I'll be going to the polls this election season, proudly voting for Kamala Harris…

Are you considering doing the same?

Great. Then you're allowed to listen to my podcast!

If you're not, first of all - yuk.

But also maybe give this podcast a listen anyway and find out why taking a stand in your marketing can actually help your business.

Hey, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach, and this is my podcast "The Weeniecast!"

Pssssst! Not sure if you've heard, but I'm inviting new members to the best community for business owners with ADHD - the Hyperfocused Community! You can join here - https://weeniecast.com/hyperfocus

Now, back to this episode...

I want to share some of the most 'taboo' topics you can possibly introduce into your business marketing, and I promise by the end of this episode, you'll understand why this can be your secret weapon to stand out and attract your ideal clients.

In this episode, I get into why bringing up politics, mental health, money, relationships, and yes, even sex, can be strategies to make your small business memorable.

Give this episode a listen, and you’ll not only learn how to incorporate these so-called 'taboo' topics into your content marketing but also get practical strategies on how to share without being overly vulnerable or unprofessional.

By the end of the episode, you’ll be better equipped to scare away the clients who aren’t a fit and draw in those who fully align with who you are and what you stand for.

It’s time to be unapologetically yourself and connect genuinely with your audience in ways that not only resonate but stick.

Oh, yeah, and remember to vote Kamala in 2024!

Unless you just fell out of a tree.

Timestamp Summary:

[00:00:43] The problem in small business marketing

[00:01:29] Using taboo topics to create genuine connections

[00:03:45] Explaining the concept of the 'sphere of influence'

[00:08:04] Politics and standing up for your beliefs

[00:10:53] The importance of discussing mental health

[00:12:38] Processing past struggles to create trust

[00:18:17] Sharing personal stories to be memorable

[00:21:02] Talking about money openly

[00:22:38] Balanced discussion on religion

[00:24:40] Embracing taboo topics for genuine connections

Mentioned in this episode:

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In this episode, we're going to talk about why I don't want

you listening to this podcast if you're going to vote for Trump in this election.

Hi, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach. And

welcome to the weeniecast. I'm proud to

announce that those of us at the Weeniecast hereby endorse

Vice President Kamala Harris for president in 2024.

Now, we're aware that no one asked us, and we're also aware that it's just

the two of us, and I'm the only american, but I felt it was really

important to start this episode on that note, because in this

episode, we're talking about bringing up taboo topics in the

marketing of your business and how it's actually kind of a

good thing to do. Let's get real about something here.

Small businesses do not have a marketing problem. We have

a memorability problem. And as a small business

owner, you have a choice. You can continue talking about the same that all

your competitors are talking about, or you can

share the occasional weird,

different taboo topic

and your opinions on it and have people actually remember who the

fuck you are. And the best thing about doing this is you scare away people

who you don't want to work with anyway. I bet you after that first

line, people who are trumpers, I doubt I have many who listen to me

anyway. But I bet you they disconnected. I bet you

they hit a stop and they unfollowed this podcast and they went

on their merry way. And that's fine by me. But I also bet you, those

of you who are also excited for Vice President Kamala

Harris to become President Kamala Harris might have leaned

in a little bit closer, which, I mean, it's a podcast. It's not like you're

leaning in closer to me. Maybe you leaned in closer to your phone. I don't

know, how do people do that? But it made you feel like we were more

aligned, and that's the goal. We're going to go through a couple

taboo subjects that I encourage you.

If you've been on the fence thinking, oh, maybe I could share this, or maybe

not to just go for it. I'm going to talk through a few different

ways you can do so without being super vulnerable. And I want to talk through

first why this works.

I want you to imagine that every single person, including yourself,

is walking around with. With an invisible circle surrounding their

head. And in the circle is everything that you

love. It's everything that you like that you feel aligned

to. So in my circle of influence, for instance, you'd have

the celebrities, Taylor Swift, Ryan Reynolds and Ryan

Gosling. I absolutely adore all three of them. And of course, a bunch of

others. The tv shows, the West Wing,

Bridgerton, the Marvelous, misses Maisel, except not the

fourth season, just. It was very disappointing. Let's not go there. You'd have

other things, like really good homemade jelly donuts,

coffee, but not from Dunkin donuts. You'd have

places like Rome and Montpelier, France and

Paris and San Francisco and New York and Cape

Cod, all places I love. And of

course, the people that I care about, my friends, my family,

the people that I feel close to, my clients, anyone whose side

I feel on, you know, all the different authors and books that I

absolutely love, you can't say anything bad about them. Now, other people's fear of

