How to Make Working for Yourself WORK for You With Brooke Monaghan

Brooke Monoghan 0:00
I think that we have a little bit more leeway to do business in a way that actually works for us and we give credit for and if you want to work for yourself, I think that there’s a way to do it that can work for you, even if it goes against the conventional advice.

Meg Casebolt 0:15
You’re listening to social slowdown a podcast for entrepreneurs and micro businesses looking for sustainable marketing strategies without being dependent on social media. Social media is a double edged sword. It’s a wonderful way to stay connected, but it also can feel like an addictive obligation. And it’s even more complex for businesses, your audience might be right there, but you’ve gotta fight with algorithms to maybe be seen by them. So whether you want to abandon social media altogether, or you just want to take a month off, it’s possible to have a thriving business without being dependent on social media. This podcast is all about finding creative, sustainable ways to engage with your audience without needing to lipsync send a cold DMS, run ads or be available 24/7 Let’s get started. Hello, everyone, welcome to the social slowdown podcast I am here with Brooke Monahan. Is that where fuck sure is that you did it? Well, people say Monhegan Yes. Okay. We’ll

Brooke Monoghan 1:15
say mon again, which is like a whole new life for me because before I got married, my last name was Briggs and no one ever mispronounces Briggs. And now I’m that person who has the hard to pronounce last name, it’s not even hard to pronounce. It’s just like, there’s a G in there. And so um, it’s like a new thing for me, where I’m not used to people mispronouncing my name, but it happens all the time. It’s totally fine. But you gotta write

Meg Casebolt 1:36
you know, my maiden name was not what you would think it’s four letters and up, right? Like it is exactly how it sounds. But the people who switched it to nap or added a k because that was what they were familiar with. Very common. And then I married somebody who has a phonetic last name, case, bolt, we still got like closable trying to make it fancy. Should I rerecord this? Or should we just leave it leave it

Brooke Monoghan 2:04
in and I just put out a podcast or I have a podcast episode coming out next week where I work. It was the first time I recorded an episode in person. And I went to the person’s house and their cat started drinking my water in the middle of the episode to cut this out. And I was like I am leaving it in now this

Meg Casebolt 2:21
especially when kept like dip their fingers in to drink the water or like at least they didn’t knock it off the table cancer so. Okay, so Brooke, hi. Hi. Welcome to Social slowdown podcast. Tell us about your business.

Brooke Monoghan 2:38
Yeah, I’m so it’s so funny. Because this is like, every time I answer this question, I’m like, I guess I’m a business coach. But if I’m being honest, I say business coach, because that’s what people recognize. But you know, there’s a mix of things going on in there, I’m kind of leaning into a

Meg Casebolt 2:54
person wants you to call yourself a business coach, but the person who needs business coaches doesn’t want you to say that. A lot of business coaches is like,

Brooke Monoghan 3:06
there’s consulting in there. There’s mentorship in there, there’s coaching in there, there’s like, you know, all kinds of things going on. But the point is, I am, you know, I work with people who are either founders of or leaders in values driven organizations, who are looking for ways to make their work more sustainable and aligned with their values. Because at the end of the day, for many of us, who decided that we wanted to work for ourselves, that is actually the only way that we can long term, like stick with this thing, you know, it has got to be in integrity for us. And that tends to be the more effective way and more sustainable way. So I also have a podcast and it’s called transcend your dichotomy where I’ve been talking about this for the past few years, since I started my business and had no idea what I was doing and was just like, I’m gonna document this whole process. And that kind of just grew into what I do now. And, yeah, I’m just trying to, you know, I was a business school student. And so a big part of what I do, I think also is just kind of setting the record straight on this concept that there are some people who like have what it takes to be entrepreneurs, and some people don’t, I think that we have a little bit more leeway to do business in a way that actually works for us, and we give credit for and if you want to work for yourself, I think that there’s a way to do it, that can work for you, even if it goes against the conventional advice.

