Growing your business in The Messy Middle, with Kathryn Janicek

Kathryn Janicek0:02

You come from a space of not worthiness, right, that you're not confident. And when we're doing business, we want people to know that they should be really confident working with you, that you're going to cross all your T's and dot all your I's and just be great. So there shouldn't be words like, it'd be my honor, you know, it's no, I'm going to kick butt and take names for you. You know,

Leah Neaderthal0:25

welcome to the smart gets paid podcast with me. Leah niederthal, I help women land higher paying clients in their independent consulting businesses, but I've never been a salesperson. My background is in corporate marketing, and when I started my first consulting business, I learned pretty quickly that it's about 1000 times harder to sell your own stuff than it is to sell someone else's. So I taught myself how to do it, and I created the sales approach that I now share with my clients so they can feel more comfortable in the sales process, get more of the right clients and get paid way more for every client contract. So whether your client contracts are $5,000 $100,000 or more. If you want to work with more of the clients you love, do more of the work you love, and get paid more than you ever thought you could, then you're in the right place. Let's do it together. Thanks for tuning in, and don't forget to rate, review and share. Hey there, Leah here, and thanks for tuning in. I hope that wherever you're listening to this, wherever you are right now, you're having a great week, making some good progress on your business and taking some time for you. So we just closed enrollment for this group of the academy, and I got to tell you, I am so excited to work with the women who've really taken this step and joined this group. I mean, in our kickoff the other day, the energy was just amazing. This is such a great group of women, so we name our groups by colors, and this group is the Gold Group. By the end of the kickoff, they were like, cheering, like, Let's go gold and like, Let's go Gold Group. So shout out to the gold group if you're listening to this. I mean, it was just awesome, but I have to tell you, so about a half hour before our kickoff was supposed to start, one of the new members texted me and said, Hey, how do I get into the kickoff? I'm not seeing any details about that. And I wrote back, and I was like, oh, that's odd. Like, did you sign up? Like, officially? You know, because she and I had gone back and forth and forth, and we had had some calls and emails and whatnot, because, you know, we have a whole thing set up where, as soon as you sign up, you know, you get an email with the agreement and the details and all of that. And so I was like, Oh, that's so weird. And I'm looking back in our emails, and we had spoken about her joining, and she's like, I'm in, like, let's do this. And you know, she was in committed, but I looked at the emails over the past few days and I hadn't actually sent her the link to sign up. All right, let's just play this back for a second. I'm a sales coach. I teach people how to get clients, and I had forgotten to send the link to a client to actually sign up. I mean, are you serious? So hey, okay, major sales tip, if you want clients to sign up or purchase or whatever, the tip of the day is, send them the link. All right, you're welcome. Episode done. And actually, what's funny is she actually did end up finding the link because I had sent it to her in a much earlier email, but still, I mean, the point remains, pro tip send the link. All right, so let's dive into this episode. So there's a lot out there about how to start a business, or how to get your first clients, or how to do your first big launch, or whatever. You know, doing that is really exciting, and frankly, there are a lot of people who are coaching on that. But what happens when you've been running your business for a while? You know, the excitement of starting a business is gone. Maybe it's been a few years into the business, and you're very much in it. You know, like running the business. There's a whole lot less out there about that. That's what I teach, and that's what we're going to talk about today. How To Grow Your Business when you're in what we call the messy middle. The messy middle is that period after the startup phase in your business, and it comes after you've gotten that you know, first wave of clients, the clients who might be people who knew you from before, or people who you worked with before, or people who were referred to you by those folks. We typically see that the messy middle starts around 18 months to two years into your business, you know, plus or minus, and it's when that first wave of consultants either starts to slow down, or people get the sense that it will start to slow down. And it's when smart consultants realize that they aren't going to get clients from within that pool forever. And that's when they realize they need an actual strategy. And the messy middle can last a long time. It's like the longest part of your business, and in the messy middle, just because you're out of that startup phase, you're not free of. Problems. You're just solving different problems, better problems. I mean, I tell my clients, you're basically upgrading the problems that you're solving, because it's no longer the questions that you're answering in the startup phase, like, how do I get clients in the messy middle? The question is, how do I get the right clients? It's no longer, how do I get people to pay me in the messy middle, it's how do I get paid for my value? And in the messy middle, it's not about making big moves and getting big results anymore. So it's not the constant hits of dopamine that you felt in the startup phase in the messy middle. It's about making small refinements. It's about keeping what's working and fixing what's broken or not working as well as it could be, and seeing the results of those efforts. And again, it's not as much dopamine, but if you can continue to run and grow your business in the messy middle, you can see some huge results. So how do you run your business and how do you keep growing your business in the messy middle? That's what we're talking about in this episode with my client, Katherine janicek. Katherine does media training and public speaking training for CEOs, executives and leaders, so that they can communicate with more impact in the media and in public speaking opportunities and in meetings. And as you'll hear, she's been in business for eight years. She is squarely in the messy middle. And in our conversation, we're going to talk about, how do you run your business and continue to grow your business when you're in the messy middle so you're going to hear the changes Catherine made, which allowed her to grow her revenue 40% year over year. You're going to hear Catherine talk about how she was able to let go of that I have to do it all myself, mentality. You're going to hear her strategy to make time appear out of thin air, and you're going to hear the habit that was killing her confidence that she had to unlearn. So take a listen to my conversation with Katherine janicek, and at the end, I'll come back and share a lesson you can apply to your business, and then hopefully, someday soon, you'll partner with us to help you build your consulting business, and you'll come back on the podcast and share your story. Enjoy. So you might have noticed that with the economy being as it is, things feel a little shaky. Referrals are slowing down. Budgets are getting cut, and clients who you thought would say yes, are saying no or not right now. And here's the thing, in this economy, you can't run your business by waiting for referrals. Clients just aren't going to swim into your net. You have to be intentional. That's why the best way to protect your business today and for the future is to have the two systems that every consulting business needs, a marketing system to bring the right clients to you and fill your pipeline, and a sales system to help clients say yes and get you paid more. But it's not just about getting clients. It's about security and stability and making your business sustainable no matter what's happening out there, smart women are doing this right now, even in this economy, they're winning their biggest contracts, filling their pipelines, and their businesses are growing, which lets them do things like build up six months of family savings a lot sooner than they had planned. Or go from having one to two months of revenue booked to having eight to 10 months of revenue booked, or getting to the place where you're able to pick and choose your clients and say no to the ones that aren't perfect. These are real results from women in the academy, because this is what we do inside the Academy. We help you build the marketing and sales systems that make your business and your revenue more stable, more secure and more sustainable. So if you've been in business for at least two years, if you made at least 120k last year, and if you want your business to feel secure no matter what's happening in the economy, join us. Apply today. It's markets pay comm slash Academy. We get started on Monday, February 9, because you can't control the economy, but you can control what you do about it. Catherine, thanks so much for being here. Thank you. Thank you. So let's just dive in. Tell the good people what you do, who you are and what you do.

