In this episode of "The Real Truth About Business," Michelle dives deep into the prevalent "should" mentality in the online business space. She discusses the pressure to conform to expectations and offers insights on embracing your uniqueness. As the year-end approaches, Michelle encourages listeners to break free from the constant noise of what they "should" be doing and find their authentic path to success.

Key Takeaways:

1. Rejecting the "Should" Mentality: Michelle emphasizes that you don't have to succumb to the pressure of doing what everyone else is doing. It's okay to say no to activities that don't align with your goals and values.
2. Embracing Your Unique Approach: Instead of trying too hard to be overly unique, Michelle advises focusing on how you present and deliver your offerings. Your uniqueness lies in how you approach and serve your clients.
3. Defining Your Own Success: Michelle shares her personal journey of defining success on her own terms. You don't have to follow conventional paths; diversifying your income or sticking to a pricing structure that feels right for you is perfectly valid.
4. Direct and Authentic Marketing: Michelle encourages authenticity in marketing. Embrace your natural style, whether it's direct and straightforward or more lighthearted and fun. Authenticity resonates with your audience.
5. Embrace Your Uniqueness: Identify the unique elements of your business approach, communication style, and service delivery that you've been holding back. Embrace them to stand out authentically in your industry.

Episode Mentions:

Launch Lessons

Quick Links:

Sunday Morning Brew

Rapid Fire Day

Hey, hey, welcome back to the real truth about business. Today, I want to really, really dive in and talk about this should mentality that is so prevalent and popular inside of the online business space, or just in general with the small business space, but I really see it in the online business space. And also dive in a little bit about like, just embracing your unique, you know,

your uniqueness, I guess I should say. And so right now we're coming up on the end of the year, depending on what, again, as always, whenever you're listening to this, it doesn't matter, but they're all time relevant, but this time of year, so we're coming into fourth quarter, and everybody is gonna be full of shoulds. Should, should, should. You should be running a sale. You should be running a Black Friday special. You should be upgrading your systems. You should be focusing on this.

You should be doing this. It's just constant, the noise. But before I dive into that, I forgot. I wanted to remind you guys, if you are listening and you are not on my newsletter list, I don't know if you guys, I haven't even really talked about it, but I am sending out a newsletter on Sundays, and it's called The Sunday Morning Brew. And it was really, like the way I really,

want everybody to feel about it when they get this newsletter is like, I want you to like think back of the days like when you were a kid and you know on Saturday or Sunday morning when mom or dad would make a cup of coffee and go grab the paper maybe it was your grandparents and you know they were always reading the paper with their cup of coffee and so that's just what I envision when I

was coming up with this newsletter, like Sunday morning brew was that like, you're sitting on the couch drinking your cup of coffee and it lands in your inbox and you get like this daily dose of inspiration. So I always start with some type of story, something and the story is always derived from either something that's happening in my personal life or something, a conversation I had with a client, one of the groups I'm in, with some type of tip, right? And the goal is to like give you a tip that you can take action on immediately during that week.

And then a little dose of entertainment because I have my don't be a douche series, which is always fun And I'm trying really hard to turn those like here's how I would have done this differently so that we can learn from it Because I do think there's a lot of power in using DMs But when done properly so anyways link is in the show notes if you have not signed up for the Sunday morning brew yet Grab the link get on the list and you know, I don't send a ton of emails I hate that and I don't like it when other people do it to me. So I don't do it to you

All right, let's really dive back in now to the should mentality. All right, so we're coming into the fourth quarter and it's one of the most popular times where everybody's gonna be telling you that you should be running this, you should be doing that, you should be doing this. And the reality is that you don't really need to be doing anything that you don't wanna do. And if it feels icky and it feels like, I don't even wanna do that, then it's okay to say no, right? Like we have got to start

really, really sitting and thinking about whether or not this is something that I, you really want to do. So like that would be my question is like, is this something that feels good to me? Do I really want to do this right now? I'll give you a perfect example. I have been told that I should create a new like lead magnet, right? That the newsletter is good and that if I'm going to start doing a podcast tour, I need a better lead magnet. I need something that's a little bit more enticing, a little bit more value add.

the newsletter is good, but it's not enough. And the podcast, not everybody subscribes to it, right? Like you can't track that. And so you should create a new lead magnet. And the thing about it is, is I agree with that in a sense. Like I do wanna do that. And I have a lot of ideas for new lead magnets, but if I'm gonna do it properly and I wanna do it in alignment with what is currently going on with my business.

