3 things you can do to create your dream HQ
Transform Your Workspace: From Weenie to Winning!
Transforming your workspace is not merely about aesthetics; it's a crucial step toward empowering yourself and your business.
Hi, I'm Katie McManus business strategist and money mindset coach.
Welcome to this episode of "The Weeniecast" where we're going to talk about what we can learn about the cultural impact of the 'Working Girl'.
If you've not yet seen the movie, you need to do so asap.
Your environment influences both self-perception and professional opportunities.
I'm hoping to challenge you to rethink your current workspace.
Are you unwittingly limiting your potential by treating your business as a side project rather than a serious endeavor?
And I'm coming at you with some seriously practical frameworks for you my lovely listener.
By the time we're done, you'll be empowered to create a dedicated space that reflects your business ambitions.
Companies mentioned in this episode:
- Equinox Fitness
- Nanu Electronics
Mentioned in this episode:
If you're a coach or consultant - find out how to attract your ideal clients
This is for your if you're working in the coaching and consulting space and want to attract your ideal clients, buying your higher ticket offers, so you can make more money, quickly, and will less time input, so you can focus on sharing your gifts with the world!
Transcript
Is it time to stop being a weenie about your workspace?
Katie McManus:Hi, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach.
Katie McManus:And welcome to the weenie cast.
Katie McManus:1988 was a landmark year in our history.
Katie McManus:First and foremost, I was born, which is a big deal because here you are listening to my podcast, and this wouldn't be happening if I weren't born that year.
Katie McManus:Second of all, women in the United States were finally given the right to own their own business.
Katie McManus:1980.
Katie McManus:1988 was when that was made legal.
Katie McManus:People, women owned businesses the same age as me.
Katie McManus:And the third thing that was a complete game changer was the movie Working Girl with Melanie Griffith.
Katie McManus:There isn't any room at the top for local girls like us.
Katie McManus:I'm not giving up.
Katie McManus:In the land of opportunity, they're not gonna give you no shot test.
Katie McManus:They're gonna shoot you where dreams are won and lost.
Katie McManus:Spray me down.
Katie McManus:Sorry.
Katie McManus:Well, I can't for a while Walk around my own party clinging Someone's about to get what she deserves.
Katie McManus:And here is where we start our episode of the Weenie Cast today.
Katie McManus:It's talking about Working Girl and how it's relevant to your business.
Katie McManus:So if you haven't seen the movie, I highly encourage you to go do it.
Katie McManus:Melanie Griffith, Harrison Ford.
Katie McManus:Alec Baldwin, who I know is problematic now, and Joan Cusack, who I absolutely love.
Katie McManus:You know, Debbie from the Addams Family, too.
Katie McManus:Family values.
Katie McManus:Amazing.
Katie McManus:Anyway, so if you're not familiar.
Katie McManus:So working Girls.
Katie McManus:So Melanie Griffith is this really ambitious, working class woman who's a temp.
Katie McManus:She has a very, very strong, I think, Staten Island Brooklyn accent.
Katie McManus:I don't really know the difference.
Katie McManus:Sorry.
Katie McManus:You New York people, I hope you don't throw tomatoes at me.
Katie McManus:Although you wouldn't be able to reach me because you're probably very far away.
Katie McManus:Damn it, I missed.
Katie McManus:And so she gets a temp job for this investment firm, and she starts working for this woman.
Katie McManus:And long story short, she kind of up levels her look.
Katie McManus:She completely gives herself a makeover so that she looks like she comes from almost a higher society.
Katie McManus:And she has this idea.
Katie McManus:She does it because she has this idea that she knows can make a ton of money.
Katie McManus:And so she starts playing this part and she changes her voice and she changes her look and she cuts her hair, which she really needed.
Katie McManus:The haircut that she starts off in the movie is not good.
Katie McManus:But the point is, is that as she makes these little upgrades to her look and she feels like she's the part she Becomes far more confident.
Katie McManus:She attracts partners to help her with this deal that take her seriously.
