Welcome to Meaningful Work Remarkable Life. I’m your host Brook McCarthy, and I’m a business coach, trainer and speaker living and working on the unceded lands of the Camargo people here in Sydney, Australia. In this podcast, we explore the paradoxes inherent in working for love and money, magnifying your impact and doing work you feel born to do. We explore the intersections of the meanings we bring to work and the meanings we derive from work.
A truism in business that I want to keep shouting from the rooftops at any opportunity that I get is that we have been taught a lie. It is not a meritocracy, which means that all the things that we imbibed at school, to work hard, to be diligent, to be conscientious, to follow through, to make sure that you dot your I’s and cross your T’s.
All those things do not apply when it comes to growing a business and earning consistent 10K plus months. I want everybody to know this because my ideal clients tend to be highly conscientious people. It is not uncommon for my clients to have 10 years, 20 years, even 30 years experience doing what they do. It’s not uncommon for me to work with clients inside my Hustle and Heart program and other groups where they have been self-employed for 10 or 20 years. They’ve been running their own business. I’ve worked with people before who have never actually had a job. They have been honing their craft and honing their craft. They are oftentimes overqualified, by which I mean that they have a whole bunch of complementary skills. They’ve gone into higher education, they have gotten the piece of paper, they’ve got the runs on the board, they’ve got credibility and spades, but this is not translating into money in the bank.
And I want to shout this from every rooftop because when we’re taught under the system of meritocracy whereby, you know, if we do what we’re told, so to speak, if we’re diligent and conscientious and we have high integrity, then we will get what’s coming to us. We will be rewarded.
If this is what we have been taught, if this is the culture that we’ve, you know, imbued, this is the air that we swim in, then it stands to reason that when we look at our business bank account and we do not see, you know, we feel represents our hard work when we are not earning consistently and not earning consistent 10K plus months, then we feel that this is some kind of reflection on the quality of our work, on our ability and on our expertise, and it’s not.
Let me spell this out. Your technical abilities as a business owner, whatever it is that you do. Let’s say you’re a coach, your coaching skills. Let’s say you’re a website designer, your website design skills. Let’s say you are a yoga teacher, your yoga teaching skills. Whatever technical skills you possess that you’re utilizing in your business have nothing to do with your money making skills. These are two different things. And so confusing these things and believing that we just need to strive higher, we just need to work harder.
We just need to pursue yet another qualification is perhaps one of the riskiest things that we can do as business owners. Because it’s keeping us in this stuck cycle where we are forever in learning mode rather than in doing mode. So stop me if you’ve heard this story because this is a story that I have heard over and over and over again. The business owner who is perpetually stuck in the apprenticeship. In the self-imposed apprenticeship, whereby they’ve told themselves they like the exposure, they appreciate the experience, they don’t mind working for peanuts because it’s diversifying their skill set, who is a yes person, who is very, very helpful, in fact derives a lot of self-esteem and self-worth from their productivity and their helpfulness. And of course, when you are energetic and you’ve got that can-do attitude, it can absolutely backfire on you.
If you combine that with people-pleasing and a lack of boundaries, that ends up in a bit of a disaster, attracting energy vampires and all of a sudden you realise you’re working all the time and you may as well just have had a job because if you’d stayed in the workforce, you would be earning more, can measure it with your skills and experience. And again, this is something that does not get talked about nearly enough. I sound so fierce, I have to inject a laugh.
It doesn’t get talked about nearly enough is that the gender pay gap in self-employment widens, it doesn’t narrow. And that doesn’t make much sense, right? Because when we’re self-employed, we take away the systemic barriers. We have the freedom and flexibility that we craved, that we perhaps inspired us to start our own businesses in the first place, and yet, the gender pay gap in self-employment widens, it doesn’t narrow. And this is because of our socialization.
This is because of our culture. This is because of the meritocracy lie that we have all ingested. Your money making skills are different from your technical skills. So stop beating yourself up about it if the number in your bank account does not reflect your years of expertise and the depth of experience that you have. Because it is very common for Australian sole traders and small business owners to earn 50K or less per year.
That is the majority of us. That is the majority, not the loud minority, including probably myself, who bray about consistent 10K plus months, 20K months, million dollar years, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. How much you earn in your business is a feminist issue. And I say that not to heap blame or shame or embarrassment. In fact, I hope to do the opposite. I hope to do the opposite, because there is absolutely no point. There is nothing to be gained, right? We’re not in a productive headspace when we’re feeling shame or embarrassment. Yeah? But key fundamental things have changed. And this is what I want to talk about today.
