179. Getting Comfortable Breaking the Rules of Business with Brooke Monaghan
Reconsidering the Normal in Business
When it comes to our businesses, there are a lot of rules and “right” ways to do things that we’re told are just how it’s done if we want to succeed.
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
When you pause to question where the rules came from, you can choose to move forward differently to create the impact you want to create in the world.
Brooke Monaghan joins Erica to discuss how she shows up in her business, reconsiders her normal, and rejects the rules in order to create sustainable, values-driven businesses for herself and her clients.
Listen on your favorite podcast player or keep reading to learn:
How to begin to differentiate what narratives are yours and which aren’t
Why we need to decouple success and sacrifice
How embodying your values combats hustle culture
How perfectionism shows up in the way we commit to narratives that aren’t working
Building Values-Aligned Businesses
Brooke Monaghan is a consultant, mentor, and podcaster who helps entrepreneurs and leaders bring their greatest gifts to the world, align with their values, and honor the lifestyle that they desire. Her work focuses on helping business owners and team leaders unlearn the conditioning that has them ditching their instincts, intuition, and integrity in favor of doing business the “right” way, and build the foundations of a sustainable, values-aligned business.
Question the Rules
On the Pause on the Play® podcast, Brooke Monaghan (she/her) says that Reconsidering Her Normal means “constantly interrogating what I take to be quote, unquote good, or quote, unquote right in the way that I live my life or the way that I run my business.”
She says it’s easy to talk yourself out of doing things differently because of the strength of the narratives of what is right or good. And it is an ongoing process to question those narratives and ask where they originated and if they are actually in line with her values.
“It’s always about, what was I brought up with? What did I just always take for granted? What did I think was the way things were quote, unquote supposed to be? And is that really true?”
Erica says that learning to recognize when the voice in your head telling you what you’re supposed to do isn’t yours is a powerful tool to develop.
She mentions the book The Untethered Soul as a resource where she learned that a lot of the thought loops and dialogue that exist in our heads on a day to day basis didn’t come from within ourselves. She says that once we have recognition of that fact, we can create the distance needed to sort through the narratives and choose how to go forward.
Brooke acknowledges that it can get uncomfortable when you’re considering those narratives, but you can choose to go through that metaphorical door into new possibilities.
Success, Hard Work, and an Honest Living
Erica says that the business world is one area where old narratives have been particularly stubborn and resistant to change, particularly in how we conceive of success as something that is received once we’ve sacrificed enough.
Brooke says that conception of success was very familiar to her growing up in a fishing family that emphasized hard work that takes a toll on the body. She says when she left the more physically demanding world of retail and started working with more mental problem-solving, she had a hard time reconciling that it was okay to make a living that that didn’t make her physically and mentally miserable.
She says when she started her business, she spent months and even years coming up against the narrative of self-sacrifice that she grew up with
“When I started to interrogate that, it just opened up so many things that I had to confront that I wasn’t ready to confront, and led me into the work that I do now, which is helping other people navigate that as well.”
Over time, she found that when she stopped resisting ease and her intuition and integrity, her business did better.
She acknowledges that breaking the rules and questioning the narratives is scary for business owners because of the financial risk of trying something new, and that every person will have their own process for deconstructing the rules.
Erica notes the connection between physical labor and the way some people make non-physical labor harder than it needs to be to prove that they’ve earned it.
“Those that don’t work physically hard need to make it hard when it comes to the amount of time that they’re putting into it, or some type of sacrifice. Like you need to give something up to be worthy.”
Brooke says she witnesses that dynamic in her family and the way ease has connotations that “that person’s ripping people off because they’re not working that hard and they’re doing fine,” and that long hours and physically demanding work are a badge of honor and how you make an “honest” living.
Erica says she has to confront those stories too and can struggle with what she calls the “itty bitty shitty committee” in her head that tells her why “you need to receive less because you didn’t physically give more.”
Give Yourself Space
Erica says the correlation of hard work and sacrifice with success is how we end up with hustle culture, which then creates burnout and disillusionment. She asks Brooke about what structures she creates for herself and her clients to counteract that narrative.
