From $1M in sales to manifesting profit with Maddy Birdcage

* Transcript created by AI – may contain errors or omissions from original podcast audio

Today on the podcast, I’m chatting to a special guest, Maddy Birdcage, the founder of Birdcage Marketing. Maddy was a client of mine for about 18 months. And one of the big goals that she set when we were working together is that she wanted to hit a million dollars a year in revenue, which is exactly What we did in our time together.

However, one of the things that didn’t feel aligned was the fact that her business wasn’t as profitable as she wanted it to be. So what we’re chatting about in the podcast today is how she has shifted the business from having a sales focus to a profit focus. In this episode, we chat about energetics, manifestation, and all things growing a business and life that feels aligned.

I know you’re going to feel so inspired from listening to this episode, so make sure you stick around.

CLARE: A big warm welcome back to the podcast. Maddy, how are you?

MADDY: I’m good. How are you Clare?

CLARE: Good. Let’s just pretend like we haven’t been chatting for half an hour before we push through.

Look for anyone who’s listening, who doesn’t know you, can you please do a quick intro to yourself and to your biz?

MADDY: Yeah, I actually have no idea how to describe what it is that I do and what my businesses do, because I am so multi passionate. I’m a manifesting generator, neuro spicy, all of the things.

So I basically, I mean, in a nutshell, it’s marketing, it’s marketing, it’s business growth, we have an agency, an online school, we have creative studio spaces. And we have a podcast as well. And a few other little brands that are up and coming, but essentially I would say that we are just like. Supporting brands and individuals to just live their best life.

And we do that through teaching them our marketing methods.

CLARE: I love that. And can you share a little bit about you?

MADDY: So I’ve been in marketing for over 16 years now. I’ve had my agency for about nine, I think nine years. And that’s where it all kind of started. And then it’s just evolved into this like big, Exciting place where I just get to do all the things that I love to do when I was a kid, making content, performing, reading, learning, talking to people, helping people.

So, yeah,

CLARE: I love, I love, well, maybe a good place to start this episode is by sharing a little bit about our, how we know each other, how we work together, and then we can dive on into chatting all things business.

MADDY: Yeah. Yeah. So I reached out to you, it would have been the start of 2020 after I just had my second child and my business was in the toilet, I was literally not earning any money.

I had just gone through a long, like years of burnout in trying to grow my business. I had a couple of employees, but I basically reached out to you for business coaching because I knew that if I didn’t do something drastic. Which was invest money. I probably didn’t have, but make some big changes and get some help.

Then I would either die or I don’t know, my business would definitely die. So yeah, we worked together for 18 months. I think it was. And you were my business coach and you were the person who introduced me to all of this now, actually. And that’s what I always tell any of my students and my clients, like it all started when I started working with you, Clare.

So, thanks for this life.

CLARE: Your life is freaking amazing. And it’s just, honestly, you are one of the most amazing people. Powerful manifestos. I have like been able to witness on the journey, like everything that you said, like, I remember when we sat down at the start, you were just like, I just want to like, not be burning out.

But then when you started to get in, you’re like, I want this and I’m at this car and I want to have a house by the water. And. Then you were like, I want to get a work like a warehouse, everything that you have said that you wanted to create, you have literally created in your life. Another goal was around your health.

And again, just witnessing all of these transformations one after the other has just been super, super cool. I love how you just, you’re someone who just goes all in and I think that that’s a real testament to, to you, and I think it’s so inspiring to, to witness it. And I think that I know that this is something that you use as well with, with your clients in the space of helping them to create amazing breakthroughs in their lives.

So let’s rewind back to when we were working together. I know that a lot of the work that we did was basically around mindset. It was like, The fears that we all have that I have, you know, at every new level, there’s new stories and things that come up and you’re able to sort of really break through that, grow your team.

And I think one of the coolest accomplishments that you had in the time that we worked together was you were hitting your first 100k months and you had your first. Million dollar year in business, which how sexy does that sound on social media?

MADDY: Very sexy. But we know the truth behind that, don’t we?

CLARE: So let’s talk a little bit as well.

I know for you at the time, it was like, I want the number.

I totally get that. Appreciate that because it is, it’s a massive accomplishment, a massive goal to get to. But maybe when you say like, we know, explain to me a little bit what you mean by that comment. So

MADDY: I was very. Ego driven for a very long time.

And I had to have my whole world basically fall apart a few years ago in order to rebuild more authentically. But if we go back to when we were working together, I really wanted to have the million dollar year in the business, because even though I knew like that was not focusing on profit, that was not the money I was necessarily taking home.

My thinking was if I can just earn that money, I can then figure out how to make it more profitable after that point. Like I just had to. Expand that much to then make it work later. I, yeah, we got there. I didn’t even realize we were going to get there. And then I did the numbers at the end of the, like, I looked at the calendar year.

Right. Cause that’s actually how I like to measure my earnings. And I was like, Oh my God, I did it. Like, I can’t believe I did it. But in the years that followed, I kind of had to undo everything that I That I’d built out of ego and figure out what was actually authentically aligned for me versus what was not, and then rebuild based on that.

