Megan Martin 0:00
This is talking small business with Kat Schmoyer. And Meghan Martin, a podcast for creatives who like to keep it real about what it actually takes to grow an online business,

Kat Schmoyer 0:09
where competitors turned to biz besties, who chat daily, and now we’re bringing you into the conversation. Hey, y’all, welcome to the first episode of talking small business with ash Meyer and Megan Martin, y’all, I am so excited that we are finally doing this. Megan and I have been talking about doing this for what feels like forever. And finally, we put it on the to do list. We made it a priority. We were going to get this podcast off the ground. So welcome to our first episode. Thanks for tuning in. This one, we wanted to share a little bit more about our story. Why are we doing this podcast together? Like, why are we friends like what’s going on? And like our little bubble? And why did we think it would be fun to kind of bring you guys into the conversation. So we’re gonna start with that. And I’m gonna actually like pass the mic over to Megan and let her kind of kick it off sharing

a little bit more about her background, what she does, who she serves, and then I’ll share a little bit more about mine.

Megan Martin 1:15
Yeah, I am super pumped friends. I’m Megan, and just really excited to share a lot of conversations with you through this podcast. But to start it off, we definitely wanted to introduce ourselves if you have never met us before. I am Megan Martin, and I help creative entrepreneurs turn what they know love do and already have within them into digital products that they can sell. My personal background is in website design and brand design. And in 2016, I pivoted from a service based business model and launched my very first line of digital products at the time, they were digital products that were for service based business owners. And I have made many pivots and evolved over the last almost five years at this point. Now I sell website templates. And I also have a membership where I connect with and serve other people who are trying to create and sell digital products. And really my whole goal every day is to either connect with other people or show other people how you can do this business model for yourself. So that’s like my background in a nutshell and two minutes. Cat What about you tell us about your background? Um,

Kat Schmoyer 2:37
so I am a service provider and i i do you have digital products, but I’m definitely not the digital product guru like Megadeth she’s like underselling herself. In this situation, you guys. She’s like the queen of digital products. So I started my first business eight years ago, almost eight years ago as a wedding planner. And I am still an active wedding planner, I just take a very limited number of couples every year. So while I love wedding planning, it’s definitely not the focus of all of my businesses. Over the past eight years, I’ve launched to several different brands. So I have my wedding planning company. And then I launched creative at heart. I host a conference every year for creative small business owners and we have a membership community to provide on demand education for creative entrepreneurs. So anywhere you are, you can pull up your laptop and kind of binge watch education similarly to Netflix is like how I like to call it. So within creative at heart, the focus is encouraging small business owners to just really be able to move forward in their dreams and in their goals. And then my own brand, the Kat Schmoyer brand is where I get to do that more one on one. So within creative at heart, I’m doing that on a larger scale at our conference, partnering with our educators really getting to love and serve our attendees. But then one on one, I want to have my coaching clients and my mastermind students and I have some shop templates. So really getting to walk alongside creative small business owners making dreams a reality. I feel like my superpower is quarterly planning. So I love to look at all of the moving pieces in your business and help you make a 90 day gameplan to like really make it happen. So again, whether that’s from a conference standpoint, or an individual like one on one, it’s definitely a way that I like to help and serve small business owners.

Megan Martin 4:29
Love it. And you are the calendar girl. We have digital products. You’re the

Kat Schmoyer 4:33
calendar. There we go. There we go all the queens and things over here. So okay, let’s talk about how we met. Because we both been in this small business world for a while now. And gosh, it was 2016 when we first met, right?