Brooke says a key way she combats hustle culture is to create space for herself to make considered decisions and not run on impulse, or do stuff for the sake of feeling productive.
“A lot of the structures that I bring people back to are really just tools to help people get more in touch with what they actually think is next, what they actually would do if they trusted their integrity rather than trusting what is quote, unquote right.”
And she says integrity is a matter of internal alignment, not an external measure. “Integrity is about being in line with what you truly believe.”
Beliefs are something we can work toward embodying as well. She says that if you’re consciously choosing to do something differently based on a value, the first step to embodying that value is to challenge the old narrative internally.
“I think that we need to really get intentional about challenging ourselves to take those steps, not just get a glimpse of it and then think, oh, well I would do that, but I can’t, and move on. Challenge yourself to really move differently.”
Erica adds that those moments of wanting to choose differently but feeling like you can’t yet are where perfectionism and imposter syndrome often come into play. She notes that imposter syndrome is not about becoming something you’re not, but about letting go of the version of yourself that you had to be to get here, so that you can become the next best version of yourself.
Brooke says people also need to let go of the idea that every change has to be made on a grand scale.
“Where the rubber meets the road is to actually take those small steps that are just you and trust that it’s gonna lead you to the next thing. Not everything needs to be this big, zero to a hundred, revolutionary move.”
Shifting Away from the “Right” Way
Brooke says that one of the most common challenges she witnesses people having when they’re trying to shift away from doing things the “right” way is letting go of the expectation that if you just do things “right,” everything will eventually click.
She says that way of thinking is what leads people to double down on perfectionism and following rules that aren’t working for them. But, “folks move into this next phase where they start to realize, oh, that promise is not real. Doing things the ‘right’ way is not gonna get me where I wanna go. I actually need to shift my focus away from what is ‘right’ and toward myself.”
And that shift can come with a grieving process for the time and energy spent doing things that didn’t work.
She also cautions that even when you do shift into a place of showing up as yourself rather than “right,” you won’t always get the results you want. She notices that people can fall into a mental trap of believing that if they can just get their mindset “right,” then they’ll see results and everything will click.
Showing up honestly is vulnerable, and it can create additional difficulty when your real self isn’t received well. Because of that, Brooke says she encourages people to take it at their own pace, so they don’t end up with a vulnerability hangover.
Brooke says she’s done it to herself too, like oversharing on social media in the name of transparency and authenticity, because that’s who she thought she was supposed to be.
“You don’t need to give people everything of you if you’re not ready for it yet. You can do this in your own way, and you can honor your own process through this.”
No Formula Works for Everyone
Brooke says it’s also key to remember that showing up doesn’t mean being visible all the time, and that showing up is not the same thing as being visible on social media.
“Showing your face on social media, to me, is not the definition of showing up.”
And she encourages people to consider if the cycle of marketing and content creation is actually serving their business or making them miserable. If your marketing strategy is making you miserable, seek out alternative ways to market that will be more sustainable in the long term.
Erica agrees and calls bullshit on people selling one size fits all formulas for success that all too often leave out crucial pieces of context for why it was successful for that person.
Brooke says that is why it is crucial to find folks to work with who leave room for you to develop your own process. “I don’t care what formula or what framework you are using, it is not gonna work for you the exact same way that it worked for somebody else.”
A Different Way Is Possible
Brooke suggests that people begin by asking themselves if there is something that keeps coming up that you say, “I would do this, but I can’t because…” and then try that thing.
She says it won’t always work, and you may not get results, but at least you’ll know, and you’ll open yourself to the possibility of alternative ways of doing things.
“What would happen if you trusted your own ideas, the same way that you trust whatever bullshit it is that you keep doubling down on, even though it’s not working for you?”
Ready to Dive Deeper?
The conventional thinking that says your values are separate from your business doesn’t serve anyone who is in business, or even us as consumers. Values are the underpinning for the actions you take, the conversations you have, and the impact you create in your business.
If you’re ready for more conversations about reconsidering your normal in business and in life, join us at Pause on the Play® The Community. Members get access to community conversations, Q&As with Erica and India, live workshops, and evergreen access to our whole library of resources and replays.
Learn more at pauseontheplay.com/community