CLARE: And so let’s talk a little bit about what, what exactly that looks like. So when you were building, it was just like, I’m just going to do what I need to do. I’m hiring, I’m taking the steps. You were so courageous in your growth and you hit that metric, which was just. Freaking amazing. But what did unraveling that look like?

MADDY: The problem with when you grow, when you grow a business, you have, there’s more, right? There’s, there’s always more to deal with. We needed more people. I needed more space. I needed more clients, more marketing attention, all of these things. But the problem was, I was missing a piece. a very huge piece of self worth in all of that.

I was really looking and you actually used to pull me up all the time because if I didn’t meet my sales goals for the month, I would spiral into like deep pit of depression. And I remember you even saying like, why do you actually care so much? Like, obviously it’s important, but like, don’t let it wreck you like this.

CLARE: Yeah.

MADDY: And I just, I knew that I was really obsessed with external validation because I was missing like that self worth for myself, but I, I didn’t realize how much it was actually going to affect my business. And this is what I think business owners need to realize it’s not actually. ever about the marketing, the strategy, the operations, the this, the that.

It’s actually all about you and your own self worth because that then affects how you show up. So for example, because I didn’t think I was good enough as a business owner, I thought I was doing all the things wrong. It meant that I let myself Become taken advantage of by other people who may be, whose intentions weren’t as good or who, even if they had good intentions, they just wanted to build a very different business.

And it even got to a point where I had not the right team members. I definitely had not ideal Clients working in the business, there was constant problems, like constantly. I can’t tell you how stressful that that was like a 12 month period, how stressful that was. But I basically at one point announced to my team that I was stepping away from the business because the manager I had at the time basically said like, the problem is you.

You need to leave. And so I did announce that, but then I was like, hang on. It feels if the, if it’s really that bad, if things are really going that badly, I shouldn’t be letting someone else be scaling my business back up. And so over that year, I really had to develop this sense of self worth, which came through asserting boundaries, trusting myself.

And then one day it was just me walking in and making more than half the team redundant so that I could. Stop bleeding cash every month and focus on. What do I actually want to do here?

CLARE: Can we go back to this? So, cause I know that when we talk about self worth, self love going on that journey, that like, those are some things that you do, but what there must’ve been some deep inner work underpinning it, because you can’t just go and set boundaries.

So how did that whole journey of your, of the deep healing actually happen?

MADDY: So you introduced me to this whole world of manifestation. And I mean, I think I always had a really, like I, I did intuitively know about it. And I think my parents even as like, Regular folks, they may seem, I think they actually are very highly spiritual.

And so I started looking into like manifestation and positive thinking and all of that kind of stuff, and then. I kind of evolved from there to like, Ooh, there’s actually like this psychological stuff behind it as well. Some subconscious reprogramming. So like getting hypnosis. And for me, my journey was very much, it was like, it was a spiritual one, but it was also very psychological as well.

And so it was reading like neuropsychology books, but then also reading spiritual books. And what I kind of realized is that we’re all saying the same thing. And. It was just, it was, but it was relentlessly pursuing that like every day doing some sort of personal development work, whether that was reading, meditating, hypnosis, listening to a podcast, whatever it was, it was like, I just found the people that I around like podcasts, especially in books, I just found that information.

I just fed my brain with it. And then I don’t know, all of a sudden we’re here.

CLARE: Because that’s literally what you were doing. You’re rebuilding from the inside out.

MADDY: Yeah. And

CLARE: then, and that’s the place where the action can happen is when you are in a place of. It’s done. I’m fulfilled. I’m worthy. I’m deserving.

Then the action, like, you know, setting the boundary, whatever it might be that flows on. But yeah, it’s kind of that be do have concept really, isn’t it? Like, when you are that person, when you have the confidence and the faith in your results, then taking the action is just an almost a just a knock on effect really, isn’t it?

MADDY: It is it’s, I mean, it feels weird and hard to say actually, because I feel like, as you know, like new level, new devil, like, I feel like I’m still always constantly, you know, Undoing limiting beliefs, which is really, that’s the journey for life. I think back to who that person was so long ago where I just, I cared so much about the money.

I cared so much about people seeing how many people were on my team and looking at how successful we are. And now I’m the complete opposite where I couldn’t care less what everyone else thinks, because I feel so secure in myself and what. And what I’m doing.

CLARE: Yeah. It’s funny that you said that because I’m just thinking about my hubby’s business.

He went through a period where his team got really big and it looked really impressive.

MADDY: Yeah. But

CLARE: actually our profit was like, his profit was lower than it had been when it was just him, because he had all these team, all these issues, all these challenges. And now that he’s scaled the team right back.

And I’m like, okay, it doesn’t look as fancy on social media. He’s making so much more actual profit now.

MADDY: And

CLARE: I think that it’s an easy trap to fall into. The, the ego trap and needing to have that validation. But at the end of the day, it’s like, does it matter what people, you know, are thinking and judging?

Well, it matters

MADDY: if you, it matters if that’s how you are basing how you feel about yourself. A

CLARE: hundred percent. Yeah.

MADDY: You know, that’s when it really matters. And for me, the worst thing that could happen did happen where we lost in one week, we lost like 50 percent of our revenue because two of our biggest clients like that I’d signed, they dropped off the same week for two completely different reasons out of the blue.