Katie McManus:She gets into boardrooms to have meetings that she wouldn't have gotten into previously.
Katie McManus:I won't ruin it for you because if you haven't seen it, I think you should go and watch it this weekend.
Katie McManus:But we need to have a very serious conversation today about how you are actually keeping yourself small with your own environment.
Katie McManus:Now, like me, you might be working from home, you might have an office somewhere, you might still be working a 9 to 5, and that's all fine.
Katie McManus:I personally am not going to be changing the fact that I work from home.
Katie McManus:I want us to talk about our environment because the environment that we surround ourselves with really does create the energy in which we show up to work every single day.
Katie McManus:And let me paint the picture of the difference here.
Katie McManus:There is the work at home freelancer who carves off like a little corner of the dining room table and squeezes laptop and the notes and their cup of coffee and their water and maybe a little snack.
Katie McManus:And they're working there amidst the chaos of their home.
Katie McManus:Then, you know, to another, another degree is someone who has cordoned off, you know, a whole room to be their office.
Katie McManus:And these are great places to get work done.
Katie McManus:You know, whatever works for you.
Katie McManus:There's.
Katie McManus:There's nothing wrong with it if you're getting the work done.
Katie McManus:But if you want to have bigger impact your business, if you want to grow an empire, if you want to have multiple businesses that all support each other, if you want to have a nonprofit, if you really want to be a tour de force in the world, do you need a work at home space or do you need a fucking headquarters?
Katie McManus:Because let's talk about the different energy that goes along with that.
Katie McManus:You know, if I'm just working from home and, you know, I know my desk is just 20ft from my bed, you know, I might get out of bed, throw on a sweatshirt, go make a cup of coffee, like kind of scuff my slippers over to my little desk, sit down, literally type in my password, check my email, go check LinkedIn, see what's going on, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Katie McManus:What about that process?
Katie McManus:Sounds inspiring, right?
Katie McManus:What about that process makes you feel like you're powerful, like you're showing up to do business?
Katie McManus:Not much.
Katie McManus:You know, this might be a personal thing and something uniquely feminine, but I don't feel like I'm that powerful when I'm not at the point in the day where I'm wearing a bra and not to say that there's anything wrong with doing some work as you're still waking up and you just want to get that one email out.
Katie McManus:But let's talk about how that kind of leaks into the rest of your day.
Katie McManus:Now, imagine the difference.
Katie McManus:When you wake up, put on a sweatshirt, go and have some coffee, start thinking about the day ahead.
Katie McManus:Maybe you do some journaling, maybe you take your dog for a walk, you come back, you have breakfast, you shower, you get dressed as if you are going to work, because you are.
Katie McManus:And at the time that your work day starts, you walk into your workspace, you walk into your headquarters of your business, and you sit down and you get to work.
Katie McManus:The currency of the universe is energy.
Katie McManus:And the cool thing about this is that we create energy.
Katie McManus:We can create whatever energy we want to attract more of in our life right now.
Katie McManus:How we feel about the space that we're in massively impacts how we can create that energy.
Katie McManus:So if you're in your home, workspace, or wherever you're working on your business, I want you to look around right now.
Katie McManus:And if you were a stranger, if you were coming into the headquarters of this business, what would your first impression be?
Katie McManus:I'll be honest.
Katie McManus:If someone walked into my headquarters right now, they'd be like, wow, it looks like she had some grapes three days ago.
Katie McManus:Hey, a little science project going.
Katie McManus:Otherwise, they look around.
Katie McManus:They'd see a lot of projects in the middle of the process.
Katie McManus:Right.
Katie McManus:It would be messy, because that's who I am.
Katie McManus:But it would seem like, oh, cool, she has a lot that she has her hands in.
Katie McManus:And even as I look at my office doing this episode, I see different ways I could upgrade my headquarters.
Katie McManus:You know, there are things on my desk that are not headquarters things.
Katie McManus:Right.
