you know. The piercings have come and gone. It is right, I mean I've again. I was already embracing it. It's so funny, because here I was in the financial world and I had the fancy blue suit on, but I had the like yellow and silver shiny T-shirt on under it, right, as much as you know the way with you know, yeah, but yeah, like so when people talk about the freedom and the money of small businesses and why you, the flexibility and all the things, to me it's, you know, you can call it lifestyle, I don't know. It's. It's control over my own world, Mm, hmm, because I have zero desire to control everybody else Like you cannot underestimate how much I don't care what you do the man that I live with.
Erin Marcus:I don't care what he does, I am so old to this. Like do, do, do. Whatever it is you're going to do, I don't care, mm, hmm, but I want to be in control of my own world.
Angie Colee:Yes, I think that's what leads to people driving themselves crazy too is the illusion that you can control another person or anything else beyond your own personal actions and what you're building yourself Like. You are the only one that you can control, friends, and there's a whole lot of freedom in that, when you go with everything else.
Erin Marcus:And then you get to be pleasantly surprised when somebody steps up in a way you didn't anticipate. I love that. Instead of disappointed because you can't get them to do what you want from it.
Angie Colee:There's a hundred solutions to every given problem too, so letting them come up with their own way of doing things. Sometimes it works out even better than the one that I had for them, so it's great.
Erin Marcus:Right. I mean and I say that in my business all the time I was answering questions today about building the team building the team and the mistakes that I watch people make over and over and over again is when they first start to go hire people. They hire people to take a specific task off of a to-do list and that is actually more work, not less work, because if that's all you're hiring for, you usually have to manage and guide that person way too much. What if, instead, you hired the person who was excellent at that type of thing and you just let them create it? Yeah, I don't create the processes in our business. I am a pro business. Creating process Like forget. This is not good use of my time. This is not good use of a process. This is insulting to processes everywhere.
Angie Colee:Yeah, my idea of creating a process is a screencap video of me doing the thing and then just giving that to somebody else and saying make, please, make this better. I know there's got to be a better way.
Erin Marcus:Right. I mean when I first hired my assistant, I'm like here is the code to the bank account, here is the code to the account. Like, just fix it, make it go, do the thing, do the thing, Tell me what you want me to do. I will do whatever you tell me to do. Tell me how you need me to do this and I will just do it, if that's what you need from me.
Angie Colee:There's a lot of freedom in that too, I think, for everybody listening. If you're feeling stressed out, if you're feeling run ragged, maybe you have fallen into this trap where you think you have to be the person that comes up with all of the solutions, and people are following your directions, and that's what it means to lead.
Erin Marcus:No not so much. You know, leading is all about finding the right people. In this case, because it's not the military, they're not assigned to you, right? Finding the right people and then doing everything you can do to help them do the best at what it is that they're the best at doing.
Angie Colee:Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes. It is all about the people that you bring into your world, and you attract those people by being you, exactly like we've been talking about this entire episode, not trying to be some version of what society tells you to be or what your mentors think you should be. Be you, that's how you are going to find the opportunities.
Erin Marcus:And the other thing that you just mentioned and I find I have to keep an eye on this, like we have to keep an eye on this if you have mentors that you love and are doing great with, be careful about accidentally just wanting to build their business for you.
Angie Colee:Yes, oh, I have fallen into that trap.
Erin Marcus:Right, and it's not like oh wow, she's amazing, she's awesome, her business works. I can do that. It's not entirely wrong, because that's what you want to do is find the people who've walked the path, so you know how to walk the path. However, keep an eye on that. Don't do that without some objectivity, yeah.
Angie Colee:Yeah, and being able to look at what's working and what's not working with detachment, like we talked about earlier, from that self-judgment. Okay, so you did build a business that works for you, based on somebody that you really like, and it felt like the thing. If you acknowledge that this either the business is not working or there are pieces of it that aren't working it doesn't make you a piece of shit, it just makes you a person.
Erin Marcus:Right, what do I learn? I observe all of the things and then I'm like what do I like about this and what do I not like about this? What's good for me? What would I not be happy with?
Angie Colee:I'm a big fan of journaling in that regard, and I'm so not the most consistent journal, or like I don't. I have the opposite of a morning routine, but I know that when I'm really really struggling with trying to figure out how I think and how I feel about a certain thing, the answer for me is usually a long drive with really loud music that I can like, scream, sing along to, and then just sitting around with my little charcoal tablet somewhere and writing down my thoughts as fast as I can capture them, and I ask myself questions too. What about this is bothering me. Where are the sticking points?