then I'm not gonna just whip up a new lead magnet just to say I did it, right? And I feel like that is what happens all the time when we do things that we feel like people say we should be doing is that we do something just to say we did it, right? But there's no strategy behind it, there's no goal behind it. And if I'm gonna create a new lead magnet, I wanna make sure that it's going to lead to something more than just.

people on my email list, right? Like what is the goal and how does this fit in with my current strategy? Because it's not like the easiest of tasks to create a really high quality lead magnet, right? So anyways, that's one thing. And like another thing, it's Black Friday, all the holidays are coming up. I'm a big fan of like National Entrepreneurs Day. And I was really even thinking about like, okay, I'm gonna run some type of special for a national entrepreneur.

day? What am I gonna do? What am I gonna put a special on? And then if you listen to my last episode about being in launch mode, I remembered like, I don't enjoy that. I don't want to be in launch mode. I don't want to have to promote something. I just want it to feel natural. And I'm not saying I might not throw a special out there like a one week special or something, but it's not going to be anything.

that is like, that's gonna require a whole new landing page or new copy. Like if I'm gonna do some type of special, it's gonna be literally off a whim with a coupon code, something I already have created. And I'm gonna say use coupon code entrepreneur, or, you know, not NED, National Entrepreneurs Day, and get 20% off or something, some drastic thing. Like, but again, just because everybody says you should be working on a Black Friday special.

doesn't mean you have to. You don't have to have a discount. You don't have to schedule something, right? And so it's this constant state of where some of this should mentality comes in, I think, is it comes from comparisonitis, right? We see other people doing it. We feel like we should be doing it. We feel like we're doing something wrong if we're not. We feel like we're missing out if we're not. And the reality is, is like, none of that is true. These are all just made up stories that we tell ourselves.

I had a client the other day that was like telling herself that she's a musician and she said to me that she needed bookings for the rest of the year, like gigs. And I was like, okay, well, let's work on that. Like, what do we need to do to get gigs booked? And she's like, everybody's already booked. They're already, you know, at this point, pretty much everybody's already got their gigs booked. They've already got their entertainers. And I was like, hmm, I don't know. I think that's something you're telling yourself.

Like you're telling yourself that everybody should have their entertainers booked up by now, which maybe they should. But there's a lot of people that are last minute that really haven't thought about it. Trust me when I tell you there's a lot of corporations that haven't thought about holiday entertainment for their big corporate parties yet. Right. So it's again, like we do it. Not only do we absorb this should mentality, but we put it out there to people too. Right. And so you have to kind of catch yourself on that is like, are you even also just

putting those thoughts and feelings back out to the universe as much as you're absorbing them. And ultimately, it all comes down to, there is a solution, clients, a strategy out there for everybody, and you get to be unique, and you get to do it in your own way, which is a great segment for me to really shift the conversation about embracing your unique path, right? You get to embrace this unique path, but here's what I think.

why everybody is getting confused with uniqueness. And I think everybody is really trying to be unique in the wrong way. And sometimes when we are trying to be too unique, it gets overly confusing, right? Like when you're trying to really create something kind of new, unique offer, a new, unique program or something, or you're doing all of these like, oh, I gotta be unique, right? The reality is it's like you.

are unique in how you approach something. There is nothing new. Listen to Alex Hermosy, Tony, Tony Robbins, any of these big names, like nothing they say is terribly unique in a lot of ways. It's how they say it. It's how they present it, right? Like Alex Hermosy is like a big high energy, constantly putting out content. Look at what Gary Vee, you know, he does it in his own unique way. For a while there, he was swearing all the time.

He was using all kinds of followed language, like in a sense, that was his own uniqueness. People either resonated with it or not. And so what you do in your knowledge is not necessarily different, and that's not what needs to be unique. Like if you set up and do VIP days, right? Like let's say you do VIP days for Dubsado setups or ClickUp setups or something like that. Like that's not terribly unique, and that's okay. But it's how you approach it.

What do you do for onboarding? How do you send, you know what I mean? Do you have a really unique onboarding process? How do you present it? What's the feeling that the client is going to get? For me, what is unique about me as far as coaching? Again, how I approach coaching is, and strategy is pretty much out of the book. I literally have a book right here, The Four Disciplines of Execution, my absolute favorite book.

