Permission to Kick Ass

Becoming a superstar as a solopreneur with Lisa Robbin Young

• Angie Colee • Episode 196

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Today we've got a real treat – the one and only Lisa Robbin Young is stopping by! Lisa is a self-titled Fusion Creative, and she's on a mission to help micro-business owners and solopreneurs become celebrities in their niche. In this power-packed episode, we dive deep into the world of creative entrepreneurship, the importance of embracing your unique wiring, and the process to becoming a celebrity in your space. 

Can't-Miss Moments

  • Ever felt like you don't quite fit into one box? Lisa shares her personal journey to discovering the creative entrepreneur spectrum and why someone who's struggling to pick a lane might just be a "fusion creative"...

  • ADHD and entrepreneurship: Lisa shares the surprising connection between the two, and this will make a lot of things instantly more clear (at least for a lot of us ADHDers in biz!)...

  • Breaking down Beyonce: how exactly does one become a superstar? Turns out there's a formula, and Lisa's here to share both the benefits and the downside people rarely discuss... 

  • Lisa's "bank balance" analogy will have you fighting the urge to beat yourself up on days when you can't do much...

  • Hop on, hop off: Lisa shares a major perspective shift that will change the way you think about "losing" clients...

Lisa's bio:

Lisa Robbin Young is an award-winning speaker, best-selling author, and accomplished musician with multiple albums to her credit. Lisa's been featured on Disney+, is the host of Creative Freedom, and founder of Ark Entertainment Media - a business consultancy for mavericks who want to become a celebrity in their niche in a way that works for how they're uniquely wired.

Lisa believes that the best way to be truly successful in life and business is to be yourself – warts, sparkles, and all – so you can Own Your Dreams Without Selling Your Soul™.

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Angie Colee:

Welcome to Permission to Kick Ass, the show that gives you a virtual seat at the bar for the real conversations that happen between entrepreneurs. I'm interviewing all kinds of business owners, from those just a few years into freelancing to CEOs helming nine-figure companies. If you've ever worried that everyone else just seems to get it and you're missing something or messing things up, this show is for you. I'm your host, angie Coley, and let's get to it. I'm so excited for this one One because it has been a long time coming For those of you that have never run a podcast before. Sometimes scheduling can be a bitch, and it has been a bitch. It has tried to keep us apart, but we are making it work and love will keep us together. Yes, all my musical people. That makes me happy, and for both of us, it's our last call of the day, so we're ending on a high note, with the high energy ready to bring it to you for permission to kick ass. So, yeah, there's my little ramble. Love it. Well, tell us a little bit about what you do.

Lisa Robbin Young:

Well, right now, today, I like to have my fingers in a lot of pies, which is why I say it that way. I'm a fusion creative, so fingers in lots of pies is kind of how we operate multi-passionate, et cetera, et cetera. So my primary objective right now is to help establish micro-business owners, solopreneurs, become the celebrity in their space. I help them figure out the how of getting from where they are now to that stage, that spotlight, that presence in the sun where people are chasing them instead of them having to chase other people. That came out of decades of work that some of which I still do, as a performing artist and author, as speaker myself. So I am a creative entrepreneur. I work with creative entrepreneurs. I've kind of built my whole business around supporting entrepreneurs with the can-do inspiration and the how-to education of building a profitable, sustainable business, doing what they love that works for, how they're wired to work, so that they can become that celebrity in their space.

Angie Colee:

Oh, I love that and works for how they're wired to work. I know that we've had that conversation on calls before about how and I honestly think that I attract ADHD people to this podcast. Any wonder, considering we take every shiny path that appears before us. But we were made for business, I'm convinced, because we can hold the multitudes that would burn out your neurotypical brain and pivot very fast. So I love this.

Lisa Robbin Young:

Well, and actually gosh, probably 20 years ago now I'm dating myself there was a study that was done and they were considering rebranding ADHD as latent entrepreneur type, because so many entrepreneurs were demonstrating ADD or ADHD-like tendencies. I don't have the link to the article anywhere near me anymore, but when I saw that I was like oh, it makes so much sense for the reasons that you exactly described. It's like our brain can hold multiple ideas at the same time figure out how they synergize, how they do or don't work together, whether it's worth pursuing or dropping, synergize how they do or don't work together, whether it's worth pursuing or dropping. And if we drop it, we can just pick up and move on to the next shiny object for lack of a better word, but it's not always a shiny object and if you're fusion creative, you can hold multiple balls in the air at the same time and still make progress on them, versus getting distracted from one project to the next, if that makes sense.

Angie Colee:

Oh, I like that. I'm writing fusion creative down because I want to circle back to that. But I totally agree with you. My totally uneducated not a psychologist or any kind of schooling in psychology hypothesis is that eventually this is going to be stripped as a disorder and it's just going to become like a certain percentage of the population works this way, certain percent of the population works that way, and as we learn more, it's just going to be more normalized.

Lisa Robbin Young:

Well, as much as I would love to agree with you, I think once it's in the DSM, it's always in the DSM. It's really hard to get a diagnosis out of the manuals. But I agree with you. I think the normalization of it is going to become much more blatant and obvious, as we've noticed with a lot of things that were taboo conversations or things that we just didn't talk about in the past 50, 60, 100 years. The light is being shined on those corners now and it's like, well, yeah, disabilities just mean you're differently abled, it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you and et cetera, et cetera. Right, lots of different things that once were seen as we don't talk about, that are now coming to light, as this is just part of the human experience y'all Get with the program.