influence may include other things, like sports teams, if they know

anything about sports, could also be more heavily into music

and have a bunch of different albums on there. Now, here's the thing about our

sphere of influence, is that when we hear

someone express positive feelings about the things

that we have in our sphere of influence as well, we feel

closer to that person. We trust them more, we

feel more aligned to who they are. And when

someone says something bad about anything in our sphere of

influence, we actually feel like they've become the enemy.

If I hear that you don't like coffee, I might think you're kind of

a sociopath, but I'm probably not going to hate you versus. If

you tell me that you don't like Ryan Goslingen, I'm sorry, we can't be friends

anymore. It's not gonna work. Unfollow me. Go

away. It may sound silly, but

psychologically, when your sphere of influence has a lot of

overlap with spherical influence of other people, you're far

more likely to trust each other, like each other, and have

relationships together. And I don't mean romantic relationships only. I mean

friendships, business relationships. This is one of the reasons

why when companies really prioritize hiring from

a diverse pool of candidates for their sales

teams, they actually tend to

increase their sales numbers dramatically.

Because instead of having, like, the same type of

person selling to all the diverse customers that they possibly

have, they have a team of really diverse human beings who

have very different spheres of influence, who can connect

with customers on different levels. And that, my friends, is how you hit higher

sales numbers, because people buy from people that they like

and trust. And of course, you're gonna scare some people away.

You are absolutely going to scare some people away. And that is perfectly

okay. It is perfectly fine to scare people away. And I'll use some

numbers to give you an example here. So I speak English. I also speak a

little French, but not well enough to provide any kind of service in French, okay?

So I'm limited to only people who speak English. All right? And so I

just looked up how many english speakers there are in the world today, and there

are 1.446 billion people

who speak English now, of course, like, let's discount

that. Some are gonna be too young to work with me, some are gonna be

too old to work with me, and all that jazz. So let's just cut it

down to, like, half a billion people could potentially be my

clients. That is a lot of people. That is too many

people. I would never be able to help that many

people in my entire life. Like, even if

I magically got turned into an immortal, like a vampire

or something, like, they would die before I had a chance

to help them start a business. If I do the math, say I work with,

like, 15 one on one clients per year, and I

work for another 30 years. That's only

450 people that I can help one on one in the next 30

years. My group programs even have a cap in them. You know,

really, I guesstimate the breaking point will go between

40 and 60 people in my group programs before

I'm not able to give the right amount of attention to each and every

person. So let's just say I have 50 people in each program

for the next 30 years as well. That's still only

1500 people. So, added together,

I can realistically only help

1950 people in the next 30

years and still provide an excellent service that I actually help them

start their business and create a life that they actually want. I'm pretty

sure out of a half a billion people, I can find

1950 people. The key here is they

have to be able to find me. They have to be able to see me

sharing about something that I love or that I believe

or that I stand for and think, wow, I

like the same thing. I believe in the same thing. I stand for the same

thing. I should connect with her. I should follow her content.

And then over time, they can start learning what it is that I do for

work. Over time, they can understand that I helped people exactly like

them with the exact problems they have get to a better

place. So when you think about sharing the taboo

shit that people advise you not to talk about when you're talking about your

business. I say that's bullshit. I say that's

maybe important when you're a massive conglomerate like. Like

target or Coca Cola, because your market is pretty much

everyone. But even then, I think they would be better served if they stood

up for some more shit. Let's dig into some taboo topics that I

urge you to start talking about if you're brave enough, and I

bet you it'll help you get clients.

So, first and foremost, we're gonna dive right into it. Politics.

What are your politics? Who are you voting for in this

upcoming election? What do you believe in when it comes to politics?

What issues really matter to you? It's an unfortunate state of

affairs in the United States right now that if I talk

about anti racism, if I talk about

women's rights and autonomy to make choices about our own bodies and our

own reproductive health, if I talk about the

rights of LGBTQ folks, I tend to

scare away a certain party.

The members of that party don't align with me.

And you know what? I'm so happy to scare them away.