One of them got snatched up by some, by a current contractor. The other one was just, I don’t know, I don’t know what happened there. But the, what it was, it’s like those plants weren’t aligned to us anyway. So they were never, we were never meant to have them. But for me, The, the rug literally got pulled out from under me.

I tried to ignore it and keep everyone’s jobs and doing all of this stuff. But it’s just like, I ended up not being able to pay myself for months on end. We were bleeding up for like 50 K a month. Like it was really scary. And then one day I just like, I had actually, I had like a spiritual coaching session one morning with someone in the States and I just.

Like, I don’t know who that bitch was that walked through that front door, but I just like had no problem making people redundant that weren’t contributing to the team.

CLARE: Yeah.

MADDY: And then from that point, it was kind of like, fuck yeah, I can do anything.

CLARE: I love that energy.

MADDY: And tell me about your team now. So we have rebuilt to there’s nine of us now.

They’re incredible. They’re amazing. They’re all extremely high achieving self sufficient. I call them intrapreneurs because that’s really how like they’re entrepreneurial in their own right. Like if any of them came out to you tomorrow and said, I’m going out on my own, I would have no surprise and complete support for them.

But at the same time. I know that they want to support what I’m doing because the way we’ve rebuilt, it’s not just about like, how much money can we make? It’s how can we make a difference? And the biggest thing for me is being able to focus on the culture inside of the team, where I feel like people love coming to work.

You know, I always ask like, is there anything you don’t like doing that we can give to someone else who likes doing that thing? Because there’s no reason for us to be doing the things that we don’t like doing. Cause there’s usually someone. Who is the right person for that job. And so my effort has really been in just making sure everyone’s in the place that they need to be.

They have the work conditions they need. There aren’t a lot of us that work full time. We get more work done than when I had 14 full time people on.

CLARE: Yeah. It looks like such a fun life. And this is obviously through the lens of social media, but it looks like such. A fun, fun place to work. I love I know on Tik TOK on Instagram reels, you’ve spoken about like your leadership style and how you’re very empowering to the team, which again, I think is very different to perhaps how things were, you know, you were like, you were like the ringmaster trying to keep everyone’s shit together.

And now you’re more like the conductor at the front of the orchestra. Who’s just like, Hey, like I’m just making sure that everyone’s. Those who are listening to the podcast can’t see, but I’m doing the motions of like conducting, but conductor hands, you’re more like leading the, you know, leading the group, but every, you just are, the team is doing their thing and you’re just.

Keeping them on track.

MADDY: Well, they keep me on track. Yeah. I think what I, because I was such a people pleaser, which a lot of women in business are that are actually struggling. I would say a big part of that is people pleasing. I wanted to avoid conflict. If something was happening that I wasn’t happy about, I’d just kind of stay silent on it, hoping it would just fix itself.

Cause I didn’t want to upset anybody. And now I just have these. A lot of rules around how I hire, fire, manage people. And it’s all based on this idea of acting quickly and being radically honest. You know, I always say to the team, I consider us as like sisters more than colleagues, because it’s like, I want to encourage almost this.

I don’t know, like not butting heads, but I do want to encourage with full respect, but this idea that if you say, see something, then like speak up and pull people up for it, like, you know, at the same time, congratulate people and just being honest to be able and feeling safe enough that you can raise your grievances.

Without people taking it personally or without bitchiness. And actually a friend was asking me the other day who worked in PR in Sydney for a long time. She was like, so how do you, like, how do you manage the bitchiness? I’m like, there is none. Like there actually is none. Like we’re just support each other.

And if someone needs extra help, then we give that help. Or we also have very high expectations of each other because we all go above and beyond. It’s like, you’re not pulling your weight, then you can’t stay.

CLARE: I love that. It’s like, it’s healthy conflict. I mean, at the end of the day, it’s not, when people say to me, like you know, there’s, there’s, there’s no disagreement, you know, like in, in marriage, like I’ve been married for 10 years now.

And I’m like, it’s normal to have conflict. Like that is a normal part. And that’s something that I say to the kids. Cause my son said to me the other day, Oh, you and dad like had, had a fight. And I’m like, that’s not, it wasn’t like a big screaming match. It’s throwing things at each other or anything. But I’m like, that’s normal.

And I’m like, that’s going to happen. And it’s how you navigate through that and being able to have respectful disagreements. That really sets that’s probably what set the team up for not having a bitchy culture.

MADDY: But I think again, like it comes down to the individual as well. Like if you are a relatively self aware person, you know, we’re all on our own journeys, but if you’re relatively self aware and you get triggered by something, someone says, I always say, It’s not what they said to you.

It’s actually the meaning that you have applied to it. That has upset you. Like some people can be fucking awful and actually mean to hurt you. And that, that can sometimes happen as well, but not in the workplace. And like, that’s not what’s happening here. There’s no one here who’s malicious, but if you get offended because someone said something about some work that you’ve delivered and it’s like, well, you must have had some doubts about that yourself for you to get so upset by it, if you were a hundred percent confident in it, you wouldn’t.

CLARE: Yeah,

MADDY: taking it like this. And so it’s always like, I like to encourage people to really reflect back on where they can grow and where there’s opportunity for them to heal themselves a little extra. But to be honest, like, it actually doesn’t, this doesn’t happen that often with us internally.