Meg Casebolt 4:30
I think all of that is true. I don’t know where to start from I like this part about like, there is a archetype for an entrepreneur. And if you don’t meet the categorizations, or classifications of the archetype, then you won’t succeed when you were just talking about like the way to do it yourself. I’m having this feeling of like a metaphor of the way that publishing a book works right now, where it’s like, you can go the traditional route, like business school or Y Combinator or some sort of Have incubator and like follow the all the rules. And you can grow something really big and but that, you know, in the the metaphor of book publishing, it’s like, you go get an agent and then you get an editor and then you sign a contract with the publishing house. And then they determine, here’s when you release, and here’s who your marketing team is, and you kind of have to follow the rules of writing that book. And you don’t get as much of a say in how it works versus what you’re talking about now, in our metaphor would be like self publishing, where it’s just like, This is what I want to write, and I’m gonna put it on, you know, Kindle Direct Publishing. And if people buy it great, and like, it’s mine, it’s my choice. And that allows you to talk about things that would not get approved by an editor or would not follow the traditional path. But that’s the most interesting stuff out there.

Brooke Monoghan 5:49
Yeah, yeah. And I think that like, you know, there’s something in there where it’s like, you get to make a choice on the way that you want to do it, there’s always going to be trade offs. But you get to use your own critical thinking and your own agency to decide the way that you want to do it, understanding how things are gonna go. For me, personally, I’m always going to pick the thing that is something that I could sustain long term that doesn’t feel soul sucking for me, because I did that for long enough. And it just, it shuts me right down. Other people can have work where they kind of compartmentalize a little bit more, and they make the money, and then they go back to their life. And like, it’s fine. Not all of us are like that, right? as well. I mean, I don’t really care which one you choose, as long as you’re not doing something unethical, you get to pick the one that works for you. But the point is, the goal for me is to help people see this option of making their own decisions from their own agency and understanding the link there, where when you’re doing that, you’re also thinking a lot more critically, and thus are probably going to make decisions that are actually going to be a lot more effective for your business. Versus this is the way you’re supposed to do it. And then crossing your fingers, which most people who I know who are doing things that way, it’s not working.

Meg Casebolt 7:05
And it may work short term, right? Like it may if especially if you’re following a framework from somebody else, or you’re you got into a program fast, and not everyone else has taken those same approaches, you might feel like you’re innovating in some way. But they’re every marketing trend has an end to it. Every business trend has an end to it. That’s the point of a trend. Right? Right. Whereas a strategy is not a trend,

Brooke Monoghan 7:33
right. And a strategy is linked to specific goals. And to have specific goals, you need to be clear on what you actually want for your business. And then from there, you critically decide like you use your critical thinking to decide how you what you are going to do to get to those goals, doing something because it’s quote, the way it’s done. And because enough people on YouTube said that this is not strategic, but it looks strategic on paper, and it’s what we’ve been sold as strategic. So so many people go that route, don’t know why they’re burnt out, think they’re the only ones and it’s like, no, no, no, no, no, that’s just not really actually strategic advice.

Meg Casebolt 8:18
And is that something that you are, like, actively dismantling with your clients? Like when when do your clients find you? Are they in this sort of, you know, build the funnel post on social be all the places all the time to all the people or have they already sorted sorted, sort of started to extract themselves from that, and then they find you like, at what point? Does a person start working with Brooke Monahan? Yeah, there’s two different

Brooke Monoghan 8:45
places where people start working with me, either, in the very beginning, when they are pretty, they know deep down that this messaging is bullshit.

Sorry, I already floor on it. We’ve already got the E. Okay, great. I find your name and then I dropped an F bomb. So I think we’re in the clear here

just blends in for me at this point. At this point in my life, they know deep down that it’s bullshit. But for some reason, when they go to show up to their business, they are really lacking the confidence to move forward in a way that is an integrity for them, or they just need somebody who has the business acumen who can kind of stand alongside them and help them see how it could make sense. You know, like, they’re not like going off the rails, you know, so people who are in that early stage and are really having a hard time even getting past you know, they’ve plateaued early because the way that they’re trying to do things is really unsustainable for them and it’s really misaligned. But I also work with people who are further along who have grown their businesses or existed in our in an organization that has grown to a certain level and now out there, they’re growing their teams, and they’re experiencing this in a leadership role. So how am I supposed to lead? What does good leadership look like and are kind of robotic in the way that they’re trying to lead their teams and don’t recognize that the same things that they did to get where they’re at in their business from that, you know, critical thinking in your agency, business strategy perspective, that challenging the way that things are being done in their industry, they can also be a bit more authentic in the way that they lead, and trust themselves a bit more to lead their team in a way that is effective and showing up like, honestly, with their team doesn’t mean that everything is gonna fall apart.