Kathryn Janicek9:03

I help people communicate with more impact. I was in television for over 20 years, and I am, my specialty is media training and public speaking coaching.

Leah Neaderthal9:15

And who do you do that for? Doing an interview with somebody who teaches people how to be interviewed is an it's like next level pressure for me.

Kathryn Janicek9:26

I was actually thinking about that because the and the flip note is I teach people how to show up on a podcast and make sure that they keep the people's interest. And it's so hard for me to sometimes be on podcasts because I'm like, I certainly hope I'm doing what I'm what I coach people to do.

Leah Neaderthal9:45

Boring, no, you're great. You're You're doing great. So, so the work that you do Who, who do you do it for?

Kathryn Janicek9:54

I do it for companies, for executives, for C suite. So for example, I have. Fortune 30 company, and I help their presidents. I help their you know, VPS or SVPs. I have other Fortune 500 companies that I might help. You know someone who's at the manager or director level their sales team on how to communicate in a way that makes people feel good and builds relationships. I also help, and have helped physicians at world renowned hospitals, Yale, Harvard, Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, financial firms like banks and biotech firms. It just what's really cool is the journalist in me gets to talk about something different almost every hour of my day, just like when in journalism, I might be writing this story, and then, you know, 20 minutes later, I'm writing a story about something completely different. So I just love that. I'm literally touching every industry, and I love

Leah Neaderthal10:48

it, yeah, well, and I know a little bit about your background, but I think it's really interesting to share with everybody. You know, you say, I you have a background in journalism, but journalism is really big. So tell people like, what you actually did in journalism that prepared you for what you're doing.

Kathryn Janicek11:03

Now the easiest way you know, I was an executive producer. I was a television news producer. I dabbled in reporting a little bit. I became the VP of news at a network. But the easiest thing to explain is I had to make sure that the audience stayed with us that the audience watched for 30 seconds more, a minute more that would be so intrigued to stick around after that commercial break, right? You know, how do you keep an audience? And that could be by the story you choose. How you tell the story. Is it with video? Is it with just, you know, the written word? Is it with amazing full screen graphics, also the person delivering the story. Do you want to listen to them? Do you want to watch them a little longer? Do they make you feel like you could be friends with them, that you could have the old saying, like, have a sit down and have a beer with them? So all of that really is so parallel to someone speaking on stage. Do their slides really help them, or does it distract from the message, does their clothing, you know, help them? Does it? Does it? Are they wearing their clothing? Or is their clothing wearing them? Is the is the color the right color? Are there glasses actually creating a brick wall between them and their audience, or they, you know, just helping them see all of those things like that is really what I did in television for more than two decades, and now what I get to help an individual, you know, really make an impact and captivate an audience and keep them and actually make them do something with their words.

