EPISODE 227 WITH AMBER MCCUE: HOW TO CLONE YOURSELF (WITHOUT ACTUALLY DOING IT)

Ready Yet?! Podcast Episode 227 with Amber McCue: How to Clone Yourself (Without Actually Doing It) 

Transcribed with Descript

Erin Marcus: All right, we finally stopped laughing. We can welcome you to this episode of the Ready Yet podcast. So, today’s guest, Amber McHugh. I love, I have to look at my notes like I don’t know your name, right? It’s that moment of introductory panic. But we’ve already been laughing and chatting about our complete inability to navigate Time zones and then some really cool stuff about how to scale your business, how to grow your business, how to get out of your own way and have a business and all of the things.

Erin Marcus: So before we get into that for everyone, why don’t you give a little formal introduction of who you are and what you do.

Amber McCue: Absolutely. I’m so happy to be here. I’ve been running my businesses for over 14 years. And I say businesses because I do run multiple businesses and I’m able to do that because of stepping into a leadership role in the business and what I call how to clone yourself.

Amber McCue: And I have three beautiful, I love business consulting, I love strategizing, I love talking about business and growing businesses. And really what I love about that, it goes way back to when I was actually in college and then my first jobs that were in people management consulting, people consulting roles.

Amber McCue: And I was like, man, work, it doesn’t stop at work. And if we’re happy at work, And now there’s just so much research around it. So I really love live and breathe that. And then in my life I currently live in West Africa, in the Ivory Coast. Cote d’Ivoire, Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, with most of my family.

Amber McCue: One of my daughters is back in the States, but my husband and my two daughters are here. And it’s because of the way I run my businesses that, you know, I was able to bring something with me when we came abroad for my husband’s job. So it’s been really by design and really beautiful, sometimes challenging but it all fits together.

Amber McCue: It’d be

Erin Marcus: challenging if it were here, like the

Amber McCue: true story. True. Right?

Erin Marcus: Like, I don’t know, where do you want to start? We can just, I don’t know if you watch that podcast. There’s two women. I’ve had it and they just talk about stuff they’ve had it with. I have not seen that. It’s so fantastic. And it’s just all the crap they’ve had it with.

Erin Marcus: So I’ve had it with people, with people’s marketing, who try to make you think everything is easy, that there’s no work to do, and that, right, just do this one thing, and that there’s no hiccups and no potholes and no challenges.

Amber McCue: Yeah, you know, that’s, it’s, I struggle with that because I am a pretty optimistic, positive person.

Amber McCue: So it’s very natural for me to share like, oh, this is cool. This is cool. Look at this, like fun, fun. And I love seeing other people’s highlight reels. And also I’m, we know it’s not true. So when I have something comes up, come up, that’s messy. Actually, I will say this is one of the things that came up for me.

Amber McCue: We were doing a social media post with my team. We’re going through our social media strategy and we’re creating the content. And there was a post in there that I did not like. It was like, do we have to like, I’m going to do it. I’m in, we’re in, we’re in it together. I trust you. We’re just going to see how this goes.

Amber McCue: And it is a, it’s a reel that’s up on my social media and I’m dancing a little. And then the team dances with me. And after that, we, we confessed to each other. I’m like, I felt, I felt a little cringe and they’re like, we didn’t tell, but we all felt it together. But you know what, Aaron? That post that I was a little bit worried about doing and I felt a little bit like about and people could probably see it and they’re like, this is weird, not this woman’s natural environment, but we got great engagement and connection.

Amber McCue: So we’ll let it be messy. It’s fine.

Erin Marcus: It’d be messy because here’s the thing. There’s also something I don’t like on the flip side is what I call woe is me marketing. Yes. Yeah. It’s a fine line. It’s a, there’s a fine line. It’s, you know, people want to learn from your scars, not see your runes. People like be transparent and authentic, but not woe is me.

Erin Marcus: Yeah, because that to me, I use my business and the ups and downs in my business as examples to be transparent and I’m like you I’m very high energy. I’m very optimistic. I think you gotta be to keep doing this. Like, come on, who are we kidding? Like, yeah, if we weren’t optimistic, we would have given up a long time ago.