Meg Casebolt 10:43
Yeah, and I think also, like, we have a lot of work to do around like the expectations of industries and capitalism. And like, what we especially those of us who had kind of corporate careers at some point experience of being in a workplace with strong hierarchical situation where you have a progress check in and you have a cost of living upgrade, and you have a very clear org chart, like you meet with your boss for your one to one your annual reviews, and like it’s a formal structure that may or may not apply to an I mean, an online small business is often who we’re talking to this group, like, leadership can look different.

Brooke Monoghan 11:27
Yeah, yeah, it can look different. And I think that people kind of grab on to things that they heard about what it means to be a great leader and kind of like fixate on these elements that actually are not really the important parts. Like, I think that, you know, one of the things that I get sometimes is like, how do I address that, like this thing happened? And I know that I need to have a conversation about it. But if I say it this way, am I revealing too much? Or am I communicating that in a way that kind of gives this impression, and I’m like, you just need to have a conversation with the person where you’re clear about the behavior that you want to see, you’re clear about what happened. And you were in a real conversation with that person to understand what actually happened. And together to come up with a solution, you don’t actually need to position yourself as the authority all the time when you’re leading somebody. Right. But I think that people get very worried that and, you know, there’s this messaging out there that says, like, you’re not taking control of XYZ, you’re not stepping into that, right. And I think that people have gotten a little bit worried that they’re not like being assertive enough in their leadership, right, and a lot of like, masculine energy around us, it’s like authoritative, like, top down approach to things where we have to keep a certain amount of distance, and have a note, not not no transparency, but like limited transparency in order to hold authority. And I think that there is a time to like, there is always a threat of oversharing. Yeah. And boundaries are important. Like you should have boundaries around what you share, and why you’re sharing a thing, of course, but I think that for most people, what I find is holding them up. And it’s a very similar thing to what happens in the beginning of starting their business, when they’re starting to figure out how to get this thing off the ground. And in a way that’s actually sustainable for them is they know what they were told to do. They can identify all of the ways that that feels gross and wrong, and not for them. And they’re worried that if they trusted themselves enough to move forward differently, it might mean that things are going to unravel. And it very quickly goes from I’m going to do this one thing to then it’s going to like totally snowball. And what I always am helping people see is like, actually, this is much more of a tip toeing into, like, it’s one thing at a time, you’re gonna have one conversation, if it doesn’t go, Well, you get to handle that. It’s, it’s, you’re not going to go from zero to 100. Right? A huge part of leadership actually, like I think possibly the most important thing is maintaining your own confidence that no matter what happens, you’re going to be able to handle it. Because if you are freaked out all the time that any one little thing that happens is going to send you the entire business into a tailspin. what starts to happen is people don’t want to come to you and tell you when things aren’t going well. People don’t want to come to you and say, Hey, I think that we can improve this. Because they know that you’re not going to be able to hold that you’re going to you know they can feel that from you. Also, you’re not going to be able to have direct conversations with people because you’re always going to be worried. What if this one thing happens in this conversation? And then from there, Bubba and I’m not going to be able to handle it instead of listen. Everything like you’re gonna make mistakes, you’re gonna mess up. When you start to step back and allow people to take on more they’re going to make mistakes. They’re gonna mess up. Good leadership does not look like avoiding all of the mistakes going wrong, good leadership looks like you handling it when it happens and correcting, like course correcting when you can, and figuring it out in a way that is like confident and moves people toward that vision and also creates a good place to work for your people. Yeah. And I mean, like you have a podcast called transcend your dichotomy where like, we’re trying to figure out where we are on a looser spectrum than just all or nothing. Right? So I think people will often Qatar catastrophize, what’s happening in their lives of like, what

Meg Casebolt 15:37
is the worst case scenario? Instead of going? What’s the first step that I need to take? Exactly? We find, especially in these conversations around the choice around social media, that people will be like, well, if I leave social media that none of my clients will ever find me ever again, you know, and it’s like, well, maybe look like, we don’t need to, we don’t need to go cold turkey and shut it down and burn down the machine. Been there? How can we take a week off and see how that impacts things? Like, can we can we experiment first? Can we set a goal? Yeah. Can we set a benchmark, then can we experiment and see what happens?