This is what I want to talk about. There have been so many rates of change in the last five years, but even in the last year. I wrote a detailed blog post called 2024 Behind the Scenes of a Rocky Year. If you read that post, you’ll know that the first half of 2024 was a lot of dashed expectations, things not going according to plan and not being on track for my target, for my money target. I wasn’t earning what I wanted to be earning and it was clear and obvious by the middle of the year that I needed to change things up. And so I did.
I changed things up and I experimented a lot, particularly in the second half of 2024. As a consequence, the first six months of 2024 and the last six months of 2024, my revenue increased 58% from the first half to the last half and my profit increased 84% from the first six months to the last six months. Now, the reason for that, is that I recognised that it was far riskier to not do anything. And I want to ask you, when things get hard, which they do, right? This is what happens, right? Things do not go according to plan. We have high expectations. I’m talking about myself here. They are not met. Life tracks us a curve ball as it does. It always does. And so therefore things do not go according to plan. And what do we do? The normal response, the human response is to retract.
This is what happened in March, 2020. A lot of business owners were like a deer in headlights. A lot of business owners froze and got stuck in that like freeze response or retracted and they stopped spending and they stopped growing and they stopped, like they were just thinking, I’ll just wait this one out. And this is what happens anytime the economy retracts. People retract, business owners retract, rather than recognizing, you know what? Times are tough, things are difficult. I can’t retract, I wanna retract. The tendency is to retract, but instead I’m gonna lean in. I’m gonna do the zag when everybody else is zigging.
Because it’s not the best person in business who wins the big opportunities. It’s not the best, most high integrity person with the most expertise and experience that wins the best opportunities. It is the person who takes sales and marketing seriously. It is a person who is willing to take a risk because the person that’s willing to take a risk, especially in times of retraction, because it’s easy to take a risk when things are going well, right? When everything’s on the up and up, when business is going swimmingly, when sales are flying in, when you’re growing your team and you’re surrounded by good people and you’ve got support and everybody’s telling you how wonderful your business is and how great your work is, how life-changing your impact is.
It’s easy to take risks. That’s not really risk. That’s just going with the flow. That’s just building on momentum. That’s not risk. It’s harder to take risk when things are difficult. It’s harder when we’re disappointed, when we’re perhaps resentful, when we’re angry, when things have not gone according to plan. This is when the tendency to retract, the tendency to procrastinate, the tendency to do busy work, procrasta work is at its peak.
So to sum up the changes, and I’m gonna do, I’m gonna run through this quickly because there’s been so many changes. I wanna just give you the Cliffs Notes on this.
Since 2020, we had an inflection point in 2020 where we had an accelerated progress. We had a massive leap forward. And that goes across the board for all kinds of businesses, large, tiny, multinational, we had this massive leap forward, working from home, remote work, digital, audio visual. I had a lot of business owners who moved their entire bricks and mortar businesses onto the internet, because they had to, right? The state premier said, you cannot open your yoga studio tomorrow, you cannot open your physiotherapy clinic tomorrow. And so they’ve been forced to learn the skills, acquire the skills that would have otherwise taken them some years. They’ve been, they’ve done it in a space of days or weeks.
But now what’s happening, what’s happening in 2025, 2024, people are being forced back to work. We’ve got these back to work orders and so the war on talent is intensifying and quiet quitting is happening. We’ve got a lot of movement, more, yet again, more movement in the self-employment space. People started businesses in 2020, went back to the workforce in 2022. They started side gigs in 2021. They wound them down. They wound them up. Yeah. There’s, there’s more, more movement than ever. People closing their businesses, people starting their businesses because they don’t want to go back to work. They don’t want to go back to the office, I should say. Also in an economic downturn, and this is February 2025 and thankfully the Reserve Bank of Australia has just announced an interest rate drop.
In an economic downturn, the high-end market isn’t affected. So what does that mean? That means if you’re selling to the premium high-end market, if your goods and services are high-end, then an economic downturn doesn’t really have much of an impact, which is why the interest rates are a bit of a blunt instrument because a good whack up the population. Don’t quote me, but I believe it’s about a third of Australians who actually have a mortgage. Two thirds don’t. So raising interest rates in an attempt to curb spending is a bit of a blunt instrument. But in an economic downturn, people will take longer to make decisions. They need more time to think things through, which means of course we need to change how we do things.
The other massive difference is that we are more disconnected from each other than ever before. We have Snapchat, we have WhatsApp, we have Facebook, Instagram, text message, FaceTime. What have I missed? TikTok, LinkedIn. But we don’t actually pick up the phone and speak to each other anymore. We text first, maybe if we still use the phone to actually speak into in real time. We’re not leaving voice notes for each other. Then we have to text first. Like that’s modern etiquette, right? We’re not actually seeing our friends and family as much. So people are craving real connection. We’re seeking a curated community of like-minded folks.