Amber McCue: So true.

Erin Marcus: But Right? What’s the fine line? And, and so I’ll give you my version of, you know, how you said this was horrible. It was so, it was a personal horrible moment. It was so funny when I look back. I went through a phase. I don’t know why I did this. It was way before the internet. Thank God. So there’s no proof.

Erin Marcus: I was in corporate. I was, I’m a total tomboy. I was a total like metalhead gym rat. And so here I am in corporate. I have no, I look like I’m wearing my mother’s clothes. Like I went shopping. Like I just had no idea what the heck I was doing because that was back in the 90s and 80s when you, there was much narrower margin of what was okay.

Erin Marcus: Yeah, I went through this phase where I decided to buy a bunch of stuff that I normally wouldn’t wear. And that was the stuff I got the most compliments on. Oh, my gosh. It just made me start thinking, what is the matter with my natural style? Oh,

Amber McCue: that’s so funny. Wait, so did you continue. Did you shift your look, your feel?

Amber McCue: No, you just like integrated it and blended it. I

Erin Marcus: learned a little bit more about my style, acceptable style. The world continued to evolve. So now it doesn’t matter as much as it did. I don’t work in financial services anymore. So nobody cares what I’m wearing, but it was so, I, you know, you say the thing that made you cringe got the most engagement.

Erin Marcus: And for me, the things that I chose that were the antithesis to my natural instinct were the things I got the most compliments on. That

Amber McCue: is fascinating. Well, there’s also that piece in marketing that when you do something unexpected, that people, you know, that’s unexpected in the landscape, unexpected for you, it’s going to seem like, We look at those sometimes as like, you gotta have the engagement, you gotta have the juice to get the, this content that you really want to convey out there.

Amber McCue: So we’ll mix it up. We’ll mix it up. Love it.

Erin Marcus: Love it.

Amber McCue: So I love

Erin Marcus: your, I love your idea. How do you clone yourself? And I’m curious what you mean because I have a feeling you and I agree on this. And we might just be using different language. Totally. Right. What do you mean? How do you clone yourself? Because I will tell you if my business was staffed entirely by people who were like me, we’d be screwed.

Amber McCue: Exactly. Cloning yourself is just fun. This, this name and this concept actually came to life because when I was starting my business a friend and I were working virtually together and we were messaging each other back and forth, just a message or how you doing, checking in, what’s, what’s new, how’s your project going?

Amber McCue: And we were bantering and she said, don’t you ever just wish you could clone yourself? I’m like, oh my gosh. I know how to do this. I’ve done this in corporate. I’ve done this. I’m repeat. I’m, I, I absolutely have put systems in place before, and I set up operations and leadership structures for a business to run smooth and well, regardless of who, but then there’s also hiring.

Amber McCue: So it’s the systems, the structure, the leadership that we put in place to clone ourselves, and that’s multiply your time, that’s multiply your results, your profitability, and multiply your impact. So it’s cloning more so the results. Because you’re exactly right. We don’t need another you. You’re perfect just like you are.

Amber McCue: We need like the ying to your yang. The peanut butter to your jelly. It’s gotta like offset and compliment. Because if, take for example outsourcing. If you aren’t getting something done, You don’t want to hire you who’s not going to be drawn to that. Also not going to get it done. Exactly. I don’t want to do that either.

Erin Marcus: So one of the things that I’ll give you the reason why I think people have problems with it and you can tell me your thoughts on this. Most small business owners go into business because they love doing the thing the business does. Right? They’re the best photographer. They’re the best chiropractor.

Erin Marcus: Like, they love doing the work. But that, if you build your business around yourself doing the work, there’s a cap on your income. Which, by the way, might be fine. That might be absolutely fine, but that’s a decision. Where you run into problems is when you build the business around you doing the work and you don’t want a cap on your income.

Erin Marcus: So, how I describe it As how do you get over the bridge? from solopreneur doing the work and into business owner because we would like to believe it’s this nice little garden bridge with a stream underneath it and it’s like a journey but it’s really the Indiana Jones bridge, right? It’s on fire. There’s a guy with a sword.