Megan Martin 4:50
Yeah. I loved how you talk about like part of your business is wedding planning. And so I didn’t share that little point but I feel like even hearing you say your thing and like me Talking about my business. We really are competition and all of the ways that are possible. No. Yeah, I actually was a wedding planner. I started my business in 2011. As a wedding planner. That’s how I found you online. Yeah, I knew you were a wedding planner in Florida. Yeah, yes. We connected on Instagram, way back in the day. I remember you following me. And then I actually went to a I went to a retreat. My friend had a retreat at the time that she was putting on annually. And I met Ashley profit at that retreat. And she was there with Shea Cochran and we were sitting at lunch one day, and she was like, so have you girls heard of this chick named Kat Schmoyer? And I was like, actually, yes, I we follow each other on Instagram. And she had just designed your brand at the time. I don’t know if you’re like, remember this whole process? Or Oh, yeah, I guess you hired Ashley prompt is on your brand. And she was at this retreat, and just randomly brought your name up at the lunch table. And we started chatting about how she was like, This girl is going to take off like she’s going to do huge things. And I’m like, Well, I feel cool because I’m her Instagram friend. So I’m like, Well, I’m gonna like hang out with her you know? But that’s like the first real inclination I had that. Like we both had similar businesses. We both had similar dreams of building our wedding planning business at the time and then we just were Instagram friends for a while I don’t even know when that was a must have been like 2014

Kat Schmoyer 6:38
Yeah, I had this is I’m pretty sure that’s when Ashley designed my brand. It was my very first like real brand I had like the you know, I DIY my website template situation for about a year and then when I could afford to hire a designer she was the first one that I hired. That’s wild. So then in 2016, we met in person and I remember meeting you in person it was the rising tide leaders retreat you often wearing all white literally white jeans white like Florida girl all like with your girls and like Jeremy and like the stroller. I don’t think it was a girl like we didn’t like Kate Spade purse all white. Like we’re gonna have to be like real life friends, since we’re like friends on Instagram.

Megan Martin 7:16
Yep. Yeah. So we met at the rising tide leaders retreat. It was the first retreat they put on it was in Charleston. And I remember that. I didn’t know anybody coming into this retreat. I led the Tuesday’s together group in Jacksonville, Florida at the time and you lead your group. And nowhere Ville Virginia, literally I don’t even need to say the city name because people will be like where is. But I remember coming to this retreat, and absolutely not knowing anybody and esli my youngest daughter at the time was super little. So I was like managing breastfeeding and like on a tight schedule with this newborn baby and coming to this retreat where I didn’t know anybody. But I was actually super excited to meet you in person I remember we’re like, we’ll have to connect and chat. And yeah, so I remember walking in the room and my all white outfit. And I feel like we just immediately connected it was like, it just felt like I was talking to a friend from day one.

Kat Schmoyer 8:22
I completely agree. It’s so cool. And as we like keep doing this podcast, I’m excited to even like dig more into this. But I feel like we’re such kindred spirits on so many areas, which is why this is so natural. Now for us to be doing this together, get we are also very, very different. So it’s just a really interesting friendship. Because again, we have such similarities, even to the point of like business offerings, and faith, all of those things. But yet we’re like ying and yang when it comes to personality type and just the way that our brains like process things in our businesses and in our life. So yes, I totally agree from like the very first conversation online to then meeting in person. Our relationship has just grown over the last few years. And after meeting at the rising tide leaders retreat, you were then a panelist at creative at heart. So we got to connect even further with just like hosting the conference and then being at the conference together, then sharing in some like really deep and like dark personal things that were going on in our lives, like over the years. And then we started our own little accountability, like pod together basically just okay, we knew that we both had similar business models, we had similar things going on in our seasons of life, small kids at home, breastfeed like nursing journeys, Pregnancy journeys, growing our businesses, with our husbands like alongside of us and wanting to have a space to be able to share like the good, the bad, the ugly, like all of it together. And so we started doing that like really off the cuff to just be able to share in those conversations together, and I’m So glad, I mean, we’ve been doing that for years now. And I’m so glad that we’ve been able to do that.