Katie McManus:They're not things like, you know, I can probably take some of my jewelry that I wear while I'm on Zoom calls, and I can put them in my jewelry box in my bedroom.
Katie McManus:They don't need to be here.
Katie McManus:I haven't talked about this publicly before, but not too long ago, my producer Neil said to me, something's changed.
Katie McManus:Your energy's different.
Katie McManus:How you treat yourself is different.
Katie McManus:You're brighter.
Katie McManus:Something along those lines.
Katie McManus:He might have also said, wow, you're so gorgeous and so smart and all.
Katie McManus:Thanks.
Katie McManus:I'm just gonna add those things to the things he said to me, because I like compliments.
Katie McManus:So there we go.
Katie McManus:And he asked me what happened.
Katie McManus:What was the.
Katie McManus:What was the thing that changed?
Katie McManus:And I'm sorry to say that the Thing that changed is I cut off some family members who I had spent a very long time trying to win over, trying to be good enough for, trying to be someone who got included.
Katie McManus:It's kind of a sad state of affairs when you have a family that's kind of run on like this exclusivity.
Katie McManus:I won't go into the details in this episode.
Katie McManus:I will definitely be talking about this more at length in another episode.
Katie McManus:But I realized that I was experiencing a lot of cognitive dissonance because here I am doing a lot of personal work on my own worth, on how I deserve to be treated in relationships, my business.
Katie McManus:And here I was accepting less than I would accept from anyone else, from some family members.
Katie McManus:And while it was a really hard, sad decision to make, I made the decision to ask them not to contact me anymore.
Katie McManus:And there was a lot of grief to it.
Katie McManus:There is incredible amount of grief that goes along with letting go of a relationship that you'd always had really high hopes for.
Katie McManus:We all know that experience of going on a few dates with someone and you start falling for their potential.
Katie McManus:We start imagining the future we could have with this person, even though there's no evidence that they would be at all interested in that future or would have any ability to be that person in that future.
Katie McManus:And the sad truth that I had to recognize is I was doing the same thing with these family members.
Katie McManus:And what I was finding is for as long as I let them treat me like my feelings didn't matter, I was treating me like my feelings didn't matter.
Katie McManus:And when you treat yourself like something doesn't matter, your feelings, your time, your self care, that's what you train the universe to do.
Katie McManus:And when you treat your business like it's just this silly little thing that you do to generate some money and it lives in a corner of your home.
Katie McManus:And isn't this cute?
Katie McManus:This is where I get my little cutesy work done.
Katie McManus:That's what you train the universe to treat your business as, as well.
Katie McManus:And it doesn't take a big upgrade.
Katie McManus:I'm not telling you to go and like, you know, rent a $5,000 a month office somewhere in the center of a city nearby and that you're going to now have to commute to work and hire a receptionist and all this stuff.
Katie McManus:No, no.
Katie McManus:I mean, maybe, maybe you're at that point.
Katie McManus:How exciting for you.
Katie McManus:But it's not necessary to upgrade the energy that you're attracting to your business.
Katie McManus:But what is necessary is that you create a space for you to do the work.
Katie McManus:That feels like your headquarters.
Katie McManus:It feels like mission control for every business you are going to launch into the world.
Katie McManus:It feels like mission control for any nonprofits you want to create, for any consulting you want to offer.
Katie McManus:It needs to be representative, not of your home, but of your brand.
Katie McManus:I mean, this sounds like a little, like, redecoration project.
Katie McManus:This can be an incredibly triggering process.
Katie McManus:There will be a voice at some point as you go through and upgrade your workspace, upgrade to this headquarters, who's gonna be like, who the fuck do you think you are?
Katie McManus:God?
Katie McManus:Like, you're just putting on airs.
Katie McManus:You're like, who's gonna buy that you're this person?
Katie McManus:Who's gonna believe that this is your workspace?
Katie McManus:Who's gonna believe that you have this massive business?
Katie McManus:Especially if you're only making, what, like one or $2,000 a month right now?