Leah Neaderthal12:30

Yeah, well, and I will say for everybody listening, you know, Catherine and I have worked together for quite some time, including as I was getting this podcast sort of up and running. And one time I was playing, I was proofing an episode and playing it, you know, on my computer. And my wife was sitting next to me, and she was like, You sound so like, down. You sound so quiet. And like, you know, I forgot exactly the word she used. And of course, in my in that moment, I was like, you know, you don't know anything like this podcast. I love this podcast, blah, blah. And then as I sat with it, I was like, Maybe I do, but I but what did I do next? I sent you a message Catherine over boxer, and I was like, This is what Emily says. Like, is this true? And you got back to me, and you're like, yeah, yeah, that is true. And so, and you gave me a few tips to to improve my delivery, which I think has made the podcast better. So, so I've seen you in action, and I know your stuff works for me, and I'm sure it works for you know, the CEOs and the leaders that you're working with

Kathryn Janicek13:27

well, but Leah, this is why you're so successful in you in business, you're coachable. Some people would be like, Oh, that's cool. Like, she doesn't know what she's talking about, and you're you asked for feedback, and I gave you feedback totally, you know, I didn't even filter it, right? Because I like you. I like you. You know, there's a difference between like, you know, liking and being nice and being kind. And like, I really like you, and so I want you to be successful, and so therefore I give you an honest opinion. But some people would have been like, no, she's wrong, and then just kind of gone along. But I think the most successful people in the world are coachable. They have, they hire great coaches, and they listen to them, and then they do the thing the coach tells them to do, you know,

Leah Neaderthal14:08

yeah, totally. I will say I was not coachable for about 15 minutes after I got that feedback. I you know, and after my about 15 minutes after Emily gave me that feedback. But then, you know, I got over myself and and I let it sink in and made the changes.

Kathryn Janicek14:24

Well, let's talk about spouses coaching spouses for a second, because my husband knows what I do, obviously, for a living, too, and I'll sometimes give him some, you know, he's getting ready for a big presentation for this Friday, and he literally, I asked him for like, two days. I said, you know, do you want to? Do you want to just kind of have a rehearsing buddy, you know? Do you want me to? Can I help you a little bit? Because I literally spend time on Zoom majority of my days helping people before they go to pitch to JP Morgan for millions of dollars, right? And they have to put together a slideshow. And here's my husband putting together a slideshow. And he said, Yeah, I'll practice, but I don't want any coaching, like I don't need. Hear about my eye contact, or I don't need to hear about this, or I don't need to hear it was very funny, because it's just like in when I coach clients, I say, find a good person who will be a good mirror, who will really tell you the truth. You know, not just a cheerleader, a yes man, you know, you want someone who says, Boy, if you did this a little differently, this will really make a bigger impact. And I said, don't ask your spouse, because, you know, it's just it's so hard to hear criticism, or, you know, sometimes feedback from a spouse, it's a little different. So I understand why. For 15 minutes you're like, No, Emily, my podcast delivery is awesome, because it's hard to get that kind of coaching from a spouse, you know, so totally. Sometimes it's better to just, well, hire an expert, but like, just find someone at you know, a colleague at work that you really trust will tell you the best thing. Because I'll tell you. CEOs always tell me, they say, you know, when you get to that CEO position, a lot of people aren't going to tell you the truth. You give a speech, you know, you rehearse it in front of your team say, how is this going to be? You know, at the next conference, they're all going to say, Great job, boss. That was terrific. And so these CEOs will say, You come in once or twice a year, and that's when I hear the honest truth, and it makes me better. So that is the biggest compliment I could ever, ever get, that it's just like no one is telling them how they actually are perceived by an audience. And then when I walk in the in the fact that they listen right? Because they know it's they've they've seen the difference when they get that kind of coaching from us, and they people actually get a response afterwards. They say, Wow, something's happened. Something's changed.

Leah Neaderthal16:33

Yeah, I love that. That's awesome. Let's talk about your business. Paint a picture of what was going on in the business before we started working together. Like, what would you say some of the problems were at that time?

Kathryn Janicek16:45

I'd say we were good and we are really good at the customer piece, like actually delivering the value of our service. The part that I don't know if I was bad or good at, but I definitely had a mindset for sure. Issue with was sales in general. One is, does my proposal look right? What do other people's proposals look like? I really didn't know, literally, how to write a good proposal, what goes in it, what order? And then also just some kind of system or process on how to get the proposals out the door faster. Because when you've got a busy week and you have several discovery calls or whatever it is, then they really add up. And I was doing those all weekend and all night long too. You know how no one knows how to price themselves until they start getting yeses or nos or whatever? So I didn't know how to price our services correctly. It's the it was the getting new business and and then actually being able to explain what you can do for them and how to price it, that was a big issue.

Leah Neaderthal17:46

Yeah, yeah. Well, how, how long have you been running your business? We're in year eight. Year eight. Okay, so and solving those problems, or getting some clarity on those problems, what were you hoping it would do for you, for the business?

Kathryn Janicek18:00

Well, bring in more revenue, for sure, because if we could move faster, if we could, well, if we could price right, right, have better margins and really get paid for the kind of value we bring to companies. Like, one is your revenue is going to go up, especially because we do a great job. And I also wanted the proposal that that whole process to go a lot faster. Like, how can we streamline this? How can we not feel like we're reinventing the wheel every single time? You know, how can we define those products better packages? You know, products, services, because I felt like it is very custom what we do. You know, every single person and organization has a different need or a different messaging or different issue, but truly we can systemize kind of like we come in for two days, we come in for a three day workshop, we come in for half a day, or we meet you on Zoom for a day. Those things are pretty similar, and you really helped us firm that up so we could not, not reinvent the wheel every time we had to get a

Leah Neaderthal19:02

proposal out. Yeah, yeah. Because I remember you were, I mean, it was stressing you out, first of all, but also, I think you were sort of dragging your feet on that process and missing out on some opportunities where they actually did want to work with you.