Megan Martin 10:04
Yeah, it’s been such a huge blessing to have connection with another entrepreneur that gets you gets what you’re going through. And that you can kind of peel back the layers of fear and, you know, holding on to everything that you have in your business with a tight fist, and actually just connect with that other person. And we were able to create a relationship where it was not only like us as friends, but us as like, we help each other with next steps or coming, overcoming roadblocks in our business and figuring out how we can best serve the customers that we show up for. So it’s definitely been such a powerful relationship. But I think what’s really interesting in this first episode that we wanted to really bring to light is the fact that we really are competition with each other. Yeah. And, you know, we met through the rising tide, and the rising tide slogan is community over competition, right. And I feel like that slogan can sort of go a few different ways and how people take it, you know, but we are that in a nutshell, you know, that’s what our relationship has become. And I was even thinking as you were talking, you know, I don’t know the exact saying that people like, you know, the saying where it says like, you are the sum of your five closest friends. Yes, yes. You know, that saying, so I feel like we are such an interesting example of that, because we’re so close. And when we say we talk every day, we literally are on day, every single day all the time. I remember one time you were like, Matt, cannot handle how much we Vox it’s all day long. I

Kat Schmoyer 11:45
go to tell Matt something. And he’s like, Well, did you talk to Megan about it? Like, I mean, yes, actually, two days ago.

Megan Martin 11:54
It’s so true. We, we used to have this situation where we would like have Thursday, I think it was 10am. In the morning that we would sit down for an hour and it was like cat and Megan call day. And we would like do our own mini mastermind. But now it’s turned into like we have kids, we have a lot of things going on. So we just box each other all day long. And so that’s what we meant by like bringing you into this conversation of we’ve always said behind the scenes, like our boxes should be a podcast, because we talk a lot about deep strategy. And we have hard conversations as well. And going back to the point of like being the some of your five closest friends like Kat and I talked to each other every single day. So it is so natural that even though we are wildly different, especially in terms of our personality, and the core makeup of our beings, we are so similar in the way that we think especially when it comes to business. And it has naturally lended itself to us starting to do the exact same things. Not only were we wedding planners at first, but it’s an it’s been a natural progression, that when we’re focusing on each other’s businesses, and the way that our like our strengths and our talents. And you know what we have our own experiences in our own businesses, it’s been a natural progression, that we start to almost offer similar things. And so we wanted to have this conversation to kick off this podcast to say, what does it look like to actually be best friends with your competition? And how do you handle these hard conversations? Especially when it comes to like, Hey, we’re starting to sell the exact same thing to the exact same person. So how do you navigate that and actually continue in a space of community? With competition? Absolutely. I

Kat Schmoyer 13:44
mean, that’s that, is it? What you just said at the end is like, yes, you can have those conversations, but how can we do it and really be genuine and authentic with waving that flag of community over competition. And I don’t want to like toot our own horns here. But I do think that we do that well. And we have learned over the course of the last five, six years and our friendship and all of the the like ebbs and flows of even the pivots that we’ve both made, you know, individually. Now doing this together, like all of those things, what does it look like to still be able to wave that flag for your best friend when they’re succeeding, and it feels like you’re not? Or when they say they want to offer something? And you’re like, well, man, I had this idea like I was going to offer it and like, how do you navigate the mindset of it? How do you navigate the business of it with knowing like, well, at the end of the day, my business still has to pay the bills. So like, No, I don’t want to be competition with my best friend, but like, we all need to like bring home some money here. So just a lot of things to unpack in this episode. And a lot of things that we probably won’t get to all of it today because this can’t be like a three hour long episode. But we want to like jump in and like start unpacking some of this. So okay, let’s talk about you already mentioned this. When you were just talking Megan, when we want to offer the same thing. So like, I feel like that’s a big pain point really, when you are good friends with somebody else in your industry, or maybe you’re listening to this, and you’re nervous to become friends with other people in the industry, because you feel like offerings are so similar. So let’s start like talking about that, like, how do we navigate this relationship? When we either want to offer the same thing, or now currently, we are offering things that are very similar?