Erin Marcus: Like, so talk to me about how somebody who got in a business to do the

Amber McCue: thing

Erin Marcus: can become a business owner without feeling detached

Amber McCue: Yeah. That’s so interesting. From what

Erin Marcus: the

Amber McCue: business does. You know, I, I think you mentioned photography. I don’t know if it was when we were chatting or just now, but I have photography top of mind and I ran a photography business and it’s so funny.

Amber McCue: And I was standing in a shoot one day and I was like, Oh my gosh. I just do the same thing over and over and over and over. I’m like, there is a system for this. This does not have to be me. And honestly, people will say to me, I don’t have a system. I just do it. I’m like, Oh no, there is a system. It’s just not documented.

Amber McCue: Yeah. You might not be a good one. Exactly. Or maybe it’s really good. And you just do it on autopilot. Like we can pull that out and structure it. So that someone else can do it and you’re right. It doesn’t have to, you may not want to clone yourself because you want to grow at a small, you know, small independent, like I’m good where I am, but I want my time back.

Amber McCue: I don’t want to spend this much time. So it could be revenue and profitability. It could be time. There are a whole lot of reasons you want to clone yourself. I, getting a framework for your systems, your team. Oh, wait, someone else can do this too. I could show someone how to do this. But Erin, the other thing that often comes up is, Okay, I think I can show someone.

Amber McCue: I see that. I know how I could train them. We could break the system down. But, I’ve learned all of this. This is my IP. This is my, my like my process. What if they take it? And this is where fear comes in because to some of this, I would say like, okay, what if they take it? Like there are other photographers and watch them, like, let them try.

Amber McCue: Let them try. Right.

Erin Marcus: Cause you know, we all know if it were easy, everyone would be doing it. To me, right, when the waters rise, all boats go up with it. If you can pull it off, more power to you. They’re never going to be you. Yep. They’re never going to come with your history and your experience and your approach.

Erin Marcus: They’re going to be them. And to me, that was the beautiful thing about entrepreneurship and small business ownership, because when you’re in corporate, it’s inherently competitive. Like there’s a hundred people on the team, three get promoted, one get promoted. Like it’s inherently competitive. Out here in small business.

Erin Marcus: Like there is your people, your people, my people are my people. And there is enough for everybody.

Amber McCue: I recently had the opportunity to meet a WNBA player. She plays for the LA Lakers, Chinny, and she’s an incredible soul, an incredible human. I have never watched her play basketball, but I was lucky enough to meet her.

Amber McCue: I’m like, I had no expectations. I was blown away. And. One of the things that she impressed upon the audience that I was watching, she was connecting with, it was a group of high school, high schoolers who were going to compete in in Senegal in a couple of weeks. And she’s like, you’re not going to compete, you’re going to win.

Amber McCue: And this is like, you’re going to win. What, what are we showing up for? I’m not going to compete. I, and I try so hard not to use that vocabulary because I’ve got collaborators. We’ve got people to collaborate with and yeah, I’m going to win. You’re going to win. I’m going to win. And to your point, we’re each going to have our own different style, but I don’t even use the word, like, go for it.

Amber McCue: Go do your thing. Go in, but that’s not to say we don’t also protect ourselves through the appropriate legal agreement and relationship management.

Erin Marcus: I even forget the name of the, the, there is some kind of thing we have in place to password protect it. You know, right. All of that. Exactly. Don’t be stupid, but at the same time, don’t be scared.

Erin Marcus: Right. Wait, because all that fear does is put a cap on your income. I mean, there’s just, yes,

Amber McCue: my gosh, it’s limiting in so many ways. And that fear likely shows up in multiple areas of our business.

Erin Marcus: So I just watched an old episode of shark tank and the woman who started Spanx, I forget her name. She was on and They’re like the yes and she was taught they were having this conversation about do you legally go after people who infringe on your copyright

Amber McCue: and she

Erin Marcus: was taught or your patents and she was talking about how she actually doesn’t.

Amber McCue: Wow. He

Erin Marcus: actually doesn’t and what happened to her early early early on is. I believe it was Nordstrom’s or a big box high end big, big, big entity came to her because they wanted to learn all about you and interview you like, and she was just starstruck that they wanted to talk to her. And they spent all this time with her and learned all about her.