Angie Colee:

Mm-hmm, and it's okay, and it doesn't really make that much of a difference to acknowledge that we've got the differences. It still works. It's fantastic, right. I want to circle back to this fusion creative thing, because that's the first time I've heard that used and it instantly made me curious. I need to know more.

Lisa Robbin Young:

So the reason you've probably never heard it before is because it's a term that I coined when I identified what I call the creative entrepreneur type spectrum. So years ago, before I wrote my last book, I was in a crisis in my business, trying to figure out who my right audience was. What was I really here to do? Because I had done so many things, I just couldn't see the path forward. And so I sat down with a pile of sticky notes and I started writing down the client that I worked with and what we worked on. And I had all of these sticky notes laying all over and I started to try and find the patterns. You know, oh, these guys are all kind of the same. I'm going to put them over here. And so are these guys, I'm going to put them over there. My kid thought I was doing some kind of crazy craft project with sticky notes, and I'm like no, I'm working, I'm working here. And so I ended up having two relatively solid piles. But then I had this handful of stragglers that didn't really fit in either pile and I was like I feel like I'm one of those stragglers, like I don't really belong in either pile, and that's when I started to get clarity that it wasn't two camps, it was a spectrum.

Lisa Robbin Young:

So we have this spectrum of creativity and I like to say everyone is creative and entrepreneurs are creative, but not all creatives are entrepreneurs. And so when we look at this spectrum of creative entrepreneurship, we have what I call, on one end, the chaotic creatives, and that's not a pejorative term at all, it simply means the way your brain is wired. It's more about the experiential nature of what you're bringing to the world. Go with the flow, trust your gut, honor your instincts, channel it from the divine. And these are the people that we typically classify as creative folks. They're usually artists, musicians, writers, those kinds of folks.

Lisa Robbin Young:

On the other end of the spectrum, we have the linear creatives. For these folks, other end of the spectrum, we have the linear creatives. For these folks, order is the rule of the day Systems, processes, checklists, everything's got a place and everything's in its place, deadlines are met, there's no deviation. But then for folks like me fusion creatives we stand in the middle with one foot in each world. We can speak both languages with relative ease. We love and hate both ends of this spectrum, depending on the day.

Lisa Robbin Young:

We can't stay in one camp for too long. If I stay in that linear mode for too long, I start to feel imprisoned and trapped because that's my chaotic cycle going on. This is too much structure. But if I spend all my day in the chaotic realm all the time, then my linear side is like we need to put some roots down, we need to get grounded. I'm a kite without a string. There's no structure here. So fusion creatives kind of stand in the middle between these two worlds so that we can navigate it, and that's part of why we're kind of that jack of all trades.

Lisa Robbin Young:

But our biggest challenge then is asking for help, because while I'm so good at all these other things, I should just be able to do them. And it's faster if I just do it myself, which is true to a point. But at some point, if you're still doing everything yourself, you're left holding all the things. So you have to get good at empowering and delegating to your team so that they can support you to show up and be the talent that you are, because there is nobody else that has the same combination of skill sets that you have and it's important for you to lean into both. And so for linears, we want them to lean into systems and processes because typically that gets you to financial success more quickly. But without any type of user experience for what it is that you offer, you won't get those customers and keep them. On the other hand, chaotics can tend to have champagne wishes and Kool-Aid money.

Lisa Robbin Young:

On the other hand, chaotics can tend to have champagne wishes and Kool-Aid money and they want everything to look and feel a certain way and it has to measure up to this standard of excellence where it's crap and I'm not going to ship it and for them they need to understand. Hey, we start here and then we iterate, right, yes, I get, you want that Lamborghini experience, but today we got to start at a Yugo because that's where you're at, that's where your budget's at right. Like we can stretch that, but we can't. We can't get blood out of a stone, right? And when I talk about money I talk about I really talk about all the resources time, energy, money, effort and attention. Because when we talk about the return on resources versus the return on investment, then it's not just money, especially for early stage entrepreneurs, where money is usually tight anyways. It's about what are the resources that we have and how do we put those to best use, again, in the ways that work for how you're wired to work.

Angie Colee:

I love that. Okay, first of all, several things as I was taking notes. One I have never heard somebody so clearly articulate what it's like to be inside my head before. I feel like you get me on a deep spiritual level, because I definitely resonated with the fusion creative. And if I spend too much time on either side, I start to get a little Absolutely, Absolutely. And I also You're the only other person that I've really heard talk about this like return on investment. We can get so hooked on that in business and I understand that it's important to measure these things. And also, sometimes you have to get resourceful. Sometimes you have to get super scrappy and super creative and make it work when the money is not there to invest or you've only got time to invest. So I love that we're talking about that, the resources, what we can do to get into action even when the money is not there. It's fantastic.

Lisa Robbin Young:

Yeah, yeah, when I was single-momming it, uh, two or something years ago.

Lisa Robbin Young:

Uh, you, you only have so much time, so much energy, so much ability, so many spoons for those of you who are familiar with spoon theory and you can't put them everywhere.

Lisa Robbin Young:

So you have to be very judicious and intentional on where can I put this that's going to give me the best possible return, because once it's out there, it's gone.

