The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Navigating Introversion in Business: Strategies for Success and Growth with Lindsey Evans-Mayhew

Episode Date: January 22, 2025

Navigating Introversion in Business: Strategies for Success and Growth with Lindsey Evans-Mayhew Evansmayhew.com About the Guest(s): Lindsey Evans-Mayhew is a seasoned entrepreneur and expert in marketing, psychology, and biology. Leveraging a rich background in sciences and innovative thinking, she assists introverted business owners in harnessing their unique strengths to cultivate customer bases. Lindsay has published six Amazon bestselling new releases, genetically engineered at jellyfish, and served on the board of an international healthcare charity. Currently, she offers coaching and insights through her platform, helping clients maximize their potential in business branding and strategy. Episode Summary: In this enlightening episode of The Chris Voss Show, host Chris Voss interviews Lindsey Evans-Mayhew, a dynamic entrepreneur specializing in maximizing the hidden strengths of introverts in business settings. Lindsay shares her journey from a stage manager in high school to becoming a proficient public speaker and successful coach, emphasizing the adaptable nature of social skills and confidence. This podcast episode, packed with insightful strategies, is a must-listen for introverted entrepreneurs aiming to bolster their brands and customer engagement. A key focus in this episode is the exploration of what it means to be an introvert and how introverted entrepreneurs can successfully navigate the business world. Using her expertise in marketing coupled with understanding of psychological dynamics, Lindsay offers practical advice on managing social energy, leveraging introverts' strengths, and building effective business strategies. The conversation highlights methods including strategic planning for events, effective social media engagement, and how to avoid common pitfalls like burnout. Additionally, Lindsay discusses the importance of branding, pricing strategies, and aligning one's business narrative to attract the perfect clientele. Key Takeaways: Introverts can leverage their introspective nature to excel in business through thoughtful strategy and planning. Effective branding and marketing for introverts involves aligning with personal values and carefully managing energy expenditure. Implementing time management techniques can significantly reduce burnout and maximize productivity. Pricing strategies, even as simple as minor fees, can greatly influence customer commitment and perceived value. Embracing one's journey, including experiencing imposter syndrome, is a crucial component of personal and professional growth. Notable Quotes: "All of those skills that you associate with being a great public speaker and networking are things that you can build." "Your brain uses 10 times as much energy as any other part of your body." "You can make it [social interactions] more valuable just by charging more money." "Imposter syndrome is actually a sign of growth." "Everyone who is looking at buying a service or a product is trying to fulfill a need."

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. I'm Chris Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. There you go, ladies and gentlemen.

There are only six of them. It's official. Welcome to the show. We certainly appreciate it It's always a Christmas show As a family that loves you But doesn't loan you money So please stop asking

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And remember, you're never alone in the world. Human beings, we all kind of have similar problems. We just have to find the right people that have solved them and take their toolkit and go, hey, we can survive just about anything, just about anything. Hope springs anew, as it were. Anyway, guys, go to goodreads.com, fortun chris fos linkedin.com forces chris fuss chris foss won the tick tockety and all those crazy places on the internet today we're talking about a wonderful young lady and some of her insights and things that she helps her clients get through

uh she's the author of the latest uh free branding workbook that you can download for free on our website called build your brand in 15 minutes so we're gonna talk about why it's important to build a brand and everything else she helps intervated introverted introverted yeah she helps both of them Lindsay Evans mayhem helps enter it or business owners use their secret strengths to grow a base of committed customers she is a serial entrepreneur with a wealth of expertise in marketing psychology and biology Blending science math and art to create innovative strategies, which is pretty much what you have to do now as an entrepreneur You got to do it where all the hats she published six

Amazon best-selling new releases genetically engineered a jellyfish that's interesting and served on the board of an international health care charity welcome to the show lindsey how are you thank you i hope that i blow some minds today but stop short of brain bleeds well wait we're blowing up minds i mean i have this image of like, you know, Michael Mann sort of stuff. Stay in your soul. You know, expand your horizons, what you think you could do. So we're going to blow up some brain city. Lindsay, give us your dot coms.