Erin Marcus: And then they literally went and duplicated her product to the point where they hired a model that could be her twin. To promote it. Oh my gosh. And right. And it was interesting to me that she didn’t go after them. Yeah. Where are you going to put

Amber McCue: your energy?

Erin Marcus: That was exactly her point. She said, I was newer.

Erin Marcus: I only had me. Where did I want to put my resources? Yeah. Did I wanna put my energy, my time, and my effort and my money into fighting with someone? Or did I wanna put it into creating something,

Amber McCue: bro, baby. Yeah. Create, mm-hmm. Fuel, passion and incredible growth. And what a cool example of someone who grew. I mean, an incredible company sold like for billions, man, her heart, she’s just fun.

Amber McCue: She’s a great example of what we talked about at the beginning, her social, it’s messy, it’s real, it’s fun. I am a big fan.

Erin Marcus: Nice. So what could you see, like, if you were gonna give someone some advice on where to start with all this?

Amber McCue: Yeah, the first, well, check your mindset and some signs and some things that come up and some thoughts to like, Ooh, maybe I should rethink this or step into this more is nobody can do it better than I can.

Amber McCue: It’s going to take me longer to train someone.

Erin Marcus: And here’s the thing, that’s actually true. What? Which, well, wait. In the week until they learn it. Exactly. Short term, short term pain. It’s a short term problem. Yeah. Is it going to take long? Long term pain. Yeah, absolutely. And the other thing I watch is people who, well, it’s too hard to hire somebody.

Erin Marcus: Exactly. Sure. It is too hard.

Amber McCue: It is hard to hire somebody and you’re going to move slow. And actually, but it’s, it’s too, it’s hard because you don’t have the systems and the structures and the framework in place. But when I look at someone’s interview and hiring process, we can start to pull out pretty quickly.

Amber McCue: And there’s small tweaks. Like one thing that comes up, Erin, is that people don’t always give. Realistic job previews in the hiring process. We don’t want to make ourselves look bad. We don’t want it to make things. I tell

Erin Marcus: people straight out the gate is if you are looking for a place to work, where you actually know how to, like, if you need to know what you’re doing ahead of time, like I’m not your man, because we’re going to roll with it.

Erin Marcus: We are, we are building this plane as we’re flying. But I want you to know that ahead of time.

Amber McCue: Yes, you do. Because otherwise people get in and they’re and then they’re frustrated with me. Yeah, I thought it was gonna be like this. No. So there are some things we can look at and do like, yeah, it takes a minute to get your but once you get it, okay, I know what I’m doing.

Erin Marcus: The other mistake that I see. They hire, they don’t, people do not, this is more important I think in a small business where there’s not enough money to have the overlap. But you need to hire for horsepower instead of hiring task rabbits. Because if all you do is hire somebody to take something off your to do list, now you’ve just replaced managing them with doing the thing.

Erin Marcus: That’s why you’re frustrated.

Amber McCue: Yep. Yep. Are you hiring for the right thing? Yeah. Expecting someone to do more than what you’ve described, what you’re hiring for, the tasks you’re giving. I mean, there’s so much mismatch there that creates so much frustration on both ends. And that’s why you want to be clear up front.

Amber McCue: And if you need someone to do these higher level activities, which I like, like what I think about is what is closest. If we have a budget, can we get closest to the point of revenue generation, meaning. They’re quickly off your plates. You can get back out there and do revenue generating activities or no, they can actually get pretty close to revenue generating or be revenue generating themselves.

Amber McCue: Yes. Let’s go. Because so often when we’re making an investment in hiring there, it is an investment first. And then we see the returns. We’ll see the returns, but you

Erin Marcus: will see the returns. And if you’re high, if you only think of hiring as an expense and then you treat it as an expense, it will only ever be an expense.

Amber McCue: Yes, so well said.

Erin Marcus: How do you turn it into an investment?

Amber McCue: Yes. Yep. Turn that around and think. And that’s what you want to think of when people hire like, Oh, I hired a VA. Okay, cool. What’s that mean to you? What are they going to do? Even if you’re hiring like a director of ops, an OBM, right? Okay. What does that mean?

