Welcome to Meaningful Work Remarkable Life. I’m your host Brook McCarthy, and I’m a business coach, trainer and speaker living and working on the unceded lands of the Camargo people here in Sydney, Australia.
In this podcast, we explore the paradoxes inherent in working for love and money, magnifying your impact and doing work you feel born to do. We explore the intersections of the meanings we bring to work and the meanings we derive from work. Hello, I’m Brooke McCarthy. Welcome to season four of the podcast, I Cannot Believe We Are Here.
It has been a longer break between seasons, much longer than I would have hoped. But from this day forward, please hold me accountable because season four we’re releasing one new episode a week, every week, so that is 10 episodes in a season. So if you come back same time, same place next week, you will find a brand new episode waiting for you. This is my promise.
And of course, the reason I’m telling you this is so that I will be accountable for just that. So the season four theme is change. And I think it’s a great theme because everything changes all of the time, right? Change is the only constant, but especially right now, the rates of change in 2024 have been exponential.
And this is off the back of some pretty wacky years, right? 2020, 2021, 2022. Like we weren’t resting on our laurels, twiddling our thumbs, watching the paint dry. There was a lot going on. But yet, 2024 has been a completely different beast. So if it’s feeling like things are changing and things are a lot more uncertain than they were, then please know that you’re not alone.
This is what I’m hearing a lot. This is what I’m experiencing in my business. And this podcast, and specifically this season, will fortify you against these changes to make sure that you are as strong and resilient as you can possibly be and that your business continues to grow. So without further ado, today I’m talking about when your values are weaponized against you. This is something I see a lot.
And I think it is a byproduct of being conscientious. And if you are a values-based business owner, if you value kindness and integrity and you have strong principles, then please know that these can be easily exploited by others who are not burdened by the same things. And what I see a lot of particularly is when you stand up for something and you stick your head up and say, this is what I believe, this is, you know, this is my values, then you make yourself vulnerable to tiny perceived hypocrisies. And it’s really, really easy to do. It’s really, really easy to criticise others.
It’s really easy to point out hypocrisies because we are all hypocritical. So don’t let this stop you. Please don’t let this stop you from sharing and declaring out loud on the internet what you stand for and what you stand against. And know that you will open yourself up to criticism by people who are doing nothing, right? Because it’s easy to criticise, it costs nothing to criticise other people. And the people who are the loudest critiques, the loudest critics rather, are those who tend to be sitting on their hands too scared to actually do anything. People who are bold and brave and doing stuff, they’re not going to stop to, you know, point out some perceived hypocrisy.
They’re too busy cheering you on. They’re not gonna slow down to critique other people. It’s just not in their nature. So, in the first few years of my business, I was definitely a victim to this many, many times. I attracted a lot of charming narcissists, a lot of energy vampires, who manipulated me into over-delivering, and sometimes for no compensation at all, these guys will suck you dry, they’ll spit you out.
And worse, they’ll make you believe it’s your fault. And it’s oftentimes burnout when you finally realise, hey, just a second, I don’t think this is in my best interests. And a sense of resentment and anger are really useful indicators that perhaps your values are being used against you. Now, if you’ve ever heard anyone say to you, I can’t believe you’re getting paid to do this, what a fantastic thing to do. The money must be an absolute bonus.
Or other people would kill to do what you do, or this is a fantastic cause and the budget is really tight or non-existent, but you’d know you were doing the right thing, you’d know you were doing a good thing. Perhaps you’ve heard people say to you, we were expecting more, or this job hasn’t been completed to the standard we were hoping for, or there’s more to do.
Now, if you’re hearing the last three particularly, you will always wanna go back to the brief, back to the contract and make sure that you have done everything stipulated. Because of course the problem is that a lot of this is subjective and it can be hard to distinguish between constructive criticism and deliberate exploitation. So sometimes it’s difficult to be objective, right? To know whether or not you’ve done a good job, an adequate job, a great job. And of course, if you’ve got a tiny budget, then it’s almost impossible to do a brilliant job.
So one thing that I see a lot of, that probably the number one when I was thinking about, okay, well, how are all the ways that people, that my clients, my community are being exploited specifically through their values? And I think probably the number one is through motherhood or parenthood. And I’m gonna say motherhood because this is true of 95% of cases.
