When you’re self employed, your business is you. It’s not necessarily about you but it must reflect you. But what exactly does that mean?

That’s the topic today in my conversation with Maegan Megginson, of Deeply Rested (newsletter and podcast) who has evolved her business over the years into one that not only reflects her main purpose but also seeks to help business owners do that too. That’s the heart of today’s episode.

Here's what we covered: 

• The Pivot: How Maegan went from being couples and sex therapist to a business coach to her current and more integrative approach to serving business owners.
• The Uncertainty: How to handle the uncertainty and discomfort of not quite knowing yet what your business is as it evolves.
• The System: The idea that under capitalism, business is disconnected from nature and who we are as human beings. But what if our business could instead be an extension of who we are as people?
  
• The Questions: Asking existential questions about your life and applying them to the growth of your business. Where are you on your personal growth and healing journey and how can your business work in parallel with your as a person?
  
• The Impact: How to expand the impact of Maegan’s work without diluting the potency and personalization of the work.
  
• The Market: How Maegan thinks about listening to the market and letting the market guide her. The balance between listening to yourself vs. listening to the market when you’re a “perfectionistic people pleaser” and how to trust yourself – without going too far in either direction. How to tune out the noise to identify what you want to offer and then listen to the market – seeing what your audience is drawn to.
• The Marketing Tools: Maegan’s most effective and sustainable marketing tools as an introvert: 
  • Relationship building, 1:1 networking with referral sources.
    
  • What is the “ask” in referral partnerships, especially if you can’t refer anyone to them? How to support each other when it’s not necessarily an equal exchange. Does it matter that you can’t refer others to them? And when to make the ask? 
    
  • Google ads: when does it work and when is it overkill?
    

The baby step we came up with was a collaboration: Maegan suggested starting and/or deepening your own personal work to find clarity first. I added that the clarity doesn’t always feel so clear or so comfortable so it’s important to get used to that discomfort throughout your evolution. 

So listen here (or below) and learn.

And If you want my help finding actual clients using AI, check out my new 1:1 AI Client Finding Coaching Calls. And if you like what you hear, we’d love it if you write a review, subscribe here and sign up for Quick Tips from Marketing Mentor.

Read the transcript here:

ilise benun  
Ilise, hi there. This is ilise benun, your marketing mentor, and this is the podcast for you, if and only if you are ready to leave the feast of feminine syndrome behind. And I mean for good.

When you're self employed or a freelance creative professional or a solopreneur, whatever you choose to call yourself, the thing is, your business is you. It's not necessarily about you, but it must reflect you. But what does that mean exactly? Well, that's the topic today in my conversation with Megan Megginson of Deeply Rested who has evolved her business over the years into one that not only reflects her main purpose, but also seeks to help business owners do that too. That's the heart of today's episode. So listen and learn.

Hello, Maegan, welcome to the podcast.

Maegan Megginson  
Thank you so much for having me. 

ilise benun  
Of course, please introduce yourself. Oh,

Maegan Megginson  
So I'm Maegan Megginson, the founder of Deeply Rested, where we do holistic, nature based, anti capitalist business coaching for mission driven entrepreneurs. 

ilise benun  
Oh, interesting. So unpack that, as they say, and give us a little background and evolution of your business, how long you've been in business, and where it started and how you got here.

Maegan Megginson  
Okay, well, I was a psychotherapist in my first career. I specialized in couples and sex therapy, and I did that work for a little over 10 years. Loved it -- it was such an amazing honor to do that work with my clients. But something was happening for me as I got into year seven or eight of being a therapist, I could just feel a little nudge, a little intuitive, little intuitive nudge that it was time to take all the skills that I had learned, that I had cultivated within myself, and turn them in a different direction and pivot to serving business owners, change makers, people who were being in service to others. So I spent a couple of years exploring what that might look like. How can I take my skills as a therapist, combine them with the skills I had created as a business owner, and do something different, do something in service of business owners? I spent a couple of years doing more strategic business coaching, sort of traditional business coaching, if you will. But there was something about that that never quite resonated for me. It just didn't sit quite right. I could feel that my purpose here isn't to help people craft their business strategies, but it is to serve people who are business owners. So over the course of years of personal contemplation and experimentation, I developed this more integrated approach to working with business owners that really weaves together psychology, spirituality, our emotions with the practical elements of creating businesses that do good work in the world, but also serve our lives in really deep and meaningful ways.

ilise benun  
It's very interesting, and I do want to talk a little bit more about what you're focused on now. But first, as I'm listening, I'm thinking about several of the people that I work with, especially who are near the beginning of their journey as business owners, and I find that they often just want to know what it is, and have trouble really embracing or even living into the uncertainty and the experimentation, as you mentioned it also. And so I'm curious what that process is like for you, or has been like for you.

