Cathy Heller’s Don’t Keep Your Day Job podcast has 15 million downloads, and she runs a multiple seven figure business from her home, but it didn’t start out that way.
Cathy shares her remarkable sideways journey to success, the key ingredients of a successful launch, how to gain traction online and how purpose cured her depression.
Welcome to Episode 365 of the podcast. Listen and access the show notes below or search for the Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts and listen for free.
Plus, in this episode’s What I’m Thinking About segment, Carey talks about what you need to do to get momentum when you can’t seem to find any.
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BELAY
It seems we always are running out of time. But what if I told you that you can have an extra 15 hours every week? Think of five tasks you can delegate—maybe emails, scheduling, booking travel, planning meetings, and expense reporting. That may sound scary, but delegation is the cost of your sanity, and the lynchpin to the survival of organizations everywhere.
BELAY—the incredible organization revolutionizing productivity with their virtual assistant, bookkeeping and social media strategist services for churches, non-profits, and businesses alike—is offering a free download of Things to Delegate to Save 15 Hours This Week to our podcast listeners today.
Text CAREY to 31996 to get your free download of Things to Delegate to Save 15 Hours This Week.
CONVERSATION LINKS
Don’t Keep Your Day Job by Cathy Heller
A Curious Mind by Brian Grazer
How Radical Empathy Strengthens Your Business – Seth Godin
How the Most Successful Producer of All Time Created Apollo 13 and A Beautiful Mind – Brian Grazer
How Vulnerability Went Viral – Morgan Harper Nichols
An Eye Opening Conversation About Committing to Your Big Leap – Gay Hendricks
7 Keys to Finding Momentum and Growth When There are No Good Options by Carey Nieuwhof
Learn more about joining the Leaders Circle by texting LEADERSCIRCLE to 33777
Text CAREY 33777 to join more than 70,000 subscribers to our leadership content
3 INSIGHTS FROM CATHY
1. Your greatest pain can fuel your life’s purpose
When Cathy was growing up, she was inappropriately used as a sounding board for her parents. Any time there was trouble, her parents would rant to her. Cathy felt as though they never listened to her, never asked how school was, and never showed her empathy or made her feel heard. In her view, they used her to feel heard themselves.
While this was very very painful for Cathy, she turned this tragedy into one of her greatest strengths and purposes. She has built multiple businesses by bringing empathy into places that empathy usually isn’t brought and making those people feel heard. The same thing can happen to all of us. Our deepest pain can turn into our greatest purpose if we embrace it.
2. Empathy is the single best way to sell
Most people think they have to have the perfect idea and product to start a business. That isn’t the case. If you want to start a successful business or begin to reach more people in your church, you need to start with the audience. Reaching people with your product or message is about the depth of the relationship not the quality of the idea.
We live in a time where there is an empathy deficit. If you want to give somebody an offer (like, “Buy my product” or “Come to my church”), you need to build up a relationship first. Don’t make the offer or the invite unless you’ve built up enough of a relationship where you know how your product or service is going to help them.
3. How to quit your day job and start your dream business
Cathy believes the best approach is to start your dream job as a side hustle and grow it over time. All of her current projects that are her full-time work started as side hustles that became more successful over time and eventually became her full-time job. She recommends you do the same.
So rather than watching Netflix and taking your evenings off, you could start moonlighting one night a week with whatever your dream job is. Carey did this with his platform. He blogged for years while he was still the senior pastor at his church before he made the jump to working for his own company full-time.
Quotes from Episode 365
The opposite of depression isn't happiness, it's purpose. @cathyheller Click To Tweet Often our pain turns into our purpose. @cathyheller Click To Tweet Be messy, just do things. @cathyheller Click To Tweet People will buy the thing, whatever you're selling, when you see the value in it. @cathyheller Click To Tweet If God made you, you are needed. And if you're needed, you have a purpose, and there's nothing anyone can ever do to do what you're supposed to do because no one ever was or will be you. @cathyheller Click To Tweet Some storms, they wreck things and they destroy things. But some storms clear a path. @cathyheller Click To Tweet We reach for the highest branch we see possible. @cathyheller Click To Tweet You can only help someone out of a well if you've been down there before. @cathyheller Click To Tweet We live in a time where there is an empathy deficit. @cathyheller Click To TweetRead or Download the Transcript for Episode 365
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Next Episode: Gordon MacDonald
To mark his 80th birthday, Gordon MacDonald took some time to write down the top leadership and life lessons he’s learned so far. In this in-depth interview, Gordon unpacks all 15 lessons including avoiding the evils associated with institutional life, how to make sure you don’t cheat your family and close friends, overcoming doubt, obscurity and discouragement, reinventing your interior life every 7-10 years and learning how to ask penetrating questions that open people’s hearts.
Subscribe for free now so you won’t miss Episode 366.