Katie McManus:Maybe you just started like Tess McGill in Working Girl.
Katie McManus:She kept herself really small with temp jobs and with her style and with how she spoke and how she carried herself and in how she believed she deserved to be treated and in the treatment she accepted.
Katie McManus:But once she started changing that, the universe changed with her.
Katie McManus:The opportunities opened up to her, partners arrived.
Katie McManus:She found the resources that she needed to make the future she wanted real.
Katie McManus:So here are three things I want you to consider before you start changing things up in your headquarters.
Katie McManus:First and foremost, I want you to imagine that you are having a meeting with a potential business partner, and it's going to be at the headquarters of your business.
Katie McManus:And don't try to imagine this like, oh, my God, they're coming into my guest room of my house like, oh, God, like, this is going to be unprofessional.
Katie McManus:No, no, no, no, no.
Katie McManus:I want you to adjust this for imagination's sake.
Katie McManus:Imagine this is separate from your home.
Katie McManus:They're not going to see your messy kids rooms.
Katie McManus:They're not going to see that there are dishes in the kitchen sink.
Katie McManus:Okay?
Katie McManus:This is just a standalone place.
Katie McManus:And I want you to imagine you're walking into the building to have this meeting.
Katie McManus:What's the feeling you want to experience as you walk into that building?
Katie McManus:That's the first question I want you to answer.
Katie McManus:The second question I want you to answer is, what do you want your potential partner to experience as they walk into that building?
Katie McManus:What thoughts do you want them to have?
Katie McManus:What impression of you and your business and your empire do you want them to have?
Katie McManus:And once you've gotten really clear on what those things are, I want you to think about what are the details in that headquarter space that gives that impression, that makes you feel that way.
Katie McManus:And it might be that you journal on this.
Katie McManus:You might go to Pinterest and start doing a board all about this, finding different visuals that help you represent this.
Katie McManus:By the way, Pinterest has rolled out a new feature, the collage board, which, oh, my God, is so much fun.
Katie McManus:I, like, want a collage my whole life.
Katie McManus:So much fun to play with.
Katie McManus:I can't recommend it more.
Katie McManus:Go and play with it.
Katie McManus:What I like about it is that you know how, like, when you pin stuff on a board, like, you kind of want to make a collage with it so you can save it somewhere and have it visible.
Katie McManus:And you couldn't before.
Katie McManus:You, like, you'd have to print up stuff and then cut it out and then paste it all together and then have it somewhere.
Katie McManus:Like, that's a pain in the ass.
Katie McManus:But now you don't necessarily have to do that.
Katie McManus:You can literally make the collage on Pinterest and it's automatically the same dimensions as your phone background.
Katie McManus:So you could literally create a collage and screenshot it and have it as your background, or print it up and post it somewhere and it's already done.
Katie McManus:It's really cool.
Katie McManus:Pinterest.
Katie McManus:If you would like to sponsor this podcast, then Please contact me katiemcmanus.com Second, once you've done this soul searching, once you've really understood the energy you want this space to have and the things that will communicate to the universe that it should send that energy to you, I want you to think about your ideal headquarters and what would the logistics of that headquarters be?
Katie McManus:And when I say logistics, like, when is the cleaning schedule?
Katie McManus:What are the standards for organization?
Katie McManus:When I worked at Equinox Fitness, there were so many rules about how tidy you had to keep your office because the offices were all visible to our clientele, right?
Katie McManus:We had glass walls and glass doors.
Katie McManus:They could basically see right in, right?
Katie McManus:And me not being the most tidy or organized person.
Katie McManus:So how it worked is we'd have, like, this desk that kind of came out from the wall that had our computer on it.
Katie McManus:We had chairs on the other side so we could meet with potential clients and members of the gym.
Katie McManus:And then we had this cabinet, and the cabinet had drawers from the waist down, and then it had kind of shelves.
Katie McManus:And on the first shelf there was our printer.