Lisa Robbin Young:

I don't get that time back, I don't get that energy back, I don't get those moments without my kids back. So, if I'm going to put it out there, not to obsess over making the perfect choice, but what's the best possible choice that I can make with the information that I've been getting, to move the needle as far as I can, one of the things I tell my clients all the time is do what you can as you are able, and some days you're going to be more able than others, and we have to acknowledge that our capacity changes, and that's true of normative body types just as well as it is anybody with a neurodivergence or a disability or aging parents that they're caring for. Our containers can only hold so much, and when it's full, it's full, and when it's empty, it's empty and we have to be realistic about that, regardless of what kind of a business we're trying to build.

Angie Colee:

Oh, I love that and I love that you took the time to specify, because we talk a lot about neurodiversity and capabilities and abilities and capacity a lot on this show, but I think it's important to point that out for everybody. This is a universal principle what you can give today is not the same as what you can give tomorrow is not the same as what you can give on your best day or your worst day or a day that you're sick, and we've got to stop putting this pressure on ourselves to show up consistently from day to day to constantly be outputting at the same level. Like I mentioned it a little bit before our well, maybe I didn't mention it before we were recording. I'm operating on very little sleep today, but I was like shit is going to happen. Lisa and I are going to talk. That is the end of it.

Angie Colee:

Last night, both of my cats decided to conspire against me and when one was up and waking me up, the other was down and vice versa, and they did that starting at 3.30 this morning. And so we're here today just doing as much quiet work as we can, with a little bit of nappage and a lot of outreach. So I can wait for those replies to come in later. This is the day for me to just focus on quiet stuff, on thinking stuff and taking it easy, instead of like, oh my God, I got to pitch this, I got to do that.

Lisa Robbin Young:

Knock it all off Absolutely. It's really important for us to recognize that. I equate it to like your checkbook right Today, you may have $10,000 in the bank. Tomorrow, you may have $2 in the bank. Well, you can't spend $10,000 on a day when you only have two. They have $2 in the bank. Well, you can't spend $10,000 on a day when you only have two, and you have to be honest about that.

Lisa Robbin Young:

The challenge that we have as individuals and corporately, as a society, is we've got this big overarching oppressor called capitalism that's pushing down on us, saying we need to produce an output in order to be considered valuable, useful contributors to society, and we've taken that to mean we have to be making money. There are lots of ways to contribute, and many of them don't seem to come with the same price tag or value attached to them as others. I was listening this morning to NPR and they were talking about a baseball player who's getting $70 million a year for the next 10 years, and I'm like $700 million could go a long way towards helping a lot of people do a lot of things and by that standard, he's well worth the investment that the team is making into his performance. So, yes, there is that. But you said something else that I want to go back to the idea of consistency, right, and I think some of us have this idea that consistency and frequency are the same thing. To show up consistently, I got to be in the same place every day, beating the same drum of my marketing message, so that everybody knows who I am and what I'm hearing. All of that Consistency and frequency are not the same thing. Consistency is about the quality of what you're doing. When you see and I'm just going to use McDonald's when you see McDonald's branding in the wild, you know it's McDonald's because it looks the same everywhere. That's consistency. It's not about there's a McDonald's on every street corner. There might be, but that's frequency. Every day, every other day, every 10. There might be, but that's frequency. Every day, every other day, every 10 blocks, every two miles that's frequency. Consistency means when I show up, you know it's me. I'm sharing a message that's familiar or resonates with my right audience. I'm not here to talk to everybody. I'm here to talk to those people and the message that I'm sending to talk to those people. And the message that I'm sending to those people is something that's becoming more familiar to them as they hear it over time. Now that can be frequent, but it doesn't have to be.

Lisa Robbin Young:

In my early years as a business coach, I talked about building a noble empire and living an inspired life. I don't use the term empire nearly as much now because I was trying to distinguish the noble empire from the evil empire, and my Star Wars fans understood. But now there's so much talk about colonialism and patriarchy that that word has a whole different level of baggage on it. So over time I've changed that language to owning your dreams without selling your soul. Same concept, different words, familiar message coming from somebody who you've gotten to know over the years and years. I'm not all of a sudden saying tuna fish sandwiches are great. That's completely different message than what I've been talking about for the last 30 years in the online world.

Lisa Robbin Young:

So consistency is about showing up in ways that are recognizable to your right audience and becoming more familiar so that they're like ah yes, if your quality suddenly changes, that's not consistent. Even if you're going from meh to wow, that's not consistent. Now you have to build a new consistency flow with this new level. You know, every time you level up people who've known you as one thing for a while. They kind of can freak out. Sometimes they're like oh, sometimes they love it in a brief, right away. Other times they may be taken aback and they have to make a decision. Do I want to continue riding this trainer, or is this my stop and my time to get off Right?

Lisa Robbin Young:

And we have to let people do that. You know, not everybody's going to come along with you for the entire ride, and that's okay. They're there for as long as they need to be, just like you're there for as long as you need to be, and then you move on to the next thing. That's part of how we evolve.

Angie Colee:

Oh, I love that distinction too, especially like the hop on, hop off. So often it's easy, especially the micro business, as you mentioned. Solopreneurs, like so much of ourselves, go into building this thing to servicing the clients, to doing whatever we're doing. It's hard not to take that personally. When somebody wants to get off the train right, like did I do something wrong? Was I not helping? Maybe it's just their stuff. Like, maybe you actually just solved the problem and you did such a kick ass job, but they don't need any help anymore. And now it's on to solve the next problem. Those things could all be true, and I also loved the distinction that you made.