Megan Martin 15:27
I think that’s like a two fold question. But in my mind, the part of the question where it’s like, I’m afraid to become friends with somebody who does similar similar things with me, I think, if you’re trying to establish a relationship with someone who does do similar things with you, so that you can kind of go deep with each other on strategy and how to grow your business, I think you have to seek out the relationship for first and foremost, I think, for a pure friendship, and not so much like, what can I get out of this other person? Because when you and I first became friends, that’s what it was. It wasn’t? Can you know, what can I get out of cat’s brain to like help might help me grow my business, I was just a lonely entrepreneur who wanted someone to be friends with, right. And so I think having the intentions of just establishing a relationship first over, what can I get out of this for my business is going to be the best way that you can go about creating a friendship like that. And then when it does become a friendship, and if you do start selling the same things, I feel like for you, and I, one of the ways that we’ve been able to navigate this well, even though we’ve had hard conversations, I think we’re going to talk about that next, like what does it look like to have hard conversations? But even though we’ve had hard conversations, I think one of the reasons why we navigate this wall is because yes, we are doing the same things. But like you’ve already mentioned, we do have different personalities. And we are different people, right. And so we even in our, in our, in our introduction, you know, you talked about how you help people set goals, and you love to quarterly plan, and you’re the person who helps make their dreams and their dailies happen in their business, right. And my focus is completely different. I’m not a goal planner. I’m not a strategic, futuristic type person. And so I feel like in our friendship cat, like we have had a way to where we can say, Hey, we can both teach people about digital products, but you’re coming at it from your strengths and how you help them implement based on your unique framework. And then I come at it from my strengths. And like, for example, if you’re the calendar girl, like I’m the girl that helps people come up with profitable ideas, and I can name them all day. Yeah, we joke

Kat Schmoyer 17:49
or like the idea generator? Absolutely. Yeah, no, I think that’s such a good way to put it of knowing like for us, and this is like very specific to our relationship. But for us with digital products, specifically, I want to help my students with the launch timeline, the project management have the to do list of all the things on their plate, and like how do they juggle that on top of other tasks and other things in their business? And you’re the one saying, here’s the idea, like, let’s keep generating these ideas, like what’s the data telling you that the ideas need to be what’s going to be like revenue generating for their businesses, and really giving them something that is income and impact, which I know like you care so much about. And so I think that’s such a perfect example of like, within our relationship, we’re just able to have this mindset of there can be two of us, because we’re coming at the same thing from a very different approach. So if you’re wedding photographers, and you’re both teaching client experience, what’s the uvp that you each have? That’s different, you know? And like, how are you each coming at the what would be considered the same thing, right teaching client experience, or for us teaching digital products, but from a very different angle that produces a different result for our students or for our coaching clients or whatever it might be?

Megan Martin 19:07
Yeah, and I think there’s naturally going to be overlap too. So I don’t want to act like there isn’t overlap, you know. But I also feel like you, I feel like I’m constantly telling myself that I do not work from a place of scarcity, that I’m going to work from a place of abundance and there are 7 billion people in the world. And while we naturally probably also share audiences, like we have an opportunity to reach new people and I think, I don’t know about you cat, but I feel like I’ve even seen my own customers who are in my products, who are customers of my products that talk about digital products. They’re also customers of your products that talk about digital product, right. And I think this is something that as our industry we also don’t like to talk about, we think that if you are selling a digital product or whatever it is a service, whatever on whatever topic make you think that that person is never going to go purchase another product about that same type of concept. And that’s just not the truth. I know that with my own website template business, like people eat up my website templates, and then they’ll launch a website, and they’ll be, they’ll just tell me how excited they were. And they’re like, Hey, I also mixed in some website templates from some other people that I purchased. And I’m like, you would think why would you do that? Right? But But customers actually really like to have different perspectives even on the same topic. And so there can be two of us that sell the same thing, even from different perspectives. And our customers might might actually want both.

Kat Schmoyer 20:37
Absolutely, absolutely. And we’ve, we’ve talked about our personalities being so different, and the customer has their own personality, too, right. So nobody’s cookie cutter in this relationship. So in to go to your point, they might appreciate Megan’s perspective and cat’s perspective, just like if you’re sitting there thinking about you and your best friend, or like your you know, quote, unquote, competition, like, your people are going to appreciate seeing the two sides to every coin, so that they can then determine what’s going to work best for their business, their personality, their lifestyle, all of those variables that are factored into it. So I think that’s a really, really, really good point to bring up. So when we’re talking about offering the same thing, can we talk through, like going into, like, the hard conversation of that, right? So we’ve talked through, yes, we can offer the same thing and like the mindset shifts that we have to make to know like, there are more efficiency. So like, we can offer very similar things, but having a different, you know, you unique value proposition I said, like uvp earlier, that’s what that means, like unique value proposition, we can have differentiating factors about our marketing efforts, our brand messaging, etc, and be able to offer the same things. But how do we navigate those hard conversations to gather, if you’re thinking through offering something new, but then your friend comes along, and she wants to offer something that’s very, very similar? This has literally happened to us before. So I want to touch on how we have talked about this.