Maegan Megginson  
When you say they just want to know, I'm assuming you mean like they just want to know what they're supposed to do? 

ilise benun  
Yeah. And so, as you have described, a business evolves over time. And I've never actually seen a business become the thing the person thought it was going to become, right? It has its own light. And if you listen to the market, and if you listen to the intuition, as you also described it, then take it where it needs to go. But it's hard to do that if you aren't sure where it's going to go. And so it's just living in uncertainty in general, but especially when you're supposed to be running a business, but you don't really know what you do?

Maegan Megginson  
Oh, absolutely. Ilise, that resonates so deeply. I think to answer this question, we have to talk for a second about this larger system of capitalism that we are operating inside of. Capitalism is an economic system that is really based on this idea that our businesses exist separate from nature, right, separate from who we are as people, and when we're creating businesses that are really based on this capitalistic system that is so disconnected from the human experience, it is easy to say, "oh, I can just snap my fingers and have a complete idea that I can just, you know, bring into the world" and bam, here's the machine I want to make. Here's a blueprint make the machine. It's going to serve its function for the rest of time. But that really is ignoring this deeper truth that our businesses, especially as solopreneurs or service providers, our businesses are extensions of who we are as people. So we do have to take a big step back and say, "Okay, what is my philosophy about life? What do I believe about being a person on the planet, having a life? What's my purpose? What's the purpose of life?" It gets very existential. But I find that the more existential you get, the happier you become as a business owner, because you can really start to treat your business as an extension of your life, instead of as this externalized project that you're trying to complete. So you can get an A plus and a high five, and do it right, and just grow, grow, grow, the sort of positive upward trajectory from now until you die. That's sort of what we're conditioned to believe is the the right way to live life. But I have found so much more satisfaction and depth by slowing that process down, and really looking at my business as an extension of myself. So where am I on my personal journey, my personal growth journey, my personal healing journey, where am I? What am I going through? What am I learning? What am I doing? And how can my business work in tandem, work in parallel, with me as a person. And the more I do that, the more I treat my business as my partner, instead of, you know, some externalized project, the happier I feel and the more nuanced my journey becomes. Does that make sense? 

ilise benun  
It does, and it sounds awesome. And so I imagine that's also part of what your focus is now. But be specific and tell us, where is your business now? Where is it going? And why?

Maegan Megginson  
Yeah, sure. Well, let me just spell this out in a couple of phases here. As a therapist, when I was first moving into private practice, I was really focused on just seeing one on one therapy clients. It was just me in my office and my clients. At some point, I decided to expand into a group practice. We decided to scale my therapy business where we hired more therapists and created a team. For the holistic business coaching practice, the trajectory has been somewhat similar in that I started my work just doing one on one coaching, and then got to the point where I felt really hungry to scale, hungry to grow my message, my impact, and start to work with people in more group capacities. I don't have any intention in this business of hiring revenue generating employees. That's what I did with the therapy center, and I discovered that it wasn't my favorite way to show up as a business owner. But where I am now is I'm really curious about finding ways to expand the impact of my work without diluting the potency of the work or the personalization of the work. So we're looking at when we started a podcast last fall as an example, as a way to share this message with more people for free. We're looking at doing more in person retreats, starting a seasonal planning membership. So we're getting really curious about how can we create spaces that can accommodate more people, both virtually and online, to do this work together in a deep and personal way. And

ilise benun  
When you say we, I'm curious, who is on your team, or what kind of team do you have?

Maegan Megginson  
Great question. I always say "we" and people are like, "Do you have a mouse in your pocket?" My team is such a such an important part of my day to day life. I forget that not everyone on the planet knows who they are. So thanks. Thanks for asking. Right now, we have a full time team of three. It's me, my husband and our business manager, whose name is Nancy, and she is truly, truly incredible. So we're all wearing different hats. Obviously, within the business, we're organized around a shared set of anti capitalist values. So we are three very mission driven people who are able to bring different different areas of expertise into this business, so that we can really crack the code on doing business, sustainably, holistically, in a different way than, you know, the traditional capitalist model that we've all been taught.

ilise benun  
And as I mentioned before, I do talk a lot about listening to the market, letting the market guide you. I'm curious how you think about that in your own business.