Kathryn Janicek19:16

Yeah. Writing proposals is, you know, I hate, I don't want to, I don't like saying this out loud, because I don't want to scare anyone from ever starting a business or anything. But like, that's my least favorite part of the whole thing. And I want to do the job. Like, I love going in and I love, oh, I love meeting the customer, you know, on the phone, or I'm on Zoom, for sure. I love doing the job. I love going in and learning about the industry, and I love, you know, helping them achieve their goal, helping them feel a confidence that they've never felt before, helping them with their mindset, helping teach them things, but putting it all together in a proposal that was it was a drag. I also. Also realized I wasn't asking the right questions, and you taught me how to write ask better questions on the call, and then that helped me create better proposals, because I was talking directly to their needs that they they actually said, you know, and so that was really helpful, so I could deliver a better product for

Leah Neaderthal20:20

them, exactly. Yeah. And I want to go back to something you said about I just want to do the work, right? I mean, you did not start the business. None of the women I talked to started the business because they wanted to sell, right? They you start a business because you see a problem, you have a skill set. You want to use that skill set to solve the problem. And that's the part that's like fulfilling. That's the part that gives you energy. And then everything that goes into getting the clients can feel a little bit like a drag or a distraction or something that is taking them away from, like, quote, unquote, the real work, but, but really, the business development process, the sales process, even the proposal itself, is like putting gas in a car, right? Like, you can't you need it to be able to even do the

Kathryn Janicek21:03

work, right, right? Yeah, I can't go and make a difference unless I write that proposal.

Leah Neaderthal21:09

Sadly, no. Well, so what would you say are the two or three things that have been the biggest game changers for you? One is, I would say,

Kathryn Janicek21:23

you know, I'm not saying this just because I'm on your podcast, but I do have to, and I'm not, I don't want to say it's just because I am a coach or I'm a trainer, you know, but hiring experts, you know, when I first started my company, it was afraid. I didn't know how much business I was going to get, and so I focused more, like a lot of people do, and I had people who are kind of an intern slash assistant, so someone in college or right out of college, and as my as I was able to pay like, a higher wage and get someone with a little bit more experience. Things moved now, where really things moved is hiring coaches or hiring experts to help me with the blind spots I absolutely had, you know, an example, would you know, of course. Leah, you you know, like, just, I don't know how to do this, so, so I need help to do it. You're not going to do it for me, but you're going to teach me how to do it so I can do it faster. Okay? Boom, up 40% in revenue year after year, right? So things move faster when you hire someone who is the expert, or an expert in it, right? You don't have to buy the expert, but things moved a lot faster. Like, small example, I have a incredible consultant who helps me, because she her background is so specific in print journalism. So when I write a piece I and I wanted to get into, like, Harvard Business Review or something. If I was to pitch, I might not get the headline exactly how it needs to be for Harvard Business Review, but this expert does know how to do that. And boom, I was in Harvard Business Review in February. So hiring the right people who are experts, instead of just people who are just kind of figuring it out right now, for me, that really, really increased my revenue, so you could focus on the big things, which, if you're the CEO, is business, right? Who else are we going to be able to help in three months, six months or next year? And also making sure that every client that you have right now is blissfully happy, like, those are your your that is your zone of genius,

Leah Neaderthal23:18

exactly, well, and I think that it's, it's, there are a few phases of this, right? Because I think that when you're just starting out on your business or in your business, you are leveraging a lot of the skills you already have, right? And when you get some of your first clients through people that you knew before, or people that want to help you, or people that you worked with, or what have you, you know that's that first wave of clients, and you're using some of the skills that you've built up in your in your career to help the clients that you work with you you already have that, and it's okay to have an intern or, you know, maybe a lower level person to just do some of the things, because you you have most of what you need. But then you get into what we call the messy middle, which you know that first wave is, starts to slow down. And what we see a lot is like you just get to the end of the things you already know how to do. And that's not a value judgment, it's just it is that way, you know. And so when you when you get to the end of the things that you know how to do, then you either need to learn something or bring in somebody to teach you, and and you can't just rely on that intern or low level person. I don't know if that's if that's what you saw as well.

Kathryn Janicek24:30

Totally, I saw that, and I also saw me buying all these, spending 1000s of dollars on all these DIY courses, you know, where I would have to learn it, you know, on demand on a Sunday night or Saturday night when I wasn't with a client, or I wasn't invoicing whatever. And guess who never watched any of those videos me? You know, I bought all the courses and but so that's why, that's why, when you ask like, what really catapulted like, what really made a big difference, you know? And it's instead of me trying to figure out how to do click, file. Funnels, or how to create a website or something, because plenty of women, plenty of business owners, do it in the first couple years. They're like, Okay, I'm gonna spend all weekend. I'm gonna do WordPress site, and that's a great way to start. It's way smarter than spending 30 or $40,000 on a website in year one. You know, you that is definitely the way to go. But once you get out in that messy middle, or outside of the messy middle, you really, in order to get out of the messy middle, you really have to hire someone who knows it already, because you're not going to take the DIY. Course, you may not. You may not. In my case, there's Marie Forleo, like, you know time how to save your time, or something that I probably bought twice now and never watched. It's like, Are you kidding?

