253. From Overwhelm to Success: Developing a Board of Director Mindset for Entrepreneurs - Misty Kerrigan

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This is happiness solved with America's happiness. Coach Sandee Sgarlata.

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Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining me today. I'm so happy you're here. I'm Sandee Sgarlata. I was born in Virginia Beach and raised in the Baltimore Annapolis area and had very humble and tragic beginnings. And as a result, my life was a hot mess.

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Thankfully, 33 years ago, I got my act together, and since that time, I have dedicated my life to serving others and raising awareness that no matter what you've been through, you can choose happiness and live the life of your dreams. Happiness Solved is dedicated to giving you content that is empowering, motivational, inspirational, and, of course, a dose of happiness. It's my way to give back to the world and share other people's stories. This thing called life can be challenging, and my guests share their amazing stories, wisdom, and life lessons that demonstrate anyone can choose happiness. You see, happiness is a choice, and the choice is yours.

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Today's episode is amazing, and I am so grateful for you. Thank you for listening, and don't forget to leave a review and follow me on social media at coach. Sandee Sgarlata. Enjoy the show.

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Misty Kerrigan, my dear friend, colleague, we work together with a mentor studio. I'm so incredibly honored and privileged to have you here today. Thank you so much. And just want to make sure yeah, there you go. There we go.

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You're just incredible. You have an incredible background. I want to hear all about it first. How did you get to where you are today? Because I knew you're a business psychologist, and I'd never even really heard that term before, but it totally makes sense.

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But how did you get into that and what drove you to choose that path? I actually started 23 years ago in children's mental health as working in group homes, residential treatment centers, the place where when the foster youth gets pulled out and they don't have any other place when they go to a campus. It's in San Diego. It's called Polinsky center. So I had all these jobs on mental health, and I started to do groups because I'm bored in some of the places.

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So I just started to put together goal groups, and the goal groups started working. And so then I put together bigger groups, and it turns out what my boss found out is the bigger things we put together that were very like a McDonald's, if you will. But it was instead of burgers, we sold confidence, or we sold liking yourself better is that we were able to systemize it and then hire teams to come in and run it and then find funding for it. So got grants or different government money coming in, and then it would be packaged and ready, and then I would find a coordinator, and they would go coordinate it, and then I would be bored again, and I'd go write another program. And then what happened was I got hired for UC Davis for training.

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So I started to train and I started and one day I realized someone was asking me what I do. And they're like, oh, you run a lot of multimillion dollar contracts. And I said, yeah, I create programs, the company. So I was telling them everything I did. They're like, wow, how much do you make?

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And it was 70,000 a year. And they were like, well, why do you not make more from your programs? And I'm like, it's a nonprofit. So they were like, oh, well, that's business. You're doing business without knowing you're doing business.

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But I was always psychology, so I never knew that that was business. Yeah, if that makes sense. I just thought that's just what I did. And so then I went back. I never wanted to be a therapist, but I did a lot of things that were therapeutic.

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So I went back and got a degree in industrial organizational psychology, which is the study of people and business because I've always been obsessed with behavior. Okay? So then I just started taking those same principles, which was how do you meet people's needs and how do you move them along from point A to point B while meeting their needs? And so then that just became the way I construct and help businesses. So I go into businesses and we just lay everything out and then we figure out how do we have your customers that love what you do, bring more people to you and then how do we get strangers moving from not knowing you to becoming a raving fan.

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But each business is unique, especially in small businesses. So it's not just one size fits all, but you could take like a cookie cutter and you bend it accordingly to where it works for that business. Interesting. And I totally forgot to mention, which obviously we are doing this live, but the audience that's only listening to this, they'd all know that we're actually taping this live in person, which is so much fun for me because I only get to interview people remotely. We are at the ultimate wealth camp brought to you by Bill Walsh and Power Team International.

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And Misty just did an incredible talk on stage. So share with the audience what you talked about and a couple of little tidbits about what you shared with the audience because they loved it. Actually, I'm going to share with you guys what I didn't get to because I talked too much. But perfect. You're helping me therapeutically here is that everyone knows that we do business with people we know like and trust.

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But what they statistically don't know is we do more business with who our friends know like and trust. Right? Because 92% will listen to referral more than our sales. Now that statistic gets even better is 75% of people read testimonials before they buy your product, especially online. Now, the awesome part that you got to understand is 92% of people trust those testimonials as much as a friend.

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Yes. So that's complete strangers, if they see a testimonial and there's a psychological way to write them, if they see a testimonial they align with, are more likely to buy your product than just coming off the streets. So the testimonial is some of that bridge to help you. Now, the fun part is, though, is that have you ever had a customer that was a pain in the butt? Yeah.

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And have you ever had a customer that you loved and almost was like family? Yes. And don't we want more customers that are more like family? They don't second guess you. They don't question the price.

