The Business Coaching Echo Chamber

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Hey friends. Welcome to episode 27 of entrepreneurial Outlaws. In today, these episode, we are going to be looking at the business coaching echo chamber. The business coaching accurate chamber is this, this place, this environment, that many entrepreneurs myself included have found ourselves in when we have invested in coaching that is feeding into no just bro marketing, but is feeding into this narrative. That success looks a certain way. It is a narrative full of smoke and mirrors. It's a place where the truth is not always honored. There are a lot of mindset, techniques and wellness techniques, the happiness weaponized within these spaces. And I'm going to be coming to this from my own experience. What I experienced both while I was within the echo chamber. And when I left, I'm going to be sharing with you. Some of the phrases and things that I saw coming across as like, we have your best interests at heart, when really it was a way to continually cause self-doubt to continually feed this idea that the individual investing in this program is at fault or is the problem and that other people see it success.

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And if you follow this very strategic, linear approach that you'll get the same success as me, but that wasn't my, and in my conversations I've had with many of you on, on Instagram and online, it hasn't been your experience either. So today's episode is really about shining a light on it. It's also about exploring what this has looked like and encouraging you to both look at it on an individual and a collective level. So before we dive in to this episode, I want to talk with you a little bit about outlaw moments. One of the biggest things to come for me leaving the business coaching echo chamber was this idea that I needed to challenge what I had been told. And so an entrepreneurial outlook moment has become part of my journaling practice. It's something that I tend to look at every single week within my own business.

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What did I do differently? What did I say yes or say no to which commitments did I honor, because this has been a huge part of my experience and my journey over the last 12 to 18 months. It's not just exploring what I would do differently, but then actually making those commitments within my business and then showing up differently, online challenging people who come to me for support guidance and mentoring, challenging them to look at their own their own outlook moments and look at what is done differently. So my outlook moment of this week has been that I have to remember that I do not need to have everything figured out to take a fast or next step. So I'm a visionary. I have a lot of ideas. And when I'm in a creative flow, which I am currently in the ideas, just keep on coming.

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They just keep on coming. Sometimes I cannot keep up with the ideas. I can't keep up with my journaling or brain dumps. And when I get scared, when I get uncomfortable, when I stop to think about how big this, this creative project could be, not in the sense of, of, of how long it's going to take me, but how much potential it has and how much it could mean for my business. I have a tendency to self-sabotage. I have a tendency to sabotage this project or this work by diving and jumping around into the next thing, right? So I will, I will go from one idea to the next idea and I'll, I'll spin my wheels and I'll, I'll come back and forth and I will go around in circles until I'm drained. And now can't concentrate on the original project. So this week, as I have found myself doing this, I've been doing some self-inquiry.

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I've been stepping back and saying to myself, okay, what is the urgency? And why do I feel like I need to have this all figured out just to take the fast step. This is a long game, right? One of the things I often say to myself is like, what would I say to a friend or a client? If they told me they were feeling this way, right? What would I feel? What would I encourage them to do? So we're going to be starting this thread. We've shared this a few times over on Instagram, but we're going to be starting this thread on a weekly basis over on Instagram. It's going to be on a Sundays and make sure you're following along on Instagram, over entrepreneurial underscore Outlaws so that you can share your outlook moments with us. And you can also see what our outlaw moments are.

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Now speaking about little moments, one of the reasons I have been overthinking and a little bit scared is because the pre-sale full, the outlook general is starting today. So if you're listening to this live April fast, the outlet journal goes on presale today through April 15th, presale journals will start shipping around the 15th of April and you'll get some really fun materials and bonuses when you do grab a pre-sale copy. So the journal itself, the outlook Gianna will be available to buy through Amazon, but on pre-sale it's available through my website. So when you buy a pre-sale copy, you are going to receive outlook stickers, exclusive stickers. I have created for you too. You can use them on your journal. You can put them on your laptop. Like, I don't know, just put them somewhere and show me that you're using them so I can be like, and then you also receive weekly videos sent to you.