Leah Neaderthal25:40

It's not just you. I mean, the dirty little secret about courses in that whole industry is that only about 10% of people ever finish a course they buy. 50% of people won't even start the course they've bought. And so, you know, that's it's not just you. That's the industry. Because, right, who has, who has time to do an at your own pace thing when, you know our lives are busy.

Kathryn Janicek26:04

Yes, yes, my life is the in, you know, you throw in being a mom, too. On top of that, I just don't want to do that at you know, at night, you know, I want to be with my daughter. Or, you know, that is my special time. You know, especially on the weekend, it's like I'm not gone. Or those days in those first couple years of my business when I wasn't a wife and I wasn't a mom, absolutely, I would spend weekends, you know, tinkering. I knew how to change things in WordPress, and I need to knew how to change my headline or change our picture, but I also had the time, and that was a perfect time, because at the beginning of my company, I didn't have the money to pay someone to do that. So it was, it's all and that's the thing too, is people talk about like, work life balance or, where should I be in year seven, year eight, year six. Everybody's journey is different, because you don't know what's going on at home. You don't know what's going on, you know, in the world is, are we in a was this? Was this the time we were in a pandemic, or not in a pandemic, right? Right? So that's because I've done the comparitis Leah, and you know this, like where, you know, I am almost ashamed sometimes when someone says, what year are you in? Because I pause when you ask me that, and because I always think I should have been, I should be different in year eight, because I've seen other people click, you know, say on on LinkedIn, you know, oh my gosh. I meant we're at 5 million in four years or 5 million in five years. And I do sit there and compare, but I have to remind myself that, you know, my journey is different, or all of our journeys are different. So that's, that's a big thing is, is probably also to remember, it's just not, you know, our messy middle might come in a different time than someone

Leah Neaderthal27:35

else's absolutely and by the way, the missing middle is really long. It's like the longest phase, right? The startup phase is pretty short, 18 months to two years. The messy middle takes a long time. And you know, what comes after? That is also different for everybody. You know, do you? Do you sell the business? Do you fizzle out? Do you just, you know, end it? Do you who knows, but it's that messy middle that that really is the longest, longest phase.

Kathryn Janicek28:00

Maybe that messy middle comes back at some point too, like, maybe there's a couple different,

Leah Neaderthal28:06

Oh, totally. I mean, you know, we talk all the time about how, as you move on in your business, you just upgrade your problems, right? You're solving more sophisticated problems, right, right? Because, you know, you're not thinking about, how do I get any client? You're thinking about, how do I get a contract that's six figures, right? Exactly. So, you know, it's not that the problems go away, it's that you they just become more sophisticated and more attuned to where you want to take the business, right? What else has been? Another game changer for you. I don't know

Kathryn Janicek28:38

if it's game changer, but I, I Okay, I'll call it game changer, the one Downing, the one downing that you talk about, you catch me in it all the time.

Leah Neaderthal28:47

When can you say what that is for everybody who might not have heard that before?

Kathryn Janicek28:51

Yeah, like when you and I only heard it from you, when you one down yourself like you make yourself sound like you are less, just less than someone else. For example, we used in an everyday language and and I in, and when I coach clients on it, I call it, like, weak language. It makes you sound, not confident, like, that's what I would say. And, but you, you know, working with you, you call it, you know, one Downing. And how it comes up is, you know, and we, anyone listening to this, is going to go, Oh my gosh, I do this. When we say something like, oh, it'd be, I'd be so honored to work with you. Or, how about the the fact that, when was the last time you gave a presentation and did you at the end? Thank the audience, like you got up, you prepared a presentation, you taught people something for 20 minutes or 45 minutes, and then what do you do with your last slide on your slide deck, it says, Thank you, exclamation point, and your contact information, like, raise your hand at home if that's literally what your webinars look like, right? So what happens is, we all think like we're so polite we walk around, you know, Leah, I've heard, you know your stories on podcasts. You're from the south, right? It's very, very polite. You know, I was. Raise always, you know, thank you, please, and thank yous, what are the magic words? My mom would always say, that was, what are the magic words? And, you know, I might dare also say, just being a woman in the world, you feel like you have to apologize for just like walking around and being yourself sometimes, but you, you know, and I teach my clients not to apologize, not to overly apologize when you're late for a meeting. You know, maybe say something like, I really appreciate your patience, or something like that. You know, if I, as I say to my my clients, don't unless you bump into them, you physically harm them or hit them with their car, or something like, you don't need to apologize. Overly apologize when you're 30 seconds late for a meeting, or you say the wrong thing that you think is the wrong thing, right? You don't need to overly apologize, just like we don't need to thank people for the fact that you're giving a speech or what you stopped me doing. Leah is just saying that I would be honored to work with you. I would write that in an email, and you would say, No, you know, Catherine, my gosh, what are your clients say? They love working with you, like how grateful they are to work with you and you. You had to just change that in my my mindset, because that was just a given thing I would say. And it does what you say, one down us. It puts us in a one down move going, you know, even just starting off a relationship with a customer,

