This is The Emerge and Expand Podcast, a place for introverted and sensitive souls who are trying to cut through the noise online and create success in their own businesses on their own terms. I'm your host, Catherine Mackenzie Smith and I'm so glad that you're here. Hi and welcome to another episode of The Emergent. Expand podcast. I have another interview in the Do Business Different Friendly Interview series for you today, but before we get into it, I just wanted to remind you about my new Get Out of Your Head and Get Into Action seven day journey called One Step at a Time. It is completely free. You can download it@katherinemckenzismith.com journey and if you're listening to this, between the 6th and the 13 July, I'm running three free live stream sessions in my introvert, friendly business community. So if you'd like to come along to that, all of the details will be in the show notes or head to Catherineckenzismiths.com journey to get all of the details and first access to the guide when it's available. Now, let me introduce you to the guest for today's Do Business Differently interview. It is my friend Brooke McCarthy, who I met when I was very early in my business back in Sydney at a B school meetup back in the day. And I just really appreciated Brooke's no BS approach to business and the stories that she tells, not just in her life, but also through her marketing messaging. So I'm really excited to share this conversation with you today as well. Brooke works with values based business owners who deliver professional services through business coaching, training courses and Masterminds to equip owners to earn consistent ten K months while magnifying their impact without burning out, getting overwhelmed or overspending on team tech or other fancy stuff. Hi Brooke, I'm so excited to reconnect with you today and have an amazing conversation with you.

Me too, me too. It's been six years, at least six.

Years since I was living in Sydney and was probably the last time that we got to see each other.

Indeed, long time ago.

I know. So great to reconnect and I know this conversation is just going to be so juicy today. I can already tell from the chat we had before we started recording how good it's going to be because there's so many things that we could talk about and I'm excited to see how that plays out.

Yeah, we're like, come on, we have to hit record. This is.

The good stuff. But just for anyone who is listening who isn't across your work, can you start by just telling us a little bit about what you do and who you support?

Yes, I'm a business coach. Please don't hold that against me. I'm also a business trainer and I work with soloists and business owners. They tend to come from the health sector as well as creative sector. So I do tend to attract a lot of writers and videographers and generally kind of creative people, even if they don't consider themselves creative, even if what their work isn't kind of obviously creative, they are still creatives and sensitive folk, critical thinkers and most often women. So I do have some men, mainly gay, but the majority of my clients are female, and a lot of them are over 40 as well. Now, you said, don't hold that against me.

So that actually brings me to a question that I really like to ask. What is it about the work that you do and when maybe you started your business that made you want to do business differently from how others in your industry do it?

How long have you got? So many things. And in fact, I find it personally really motivating to look at other people doing a shockingly shit job of something, and I think, oh, God, like, I almost feel a moral obligation. You know, I can think off the top of my head at least three instances. There was one time I was just about to quit social media marketing. I found it sorry, social media marketing training. I found it very hard work to deliver that. I found people got highly emotional, and I was like, I'm done with this. I'm too old to be teaching it anyway. Let the young kids teach this. And then I went to a business event. There were about 300 people in the room. It was one of those events where you know you're going to get pitched because the ticket is free or the tickets cheap, and they pack people in, and they got the credit card machines out the back near the doors. I wasn't paying much attention when I booked it, but it was all about social media marketing. And the guy who shall remain nameless was standing on stage giving the worst, most unworkable advice to a room full of small business owners that I kind of felt morally obligated to keep going.

I have to say, when you just said that, I was like, I have definitely had periods like that.