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They'll support you in your journaling practice. So these are going to be really short videos, like less than five minutes. And that's designed to support you, especially if you've been resistant to journaling, or if you kind of go back and forth and you find it really hard to be consistent with it, or you have just not found your kind of journaling purpose, which I talked about a few weeks ago, when I shared with you, some journaling tips really important that you find your own purpose vaginally. So these videos will be designed to support that there'll be designed to help you guide you and remind you to check in with yourself. Because part of this practice, the point of the entrepreneurial outlook journal is to actually help you create your own manifesto to help you look at each each individual characteristic of, and I have an entrepreneur outlaw and address those through self-inquiry.

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Where can you better commit back to support yourself through your business within each of these areas? And then for those of you who are going to want to take this process to the next level. So actually walking through and unpacking specific business strategies, marketing and practices that are stopping you from taking action or are leading you to overthink and doubt yourself. I'm going to be running an entrepreneurial Outlaws collective. This is a group program, and it's going to be in beta, right? Full transparency. It is going to be in beta. This means it will be live. This doesn't mean anything other than it will be live over the course of six weeks. It also means that you would be helping me to create this program to create this collective, because this is about you. This isn't about me. This isn't about my experience. This is about helping you to unpack this for yourself, helping you to identify when you are being when you were being drawn in by the strategies or marketing or practices, and also how to identify them through your own lens.

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So this is about looking at the business strategies, the marketing and the practices through this lens of, of entrepreneurial Outlaws through this lens of your own experiences, whether you have been coached and had this experience, or whether you are a coach and you want to do better, or whether you just want to look at and make sure that you are leading in the best way for your own business, that you are creating a leadership that forges a new path and that you can be the leader that you wish you had. So this will be a six week course or six week program. It will live and it will start on May 10th. So this will be a discount available for those who do ordering the pre-sale. And you can get more information, both about how to order your pre-sale copy and you can order it.

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And you can also get more information about the program@melanienights.com forward slash outlaw journal. And from here, you'll find more information about the program that I'm offering at a discounted rate to presale buyers. So if you have any questions about the journal or you have questions about the program, let me know, reach out on Instagram or via email. I'm always happy to answer questions. I'm happy to send voice messages back and forth. And if you have some questions about the program, I'll hope invokes a with you. Like let's chat this out because this isn't about me. This is about being able to support you through the lens of entrepreneurial Outlaws. So, as I said, the presale is running from the first to the 15th of April. I am so excited. I'm also excited to stop spinning my wheels and panicking and worrying about all the things, because honestly, this has been the best, the most enjoyable creative projects that I have done it in so long. And I'm so happy that it's finally here. You finally get to witness and experience this. Okay. So let's dive in at two episode 27.

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Okay. So as I shared, we are going to be talking about the business coaching echo chamber. And this is an entirely relevant conversation. Whether you are a business coach or you have been coached, or have no interest in looking for coaching, because this isn't just happening within coaching spaces, this happens through content. It happens through marketing and it is a problem, right? It is a problem is problematic and it is weaponizing a lot of strategies and tools and resources that actually can be really helpful and can be really supportive for business owners. But the problem is that they have been weaponized. They have been abused. And over time, this has led to a lack of trust within the online business space, especially within business coaching. So what tends to happen with this within this echo chamber is there's a lot of repetition. There is a lot of regurgitated content, right?

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It, it might have a different stock for it to attach to it. It might have a different name, a different price, but these strategies and ideas of success often look, they often look the same. Like once you get in that, you realize that it's all the same. And this is the problem because you have to get in there to realize most of the time that it is the same. A lot of this is often built from privilege. There is a real lack of context around what is contributing towards that. Person's success. This isn't just financial success. This can also be hiding audience size, right? So you might, they might be selling an Instagram course and say, I started off with only a thousand followers on Instagram, but maybe they had a Facebook group with 50,000 people in it. Maybe they had an email list with 15,000 people on it because we'll learn numbers are vanity metrics.

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Of course, if you know your audience and you have built an audience on a platform, wherever that platform may be, that does mean more eyes, more visibility, more potential clients and customers. So oftentimes there is this, this lack of context around the whole story pieces of the story get left out, right pieces as a story, get left out. There are a lot of big names in business who I believe, and I don't know any of this for truth, but I believe have left parts of the story out. That is why I've had. So there were other factors that actually contribute towards their success. And this gets left out of the marketing, the story, the content, all that stuff, right? And then these relationships and communities within this echo chamber are built to protect the coach and their ideas, right? And I'm not talking about, you know, plagiarism, I'm talking about keeping the coach safe, right?