Leah Neaderthal31:20

absolutely, oh, it's like my big if people learn nothing else from me ever, I hope it's this right when you when you what to call one down yourself versus one up yourself, but one down yourself. It just, it teaches the clients. It teaches everybody, really, but, but in this case, the clients how to think about you. And that's not how, that's not how you position yourself as an expert and, you know, an incredible service provider. And it's so funny. I remember catching those in some of our early work together, and I haven't seen it. I haven't seen it since. I mean, if here's, here's how this change started to change for me with, like, the apologizing piece, because you're right. It's, it's how we were raised. It's how it's like in the ether as women, you know, we just do this. But like, picture a scenario that happens all the time, where you're getting to the door, whatever, door just, door to the store, door to the bathroom, whatever, getting there at the same time as somebody else, right, another woman, and you say, oh, sorry. It's like, no, no. I'm sorry if see what I just did. But anyway, it's like, no if, if we get to the door at the same time and I punch you in the face, then that is something I'm going to say sorry for. But if we get to the door at the same time and one of us reaches for it, and the other one, like realizes that, you know it's you can't both open the door, I'm not going to say sorry for that. And so little things when you start to when you start to be aware of the one downing language and especially the apologizing. When I stopped doing that, I felt a lot just more more confident, more powerful and and freer. I don't know there was something that made me feel freer. I don't know. How is this? What has this done for you to be aware of this and to change how you're speaking about it.

Kathryn Janicek33:03

Well, I I love it, and I love the fact that I'm I'm trying to spread it like so I have a mainly female team, and I will see them do the same thing, and I want them to stop doing it. They're a little younger than me, which is great, because maybe then they cannot spend all their 30s saying coming up to doors and saying that they're sorry for making it to the door the first time, right? You know, right? It's before someone else. But you're right. We literally walk around our lives and we just say we're sorry, you know, I think that if I ran into a wall, I would say I was sorry. I am working on that my mom started calling me out on it a couple of years ago, and it was, you know, and then you tour it to see it in my emails that I'm honored. And I think everyone you work with probably, you have to kind of shake it out of them and say, No, you know, gosh, they should be excited about you to to work with you. Like, look at all that you've achieved and stuff. And they're coming to you for your expertise, and you're saying that you'd be honored or grateful, or, like, lick their boots, you know, if to work with them. You know, it's just, it's, it's weird, but I, I, I love it because I can give another word or phrase to it now that you, you've put that in my head, because my my clients all need to remember that it's, you come from a you come from a space of, of not worthiness, right? That you're not also you're not confident. And when we're doing business, we want people to know that they should be really confident working with you, that you're going to cross all your T's and dot all your I's and just to be great. So there shouldn't be words like, it'd be my honor, you know, it's no, I'm going to kick butt and take names for you, you know, right?

Leah Neaderthal34:38

Because as a client, if you're confident, I can trust you to take me where I want to go exactly. Yeah, this is spread. Let's spread the love. Spread. I mean, spread it to everybody. Don't one down yourself. The the if you're listening to this, you're like, Well, how do I really do this? The easiest way that you can start to do this is. The end of a call or a meeting instead of saying thank you for your time, or, you know, when you when you say, maybe send a follow up email, or what have you, instead of saying thank you for your time, say thanks for a great call or thanks for a great meeting. Easiest thing, and it totally changes the tone, and I will promise you that it feels stronger. So what are some results that you've seen from our work together? Like, where are you now, relative to some of the things that you were working on before? So last

Kathryn Janicek35:29

year, we were up over 100% so that was awesome. Awesome. Yes, amazing. We have a better process for the proposals and then turning the proposals over, and they're in a way that truly describes the value that we bring to the company or the individual too. So it looks very different. And we just honestly, it's, I'm, I'm excited to, you know, launch a whole nother company side, you know, to the side of ours, you know. And so what's nice is, I wouldn't really have that time if we hadn't figured out that other piece.

Leah Neaderthal36:09

First, awesome. How else has our work together affected your business? You know what?

Kathryn Janicek36:13

Because you've worked with members of my team also being on the calls, I feel like their confidence levels have come up quite a bit. And so what's nice about that is they can call me out, you know, sometimes we'll do a proposal on Zoom, and I'm just, you know, we're working together on it, and I will still go, you know, I don't think that they can afford this, and I might change the price a little bit. And a member of our team who's been trained by you will say, Oh no. Leah would not approve that, you know, like, nope. Catherine, no. What is the value like? What is our price? That is our price. That's what people have paid us and always said yes to so why are you trying to change that? Because you think you know what that person's, you know, bank account looks like, or that company's budget looks like. So that's really been nice, because if I would have just gotten the training, it would be a little different, right? I could totally get away with, you know, taking off a zero, or, you know, moving something down, but the team won't let me do that.