Maegan Megginson  
Yeah, it's a really good question. In my business, I want to listen to myself more than I listen to the market. And this was really born from my experience as a business owner where, let me say this succinctly, since I was old enough to talk, I've been what many would call a perfectionistic people pleaser, probably similar to many people listening many small business owners. And because I was so good at being a perfectionistic people pleaser, I found that when I became an entrepreneur, it was really easy for me to listen to what everyone else wanted or said they wanted, and to look around at what other people were doing, or what seemed to be working, and that trapped me in this place where I was really creating offerings and coming up with ideas that weren't coming from deep inside of myself. They weren't coming from my own intuition, my own heart, my own wisdom. So there was a big learning curve for me as an entrepreneur where I had to step away from the voices of everyone else and really learn. How do I listen to myself and how do I trust myself to know what the right next step is in my business? Now, I did spend some time going too far in that direction, where I was listening to myself and not balancing it with listening to my audience and to the market. But what we talk about now and in my company Deeply Rested, we talk about like a "one two punch." The first thing that we want to do is really tune out the noise of the external world and listen deeply to ourselves. What do we feel is the right thing to do, to offer to market? And once we come up with a little menu of ideas that we feel really aligned with and attached to, then we're going to pivot outwards and start listening to the market, which in our world, really means listening to our audience. What are people drawn to? Which of these ideas we've come up with do people say, "Yes, absolutely, I'm willing to do that and pay for that right now." And what do people lean away from or say, "This actually isn't quite what I need right now." So we like to find a balance between what we think of as listening to ourselves and listening to our audience.

ilise benun  
I totally agree with you that it is about the balance, for sure, and I can see the balance in your business also. Because it seems to me, if you call it Deeply Rested, it's built around a pain point. So share a bit the thinking behind that, if you would.

Maegan Megginson  
The thinking there is just, well, taking it a step back... When I first started business coaching, I'm going like way back from the memory bank now, when I first started business coaching, I was leading with a more pleasure oriented approach, future oriented marketing, messaging, because I think, as a therapist, I was feeling a little burnt out on talking about hard stuff all the time. I was like, I don't want to talk about burnout, I don't want to talk about drama. I don't want to talk about struggle. I've been doing that day in and day out for so long. I want to just lean into things that feel positive and hopeful and optimistic. I was finding that for the people I wanted to work with, and the way in which I wanted to work with them, that messaging didn't land. It just wasn't actually a reflection of what they were experiencing and what they needed to hear, to have reflected and to hear validated right now. So I really just started getting more honest with myself, really looking at what are the parts of me that are resisting focusing my messaging around pain points? There was also a part of me that was really scared and hesitant of manipulating and exploiting people's pain points, because I saw that happen a lot as a therapist and just, you know, like a human who lives inside of capitalism. So I didn't want to do that. Yeah, it was all of these factors that made me resist having a business that revolved around a pain point for a long time. But the more honest I got with myself and with the people I was working with, the easier it was for me to see that the people I'm working with, they are hurting, and the work that I'm doing is emotional work. It is personal work. So it makes sense for us to really lean into this messaging around being burnt out, being overwhelmed, feeling like you love your work, but you just can't imagine doing it like this for the long term. That really helps us connect to the people need our work right now.

ilise benun  
For some reason, I'm also thinking about the difference between a coach and a therapist. I don't know what that difference is. I imagine you do, or you defined it for yourself in your own evolution and transition. Because often I find that people think they need a coach, because it's very trendy right now to want a coach and to have a coach, or all different kinds of coaches. But sometimes the problems seem to be deeper and coaching is not enough. So I'm curious how you think about that.