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They don't call you all day. Right. It's the things that you help them do. They go and they do because they trust you. So when it's a referral, you are hired to convert them.

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You're hired to keep them within your company, and they have a 16% more return on investment over a lifetime than a customer that just comes in from other traditional marketing. Well, and that just speaks volumes, the power of testimonials and our shopping patterns and behaviors. Because I know for me, I wasn't like this a long time ago, but if there's a product, for example, this equipment that I'm using here, this is not the equipment that I use at home. I bought this equipment especially for doing live podcasting because it's a little bit different. Oh, my gosh.

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And I need better quality microphones and just the whole setup. This particular one, I purchased it on Amazon because of all of the five star reviews. And not just like there was a lot. It was like a few, right? And like that.

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To me, I'm like, oh, okay, I can trust this product. Because if that many people, because how many times do you actually purchase something and take the time to review it? Right? I mean, they send you the email reminders. But do I have time?

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Because I do a lot of online shopping. Do I have time to review everything? No. But when people do do that, it really speaks volumes. So I want to give you a tip for that.

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Okay? So what I love to do is, psychologically, I read the ones and the fours, okay? And I read the ones because I want to understand why they're ones and if the ones are more in, more internal locus, like, let's say this product, they said it was going to be smaller, okay? I really don't care about that. I care more about the sound quality.

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Right. Or the store didn't have it for five weeks. I'm like, okay, well, that's a store thing. There's nothing about the product because you'll see that they'll give it a one for the stupidest reason they didn't deliver it when they said they were going to deliver it. And if it's not a delivery thing, then I don't care if it's holding it right.

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And then the full are Raving fans, but they'll usually give you a little something like, you know what? It was really great. The sound quality wasn't quite where I wanted, but it worked for the price. So those are the stuff that I'm like, okay, yeah, I'll go ahead and I'll purchase this because sometimes when we're writing the reviews, it's really just based upon our emotion in the moment we're writing the review. So I want to get both moments.

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I want to get their high moments and their low moments and then take logically in, okay, this is how I'm moving forth with this product. Yeah, love that. Because at the end of the day, that's what makes us happy. Right?

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All right, so you're writing these programs for different companies and whatnot, how do you incorporate that? Business psychology? Are there pain points that most organizations come to you with? And like, we need to figure out how to resolve this issue. Is there a commonality there or is.

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It really just in the bigger companies I work with It's people, it's employees, leaders. And so in the bigger companies, I do leadership, culture, multigenerational trainings, a lot of communication. Now in a smaller company, if it's just the one person, one of the things I see entrepreneurials lack is the board of director sort of mindset, where I'm accountable with these numbers to these people because a CEO has to answer to people usually, right? So the fun part about entrepreneurials is when we answer to ourselves, sometimes we're not as great as when we have to answer to somebody else. So what I find in most companies is, especially if it's one to two staff, the owner is just doing all the things, 90% and not the 10% that makes money.

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So usually the first thing I come in is we clear everything out, and I said, Show me what makes you money. Show me what is the things that you specifically do. Is it the phone calls, not the posting, not the thing, but what makes money? And then we kind of go back. We start backwards from there because a lot of times when I'm coming in, it's because of lack of funding coming in.

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And if I can get them out of stress to understand, like, oh, this is how I get the money coming in, then we can get that up and going, and then we could kind of fix some of the other stuff. Because if I'm a business, I know, like, when I work for UC Davis, I make 100 an hour. No matter what I'm doing. If I'm creating, if I'm training, it's just 100. It doesn't get any lower.

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Doesn't get any higher. So some of the stuff that I told my boss at Davis is, I'm not going to critique the grammar because then I would be making a dollar an hour. So if you want to pay me 100 an hour, I'll take 100 an hour. But anything I turn in needs to be run through a grammar and editor. Because that's not my strong point.

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I don't edit. I suck at edit. And I'm going to have to pay someone to edit this. So it's not going to make 100 an hour. And they said, no.

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We have an entire team. So I'm like, okay, so I stay at 100 an hour, and then I don't have to not decrease that by worrying about let me go spell check this. Let me make sure this is grammar and the different things. So sometimes what we do is we'll do the things that are really like, 15, $20 an hour, and we stay out of the things that would be making $1,000 an hour in and sometimes you have to. When you're starting a business, you're the business.

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Let's face it, you can't. Like, I'm going to start a business and I have five staff because I have no money. But what we really look at is the priority of time. If I can get you focused on doing the things that make you money first. Crazy point is, you have more energy to do the stuff that usually takes you longer.

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Later, you'll do it shorter. Because a lot of times we want to be we procrastinate or we push stuff off. But if we're in good moods, things get done faster and we're really more creative. Okay? Because you bring up a really great point right there.

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And I remembered something that and that's why these conferences are so amazing to come to. Because there's so much we forget about. Or we need those gentle, friendly reminders. Because I heard somebody say it. It may have been Bill.