Angie Colee:

I thought this was so brilliant that the time put in inconsistency. That's something that I hear a lot lately with especially people in some of the copywriter groups that I've hung out in online being like I can't go for that role, I can't pitch for this thing, because they require a certain amount of experience, and usually when they say amount of experience, they're thinking in terms of years. I've been in this game for five years and I'm like but did you really put in five years worth of work, did you really? And same thing I've been in the game for 14 years as a marketer and as a creative. Did I really put in 14 years of work? No, there were definitely days, even in the corporate office as a full-time paid creative, that I was like I did my 90 minutes of work for the day and the rest of the day is just goofing off and surfing the internet and going to the break room Mailing it in.

Angie Colee:

Yeah, like but that counts toward my years of experience Like we have this weird tie to like the time that we had our butt in a chair to our value, and I'm like exactly what you said it's the quality, it's not the time. We've got to get that straight.

Lisa Robbin Young:

I've seen people fresh out of school who are so innovative and so thoughtful in their approach to the work that they're doing that they perform circles around somebody who's been at it for 30 years. Yes, and it's as much as we want to live in a meritocracy. It's those kinds of folks that both terrify me and get me really excited. Terrify me because obviously they're raising the bar for everyone and sometimes we're not up for the challenge. Sometimes we're like can't we just keep things easy for a little while? Cause it has been as a Gen Xer. It has been a long, winding, stressful road and I would just like to take a nap and have a cookie right now.

Lisa Robbin Young:

And you know, here comes this 20 something arts upstart. I mean, my kid, my oldest, is pushing 30. And I'm like please do not compare yourself to the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world. By the time he was 30, he had a billion dollar business and and and and like if you try to measure yourself by that yardstick, you're going to feel like a failure every day of your life. Instead, look at where you've been and how far you've come and recognize and this is something I tell my clients all the time too success is a destination and you're already there. Take a look around you. This is success today, based on where you've been in the past. Every decision, every choice that you've made, everything that you've said you're going to do and not do, has all led you to this moment, right here, and this is success for you. And if you don't like what you see, if it doesn't feel successful for you, then you get to make some different choices so that tomorrow's success can look differently.

Angie Colee:

Ooh, I'm just going to like let that sit first. That was like a mic drop moment. I'm not going to drop the microphone because this shit's expensive, but we're going to have a mic drop moment. Right, that is so great to point out. You don't have any other destination aside from your own. You don't have any timeline aside from your own.

Angie Colee:

If you want to move faster, you get to move faster. If you want to slow it on down, you get to slow it on down. These are all choices that have to come from you, not from society outside you. And you're not a failure, and I love that reframe of putting it back on how far we've come and that we are a success right now Because, as you were saying that, I was suddenly picturing me bored to tears in my corporate office thinking about what's next. She couldn't imagine this hosting a podcast. Having written a book, she could not picture this because all she knew was what she got to at that point. So this is success, even if it's not entirely where I want to be, but I'm never entirely where I want to be because it's a journey.

Lisa Robbin Young:

Well, and we're always moving the goalposts. I mean that success kind of I don't want to say demands, but success demands that we continue to move the goalposts. We have to get to a point where we're like you know what, this is enough. And for most of us, especially ambitious entrepreneurs, we're always going to be moving that goalpost a little bit. But the more important question is are we moving that goalpost because it inspires us or because we feel compelled to, because that's what society says is right? That's what we should be doing? Are we shooting on ourselves or are we really recognizing that? No, this is the right next step for me, and we need to be mindful of that. We need to really think about that in the picture, the bigger scope of what we're doing.

Lisa Robbin Young:

I did a TED Talk a couple of years ago about this. Quest for growth for growth's sake is not sustainable. Like as a planet, we can't just contain and sustain perpetual growth. Instead, we need to be moving towards whatever enoughness looks like for us, and maybe today that is a nap in a cookie, and maybe tomorrow it's launching a new program, or maybe the next day it's being on Angie's podcast and we are the success today that our past selves only dreamed of. So imagine what our future self is like to us now, like that's where we're headed.

Angie Colee:

Ooh, I like that so, so much. And I feel that forward drive I think a lot of entrepreneurs do and that pressure to be faster or better or like comparison to peers and colleagues and whatnot, and I think it clicked for me one day. It literally was just an epiphany, a thought that popped in my head when it was like, okay, I'm looking ahead of me, at the people that I aspire to be like, the people who inspire me, who push me to be better and to always strive right, and I forget that behind me there are people looking at me like that that are admiring exactly where I am. When I'm not feeling like I'm enough right, when I'm feeling like I still have so far to go, they're looking at where I am and going I have so far to catch up with her. There's always somebody ahead with her. Like there's always somebody ahead of you, there's always somebody behind you, and I don't mean that in like a judgy better than less. No, absolutely not, absolutely not.

Lisa Robbin Young:

yeah, so maybe 10-15 years ago, I was in a class designed for musicians to help them build their careers and their trajectories, and I got the best piece of advice from the instructor that I probably ever gotten when we talk about careers, don't look at that person that you aspire to be right now. Look at what they were doing when they were at where you are right now. Right. So if you're in the early stages of your career, look at what they were doing in the early stages of your career. Look at what they were doing in the early stages of their career. You want to have a career like the Beatles. In the early years of their career, they were playing seven nights a week in a dive bar in Germany. Two shows a night, three shows a night.

Lisa Robbin Young:

Are you doing something like that? Well, if you are now, you can look towards what the Beatles were up to. But if you're not, that's not an indication of oh my God, I suck, I'm terrible. And judging yourself, it's a question of am I willing to do what they did to get to where they got? And if not, what am I willing to do? What do I have the capacity to do? Because, look, if you've got two kids. There's no way you're gonna be able to perform seven nights a week, two or three shows a night and have any kind of quality time with your children. It's just not feasible.