Where can people find you on the interwebs? Sure. EvansMayhew.com is a great place to start. That's where you can download your free branding booklet and also find me on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, all the normal social media places. Definitely entrepreneurs are always wearing lots of hats and marketing can be a hat that fits uncomfortably

for a lot of introverted business owners. That doesn't seem to be your problem though, Chris. No, I was an introvert though when I was younger. You know, and I bring that up because, you know, people say, you know, I'm an introvert and I'm like, you can change. It's definitely possible to become an extrovert. I'm living proof.

I mean, once you become a CEO, you've got to run your mouth off all the time. So I just finally broke and became an extrovert. So I'm living proof. There is hope, folks. So give us a 30,000-hour view of what's inside your book. Well, I don't have a brainwashing program to turn people from introverts to extroverts. But it is true that all of those skills that you associate with being a great public speaker and networking and are things that you can build. theater in high school, but I was more the stage manager than the actress in the front of this. And now, you know, I've given international talks. I have introduced Rita award winners. So, you know, being in front of a whole bunch of people is no longer something that bothers me. And so it sounds like this is similar to your journey through life that you're, you're helping clients through and being in, you know,

maybe being an introvert at one point in time and, and then showing them how they can how they can overcome it basically was overcome the right word or just how to get better chops at it or Overcome isn't quite the right word. So I still identify as an introvert and so do about 57% of business owners. So being an introvert is day-to-day life. I would rather have a little bit less stimulation. To recharge, I'd rather have the quiet bubble bath than go to a rock concert. Some people would go to a rock concert and be so hyped afterwards. And some people crash.

Let's talk about what an introvert is. Give us a floor definition so that we can have that. Say someone's out in the audience and maybe they haven't figured out they're an introvert yet. What is an introvert according so um when you interact with big groups of people do you feel energized or exhausted afterwards you can like people and be very socially aware and very socially polished and still be an introvert um it's just being an introvert means networking with a lot of people takes more energy than it would for someone who's an extrovert. And being an introvert also comes with strengths because your leisure activities tend to be quieter. You tend to do more reading and research. You tend to do more reading and research. You tend to create things.

You know, when we think of the big minds to huge groups of people or post their whole life story on Instagram. And a lot of marketers, people who tend to say, oh yeah, communications is what I want to major in in college. And I know that all I want to do is talk to people all day. So they give advice about, oh, you need to network. You need to go on social media. And it's exhausting. But you have strengths as an introvert that you can learn. So maybe you're an incredible writer.

Maybe you have all this expertise that you can put into bite-sized pieces that can pull people in. So writing and stuff is good. You know, it is hard because as a, you know, one of the reasons I switched from being an introvert to an extrovert was you have to sell everybody all the time as the CEO. You've got to sell your investors, your clients, you've got to sell your vendors, your board, you know, you've got to sell your investors your clients you're gonna sell your vendors your board you know you got to sell employees on your vision and you got to inspire other people and and it could be it couldn't be quite the daunting task and that's how I went from being an introvert to being a big mouth that I am is you know I just had to learn to sell and I had to learn to sell

everyone and I I didn learn to sell everyone. And I, I didn't have sales skills either. I, that was something I had to develop as well. Um, but it just became to a point where, you know, as, as, as you grow a company, as you become very successful in scale, you've got to communicate with people. And I imagine, you know, I just had to, I just had to say, screw it. And I'm just going to have to be the big mouth extrovert now everyone's really unhappy that they're like we should have listened to him more when he was just normal but it's kind of

necessary you know you've you've got to be able to sell vision especially as a leader of course you know this is my gig and talking about leadership but you know there is a quiet leadership that you can do we recently had one of the heads of the USS the I think Theodore Roosevelt on the show and he really was kind of interesting because he's supposed to be a very stoic very quiet leadership there was more show than tell and that kind of changed some of my minds because I'm used to being a soapbox sort of CEO, getting on the soapbox and blasting out the vision message and then blasting it to the investors, blasting it to the board, making sure everyone's

up to speed. But I can see why that's hard. And you said it's about 50% of people, huh? Yeah. Some statistics that I've read said 57. So slightly more. And then, of course, that does change when you're in different industries. So I have a science background. My background is in microbiology. And then I went to graduate school in psychology, and I worked on creating science curricula. And so in the science world, and then my last company was working with authors, writers also tend to be much more introverted.