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It may have been you. I don't remember who said this, but it know. Take a look at yourself as the solopreneur of your company and based on your productivity and what you're doing, would you fire yourself? And I was sitting there, and I'm like, yeah, because I know we all have our seasons. And I know the past few months, for me, I really didn't accomplish a whole lot.

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You focus on different things. I've been focusing on my podcast. So some of the other revenue streams have been neglected. And I was looking, I'm like, yeah, I'd be fired. And that's okay, right?

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Because it's all mine. So when it comes to things like procrastination or you're doing a busy work and you're not doing what's driving the needle? From a revenue perspective, what is the psychology behind that? Why do people do that? Because I find myself getting into that.

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And what is like, why do we tend to just create all this busy work that's not really pushing us forward? Is there a reason? So the funny part about entrepreneurs is there's a famous it's a quote, and I think Bill says it a lot. He Says if you don't schedule your success, you're going to plan your failure. So a lot of times the entrepreneurs have this rebellious sort of thing.

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Like, I'm not working 40 hours for someone else. I'm going to work 200 hours for me. So when I break down and I show them and I did this to one of my photographers, she's my branding photographer, and she's going everything she does, we got it all niche down. And I said, Congratulations, you're making $12 an hour. You know that right?

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Now at Target, they're playing 25. So I don't know why you're in your business to make $12 an hour if you're in your business for the money. Yeah. Go work at Target. And she was crying, and she's like, I don't understand.

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I go, because all the bullshit work you're doing, you're not doing the work that gets you the money. And we're really figuring that out is because we enter because we want to control our own schedules, but then we don't schedule, and then we become out of control. So it really is you sit down at the beginning of the week, and you put your schedule into place. This hours is where I'm going to do this. These hours, where am I going to do that?

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And then I get pushed back by some of the entrepreneur owners, like, well, I didn't start my own company to kind of almost feel like I'm being bossed around, so I have to go in and psychologically we'll switch it so it feels more like your schedule is freedom, not boxing you in. Right? It's just switching that perspective. You have to schedule, and you could schedule your rocks first. Like, I'm going to drop my kids off at school, then I'm going to do so when you're looking at your schedule and you see all this, I like to do colors.

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Like, all the blue means that's all the stuff I want to do this week. And you look what's left, then you go, okay, do I need to decrease some of the blue this week to add and let's say green means money. Green means your business. What ratio are you willing to have your business in? And the business part making money.

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So you have the green. Red means you're doing the stuff that it needs to be done in your business, but it's not making you direct money. So when you see blue is my free time. I'm an entrepreneur. I do what I want.

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Green is where I make money, and red is where I work in my business without making money, that visually pisses people off. And then what we could do is then we could decrease and increase more. Like, do you want to make more money? Yeah. Okay, great.

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Where in the schedule do we want to make more money? And a lot of times they want to go right into the red and not the blue. Sometimes they'll do both, but that's what you really do first is like, lay out your schedule for the week, where's green? Where's money coming in? Where are you trying to have way more freedom than you really can at this time, and then really looking at what am I spending more of my time doing that I really don't need to be doing?

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Yeah. Oh my gosh, I've got that visual of mine. And mine probably more often than not, is mostly red in the stuff that I'm not. Yeah, wow. Lots to think about.

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So, yeah, for all you entrepreneurs out there, take that to heart because that's really great advice to move the needle, because why are you doing this otherwise? Right? I mean, we have our why, but at the end of the day, you. Still want to be making money and I'm guilty too. This is the fun part about being I always say that the doctor is the worst patient.

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Right? Right. So a week before here, I had a client and I was like, okay, I'm going to write you up a proposal. My making money is writing it for proposals. And then two days later, I had an accident client and they wanted a proposal.

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So I have two money proposals that are due, but I didn't set the next meeting with them. I just said, I'll get you the proposal. And then as we know, all this other stuff starts coming in. And so I was laughing about it because I was like, oh my gosh, I'm procrastinating money. I knew I had to be here, but I could have met at least one of them before I came here.

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So what I did last night is I text both of them and I said, oh, no, actually, this was the most even more embarrassing part, is I get a text from the customer, hey, when can I expect the proposal? That's embarrassing. As a business owner, the customer shouldn't be like, hey, can you send me a bill? I want to work with you. Right?

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I want to give you money. Can you please send me a bill? Please? Maybe give you money, sir? So I was like, it's not done yet.

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I know what I need to do. I just haven't sat down and do it. But I have a long flight home today. So I said, oh, awesome. What works best for you, wednesday or Thursday?

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Yeah, she said Thursday. I said, it's great. 04:00 work. Yes, it absolutely does. Now I have a deadline where I know it has to be there and it has to be really great.