Megan Martin 22:04
Yeah, I mean, I think we should just bring up the tangible example, yeah, that we have and start from there, you know. So a very real example of this. And our friendship is that cat hosts a mastermind, and it’s a higher ticket mastermind in her business. And in that mastermind, the bulk of all of it, I think, from everything we’ve talked about Vox is that you’re helping people establish passive revenue streams, right? Yes. And even though again, like your person is probably a service provider who wants to add this on top. So you’ve kind of gone through it from that angle. And you’re helping them from a planning and strategic perspective, like, how do we do this? How do we add passive revenue? Okay, well, I also teach about digital products, right. And so I have a membership, a lower ticket offer, where I am showing up monthly in different ways with my members to talk about creating passive revenue, right. And so an example of how this kind of like clashed recently is that you had this mastermind where you built out content that you’re sharing with your mastermind group, and I was seeing in my own membership business, that I was almost like missing a step in terms of content for my members. So really, digital lab is really well served for somebody who already has a digital product and has some sort of understanding of the digital business model. And they want to walk alongside with our community for the long haul and optimizing their sales funnels and how do I increase sales? Or what’s the next digital product? How do I create my value ladder, all these good things? Well, I was seeing that there was a gap in my membership of a lot of people who were there who didn’t have their first product, and felt a little bit overwhelmed and lost about how do I actually do this, how to create my first product and set up my first sales funnel. So then I can optimize and be in the game with all of you over here, right? So my natural inclination was to say, I need to create a course that’s going to help somebody walk through the A to Z. Well, on your side, Kat, you were thinking, Hey, I have all of this content that’s already built out for my mastermind, I should turn this into a course. Right? Yeah. And so we had a hard conversation around this because I remember, you know, at the time that recording this podcast, this is probably about a year ago today that you had randomly said on one of our Vox chats like 1000 Vox chats a week. You said I, I might turn this content into a course one day, and it was like a very passing comment, right? And then like, six months ago, when I bring up this idea, like hey, I’m really seeing a gap for my members here in digital lab, and this is what I’m thinking and it was like, immediately, well, wait a second. I’m thinking about doing the same thing. And that’s what started this hard conversation. Yes. And you know, I think even just like starting from here now like how do we navigate that hard conversation? Like, what did we do? And what can we encourage like you as a listener to do if you have a situation come up like this? Yeah,

Kat Schmoyer 25:12
I think first and foremost is not assuming that the other person knows how you feel or understands the ins and outs, like, we all know what people say about people who assume things, right. Like, let’s not do that in this conversation. So like with what Meghan just outlined, which was a very real thing that happened last year, like within the last year, when she brought this up to me, my first thought, initially, even before I said anything to her was, whoa, I was thinking about doing something similar. And so I had to, like, take a step back, sit in that, even if it was just for like, a few minutes to like, get my thoughts together, and then bring it up to her. Right. Like, I can’t assume that she knew how I was going to feel or that she remembered that I said that, especially because in our scenario, it wasn’t in passing thing. It’s not like, I’d been working on building out this course for six months, you know, and now she’s like swooping in to do it. Like it was not that scenario at all. But on my end, I had to bring it up to her. And that can be hard, right? Like, it’s hard to put yourself out of your comfort zone, potentially have a confrontational conversation and say, like, Hey, listen, I think this is great. I totally understand like, where you’re coming from on the strategy for your digital product suite. But I was also thinking about doing something similar because of X, Y, and Z. Let’s talk about it. And that’s literally what we did. So then we spent some very dedicated time strategizing in our box, you know, in our box conversation about, alright, what’s Meghan’s reasoning for wanting to do this? And what’s her unique value proposition? Like, what is her why behind this? Like, how is this helpful for her customer? And then I did the same thing on mine, and I got to brain dump, okay, this is what I’m thinking, this is how I think my content is going to be laid out. And actually, y’all in doing that, we realize that we had enough of a difference to where we could both move forward. And it would be fun, quote, unquote, fine, you know, yeah. Going back to what Megan said earlier, there might be somebody that purchases both of them, great Soviet let somebody understand how I would do it, let somebody understand how Megan would do it. And then let them create their own plan to pass a profit, please do that. But we were able to take that step back and not make assumptions, and have a very clear, raw conversation about the ins and outs of it for each of our businesses and each of our ideal clients.