And so in certain industries, it's much more like 70 to 80% of the people who are in charge don't enjoy being on a stage, fireworks going, telling about their new product launch. And they're like, how do we communicate in a way that is comfortable, that uses our skills, that might look different, might be a quiet sort of leadership. It might be a values-based leadership where I feel uncomfortable promoting myself and my brand for a profit-based company. And then we have that person link it to their vision or the charity that they want their company to sponsor. And then suddenly they are a huge advocate because, for example, my company has a plan

to build a hospital in Ethiopia in the next six years. And so when I am pushing myself to follow my pricing schedule and raise my prices as I'm adding on more subscriptions, more knowledge, more access to freelancers and more services. And I'm like, nope, I already planned this was going up. And it has to, because it's not just me that would be influenced if I wasn't hitting those income goals it would also be pushing back Sloan Ethiopia's Hospital yeah they need more hospitals I think we've had some people on the show that done hospitals and in Africa in different places so with do you find that I have some big dating groups that we run and we found that a

lot of people have a hard time coming out to events it seems like almost covid kind of made being introverted worse uh and maybe converted some people to being introverts it seems like a lot of people lost their social skills over covid and you know being indoors remote working and stuff people seem to have lost some of their social skills over COVID and, you know, being indoors, remote working and stuff. People seem to have lost some of their social skills where they really struggled to come out to events and do stuff. So it's almost like the world's become more introverted, as it were. You kind of have to. As you said, you know, introversion and extroversion is fluid, what you can handle.

And in COVID, being extrovert was kind of a risk factor. You couldn't be around people. And so you had to find other ways to connect with people, whether you're doing, you know, Zoom get togethers with your friends, whether you were just clinging to your close family and spending a lot of time with them or picking up some more introverted hobbies to fill your tolerance and you can give yourself easy wins and learn that you can actually do this. You know, and I think sometimes I come home from events sometimes tired, partially because I usually have to host them. So there are some times when I feel kind of tired of dealing with everybody and everything so I think I still I don't know maybe I have some still latency under there where you know I can be on for a long time you know I could be when we do like CS show or other events you know I'm on for six hours or so, eight hours.

And, you know, sometimes after that, there's a lot of physicality to it, too. Walking around and talking to people, shaking hands. Oh, for sure. And so that that I think that contributes to some of the tiringness. I'm old, but it takes a lot to walk me around the room in my walker. But you're in your prime, Chris. Thank you. Thank you.

I needed that this morning. Um, but, uh, you know, so I, I kind of still feel like, is it, is it mainly that, you know, I, I know that one of the things that they feel is they feel, uh, when you feel you're introverted, you feel emotionally drained after an event or, you know, something that you have to really be engaging in. It can really feel like, you know, you need to go spend some downtime, right? Some, some time to recover, refresh and, and get back on gear. Do you, do you kind of like help, help clients say, look, you know, you, you know, that you're going to have this, you can have this downtime. You just got to, you know, do this event, you know, and you just kind of help them try to manage how their mindset is in their brain and how they approach it and activate it.

Absolutely. You know, having a plan before an event is important. important so i was working with maron's med which is a startup here in delaware which invented a new version of the prosthetic hook and um right now the most popular mechanical hook was invented in 1908 and it is two pieces of metal with a rubber bands. So there's lots of room for improvement. Oh yeah. And yeah. And so they needed to get this information out to the community. And they knew it was going to be three emotional days.

And I said, okay, what are your goals? Who do you need to talk to? What is the, are you going to create content while you're there? Are you trying to make certain connections? And then set yourself a goal of I'm going to have 10 conversations with people And I'm going to create two videos at the conference. And then also set breaks because you need them because your brain uses 10 times as much energy as any other part of your body. 10 times. So just like you wouldn't expect yourself to go out and do physical labor for 15 hours in a row with no breaks, you shouldn't expect your brain to be on for 15 hours in a row

and not be exhausted. And yet we do and we see burnout. And social interactions are one of our most complicated, right? We have words, we have tone, we have people's expressions. We have, we're trying to figure out, okay, are you dressed like a bum because you're a CEO and you don't care? Are you someone who just wandered in? Like, where is that? And they can be really complicated and really energy intensive. So going in with a plan and going in with reasonable expectations to an event. And I'm like, you know, expecting to have 100 conversations in one day.