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So I went into my schedule and I just blocked out plane ride home, which might get weird. So then tomorrow, I already have 2 hours blocked out to get that done. And then I text my other client, hopefully my other soon to be client, and said, hey, do you have anything open on Friday to review the proposal? So sometimes what you have to do, especially if you get I have ADHD, and I do great with deadlines. I just do.

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So I have to give myself deadlines. I was just thinking the same thing, and maybe that because I was like, I wonder why that is. ADHD. I'm the same way. Like, if I have a deadline, you better believe it, I will meet that bar none.

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And then there's so many times when I know I have to have something done by Friday, and I wait until Thursday to do it. Why is that? Why do we do that? Do you know? Absolutely.

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Because we don't want to do it. It's always so simple. I'm always looking for these big explanations, and it's because of XYZ. And then it's like, yeah, that's really what yeah, we just don't want to do it. We don't want to do it.

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So then we have to add more to doing it. Another thing that I started doing is I think you probably do this too. I know I used to do all the time is, I don't have time for this right now. I only have ten minutes. I got to get to my next appointment.

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I only have ten minutes. I got to eat. I only have ten minutes. I got to do this. So a lot of stuff would pile up, and then I would look up, and it'd be overwhelming.

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So I just started thinking, what can I do in ten minutes? I just changed the question in my head. Instead, I had only had ten minutes. I thought, what can I do in ten minutes? And I just started like, oh, while I'm waiting for my coffee, I'll load a couple of dishes.

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I might not get to all of them, but I'll load as much as can. The funny part is you could accomplish a lot of stuff in ten minutes. So now it's now a game. And I'm like, okay, I have ten minutes. Let me straighten up the living room.

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I have ten minutes. Let me get the next project organized, because sometimes it takes me more time to organize what I have to do than it really does to take to do it. So I had all these little, like, five to ten minute things that add up, and now they're adding up of days because they keep pushing them off because they're too simple. And now I just find that the small times in my day, ten minutes. I could do this for ten minutes.

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And I got my wife doing it, so she'd be like, you know, I have ten minutes. I'm going to put some stuff away in the garage, because the garage is overwhelming sometimes. Yeah. So then I hear people say, like, well, I'll just stay all day and clean it. But you won't.

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You just set an alarm and leave. But the fun part is, yeah, so what if you do stay all day and clean it? Then you really had more time to clean it. I love that because and I notice that all the time, especially with a podcast, I only have five minutes before I have to log on or whatever, and it's amazing how much you can get done. I'm like, oh, my gosh, I got all that done.

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I'm like, oh, that was only two minutes. Wow. But yeah, I'm going to use that. What can I do in ten minutes? What can I do in ten minutes?

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Love it. Because you know what? You can do anything for ten minutes. You can. And I learned this from Tony Robbins was he did his 15 minutes.

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He's like, if he just does 15 minutes, he does 15 minutes of something he doesn't want to do. He changes his state. And now he's in his new state, in the state of mind. Not a new state, but like a state of mind. He said, yeah, the 15 minutes and sometimes takes to an hour, but that's what he wanted anyway.

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But if he tells his brain, I'm just going to do this for 15 minutes, I'm only going to work out for 15 minutes today, by the time I know works for me on the treadmill, I get on the treadmill, 15 minutes goes by, I'm like, I might as well stay another ten. It's to motivate you to at least get started, because once you started a lot of times, especially with ADHD, you want to finish because now you forgot why you don't want to start in the first place. Our minds, crazy thing. Misty, is there anything else that you'd like to share with the audience that we haven't talked about today? And where can people find you and learn about more about what you do?

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Outstanding. So there's two ways I'm on social media. You'll find Misty Kerrigan, and if you text the word rave to 26786 the word rave rave to 26786, you are going to get this amazing referral guide. So it's going to break down five components that need to be in the referrals. It's going to break down different examples.

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I like examples. I learn if someone says, like, I do more business by explaining business through a lemonade stand. Because if you simplify it, then your brain can then connect to it and make it better. So this one gives you it's like a razor company, and it gives you five different ideas of how to add referral programs and affiliate programs to a razor product. So you could do that with business coaching, or you could do that with maybe you're selling vitamins, I don't know.

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But you could kind of plug and play it, and it gives you lots of ideas. So you're going to text the word rave rave to 26786, and you're going to be able to download it right from your phone. Nice. All right. We'll make sure that's in the show notes as well.

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Rave to 26786. Misty, thank you so much. I'm so thrilled because I've been wanting to have you on podcast for this. And it's great that we can do it live. Oh, my gosh.

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It's even better. I love this. I love live podcasts. It has been an honor. Thank you.

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All right, thank you. And thank you, everybody, for listening today.

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I certainly hope that you enjoyed today's interview. Thank you so much for joining me. And as always, I hope that you and your family are healthy and safe and that your lives are filled with peace, joy, and happiness. Take care.