Brooke Monoghan 16:12
Right? And also, like, maybe look at the data and see if people are actually even coming in from social media?

Like, where do your clients find you?

Yeah, I mostly get referrals. I get lots of people from, I don’t know that they’re finding me necessarily through my podcast. But I would say that the podcast is definitely the key thing that helps people identify that I’m the person that they want to work with, and then eventually actually work with me. So it’s definitely referrals. It’s guesting on other people’s podcasts. And then once people find me, I mean, really, the thing that’s converting people is my podcasts and my newsletter. I’m on social media, I have an Instagram account, the engagements pretty low, I have some support to repurpose some stuff for my podcast on there. Because I’m kind of like, okay, I know that like a good amount of people are there. But I honestly treat it more as like a, you’re scrolling. Hi, let me interrupt that pattern for a second. And like remind you of this thing that I think is really important. You know what I mean? Versus I’m, I’m not trying to grow on Instagram, by any means. I’ve, I’ve given up on that long time ago, to be honest with you.

I can’t tell you how many of our guests are like the discovery is referrals and guest podcasts and the conversion is podcast. And, you know,

yeah, I mean, I think that we’re attracted to this show, for obvious reasons.

Meg Casebolt 17:46
And, you know, podcasts are a great way to like get in someone’s ears long term and share that with them. I think books to people will will confirm through books, but like, yeah, obviously people who are coming on the show I’m not I’m not reaching out to influencers who have millions and millions of followers typically. But, you know, there’s, there’s this feeling of FOMO of everybody’s on social media. And it’s because when we’re on social media, we’re looking at the people who are successful on social media and feeling like we need to achieve that. And the folks who aren’t on social media are who are using it as more of a nurturing tool versus conversion tool. They’re not yelling about it. Oh, yeah.

Brooke Monoghan 18:25
Yeah, I mean, social media is designed to make you have FOMO, when you’re not on it, like, they pay a lot of money to make it have that effect. So of course, it feels that way. But I can tell you, there have been plenty of times where I’m just like, I’m just not, I’m just not going to be on social media for an extended period of time. Or, you know, at one point, I hired somebody who was fantastic, I loved working with them, we created a whole social media strategy for me, I experimented with it for six months, it did nothing. And I was like, okay, that’s what I needed to know, by like, I’m just, that’s just not where I’m gonna put my effort right now. Now, I’m at a point where I have some systems in place for getting on other podcasts or for getting my own podcast out more easily, and for pitching to different places, and more referrals come in. And so it kind of has taken the load off a little bit. Plus, my business is at a point where I can invest in a little bit more support. So I can dip my toe back into social media, it’s accessible for me again, because but there was a time where it was really taking so much of my energy, and like really not doing anything for me. And instead of looking at the data and being like, Okay, this is not the thing that works for me. Here’s the thing that does work for me. Maybe I lean into what works and take like and, and kind of divest a bit from social media. I was instead like, there’s something wrong with me. And I have to push harder and harder and harder. And then I realized, oh, no, there’s actually plenty of people out there who are Are we doing really well for themselves and have like almost no social media presence, or no social media presence? There’s,

Meg Casebolt 20:06
I think there’s an ego piece here where it’s like, but I want to be seen, I want the instant feedback. I want people to know what I’m working on. I want to get the likes. I like the dopamine hit, right. Like there’s something there. But then when we go look at the data, like it’s hard to extract our ego from the data.

Brooke Monoghan 20:24
Oh, yeah. Totally, totally. And like, I think it’s so interesting, too, because one of the things that I definitely noticed for me, and I noticed this with a lot of my clients who are kind of in the earlier stages is like, the data that people are kind of telling you about, like, look at your insights and look at this and look at that, like, it’s really only going to become reliable when you’re hitting certain numbers, or you’ve been doing something for a certain amount of time. Looking at like two P two posts, and then drawing a line between the two is like absolutely not the way that it works. But we’re just again, the catastrophizing, we’re so good at that.

