The Causey Consulting Podcast

The most downloaded guest episode to date featured Scott Grayson talking about cubicle zombie life. This topic is now even more germane than when we discussed it in June of 2020. 🤔

Key topics:

✔️ Updates on what Scott's up to these days. Spoiler alert: a lot.
✔️ If you weren't ready last year but you are ready now to escape the cubicle zombie life... how do you do it?
✔️ If you are Mike the Micromanager and you feel that you need a digital panopticon of surveillance to suss out who is working hard versus who is goofing off all day: you got bigger problems, man.
✔️ Plan ahead. Think about your own future and what's best for you and your family. Corporate America will always take care of itself. Who's looking out for you? (Hint: it had better be YOU yourself.)
✔️ Do you have valuable, marketable skills? If not, do you know how you could acquire them?


Links to find Scott online:

https://strengthandreason.com/

https://www.mentallyunscripted.com/

Need more? Email me: https://causeyconsultingllc.com/contact-causey/

Episode 99! Hard to believe. Today I'll be answering some viewer mail from the last episode, i.e.: OK, the social media outage scared me. How can I not be so dependent on it?

Key topics:

✔️ I don't recommend going cold turkey, especially if a huge amount of your income is predicated on social media. Instead, create an exit strategy BEFORE you need it.
✔️ This is not insane. Don't think for one second that your business could not survive without social media. Yes, even in 2021, this is true.
✔️ Is your marketing plan based mostly or solely on spamming other people? Well, if so, plz find something else to do with your time. Sending out 500 LI InMails each day trying to pitch yourself is probably not the best way to make money. Ironically, it might also get you banned from the platform one day.
✔️ There are other ways to obtain positive reviews and testimonials without relying on star reviews through social media. If you're viewing social media as the only means for proof of concept, you'll stay stuck forever.

Links to articles I discuss:

https://www.broganmicallef.com/articles/quitting-social-media-guide

http://www.alexandrafranzen.com/2021/01/30/marketing/

Special intro music: "99" by Toto.
Special outro music: "It Keeps You Runnin'" by Michael McDonald.

Need more? Email me: https://causeyconsultingllc.com/contact-causey/

On Monday, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus went down. Was your business impacted by it? Did you hardly even notice?

Key topics:

✔️ As I've said repeatedly: the future is now. Censorship. Banning & shadow banning. Was the outage really caused by a network problem or was it something else? I dunno, but I do know that if you're still out there basing your entire income on a platform you don't own or control, you're playing with fire.
✔️ Do you have access to your own data? If you've been talking to JKTheButterfly82634 on social media and don't know her actual name and email address, how would you reach her again if that platform died?
✔️ Nothing is too big or too popular to fail. Remember the mess with Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers? Or Enron? 

Link to Verge article I mention: https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/4/22708989/instagram-facebook-outage-messenger-whatsapp-error

Need more? Email me: https://causeyconsultingllc.com/contact-causey/

Wu wei can be defined as "effortless action," which may seem like a contradiction to the American mind. Busy, busy, busy. Always on the grind. Never stop hustling. Yet what happens when we run out of F bucks in our daily F budget?

Key topics:

✔️ Too often we prioritize other people's agenda  for our own time rather than asking the simple question: does this even matter?
✔️ So Karen is mad that her apple cinnamon candle wasn't perfectly balanced but rather did not have enough apple scent to satisfy her. WHO CARES.
✔️ We have a series of decisions to make before we even start work for the day. As time goes on, the brain gets weary. If you want to have gas left in the tank for family, friends, charity work, etc., you need to be mindful of your own F bucks and the overall F budget.
✔️ I LOVE how Sarah calls social invitations and extroverted hoo-ha "impositions" because that is precisely what they are. If you want to go and you give an F buck for it, cool. But if you don't, the world will not end by saying, "No thank you."

Special intro music: "Forget You" by CeeLo Green.

Link to Sarah Knight's TED Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwRzjFQa_Og

Need more? Email me: https://causeyconsultingllc.com/contact-causey/

In this episode, I answer some viewer mail with a common problem we encounter as solopreneurs, freelancers, and small business owners: when I started out, I did whatever I had to do  in order to succeed. Now how can I do what I want to do?

Key topics:

✔️ Jane recounts a story of someone who wanted her to FILM HERSELF working. Cuz that's not hella creepy or anything. 😲
✔️ Sometimes we work with less than ideal clients to get that first burst of cash or a few positive testimonials. So how do we move from the less than ideal to the ideal?
✔️ The level of micromanagement and nitpicking you will get is the level you are willing to tolerate. This is true across the board in any industry.
✔️ Constant monitoring may be some control freak manager's fantasy but you don't have to accept it in your own practice. Nor should you be perpetrating that on your own employees.

Special intro & outro music "Jell-O" by Egozi.

Links discussed in this episode:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/04/30/work-from-home-surveillance/

Michael Sealey's meditation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2H1On9pr7y4


Need more? Email me: https://causeyconsultingllc.com/contact-causey/

In this episode, I discuss my rediscovery of real food. Yet what does that mean? What is real food versus fake food or Frankenfoods?

Links to the books I discuss:

Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food: https://www.amazon.com/Defense-Food-Michael-Pollan/dp/1594133328

Nina Planck's Real Food: https://www.amazon.com/Real-Food-What-Eat-Why/dp/1632864584

Gina Mallet's Last Chance to Eat: https://www.amazon.com/Last-Chance-Eat-Finding-Taste/dp/0393344843

Key topics:

✔️ My weight loss and health & wellness journey has been slow, which is completely different from crash diets. 
✔️ Our eating and exercise habits can re-trigger emotional trauma. Be aware of that.
✔️ Most fad diets recommend food consumption below the threshold of the Minnesota Starvation Experiment! Don't believe me? Google it and read about it for yourself.
✔️ As I said in the last episode: Always talk to your doctor FIRST before you make any changes to your own eating habits and/or exercise routine. Don't get in a hurry and cause more harm than good.