Lisa Robbin Young:

So what can you do? Well, maybe I can do one show a week. Does that mean it's going to take me longer to get to Beatles level status? Probably, and are you okay with that? Like you have to make those kinds of decisions from a place of I am the business owner and I get to decide what this is going to look like, and I get to decide what I'm willing to invest, what I'm willing to spend of my resources. Right Again, resources, time, energy, money, effort and attention. It's not just about well, I have $12. Where are you going to invest those resources to get the best return on them possible for you? And that's one of the things that I love helping my clients do.

Angie Colee:

Oh, that's so fantastic and that's such a good point too, and that brings me that so nicely brings us back around to the celebrity in your niche. But I wanted to make a point real quick too because, like we briefly mentioned, that you and I are both musical people. Right, I had a band for a long time and people would always ask me oh, what's the plan there? Are you going to do an album? I was like we all have like careers and businesses. We just want to make music and play at dive bars a couple of times a week and have a really good time. I don't think anybody in that band had delusions is the wrong word but like a vision of, at this age, we're going to hit the road and I say that like. So you bring the perspective of having kids. I have no kids and I still have no desire to work. Seven shows or seven nights a week, two to three shows a night Ooh, it's exhausting enough to do one day of podcast recording.

Lisa Robbin Young:

Right, right, exactly, and that's a reflection of your capacity. I mean, if Beyonce has got enough minions that she can go in the studio for 16 hours, not eat, not drink, not sleep, and get her record done, that's because she has all these other resources to support her to be able to go do that. So many times we look at Beyonce and go I could never do that. Well, if you had everything she had, maybe you could, but you don't. So what are you going to do differently? Right, and and being conscious of opportunity costs, right, like, there is always a trade-off. I have a you were talking about your band.

Lisa Robbin Young:

I have a good friend who is a security guard with an amazing voice, just killer vocals, and he never wanted to become a professional singer because he didn't want to ruin the joy of just being able to show up and sing. If he gets paid occasionally, that's cool, but that's not why he does it. And we really have to get clear on what are our goals, what are, what is our vision for our life, for our lifestyle, for our livelihood? And you know, whip out the magic paintbrush. I do this to all my clients. If you can paint the picture of your life and work to look and feel and be exactly what you want it to be what's in the picture and you don't have to let anything else into that picture in your mind.

Lisa Robbin Young:

Now reality might play out a little differently, but you still get to make choices. You know, one of the things that you said earlier was about you know you can go faster and sometimes we can't, and we have to acknowledge that. Sometimes we can't go faster because we don't have the resources to go faster. So what can you do to support yourself, financially or otherwise, so that you can maintain something? Do what you can, as you are able, that's. You know. Plenty of stories abound of famous entrepreneurs who are in their 60s, 70s, 80s and beyond when they finally had their first big break. Right, colonel Sanders, grandma Moses, take your pick. If it's worth pursuing, it's worth pursuing for a lifetime. Don't give up just because it's going to take some time yeah, and don't give up for some fucking bullshit.

Angie Colee:

Arbitrary number that, oh my god, came out of the universe somehow, aka social media. So and so had their first billion by 20. Yeah, most of the I know. You know who I'm talking about. That is not a self-made billionaire, that is somebody that came to the table with the card stacked in their favor. You know what I mean? The resource is exactly like we talked about.

Lisa Robbin Young:

And the reality is nobody is self-made right. Self-made implies complete self-sufficiency, complete sovereignty and autonomy, with no help anywhere. And I got to be blunt. Every customer is a somebody and they bought from you. You're not self-made because it was their purchase that enabled you to be able to do the next thing or iterate on the product or whatever. We are an ecosystem of buyers and sellers, of consumers and makers, of creators and sustainers, and To pretend otherwise discounts the very people who helped get you to where you are, and I mean.

Lisa Robbin Young:

I understand the idea of being self-made and pulling yourself up by the bootstraps, but in its original intention, pulling yourself up by the bootstraps was an impossibility and meant to be an insult. I'm not interested in receiving and holding on to that anymore. I used to wear it like a badge of courage in my 20s, not anymore, thanks. If I'm bootstrapping, I'm doing something wrong. I need to be in community with my people to rise all the ships on my tide.

Angie Colee:

Exactly. Oh my gosh, my perspective changed so much when I realized we're not all competing for a slice of the same pie, which means most people aren't going to get shit right. We're all coming together with the ingredients that we've got and building an infinite pie. I like all kinds of different flavors, and some of it might be pizza pie and some of it might be key lime pie, and like everybody gets some, because we're all contributing and we're all working together instead of hoarding and there goes dreamy, idealistic Angie, but that's the vision that I have. Where we realize that, let me climb up on my soapbox. Where we realize that the picture that we've been getting is warped and skewed in favor of the people who have made a kajillion dollars off the rest of us, basically telling us oh, you can have what I have too, if only you work hard enough, and I have all the resources and support and connections that you did.

Lisa Robbin Young:

Yes, yes, if I can do it, you can too, is such a deceptive term because you can't possibly know what went on behind the scenes in somebody's life. What kind of butterfly effect may have had a hand in getting them to where they are in this moment. Had Zuckerberg not gone to school with those twins who had the idea for Facebook in the first place, he never would have had Facebook. It would have been something else. You just don't know what influence you have, or someone else has, on the trajectory of your career, and you can't trust that just because somebody else made six figures in six minutes, that if you follow their step-by-step blueprint, you will too, because you didn't have a $10,000 credit limit credit card, like they did, to pay for Facebook ads.