Katie McManus:And so what I would do is anytime papers started accumulating on my desk is I would just take the whole pile of Papers, and I'd put them directly on my printer.
Katie McManus:So there'd usually be a pile about a foot high of papers on top of the printer, which of course, like, because I knew it was there, anytime I needed to print something, I'd just go in, take this massive pile of papers off the printer, print it, all the things, put it back.
Katie McManus:Our CEO once came into our club, and because it was my day off, he decided that he was going to use my office.
Katie McManus:And he went to print, I think like a 70 page report.
Katie McManus:And that is the story of how I had to get a new printer because it jammed up the printer so much, it broke.
Katie McManus:That is also the story of how I got written up for the first time in a job because I wasn't following the rules and caused company damage.
Katie McManus:So anyway, I want you to think about your workspace and what are the rules like that and what are the reasons for it?
Katie McManus:And especially if you share your home with other humans, like adult humans, a child humans, how do they need to learn the rules?
Katie McManus:A home office is where you can go and be like, oh, God, I feel really guilty.
Katie McManus:This is kind of a mess.
Katie McManus:Oh God, like, I should probably do that.
Katie McManus:Oh, God, like, this isn't working.
Katie McManus:That's not working.
Katie McManus:I gotta fix this.
Katie McManus:Would you accept that from a headquarters?
Katie McManus:Is that within your company's guidelines of how things should be done?
Katie McManus:I've been doing a lot of work with my favorite self lately.
Katie McManus:You know, the whole concept that we don't need our ideal self, like, they're not really helpful to us, but our favorite self, the person that we so enjoy spending time as each and every day.
Katie McManus:I've been spending a lot of time with her.
Katie McManus:And whenever I get stuck in my work, I kind of revert back to her.
Katie McManus:And I'm like, cool.
Katie McManus:What do.
Katie McManus:What do I want to be focusing on right now?
Katie McManus:And I can't tell you how often her first response is, tidy, tidy.
Katie McManus:Take the mugs down to the kitchen.
Katie McManus:You have too many index cards with too many notes.
Katie McManus:Go through them, throw out the ones that you don't need to keep, organize the rest, do this, do that.
Katie McManus:15 minutes here, 15 minutes there.
Katie McManus:My favorite self actually wants me to have a nice clear space to do my work.
Katie McManus:And I can't tell you how many of my clients, now that I've started working with them on their favorite selves, are experiencing the exact same thing.
Katie McManus:We don't build in time to take care of our headquarters.
Katie McManus:So what you're going to do in this second step is you're going to a figure out the standards for how your headquarters needs to appear.
Katie McManus:90% of the time, we're not perfect.
Katie McManus:Right?
Katie McManus:And build in an hour, an hour into your schedule each week to make sure it reaches that standard.
Katie McManus:Schedule it block it off.
Katie McManus:No client can book in that time.
Katie McManus:Family and friends cannot invite you to do stuff in that time that becomes part of your work is to maintain your headquarters.
Katie McManus:And finally, the third step is I want you to make three changes.
Katie McManus:They can be big, they can be small, but three changes this month and three changes next month and three changes the next month, just three.
Katie McManus:We're not trying to overwhelm you with a whole redecorating, with getting all new furniture, with painting.
Katie McManus:Whatever it is that you think you need to change, you can change in simple, small iterations.
Katie McManus:And the reason I want you to do it in small steps like this is because I want you to see the gradual shift in energy.
Katie McManus:What changes when you maybe get a desktop monitor and you're able to see on a bigger screen.
Katie McManus:What changes when you change your background and you feel a little more confident on zoom calls?
Katie McManus:What changes when you buy something that's beautiful and artistic and sculptural and you have it on your desk and it's just there for decoration's sake because it feels aligned to your brand.
Katie McManus:And you don't have to do this forever.
Katie McManus:It's not like for the rest of your life, every month you have to change three things about your headquarters.
Katie McManus:But do it until you feel like this is your headquarters.
Katie McManus:It's not your little rinky dinky at home workstation.