Maegan Megginson  
Yeah, well, we could spend a whole three hours talking about this. This is a very hot topic, and it's a very hot topic in the therapy field right now, right? Because, in fact, therapists, ethically, aren't actually allowed to do coaching. I'm oversimplifying a very complicated conversation that also differs state to state. Just to make it even more complex, but in general, the therapy field really wants to protect therapy clients from working with people who aren't qualified to be therapists. So yeah, ilise, this is a complicated conversation. But I would say that the main difference between therapy and coaching is that when when you're with a therapist, you first of all are working with someone who has years of training and 1000s of hours of supervision and learning how to dive deep into your psyche, your past, your trauma history, your emotions, and knows how to meet you in a way that isn't going to make it all worse, right? A therapist, hopefully is trauma informed and understands how to talk to you about the things that you're really struggling with in a way that's going to help you heal those struggles and then move forward in your life. Many coaches, their approach is more "we're starting we're starting from where you are today. We're going forward." A therapist is going to say "we're starting from where you are today. First, we're going to go backwards. We're going to go backwards in time, and then we'll go forwards in time when you're ready." I would also say a distinction is that a therapist is the person you want to work with if you're really struggling with a mental health diagnosis, if you have clinical depression or generalized anxiety or an unprocessed trauma history, or OCD or ADHD, or any of these things, you're going to want to work with someone who really has the training and supervision to help support you in overcoming those struggles. Whereas most coaches don't, they don't have the background and the training to know how to work with those diagnoses effectively. But all of that being said, there are some really phenomenal coaches out there who have gone above and beyond to get trained in lots of different ways so that they can work with their clients more holistically. And just because something isn't therapy doesn't mean that it's not therapeutic. So that's how I think about my work as a holistic business coach. Now it's like, I'm not your therapist. First of all, I'm not on call for you, right? If you're struggling, I have really clear boundaries, I'm not here to work with you on your mental health diagnosis. If I'm working with a client and it's clear to me there's an underlying mental health challenge, I'm going to refer you to see a therapist and we can work together at the same time. But that's not the work that I want to be doing anymore, so I am approaching this more from a coaching angle. The work that we do together, it is deep, it is meaningful. It is going to feel therapeutic without the Western connotation of what all is included when you go to work with a therapist. Any of that resonating for you?

ilise benun  
Yeah, definitely. I think that all makes sense. And you know, one has to just be careful choosing who to work with.

Unknown Speaker  
Yeah, you have to be an informed consumer for sure and go back to trusting your intuition. 

ilise benun  
All right, let's talk about marketing again, because I want to hear a little bit about the marketing tools that you've used, whether it was as a therapist or promoting the group practice or now with the new iteration of your business, I'm curious, what have you tried and what has worked, especially maybe even what hasn't worked?

Maegan Megginson  
I would say that when my business, both my therapy business and my coaching business were focused on working with one on one clients, when I was a solopreneur, and I was really comfortable at that 10k a month revenue marker. The sweet spot for me in those seasons was just good old fashioned, one on one, networking relationship building. That never failed me, just being a relationally oriented person in the world, like really creating a referral network of people I truly cared about and who, in return, truly cared about me. There was a season when I was learning about all of this, where I went to BNI groups, Business Networking, international. I hated it so much, terrible for me. Oh, it just felt to me for the ones that I visited, so insincere, you know. I'm a therapist at my core, I'm a people person, so superficial relationships, like I'm not interested. I need depth. I need intimacy. I need genuine connections. And the groups that I visited that didn't feel that way, where it felt more exploitative or extractive. Perhaps that is a better way to say it, the relationships felt extractive. "What can you take from me and what can I take from you?" I wasn't into that, so I really gravitated to more one on one relationship building and getting systematic about it. I created spreadsheets for myself and like, Okay, let me think I want to build relationships with when I was a therapist, other therapists, with doctors, with divorce attorneys, with pelvic floor PTS, you know, I had all of these categories of referral sources that I wanted to develop relationships with. And then I just put in the time and the energy, even as an introvert, to building really meaningful relationships that sustained me in business for a very long time

ilise benun  
Let me ask you a question there before you go on. Because actually, in my Simplest Marketing Plan program today, we had a meeting, and the question that came up was from someone who wants to build these kinds of relationships, and she was struggling with, "what is my ask? Because I don't know that I necessarily can refer back to some of these people or businesses, and so why would they want to refer to me?" And so I'm curious if you can articulate what exactly is or was, or could it be, the ask in that kind of relationship? 