Lisa Robbin Young:

Well, now what? How am I supposed to do that? You can't right. Instead, it's about understanding the underlying principles and going oh okay, they got successful because they advertise. What can I do that takes advantage of that strategy, or is that strategy even right for me in the first place? And if it's not, what other strategy would produce a comparable result? And how do we implement that into my business?

Angie Colee:

Yes, I love that, and I think that's getting to kind of the crux of the matter and I've coached people and I've had to be coached on this before too of like believing that there's some sort of blueprint. If only I can just sit down and think hard enough and come up with the exact step-by-step plan and the backup plan and the backup backup plan and the backup to the backup backup plan. Then I will follow all of the steps, there will be no stumbling, and I will get to that finish line and make it Trademark. That's not the way it works, though.

Lisa Robbin Young:

Yeah, I mean there are just too many unknown quantities between here and there, and when I'm working with a client and I'm like, okay, so this is your success map, right, like this is the stage you said you wanted to get on. These are the milestones that you can expect to go through before that's gonna become an opportunity that you can have Now. When will that happen? Good question. How will that happen? Good question. How will that happen? Even better question. But what you want to look for is when these things start showing up on your radar, then it's time to start moving into the next milestone. And when those things are starting to happen, now it's time to move to the next milestone and then you can reasonably have a reasonable sense that this is a likelihood now, not an improbability, right, and the closer you move and keep moving towards that goal. So it's not a cookie cutter blueprint. I think you can develop a roadmap to help move you in the right direction. But detours happen all the time and you have to be prepared for what do I do if there's a detour? What do I do?

Lisa Robbin Young:

When I was 10 years old, I want to be a rock star. I knew that was what I was going to do with my whole life. I went to school, got a degree in music, you know, I took business classes so that I didn't end up getting taken by my manager Like I did all of that. And then I was like, oh hey, let's have a child, let's get married, let's have plan. Those were not on my bingo card. And in the course of that I got really clear that the things I liked about being a rock star were being able to perform, being in front of an audience, having a spotlight and making people feel good about themselves. And I'm like you know what? I can do all of that myself. This way, instead of waiting for somebody to discover me and put me on tour, I can record my own albums, I can write my own books, I can put those out into the world, I can tour as much or as little as I want to on my own and I can share my stories and inspire my audience without having to wait to be picked. If I had waited to be picked, I would still be waiting, because I don't have the quote-un looks or the quote unquote classic, whatever's that they're looking to to spend millions of dollars on and put on tour. But I can still be successful in my own way, the way I want to, with way more sovereignty doing it this way. So you have to get really clear on what is it that you really want about that goal.

Lisa Robbin Young:

One of the things I say all the time is your goal is not always the goal. We go through life with a very parochial, limited view of things and all we can see is what's in front of us until we take a step, and usually it's a goal that acts as a catalyst to get us moving towards it. So then we step out and, oh my gosh, now I can see these other possibilities and oh, I think that's more important. Now I'm going to go in that direction, which is great. That doesn't mean that the goal you had set for yourself that you didn't achieve makes you a failure, because the goal did its job. It got you off the stick, it got you to move so that you could see the next thing and go, take that step in that direction.

Angie Colee:

Yes, that is such a critical distinction. Just because you moved toward the goal and then the goal changed doesn't make you bad or wrong, doesn't mean your first goal was off track, doesn't mean that you're wishy-washy or anything like that. You can't get this context until you are moving forward and you can see more than you can from your current vantage point. And I think all of this brings us around nicely to this idea of celebrity that you talked about. We're circling all the way back to the beginning. I want to know more about that, and you don't have to give away your secret sauce, unless you want to share your secret sauce, like this idea of becoming celebrity, like with everything that we've just talked about, with resources and time and things like that. How is it that you're able to make this happen with people who are micro businesses and solopreneurs?

Lisa Robbin Young:

Well, let's be really clear. I don't make anything happen. What I do is show them the how, because so many times people are like I don't know how, I know what I want and I can't tell you how many times people have come to me and said I want to be the insert celebrity here of my niche the Bernie Brown of my industry, the Dr Ruth of my industry, the Sherlock Holmes of my industry and it's like, okay. So I've spent the last several years since my last book figuring out what are the elements that distinguish a celebrity from everybody else. Great example what makes Beyonce, beyonce and Solange Solange? They are sisters, they grew up in the same house. They both have great voices. Why did Beyonce rise to the level of stardom that she did and Solange didn't? Or any of the other members of Destiny's Child, for that matter. All great singers, not a Beyonce. What set them apart? And so I discovered these, discovered.

Lisa Robbin Young:

I uncovered, identified these nine different elements that basically come down to clarity, confidence and courage. You've got to have crystal clarity on different aspects of who you are, what matters to you and what you're about in the world. That gives you the ability to make more confident decisions about what you're going to do what you're not going to do, what you're going to tolerate what you're not going to tolerate, and that then allows you to take courageous action. Courageous action, not massive action which we hear so much in the you know internet self-help woo-woo circles. It doesn't always happen. Sometimes the most courageous action you can take is to be still and do nothing, and that's really hard and it's not big, but it's big for you, right? So we're talking about courageous actions to change course when things aren't working.