Amber McCue: Does it mean the same thing to you that it means to them? Because I’ll often hear clients describing OBM. As one thing, but the OVM describing it as something else like, all right, well, so when I went

Erin Marcus: to hire mine, it was interesting. I interviewed five people for that position when I was looking for someone to help me with the automations and the scaling processes, because we all know I wasn’t going to be able to do that.

Erin Marcus: Four out of five people literally said to me, I can help you work less. Okay. I never said I wanted to work less. Ah, yeah. I never said it. I have zero problems with how much I work. I work when I want to work. I don’t work when I don’t want to work. I never asked to work less. It’s fascinating. Isn’t that interesting?

Erin Marcus: And one person said to me, I can help you take your multiple six figure business and turn it into a seven figure business. Great. That’s what I wanted. Yep. Let’s go. Yeah. You talk about the mismatch right out of the gate.

Amber McCue: Yeah. That’s fascinating. And it’s the same thing, like what we’re talking about the beginning, how to clone yourself.

Amber McCue: Maybe you want more revenue. Maybe you want more profit. Maybe you just want more time. Maybe you want your time back. Maybe you want to shift what you’re spending your time on and start to remix who’s doing what on the team.

Erin Marcus: And that’s what I talk about when I talk about scaling or growing, right?

Erin Marcus: Whether you’re growing a business, whether it’s time to scale the business, whatever version of it you’re in, it’s never about more work. It’s different work. And I think that’s where people really freak out because. Okay, if I’m making X and I want a little more all the only really answer is we’ll work a little harder, but if you’re already out of hours in the day and days in the week, how in the, how are you supposed to pull that off?

Erin Marcus: You’re not, that’s not how it works.

Amber McCue: Yeah. It’s interesting too, because there are so many different ways to remix this. Like I’ve talked to a lot of clients in the past, couple of weeks who are looking for different things. One came to me today and said, I need to, I need to scale. But the only way I can do that is she’s a solopreneur right now.

Amber McCue: The only way I can scale is if I add a group program, like not true.

Erin Marcus: We broke down

Amber McCue: some different scenarios. And then another client is already running group programs. She said, I don’t think I like the coaching side of it. She’s like, I love these things. I’m like, you don’t have to coach. Like, let’s remix how your business operates.

Amber McCue: And there’s so many possibilities for this as you’re building programs as you, and she is the brand. She’s excellent. All of the things.

Erin Marcus: There’s an infinite number of ways to do this, and I think what happens, like going back to our conversation about social and marketing, I think what happens is when you’re just learning this, and when you’re trying to figure it out for yourself, you follow people who are further along on the path, and you think they’re doing it right.

Erin Marcus: And so you emulate them even before you decide, do I want that or do I not want that?

Amber McCue: It’s so true. And it’s easy.

Erin Marcus: It’s so easy to fall into that. I mean, that’s not a judgment thing. I think that happens pretty naturally.

Amber McCue: Somewhere in entrepreneurship. I agree. I’m sure it’s happened to me. I’m like, all right, let’s go.

Amber McCue: This is working. Let’s do it. And I think there is a season where you’re going to dabble. Then, for example, the client who grew the coaching program, she’s like, I thought this is where we wanted to go. I now see I do not want to work at this way. I’m like, perfect. That’s A OK.

Erin Marcus: Well, and going back to your point about who are you hiring, in the last year, especially in the last quarter of last year, two or three different times as I was talking about what we were doing, my OBM stopped and said, she’s much nicer than I am.

Erin Marcus: I’m a little bit more direct. She’s like, can I reflect back to what I hear you saying? And she was picking up on my language being all about the workload and harder, and like, it wasn’t my normal, upbeat, optimistic language. It’s just like, do you even want to do this?

Amber McCue: Oh, interesting.

Erin Marcus: And I said no, and we got rid of three quarters of what we were doing.

Erin Marcus: Wow. We got rid of from our marketing program just because she, right, who are you hiring? Because one, she challenges me and two, I listen to her. Thoughts and help. Right. Yeah, we got rid of 75 percent of the effort we were putting into client acquisition. And in the last six weeks, I’ve already contracted, we changed more than that.