Meg Casebolt 21:06
And we want to feel important, we want to feel like seen, and that’s huge. So what are you doing in terms of like, you’re creating this content from your, your podcast, and emails, and I know that you do a really good job of repurposing it. So talk me through like, once you have this marketing asset, what are you doing with it?

Brooke Monoghan 21:27
So my current system, which is so amazing, oh, my gosh, having help is like,

right game changer.

What I’m doing right now is actually not I don’t want to bury the lede, I’m starting YouTube channel. So that’s about to become an experiment, for very specific reasons that I can get into if it is helpful, because it is for again, a very specific reason. But what I do now is I record my podcast episode, and then I have somebody Her name is Crunchyroll, Gianni and her team, they actually transcribe my episode The episode for me, and then they listen to the episode, write my episode description for me, and write social media captions, that kind of link to that. And then my VA creates graphics for that episode. But we also take the outline of the episode and make that into a carousel post is just kind of walking people through the same content, because what I used to do is be like, hey, Instagram, come and listen to my podcast. And it’s a lot better to just be like, You got to stay on the platform that you’re on. I know you’re not leaving, I know that this thing has you like, totally locked. I’ll just give you the information here. So that goes out as well. And then what I actually was experimenting with earlier in the year, and right now, it’s kind of shifted, because I’m going into a bunch of guest interviews. But I was actually starting to share some of the ideas for the podcast with my newsletter in advance and asking people like, what questions do you have on this? How does this land for you? What still, like what what loose ends are still there for you, as we talked about this concept, so that I could get ideas from people about like, Okay, that sounds good, Brooke, but like, what about this, because podcasts are such a great place to go deep in on a topic and include all of the nuance and really talk through things and not have to boil things down. So I would start there. And then I would kind of kind of make a more robust outline that I would create the episode from and then that goes out onto onto Instagram. And right now I’m actually going back into some of those outlines that I created for the episodes and I’m doing two things with them. One is I’m creating YouTube videos straight from them, that are a little bit of a different format for my podcast, they’re a little bit more like quick to the point concise, here are the things that you need to know. But also, I am pitching publications, articles that basically I already have the article written because I have this whole outline that already exists with input from people for my newsletter. So that is like a huge thing that I’ve had to work on. Because there was a whole period of time in my business where I was just constantly coming up with new ideas. And then I would like write one thing on it and then it would just like die in the dark corner near graveyard. Yeah, I

call it the content, graveyard drive.

And now I’m like, okay, like we’ve already worked so hard on some things. Let’s just be a little bit more strategic about how to get that out there. Yeah, I

Meg Casebolt 24:35
love that. And I love that idea of like, email input of like, I’m going to talk about these five topics. What questions do you have what isn’t clear to you? What else would you want to hear about? Because the benefit of doing that especially before you record is not only does it impact, what you’re going to say and the type the tone that you can take in that but also like you can people will feel heard when they hear that Right, like you’re going to want to tune into that episode if they asked a preview question, because

Brooke Monoghan 25:05
they want to hear the answer. Yeah. And a lot of my lip, my newsletter subscribers are not podcast people, you know, they don’t. So it’s also an opportunity for me to turn around and the next week and the footer of my newsletter, where it’s like, here’s the latest podcast episode, if you gave input on that thing where you were interested in that maybe you listen to that one episode, maybe you go and you download the transcript, if you’re more, you’re someone who wants to go that route. But like, it makes it I think, a little bit easier for people to navigate where they don’t have to be like me, where I’m a person who just binges like a whole feed. Not everyone’s like that.

Meg Casebolt 25:43
I think also the option that you just gave us much more accessible of like, you know, here’s the information for this one podcast, if you don’t want to listen, or you can’t listen, here’s the transcript. Here’s the answer to the questions. You know, here are the bullet points of like, here’s, here’s what the q&a was. And we’re just going to put it into the show notes. So giving people the option to consume in a way that works for them. And not just the preferred way that you prefer to create can make such a huge difference, not just in terms of repurposing, but in retention of your audience.