Lisa Robbin Young:

I talk about Katy Perry quite a bit. She was a Christian music artist and she was not getting traction. Yeah, I know Most people go. She was what she was a Christian artist. Taylor Swift was in country and she was like let's go do pop. And now she's a billionaire. Right Like, we have to decide for ourselves that sometimes and I'm gonna misquote and slaughter Marilyn Monroe's idea here Sometimes, good and I'm going to misquote and slaughter Marilyn Monroe's idea here sometimes good things have to fall apart so the better things can fall together. Right Like, we have to be willing to let go of the good for the great, and so many of us are so risk averse that it's hard to do that. Right, and understandably so in this capitalist society in which we live, and so being able to make those confident decisions and take those courageous actions distinguish people.

Lisa Robbin Young:

And so when I'm sitting down with somebody who wants to be that person, you know they've come to me and they say you know, I can't explain it. I've known since I was a kid that I'm supposed to be on stage in front of millions of people, or hundreds of thousands of people, or talking to the world about this message or this mission or this vision that I have, but I don't know how to get there. Or but I'm afraid of and typically it's around. I don't want to cause harm or be harmed. I'm afraid that it's going to be too much and that it's all going to come collapsing down around on my ears, or I just don't know how to do it Like I just need somebody to show me how. So we sit down and we look at end to end, what's the context of your life, what are the capacity constraints that you have, and then what are the milestones to get you from where you are to where you want to be, and how do we navigate those in ways that work for how you're wired. You know if you've got kids and they're all under 10, that looks different than somebody who's single and unencumbered by anything else in life, somebody who has a lot of resources, versus somebody who has very little resources.

Lisa Robbin Young:

I had a client recently who was like I want to hit this income goal and I want to do it in the next six months because I want to have a baby by the end of the year. And I'm like are you pregnant already? And she's like no, and I'm like that has to happen in order to have a baby by the end of the year. So maybe you want to bump that timeline out a little bit, because if you're pregnant during the middle of this kind of a launch, that could create some other problems because you've never been pregnant before and that's a huge question mark. And she's like I never even considered that Right. So I'm such an overthinker. I can see all of these different possibilities and go, okay, how's that going to impact you? And sometimes we don't have the answer. So it becomes a question mark. When this shows up, we have to figure out how to address that right. When this shows up, this is going to point you in the right direction, right, and decision points along the way.

Lisa Robbin Young:

So I'm helping them identify these milestones towards whatever it is that they want to do transition from being a realtor into being a motivational speaker or whatever and what are the things that have to happen? Well, in order to leave that job, you've got to be able to replace that income. What are we going to do to replace that income? What's that look like? What's the business model for that? How do we find the customers for that? I'm helping them map out all those details so that they can then go back to their team or so that they can then implement for themselves. Okay, step one is this so, while it's not a blueprint, it is reasonable, doable, understandable, meaningful and believable action steps for them or their organizations to begin to implement on so that the wheels can turn and move them to where they want to be. So no, I don't do anything. I just show them how to have that strategy and that capacity that works for them uniquely so that they can move into that role.

Lisa Robbin Young:

Because I got to tell you, and I probably don't even need to tell you, when you're a celebrity in your niche, in your little corner of the world, people come find you, people want you in, they want to be in your world, right?

Lisa Robbin Young:

Like they want to glom on, they want to be able to tout oh, I've got Angie on my event coming up on my stage. Like you know, they want that. When you're languishing in obscurity, it's such a slog. Marketing is so hard. Reaching your audience is even harder, but when you're the celebrity, when you're the go-to person, everybody knows your name. It's like cheers, norm, like they know who you are. So for me, it's helping them and because everybody is different, it looks different. Like maybe you need some PR, maybe you need to get on podcasts, maybe you need to write a book, maybe you just need to connect with your network more. Right? Like we look at the resources that you have and we build a plan that's built on what you already got going for you, so that we're not reinventing the wheel and we're not making it extra work for you and making it harder than it has to be.

Angie Colee:

Oh, I love that it reminds me of. I was at a presentation recently where somebody was talking about this like branding and positioning right and starting to reverse that lead flow to where people are seeking you out, and the example you used was like well, you could, you could hire rihanna to come speak at your event or sing at your events. It's 250 000 I can't remember if it was per hour or for the appearance itself. And he just asked and I knew the answer right away it's like so why does Rihanna charge that much? And I was like because she's fucking Rihanna and she can like and people will pay it because she's freaking Rihanna and that makes it so much easier, like when you're not out here being a vendor competing on price.

Angie Colee:

I know we're talking kind of like business 101 here, but it's so easy to fall back into that trap when you've been a solopreneur for a long time or a small business for a long time of like, oh, especially this year. So we're recording in summer of 2024. It's been a weird year for most folks that I know between 2023 and 2024. It's been a little bit harder to operate in the online business space. That doesn't mean it's impossible, but there's a lot of skepticism. There's a lot of people that have been burned by big name coaches that didn't deliver. So there's like a little bit of an uphill.

Lisa Robbin Young:

There's a reckoning, and those big name coaches are still raking in plenty of money because they're the big name coaches, right?

Angie Colee:

Regardless of the result.

Lisa Robbin Young:

They are now the celebrity, and so people continue to come knocking on their door. They're the ones who get called to be on Oprah's stage. They're the ones who get insert great idea here, and they get it first because they've got the audience, they've got the reach, they've got the name recognition. So why not develop that kind of reputation for yourself? That's what becoming the celebrity in your niche is all about. I'm not. Most of the people I'm working with do not want to be Beyonce. They want to be the Beyonce of whatever they're up to right, and that's.