Like a lot of what I use is printed in that book too. What they're saying is not anything new, but it's how I present it. But also, like what, how you deliver it is unique. So for me, like my brain is unique in the sense that it works at rapid fire speed. I literally do best off the cuff. Like even these podcast episodes, I come up with a name and I come up with a few key points and the rest of it just comes off the cuff.

when I'm working with a client, these ideas just flow to me. Like my brain just starts firing on all cylinders. And that's why the rapid fire coaching model works so well for me. So again, like the rapid fire coaching model is not necessarily unique. How I am helping people implement it into their system, because there's a million people out there that are offering boxer coaching, text coaching, all these things like that in itself, and me getting known.

as somebody who teaches the rapid fire coaching model, that's not terribly unique, but A, the fact that I use it, do it in rapid fire, the way that I incorporate it with, you know, a combination of video and text and voice and some, you know, strip strategy planning and strategy sessions and that, you know, whatever, like how I present it.

is unique, how I teach it is unique. I'm teaching it now in a format that's like a two hour workshop style format. Like grab your workbook, get ready, do the worksheet. It's not your typical course format, right? Where there's module one, module two, it's just we're working through it and then diving in individually with the client like to figure out like how can we incorporate this into your business. So again, your uniqueness doesn't have to

You have to be careful that when you are trying to be super unique, that you're not confusing your audience. And I feel like we get wrapped up in that like, yeah, but I got to be different. I got to be different. No, the reality is, is that the people that you're comparing yourself to, the reason they're, if they are doing better than you, which again, that's a topic for another day is they're likely not, they're likely going through some of the same shit you are. But

The difference is that they're not really trying to be unique. They're getting one thing, they're getting hyper-focused on it, they're getting super specific on it, and they talk about it all the time in such a clear way that their audience is never confused. Their audience knows exactly how they can help them, their audience knows exactly what they wanna be known for, and they do have their unique approach, right? Everybody has their own unique approach. And so there's that side of embracing your unique path.

And then the other side to you embracing your unique path is embracing your own definition for success, okay? One of the things that I've really, and I've talked about this quite a bit on the podcast, and I'm gonna keep talking about it, and I've got another episode probably coming about it, is that you get to diversify, right? Like don't...

If your definition of success is as a multi-passionate entrepreneur that has a very diversified portfolio of income, that's okay, right? It's okay. I really am going to talk about this probably towards the end of the year, but I'll just give you a little bit of a sneak peek on where my head is at and why I'm even talking about this too and how it relates is that for me, one of the things that I am finding...

that I've really reflected on this year is that I have large revenue goals, right? Like I have big dreams, you know, to be location independent. Like that is my biggest ultimate goal. That is everything I am working for is to be location independent. I mean, I'm talking like, let's go live in Belize for three months and then let's go live in Europe for three months and then go back to New York and see the kids in the fall, right? Like that is my biggest goal. And one of the things that I realized

the online space and my pricing and where I feel comfortable and why I do what I do is probably not going to get me there. So my pricing structure is unique in the sense that I feel good about it and it goes against my entirety to raise my prices any further than I have them right now. It's not because I don't...

trust my value and it's not, you know, I have spent five years being told that I have money mindset issues and I'm not saying that I don't still, I think we all have levels of money mindset issues and I've worked really, really hard on it. But I also realize that again, I've been told that I should raise my prices. I've been comparing myself to everybody else in my world, right? And how, what they're charging and what I'm doing. And the reality is, is that just doesn't.

It doesn't fulfill my heart. And my success is making sure that my heart is fulfilled. And I will do that by diversifying my income. All right, so I'm gonna talk about that like a really deep conversation here in another episode. But like I had to really, really embrace that, that that's okay, right? Like it's okay for me to embrace the fact that I love to do rapid fire coaching. I loved alpha rapid fire day rates.

They're $197, which by the way, I have two, I'm gonna start offering them every other Wednesday. So for $197, you get me all day long in your DMs, like you can use WhatsApp, voice memo, we do a quick Zoom in the beginning to get an idea of it. And so I can do three people per session. So if that's something you're interested in, again, link in the show notes, but I love it. I love, love it. And I love being able to do it for like 200 bucks. Like.

It doesn't mean I'm not worth it, and it doesn't mean that you're not gonna get more than $200 worth of value, but it means that I get to serve you in such a way that is so deep and so fulfilling and so rewarding for everybody. And again, that is what makes my heart fulfilled, right? I got a little something, you gained a lot, right? And we are all happy.

That is what makes my business unique, okay? So I don't wanna raise my prices. I don't care what everybody else tells me I should do. I have a very clear path on how I plan to grow my business and what it looks like and how I'm going to do that. And raising my prices right now is not part of that strategic plan, regardless of what everybody else is telling me I should do. Okay? So...