Megan Martin 27:32
Yeah, for sure. And I think to piggyback off that thought process, so your advice was so helpful to say like, Don’t think that the other person under or don’t assume the other person understands how you feel, or the ins and outs of what’s going on behind the scenes in your business. And for me, on my side, I would say also, like, Don’t assume that the person has ill intent, yes, when they are coming to you with an idea that might be similar to yours. Because that’s something that I feel like we’re constantly I’m constantly remembering is like, you don’t have ill intent towards me to like, hurt me or my business, and I don’t have ill intent towards you to hurt you and your business, we both have a same goal, and that is to serve our customer really, really well. And so, what you said next about how, you know, we dug in and said, Okay, tell me, you even said okay, like, explain to me, the reason why that this member, for example, me specifically why my digital lab member needs this? And what is the specific problem that they have that I personally can help them overcome. And we really did see that there was such a difference. And we already talked about this even earlier, where it was like, I’m the ideal girl, and you’re the calendar girl, right? And so when we broke apart when I like, I laid out like point by point by point by point for cat, almost like it was a sales page. I’m like, bulleting out, like, here’s, here’s what I think my digital lab member needs, here’s what I can actually help them with. And I feel really confident that I can help them with even differently than anything I see on the market right now. And it came down to the to the concept of they need a profitable idea, and how to ensure that idea is going to be profitable before they move forward. And yours was all about from a planning perspective. Mm hmm. Right. And so we we both can teach digital business because at the end of the day, nothing is new under the sun. Right, right. Like we’re talking about digital products right now. But we can talk about any industry, any niche. Business is really not that complicated. It’s pretty simple. When you get down to the core of it, even in different niches right? and digital products are no different. It’s pretty simple. When you get down to the core of what, what it takes to have a digital business up and running. So the truth is, we’re probably teaching a lot of the same things right? Um, but it really does come down to like The angle at which you approach it and ensuring that it’s not just about how can I make another book, but how can I serve my customer really well, in my own unique way? And I think, then it doesn’t matter if your friend if your best friend ends up being your competition, right?

Kat Schmoyer 30:16
Not at all. And I love what you said about. So we’re like to back it up with not having ill intent, and not assuming either. So both of those things, they also come down to like your mindset, and really knowing that, like, when you’re stepping into a conversation with a friend, who is potentially already competition, or could be competition based on, you know, the hard conversation that’s about to take place, knowing that right, no assumptions, no ill intent, like, I think for us, first and foremost, whenever we have any of these conversations, whether it’s worth thinking about the same product, whether we’re working together, and you know, we need to talk through things, issues, whatever. It’s that foundation of friendship, like first and foremost, like, we have developed that. And so that even though I know, I know people say like, don’t you know, mix friendship and business, like things get sticky? Yeah, they can. But it’s knowing okay, but what hat am I wearing right now. And for me, the friendship hat is actually always on first and foremost. And so in any conversation that I have with you, it is going to be friendship, focus, knowing that like I want Megan’s business to succeed, I want her family to have the lifestyle that like they are striving for. And I know Megan feels the same way about me. So when you’re entering into these conversations with friends, I think it’s really important to note in this, that it is a friend, right like this, we’re talking about a close friendship, this isn’t the stranger on Instagram, or the person that maybe you dm every now and then in like, oh, man, it looks like she’s launching something similar. Like, maybe you want to talk about it, but probably not. Because you don’t have a foundation, you don’t have a friendship. So this is for the friendship part of that conversation.