Lisa Robbin Young:

It's a game changer, and I don't use that word. I don't use that term very often at all, but it really does change the way the game is played for you. When people are coming to you, instead of you constantly having to send out another pitch for this thing and another thing for that thing and another application over here, they just send streamers going. We would love for you to be on your thing. It becomes an opportunity to consciously say no to a lot more things. So you can say yes to the gems versus saying yes to everything in the hopes that something you know, that spray and pray. Now you can be much more choosing, much more discerning, because everybody's trying to beat a path to your door.

Angie Colee:

Okay, I got to ask is there any part of your process with these people that involves like picking your favorite celebrity that you want to emulate and like imagining yourself as that?

Lisa Robbin Young:

I don't usually have that issue because they've already decided for me, right? They come saying I want to be the Brene Brown, I want to be the Sherlock Holmes, I want to be the whoever it is, and it's like cool. What is it about that person that sets you on fire to want to be like them in your niche? Well, you know, and a lot of times it's character traits and personality. It's also about audience reach, those kinds of things.

Lisa Robbin Young:

And so when you start to identify, you know, for me it's Queen Latifah, right, like she is one of my brand ambassadors, like in my heart, like there's so much about Queen Latifah that I can't say enough good things about. If you've not read her book Put on your Crown, you need to. So much great insight and information in that book, especially for somebody right, especially for somebody who's trying to build a business. Lots of lessons learned, and this is not a relatively new book either, but such a good book and it really changed how I thought about being a woman, being a pioneer in my industry, standing up for what was important to me in my industry and being that person willing to put a line in the sand. So she's very much like I want to be the Queen Latifah of my industry.

Lisa Robbin Young:

So look to those people that you want to be like why, what is it about them and start to pick that apart and then go, okay, how can I start doing being having that in my business now, right, because that's really all I do, like there's my secret sauce. I just pick all that stuff apart and go, okay, well, let's start where we're at. And how can we iterate on that over the next year, two years, three years, five years, until we get to where you want to be? And I got to be honest, right.

Lisa Robbin Young:

Sometimes it's going to take years to get you there, depending on where you're starting from or depending on how many resources you have. And I tell people right up front, like, if you want me to solve your problem in six weeks, I'm not your Huckleberry, because that's probably not going to do you any service. Sometimes we can do that with a business model tweak or something, but if you're a relative unknown today, you're not going to be an overnight sensation tomorrow. It's going to take some time. You've got to put some things in place so that you build that reputation of excellence that people start to talk about and rave about and share with their friends, right? So I'm not a miracle worker, but we can do some pretty amazing things if you're willing to step up to the plate and be honest about where you're at, what you need and where you want to go.

Angie Colee:

Oh, I love that. Yeah, and to circle back to clarify for anybody that was listening to the audio and doesn't happen to watch the video the reason I cackled in the middle of Lisa talking how wonderfully inspiring Queen Latifah is not because I found that funny, because I actually had a tiara sitting on the desk next to me. So when Lisa mentioned the name of the book, I went and grabbed my tiara and put it on and then we both just kind of like snort, laughed a little bit.

Lisa Robbin Young:

My tiara and scepter are in the other room, so otherwise I would have joined you. I actually I have two.

Angie Colee:

I had that purple one. I actually I have two. I had that purple one, I have this little pearly one too that my niece picked out for me, but, like co-signing Queen Latifah, she is definitely one of my heroes. I haven't read the book. I'm adding that to my list, but I do watch and it's so fucking corny. But I don't care if you like it or not or if you think I'm dumb for it or not. I watched Last Holiday. At least once a year. I love that movie. I highly recommend it for anybody that's watching.

Angie Colee:

She plays a character who has it's kind of like what we're talking about on this show right Done everything by the book, everything that you're supposed to do. Gets a life-changing diagnosis, decides screw it, I'm going to blow every last cent. I'm going to take the dream trip of a lifetime only to find out. Well, I'm not going to give anything away. Like dream trip of a lifetime, we're going to leave it there. And everything changes when she decides to fully live her life instead of doing what she's told and like that, just brings it around so nicely to everything that we're talking about. Oh, I want to keep ranting for like two more hours, but we've already hit time, so please tell us a little bit more about how we can work with you on becoming celebrities.

Lisa Robbin Young:

Oh well, firstly, you can find me just about anywhere. I'm at Lisa Robin Young on all the socials. Robin has two B's, though If you don't use two Bs, you won't find me. My website's lisarobinyoungcom. The one thing that I would invite you to do is go to the website, take the free quiz you don't even need to opt in and that will tell you where you fall on the creative entrepreneur spectrum and give you a better idea about what your strengths and challenges are as an entrepreneur in that type, and then you can start to build your business more successfully around what you do well and learn how to relinquish your Vulcan death grip of control around the things that probably aren't in your wheelhouse and still have support in order to be able to get there.

Angie Colee:

Love that. I love that. I'm going to make sure that there are clickable links in the show notes. Thank you so much for being such a wonderful guest. I'm so glad that we made this happen.

Lisa Robbin Young:

Me too. Thanks for having me.

Angie Colee:

That's all for now. If you want to keep that kick-ass energy high, please take a minute to share this episode with someone that might need a high octane dose of you can do it. Don't forget to rate, review and subscribe to the Permission to Kick Ass podcast on Apple Podcasts, spotify and wherever you stream your podcasts. I'm your host, angie Coley, and I'm here rooting for you. Thanks for listening and let's go kick some ass.