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Keeping the, kind of the coaching, the hierarchy safe. So these are systems that typically feed on each other's success and this isn't JV or affiliate launches. That's a whole different thing. This is something that runs a look deeper than that. This is something that either, I don't even know if it's happening consciously. I think it probably is, but there's also, this, this also happens subconsciously or unconsciously, right? There's just scenario where it's like, if you Pat my back, I'll Pat yours, right. This cycle of coaching success, but they're all teaching the same thing at different levels. So you might have someone teaching it in a group environment for, I don't know, less than $500, but then you have people doing it, a mastermind level where it's costing you now five figures or more, they might have different target markets, different ideal clients, different language or different ways of approaching it.

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But it's all the same thing. It's still the same ship. And so this echo chamber, I wasn't aware of it when I was in it. Right. I want to make that really clear. I was totally unaware of the fact that I was in it. Now this is poly because it was my fast few years of online business. I very much dyed this journey feeling like I had no idea what I was doing. And I certainly learned a lot. I'm not going to disregard the fact that I learned a lot. And there are things that I do believe are foundational that we do have to hold on to. They're all things in our businesses that every single one of us does, like create content, like talk about our offers, but how we do that and why we do that. And how often we do that, those things are unique.

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And it's when we put this kind of rule book on it, we start to create these ideals. It's like, perfect scenario. How many times a week you're going to do this? How many days you'll move should be? And we start to impose these rules. And one of the things that I was, I was actually chatting with a friend just recently about this. He's the, I didn't question a thing. I was so convinced the, I didn't know what to do that. I didn't question anything. I didn't ever stop to look at my own life because my lifestyle, my at the time, and even now was very, very different to the people who were coaching me. Their lifestyle was very different where they lived totally different. They had very different responsibilities and experiences than me. So those things matter, right? Individual, lifestyle and individual experiences matter.

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And this, again comes back to that lack of context. So let's talk a little bit about my experience. So I spent over three, a period. I spent around $13,000 in coaching until I sat down and worked that out. I had no idea that it was that much money and I was slightly horrified. And I'm just because it was done in pieces. And it probably actually, the number could be bigger than that. I'm talking about specifically one-on-one coaching group coaching here. But the number is probably big in that because I very much was stuck in this spiral of spending money and investing because I was just like, this is what everyone keeps telling me to do. Right? Everyone keeps telling me that you need to invest in yourself. You do, but not to the point where you're in debt. Okay. No one should get into debts. The, when, when it comes to learning how to grow a business, nobody should get themselves into debts. This is my opinion. Feel free to challenge us. I don't think anyone should be getting themselves into debt to invest in a coaching experience with a coach is telling you that you'll make this all back in the first month, right? That's usually a complete Corker because I felt for that time and time again, and that maybe one or less than a few people's experience, it's not,

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It's not the norm at the same time,

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Investing into something when you aren't guaranteed anything, right? You're not guaranteed how quickly you're going to get results. Because again, coming back to the fact that we each as individuals have different lives and different experiences, we live in different places. I just don't think any coach or anyone should be asking you to get yourself into debts for this idea, that especially this idea that you can start a business with nothing. You can start an online business with nothing, with no overheads, but invest all his money into me, get yourself into debt so I can teach you how to make more money. I just look personally in my experience, it's just very, very unethical.

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Cool. And I started to notice

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When I was in this echo chamber, I started to notice how the same names kept popping up groups, communities, referrals, success, stories, testimonials. It was like the same names kept popping up.

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And I became really, really blind to my lack of growth. I felt like I was growing as a possum. And I felt

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Like this was just part of the Johnny at the time, right at the beginning, I was like, well, this is just part of the journey. It's not supposed to be easy, but, and it's not supposed to be easy. I don't think it's always easy, but I think it can be a lot more enjoyable than what it became. I became

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Really, really loyal

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To these coaches. So not only was I seeing the same coach names pop up the same people, the same testimonials I became really loyal. Right. So it's like, I was just like spending money with like all of that.

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And

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Even when I wasn't getting results and struggling, I would hang on the phrases phrases. Like you can always make more money. This was one of the really common phrases I had. You can always make more money. Right? This was, this was

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I I'm like. Sure.