Megan Martin 32:01
Yeah, absolutely. And I think the next step of talking about the friendship is, you know, I’ve had friendships in the past where we mixed friendship and business. And one of the one of the things that made it not work in the end, and we’re not close friends anymore, is the fact that we let things fester. And I think that’s another thing that we’ve really done well and is worthwhile talking about. And this hard conversation part is that if you have hard feelings, if something does come up, just like Kat said, like, take a minute. Collect your thoughts, collect your feelings, because you don’t want to send somebody a message or you don’t want to start a hard conversation out of like, I’m upset, or I’m mad. You don’t want to start that out of anger, you need to take a minute, collect your thoughts, remember, okay, this person might not know my plans, and this person doesn’t have ill intent towards me. But what we’re not going to do is let this fester for a long time. And I think for both of us, we are pretty quick to react. So I know for me, whenever there’s been a hard conversation, I don’t I don’t let it even go a day. It’s like maybe 30 minutes that I collect my thoughts and feelings. And then I’m like, Okay, we got to rip the band aid off, send the message. have a chat about this, right. And I think even for you, from what I know, you’re the same way to where it’s like, we’re going to collect ourselves emotionally. And then we’re going to start this conversation. And it’s in the past when it’s been, I found out, you know, maybe weeks later that somebody was upset with me for whatever reason, you know,

Kat Schmoyer 33:40
yeah, no, I don’t I don’t like any of that. Like, let’s just talk about it. If they’re just like you said, I don’t want it to fester. Because a mountain can become a molehill can become a mountain, I feel like like they can start to something so little. But then it just like builds and builds and builds and builds. And then all of a sudden, six months later, you’re so angry, like you’re so angry at this person. And it started with something that probably could have been resolved very easily. But you just tried to let it go when you didn’t actually let it go. So it becomes something that you can’t let it go like I don’t think you should nitpick, right? And anytime anybody says anything, really, I don’t really agree with that or whatever. Like No, we’re not saying like nitpick your friends here. But if it is something worth discussing, discuss it right away. Don’t let it fester. I also wanted to know, I don’t know if this is the same for you. So I’ll be super curious. It’s helpful to me that we’re doing it via Vox because I can use my words like I can physically talk versus writing. And so you know how I sound when I’m saying certain things, but you can’t see my face. So it’s easier to like, say something hard when I’m like staring at my kitchen instead of like actually looking you in the eyes, but I know I need to say something that’s hard, but I can still say it and not like look at you.

Megan Martin 34:55
Oh, absolutely 100% if we were like trying to text hard conversations Now you because you read the tone differently than the person the way the person wrote it. So absolutely, it’s such a valuable thing to use a tool like Vox in a friendship like this. Because I can hear you and I know your voice so well that like, if you were angry with me, I can probably like tell that but I can tell. Um, you know the tone of your voice and it just makes a message be delivered so much differently when you can hear the person but I absolutely agree. Like we’re having these hard conversations or like you know, you don’t even see Yeah, get on zoom and have these.

Kat Schmoyer 35:34
The sender send a box, or like a voice dm or something if you don’t have like boxer but voice dm is like a one minute limit, which is awful. So actually just download boxer and like start sending voice messages on boxer. Okay, it’s been so so interesting. I’ve like loved talking about this, I want to start to like wrap up some of these like thoughts that we’ve been having here. So we talked through this our friendship, our relationship, we talked about how we navigate when we both want to do something similar that would in fact, potentially be competition or actually be competition, we talked about navigating that hard conversation. How do we handle collaborations together, I’d like to talk I like to kind of end it by talking about this. Because I, I think that this, we see this happening just with friends in the industry, right? Like they have for us our strengths are so different. So we can then naturally like join forces together in certain things. So I’d love to get like your insight for others on how to handle collaborations when there is a friendship layer there. And we can also share like some of what we’ve done to.