You know, that is crazy. Expecting to hand out 100 cards if you have a raffle. Okay, that's different. Is it more important to have an in-depth conversation or more important to get your card or your little, you know, swag into people's hands? And depending on the price level of your product or service, those might be very different answers. And so one of the ones, things that they were looking for, because while they were at this conference is we really want upper limb amputees who are willing to be alpha testers for us and see how our pro hook works in their actual lives.

And then, you know, the inventor is a carpenter. So he is using his hook with his saw, with his drill. He broke the last prototype swinging gallons of paints. And we're like, you know, maybe the average person wouldn't do that, but let's find out. And so they knew they had to have pretty high quality conversations for people to be like, yes, I'm willing to take this prototype and spend two weeks testing it and give it back and give you feedback and make sure it's ready because the first order of the prototype is going is already purchased by the Victoria Hand Project and they're going over to Ukraine and the veterans in Ukraine are going to be using their hook in heavy duty real life.

There you go. You mentioned burnout. Is maybe that one of the things that seems like a lot more people nowadays are struggling with burnout. Is that maybe one of the contributors of burnout is people aren't scheduling enough downtime for themselves, recovery time? Maybe they are introverts and they don't really understand that maybe they are. What do you think about that? So one of the things that I talk a lot about my coaching clients is how they're managing

their time and scheduling time where you are off is definitely important. And as an entrepreneur, as somebody who wears a lot of hats, it's easy to constantly have your phone to constantly be checking your social media to, um, be thinking of solutions to problems. And that, again, 10% more energy is being used by those four pounds of gray matter than the rest of your body.

So, you know, when you're scheduling, okay, I'm on social media. I need to engage with social media in order to get engagement back. Give yourself a time that's otherwise not very productive time. It doesn't take much energy to write. Congrats. That looks really fun. But I have a timer on each of my social media accounts. And if I'm on it for longer than I have decided beforehand, I should be on for engagement. It will just kick me out. Really? It kicks you out? Yep.

Wow. It's set the systems up beforehand and let the systems help you. I like that. Because they're designed to be addictive. They're designed to suck your time

and you don't have extra time as a business owner. Yeah, that's funny. Maybe I need that because during the pandemic, I'd get on TikTok and I'd just be like, I'm going to watch a couple of TikToks and fall asleep. And then four hours later, the sun's coming up and I'm like, wait, I was just watching a few TikToks.

And so there's that. But yeah, it's having social media social media you know and avoiding that doom scrolling that you can get in with social media and stuff uh where you're just like sitting there after a while going holy you know the world is going to hell and the sky is falling and yada yada yada um it could be uh it could be a little it could be a little difficult that way, but you know, I, I see a lot of people with burnout. In fact, one of the, we were discussing how we can't get more people out to events and they just tell us they're afraid to meet people and we'll, you know, cause we're, we're running

these dating events. And so we'll ask them, you know, how come we can't get more people out to meet in person because clearly dating apps aren't working. And people are telling us that, um, you us that we have a lot of flakiness. People don't show up. We have a lot of no-shows and stuff like that. And they'll RSVP, but they won't show. Are they free events?

Yeah, they're free, too. Don't do that. Oh, really? Yes. free events or pay yeah they're free too yeah don't do that oh really okay so even if they've charged five dollars then they have the sunk cost fallacy be like well if i don't go i will have lost five dollars five dollars yeah it doesn't have to be much but there's a huge difference. And yeah, it can. I mean, try it. Have one premium one where you charge more and see if that improves your RSVP rate. But

when you're pricing something, the value and the price are linked in someone's head and you can make it more valuable just by charging more money, especially advice, you know, especially experiences. Um, when, when someone's going to a dating app, you said, um um and they have to spend 30 minutes filling out the profile and then they have to pay 20 bucks a month just to be on this app well they're more committed to actually using that app and you've weeded out people who were not really that interested yet not really that committed. I was in the dating world for a while, and I saw a huge difference in the quality of people who are on paid apps

versus free apps, even if it wasn't that much of a charge. Yeah, because you've got to be rich to be able to afford those paid apps. No, I'm just kidding. You've got to be rich to be able to afford those paid apps. No, I'm just kidding. You've got to value finding love. Value finding love. And I'm just using this as an example of if you want to get something achieved in your life, whether you're a leader, whether you're a business, whether you're dating, you've got to get out and meet people.