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But again, context, I would

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Hang on the narratives

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Around mindset, right? That it's all in my mind, it's all my mindset. This is the only problem they've given me a strategy to go from a, to Z to build a successful business. If I'm not getting results. It's my mindset. And I know so many of you have had the same thing you've said to me that you were constantly told after launch that didn't go as planned or a launch that didn't go as well as you'd hoped that will, you need to journal on that, right? This is your mindset. You're not doing enough.

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And I felt I

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Had the same things and I felt lost as you did.

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And despite this, despite this

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Gaslighting, despite the fact that I wasn't getting results and I was struggling, I would get really defensive. If anyone questioned the coach, now I'm not one for confrontation.

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So I never said anything. I mean, I would speak up now, no, in this case, because it's a ship, but I didn't speak up, but I was like, we can't question the coach like that was, I was, I was in deep guys. I was in a really deep, I would get really defensive about the fact that people were saying, but I haven't made money from this experience. I hadn't made money either, but I kept believing. And I think this is my own privilege, as well as charming. I just kept believing this was part of the journey and part of the experience. And it would all, it would all figure itself out. I was going to be fine.

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It really didn't. And it really wasn't. And I think

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Take responsibility for my actions. I know that's at any time I could have left at any time I could have questioned or spoken up, but I didn't know. I was, I was so convinced that I didn't know what was doing. I was doing, I didn't know how to do this. I needed help. I couldn't do on my own. I didn't know enough. I had to keep learning and keep spending.

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And

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There was zero transparency around how money was being made within these communities. So the people who making money, every launch and seeing their businesses grow and getting results. I'm not saying that those people were, are unethical. I'm not saying they may have, and probably have used tactics that we would now be like, you shouldn't be doing that. Cause it's really a manipulative. I don't know what they do now, but the point is that

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Those people who

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Was seeing results, that wasn't as much transparency around how that was happening. So for example, I mentioned this a little minute ago about the testimonials that will, you'll see that say I made my whole investment back in the FOSS month. And the reason I'm using that as an example is because I distinctly remember that being a testimonial eyesore, and I invested money that I didn't have. I sat that it was late at night and I was like, I can't do this on my own. And I'm looking at the sales page and this person is promising me, everything that I won. And he's like is in my head, like, you know, I'm checking PayPal when I have a launch, because I'm making sure that PayPal is working in the, I'm not missing out on these sites. Like if I remember that, cause I remember at the time being like, Oh my God, I do that.

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And of course now I see it. Well, yeah, that was like the whole pain thing, right? This was playing on my fears, playing on my pain points, knowing me so well, Bravo for that. But at the same time, I clicked that buy button and I felt sick. Like it was literally within a few seconds, the moment of like excitement, if I'm going to make all this money and I'm going to make this whole investment back and you just look at me within seconds, I felt nauseous. I felt so sick. Now I look at that and I'm like, you could have just emailed and said, I made a mistake. I don't want to do this. I'm sorry. I mean, you don't need to apologize, but you know, I could've just backed out right there. Wasn't there was no calm down. I hadn't got anything for that money at that point.

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But I didn't because my eager was like, Nope, you're you, you you've invested now. You can't go. You can't go and do that. It's really embarrassing, right? Again, like this, this idea that it would be embarrassing for me to admit that actually I don't have that money. And actually I was, I was fulling fool. What was on this house page? So the point about being that we see these testimonials as individuals, we have to ask them a questions. We have to kind of take off the kind of Rose colored glasses around this person is telling us everything we want to hear. And we need to start looking at, okay, what do I actually need to hear? Not what I want to hear because oftentimes when we were like, I hate what I'm hearing this past and telling me everything I want, are they giving you what you need, right?

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Are they giving you what you need? And I telling you what you need to hear bright, which honestly, at this point is transparency and the truth. And as I navigate to this echo chamber, as I wasn't getting results and I was getting further and further, and I wasn't growing my list every day, I wasn't growing my list every week or month either. I did not. My lead magnet did. I was thinking about this the other day. Because lead magnets, like I get the point of it, right? Freebie, lead magnet. Opt-In whatever you want to call it. I get the idea. I get the point of it. But what is amusing to me about this is that so few people are actually getting leads from these without paid ads, without really putting a lot of time and attention on that. One thing myself included right now.