CLARE: Yeah. Yeah. It just sounds like you’ve built such an amazing, amazing team.

And what does this look like for you now? Like what are the goals for Birdcage? Do you have like a five year vision or are you just like, Hey, I’m just following what feels great. And.

MADDY: I mean, kind of set up a 12 month vision, which is that is a miracle for me. I think actually, if I think back to the beginning of 2023, that’s when I first started it.

Planning in quarters. And that actually, that was a big turning point for the business as well, because I felt like people felt empowered to take action on the things that were upcoming, rather than us just being super reactive to things or just Doing what our clients needed and that’s like the business developed its own boundaries where we just, we intentionally decided to cut particular services or to start offering particular services.

It’s like, rather than just waiting for a client to show up and be like, Hey, I want this service and be like, yeah, right. Let’s, what are we going to do now? Like we have no processes around this. It’s like, no, let’s just actually figure out like, where are we super profitable? Where are we not? What do we love to do?

What are we not so good at? And so planning in quarters is good, but then, yeah, we’ve done a 12 month plan as of last week because I want to do like a big conference both here and probably overseas in London is what I would love to do. Whether that’ll actually happen or not, because, you know, I don’t know.

Let’s see. But I think the overall plan is just I want more people to believe in who they are and what their passions are and show up more authentically through social media that way, because I believe there’s an audience for everyone. Like if you think of people on YouTube, like there’s like a father and son duo, like their whole channel is just about cutting shit open and having a look at what’s inside.

And they’ve like, they’ve been around for like 10 years now or something. And you know, there’s an audience for everyone. If you are. Interested in a particular really niche thing. I encourage you to go and start a social media account because there’s probably other people in the world that are interested as well.

And so what I would love to see is almost like decentralizing how the world works almost, you know, let’s, rather than having these big companies, wouldn’t it be great if everyone was just kind of showing up doing their own thing or like little groups of people, little small businesses all over the world.

And that’s just how we. Yeah. I don’t know.

CLARE: Yeah. I love that. I on this note about showing up authentically and I have seen probably in the last maybe 12 months, I’ve seen such a shift in how you have been showing up. Energetically in your marketing.

MADDY: Yeah.

CLARE: I’m really curious. Was that something intentional or how have you kind of, I feel like you were just this confident magnetic energy.

I’m really curious if that was something intentional or if it’s sort of evolved over time as you’ve.

MADDY: Well, it’s interesting. And it kind of messes with my head a bit because I mean, people can’t see me, but I, I, and they may not have known before, but I did lose 30 kilos, which. Less about what I look like more about my overall health with all my other health shit that I have to deal with.

I mean, so that helps, but I have to say my engagement on Tik TOK used to be better.

CLARE: I see. I don’t think that the shift, it wasn’t like you lost weight. I think that there was an energetic shift that happened. Before is my, I could be wrong. I can’t remember the timings exactly, but I felt like you were then like, this is my space and this is who I am and take it or leave it.

And then it’s like all this other kind of stuff. This is my perception from the outside, but I’m really curious as someone who is living, breathing it, if that’s what.

MADDY: Well, I feel like. I started posting on TikTok when I still had the old team and all the problems because I had no access to the business social accounts anymore.

So I wanted a creative outlet. And so I started posting to TikTok. And then I reckon that shift probably happened when I downsize the team and started rebuilding again. Like, I really think the start of 2023 is when I kind of like showed up and was like, alright, let’s get this shit done and just started doing it.

And then 12 months later is when I started getting my health on track and actually had, well, it’s, I wonder if it’s. My sister’s energy that you’re noticing because she started working with me about 12 months ago, and she is now my content guru. I don’t even know what a job title is, but she actually doesn’t live here.

She lives in Auckland. And so we’ve found out this way of working together when she does a lot of heavy lifting in terms of helping me formulate ideas, but then also lets me really just film whatever I want whenever I want to say it, but then she’s the one responsible for like all the editing and all the kind of the heavier work that.

Can feel a little bit like, Oh, you filmed now you have to edit and post and do all that stuff. So I definitely have a lot of help around that, but she also pushes me to do better. Like she pushes me. She will literally, I’ll record a batch of content and she’ll go. We’re not using that. What’s going on? How are you feeling?

It’s actually very similar energy to you, Clare, where it’s kind of like, what’s going on?

And she’ll literally tell me, don’t film if you don’t, if you’re not feeling up to it. We have she’s going to be in Melbourne with me on the weekend before this conference that I’m speaking at. And I get there a day before and she’s literally called my husband already and said, make sure Maddy has a relaxing day on Friday, because I need her to be like her best self on Saturday morning, like she knows how to manage me and she knows.

Yeah. Which is interesting because again, like we didn’t always have the most perfect relationship growing up. And I think if people were even spectacle when skeptical, when we started working together, how’s this going to work, but it’s actually the best duo of all time.

CLARE: Oh, I love that. I was thinking I could not work with my sisters.

That’s great that you found that flow. And it’s really interesting that you’re talking about, cause it’s something I think about all the time is the relationship between me. Your marketing and your energy. And I know when I’m doing something from, Oh, I’ve got to send an email. I’ve got to record a podcast.