Brooke Monoghan 26:13
Absolutely. Absolutely. And I don’t know, man, you know, better than I do. Doesn’t do good things for SEO. SEO forget is fine transcript or website or something like that? I don’t know. I heard I heard that somewhere. You heard that somewhere. Somebody

Meg Casebolt 26:27
told you that to talk to me about the YouTube channel? Because I mean, I get the the like, the recaps and being able to have a place to just have another platform. But yeah,

Brooke Monoghan 26:38
so the YouTube channel is coming about for a pretty specific reason, which is that

it which is that your hair looks good. So you have oh my god for the video. So the people you have it for posterity, like that’s the whole reason I did YouTube. That’s that I,

I wish I had that much confidence. Yeah, the YouTube videos are coming about because earlier this year, I came out with a new digital product called the aligned business portal. And it basically was meant to be is meant to be and it’s been in beta for like a few months. So I’m getting feedback from people like this week, and next week, which is so much fun. But it’s really meant to be like an entry point for people who are looking for the ways to market their business by maybe like I want a framework just telling me what to do, but guides them through the process of creating an offer and marketing that offer kind of guides them through that process in a way that centers their agency a lot more and helps them get their own ideas, rather than just writing the right answer to the question. And then write helps them get more to their own ideas and what they actually care about, and what they know would be most impactful for their people. And this kind of came up because one of the things that I’m constantly thinking about, and I don’t use this like lingo often because it means nothing to people. But back in my, my days before I had this business, I was trained in something called Value stream mapping, which is a thing that people use in process improvement. And it’s basically this concept that like, every single thing in a business has to align with the offer where the money comes in, and you create value for the people in order for it to be effective. So like, essentially everything that you’re doing in your business you’re doing to get people into that offer or to deliver that service or whatever. And when I saw that, and I started I mean, later on, when I started working with people that I worked with, I started thinking, Okay, right. So if your offers are not actually in alignment with what you really care about, then really what you’re doing is almost every other thing in your business is going to feel more forced, if you’re going to make it effective. So really the way to not have to choose between doing things that matter to you and feeling like you’re it’s aligned with your values and the impact you want to have not having to choose between that and doing things the strategic way is to align the offer First, start with that, right. So I started kind of building out this idea and I created this whole product. Again, it’s in beta. And anyways, as I was thinking more about who would be perfect for this. I was like I think they’re searching for marketing advice on YouTube. I think that they’re searching for marketing advice. And I think they’re getting they’re consuming a lot of how to material and I think that they’re being led down a rabbit hole that I really don’t want them to be led down. No, maybe. Maybe I take my guide that I got from someone I know about SEO keywords and and putting some titles together and I start making videos that are targeted toward those people but when they kind of get through the door they’re good Think this much more refreshing approach that actually feels a lot more accessible for them. So I’m focusing on a very specific thing there, which is at least right now sustainable aligned marketing marketing plans that you can actually stick with. Not because your keyword

Meg Casebolt 30:17
sustainable, nope. Aligned Nope. Marketing Plan. Yep. Marketing Plan. Yeah. On page marketing plan, even though you can make it more than one page because people writing stuff they want simple, but then they’re going to blow it out and do something way more complicated. Simple.

Brooke Monoghan 30:33
So I’m really focusing on that they’re not because I’m like, This is my niche, but because I know that for the people that I want to work with, that is the thing that they are constantly looking for guidance on. And I call it like, I call the aligned business portal, the aligned business portal, because I feel like it’s a portal into a totally different way of approaching your business. And when you experience it, in your marketing, it’s like, Whoa, I get to do things this way.

Meg Casebolt 31:01
What do you say portal, I thought, like, just somewhere that you log in, and it is like a hub of information. But now that you explain it that way, I’m thinking of like, a swirling, you know, like, into another dimension. Like, can I like so much better, like, we need to have like a wormhole portal in Brooks brain?

Brooke Monoghan 31:20
Yeah. Um, and I need to give it to you in a way that’s like tangible and like, you can actually apply it to your business to see what I’m talking about. This is what I realized as, as much as three years ago ago, Brooke would be so angry to be like, we’re creating bite size marketing videos, are you serious, really, this is what we’re doing have we’ve crossed over to the dark side. It’s like, I’m at a point now where I’m like, this is where a lot of these people are, and I want to be there to meet them where they’re at. It’s an experiment, we’ll see how it goes, I’m not attached to having to be like, some YouTube sensation by a longshot, I have no expectation of that happening. But I also know that, you know, I’m already sending out emails to to my list to be like, hear these podcast episodes, having another way that people can consume this thing that I’ve already worked really hard on, especially now that I have the capacity to do it. Because I’ve slowly built my business to this point, it’s something I’m willing to do and experiment with and see how it goes. And so far, it’s been fun. Yeah, it can be fun.