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And yet we have this, like this idea that a lead magnet is the answer and I'm using it this because I was writing out my journal and I was like, what if my lead magnet actually brought me leads? And it made me laugh because back then lead magnets were like all the rage, right? This was like, you could have like lead magnets for everything. And I wasn't getting leads. I didn't have hundreds of people signing up for my challenges. I didn't have a flurry of sales on the day I opened my carts and the day I closed my carts. And because of this, I was just constantly convinced it was me. Right. I was constantly convinced it was me. If I'm not getting all these things, I'm being told, I should be gang. It must be me. And it kind of was not because I wasn't doing enough, but because I didn't leave, I didn't question it

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Thing. And what is it

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Interesting is I kept getting myself deeper. I wanted to learn more. I must be missing something. There must be something I missing. It's me. I'm not seeing it. I kept getting myself deeper into debt.

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And the more

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I invested time, money, energy, the hotter it became.

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I had that

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This idea, and this is, was fed through from the coaching echo chamber. That if I invested in myself time, energy, money, that I would reap the rewards. Right? How can anyone, how can you expect anyone to invest in you if you weren't investing yourself? Sure. Get it. Let's also again, have context, right context. There is such a lack of context in this industry that is horrifying.

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So sure.

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When we ask people to invest in us, we need to be investing in ourselves. That doesn't mean that we need to be getting 5,000, 10,000, 13,000, whatever into debt. That's not an investment. Right? Investing in ourselves looks different on an individual level. The same way when we ask people to invest in themselves, looks different on an individual level.

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So I just became more of a WellMed. It was like

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The more invested, the deeper I went into this, the deeper into I was the harder it became, the more I've WellMed I was. And then the more, I felt like a failure. It was, I know that people talk about entrepreneurship as like this rollercoaster of highs and lows. I think that's true, but I don't think it needs to constantly be one of those, like, like bicycle drops. Like that's what it was for me. It was like this vertical drop. And then I had to like climb all the way back up to the top again, just to keep doing it, even though I was terrified, right. I just, I'm imagining that in my head. And I'm like, that's pretty much what it was. I would spend all this time climbing and climbing and climbing to learn and to keep doing and doing more and working harder. And then I was just like full and I was terrified, but I didn't know anything else. I didn't know that there was like one of those like little teacups over there where I could, you know, have allegedly ride. 

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So when

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The business coaching echo chamber in December of 2018, and this was because the coach, I was working with Brooklyn,

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My trust right. Broke my trust. I could not afford to hire a new coach. And I was terrified. I,

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He didn't think I could do it alone. I hadn't been alone in this from day one, like from day one, when I started my business, I had a car,

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I had a group of people and I hit

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Almost like grown up with these people over three, three and a half years, we had moved between coaches again within this environment where everyone was like feeding each other. But now I was in major, down on my

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Credit card. It was not bringing

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In consistent income. I wasn't really bringing in any income. My parents had supported me through these coaching sessions.

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[Inaudible] So I wasn't like that

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Lose my house, but it was really crappy.

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I felt like share the guilt,

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The shame spiral. It was real. Like it was, I just remember feeling this constant sense of fear that everything was going to fall over

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Pop. And I could've got a job. Right. I could've got a job, but I didn't want to.

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And I remember that this was one of the first things that I unpacked through journaling. Right? When the moments when I stopped being really resistant to journaling, because I gave it a purpose for myself,

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I started to

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Unpack this through self-inquiry. Why was I so defiant about getting a part-time job now? Yes, I had did very much disliked the corporate world. I had not enjoyed my career at that point. I had been, you know, I I'd been burned again. Trust had been broken, right? This was, it seems like

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A recurring theme, but I have a family and I was

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So define that. I did not want to get a job, not even a part-time job, not to do something, anything that could pay some bills. Right.

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My ego was getting in the way in. And this was because I didn't want to admit.

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I felt like because my entire life, my business was my entire life. And I felt like because my entire business and life was like on Instagram and everyone's looking at me, no one was really looking at me, but in my head, I was going to have to admit to like my audience, the, I was stepping back the, I was going to go and get a job. This is hard for me to realize and admit even now, because I can't believe that I was so focused on playing this role because this wasn't even me. This was an image of myself. This was a version of myself that I was playing and had created over this period of time. Whilst in this chamber, I had created this version of myself. Right. I had created someone who was so defiant on putting her family first was so defiant on stepping away from this business. I, at this point I hated I did not enjoy it. I was so against doing that because what would it look like to other people? What would it look like to Instagram? What would it look like to my email list?