Erin Marcus: But in the last six weeks, I’ve already contracted half of what we contracted last year.

Amber McCue: Wow.

Erin Marcus: By doing 75 percent less.

Amber McCue: That feels good. That is how to clone yourself. What do you enjoy? What gets you the most leverage? Biggest bang for your buck? It’s yes about team. It’s yes about systems. But man, you gotta lead.

Amber McCue: It’s just about strategy

Erin Marcus: over tactics.

Amber McCue: Yep.

Erin Marcus: And not strategies you hate. Yeah. Right? Like I want, I fall into this all the time. I fall into it myself. I try to not, but I fall in with like, if you hate. The approach, no matter how effective it is for the people who are good at it, you will suck at it

Amber McCue: because you hate it.

Amber McCue: Because you hate it and it’s going to hurt. It’s going to hurt. You’re going to procrastinate it. You’re going to avoid it. It’s not going to get done. Why is it working?

Erin Marcus: And then you’re going to get mad that you’re like, see, I knew I hated this,

Amber McCue: right? So just lessen the learning curve. You know, the other thing I see, Erin, you probably see this too.

Amber McCue: And those of you that are listening probably see this as you look at sales and marketing. But very similarly I was speaking with someone who doesn’t need more clients right now. But her main priority in her 90 day plan that we had worked through was, that she had worked through, was Marketing. I’m like, why are you putting so much emphasis on marketing right now?

Amber McCue: Like, you have no room.

Erin Marcus: I just had that conversation with somebody today. She’s like, I only work with ten clients at a time max. I don’t, you know, I have eight. I don’t want two more right now. What do I do? And I’m like, just go work on your personal brand and build goodwill and give away the things you’re passionate about in your mark, in your very low hum marketing efforts and by the time A slot opens up, you’ll have such goodwill built up, one post of, hey, I got an opening, who wants it,

Amber McCue: and

Erin Marcus: that’s it, but have fun with it.

Amber McCue: Have fun with it. Let it be. Enjoy it. Yeah, it’s so true. It doesn’t have to be hard. Yeah, and one piece of the how to clone yourself process that we don’t bake in, Or we bake in throughout, but it’s not a specific track, is that energy, the mindset, the belief that you bring, and if you’re not feeling it, it’s not gonna work.

Erin Marcus: No. That was horrible news to me, by the way. Coming out of corporate, that was, I had a hard time with that. Because coming out of corporate, you just work harder. Or you just do the thing. And so when I realized in my journey that it was how I was thinking, not what I was doing, that was screwing things up.

Erin Marcus: I didn’t even know I was had a way of thinking like that was so not my, I was so not my world. Like coaching was so not my world. I, you know, I grew up during a time. Where you went to school and then you got a job and if you needed to learn a new thing, you went to more school of one sort or another.

Erin Marcus: There wasn’t this coaching thing.

Amber McCue: It’s, I love the transition. It’s going to be so interesting how this. Next generation, who is a little bit more tapped in, plugged into things like this. Well, and

Erin Marcus: they’re all into the coaching with no taking action, right?

Amber McCue: They’re the other way, the pendulum swings.

Erin Marcus: Everyone just ends up somewhere in the middle.

Erin Marcus: Gotta do something. Damn it.

Amber McCue: I know.

Erin Marcus: Awesome. So let’s back it up a little bit. Let’s do more to shorten people’s learning curves because we’ve been talking about what to do. But what are your, some of your examples? Like if I would say to you, Just don’t do this and you’ll be further along than I am. What’s some stuff you tried that just doesn’t work?

Amber McCue: Well, the, okay,

Erin Marcus: oh my gosh, there’s so much. By the way, this is my very unscientific test of how I can tell a successful business owner. When I ask that question and they’re all laughing at themselves going, oh my god, where do I start? That’s how I know if you’re still nervous about sharing a failure, or you have to do that interview thing where you make it a strength.

Erin Marcus: You haven’t been through enough yet.