Leah Neaderthal37:15

Yeah, they hold you accountable. Yes, oh, I love that. I will tell you the number of people who have shared with me that they have, like, a what would Leah do? Thing going on is, it's really funny, and it's it makes me feel really good, because, you know, not everybody has a team member or team members there to hold them accountable. So if a little voice of me, like on your shoulder, is is holding you accountable, then I'll take it and it keeps you from, you know, taking off a zero or doing what we call negotiating against yourself on the

Kathryn Janicek37:47

price. Yes, you should get some bumper stickers.

Leah Neaderthal37:52

So what advice would you give to other women who are running consulting businesses?

Kathryn Janicek37:57

What advice would I give specifically women? I would definitely go back to what we talked about earlier, just hire the right experts like hire. Be okay with hiring people i i think i don't know if it's a female male thing, but I had, I really struggled with figuring out that I didn't have to do it all. I was definitely raised by a mom who felt like she had to do it all. And so I, you know, to be quite honest, I struggled. The first time I hired a cleaning lady. Struggled big time. I sat there I felt like I had to clean with her. Because, to best of my knowledge, my great grandmother came here from Poland, and she cleaned houses until she ended up working at the Mars chocolate factory here in Chicago, and then retiring from there. But it made me feel like it made me feel really awful, to be quite honest. But then, as I hired other people, I felt like too, you know, maybe I should be able to teach myself that I'm smart. I did a little bit of this, you know, I did this. I ran social, you know, I literally was a social media lead at NBC Universal, yet. Now I had to hire someone freelance to run my social media for our company. I felt bad doing that, but I realized, you know, someone has an awesome part time job doing that every single month for us. So number one, you're probably going to make more money if you hire experts, right? Because you'll be able to focus on the things, the tasks that you need to to do. But also you'll have more, maybe you'll have more time to actually have some self care too, in your life, you know, instead of doing that website till 10 or 11 o'clock, and how good are you really? To your team, to your family, to no matter if you have your own, you know children or whatever, but your parents, your sisters, your cousins, you know wherever. But you don't need to do it all. You actually should not, because you'll be much more successful personally and professionally if you don't do it all. That's yeah, and that's I, and I hate to say it, but it's really a message specifically for female. All consultants, right? Is you don't need to do it all. And then the other thing is, I found in the last couple months, and this is brand new, so please don't think that I'm some kind of Guru, but I, you know, I teach my clients to steal back their time in their calendar. Okay, so for a long time, I've been teaching my clients, you know, in television, we call it back timing. So you know that in TV news, during that 5pm newscast, you know that sports is going to hit at, you know, 520 or whatever, so you have to back time. What else you're going to put in that newscast before 520 or before the commercial break, whatever. So in for my clients, when they have a speech to give on August 1, or they're going to be on live on CNN on August 1, I tell them to back time and steal their time in their calendar so they can prepare and practice for that August 1 speech. Okay, that you need to know that you know your slides need to be done by July 1. You need to book time to practice all of July. You need to have it memorized by the last week in July to steal that time right away. Well, as a consultant, as a CEO, I wasn't doing that for myself. So now let's just talk about proposals. Before I was writing proposals at 10 o'clock at night. Well, how good were the proposals at 10 o'clock at night? Right? I was probably leaving out some numbers. Maybe I probably wasn't charging enough. I also wasn't probably putting in all those wonderful details I remembered from those calls, because at 10 o'clock at night, what good are you or I was doing at five in the morning before my daughter woke up on a Saturday, right? And now what we do? We changed it so we have that soon as that discovery call is booked in our calendar, we go ahead two days after that, and we say, okay, the proposal needs to be delivered, so the day before that, you know, one day after the discovery call, the proposal has to be completely written, right? Because then I'm going to go through it, perfect, whatever it is, put some magic Mojo on it, and bless it, and it goes out, right? So you have to steal your time. You have to whatever you have to do. So if it's working out or meditating or making sure you eat lunch or snack or whatever it is, or take a walk outside and get your Vitamin D. You have to carve that out in your calendar, because everyone will steal your time. Your team will steal it, clients will steal it, your children will steal it. For sure, your husband will steal it, or wife will steal it. But you absolutely have to guard your time like it's, it's gold, because it is gold. And you will, you know, Leah, you know, you know, in my 20s and 30s, I didn't spend a lot of time on self care, and I had health issues. I totally screwed up my thyroid. I had vertigo for like, a year because I worked all the time. I did not have any kind of self care. So in my 40s, I realized that I have to do it or someone's going to suffer, and that could be the company. It could be my family, and it's definitely going to be me. So the biggest tip I would give women is steal your time before someone else does.

Leah Neaderthal42:53

Oh, I love that, and even the phrasing of it, because, you know, these concepts like work, life balance, and, you know, make time for yourself and take time for self care or whatever. All of that are like, those are good in theory. But I just love how you phrased it, steal time, as in, you have to do it on purpose, right? As in, it will be, it's, it's more challenging than just not doing that right, because the time will not make itself right. The time will not steal itself, and you have to, you have to steal it back and be okay with it, and and I think what you're saying also is just think three steps ahead and do it before you get to a critical point right, whether that critical point is that something has to get out the door, or the critical point is that you are, you know you're hurting yourself, or you're, you know you're sick or what have you. But stealing time back to me, just seems more more actionable, and it acknowledges all the demands, all the demands we have on our time, from clients, team, family, whatever. So I'm, I love this. This this is going to go on a post it note for me, good, and it

Kathryn Janicek44:02

feels a little naughty, doesn't it, too. It's kind of exciting, but you do need to steal your time back. You do, right?