Need more? Email me: https://causeyconsultingllc.com/contact-causey/

In March, I recorded an episode called "No More Dieting... So Now What?" After reading Dr. Aamodt's book, Why Diets Make Us Fat, I wanted to figure out that million dollar question for myself. If I don't want to yo-yo diet and punish myself anymore, what do I do?

Key topics:

✔️ The Buddhist idea of the Middle Path is so useful here. Too much asceticism makes life dull and restrictive yet too much indulgence can make us feel sluggish and tired. 
✔️ I focused on one habit at a time and truly worked on not doing too much too soon. Yes, progress is slower that way but it also tends to be long lasting. 
✔️ Keeping a food journal can be very helpful. Sometimes we tend to graze mindlessly or eat little snacks that we brain-dump later. 
✔️ Fake foods are usually highly processed and don't make me feel full for any significant length of time. Yes, they may be convenient but at what cost?
✔️ Always talk to your doctor FIRST before you make any changes to your own eating habits and/or exercise routine. Don't get in a hurry and cause more harm than good.


Need more? Email me: https://causeyconsultingllc.com/contact-causey/

You dream of leaving Corporate America behind. No more cubicle life for you! It's time to set yourself free. So you get started on a freelancing site and wait for the cash and the great opportunities to roll in... but WTH is actually going on?!?

Key topics:

✔️ Sites like Upwork, Fiverr, and Freelancer.com can be  a decent place to get started and/or to garner some positive reviews and testimonials. They can also suck the life out of you and ding you with fees. 
✔️ At some point, when you are ready to truly grow and scale your business, you will look around and realize: it's nigh on impossible using one of these platforms. You'll probably also feel a tremendous sense of burnout, too.
✔️ These sites often promise to have the freelancer's back. If you work, you'll get paid on time every time.  But is that the reality?
✔️ Customer support is often terrible. Freelancers and clients sniping back and forth at each other on the feedback pages accomplishes nothing and looks tacky.
✔️ Pricing is usually a race to the bottom. The clients shopping on these platforms are often not your ideal prospects either. Why? Well, TBH, some of them are downright abusive.


Links to articles I mention:

https://doubleyourfreelancing.com/escaping_upwork/

https://medium.com/swlh/freelancing-websites-to-avoid-like-the-plague-7db694ed7293

https://www.proteusthemes.com/blog/why-you-should-avoid-freelance-marketplaces-at-all-costs/

https://web-crunch.com/posts/how-not-to-freelance

Need more? Email me: https://causeyconsultingllc.com/contact-causey/

Teddy is a tailgate negotiator. You agree on terms up-front, sign necessary documents, and begin the project. But then... Teddy decides to renege, ask for items not agreed upon, insist on endless revisions, etc. Ned is needy. He wants to micromanage you and he has 50,000 questions to ask before he can hire you for the project. Ugh.

Key topics:

✔️ You always have to consider the cost. When you are looking at the money, don't focus on the gross. Focus on the net. When all the expenses and taxes are deducted, how much will you actually net from this? Sometimes looking at the true bottom line is enough for you to decide that a Teddy or a Ned is not worth it. 
✔️ Your business needs to function well for YOU. The customer is not always right and you should not put them up on a pedestal.
✔️ The Buddhist idea of a middle path is useful here. A good client usually has sensible questions and doesn't rush through the process of hiring you yet also does not drag it out or ask an excessive number of anxiety-laced questions.
✔️ You have to weed out clients who expect that, because you are a freelancer, solopreneur, or small business owner, you will be at their mercy. They hold all the cards and you hold none. Nope. Huh-uh. Inaccurate.

Link to the article I discuss in this episode: https://www.inc.com/jayson-demers/7-types-of-clients-who-will-take-your-patience-to-the-brink.html


Need more? Email me: https://causeyconsultingllc.com/contact-causey/

One of my coaching clients asked me, "When are you done with testing and beta testing? When can I just kick back and let things run on auto-pilot from here on out?" NEVER. Unless you sell your business or want to allow it to run itself into the ground, you are never done with testing. 

Key topics:

✔️ A more appropriate analogy is a bicycle with training wheels. As you gain more knowledge and you feel more confident, you can take the training wheels off the bike. But this is different from thinking you never have to test ideas or that you'll lock a system in and it'll work forever and ever amen. 
✔️ Your target audience may change over time. Likewise, your own personal goals and/or business goals may change, too. A friend of mine sold his business to travel the country in an RV. And then when his son got married and started a family, he decided he no longer wanted to be a rolling stone. Stuff changes. That's life.
✔️ Part of practicing alchemy in your business involves refinement, sifting and sorting, choosing and leaving alone. If this is something you hate, you may have to determine if entrepreneurship is the right choice for you.
✔️ You should say "no" to more than you say "yes" to, especially once you're past the early days of your business. In the same way that I do not work with very small, very young start-ups in the middle of pure chaos and confusion, I also don't work with people who want Signs, Wonders, and Miracles. Turn this water into wine in five minutes or else!  Umm, no thanks.

Special intro music: "All I Need is a Miracle" by Mike + The Mechanics.

Need more? Email me: https://causeyconsultingllc.com/contact-causey/