Whereas, you know, fatherhood might be only 5% or less. But if you are continually feeling that you are being pulled in a thousand directions, and if the people around you who may or may not be very skilled and subtle in their criticisms of your parenting, yeah, of your mothering, while you’re trying to build a business,
And what I see a lot of is business owners who don’t just have young children, which is, you know, a job in itself, but they’ve also got a business and some of them also have a job. So perhaps they have a two day a week job or a four day a week job, or perhaps a five day a week job, and they’ve got a business and they’ve got kids. It is
And you just pressure up from every angle, right? And on top of that, you’re supposed to see your friends and you’re supposed to exercise and you’re supposed to look after yourself and you’re supposed to read a book, you know? It’s other things. And then we are being pressured. And like I said, oftentimes it’s really, really subtle or it’s passive aggressive or it’s hard to kind of distinguish. It’s not like your partner’s saying to you, you’re a terrible parent, you need to quit this business immediately. They’re not saying that.
In fact, my partner went through a period of saying, you know, if it’s so difficult, if it’s so stressful, why don’t you just quit? And eventually I had to say to him, I don’t want you to say that to me. This is not an option. Quitting my business is not an option, but you are my partner and so you’re gonna get the brunt of my stress because that’s what partners are for, are they not? Our poor life partners, our poor lovers, they get the worst of us.
And I had to ask him, you know, please don’t say that because I have absolutely no intention of quitting my business. I am just venting. And after I vent, I will move on and do something productive. But back to parenting, back to mothering. What we’re looking for here, how can we find a way through this vexed relationship or this vexed, you know, relationships, it might be more than one person, right? It might be more than one person who’s asking you or pushing you to choose between one or the other. We need to find other people who are doing both. We need to find other people who are modelling the behaviour and the life that we want for ourselves, because make no mistake, there are plenty of successful business owners who are juggling young children and building a business.
And I’m not saying that to add further guilt or further crap to your already over full plate. That is not the point of this. The point is, it is possible to have multiple things going on. It is possible to hold multiple truths at the same time. And of course it is hard. It is absolutely hard. But the alternative is not very attractive, right? The alternative is we put our needs on hold, we put our ambitions on hold, we put our desires on hold.
We oftentimes make ourselves quite vulnerable to some extraneous circumstance that needs a huge amount of money to overcome, because we haven’t been building our business in the interim, while we’re building our life. And I see this happen over and over again, and this is one of the things that motivates me to do what I do. I’ve seen clients who have been absolutely blindsided when their husband has walked out on them and has frozen all the bank accounts in the process. I have seen clients who have no choice. Yeah, they have their choices taken away because make no mistake – money is choice. Money is flexibility. Money enables you to do things that you couldn’t otherwise do, such as perhaps hire help or buy back your time. Yeah? So, it sounds a little bit depressing this episode. I didn’t mean that. I don’t mean it to sound quite so dire.
But I do want to point this out because I see it happening over and over again. And there is a saying from law school that says they don’t make a job prestigious unless it sucks. It’s not just motherhood that is, you know, a common occupation where you have your values weaponized against you. It is any industry or sector where there are fewer jobs than there are applicants. Any, anything that’s aspirational, prestigious, or feel good is also popular for energy vampires. So the amount of times that I have seen requests for people to work for free from the social enterprise sector, from the not-for-profit sector, from the political sector, from arts, fashion, health and healing, this is not an exhaustive list. And it’s also not, you know, specific to particular industries as well because, back to my first point, it’s any time where conscientiousness is a factor. If you are highly conscientious and you have high standards, then you are prone to exploitation. You are prone to having your values weaponized against you.
And again, it can be hard to know for certain, right? Because you could always do more, you could always improve, you could always do another edit, you could always add to, you could always learn more, you know, but sooner or later there has to be somebody that says enough, yeah? When I used to work in PR, you know, sometimes we’d get to version number 17 before I’d say enough, 17 versions is enough versions. Yeah.
So I want to talk about how to protect yourself. Now, if anything I’m saying is resonating, maybe you are a mother of young children, maybe everything seems impossible, and maybe you’re starting to feel really selfish. You’re starting to feel like there’s something wrong with you for wanting more than just parenting your children. Meaningful pause. Just consider you may be being exploited, you may be subtly encouraged to martyr yourself at the altar of motherhood. So how do we protect ourselves?