Megan Martin 36:42
Yeah, I think, again, if you have a friendship, just back to what we’ve talked about so many times if you have a friendship with somebody who does something similar. But if you really can pull out a unique angle that you know that they have and you don’t, then why wouldn’t you want to serve your audience with that. So for example, you know, what we’ve talked about you being the planner, me being the ideal girl, like I’ve had you as a guest expert inside of digital lab, to share specifically how to help people plan out their days and use their time wisely in order to accomplish their goals, especially when they’re trying to add digital revenue to them. And I did that. Because number one, I do hold business with an open hand. And if my members want to be your member, then I’m fine with that. Like it’s totally okay. Again, there are 7 billion people in the world. And but also, that’s such a value add for my members, because I’m not the planner, girl, I am not the person that’s going to help you make the checklists and plan out on your calendar when you should do what so that you can get your goals done. Like you’ll, you’ll never hear me teaching you that because I can, you know, you help me do that

in my life get.

And so even similar with you, like I have been featured in your own membership, we’re literally competitive products. And we’re both in each other’s membership again, but I brought something to the table that you might have not been able to serve your customers with. And that’s okay. And I think, again, I think at the end of the day, you really just have to remember that. If you are going to approach business with close fists, then you’re gonna go out business alone.

Kat Schmoyer 38:22
Absolutely. Absolutely. You’re literally just gonna be swinging all the time, like you’re gonna be fighting all the time. And like that’s

Megan Martin 38:28
not enjoyable. Right? No. And I I personally like going back to the scarcity thought process, like, I want to strategically run my business, but I’m also not constantly thinking about the people that are leaving. Yeah. And, and so while I want to set up systems and automations or you know, whatever I can to encourage people not to leave, I’m not going to like, cry at the end of the day, every day because somebody doesn’t say yes to me, or they decide to in the membership model experience, they decide to leave my membership. Like, if it’s not a great fit for you, then that’s okay. Right. It’s not a great fit. I have work to do to show up for the people who it really is a great fit for. And I think if we’re both coming at business from that perspective, you can collaborate and share each other’s businesses, even if they’re competition with each other. Absolutely. Absolutely. And to also note on like, certain collaborations y’all like, make sure that you feel as professional and official about those collaborations as possible, right, like,

Kat Schmoyer 39:33
we were not going to advocate for like taking advantage of friendship in the industry. And I I mean, I obviously can only speak for myself in this situation, but like I’ve never felt taken advantage of from Megan and I would like to think that she has never felt taken advantage of for me and even though like she’s given me a discount for website design, because I’m her best friend, you know, she’ll be like, Okay, well, this would be like this is for you. Or I’ve said like I’ll do this or whatever. Like Yes, we like to say there’s like perks to our like work life. relationship when it comes to utilizing our strengths and our gifts and our like toolbox to help one another. But there are also things where it’s like, okay, we need this, here’s the contract. Okay, well, we need this, and this is how it’s going to be. And again, I mentioned before, like, for me, yes, there’s a friendship hat and a business hat. And I always want to be aware of the friendship, like, that’s a priority hat for me to wear. But I don’t want to not be aware of the business hat. And so if there are things professionally, contracts, legal things, whatever that needs to be in place, please do that, like protect what you’re building, and make sure even not even just on the protection, that allows for very clear expectations, right, like nobody could, should feel taken advantage of, if there’s a bullet pointed outline list of like, okay, you’re doing this, I’m doing this, and here’s how we’re like, rockin and rollin and you’re moving forward in it. So just want to like, shed a little bit of light on that part of it, too.

Megan Martin 40:53
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that allows you to continue wearing the friendship, like when you know that terms are really, really clear on the business side, then you’re just checking off your list. And you can continue to feel you continue to like, pour into the friendship part of your relationship. And I don’t know, friends, I feel like if nothing else, at the end of this episode, like I just want to encourage you to get out there and make a relationship. And I know we talk a lot about networking in business. But there’s, there’s a network of people that you can grow your business off of. And that’s a goal but like if you can seek out just one friend in the industry, start with one person and build a relationship. It is going to change your business and change your life for the better. And I just really, really would encourage you to make the effort to make that happen for yourself. Absolutely. We

Kat Schmoyer 41:43
are living proof of that for sure. Alright, y’all, thank you so much for tuning into this first episode. We will be sure to link everything that we talked about in the show notes below and we can’t wait for next time. Thanks for tuning in. We’ll

Megan Martin 41:59
catch you in the next conversation.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai