Breaking Barriers: Women In Business With Maggie Frank-Hsu

Breaking Barriers: Women In Business With Maggie Frank-Hsu

I have with me a very special guest, Maggie Frank-Hsu, who went from coaching skeptic to writing coach for women entrepreneurs. She’s going to share her amazing story and everything she does to help women entrepreneurs in their writing journey. Welcome, Maggie.

Thank you so much, Amber. How’s it going?

It’s good. I’m having one of those days where it’s hard for me to get my words with me. This is not ideal for somebody who’s a podcaster to not have their words.

It is ideal because I help women find their voice. If you’re having trouble with words, you’re talking to the right person.

I was like, “I’m losing my voice with the voice expert.” This is the time to do it because you can help me, right?

Yes.

Why don’t you share a little bit about yourself with everyone and then we’ll get right into it?

I have always used words to gather the audience’s attention and move them to action in all kinds of different ways. If we go back, I started in journalism. I worked in small-town newspapers. I also got my Master’s degree at Columbia School of Journalism in New York. That’s when I got to move to New York and was working for several national magazines in different editorial roles. I worked at Gourmet, Martha Stewart, and ESPN for a little while all along the way. I transitioned into marketing for a lot of different reasons. I wanted jobs that were more stable, first of all, so it was not a big why in the center of it. The first job I had in marketing, I worked at a startup and I learned a lot.

When social media became a tool that businesses started to use effectively, that was interesting to me. I always felt like I wanted to be on the front, in the avant-garde of what people were doing and what they were trying. I loved experimentation, which all comes into what I’ll talk about with my work. I did a bunch of marketing strategy jobs. I went back and forth and did some editing in magazines again. Years ago, I started my own business. I had my son, and I had some ambition to do something that was mine. I started the business and I did all kinds of different marketing services. I did Facebook Ads for a while. That’s so not what I do now but it felt like something I could sell and people needed. I did copywriting and I did a lot of writing for other people.

Years ago, I landed on writing coaching and what I call big idea coaching. I worked with female entrepreneurs who have successful businesses. Usually, they’ve been in business for a few years and they’re not at that point in their business where they’re white knuckle like, “I don’t know what’s going to happen in my business.” They have some stability but they feel a little bit generic both in how they market their business and what people know about them. They’ve started their business because they saw something about the way that work was done pissed them off. They started their business because the way everyone else was doing it like there’s a need in the market and you’re filling that need. I help them talk about what that is, what they’re bringing to the table, what that big idea is, and the difference. I help them stand for something in their business. We can talk about exactly how that works, but it’s more than about the writing, it’s about thinking. Other people might call you a thought leader when you take that stand, but it’s about raising your profile, all the kinds of business opportunities that it brings you, and also the integrity you feel when you do that.

There’s a lot about your story that I love. One, it’s great to hear especially for women your willingness to experiment. I see a lot of women getting stuck in this place of overthinking, especially these high achieving smart women. They’re good at thinking. I put myself in this category at times so I am owning it. It’s like, “I want to know the ten steps down the road,” bigger picture as opposed to saying, “Action gives you clarity.” I hope people take away from that. Some of the best stories I’ve heard when I talk to entrepreneurs, and this is why I’m a therapist and I love people’s stories is it’s so windy. When you do those different things, it makes the work you do and that when you find your voice and find that thing even richer because of all of those experiences.

You said many good things. Action gives you clarity is a great line. How I started doing this work was I did it on myself first and then I developed the system out of that. I’ve worked with a dozen women doing this one-on-one and have done groups and different things but it started with me and all these limitations that you pointed out. I started my business because I was annoyed by the way my career had gone. I felt like I had made a lot of lateral moves. Marketing and communications is not an accident and coincidence that that is a female or woman-dominated industry because there’s not a straight path to the top of any company if you’re in marketing or PR. I would look at that and I would think like, “What is the top of this food chain here?” I felt like I couldn’t quite figure it out so that was a big reason that I started my own thing.

That’s not going to be the same for everybody but for a lot of people, they started their own thing out of this frustration. It’s scary to start your own thing so you start playing it safe. You go like, “I don’t know.” You’re trying to figure it out. There’s also a sense that there’s one path. A lot of us have dealt with that, especially early on in the business. It’s like, “I’ve got to buy the formula from the formula guy.” It’s usually a man and he’s going to tell me the seven steps to $1 million. We’re like, “I diligently followed that. What’s going on?” That was me for the first couple of years of the business. I was trying different things, but I was also like, “I’m sure I’m going to land on the thing, and then it’s going to be easy street.” That wasn’t happening. I had my second child at the end of 2017 and I took a couple of months off. When I came back in 2018, I was like, “I don’t even know what I want this business to be about anymore.” I had a couple of clients, but it wound down and it was going to be, “I have to get back on this horse and start doing stuff.”

I was like, “What is that going to look like?” I was talking to a good friend and mentor named Margo Aaron, who is also a marketing expert and a writer. She was like, “You never write about the stuff we talk about that makes you interesting and dynamic. You never write about that publicly. Why don’t you do that?” We were on the phone and I was like, “What do you mean?” I don’t remember exactly how it went but I’m sure I resisted in some way. What stuck out to me about what she said was she was like, “Don’t worry about how this connects to sales in your business right now. It doesn’t mean forever you’re writing random stuff and you don’t know how it connects to your business.” I talk a lot about feminism, motherhood, and the business intersection of all those, “Some of the things you’re talking about with your mouth to me are interesting. If you would write that stuff, you would draw an audience to you, and then you can see.” I said, “Okay,” and I did that. I’m telling that story because that’s baked into the big idea coaching that I do. It’s the thing that most of my clients are most resistant to.

They don’t want to explore or get words out on the page or in front of the video or whatever because they don’t see ten steps ahead like the exact connection. How we work through that was I talk about my story more, which is impossible. The action brings clarity so you must do the things you cannot get the clarity from thinking about what it would be like if you did this. That’s what happened to me. It transformed my business. Not everyone who works with me throws their core products out the window and offers new ones, but that’s what I did. It changed everything. I brought a different audience to myself. I brought a different type of woman, a woman who was interested and hugely ambitious. I realized that that was a better client fit for me and those people worked with me. I was still doing a hybrid of copywriting and strategy, but I was working with people that I was getting better results for.

There are three things. It can bring you leads. Number two is it can bring interest from higher-profile people in your industry who will feature you, as long as you’re not a direct competitor in marketing. People who if I pitch them, they would have ignored my cold pitch. They would read something of mine or they would come across me and it would be a whole different start to the relationship. That’s happened to me several times. This happens to a lot of my clients. People will say to them, “You should think about writing a book.” They’ll either be like, “I should,” or, “What? I don’t have time for that.” It will sound overwhelming to them.

This writing shorter things that you’re publishing regularly is content marketing but not content marketing necessarily for Google, but writing like blog-length posts, long Instagram captions, or doing it consistently but small. It’s a great practice like a practice court for the big show. If you’re going to go write a book, this is a great intermediary step because you get a lot of stuff out of the way. You get to figure out what you’re about. You put stuff out publicly so it doesn’t feel so scary. The first time someone has a not 100% positive comment is a terrible feeling and then you get used to it.

When you write regularly, you realize things like, “Every time I sit down to write, I don’t write a masterpiece. It doesn’t mean that I wasted time.” All kinds of benefits come from this middle place where you write shorter things, you figure out what you’re about and want to take a stand about or take a stand for. If you still want to write a book, do a TEDx Talk, start a podcast, offer an additional service, or even weave something new into your services, all of that can be figured out in this writing process of writing shorter things more often and publishing them.

There is so much value in that because as you’re saying, it’s a way of clarifying your voice because not everything you write is going to be gold. You also get to see what draws people in or what people are responding to, which if you’re going to write a book, it gives you an indication of where you should be headed in that journey.

That’s such a good point. That’s such a good way of saying it. I’ve seen this in all the marketing jobs. I’ve had many different types of marketing roles, both working for companies and working with clients. There’s often this sense of like, “I don’t want to talk to the audience. I want to put my thing out there and then I want to walk away and they’re going to love it.” It’s the same with product development too. You see that with people. They keep guessing instead of opening up a back and forth. Putting something out and then paying attention to the comments, responding to them, not from trolls but their ideal client or ideal audience member. If they get a comment that’s like, “Bring up something new,” not seeing everything is this horrible criticism that they have to go lie in bed for days to get over. It’s opening up this back and forth. It’s great for that and it’s great to do that before you go trying to sit down and write a book because that will be frustrating if you have no idea how people are going to react to your biggest ideas.

I know quite a few authors and some people who continue to “edit” forever because the fear was putting it out there and how it’s going to be received. This is an upside of social media of being able to get those nuggets out there and start to see how the response is. We’re all going to get those negative comments. As you’re saying, the first few times hurt a lot and it’s hard. As you get more of it, you build up that tolerance and you understand which opinions to disregard and which ones to take in and that’s important. I want to go back to your story. I do want to highlight that when your friend had that conversation with you and we all have had those conversations about something or another in our business or our life where somebody gives you feedback. At first, you’re like, “What? No.” There’s resistance.

Personally, I’ve had that where I’m like, “No way.” I let it trickle in and think about it, but you took that leap because it is scary to say, “Okay,” especially if you have a young child at home and energy is limited. I don’t want to do something where I’m “wasting my time.” To say like, “This is something where I have to look at this process as developing my voice or my journey, which is only going to help me in business even if I don’t see the direct connection. I have to have faith that that clarity will come and it’s okay.” People worry like, “That’s going to seem super disjointed. Why am I talking about diaper creams but I help people build computers? I have no idea.”

There’s something in that. I’m saying this to you, the audience. If something like that comes up and you’re feeling a little bit of resistance and fear, that might be the indication that there’s something there that you do want to express but you’re afraid to take that leap. What you did was a huge leap. We can be like, “I did it.” It’s like, “No, that’s a big deal,” and many people stay stuck. They stay stuck in their business and in that fear of letting people know who they are. Ultimately, that’s the biggest fear. This is what I see in my couple’s work, in my work in therapy with people is this fear of, “If people see the real me, will they still love me?” That’s what it comes down to and nobody wants that rejection. It’s very vulnerable. If you feel that fear, there’s nothing wrong with you, that’s normal because it is a vulnerable thing but I do think there’s a lot of benefit to it on the other end.

A couple of things that you said strike a chord for me. Number one, it was a big leap for me and it was hard. That’s 100% of the reason that I developed a system. I worked backward and I looked at what I had done and pulled out the most effective pieces and that’s what I use to coach now. I’m not sitting there going like, “It’s okay.” There are things that I got stuck on for months that I had to get stuck on. When I pushed through them, I can look back and see. Resistance for example, what you said about, “I’m afraid that nobody is going to love me,” and it’s scary. If you put out a fake version of yourself and people reject it, it’s not you. If you put out the thing that you care about the most in terms of your business, about this industry or where your heart is with this and people reject it, that stings. I had people say to me like, “I’m afraid that if I put out the real me, I’ll lose all my clients.”

There are five things that people say the most that hold them back from ever writing or after they write from publishing on their blog or LinkedIn. I’m not talking about a book. There’s one about like, “I can’t say that because my clients will fire me. My current clients will get alienated.” That’s a scary one because that’s money. That’s an interesting one unless you’re going to say something personally offensive about those type of people are your clients. This was one that I struggled with. I wanted to talk more about feminism and I had some lines in the sand. I’ll give you an example. I was working with women who are doing, I don’t know if I’d call them side hustles while they were full-time parenting young children. They had no childcare and they were running a business. I didn’t want to work with those women anymore.

I wanted to work with women who had childcare because in my own experience, I couldn’t build my business without childcare. Everybody can choose their path but my ideal client has certain hours where she’s dedicated to her business and someone else is taking care of her kids. I was worried about talking about that publicly. The way I waded in the waters was talking about my own experience was like, “I tried this thing where supposedly you can work while the baby naps and you’ll build something. It doesn’t work for me. I need to invest money in childcare and I moved much faster in building my business.” That’s how I waded in.

I was scared to say that because I was afraid everyone or all the moms were going to hate me. The moms who felt that they didn’t need childcare, they were like, “That’s you.” The moms who felt that they did need childcare felt seen and validated. I understand that it’s scary. That’s another reason that it’s good to write small things that you write and then you see the reaction to. If you’re going to say something and it’s what you feel, it’s of value, and people are going to walk away from you, they’re not the best clients. Those are people that you’ve had to be fake around during your whole relationship. I know that that’s cold comfort for people who feel like they need clients. This work is for people who want to work with the right clients, not just with any clients.