Meg Casebolt 32:19
And I think you’re onto something too, which is, even though we want to systemize our content, so that way, we aren’t creating new things for every platform, like knowing who is hanging out on which platforms and what they are using it for can lead to very targeted, niche content that’s specific to specific places. So like, I when you said, like, I’m just gonna start a YouTube channel, like that inner simplicity in me like cringe, you probably saw like a little like, Oh, we’re doing that, okay. But the way that you just explained it of like, I want to create these bite sized tutorial videos for people who are thinking that that’s what they need. And then they can come into my universe, and I can introduce them to my approach, and then they will probably go listen to the podcast, and they will get to know me a little bit better, like, we were talking earlier about, like, do you use referrals and guest podcasts for discovery and versus like, your own podcast and email for conversions, and I see this very similar, like your discovery is YouTube, but then you have this ability for people to get to know you better through the other things that are happening. So it’s just another discovery platform. That’s very specific to folks who are looking for tutorials, and then you can blow up in their world with like, Yeah, I mean, tutorials, you need intuition. You need facts, you need innovation, you need to listen to yourself.

Brooke Monoghan 33:40
Right, exactly, yeah, that’s the hope. We’ll see how it goes. I’ve had so many experiments that have absolutely gone like totally off the rails over the past however many years that I’m at a point right now, where I am so open to just being like, let’s try it is my best effort. I’m going to be as strategic as I can about it, but also do it in a way that’s sustainable for me. If it works, cool. If it doesn’t, wouldn’t be the first thing that I dumped some time into. That turned out to not be it. I can’t tell you the amount of time that I dumped into Instagram. And

Meg Casebolt 34:11
I think, you know, a lot of us who were who have been in this space for a while and who have kind of the approach of you and me, which is like it’s an experiment, whatever. It makes us better at helping other people evaluate their marketing, because you can say like, I mean, before we started recording, really, the worst advice you can get out there is like just go viral. Like it’s so easy to go viral, and you’ll get all the right people and I joked to you that I’ve only had one guest on the podcast who went viral. And it was a person from my team who went viral for her own business. And she had 1000 purchases in a week. But like, she hasn’t been able to do it again. Yeah, you can’t. And like that information about she went she went wild on Tik Tok. But it’s not replicable. Right. And that’s and you cannot I’ll take that information about, like, here’s what, here’s how my podcast converts, and here’s my YouTube experience and give that to your clients and be like, You know what, I think YouTube would work for you. Because when I did this on it, it had this outcome.

Brooke Monoghan 35:14
Yeah. And I think that also like, part of what you’re getting at too, and part of what I think is really central to why I take the approach that I take with my clients is like, I plan on everything taking a long time. I just, I just am like, if I’m going to do a thing, I better set it up so that I can do it for a long time. And be consistent with it. Because as far as I’m concerned, I am not like out here thinking that I’m going to make millions of dollars in however many years and then just like what, like kick up my feet, I would like no, that’s just not what I’m I don’t know, I’m not saying that that’s, you know, whatever. But for me, I plan on doing this for a long time, like, this is my business, I want to develop a body of work, I want to get better at what I do, I want to be like, continue to get good at this and better at this right? And expand this. And so this YouTube channel is no different. I expect that if this works, it is going to take a long time. For me, I’m like, I don’t measure anything before three months, and really like six months is to the point where I’m like, Okay, now I feel like I can, you know, really get more data. But with YouTube, I don’t even think that six months is really like gonna be the thing where like, I can really expect that much to come from it. I think it’s gonna take a long time. You can like create

Meg Casebolt 36:32
for six months, and then evaluate how well it’s working for several years. You know, like, it doesn’t have to be a I mean, the velocity algorithm. But yeah, like, I think being able to say, look, when my husband and I meet with our financial planner, he has a traditional job. And he’s like, Okay, I want to work until this age, and then I want to retire. And then I want my life to look like this. And when we sit down with a financial planner, he’s like, okay, Mike, what’s your retirement age? And I’m like, Yeah, because I, I just want to scale back. I want them have things be easier, but I don’t necessarily feel the need to escape.