Amber McCue: It’s true. Like there’s a lot, a lot just floods in like, oh my gosh. All the time. I mean, we talked about. Social media is one where just letting myself be a little bit more free and flexible on these things. And I am pretty flexible. That’s one area I’d say that I take more time than is probably recommended is I trust and I have so much compassion and I take my time.

Amber McCue: The adage of high or slow, fire fast. I don’t fire fast. Like people are people. I go against that in so many ways. And does that sometimes impact my business or my profitability? Probably. Am I okay with that? Because it aligns with who I am and my values and my heart. Yep. I’m okay with it. I do think there’s

Erin Marcus: Been times where I’ve waited too long, but there’s been times where I’ve been really looking back.

Erin Marcus: I’m glad I didn’t move too quickly or give up on someone too quickly. We just had to tweak and find them their right place. And then they turned in, I mean, this has been corporate, my last business, this business, like it just took a minute to find their real right place. Yeah. You can feel that, right? You can feel, when are you?

Erin Marcus: Just holding on to someone because you like who they are, not what you do. And when you’re like, I know there’s something there. We just got to find it.

Amber McCue: And that’s a great point. You can feel it. So just checking in and that actually is something early on in running the business. I was like, Oh, I’m just going to.

Amber McCue: I’m not going to create a to do list each day. I’m just going to feel my way through like whatever I’m feeling. That did not work. Because

Erin Marcus: you never feel like doing the

Amber McCue: thing that absolutely has to

Erin Marcus: get

Amber McCue: done. So I listen and so I put some hacks in there and some tricks in there to get myself on track.

Amber McCue: Like you want to do this. It’s just hard getting started. So, okay, how are we going to hack our way to it? So I procrastinate as much as anyone. That’s something else you see self procrastinating regularly. Is this because I haven’t done it for this long? I don’t even need to do it. And it doesn’t jive with who I am, how I want to show up or my procrastinating and this needs to be done.

Amber McCue: Let me get help. And those are areas I watch for either. It doesn’t need to be done or it does need to be done and let’s get some help. There’s I have learned how

Erin Marcus: to identify that. By my physical response. Right? Like if I’m rolling my eyes like a teenager. Yeah. Right? It’s like, ugh. Right? If that’s my response, then it’s something that has to be happening, but I can’t be the one to do it.

Erin Marcus: That’s nice. Right? That’s work that has to happen, but it doesn’t have to be me. That’s what you know what I’m talking

Amber McCue: about has to happen,

Erin Marcus: but it doesn’t have to be me until that one. It does not have to be me.

Amber McCue: Let yourself get help. And this is a, this is a challenge actually, because we are in such a DIY culture that it’s very easy to feel like and believe and know that you could do.

Erin Marcus: Right. There’s so many great tools that would have you believe except like with me, like there’s not enough. AI tools out there to allow me to be a graphic designer of any way, shape, or form. That’s great.

Amber McCue: Know your strengths. This is key. Actually, I haven’t dabbled. I, at the very beginning, when like Dolly or something came out or mid journey, I put one image in and it wasn’t there yet.

Amber McCue: That was forever ago. I haven’t gone back to dabble. Yeah. I

Erin Marcus: haven’t been like, I’m going to come out with the ones that they show on, you know, Instagram, the fails, Oh,

Amber McCue: that’s pretty good. But speaking of strengths, there’s a book that you may be interested in called business brilliant. It’s written by Lewis shifts and it’s a white book, red letters.

Amber McCue: And in the book one of the things that he talks about, he researched the difference between self made millionaires. And people who stay in the middle class. And a big difference between the two is that self made millionaires and billionaires, nine out of 10 times, if they believe there’s someone who could do this thing better than them, they share that work.

Amber McCue: The flip side, middle class, we’re trying to DIY it

Erin Marcus: the

Amber McCue: whole day.

Erin Marcus: It’s about what the way that I learned that was, it’s all about leveraging. Like the way I learned that was a lower socioeconomic group believes money exists to be spent, right? You go to work to earn the money to pay the light bill one for one, a middle class mindset believes that money is to be managed.

Erin Marcus: Right. These are all of the people who are moving the 401k to the, this, to the, that, like they’re managing it. There’s all this maneuvering and managing and watching, and there’s this interest rate and that interest rate, the higher socioeconomic people believe that money is to be leveraged. It’s leveraged.