I want you to really think about that. If I'm gonna wrap this up and I want you to take action, okay, and I want you, oh, by the way, I'm getting back to Instagram, which is crazy, I know, because you all know how I feel about Instagram. Look, I'm literally looking at my phone right now because I don't even know what my Instagram handle is. But anyways, I'll link it in the show notes, but please come hang out with me on Instagram. It's Michelle underscore Daniyo.

But yeah, I'm gonna start getting back on the IG train here. But I would love for you to like send me a DM and tell me what is it that you feel like you are being told you should do that just doesn't feel good? And let's see if we can come up with a better solution, right? Let's see if we can come up with a solution that does feel good. So please hit me in the DMs, really, and ask me anything, right? Like what is on your mind that somebody is telling you should...

do right now that you just really don't want to do. Okay? And we may end up just doing what I call the parking lot. If you are not on the Sunday morning brew, I did a whole thing about how you should have a parking lot and maybe it's time to just park it. And if you want that, I can just forward that to you too. So if you get on the list for the brew and you don't have that, let me know and I'll get you that information. But.

embracing that and then also like where are you stifling yourself because you feel like you're trying either one of two things you're either trying too hard to be unique and you're feeling like you're confusing your audience or you're confusing yourself even and then also like what is that one unique thing that you want to embrace okay um i'll give you another example of this is that i if i get told all the time that i am too direct

that I'm not salesy enough, that I don't have enough persuasion in my marketing, that I don't do, you know, with my marketing, it's like kind of boring. And then I need to incorporate more stories and I need to write longer things and la la. And I'm like, you know what? The reality is, is this is who I am. I can tell stories all day long. I tell stories on this podcast all day long. I'm not going to type them up. It's just not who I am.

Number two is I'm always going to be direct and bold and blunt and straight to the point. Like I'm just not a super punchy person. Like I actually, I can't even funny story. I can't remember somebody, somebody sent me a friend request, I think on Facebook the other day and I clicked on her profile and she was like, like doing this like really loud and like super hyper video. I just thought to myself like, this is just so not me. Like

Oh, I don't know if our personalities are going to be a fit. Like I love her. Like I love that you are embracing that. And I love that you get to be that silly, goofy, funny, like all over, you know, mouth wide open in her videos. Like that is so not me. Like not ever. It's just not me. And so for a while I tried to stifle that.

but I'm just not going to anymore because it's not who I am. Like I could try to be more fun and I could try to be more exciting and all this. Like, can you even hear it in my voice? Like this is so not me. If you wanna see that side of me, that's where in the one-to-one or like in the 100 Coffee Chats Club, like you'll see a goofy, silly side to me. I can be silly, but I'm not gonna do that. Like it's just not who I am in my marketing. And so I just am embracing it. Like,

I'm bold, I'm straight to the point. I'm gonna tell it like it is. That's why I named this podcast The Real Truth About Business. Like it's not fluffy, it doesn't have a fancy name. Like when I come up with naming things, it's like, what do I want it to be? I want it to tell the real truth. Perfect, that's the name, right? Like, and I'm just embracing it. And when you can embrace that and embrace who you are, that is what makes you unique. Cause there's not a lot of other people that are just gonna like name something, whatever they're thinking they want it to be, right?

That is my own uniqueness, and that's what I've started to embrace, and that is what's propelling me to move forward, and that's what's gonna propel my success. So that's what I want you to do. So step one, take action, figure out where you're shooting yourself. Is there something, especially if you're feeling like you should be doing a Black Friday special and you really don't want to, let's talk about it. Excuse me, you don't have to. You literally could just create a coupon code like I probably will.

and maybe throw it up on social media. And if somebody sees it, great. And if they don't, okay, fine too, right? Like go into it with zero expectation. That would be my answer to that. If you don't feel like getting into full on launch, promotion, et cetera. And then also like, I want you to share with me in my DMs or in an email or something. What is something that you feel like you've been stifling yourself?

Like what is something that you feel like is super unique about how you approach business, how you treat clients, how you serve your clients, how you offer your programs, like how you communicate? What is it? What is it that you feel like you have not been embracing because the outside world is telling you that's not how it is in business. Okay. That's all. That's all I got for you today. So anyway, if you have any questions, you know where to find me. I hope this was helpful. If it is, share it.

tag me on Instagram, look at me, being all IG friendly, and I'll talk to you soon.