Brooke Monoghan 37:06
Right? And yeah, right. And that’s the thing, right? So it’s like, so then anything that I do, I’m very much like, How can I do this in a way that I’m not going to want to escape from in however long because my experience is that when you are not aware of what is sustainable for you, when it starts to work that’s around the time where you want out, it’s harder, and then it’s a lot harder to figure out a way to make it work for you. Because now you have all of this evidence that that’s what works for you, like, running yourself into the ground is the thing that gets the results. And it actually like reinforces this idea that that’s what works versus being like, Okay, this is probably going to take some time. So if I know it’s going to take this amount of time, what’s how, like, what’s a pace that works for me? What kind of support am I going to need? What do I want to be right? Like, it’s just a totally different way of approaching things that I think is actually way more strategic, because you’re not betting on being the anomaly. You’re not betting on being the exception. Where like, oh, my gosh, look at how amazing I am. I’m one of the like, you know, 1% of people who like struck struck it big out of luck. Like,

Meg Casebolt 38:20
I know, people probably just have family money, it’s okay, it’s fine. I was really dismissive. To eat the rich for me, but like, there’s a little bit there. No, I like what you’re saying, though, about, like, if you plan for a long term than that, adjust your expectations. You know, I think there when I was in school, I would be like, well, I work well under pressure. So I will just procrastinate until the last minute and then crank it all out overnight. But like, I told myself that I worked well under pressure. And then I would force myself to work well under pressure. And then I reinforced that and I think a lot of us do that in our businesses to where it’s like, we put our we back ourselves into a corner. And then we’re like, Well, it worked. Right? Do it again, versus coming up with solutions that don’t back us into corners that don’t make us feel like our entire adrenal system is active.

Brooke Monoghan 39:13
Yeah, it’s challenging to be like, Oh, now I need to come up with a different solution. Okay, if that’s not an option, then what other options do I have? That’s a lot more challenging in the moment than being like, that’s the only way that’s what I need to do. But we have other options. And it’s just about I mean, you know, understanding their trade offs. And considering those options and making choices for yourself that are like, you know, based on you and not like, I don’t know what you saw on someone else’s profile that honestly, it was probably like not even completely accurate to their actual experience, you know? Yeah.

Meg Casebolt 39:55
All right. So any final thoughts that you want to impart to people if they’re listening to this and nodding along, what’s the like next step that they need to do aside from, you know, subscribe to your fledgling new YouTube channel.

Brooke Monoghan 40:08
Yeah. What do you mean, Meg? We’ve been talking for like three minutes. I don’t even know where this time went. Well, if you’re listening to the podcast, then probably the best thing to do is pop over to transcend your dichotomy. If this is your preferred method of

consuming information assumption, yeah,

you can go to my website, also Brooke dash monahan.com/podcast. To remember, there’s a G in there. So maybe

just check out the title. Before you go. I just read the show notes and click through it’s through right here on this one. Yeah, if you go to the podcast

page, you can actually pop in your email. And I’ll send you a list of like my top episodes on different focus areas. So if you’re not the kind of person that wants to just like start scrolling and finding the things that are relevant for you, I break it down into marketing, mindset and leadership. And so you can just like dive into the ones that are actually helpful for you and relevant to where you’re at, because we do not need more information. Extraneous like content.

Yeah, we don’t need to just learn all the things we need to get more targeted about what it is we need to know and go seek out that information. Yeah, yeah. Well, thank you so much for being here today. I really appreciate it.

This was so fun. And like easy. I don’t even know where the time went. But yeah, it’s a good time.

Meg Casebolt 41:25
Well, we’ll have to do it again sometime. Yeah. All right. Talk to you soon. Thank you so much for listening to the social slowdown podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe or come on over to social slowdown.com and sign up for our email list so you never miss an episode. We’d also love if you could write a review to help other small business owners find the show you can head over to social slowdown.com/review Or grab that link in our show notes for easy access. We’ll be back soon with more tips to help you market your business without being beholden to social media. Talk to you then

TPlease forgive any typos or errors, as this transcript was automatically generated by Otter.ai