And it’s just, I’m sure that energy is felt. As compared to when, yeah.

MADDY: There’s like a science thing that I read once and I’ve never been able to find the article again. They literally did a test where like, well, it was like a split test with ads. And if the marketers believed that it was going to get great results, it got, it would affect how the ad would perform.

CLARE: Yeah. That doesn’t surprise me.

MADDY: No. And it’s the same with like, you think about it, like everything is energy. You think about how food is cooked. Why do you think fine dining restaurants Can be so special. It’s not just because it’s fancy. It’s because the people in the kitchen are literal artists putting their heart and soul into what they’re making, but it doesn’t have to be fine dining.

Like sometimes you can go to a family restaurant and feel that same feeling and it’s just a bowl of spaghetti, but it’s like, why is that so much better than the chain Italian restaurant down the road? It’s because there’s been an, like, my big thing that I’m obsessed with right now is this idea of like only, Working or buying from artists, and I don’t care if you’re an accountant.

I don’t care if you’re a lawyer, if you’re an actual artist, if you’re a chef, whatever, I believe that we can all be artists in our own way. The distinction between just being someone who does something versus being an artist is like, how much of yourself are you putting into something? And you have to have this obsessive craziness aspect to it as well, but you just can’t fucking stop.

CLARE: Yeah.

MADDY: It’s all you think about. Like,

CLARE: yeah, you have just like hit the, I was just thinking about my husband. So I, he’s the cook. I can’t cook. And he goes, It’s like, you don’t really give a shit. And I’m like, you’ve hit the nail on the head because I mean, I do, I do care. Like I, you know, I love good food, but when I’m preparing it, like if I ran out of certain type of cheese, I’d just be like, I’ll just use the other cheese.

And he’s like, you’re missing the point. Like he’ll go, go buy me a tin of tomatoes. And I’m like, I just grabbed tomatoes. And he’s like, but that’s, that’s not the brand that we buy. And like everything has to be, and I’m like, so just. We are hungry. I’m like, honey, we’ll just eat it early. Don’t worry about it.

And he’s like, no, it needs the extra 30 minutes. Like, yeah, he’s obsessed with it. And I’m like, this is why your food is so fricking good. Yeah. And I know this with like, mentorship with, to your point, like it could be anything like accounting or any area of your business if people are there. And we’ve literally called my husband’s someone in his team on this because I’m like.

You just, you’re not vibing. She’s like, but what am I doing? And I’m like, no, you’re doing the things, but you just, you’re just going through the motions. And I’m like, when we first worked with you, you were like, I can’t believe like, this is the greatest job I’ve ever had in my life. Like everything was 110 percent and you can feel that.

MADDY: Yeah. Well, I had to like, we, it was a mutual parting of ways, but one, one of the girls who I’ll always be grateful for, because she was one of the only one special member in the team through all of this, she really stuck by me and she like did what had to be done to get the business back on, on deck, but eventually she just lost her passion for it, and I just kind of called her out on it.

And this is what I mean about. Having those hard conversations and as early as you can, because she was already starting, her energy was already starting to affect other new, new stuff, hires their energy. And it’s like, you have to cut it off. You know, it’s not, she was still doing her job. She, I still personally really like her.

But it was just like, she’d lost the passion for what she was doing and it’s just, yeah, she couldn’t be here anymore.

CLARE: Yeah. And either you can shift your energetic state and get it back. I know. Yeah. I know that there’s times in my business where I’ve just been like, Oh my gosh, I’m so like that my heart’s just, but you can, if you desire to, you can recreate that energy, that passion, that excitement again.

But if someone’s checked out and they’re done, yeah. They’re done.

MADDY: I know with myself, like if I’m not vibing it, I usually have to like hand off whatever that thing is that I’m not vibing and stop doing that. Or I need to go and find something else that lights me up. Otherwise I will start to kill the thing.

Yeah. Like I will start to kill it because I’ll just stop doing it or I’ll stop like only half of it or whatever. And so it’s like, like I’ve stopped one on one coaching with people because I feel like I It just wasn’t right with where I needed to go. And I it’s because it is like, as you know, one on one coaching can be such, like, it’s such a, you give a lot of yourself away and a lot of your energy away.

And I just didn’t have enough to then be able to focus on other things.

CLARE: Yeah. And I think. It’s such an intimate thing as well. Like if your energy is off in a coaching dynamic, I think that people would really be able to sense that it’s really interesting because people always ask me and they’re like, Oh, are you going to stop one on one?

And I’m like, I love,

MADDY: like,

CLARE: I, I love, like, it’s my favorite thing is coaching people, but I totally understand why other people, it wouldn’t be, or for a period of time, it might be, and then it might not be. And maybe one day it won’t light me up anymore. You just got to follow that. So I’m really curious.

Well, and now that you’ve sort of got this focus back on, on profit and building a profitable and sustainable business, how does this all fit in with energetics? Like if, if you’re like breaking love, I don’t know, hosting events. I mean, I love hosting events, but geez. The profit, like, let’s be honest, it’s not really a big profit spinner.