Erin Marcus: And so that’s the word that I like to use. Yep. How can I leverage

Amber McCue: my resources? And I love that you said resources there. Money. It’s not just money. I mean, it’s time. It’s talent. I mean, it’s endless. So that, and then I tied the so that to it. So that, what is it that you’re going after? Is it lifestyle? Is it living and working from anywhere?

Amber McCue: Is it time with your family? Is it traveling? Is it, I just want to be home and take the time I want off. It could be any number of things. And when we tie that so what to it, it gives it purpose and fuel and gives us motivation.

Erin Marcus: 100%. So we’ll flip it. What are you most proud of?

Amber McCue: Oh, oh my gosh, man. I don’t know.

Amber McCue: Africa running businesses and kids. I, you know, it’s probably, I, I’m proud of the fact that I don’t know if it’s that I overcame workaholic ism, but man, I, I worked at corporate, like I was in it and it was fun. It’s not, I didn’t know. I had a great time. I mean, but I knew. I couldn’t, I did not want to spend my whole life living that way.

Amber McCue: And so it took a long time to make that flip, but I take weekends

Erin Marcus: off.

Amber McCue: I couldn’t,

Erin Marcus: yeah, I couldn’t. And it wasn’t my company. It wasn’t my boss because my boss was so unbelievably generous. And my company as far as paying me and all that was very, very generous. So it wasn’t from that perspective. I just got to the point where I couldn’t fathom.

Erin Marcus: It was like the adult version of me as a rebellious teenager. I couldn’t fathom being in a situation where someone else had control over what I did or didn’t get to do. Oh,

Amber McCue: interesting. I did not have that challenge because I felt like I had a lot of autonomy and control, which is actually. Yeah, evidently I’ve been elevated, I have

Erin Marcus: an elevated knee for no one telling me what to do.

Erin Marcus: Cause I had the same, I mean, I had all the days off and all the things and I could do whatever I wanted and it wasn’t enough. It still, yeah, you still wanted to be

Amber McCue: able to like, all right, I’m still confined here in some way. Yeah, that’s so interesting. I have, I feel like I had that flexibility and freedom.

Amber McCue: My wake up call moment. I was driving home from work at 9 PM. I stayed at the office that late and there was an incredible, gorgeous moon in front of me. I’m like, what? Why am I driving home from work right now? I should be at home with the kids sitting outside looking at that beautiful moon and enjoying this moment, not by myself in a car, but I should be with family.

Amber McCue: So that, that was one of my moments. The other moment was when I was working late in the basement. I guess these were the two I was working late in the basement and my, my, my boss at the time popped online, his light lit up and then we were working. It was 2 a. Oh my god, no. What are we doing? What are we doing?

Amber McCue: That took me like a few weeks to reflect. What are

Erin Marcus: we doing?

Amber McCue: Again, having fun, enjoying the work, but. Yeah, no, not anymore.

Erin Marcus: So if people want to, you and I could talk forever. We’ll do this again. If people, once we figure out our time how do people get ahold of you? Find you learn more about you, have conversations with you, all the things.

Amber McCue: I am pretty easy to find Amber McHugh on Instagram, Amber McHugh. com, but you can also go to how to clone yourself. com for all the, how to clone yourself details, all the insights, all the scoop, all the shortcuts.

Erin Marcus: Love it. Do that. Seriously. It’s the, it’s the freedom, right? To me, getting over this obstacle is what gives you the freedom you wanted when you opened a business.

Erin Marcus: Yeah. Right? Like, we go in a beer in our boss. We go to open our businesses because freedom is almost always one of the main things. And then we corner ourselves and this how to clone yourself is really how do you get the thing that you said you want, you know, that you set out to do.

Amber McCue: Some structure, some framework.

Amber McCue: It is not hard, but it’s going to take a minute.

Erin Marcus: This is going to take a minute. That’s okay. This is, we’re all in this for the long haul. So, so much for your time and your insights and your energy. This is awesome. You’re awesome. Always so much fun to chat.

Amber McCue: So much fun. Can’t wait to do it again. Awesome.