You can't just sit at home and be like, I hope this whole thing works out with me finding my person by just me sitting at home watching TV all day. They're just going to come knock on the door and be like, and customers the same way if you own a business. Customers are going to knock on your door and go, hey, we have these piles of money in the car we want to spend. Do you have a business or something we can spend it on? It's not how it works. And yeah, there was an article. I brought that up because there was an article recently that came out in, I'll see if I can find it really quick. And it talked about how people are really suffering from more introvertness than ever before.

It was The Guardian. People feel they don't owe anyone anything in the rise and flaking out of social plans and it basically talked about how people if a lot of it seems to be burnout they just feel like you know they're just between the social media yelling at them all day long the the you know they've got the wife the kids they got the husbands they got you know the jobs that you know The emails come after five o'clock. You know it's kind of interesting how some countries have banned Where employees you know don't have to respond after work hours to emails and and company requests And so I think people are burnt out from a lot of different areas and stuff

I think that's part of it, I don't know I haven't read that particular article but the Guardian is a pretty reputable source I think that some people are replacing some of the socialization that would have happened face to face with online communities. And as introverted founders, you can take advantage of that by building a community that's based on social media or building a community where their relationship is based on email, where you're sharing a personal story, a cute picture, and people are very risk averse now. They want to get something without risking rejection, without risking loss. And so when you're, you know, you have a dating event and you're like, well, on one hand, you have the chance to find the love of your life.

That's incredible. Right. And it's like, well, on the other hand, you have the chance of social rejection. And that is also not cool. someone more excited of, I think there's someone who's really going to be a candidate, or I think there is a setup where the risk of rejection, the risk of feeling awkward and weird is very low. And so working on both of those together can help someone get over those qualms of, do I really want to go to this event? Am I really committed to this event? Everyone who is looking at buying a service or a product is trying to fulfill a need. And Maslow's hierarchy of needs taught in every psych 101 class um you have your physiological needs what you need to

keep your body alive right on the bottom right you need food you need water you need shelter you need medicine if you're sick coffee and then you have your your economic needs you need to make a living, you need to be able to pay for shelter, you need to stability, like, okay, I have enough money for this week. And I don't know where I'm getting it for for next month. That is is very important. And then you keep going up all the way up to, you know, love and relationships, to self-actualization. I want to be who I really am and use my talents and make a difference in the world. So when you plug into all of that, when you can identify what you're actually selling, because you're not just selling an event, right? You're selling this connection.

You're selling this vision of the future. You're selling something that's much more intrinsic. And for some people, it's very obvious in some areas. But in others, it's a little harder. I can't hear you, Chris. You bring up some good points. Is part of the makeup of being an introvert that fear of rejection, or is it just the draining of energy part of the makeup of an introvert is that negative things are more negative and positive things are not as positive

which sounds like they're depressed but not necessarily they're more cautious okay they're more they can be more fear driven if they're not more careful um but they're less likely to get in crazy accidents um extroverts are more likely to take more risks they're more likely to be the guy on the skateboard that'd be like oh if i land this cool trick it'll be awesome and the introvert's like if you break a bone, that'll be terrible. So they, everyone, you know, rates different experiences differently. And so that is definitely part of being an introvert. And as a business owner, you have to check with your head and say, am I being too cautious and too risk averse and not ever changing my prices because I'm afraid my customers will leave and

they'll reject me? Or am I being way too ambitious and growing way too fast? Growing too fast is one of the major killers of businesses we don't talk about. Yeah. And not charging enough, I think, is one of the leading causes of startups not picking up. Because if you don't have enough money coming in, you're not going to make it. That's true. What's that old, what's the thing about imposter syndrome? Do introverts experience a lot of the imposter syndrome? I think that's kind of some of what you talked about there, led into. Yeah. So imposter syndrome is extremely common in professional and high achieving women in particular. Over 80% of women in leadership roles have reported feeling imposter syndrome at some point in their career.