The other major issue of course is AI. And that is not an issue. Let me rephrase the other massive change is AI, which created a lot of disruption. 2023, 2024, there was a lot of, oh my God, oh my God, the world is ending in 2023. 2024, we got on with it a bit better and realized actually it could make our lives and work a hell of a lot easier. But what’s happening with marketing? It means that it’s now the information saturation age. So it’s easy to create than ever. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that business owners are using it effectively or producing more marketing or producing more effective marketing.
So the market is also sophisticated and this is something I hear a lot. People tell me all the time, every business owner I’ve ever asked the question, are you in a crowded niche? Has answered, affirmative. Every business owner believes that they’re in a highly competitive niche or sector. Every business owner looks at another sector or another industry or another niche and says the grass is greener over there. It’s easier over there.
But what in fact is happening is that digital marketing, the mainstream of digital marketing where it became something that was, it went from being something that was niche and not mainstream. Something that geeks did, but the rest of us didn’t have access to. That pretty much mirrors my business journey. So 2006 we had iPhones, 2007 they came to Australia I believe, 2008 I started my digital marketing agency. Instagram didn’t exist, Twitter didn’t exist, Facebook I still logged in and logged out. I looked at my four ten friends and logged out again. So 17 years of digital marketing, the market is now sophisticated, consumers are more discerning. We know what’s what, right? We’ve all bought things on Instagram ads that we regret later. I’m talking about myself here. We’ve all purchased stuff and had buyers remorse because the marketing was super shiny and schmick and the actual thing that we purchased was far from it. So we’re becoming a hell of a lot more discerning, you know.
Crappy old marketing just doesn’t cut it anymore. Slapping something together and popping it back up on Facebook is not good enough. And for, please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not talking about, you know, creating a highly produced video, getting a, you know, paying a professional video team. I’m not talking about expensive technology. I’m talking about messaging by and far. I’m talking about saying something worth listening to that’s actually going to reach through screens and pluck the heartstrings of strangers and make them feel something. That’s what I’m talking about. It’s not good enough anymore to say, hey, here’s a helpful tip that relates to what I do. Here’s an inspiring post of me eating toast in the sunset.
So effective marketing is not enough. When you’ve got this inundation of AI powered marketing, when you’ve got a sophisticated market because of the fact that digital marketing is well and truly mainstream, then it’s not enough to just post stuff on the internet. We need to learn not just marketing, we need to learn how to sell, which means we need to learn how to be direct, how to be clear and what makes a compelling offer, not just here are my services. Here’s how I can help here in my services, but here is my offer. Here is my package. Here is a compelling reason why you, you should buy now and not later.
So to recap what I just talked about, there’s been continual movement in the self-employment space. People leaving, people coming, people expanding, people contracting. That kind of puts people on edge, other self-employed people on edge. And it’s easy to kind of buy into the woe, you know, the world is ending kind of thing. We’ve got a lot of disruption with working. Of course we have, you know, terrible political actions, activities going on. New president of the United States, who shall not be mentioned. Let’s not say that out loud. We’ve got wars, we’ve got genocide. So we’ve got disconnection, we’ve got people craving community and belonging, people looking for community and belonging. And then we combine that with AI marketing, a sophisticated market and an economic downturn, which means that our marketing and sales skills need to be as powerful as ever. And again, not to misunderstand me.
I’m not talking about you need very deep pockets to pay a marketing agency because God knows having a lot of money. to spend on marketing does not translate to sales. All you need to do is Google biggest marketing spend blunders to see examples of million dollar budgets that have backfired and actually lost a brand market share. Throwing money at a problem doesn’t make it go away, right?
We need to get better at digital marketing, online sales, business development. know how to make offers, understand biopsychology, understand what people are looking for, needing and buying right now.
And this is where my Hustle and Heart program comes in, because there’s some key fundamentals that have not changed. And the fundamentals that haven’t changed is that saying something worth listening to and doing something worth talking about. And not just that. But recognizing that in the age of information, other people’s attention is a privilege. It is a privilege that’s earned, not a privilege that’s bought. You cannot bully people into paying attention to you. Effective digital marketing is saying something worth listening to so that people cannot wait to read, hear, listen, watch your latest marketing messages. And how do we do that over the long term? Because this is also something that I’m very passionate about, is if we wanna build businesses for the long term, if we wanna be here 17 years later, then we need to actually commit, not be consistent, forget consistency. I’m as inconsistent as my menstrual cycle, the tides, the seasons, the day, the night and day.
We need to commit to building relationships. We need to actually enjoy marketing and sales. And that makes way more sense, right? Because if I said to you, okay, here’s how you’re going to get consistent 10 K plus months. Here’s how you’re going to earn that money. You got to do this. You got to do that. You got to do this other thing. And you go, yeah, okay. I guess. And then you go away and maybe if we’re lucky, you do it for a month, maybe two weeks. And then what? You don’t enjoy it. You don’t like it. You don’t understand it. You don’t enjoy it. You don’t recognise it as a privilege and you haven’t committed to building relationships. So of course it’s gonna be short-term.