Maegan Megginson  
Well, I think for me, the ask is secondary to the relationship. So I was always more interested at first in getting to know -- a divorce attorney as coming to mind. So as a couples therapist, for example, I often wasn't referring my clients, if things were going well, to a divorce attorney. But often a divorce attorney would refer couples who were separating to me, or typically, they just couldn't communicate. So this was one of those dynamics like you're describing, where I knew that divorce lawyers, family lawyers would be great referral sources for me, but not really an exchange. And they're busy. I think that's the other thing. Like, we're all busy. Nobody has time just to go on a dozen coffee dates every week. I would always step into those relationships with the spirit of "we're both doing work in our community. How can we support each other as entrepreneurs in our community, and how can we support each other as people who are doing similar types of work?" So I would lead often with "Who are you and why are you doing this work, and what's happening in your life, and what are you struggling with, and what's going well for you." First I put the energy into developing an actual relationship, and then I will start sharing asks if it feels aligned, if it feels right. So that can't be understated, because, for me, there's nothing more annoying than getting invited into a networking date, and feeling like the person asks me two questions and then immediately starts telling me, "Here's how you can support me." I'm like, take me to dinner first, you know? I don't even know how to spell your name yet. Yes. So that felt really important to me. And then I find -- I'm curious what you think about this, ilise -- but I find that when I really make time to build genuine relationships, usually the person I'm connecting with is going to ask me, "How can I support you?" And I don't actually have to make an ask, because I'm invited to share, how can they support you? And then it creates this organic opening to say, "Well, I would love to help you by supporting these kind of clients that you're struggling to work with." So it becomes organically, really symbiotic, right? How can I support you? By supporting your clients? There's no greater gift to me as a business owner, than having a wonderful referral to give to you, my client. So even if you never -- so let's say you're saying to me, "Oh, I really need a physical therapist." You're my therapy client. And I would say, "oh my gosh, great. I know the best physical therapist, you're gonna love her." But that physical therapist never really has reason to refer back to me. I don't really care, because her service to me was that I was able to make a good connection for you as my client, and you are then going to remember me and appreciate me and have gratitude for me making that connection for you. So you might go and tell your friends about me as your therapist, because we had such a positive working relationship together. I just really believe in the power of the mycelium network--that we are all connected to each other, and if we step into these relationships with a genuine desire to connect and be of service. And of course, we're being clear about how we can support and we're offering to lend a helping hand that like we're all taken care of. 

ilise benun  
Amen. Sister, yeah. Okay, good, yeah, no, I totally agree.

Maegan Megginson  
Nice. Also, I'm stretching my brain right now. Why am I using these therapy metaphors? I think because we were talking about therapy earlier. It's been many years since I did this work, so I should switch my examples to easily accessible information for my brain.

ilise benun  
But I think that those examples are relevant to anyone really offering a service that is intangible, essentially, because that's all there is, you and your effort and your caring and your curiosity. So I think it's relevant.

Maegan Megginson  
Thank you. It is relevant. And here it just occurred to me, like, here's the actual short answer to your client's question, or how I would answer that question when someone says, "I don't really have anything to offer the other person in terms of referrals. So how do I make the ask?" To me, I hear that you aren't really understanding the value of your relationship with that person, that it's not just about the ask, but that by being in relationship with this referral source, you are giving something to them. You're giving yourself to them. You're giving your support to them, human to human. So maybe you're not supporting them with referrals, but you're supporting them with your presence, with your attention, with your care. And that shouldn't be understated. 

ilise benun  
I agree. And I derailed you from talking about the marketing tools. So keep going.

Maegan Megginson  
Okay, so yes, I just wanted to emphasize the power of relationship building. That is the foundation of my marketing. Always. Yes. As I started to scale my group practice hiring more therapists, we did get to the point where my beautiful relationship network was not large enough to supply the number of referrals that we needed for a larger therapy practice. So we tried a lot of things. As a brick and mortar local business, we tried social media, which really wasn't that effective for us, and we finally landed on Google ads. So for that business, Google ads is our bread and butter to this day. So the larger the therapy practice scales, the more we scale our Google ad campaign, and that seems to work really effectively. Excellent. Yeah, love that. And I think that's true for lots of geographically defined service based businesses, yes. 

ilise benun  
I don't know too much about Google ads at all, and I tend not to recommend them. The three tools that I recommend in the Simplest Marketing Plan include networking, targeted outreach, and high quality content marketing. Advertising doesn't really come into it, but I know that for certain types of businesses, Google, whether it's organic Google or a combination of Google ads and organic, is the only thing that matters.

Maegan Megginson  
Yes, and it really was, there was a threshold, at least where, and I don't remember exactly what that threshold was now, I have to go back and look, but there was this threshold where we tipped over the threshold. Let's say it's when we hired our fifth full time therapist. So instead of needing 20 new therapy clients a month, and now we needed 50 new therapy clients a month to keep all of our providers full and that jump really necessitated an ad strategy, right? And ads that are targeting people specifically who are Googling, this is what I want. I'm ready for this right now. That three pronged approach that you described, I would say yes, like that is absolutely what I did when I had a smaller business, when I was more of a solopreneur, and I wouldn't change a thing about it. And when people come to me now and it's just them, or maybe them in one service provider, and they're like, "Oh, I think I need to run Instagram ads or Google ads." I'm like, "hold the phone. Please don't do that. Bad idea. Like, that's too much. You know, that's It's like opening up a fire hose when you just want to extinguish like a candle on your desk. Right. It's it's overkill." So yeah, totally agreed.

ilise benun  
All right. All right.