Um, and imposter syndrome is actually a sign of growth. So your self image takes about two years to update for you to be like, Oh yeah, I can do that. Oh yeah. I'm that tall. Um, just anything you, if you've ever, you know, gained or lost weight or, or your hair changed color and it took you a while to stop being jolted when you looked in the mirror, you know, it takes one to two years. So if you are starting a business and you're learning a new skill every week and you're doing things you never thought you could actually do, you're going to have a period where you think you could do less than you're actually doing. And someone comes up and says, Hey, do you have a plan for me to bring my book to make it an Amazon bestseller and be like, Oh, I can't do that. I'm like,

Oh, wait, I've done it six times. I just forgot. Because the first image that you think of yourself in your head is not the most accurate image. We tell stories about ourselves, stories about the world that aren't always true. You have to be careful about what stories of your business, stories of your success you are telling to yourself and you're telling to the world as your brand oh that's important because you've got to make sure you're aligned let me ask you this I didn't thought about this but you know being a CEO or being a leader being an entrepreneur the folks that you help being able to interact with people day to day you know I mean I've had hundreds of employees under my stead that you have to interact with. I mean, you don't technically interact with hundreds of employees,

but there's some days when you're, you have to talk to a whole few hundred employees or you've got a, you know, you're, you, when you're moving through the office, everyone wants to talk to you. Everyone wants to shake your hand or was, you know, you know, they want to, you know, make sure that they're kissing everyone's butt. You know, that's important to do to the boss. I'm just kidding. Don't do that, folks.

But, you know, there's a lot of interaction that goes on. And I can imagine if you're an introvert, you know, having a scalable business, lots of employees, can be harder because you kind of have to be on for eight hours a day if you're sitting in an office. That is a great point that there definitely is certain roles and certain sizes of organization that's going to take more people management. And there's a couple solutions to that one. You can decide to promote yourself out of that first thing. I started my business, I hired a VA. I'm like, okay, I'm a big picture person, I need you to take care of the details. And then I realized I needed a graphic designer, I needed someone who was going to handle my website. I added more people to my team and I'm like, hey, you just got promoted to manager. Because I knew that having, you know, two team meetings a week with my manager, with my whole team. And then having one person who was, even though our,

you know, our company was four people, having me be one step above would protect my energy because I'm a service-based business. I need my energy and the social bandwidth I have to serve my clients. And so then I would batch, okay, the day that I am going on social media and I'm putting on my makeup and real pants and being high energy and funny and silly in front of a camera, I'm going to make all of my videos that day and not try to take care of a client in the afternoon. So then maybe I'll do bookkeeping in the afternoon. So you arrange your schedule to fit that though. Yeah. And I know in the software world, it's often very common to have a day or at least half a day that is a no meetings section because coding software is an intensive process that you need to focus.

And I think that is beneficial in most industries where you block out time as your CEO. That may be your strategy time. That might be your continuing learning time, that whatever you need to work on, that is not just taking in information and sharing information. There you go. So let me ask you this. So let's talk about some of the other offerings you have on your website. What do you offer clients that are available there? I see some offerings that you have on the website people can take advantage of.

Yeah, I'm offering three coaching packages that are available to work one-on-one with me. And then people can join the wait list for the group coaching. The one in March is already full, but there will be one happening in April. I just haven't announced it or set the date yet. And so what that looks like is actually, you can get it kind of a sneak peek with the branding workbook. We'll go through exactly what your most profitable or best offer is, who the audience you should be targeting now.

So the people that help you make your first million might not be the people who help you make your 20th million dollars and that's okay you know start with the people who are super passionate start with the people who have deep pockets start with the people who are easy to access um and then your brands and your messaging needs to be aligned with all of that. When I was working with Chris Boozer of the Trash Porters, he was a year into his company and people were very excited about his doorstep offering. So instead of dragging your trash to a dumpster, he was going into apartment buildings

and doing a trash valet individual. Wow. I didn't even think about that. That's business. I should do that. It's actually pretty common in luxury units in California.

It's growing. But here on the East Coast, it was almost unheard of. So this is a brand new offering. People are excited about it. But bringing on a new client meant he had to put out for more bins. He had to. And so it would take three months before he would recoup the cost of onboarding a client. So I'm looking at his numbers and I'm like, Chris, if I got you a hundred

clients this month, I'd sink you. We have to be strategic about how you grow. So like, what is the service you provide that actually brings in profit right away? Because right now you just need cash flow. And this is the core of your business and you will grow, but you can't outgrow your cash. And he's like, well, when I do pickups and haulings, it's really profitable. I'm able to resell the furniture to a charity store. So anything usable still gets used. So I'm getting paid on both sides.