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So

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My egotistical state, I decided to strip back my business back to basics.

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I canceled and I downgraded any and all payments that I could write. I got really back to basics because one of the things, and you may have experienced this as well. And I want to talk about this a little bit. And one of the things that happened a lot for me when I was starting, my business was it went from, you don't need any investments to full, cut out a lot of money, right? It went from you don't need overheads to all of a sudden, I need this and I need this bit of software. And if you, you need this piece of tech and all these things.

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And so over the years, I had got to this point where it had all these like pieces of software and these small, like, and they're not big things. I like anywhere from 10 to maybe $50 a month at the most, but they all add up. And so I really stripped everything back, right. I really stripped it back. And I started focusing on one area of my business and I don't necessarily think this was intentional. Although I knew that that's what I was doing, but I focused on one area. And that one area of my business happened to be content creation. And like, because one of the things that we have been taught over the years is to be consistent at all costs, which I don't agree with, but I was consistent as. So I was really consistent with my content creation and this was kind of how I fell into content planning and content matching and my business.

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I taught that for a long time and my business, because that was what I was doing. It just very naturally happened. People were interested to know why I was doing well. I wasn't doing much else. So that's why and this was my group. Okay. So this doesn't mean that it's going to be your roots. If you are feeling this way now, like everything I've just gone through and explained. And if that is something that you are experiencing right now, or a walking through content creation and consistency doesn't necessarily need to be your route, it doesn't need to be your journey. This was my journey. I focused a lot on Pinterest at the time because it was something I had never really walked through. And I did see great results, but like anything, when you stop giving it so much intention, things slow down. Right. But at the same time I found new communities, new groups. I didn't invest in coaching, but I found new communities and new groups. I found different strategies. And some of these groups and communities stuck, some will also major disappointments as before. But I also spent a lot of that year and have done since saying no to FOMO,

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Right. I just,

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I mean, I couldn't afford, right. I had no choice. I couldn't afford to invest in these things because it just seemed crazy to me that I would invest in something that hadn't worked. But there was a number of times, even as I was unpacking all of this, there was a number of times that that was like the secret to whatever it was. I was walking on. I like the business coaching program. Well, the thing, and I remember actually I remember James Wedmore's one was one of the programs that came up. And I knew a lot of people. It's funny, isn't it? How we kind of navigate and, and kind of go from one thing to another, because a lot of people I know, ended up joining that course. And now I'm like, well, I'm glad I didn't. But at the same time, one of the questions that got me through a lot of those feelings of FOMO when they came up was am I going to really regret not doing this?

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And I, I, I encourage you to ask yourself that question, when you are in a situation saying, looking at a sales page, I don't care how much that program product, whatever is, is if you're sitting, looking at a sales page and you do not have the money right then, and that to invest, and it's not an absolute. Yes. Asked yourself the question. Will I still care about this in a week's time? In a months time, will I be losing sleep over the fact that I didn't invest? Right? Because look, I sure as hell have lost a lot of sleep over the years from investments that I made when I couldn't afford them, but I've never lost any sleep over the best. I didn't like.

(38:26):

So hearing him

(38:30):

Unpacking, struggling to kind of figure out what I want to with my business, why I fell so many of these tactics and I made the decision, I got to the point, my ego, I put my ego at the door and I made the decision that as grace was starting school, if he's my son, by the way, I don't know if I've ever really talked about him on it. So when my son was starting school a couple of years ago, I was like, right. If, if things haven't changed, if things haven't shifted, I'm going to get a job. I'm just, I'm going to have to go get a job and I'm going to have to step away. And I'm going to have to just not worry about this whole thing about this being an issue. Now, this is the point at which we often hear success stories.