I believe that when you do that when you’re in alignment with finding and working with your people as I would say like, “Not my people, my people,” they’re not my people. It doesn’t mean I hate you, you’re terrible. It means we’re not the best fit.

There’s someone out there better for you than me. You should go find them.

Energetically, that’s when I see a lot of people in burnout because they’re trying to force that person to be okay for them or, “I need to make it work. I need to make it okay.” It’s a bad experience for both client and the business owner. I understand we all have to put food on the table and whatnot, but I do think that it’s an important one. One thing I’d to say about that example is fear could easily be substantiated. Frankly, I’m in the mommy world a lot being a therapist even socially in the mommy world. I call them the Momfia because they can be so harsh sometimes, and I think it’s their triggers. If somebody were to respond negatively to that to me, that’s their stuff, “Clearly, those moms who just want a hobby,” I’ve heard somebody say that before. That’s why I say, “I don’t believe that.”

I know some moms who do it on nap times that are crushing it. If they’re feeling like, “She’s attacking me,” and you’re not, you’re clearly saying your experience, that’s about them. I say that so that when people understand, you might say, “The thing I want to write about, people will get mad.” I would be like, “There are probably going to be some people who are pissed. Maybe you don’t hear from them.” When you’re being thoughtful about how you’re presenting it, even if you’re doing it to be a little divisive or out there to understand that sometimes when people get upset, it’s not because you attacked them. It’s because that’s their stuff. You need to be like, “You’re on that journey. That’s okay and don’t take that in.”

That’s why it takes practice in getting stuff out. I have a client who’s a sleep training coach for babies and toddlers. Before she was working with me, she was posting tips and you would think that would be fodder for bringing clients to her but it wasn’t. She had clients but not people flocking. She posts like, “How to deal with the time change to Daylight Savings Time. How to deal with crib to bed transition.” She had a deeper ‘why’ going on. However you decide to set up your sleep home life, when you have consistency in that and boundaries for the kids, even if you’re co-sleeping, but the boundaries around their bedtime or whatever, it’s a gift for them and a gift for you. She had a lot of things to say about mom guilt. It’s okay that you need them to go to bed at the same time every night. It’s okay that it’s for you. Everything you do for your kids, you don’t have to justify. She has many great things to say.

I remember the first couple of times she even poked that hornet’s nest and different parents came to her. The volume of inquiries increased. That was through word of mouth from people who understood that philosophy of hers, different quality and type of clients. That’s the same thing that happened to me but it’s amazing to see for her that shift. It’s not like she burned it all down or said something controversial. She found those people that needed to hear that. It can be so powerful and when you do it a few times, you need that faith. The other thing I wanted to say is I think about this as a laboratory situation which is scary for a lot of people. We do this in our businesses all the time. You’re doing it. If your business is growing, chances are you’ve done little experiments about the product you deliver, pricing, or who you’re talking to and what you’re saying to them.

You’re in your head or you have a more formal system, but you’re going like, “That seems like that works. I’m going to scale that. That doesn’t work. I’m not going to do that anymore.” We do this all the time. It’s the same thing with writing. You say some stuff. You have to write a few to have something to compare them to and then some of them will have landed and some of them won’t. You’ll have that sense. You can’t get that. My big idea is in one sentence and it’s fancy. It’s when women give ourselves permission to claim a platform, speak a message and be heard, we are dismantling the patriarchy. Do you think that I had that big idea the first time I posted it on Instagram? No. I posted about how mad I was about something. You have to allow yourself to say some stuff and you’ll find the patterns within that.

That’s why your story resonated with me so much when we had talked the first time. There’s so much power in the message you’re giving and a lot of people are wanting that. I love that you’re saying like, “I didn’t wake up and I was right there. This is how I’m feeling.” There was a process and unfolding. That’s the refining and clarifying. It’s continuing to put yourself out there, but it does make sense. We do this in business. This is a healthy mindset. I learned this when I was eighteen and I was working at Glamour Shots trying to get people to come in to get their glamour shots. I remember my boss had instilled this in me, “People are rejecting your service, not you.”