Is it? How does that work for you? When you’re sitting there looking at different components of your business, do you sometimes do things? I know I do like running retreats for me. It’s one of those things. And I’m like, this is, this doesn’t make sense. But far out. I love it. Like I have to kind of do some things that perhaps aren’t as profitable as other sections of the business.

How does this work for you?

MADDY: Yeah. Well, I guess it’s about balance like everything, but I actually relate this back to what my parents have always told me about real estate investing. So if you listen to the hardcore real estate investors, they’ll tell you never to buy your primary place of residence, always rent, like something a bit shitty so that you can put all of your capital into buying more houses.

Then you build up a housing empire. And my parents have done quite well out of property. But they always had a really nice home themselves because they’re thinking it was like you have to fucking live. You have to live. And it’s the same with like, In a business, I had this conversation with my general manager only yesterday because she went and met a perspective client here in Makai.

It became clear that the client would be better suited to one on one coaching, which isn’t what she does. It’s what another team member does. She can do it, but her time is better spent doing other things. But then I basically said to her. Cause she was like, Oh, I feel sad that it’s not going to be me working.

And I’m like, if you want to host the one on one coaching, go for it. If that’s something you want to do, that makes you feel good, then go and do it. And I became so obsessed with this like 80, 20 principle, probably at the start of 2023, where I was like, we’re only going to do the 20 percent of the activities that generate 80 percent of the income.

And I kept cutting and cutting and cutting and cutting services. And then we became extremely profitable. But then things kind of started like. There were people in the team that weren’t getting as much joy because they weren’t doing the things that really lit them up because I’d cut the service. And then there were also, I felt like we weren’t, I don’t know how to explain it, but it’s like in our agency side, for example, revenue was stalling and I couldn’t figure out why, because all these things were working and I kind of realized we’d cut websites to be clear.

So I’m like, I kind of realized the websites. Number one, it completely lights up the person that works on them and she loves to do them and loves to bring them to life. Second of all, people know that they need a website. So when they come to us, they say, Hey, I need a website. Then I can actually start the conversation.

Hey, actually, what you need is a strategy first. And then we can talk about a website. So it kind of, Even though the websites in themselves weren’t extremely profitable, they were actually leading to a lot more work. And so it’s like, you do need to, you can’t just look at numbers on a page and be like, cut the websites.

They’re not that profitable compared to the strategies because you have to actually understand what, like, again, it’s about understanding your customers and understanding the stories in your business. Yeah. The question was about energetics though, wasn’t it?

CLARE: No, but this makes so much sense. And again, like, you know, for example, speaking, I’m doing a lot of speaking at the moment and people are, I mean, even though I’m getting paid for it, if you, if you objectively stand back and I look at what my hourly rate is, the fact that I need to get hair and makeup done, the fact that I’ve got to travel somewhere, you know, it, but it, it all is actually part of the marketing mix.

MADDY: Yeah.

CLARE: And, you know, people might. See you on stage and they might go, Oh, cool. I’m going to go and hire you straight away. But then they kind of go, Hey, that’s really interesting. And then they might mention you to someone. And then, you know, it kind of is all this. It’s all interwoven. But I think that the energy that you, you did allude to that by like saying that with the websites, like if someone loves doing something, that’s going to contribute to that.

MADDY: Yeah.

CLARE: Overall to the business, you know, how people are perceiving it, how the team is performing together.

MADDY: Yeah. And I think like, I always talk about these two different modes of. Being in business survival mode and like, I don’t know, impact mode, let’s call it because I used to be really hard on myself about being so money obsessed.

You know, like I, number one, I was ego driven to get the money because it was validating me. Right. Like I was so it mattered so much how much money I personally earned. That’s how I determined my worth at the same time. I have to reflect back and think, hang on, it’s actually, I had to be money obsessed when my business was insolvent.

And I couldn’t pay bills. I had to be money obsessed to get money. And now it’s easy for me to say like, Oh, all we care about now is being impactful and changing lives. And it’s like, because we can, because we have the money to do it. And it’s like, you can’t start a business with no money and then only care about driving an impact if you have no resources to do that.

So it’s like. I don’t know. I feel like if you’re in like survival mode or stage one or startup or whatever it is, it’s like, you have to work on getting the money in and be smart about that. But once you have it, then you have the power and the freedom and the choice and the flexibility to say, yeah, I do actually want to go like this event.

I’m speaking in a Melbourne. I’m not getting paid for it because I’m now good friends with the organizer, but I’m going me, my husband and two of my team members and my mom who manages our money is like, what the fuck? Fuck you guys. Like how, why do four people need to be there? How is this helping the business in any way?

And I’m like, you just wait, mother, you just.

CLARE: I said it always interesting. When you have like an intuitive. Feeling or I don’t know, an energetic pull to something. And sometimes the logical, like people looking are like, this makes absolutely no sense. I know even with our home that we own, I mean, we’ve you know, we’ve got a waterfront home.

It’s it’s a shitty house. Like we’re living in a beach shack and people are like, why would you live there? Like our last house was a five bedroom house, three bathroom, beautiful new modern home. And now we live, people come here and they’re like, are you serious? Like all of you use one bathroom, you and your husband, we work in a three by three office.