(39:15):

And it's like, everything changed. I suddenly was making six figures. That is not this story, right? That is not my story. That is not, that is not how this story goes. Things did start to change. I was not making six figures. I'm still, don't making six figures. What happened was my consistency and my commitment to shifting how I looked at online business started to make a difference to me. I will not to be again, really transparent. This was my experience. It does not mean that it's everybody else's. But I started to see this shift because for year

(39:59):

I've really

(40:00):

Focused on who I was without my business. I was miserable when I left business coaching echo chamber. When I stopped investing in coaches, I was miserable. I was unhappy with my business. I was unhappy with the strategies that I had. I didn't know any differently, right? Because you only know what you know. So I only knew what I'd been told

(40:22):

When I stepped away for year. What happened was I met new people.

(40:30):

I met, I make new friends. I made new business friends, new peers. I joined new communities, new groups. These people had not really experienced the business coaching echo chamber, not in the same way. They know it exists, but they hadn't really experienced it. They had built businesses

(40:49):

Without that.

(40:52):

And this was fascinating to me. And as I started to look at this, I was like, these people have a really different Jonny to mine, have a really different story to mine.

(41:05):

And what was interesting about this was that

(41:08):

I didn't need to look at them for new strategies. I didn't need to look at them for what they were doing, but what I looked at was how they approached business. You know, how they looked at it from a data point of view from a, from a strategy point of view from, from that kind of energy. And then for some people, it was like, how do they approach business from the other end of the scale, from like this very energy, this like energy of intuition and

(41:37):

Feeling into it. And that was eyeopening

(41:42):

For me because I hadn't experienced that. I had been in this world where you people talked about both, but they only did one, right? That was the world I was living in. People had talked about both, but you only did one. And I didn't do either of these very well. And there was no options. It was linear one path, which is just not how things are like business is not simple. Entrepreneurship is not easy. Making money is not easy. If it was, we'd all be millionaires, billionaires, hell, let's go big. So the fact that it's not easy, right? No one wants to talk about that. No one wants to talk about the stuff that's not sexy. No one wants to talk about this stuff. There's no sexy.

(42:23):

And when you start to see

(42:31):

The business coaching, accurate chamber for what it is, when you stop too,

(42:36):

Unpack this

(42:37):

Stuff in your own business. Again, whether you are a coach or not, whether you've experienced coaching or had an experience like this, when you stopped

(42:45):

See the, the phrases and the mindset

(42:51):

Narratives that have been weaponized against individuals,

(42:56):

You can't unsee it.

(42:58):

When you start to see that trauma, you can't unsee it.

(43:04):

And that's really hard for people. I've seen it. Yeah.

(43:08):

Over the last six to nine months, as some very big names in online business have been cooled out for that lack of speaking up against racism. They have shut people down in that groups they've turned off comments, they've deleted posts, they've done all this stuff.

(43:31):

And I don't know.

(43:33):

I think I've loved that lessons and B, they have continued to be put on this pedestal where they're protected at the same time.

(43:39):

Same time.

(43:42):

There are people who defend them

(43:47):

Now.

(43:47):

I mean, that's, that's the case across all areas of life, right? There's going to be people who don't want to say it. I'm going to say it. I'm going to defend this possum. This comes a lot from that know like and trust, right? It comes a lot back to NOLA comes a lot. Back, comes back a little at the time to know like, and trust, right? Because this likability piece is what causes us to kind of forget, to look outside of this very linear route to success, right? So we ended up focusing on this person's likability and how amazing they are and how amazing their life is. And we will not life. We forget about ourselves as individuals. And this is why breaking this down is an individual job as well, a collective, right? These podcast episodes, they are part of the collective work because I'm talking with you. All my content is a collective, a collective role, or part of that role, the genital, the outlet channel that is collective, but it's also individual because you will take the time to do it yourself. And so as individuals, we need to ask better questions, both within our own businesses, within the investments, we make people, we give our money to collaborations. You know, all of these things, we need to be asking better questions, more questions, right? We need to rebuild that trust because

(45:18):

When we think about the old adage, no, like contrast, which I hate by the way. And I think instead of likability, we really need to focus on relate-ability. But when we look at the adage, the know like, can trust it's manipulate it's manipulative. No, I can. Trust is not it's it's a, it's a facade, right? The idea is that we're building these relationships and it's all about it's about the possum, but it's no it's about the business owner right now. I can, trust is built from the business owner, getting what they want, not from the person they're selling to getting what they need. And that's the difference. And so,

(46:00):

Okay.