The other thing too is you don’t want somebody handing you over a business strategy or a marketing plan and saying, here you go, do this. You need to own your own creative thinking. Stop outsourcing your responsibilities, stop outsourcing your creative thinking. This is one of the most fun, impactful things that you can do in your business. Learning how to actually enjoy the process of marketing and sales, developing your marketing and sales skills so that you know what you’re doing, but more than that, you’re actually loving doing it and you’re getting results that is a generative, sustainable, long-term, profitable business.
So if we want to do this, if we have decided that our desires run deeper than our fears, we’ve decided that our desires are worth more, that we are willing to outrun our fears because our desires are worth more and we owe it to ourselves because we’ve had this desire. Squatting in our head, squatting in our heart. We’ve desired to earn consistent 10K plus months, impacting so many more people than our business is currently reaching. Being able to have the freedom of flexibility that probably led us to starting our own businesses in the first place, and doing so using our values as a GPS. So we’re not compromising ourselves.
We’re not trying to fit into somebody else’s wardrobe where it’s too tight across the chest, it cuts under the armpits, it restricts our breathing, but instead we’ve redesigned our business model, which is what we do in the very first lesson of the Hustle and Heart program, is to redesign our business model from the ground up. And that includes our profit plan. Because our profit plan is the roadmap to consistent 10K plus months. And our business model determines how much we earn, how much we charge, how much capacity or time that we have. So we’re not working, you know, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. or 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day.
Our business model determines how consistent our income is. And it’s normal to change our business model. It is totally normal to change. In fact, I would suggest it’s necessary. I would suggest it’s the riskiest thing that you can do in business going, well, this once worked for a period of time. This business worked. The marketing was effective. Paypal purchased. I made good money and therefore I’m going to dig my heels in and just keep on keeping on, even though everything around me has changed. That is the riskiest thing that you can do. Because we’ve got to recognize that it’s normal to change our business model.
As the world changes, as we change, as our lifestyle evolves, as our needs evolve. Many of my business clients come to me because somebody’s read them the riot act when it comes to money. their partner, their business partner, their accountant, perhaps their financial advisor, perhaps has given them that talk and said, enough’s enough, retirement is coming. You got to earn more. You know, somebody said enough is enough. Ideally the business owner agrees, yeah but you know, this isn’t working. You need to, we need to change things up. And so for consistency in cashflow for consistency in 10 K plus months, the best business models. And remember we’re creating a business model that’s unique to us. So we can combine different things in a way that makes sense, not just to us, but to our ideal clients, to our environment is retainers.
This is the first business model I came from the PR industry way back when, when I started my business back in 2008, I just did what I’d seen, what I knew, which was retainers. Every month, small handful of clients would pay me to do their digital marketing for them. Then we have payment plans of a full amount. So payment plans are different from memberships. Payment plans are different from memberships because memberships are month to month, although you might get a three month commitment or a six month commitment or a 12 month commitment. Whereas payment plans are a full amount that’s, that’s broken down into a cashflow friendly option.
So we’ve got retainers, number one, payment plans, number two, memberships, number three, and then the hardest is becoming rebookable. So this is where, and I had a lovely masseuse for a period of time where I got regular massages because she was excellent at rebookings. So this is the hardest because it requires sales skills, it requires stamina, it requires resilience to ask for a rebooking every single time, rather than selling a package or a commitment, for people to kind of commit to over time. Again, this is something we do way back in the very first lesson of the Hustle and Hump program.
So the Hustle and Hump program was created to help build sustainable business, to help make sure that business owners were well-resourced, well-rested, they had the essential money-making skills, sales, marketing, business development, starting with pricing, starting with profitability, starting with your business model, and going all the way through to leveraging and automating banking confidence and boss moves so that you have resilience and skills in self-coaching, so that you’re here for the long term. Now, our program is only open for a very short time.
We close our doors on the 24th of February, and we kick off with our first welcome call on the 25th of February. We’re traveling all the way through to August, 2025. This is a six month commitment, because I’m not interested in short term fly by night, make a quick buck and exit businesses. I want you to be in business for as long as you wish. Be that decades. Making you perhaps happily unemployable for the rest of your life.
If this is something that you want to click the link in the show notes and I will see you inside the Hustle and Heart program.
Real quick before you go. If this episode has gotten you thinking, gotten you excited, or has you changing the way that you do business or life. Would you do me a super quick favor and write me a short review? Your podcast review means so much to me and it helps other values-based business owners just like you to find this show, which is a fantastic gift to me.