Both of us are here next to each other all day, every day. And I’m like, I know you don’t get it, but this energetically is so much. And one day everyone will be like, I can’t believe like you’re a genius for buying there and, you know, making that decision. And, and. And maybe other people don’t get it, but I know that one day they will.

MADDY: Well, that’s, I learned that when we first moved to Mackay from Sydney, because my husband who’s, I believe spiritually gifted, even though he doesn’t want to like invite that in, but he basically, he was a captain of the ferries down in Sydney, but he took like, not a pay cut, but he took like, A position cut to come and be a deckhand on the tugs casually in my car.

And everyone was like, what the fuck are you doing? If you’re crazy, like you’re literally getting demoted, like what, but he kind of already knew he’s like, I just, I need to be in that. I need to be there because I know in a new contract port, there’s going to be. A master that leaves or a captain that leaves, and then I’m going to get that job.

And that is exactly how it worked out. And he ended up being the youngest ever still to this day, the youngest ever captain tug captain in that company. And it’s like, from the outside, people are like, what are you doing? But he like knew for sure. And luckily, like, I’m just like, yeah, sure. I’ll move.

Whatever. I’ll do something new. Just finished renovating my house in Sydney, but I’ll, I’ll move. So, yeah,

CLARE: and everything’s all happened for a reason sometimes, even if you can’t sequentially or intentionally see the, where it’s all heading.

MADDY: Well, I call it the red thread when you can look back and you see like the red thread that’s like, Oh, that’s why all that shit fucked up.

But it’s like, like for me, my business had to fall apart. The worst thing had to happen for me, for me to rebuild it. To be able to be in this place because I, when, even when the business was making really good money with the old team and the old structure and all this stuff, I was so mentally unwell, like my anxiety, I was like the worst mother, the worst wife.

I couldn’t even think of like having friends because I’m like, that’s just too stressful for me. I was just constantly on edge, feeling like something bad was about to happen, which is generalized anxiety disorder. Right. But it’s like, I had to literally go through the worst shit. And then rebuild it. And so now, even when things are fricking amazing and it’s like, ah, even if it falls apart tomorrow, I can just rebuild it again.

You know, like, I was talking to my sister about it yesterday, where it’s almost like you go through so much shit and you have to learn through so much lessons that nothing kind of bothers you anymore. Cause you’re like, ah, I went, that’s about that. Whatever anyone says about me online, I don’t care about that.

Like,

CLARE: Yeah, yeah, totally. I, I feel in hindsight again, but I was really bullied through school

MADDY: and

CLARE: now that, you know, you have online haters and things like that. And I like, I don’t know, I’m like, I kind of laugh and I had this moment where I thought that I saw my high school bully who physically beat me up.

She like gave me a blood nose. I had like bruises on my head, everything. I thought I saw her in a coffee shop. And. I was like, Oh my gosh. And I, I didn’t have a panic attack. I was, I was like, I almost had this like sense of pity for her because I thought, you know, even if she physically beat me up again, like right there.

And then I’m like, dude, like, look what I’ve done with my life. Like I, I love myself and you clearly don’t. Otherwise, why would you have been projecting all of that stuff onto me all that time? And I just had this real peace sense of moment. I saw it. I’m like, wow, like I don’t feel any fear or anything. I just feel a sense of like, almost like pity for you.

And I think that this is something that I’m learning about online bullies is that that’s ultimately where it comes from. It doesn’t come from a place of.

MADDY: No.

CLARE: Trying to educate a whole part, like at the end of the day, it comes from a place of lack and lack of self worth within.

MADDY: Yeah. Well done.

CLARE: Anyway, we’ve got a whole, whole different bunch of segues here.

MADDY: Yeah. That’s a conversation with me.

CLARE: This is a conversation with me as well. Two ADHD minds just going all over the place. I love it. And look, anything else that you want to share with the listeners, whether it’s about profit, life, energetics, chasing your dreams.

MADDY: Like, I want to say so much, but I don’t even know where to start.

I think what, what I would say, especially since it’s us having the conversation and you had such a profound impact on the whole trajectory of my life. But it’s like, I always tell the story that I didn’t have the money to hire you. Initially, you know, like I didn’t technically have that money, or I think it was like all of the money that I was going to earn, right.

That I would pay myself as a salary, but I knew that I had to. I had to do something different. I wasn’t going to keep doing the same thing that I’d been doing for four years. I had to do something different. And at that time, doing something different was getting some expert advice. And then again, if I look, yeah, if I guess if I look at all the pivotal moments in my business, it’s been like really doing something fucking different, like doing something that scares me, like hiring, having that Like feeling like, Oh, how am I going to make sure I can pay this?

It will, it’s the same with when I hired my first team member, like I hired her one day a week and I was like, how am I going to make sure I have the money every week to pay her for one day, you know, and now I’ve got nine people’s livelihoods depending on me, but then it’s like, You have to do the thing that scares you or nothing is going to change.

Like when I had to come in and make half the team redundant, I was scared and it wasn’t a good feeling, but it was kind of a good feeling. If I will like, just cause it was like, I knew it was something that had to be done for the business to continue. And so you just have to do the thing that scares you.

And if you’re not willing to do that, then you, nothing’s going to change.

CLARE: You have to

MADDY: get so honest with yourself.