I learned that early on of like, “I can put on the big persona, put myself out there. If they reject me, it’s not me. I don’t care. It’s this business, this product.” I still could carry that into my business. When I’m putting out my thoughts, my pieces of who I am, it was ironic because here I’ve had a successful business for years. When I thought about doing a podcast at first, I felt petrified and the perfectionism came up in this fear of like, “This is very different.” You’re putting out a piece of yourself as opposed to like, “Here are my services.” It felt different. I say that for people who maybe are in that. You can be successful in business and still have these blocks come up. It’s normal.

What did you do? Did you decide to do it or how did you deal with that?

I got to the point where I was like, “This is what I’m doing.” What made it easy for me was starting this podcast with Melissa. It’s what gave me the confidence, having someone in it. As soon as we started doing it, I can remember the first couple of times, I’d been interviewed on somebody else’s podcast and I felt neurotic about it afterward like, “I screwed that up.” Inevitably, I forget to say something. I was interviewed on a podcast and I remember I was going to go down this track and mentioned these three things. I never got back to it. I was like, “Why didn’t I say that?” I know now in a podcast format, I’m always going to forget to say something and I’m okay with it.

At first, that used to be like, “They’re going to think that I don’t know what I’m talking about. That was the most important thing I wanted to share and I didn’t share it.” I was stuck in that beating myself up. In the process of doing it more, I became more comfortable with it because I’m too busy to be obsessing about this. There’s only so much time. Here and there, I’ve had a bad interview where I stunk on that one. I should never schedule one early in the morning because my brain takes time to wake up. I would try to set boundaries for myself but for the most part, I’m like, “It is what it is,” and I move on. You start to realize you get another opportunity. People’s memories are short. If they’re like, “She sucked on that one,” and they hear you somewhere else, you might have another chance.

I have a couple of things responding to that because that’s who I am too. I’ve always been a little bit like, “I don’t give a fuck.” I didn’t grow up with these phones and all that. I was well into my adulthood when the iPhone came out, but somehow for me, I have no problem. I get on Stories all the time. I was telling you before you started recording, I get on Stories with no makeup. I don’t care. I’m happy to admit that that’s something that I have going on more naturally and other people don’t. I don’t know if it’s getting older or if you flip a switch but there is a moment and this connects to that sentence I read to you about dismantling patriarchy, where you get tired of that quality that comes with being a woman which is never right.

“If something goes wrong, what did I do wrong? I must have done something wrong. It must be me.” That is very much female. I’m talking about two genders and I know there’s non-binary but if we’re talking about men and women, women take on personal responsibility when random things happen. There’s more of the sense of like, “I should have done this,” perfectionism and all these kinds of things. I know women who are much older than me that are still like that. I don’t think its age specifically but it’s something about getting sick of that whole system or paradigm. I can’t be out here and also be perfect all the time. You have to choose one. That’s like, “I’m going to be out here. I’m tired of sitting on the sidelines.”

Age can play a part. As time and experience goes on, you get to that. I agree that many women who are in their 60s and beyond are still very stuck in that perfectionism place. It is interesting because my mom instilled in me a low bullshit tolerance. I’ve never been great at giving a fuck about a lot of things. What was interesting is in so many areas of my life, I didn’t care about things. I would be like, “Go with the flow.” I didn’t care. There are certain areas where their perfectionism would show up. That does help me because I already had all these other things. People would say like, “I don’t go out without full makeup or this and that.” I’m like, “I could care less. That is not something I care about.” I want to look presentable but sometimes I don’t care like going to the grocery store. It was the same thing. Interestingly, something about the show felt like, I want this to be more formal in the sense of a formal product even though it’s free.

I want this product to be useful so I cared about how the content and I wanted it to be like, “Was that impactful? Was that helpful to people?” We would go on Facebook Live and I would be with a little mascara. There was something about the informality that also helped me. Social media lends itself to be a little more informal. That’s the benefit of starting in a place like that where I saw the podcast or a blog is more of professional representation. I was able to detach and I don’t know if that’s true for anyone else but you get to that point. Now, I’m at that point that I want to do my best, I want to be of value and service to people, but at the same time, I don’t have time or energy for any of it.