I'm getting lots of leads. And I'm like, okay, this is the campaign we need to run right now. And three months later, he broke even for the first time. Oh, wow. By shifting what he was focusing on at the time. Yeah. Yeah, those luxury houses, they throw out some nice stuff. Like a lot of it, you know, I think you can at least stick to welfare or goodwill or something.

But yeah, my dad would go looking for stuff. He was a bit of a hoarder when I was young. And we would drive around and he would look for stuff that was in garbages and like go grab this ski and we're like dad it's just one red ski and he goes don't worry we'll eventually find the other one and did he ever find the other ski i don't know no he had a bit of a hoarding problem so if you uh p, if you have a hoarding problem, you know, see, seek some mental health folks, uh, please. Uh, it's a tough disease, but you know, he would, you know, we would, you drive through nice neighborhoods and I've lived in nice neighborhoods and driven around and been like,

Oh wait, they throw that out. That's, that's actually pretty nice. But, uh, yeah, I can see how that'd be kind of interesting business. I need to hire somebody to take my trash out. Cause I always, I always forget which day it is, even though it's the same week. Yeah. And then, you know, it's really cold out there right now. So, you know, that 20 feet walk from the house to the curb is a little much right now. So I think I pretty much freeze to death.

By the time I'm back, I have to go lay by the fire for a half an hour or something and have someone rub me so I don't die of hypothermia. It's like 21 degrees out there now. It doesn't sound like a fun chore. Yeah, it's not. I mean, why isn't someone creating like automated, like we have these self-driving cars. Maybe I just came from a billion-dollar business. We have these self-driving cars. Why don't we have self-driving garbage cans that I can just press a button

and be like, have the garbage cans drive themselves to the curb. There you go. We just came up with a billion dollar idea on the Christmas show. That is quite the idea. I don't know if I would trust my current trash company to be gentle with my

very expensive automated trash can. They go crazy and they drive into someone's car or something. Now you owe somebody a bunch of money because your garbage can's got out of control and had a software bug. So, Lindsay, as we go out, give people your final offer. Tell people, pitch them where they can onboard with you,

how they can reach out to you, see if working together with you is a good fit, et cetera, et cetera. Absolutely. So I am happy to work with micro businesses of 20 people or less, and you can find me at evansmayhew.com if you're looking for the answers to your marketing questions or looking to build a strategy that ethically attracts the perfect clients for you. And of course, you're welcome to download my free branding workbook and get some ideas. There you go. You know, you can overcome being an introvert and there's nothing wrong with being an introvert. I mean,

you just, it sounds like if you, if you smartly manage your time, if you manage, you know, you can overcome being an introvert, and there's nothing wrong with being an introvert. I mean, it sounds like if you smartly manage your time, if you manage your exposure time, you know, you give yourself grace for when you need it. You certainly can. You know, my biggest problem of being drained at large events is usually dumb people. And I get a lot of that on Facebook where I get drained over dumb people too, and X. So anyway, they do take a little extra,

kind of drain of energy, working with business owners. They tend to be pretty interesting, pretty motivated people. So, uh, yeah, I,

I really enjoy the people I get to work with, um, which is a huge reason why I started my own business. There you go. There you go. Well, Lindsay, thank you very much for coming to the show. It's been very insightful. And I've learned a lot about introverts and maybe I'll be nicer to them and quit trying to drag them out of their shell or drag them out to events or understand why they don't show up to stuff But yeah, I mean if this is something you have to overcome or try and manage as a CEO as a leader

You know if you're gonna be exposed a lot of people and you want to be financially successful I mean you just have to do it I mean it's not like there's a choice so You can't you can't raise a lot of money and scale your business If you're just sitting in your home looking at the wall I mean you got a you got to get out and interact with people right and you can't even coach lot of money and scale your business if you're just sitting in your home looking at the wall i mean you gotta you gotta get out and interact with people right and you can't even coach people if you're too much of an introvert they're like hey can you coach us and you're like i'm afraid to get on calls it won't work very well so i find a hard time believing anyone's afraid of zoom in 2025 I mean, you'd be surprised.

I mean, there's a lot of Zoom burnout too. So I'm sure you've seen that. Thank you very much, Lindsay, for coming to the show. Thanks for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, Fortress Chris Voss, linkedin.com, Fortress Chris Voss. Go to her website and download free. It's a free branding workbook.

Build your brand in 15 minutes and get to know her better. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you guys next time.