(46:00):

Trust has been abused, right? The likability factor it's like done. The trust is being abused. And often now, again, I was chatting with someone the other day. I was, I said, you know,

(46:15):

If

(46:18):

Narratives, if these strategies hadn't been used, would we have this level of lack of trust because there are phrases and there are approaches to business which are unintended to be harmful, but because they've been weaponized within your own space, you know, if you now say I'm holding space for you, most people are going to roll their eyes, right? Most of us are going to roll our eyes because we're like, no, you're not. You know, or if you have a sales page, it says, you're not going to be a number in my Facebook group. We don't trust that. Right. We don't trust that. So I think one of the processes, one of the levels of awareness we have to get to is business owners at this point is the, the, the journey, the customer journey, it takes, it's gonna take longer, right? To go from this idea of, someone's going to find your piece of content, your blog, your podcast, whatever social media, and then suddenly want to have that money over from, which is what we used to be told. And people probably still tell you this.

(47:27):

I don't, I have

(47:30):

Only experienced that a few times in my business. And that came from trust, right? It came from trust. It came from my consistency with a specific message. It came from me being very honest and transparent about the way I do business. And I, the way I see it is that as we move forward in business, we have to build that trust. We have to rebuild that trust with our audiences, because we need to understand that whether you're a coach or in any other industry, you know, it doesn't matter whether you're selling a, a coaching or a product, you know, you can be a designer or an artist, or you could be an author or a speaker that has to be a level of trust. And when that trust gets broken, well, then, you know, we, we not going to believe so it's not to say that as business owners, we can't coach and we can't invest in coaching, but we need to both individually and as a collective, but look at the bigger picture and look at what is being presented to us and ask questions, because oftentimes we're told we can ask questions, but we don't because we're getting everything we want from a sales page.

(48:54):

But I challenge you to ask questions, right? Also those questions that you even, if you think you already know the answer, ask them right. Challenge and get the answers you want and need. So

(49:20):

[Inaudible],

(49:21):

So when next week's episode, we will be joined by Maggie Patterson. We have a guest joining us, Mackey pass them from small business boss and scoop studios will be joining me. And this is really exciting because it's very much an extension of today's conversation. So Maggie is one of the few people that I see openly talking about the BS narrative in online business and her approach to this work always has me thinking she asks questions and she encourages me and probably everyone else who sees her content to ask more questions and different questions. So I'm really excited for you to hear this conversation. I'm excited to sit down with her and talk about, self-trust dig a little more into the problematic narratives that we both see in online business. We're going to be talking about cults and cult strategies and how that's coming through in online business and how a lot of these my equals and celebrity entrepreneurs, a lot of how these celebrity entrepreneurs are using very specific manipulative processes and tactics and like hierarchies to grow that business.

(50:39):

So we're going to be diving into all of that, which is very much an extension of this episode. So I feel like this episode today was kind of, this is my experience. This is what I've been through, and this is what I did to get out of it next week. I'm going to have Maggie on the shoulder so we can actually talk about it from her perspective and also look at some of our other what cause she has done, because she really digs deep into this. You guys, and I'm really excited for you to meet her if you don't know Maggie. And then don't forget that our pre-sale is now open for the outlook journal. You can order your pre-sale copy via Melanie nights.com forward slash outlawed journal. And when you order pre presale copy, you will receive some really fun bonuses. And as I said, Ellie, there is discounted access to my beta of the entrepreneurial Outlaws collective.

(51:28):

So if you want to dig deeper, then that program is going to be for you. You will get the opportunity to work with me, live over cost six weeks. We will create this, this collective together. And I am so excited for this month because we have the outlet general coming. And I just, I feel like I've been talking about this for so long. It's been such an incredible experience to create this. I have learned so much about myself, about my kind of little sub-niche that I've kind of created over here with the entrepreneurial outdoors. And you will have been so helpful as I've created this and figured it all out. So thank you for being here. Thank you for trusting me on this, Johnny. If you go and grab the pre-sale copy of the outline general, make sure you tag me on Instagram. Let me know. I can't wait to see all using your journals and see them on your feeds and in your stories. And I'm so excited to hear from you and learn more about what you love about this channel. So that is it for this week until next week outlook.

(52:39):

Yeah.