Ethically. As a coach, when you're working with a client, one of

the things that you have to be able to say with complete honesty is that

you want your client to succeed. And personally, if I

think that someone's going to make a ton of money and then turn around and

vote and donate to politicians who are going to take

away my personal rights and the rights of women and the rights of

LGBTQ folks and who are going to make the world

far more dangerous for people who aren't white, I

can't honestly say that I want them to succeed, and it would be

unethical of me to take their money anyway. And really,

for people who don't care about politics, who don't care about these

issues, they're not my ideal clients, either. I

have a deep passion for helping people who want

to step into their power in the world to make it a better place

and to do so through their business, to do so through work that they love,

but also to do so as citizens of the world. And the first

step to being able to do any of that is to give a. You have

to care. So, talking about politics, for me, talking about the issues

that I care about is a cornerstone of my business

because it ensures that I'm attracting people who

also want to make a difference for the better, who also want to make

this world safer and I more equal for everyone

and who want to make a lot of money doing work they love. Can't forget

about that bit. So I urge you.

Talk about politics. If you care about them, talk about

them. Share your beliefs. Share what you stand for. Allow people to

opt in and opt out. I promise you, you will have so much more

fun and feel so much more fulfilled working with people who

feel aligned to how you believe the world should

function. And you'll also warn the rest of us if you have really shitty beliefs

that we shouldn't give you our money. Please and thank you. So the Weenie

cast is a podcast for people with ADHD

who are entrepreneurs, business owners who want to

succeed using their strengths as a person with

ADhd and also want to bypass a lot of the bull that we have to

deal with. This brings me to my next point is mental health.

Mental health is a super taboo topic, we're told from a

very early age, and maybe it's not even explicit. Maybe it's just something that we

observe is like, don't let anyone know that you go to therapy. Don't let

anyone know that you're struggling. You know, fake it till you make it was some

advice that I got early on from a therapist when I was going through

a depression because I think she thought it would help me. But I took it

as something that, like, oh, well, I can't show people that I'm struggling to. I

can't show people that I am dealing with

mental unwellness right now. And I can't tell you how

empowering it was when I dropped that bullshit. And I

can't tell you how many people it actually helped to be open about

my struggles with anxiety, my struggles with ADHD, my

struggles in the past with PTSD. When it comes to sharing

about mental wellness or mental illness, there's

always this question of how vulnerable is too vulnerable.

And let me tell you, there's no right or wrong answer.

There's what's right for you and what's wrong for you. Okay?

What's right for one person might not be right for you.

Someone may feel very, very comfortable going on

LinkedIn and sharing about their past struggles with addiction,

whereas you may find it still a little too vulnerable to talk

about how you struggled with anxiety in the past.

You get to decide what that line is for you. But here's the cool

thing about talking about mental wellness and mental

illness and any kind of psychological diagnosis or

struggles is that when you share, you normalize it for the people around

you. When you share, you make it safe for

others to talk about what they're going through. You create

a space. You know, a lot of my clients work in very

kind of intimate services where their clients are either going through like

a health transformation or they're investing in

executive or leadership coaching. And they have to be very vulnerable in these

sessions. And getting clients online

for something like that is pretty difficult, you

know, if you're not willing to first be vulnerable in your

content. Because what you're basically asking a bunch of strangers on the Internet

to do is to be super brave

and book a call with a stranger and divulge all the

details of their life to you. Sharing stuff that is really hard

to share with another human being. Things that you don't like about yourself,

things that you feel shame around, the deep

dream that you have that you don't believe is possible for you. You're asking

strangers on the interwebs to just book a call with you, a perfect

stranger, and share all that stuff without knowing

anything about you, without knowing anything about your past and whether

you're a safe space for this. Yeah, tell me how that goes.

You know, we have this. We have this belief that for other people to see

us as a good resource to help them with their lives, we have

to be perfect. And that's absolute bullshit. When you show up

as perfect, the standard you actually set for everyone around you is

that they have to be perfect as well before they even reach out to talk

to you. If you listen to this podcast, I bet you have some personal

development books on your bookshelf. And I've said this before, I'll say it a

gazillion times more. Go and check out the intro or the first

chapter of those books. Most of the time, it's not about

how perfect someone's life was. The amazing schools that they went to, the great

jobs they've had. Like those may play a part, but more

often it's about how they fuck up royally. It's about how they

crashed and burned their life and how they crawled out of the

deepest, darkest hole and made all these good things happen.