Erin Marcus:Yep, Right, and so I wrote an article about this some time ago, because my process for that is often called take a walk, take a shower, take a walk, take a shower, take a walk, take a shower Right.
Erin Marcus:So I live across the street from a forest preserve, so I will go and walk. Immersed in nature is where I get refilled and settled. So I will just go walk and get it all out. And get it all out and get it all out. And this was so funny because Mike was with me this one particular day and he's I'm going down, this isn't working, I'm going down, and on, and on, and on and on. And he's listening because that's what he does. Because he doesn't, he's scared to do anything else by that point.
Erin Marcus:And so we get home and I get in the shower, and so now I'm quiet, right, because I've got all the energy out, I've immersed myself in the restorative place and now I'm in the quiet shower, warm, cozy, quiet shower. And then the question is okay, in a world of infinite possibilities, how could I XYZ? And it's so funny because along the way I'll say to Mike, you know we'll get home and I'm like, oh, how's my superstar? I'm like, were you not listening? It's all falling apart. Where were you? Were you on a different walk? And he just goes, you'll figure it out, because he's not attached to it the way I'm attached to at the moment. And so by the time we get out, I get out of the shower. Okay, in a world of infinite possibilities.
Angie Colee:How I fix this. I love that question too, because I feel like a lot of us get stuck in these blocker questions like why is this happening? How could I do? This is a much more productive question, especially with that. That's not even a guardrail. That's like removing the guard rails in a world of infinite possibilities. What could I do?
Erin Marcus:Well, because it's neuroscience. It's not. It's neuroscience, because if your brain is obsessed about a problem, you're literally telling your brain problem, problem, problem, problem, problem, problem. See the problem to the problem. There's a problem. You, I literally will physically change directions, because if I'm staring at the problem, all I see is the problem. Which is why I like to use physical movement, because I will like, okay, if the problem's over here on the left, what's over here on the right? Nice, I like that, because now I, my brain, just went oh, the problem lives over there, so what's over here? And my mind just went wide open that fast and change directions, and now we have possibilities.
Angie Colee:Yes.
Erin Marcus:And it's not blue or or even like meditation. It's not even. It's literally electricity, it's literally neuroscience.
Angie Colee:I think that's that is something that I want to encourage everybody to do is just to open your minds and stop focusing on the limitations, because the more what you focus on is what you get. And so if you see, the world is a shitty horrible place, all you're ever going to see is shitty horrible things, and if you think that the world is alive and wonderful and full of possibilities, then you're going to see a whole lot of wonderful possibilities in your life. Tell yourself what you want to see more of.
Erin Marcus:And you know in the way this all you know. To circle back a little bit, the way it was phrased for me is do you believe and it's like yes and no black and white Do you believe the world is happening to you? Do you believe the world is happening for you?
Angie Colee:Hmm, oh, I love that for you all the way, for you all the way. That's my perspective, me too. Mm, hmm, oh, this is fantastic and I want to talk for like two more hours, but I'm going to respect your time. Please tell us more where we can learn about working with you, learn more about your business. I want it all.
Erin Marcus:Oh, thanks. Here's the thing we make it really really, really, really easy for you. It is all all in one place at conquer your businesscom. If you go to conquer your businesscom, you find me, you find our podcast, you find what we have going on. You find all of the things at conqueryourbusinesscom.
Angie Colee:Fantastic. I'm going to make sure that there's a clickable link in the show notes and I'm going to have like 20 different quotes from this one.
Erin Marcus:Here come the memes here come the memes.
Angie Colee:Oh yeah, I have these quotes that I create, that I need to be better about sharing, but we got so much from this one, so thank you so much for being on the show. This one is a great one and I think we're going to have to do a part two. I would love to do a part two with you. This is awesome. That's all for now. If you want to keep that kick ass energy high, please take a minute to share this episode with someone that might need a high octane dose of you can do it. Don't forget to rate, review and subscribe to the permission to kick ass podcast on Apple podcast, spotify and wherever you stream your podcasts. I'm your host, angie Coley, and I'm here rooting for you. Thanks for listening and let's go kick some ass.