CLARE: Yeah. And that’s the same, like for any big decision that you’re making the first time you hire, like the first time you invest in your marketing, you’re like, what if this doesn’t work out?

And people want you to say, Everything’s going to be perfect. And, but it’s like, this is marketing. Like sometimes it’s going to take a couple of tries and you can either keep doing nothing

MADDY: and

CLARE: hoping and praying that just magically clients come along or you’re going to lean in and go, right. I’m going to give this a shot.

And this really is entrepreneurship in a nutshell, isn’t it?

MADDY: Yes. And what I was just trying to distinguish is like, okay, how do we distinguish the difference between someone blindly investing in a shitty agency, 10 grand a month and be like, Oh, it’s going to work. Okay. So the difference is if you’re in this state where you’re like, not, I mean, things don’t even have to be diet, but if you’re just like, things are not changing, why are things not changing?

And you need to take big action and you’re scared of it. What I always advise is Invest in yourself because you are the only person that can guarantee that it’s going to work out because you can just keep going until you figure it out. And so that’s why, like, when I was looking at, when I hired you, for example, it’s like, I didn’t hire A business manager to come into my business.

I hired a business coach to coach me on getting better. And then it’s the same with people who have a bad experience with an agency. And I’m like, well, what were you doing this whole time? Just sitting back. Letting them tell you how things, why weren’t, this is why we do so much coaching. We have our online school now because it’s like with content, for example, don’t outsource your content.

Don’t outsource any of your marketing until you’ve figured out how to make your marketing work yourself, because that is a skill for life. Number one, it doesn’t matter what you do. You can use those skills, but number two, you’re the only one that’s not going to stop until you figure it out. And so the safest thing to do is to upskill yourself, educate yourself and make yourself better because.

That’s like a sure thing then. Like that’s risk free in my opinion.

CLARE: Oh my gosh. So, so good. Okay. So first piece of Maddy wisdom. What’s that? What’s that something? Can we use alliteration? Maddy Musings? Maddy, I don’t know. I don’t know. They used to call

MADDY: me Millionaire Maddy, remember?

CLARE: I sure do. That was my nickname.

See, there you go. I don’t all start. Like I remember when you first said it and you were like what? And then you’re like, yeah. And then you just like owned it. You’re like, I’m going to be millionaire Maddy. I love it. So millionaire Maddy musings, number one is do the thing that scares you. Anything else?

MADDY: Prioritize your social media. Prioritize it. And that’s wild coming from me because I used to judge the social media girlie so hard thinking it was just fluff. Now look at me. It’s like the main thing that I say. It’s like, have a good strategy, but that it gets, when I say, take your social media seriously, it’s literally, we have this tool, which is the internet where we can post, record ourselves once, post ourselves on the internet.

And then for free. Our video gets shown to people who they think are going to enjoy the video the most, like, think of Pete, think, think if we said this back in the sixties to people, they’re like, and there’s actually people that think they want to grow a business without doing that.

CLARE: Yeah.

MADDY: It’s like, I think we need to reassess the situation here and be like you, even if you just get 200 people to look at you talking about your business, that’s 200 people.

Think of what that would have cost pre internet. Yeah. Yeah.

CLARE: Yeah. Yeah. Prioritize social media. Got it.

MADDY: Work on your own shit.

CLARE: Work on your own shit. I love that. And I think that that is, to your point, like the biggest thing.

MADDY: The

CLARE: more that you are loving yourself, healing yourself, working on your mindset, the other stuff all comes organically off the back.

MADDY: It does, because you can’t control other people. You can control, again, it’s all, I find it hard to distinguish because all the advice is just the same thing, which is like, you are the center of the universe. Like I said, my husband’s life revolves around me. But you are the center of your universe and the way you are the main character, you know, the way you think, the way you show up.

You Will create your external world, whatever that is. And it sounds woo woo and weird, but it’s not, it’s science.

CLARE: Yeah.

MADDY: It’s like attracts

CLARE: like.

MADDY: Yeah.

CLARE: And I think it’s, you know, I was saying to you earlier about how I did a training yesterday about, you know, why are all the people in my world, multi millionaires now, like most of my, most of my friends.

And I’m like, it’s because there’s a frequency of attraction around, this is the world that I belong in. This is the energy that I’m putting out

MADDY: and

CLARE: therefore I’m going to attract people. Those kind of people into my world. Yeah, I love love love. Well, I on that. Thank you for the millionaire Maddy musings to wrap up this episode of the podcast.

I’ve absolutely loved our conversation. It’s so incredibly inspiring to watch your journey. I know that people who found podcast over the years. Brave to me. They’re like, Oh my gosh, Maddy, and I want to do what Maddy’s done. And I want to work with Maddy or I’ve worked with Maddy. And yeah, I just wanted to say, you know, a huge congratulations.

You deserve everything and so much more, which I know is coming your way. And I’m cheering you on and celebrating you all these years later.

MADDY: Thank you, Clare. Thank you for being such a pivotal part of my story and my journey. And I couldn’t have done it without you. And likewise, I’m looking forward to seeing what you do next.

CLARE: Watch this space.

* Transcript created by AI – may contain errors or omissions from original podcast audio