I’m writing a book and that reminds me of what you’re saying because the first couple of weeks, I was like, “A BOOK.” I’m not writing my things on social media anymore, my email list. I’m writing this thing. I’ve calmed down about that because the ideas are in place and I’m flushing things out and so it feels a little bit easier. I identify with that. What I wanted to say about is in the book, I talk about something heavy and I start the book this way which is about, “Are you going to wait?” If you wait until you’re ready and it’s all good and 100% professional and perfect, you might die before you get there. I’m not driven by like, “I could die at any moment.”

On the other hand, it’s a quick exercise to strip away everything to think like, “If I died suddenly, what would I regret?” In my business, try not to bring your family in because you’re sad. If this business had to shut down suddenly if you don’t want to go so far over to death like, “What would I regret not having set this business was about or I was about as a founder of this?” That can be clarifying and it helps me get out there to say stuff. I don’t want to wait because the next opportunity, who knows when it’s coming along? I think that is helpful. It’s the heaviest you could go but it’s a way to think about getting over that doubt and jumping.

I forget who said this but they talk about the quality of the questions you ask yourself. That’s a powerful question, “What will I regret having not said or whatnot getting out there?” I don’t see the morbidity in that but I tend to do that stuff. It gives me perspective, not in a way like I’m panicking that I’m going to die, but I do this even with budgeting. I have an SHTF budget, Shit Hits The Fan like, “Could I survive and feed my family and have a roof over my head, if shit hits the fan?” When I figured that out, it calms me. I’m like, “Good.” I figure out like, “I want to have this great life where I get to do these things. How can I make that work?” If I calm that part of me that needs security, we all have that part of us. Some are big and some are smaller but there’s that thing of like, “What am I going to be sad or feel I missed my opportunity to say this thing that’s important to me and get that out there?” That’s powerful. I don’t see it as morbid.

I’ve read a lot of books and I’m not the first person who’s thought about bucket lists and stuff like that. I’m not it my twenties anymore. It’s not ancient. I look back and writing has always been an A-plus talent for me. I’m not saying I’m the best writer in the world but I’m a good writer. I always get that feedback. It was a slow thing. It wasn’t like one day it hit me but I started to take stock and I’m going, “Why have I not been writing?” That was another thing that happened. It crystallized it me because if you can think about saying what you think as taking a risk, I’ve been playing the odds and taking a risk not writing anything publicly and assuming that I have this long life ahead of me and I’ll have time to get to it someday.

That was motivating for me to pivot into writing, coaching, and to do this with other women. I hope we all live long and healthy lives and the vast majority of us will, but it is like, “What are you waiting for?” You can sit up at your computer. You have your health and there’s so much to be grateful for that we have, especially at this time that we’re living in. At any time, being able to get up every day and sit in front of your computer all day is not something everybody can do. Reframing in those ways and thinking about things differently, that moved me too because it made me see my choices differently.

You’ve got to take the hero’s journey and it ultimately came back to here was this original thing that you’ve always gotten feedback about that was always part of who you were and you realize like, “Writing is my thing.” If you’re at the start of the journey, it’s like, “That is so obvious.” You go through that process but I do think that the journey is what gives the richness to the voice. I’m not saying that twenty-somethings don’t have this because I know many great ones that do. You might not have had the same sense of the problem with the patriarchy, the corporate structure or in fairness. You might not have got that at the level you get it had you not gone through it. There are many amazing young feminists who have a strong voice in that.

I’m not saying you need to do that per se but I do think there’s something about that richness that after going through an experience, you understand it at a deeper level and so then you can speak to it in such different ways. We are in such a unique time that people are getting in touch with their unique voice and figuring out how do I approach my business in my life in a way that’s going to be fulfilling for me is even more important. I get survival. We all need to survive. We all need to make money and we need to eat. I do think there’s something to this. This will be helpful and we’ll have to talk again but if people wanted to find out more information about you, where should they go?

I would love for people to come to MaggieFrankHsu.com and join my list. I send a weekly letter, which is all the stuff I’ve been talking about in action. Every week, you read thoughts related to my big idea. You’ll get the notification when my book comes out and I’ll have some special offer on that to my list. I would love for people to join me there. That’s where a lot of the ideas come out. You should get a pop-up and you’ll get a free PDF that’s on there as if you join the list.

Thank you again, Maggie, for coming on.

I appreciate it so much. Thank you.

IMPORTANT LINKS:

• Maggie Frank-Hsu

• Margo Aaron

• MaggieFrankHsu.com