Katie McManus:The universe will take your business as seriously as you you take it.
Katie McManus:If you're not taking it seriously from a spatial perspective, the universe is paying attention to that.
Katie McManus:And the universe won't take it seriously either.
Katie McManus:And just like our friend in Working Girl, when the universe doesn't take you seriously, it does not send you partners, it doesn't send you resources, it doesn't send you opportunities.
Katie McManus:It starts with you and the upgrades that you are completely, completely within your power to make right now.
Katie McManus:The three changes that I have made in my workspace.
Katie McManus:Number one, I changed my schedule so that I could have time to really make sure that I'm not working in a cluttered space, right?
Katie McManus:Because clutter is kind of my.
Katie McManus:My go to.
Katie McManus:It's something that I just don't even think about.
Katie McManus:I just create mess wherever I go.
Katie McManus:It's kind of like I'm accidentally the Tasmanian devil of my own life.
Katie McManus:I just kind of like spin and chaos kind of ensues.
Katie McManus:And I don't mean to, but, you know, it happens.
Katie McManus:And what's funny is that I don't even notice it as it's happening or immediately after.
Katie McManus:But it gets to a point where all of a sudden it's so bad that I have to disrupt my day to go and take care of it.
Katie McManus:So what I've actually done is I've built into time for me to tidy as I go, so I don't have to wait till I notice it, right?
Katie McManus:Because if we're hearkening back to a couple weeks ago, and this used to be a podcast on adhd, once you, like, have fulfilled the purpose, you don't really follow through to the rest of the task.
Katie McManus:So, like, for instance, when I go into my closet to get socks, the socks are in the drawer.
Katie McManus:I open the drawer, I find the socks, I move on.
Katie McManus:The thought of closing the drawer doesn't even occur to me, Right.
Katie McManus:It's the same with everything that I do.
Katie McManus:And I don't have to make myself wrong for that, but I can help myself be better at tidying it up sooner.
Katie McManus:A small upgrade that I actually made this month is I got this nudge counter from Nanu Electronics.
Katie McManus:And it's not electronic at all, but it's this beautiful heavy hunk of metal, essentially, that you can click and you can count.
Katie McManus:And what I love about this is that it's something that is so tactile for me to be able to track the very specific habits that I'm trying to stick to.
Katie McManus:As I think about my headquarters, I want to have interesting little pieces like this throughout that are utilitarian, Right.
Katie McManus:I love, like, for instance, when I'm shopping for jewelry, I love earrings that are sculptural, like a 3D personality.
Katie McManus:And that's one of the things that I find really energizing in a space when there are really beautiful little utilitarian objects that have significance.
Katie McManus:And the upgrade that I am planning on making once I finish my research is I'm buying a new office chair.
Katie McManus:Full disclosure, this office chair, when I started my business, I actually stole it from my mom's law office.
Katie McManus:No one was using it.
Katie McManus:The lawyer was like, I don't really care.
Katie McManus:She can have it, it's fine.
Katie McManus:And it has served me really well.
Katie McManus:But this is a really squeaky chair.
Katie McManus:There are times when I'm recording this podcast where it squeaks because I move and I have to rerecord the last portion, and that's kind of a pain in the butt.
Katie McManus:Also, it's not the most comfortable.
Katie McManus:It's not uncomfortable, but it's not the most comfortable.
Katie McManus:And I know I'll feel a lot more grounded when I'm sitting in a chair that is like, ergonomically correct for me and feels a little bit more on brand.
Katie McManus:So three upgrades, you know, and one has to do with my time, one has to do with a piece of furniture.
Katie McManus:One is just a little knick knack.
Katie McManus:It doesn't have to be an extreme project, it doesn't have to be super expensive, but it does have to feel in alignment with your vision for your headquarters.
Katie McManus:Unplanned gold.
Katie McManus:Squirrel.
Katie McManus:Squirrel.
Katie McManus:Squirrel.
Katie McManus:Squirrel.