Screwing things up and being imperfect actually builds

so much more trust and credibility than being this

perfect version of yourself. For example, I want you to think about

a woman who's 35. She's just had her third baby.

She's postpartum. She has this five month old baby who is not

sleeping well. She has two other kids under five. They go to day

care, thank God, or else she'd probably go insane. And she's

looking in the mirror and she's like, you know what? I really want to lose

20 pounds. I want to get back into a body that I feel more

comfortable in. I know I'll feel more confident, and I know I'll feel

healthier. Who do you think she's more likely

to want to work with? The 22 year old perfect

personal trainer who's 110 pounds soaking wet,

who's always had the most perfectly sculpted body, who's

super happy and go lucky all the time, and who

works out seven days a week? Or the 40 year

old personal trainer who also has a few kids,

who has also struggled with her weight since becoming a mom,

who also deals with the sleepless nights that come along with

being a parent, and who understands the struggles

that this woman is going through right now. Now she doesn't have the

perfect body, and she doesn't have the perfect diet, and she

doesn't work out seven days a week. By all accounts, the

20 something year old who has the perfect body should

technically be her go to. Here's the thing. She's not gonna

feel comfortable being vulnerable with that personal trainer. She's not gonna feel

like that personal trainer will understand all the nuances

and struggles of her life, whereas the second personal trainer, the

imperfect one, that's who she's going to trust. So as

you're thinking about talking about what you struggle through, you know, I want you to

think through, like, what have you already processed? What doesn't feel

really vulnerable and icky to share right now? You know, stuff

from when you were a kid, stuff from high school, stuff from your early

twenties, things that you have seen the other side

of and have some context for and some

perspective on. You can absolutely

share some anecdotes about those struggles in your past. And let

me tell you, it will build so much trust and connection with

the people who want to work with you, and it will make it so much

easier for them to reach out to you and be vulnerable on a call with

you so you can really easily determine if they're the right client for

you. But again, this is up to you. You get to do

so within the boundaries of your own comfort because,

well, we are here to not be weenies. We're not here for

vulnerability hangovers. There's no need to go there.

Other taboo topics that you can talk about that will make your brand

far more memorable, that will make your name far more

memorable, that will make you the person that people think

of as, like, this friend that they know from the online times

are honestly talking about relationships, talking about

sex, talking about the good, the bad, and the ugly. Last

year, I went to this LinkedIn event in Denver, Colorado,

and it was genuinely a bunch of people that I had never met in

person before. These are all people that were showing up in my comment

section. I would comment on their stuff. And let me tell you,

I walked into this event and I didn't really

recognize many people because it looks different from their profile picture, right? And

also it's just different. Like they might have looked very similar to their profile picture,

but it's very different going from two d to three d. And also LinkedIn has

very small profile pictures. I would talk to them and like we'd kind of

like be sussing out who is this person? I feel like I know them, but

I don't really know who they are and they'd figure it out

usually before I did cause I was dealing with multitude issues

and I was a little out of it and I cackled at how

many people were like, oh my God, you're the weenie lady who shares dating

stories. And I think I've probably shared maybe five dating

stories on LinkedIn in my entire four years of being super active on

the platform. And I always share them in the context of like

here was a terrible date that I went on and here's a sales lesson that

you can take from it. Here's how this guy did not close the

deal and why they lost the sale with me. And I do so from

a place of like, I don't divulge any personal information on their part, I don't

share their name, I make fun of the whole situation.

I genuinely write these posts as I'm kind of giggling to

myself. But they're real. They're real

experiences that I've had and I use them to kind of showcase. Here's

my expertise, here's my philosophy on sales, here's how I

see that conversation going and how it could be better. They

didn't remember that I was a business coach necessarily. They

didn't remember that I helped people with their money mindset, but they did

remember me. And someone who remembers you is

far more likely to end up being your client or to refer business to

you than someone who has no idea who the you are.

You can share whatever part of you it feels correct to share.