Well, firstly, boundaries. I’m gonna say this, you’ve heard me say it before, you’ll hear me say it again. Boundaries are absolutely essential, and especially for business owners, especially for those who are empathetic or highly sensitive or perhaps who are very social. If you’re very social, then your boundaries are super important. And so some of the things you can do is to just make yourself a little bit more hard to reach. Take the mobile phone off the internet, take it off your website, take your email address off your website, have a really clear and obvious sales process. You can put your prices on your sales page. Oftentimes just by having a really clear process with your with your prices stipulated, your prices really clearly obvious on your website, is enough to deter the energy vampires. The second one is, and this is a big one, this is a huge one, so forgive me if I mention it in brief, but the self-worth from sacrifice, we need to divorce the martyr or the savior complex. I see it all the time, all the time in our business owners, many, many years after this was first created, your self-worth needs to be distinct and different from how much sacrifice you’re putting in there. I love the term selfish. I like being called selfish. I want to own that. It’s oftentimes meant as an insult and hurled as an insult.
But actually it’s a sign that you’ve got your priorities sorted. And especially if it feels, if, if listening to me say this feels all kinds of wrong, then this is for you. Be selfish. How much you do has nothing to do with your value or your self worth.
The next thing is we want to make a short list of people that we would work for for free. So I can count that on two hands. I’m talking about inner sanctum people, people who I actually love deeply, not friends of friends, not even friends. Yeah, some friends, absolutely for sure. At all times, I work with one pro bono client, one only, and it’s not some random little not for profit, you know, put together by well-meaning people whose cause is not my cause. They are not my pro bono client. Yeah.
I have to be choosy. I have to be discerning with the limited time that I have available. And it is limited because whatever time you’re spending on one thing is time that you’re not spending on something else. So more detail also in our proposals and quotes.
16:51
especially if some of what I was saying earlier, you hear people say this is not to the standard that we were hoping or there’s more to be done here or it isn’t finished kind of thing, then you wanna go back to your process, back to your proposals, back to your quotations and make sure it’s really clear and obvious what the process is, how many revisions, what the timeline, what the requirements, with deadlines for clients, because it’s not just you, right?
17:19
The client has to be active in the relationship. They need to supply you with information, for example. Another big one is working for exposure. I am very, very fussy about who, you know, if for example, somebody says, can you speak to my group and there is no budget and I’ve asked if there’s a budget and they say there is no budget, well then I’m very, very fussy what happens next. Yeah, it needs to make sense for me.
17:48
I’ve been doing this for a long time now. I have done thousands of hours gaining, you know, mastery as they say, in my topic of expertise. I don’t need practice anymore. I don’t need practice. And even if I’ve never done a specific thing before, well, so what? I would still expect to be paid the first time. If I could do it, doesn’t matter if I’ve never done it before, I expect to be paid. I expect to be paid.
So one final point that I wanna make, actually two, I’m just gonna shoehorn a half little point in. The first one is, it is much easier to spot an energy vampire or a charming narcissist or some weird passive aggressive subtle kind of shaming when you’re well rested. It’s much harder if you are burnt out and in need of a good long rest.
Yeah. And then finally, my final point is that it is super important to move away from these binaries because it’s the binary thinking that enables this to continue. It’s that all or nothing, black or white, you’re either doing it for love or you’re doing it for money. You’re either highly conscientious or you don’t care. Yeah. It’s either very, very kind of high prestige and highly creative and really interesting and fun, or it’s dirge and therefore it’s paid or well-paid, that’s actively stopping you from growing a dream business where you work for love and money, yeah? And where these energy vampires and charming narcissists can continue to exploit good people by weaponizing their values against them. So let me know what you think. Please send me a message, find me on all the places. Let me know what you think. Has this ever happened to you? I would love to hear your story. Real quick before you go, if this episode has gotten you thinking, gotten you excited, or has you changing the way that you do business or life, would you do me a super quick favor and write me a short review? Your.
The podcast review means so much to me and it helps other values-based business owners just like you to find this show, which is a fantastic gift to me.