Leah Neaderthal44:12

Well, you know, and especially what we're talking about is the expectations that we that are placed on us and how we exist in the world as women, right? Because the, I think the assumption is that our time will naturally belong to other people, right, and and so stealing it back is something that that we have to do to sort of change that, that narrative and how we exist with other people, right? Right? Is there anything else that you wanted to say that we didn't cover,

Kathryn Janicek44:42

I have to tell you, helping women find the confidence to ask for what they're worth is a really, that's a it's an incredible legacy to to be known for. You know Leah, so you know, I think that in general, as women. We may not ask for the kind of salaries that we we deserved. We didn't know. We may not have known to ask for raises every year. Ask for annual reviews if they weren't being offered. There's so much of a lack of knowledge when it comes when it comes about money and employee employer relationships and client consultant relationships, and a lot of us as consultants started out as an employee, right? And so our not only was our first money memories of like, how our parents obviously manage money, you know, that's going to create this foundation, but then also, you know, just how our if our bosses said yes or no, or if we knew how to ask for it, right? And we probably didn't learn how to ask for it then. And then, all sudden, you own a company, and you're asking people for for money, and that's honestly, you don't have a, you know, a salary to, you know, to fall back on, so that's going to pay the mortgage or the rent and everything. So there's a real lack of knowledge there. And for you to help empower people to really talk about their value and the value they bring, that's huge. And I just, I really appreciate it.

Leah Neaderthal46:01

Oh, thank you so much for saying that. That means that means a lot to me, Catherine, where can people find you?

Kathryn Janicek46:07

You can find me at Catherine janicek on Instagram or LinkedIn. That's where I'm probably hanging out most days. On LinkedIn, that's for sure, also on our website. Catherine janicek.com

Leah Neaderthal46:21

Well, you did great as the as the interviewee,

Kathryn Janicek46:25

you did too. I loved your questions. Thank

Leah Neaderthal46:27

you. Thank you. Good job. Good job. All right. I had so much fun talking to Catherine. And if she said anything that spoke to you or helped you, please reach out to her and let her know and thank her. So there were so many gems in that conversation, and I want to pull out something that you can apply to your business, and it's along the lines of this idea of stealing back your time, and I want to just offer another way of thinking about it that might help. So in the startup world, there's a concept or a name for a certain type of startup called a zombie. In startup lingo, a zombie startup is kind of like an actual zombie. It's not dead, but it's also not really alive. It's still sort of going along, but it's not growing. It's just sort of stagnant. And there are a lot of consulting businesses out there that are zombies also they're not growing, but they aren't dead, either they're just, you know, going along and staying stagnant. Now that's not to say that every business has to get to be big, or that every business has to grow in leaps and bounds or 40% year over year like Catherine's. Did you build the business that's right for the season of your life? And it's totally okay to stay small in your operations. I just did a whole episode on that in episode 82 but the thing is, it's really easy to accidentally become a zombie business when you're in the messy middle. Because again, it's not huge leaps, it's small movements, and you're no longer getting your first clients or your first six figure year. But even in the messy middle, the reason that a lot of businesses are zombies is because they're not running their businesses with intention. They're just sort of going along. It's like my friend and fellow business owner rhodaya Rhodes, says, don't build a house you don't want to live in. And it's not like anybody builds a house they don't want to live in intentionally. They build it accidentally. And we want to build our businesses with intention, by design, not by default. And so it's really hard to build your business with intention when you're spending all of your time serving clients and there's just no time left for you or working on the business. I was talking to a woman who put it this way. She said, I've allowed work to get in the way of building the business. So what happens is that you work so much with your clients, and you're working what we call in the business, that working on the business just gets your leftover time and energy, which, let's be honest, there's not a ton of that leftover at the end of the day. So to combat this, do what Katherine does, which is steal back your time. So after this episode is over, go to your calendar and follow her directions and steal back your time. And as she said, it'll take work. It will take more work than simply going on with things as they are continuing on. But you do it not just to make more time out of thin air. You do it to create space to work on your business. Don't let your business become a zombie business. Build and run your business with intention, with purpose, and build it by design, not by default.

Leah Neaderthal49:52

Hey, everything we're talking about in this episode is part of the system women like you are learning in the academy. In the academy we. Of women. Consultants install the two systems every B to B consultant needs a marketing system to consistently attract the right clients and a sales system to lead a sales process to a yes and get paid more for every contract. So even if you've only gotten clients through referrals or word of mouth in the academy, you'll learn how to attract and sign clients outside your network, how to lead a sales process with confidence, and how to get paid for your value, not your time, and there's no cold calling or cold emailing involved, no changing your services or making a course, and you won't use any pushy sales tactics. That's just not our vibe. So if you like what you've heard here, the academy may be your right next step to learn how you can get these two systems in your consulting business and make progress faster and with fewer roadblocks. Head to smart gets paid.com/academy and apply and we can chat about next steps. All right, see you over there. Transcribed by https://otter.ai