There's no right or wrong way of doing this. There's the right and wrong way

for you to do this. So full permission here to experiment,

full permission here to write something and sit on it for a while and see

how you feel after a few days and post it later. Full

permission to write something that's just on the edge of your comfort

zone. And to post it and think, oh, my God, I can't believe I did

that, and then just go and delete it. Sure, the Internet lives forever, but, like,

you know, if you have 5000 followers on LinkedIn, no one gives a. If you

posted something too vulnerable and then deleted it five minutes later,

the pundits are on CNN are gonna be like, guess what?

What Doreen Smith posted on LinkedIn today. You'll never believe

it. She shared about her divorce. How shameful.

They don't care. They have bigger fish to fry than you. Doreen, calm

down now. And of course, we're talking taboo topics. You know, another taboo

topic that you can absolutely talk about is money. Ooh, what am I gonna

say next? Well, you'll have to keep listening to find out. But first,

squirrel, squirrel, squirrel.

And of course, we're talking taboo topics. You know, another taboo topic that you can

absolutely talk about is money. And it doesn't have to be about how much money

you make, which is a little gaggy, honestly. Cause who

cares? But talk about something that you spent the most money on, that

you've ever spent in your life. You know, talk about how proud you were to

buy your first house. Talk about the shame of

being in credit card debt when you were in your twenties. I've been there. I

love it when people should talk about that stuff, because even though I coach people

on money mindset and I've done a ton of work on my own, I

still love seeing that reminder that I'm not alone. I'm not the only one who

made really bad money choices in their twenties. If you want to

align your sphere of influence with your potential ideal clients out

there, sharing your unpopular opinions,

sharing how much you hate a band for whatever reason,

sharing how you think a certain book series is stupid,

even though everyone else seems to like it, you know, sharing how

maybe you've never watched Star wars, which whenever I tell people that, they get really

upset. I can't tell you how many people have, like, vowed to make

me watch Star wars. And now it's just like this little game that I'm playing

that I'm just like, no, it's not gonna happen. And now I'm wondering how

many messages I'm gonna get after the fact saying you haven't watched Star wars. What

do you mean? I also haven't seen the Godfather series.

And in contrast, you can also share all the things that you love, the

things that you nerd out about, the stuff that honestly makes you

a bit of a weirdo.

And lastly, this is kind of a hard one for a lot of people, but

sharing about religion. Religion is a big one. There

are so many creators, influencers,

coaches, business owners who use

their christianity in their content. And

you know, whenever I see that, I think that's so good for them. I mean,

it doesn't align to me. I'm not religious, but good for them

for incorporating something that feels super aligned to them. On the other

side, the stuff that I feel really aligned to is the witchy. Talk

to me about the spells ex speliarmus. Talk to me about the new

moon rituals. Talk to me about the tarot cards and the astrology

and all that stuff. I'm super down for it. Share with

me your religious practices. Share with me this and that. Neither one

is bad. You want people who are

not on board with that stuff. If you're really, really

passionate about it, you want to scare them away. You want to make it clear

that your work is not for them because it's never going to be the right

fit. And I know sharing this stuff can feel kind of

ick, can feel really scary. It's stuff that's

very personal to you. And what if people reject you for that? Well, if people

reject you for who you are, let me tell you, the way

they talk to themselves is way worse. The stories they tell themselves

about what makes them lovable and deserving and worthy of would

break your heart. The thing that you can actually do to help

them is to stand in your power and be exactly who

the you are, knowing that you deserve to have all the

business and all the incredible clients and all the good things to come your way,

regardless of who you are, regardless of how imperfect you are,

regardless of what your beliefs are. They may not like it. They

may write really nasty comments, they might dm

you, they may talk behind your back. But hopefully

someday it'll get through to them that, oh my God, that person's

not afraid to be who they are. And if they're not afraid to be who

they are, why am I being so afraid of being who I

am? What's wrong with my identity? What's wrong with

everything that I like and dislike and feel aligned to and believe in? If

they could share all this taboo stuff and still

be successful and still find their people out there in the world,

maybe, just maybe, that's possible for me too. What a cool little gift

to give the world, even if it does take them a while to unwrap it.

So, my friends, with this I urge you, go be

memorable. Go share taboo sh. T

talk politics, talk religion, talk sex, and share it with

me, especially if you're supporting Kamala Harris this election

season.

Well, let me tell you something. When I am president of the United

States and when Congress

passes a law to restore those freedoms, I will sign it into

law.

We are not playing around. Ha ha

ha. Squirrel, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel.