Mistakes That Made Me

there are a number of dimensions of diversity and when it comes to inclusive marketing the first rule is that you have to choose really it means that you want to choose which identities or which dimensions of diversity you're gonna choose to ensure that they feel like they belong with your brand now the reality is that for a lot of brands that are just are sufficient resources to serve everyone well but we also need to contrast that with how can we think inclusive so that we're able to serve the broadest group of people in an authentic and effective way to support them in achieving success that they're looking for that last part i feel becomes even more important when we're talking about events and especially when it comes to business type of events when the actual type of person the event planners are targeting is broad in terms of the identities that they hold and even though events are on the whole becoming more inclusive there are some dimensions of diversity that are not considered often enough that actually impacts a lot more people than leaders think so we're gonna talk about that today with my guest ema ism founder of emo copy c an email copywriting agency and i had a really candid fascinating conversation that i have a feeling you're gonna love so we're gonna get right to it after this short break you don't become the world's most valuable women's sports franchise by accident angel city football club did it with a little help from hubspot when they started data was housed across multiple systems hubspot unified their website email marketing and fan experience and one platform this allowed their small team of three to build an entire our website in just three days the results nearly three hundred and fifty new sign ups a week and three hundred percent database growth in just two years visit hubspot dot com to hear how hubspot can help you grow better hey thank you so much for joining me today how are you hey i am good thank you i'm so excited to be here oh well i think we're gonna have a really fun shot it's a little different but i like different right like that's the whole objective of this podcast right so before we get into it let's tell the people who are you and what do you do my name is simon is mario i the founder and head email strategist at ema copy which is a micro email agency so we do email strategy and copywriting in for course creators coaches service providers personal brands basically companies that want to do email better and make more money from their emails very cool who doesn't want us business owner or as a brand leader who doesn't wanna make more money for their brand right like so exactly we definitely we definitely need that and i think sometimes we probably forget just for the amount of emails that we receive we probably forget like as consumers brain whether it's for work or whether it's for personally like i think we probably underestimate the importance of email whenever we're thinking about it for a brand but like i get i i mean there's so many emails that are in my inbox right so mh yeah i'm imagining that you think that people should be thinking more about this than they are yes i was gonna say you get a lot of emails well is there anyone who's emails that you will always read or that you look out for for a long time i used to read tarzan email like and i know you had tarzan as a guest on your on your podcast yeah which i love that's actually how i discovered you right listening from an email that tarzan sent about being on your show and the reason why i like her email so much because she's telling stories so even though their work emails they sort of feel like maybe i'm watching social media or something like that right and so i think it's the distinction where it's not quite like so transactional or let me tell you something kinda thing i enjoy stories right so it's nice to and that's the thing like that's the goal the goal is to create emails that people can't wait to open that people feel that help people feel super connected to you so that when you see their name in your inbox you immediately wanna open and like you know yeah and so there will always be those stand up people in your inbox and it's those that you wanna aim to be because those are the people who know how to sell through email if they can keep you hooked and engage especially when they're not selling yeah by the people who are gonna make money and know how to make money he from the emails very cool alright well good to know and i'm glad to know that you're hoping your clients tell those stories and keep you today alright so we're gonna have a chat today more from like the consumer attendee perspective and the impetus of this is really around events but i think that people can extend this to a lot of other types of things because probably like email there are a number of events that we go to for work and otherwise that we don't necessarily classified our head as events but it's the same type of impact or feeling that we need to be thinking about so i wanna know what is it about events for business and we'll start there that doesn't always make it easy for people who have an underrepresented an underserved identity to fit into what is considered to be quote unquote normal or mainstream yes okay so i have quite a lot of different identities i'm i'm a woman i'm i'm black even within that i'm from different places in the world so i'm not just from one you know one place i a mother i'm muslim and then i feel like it's different i'm visibly muslim you can see from the clothes iowa when you look at me you can see that i'm muslim which isn't always the case with men or with the women as while sometimes times i'm a mother so loads of identities but the one that is kind of most at the forefront when it comes to events for me is the fact that i muslim them and so i don't drink don't drink alcohol but it's more than that i i don't basically put myself in environments well alcohol is the main you know thing that's the main attraction the main attraction exactly okay so you wouldn't really find me in in a bar and a pub and that people get confused because it's like yeah but you can still come with just like don't know a alcohol like drink orange juice i don't know but it's it's it's not just about the drinking of the alcohol it's it's the wider environment as well yeah and i have found basically that it's been really difficult to go to events because a lot of the time and i feel like most people don't notice this especially if you if you don't if you do drink you probably haven't noticed this but maybe you'll notice it's now that i'm saying it a lot of events are centered around alcohol mh business events centered around alcohol and even if it's not like really over like the other day i was looking at in a a business event and i was like oh i'm excited like because i don't go to a lot of business events where i am mh and it was pizza and bear like the title of the event was pizza and bear and know yeah i was really i was really excited about that one yeah and then if so if it's not really over like that then it's like the environment that i send it's it's a network and event at bar yeah or even i don't know i wanna say club but it's not i got yeah it's it's it's still it's like it's bar dancing that's all like you know have a great time which is fine yeah but also it would be really great if there were some alternatives it would be that would be really great because you know the thing is is muslims who who practice the way i practice just won't attend these events yeah we we were excluded from these events even though we want to join them we wanna be included and we wanna take part and we wanna get involved and right and then you know there are people have conversations about well this community or that community well they don't integrate with us well you know we don't see them they're just not hit well this usually there's a reason yeah why you don't see them you know and so that's something i found really difficult i recently spoke at an event and there was the networking part of the event like the evening like all get together and like let's get to know each other and both nights it was in in a bar and so i wasn't able to and i chose not to not to attend it was i mean it's fine because i know i'm i make that decision and i was actually fine just going back to my hotel i need to practice talk and whatever else but also you know i did miss out on business opportunities i missed out on yeah meeting and people it's between the you know the talks and stuff that and when you're trying to people you get know people that relationships are built and business opportunities are built because very aware of what's being invested and so that's the first challenges that a is the is events being centered around alcohol let's oh no i'm gonna pause i'm gonna come back to the other one okay because i think that you are presenting this this challenge is around alcohol from the perspective of your religion mh now but there are plenty of people who don't drink alcohol i don't drink alcohol yeah and i've just never been someone who drank alcohol and i remember whenever i worked in corporate that was one of the things like you said like so many events yeah sales meetings and these are opportunities to network and everyone is drinking and i remember having like a conversation when i was at like a work meeting and one of my colleagues is like why don't you drink and i'm like well because i don't want to he's like but why like what is the reason like i was being drilled and it would because i don't want to right and so but imagine if it was someone who had a health condition who didn't want to share that you're about their health condition or let's say someone who had a history of being an alcoholic right and so are we we're excluding all those people who don't wanna be in this environment or who find it like i don't wanna say tempting or just uncomfortable yeah and i think that increasingly there's more and more like a sober movement popping up yeah and so i i think that business leaders really need to reconsider this in particular for religion but also for there's just a cohort of people who don't drink and yeah you know re you know it shouldn't feel ashamed for that right i'm really really glad that you said that because that has been that's what i found whenever i speak openly about this i get so many people who are not muslim mh who who respond to me who reply who let me know hey i'm in exactly same position i'm not muslim like i i don't drink either because i i just don't want to or specifically maybe for health reasons i even had someone say to me i'm a recovering an alcoholic and i cannot be in in those environments and so i can't attend business events right i i can never attend them and i'd never thought from that perspective and that was amazing and like you said there is definitely a bigger sober movement that's where people are choosing not to and would like alternatives yeah and yeah i i totally agree there's was something else you said your experience in corporate i think this came from the corporate world where people move into the business well and then that just it just kind of yeah you know follows us into the business but i would actually say in the places i worked and i had the same problem too whenever we were ever invited to go somewhere it was always a about it was always a pub yeah and it made i think it made me look like i didn't wanna socialize it didn't want to be part of like what was going and that wasn't the case mh at all i would love to spend time with you outside of what i would love that come we do something else come to do a cafe come go like one time there was a conversation about ice and i was like i'm that let's go ice skate know yeah and so it's not just for one community is actually lost in communities yeah yeah i love this example that you brought it up and i think more people need to do that even like the pizza and beer thing i couldn't do it because i don't i can't drink beer right like yeah is highly gluten right like so yeah it's that something i couldn't even do but okay so you had another one that you said is a very common sort of other that kinda negatively impacts people what what was that okay so the other one is again it's related to to my religion but i will say that even if it wasn't related to my religion i think i'd still have exactly the same issue just because of my personality and i also just wanna make the like disclaimer that i don't represent all muslims i don't speak for all muslims yeah just like you'll see different variations of different people from different religions from the same religion living in different ways right i can't speak for muslims however i know that i speak for a a a certain community in the business world to both feel they my the same way that i do so another another issue is that i basically don't engage in in physical touch with men who aren't unrelated to me so it's similar to me wearing in my her job my scarf only the males who are related to me can see we'll see me without my head sc basically mh in in the same way i only physically took males who are related to me son husband's you know uncle brothers grandfather father of course right and so this causes an issue when i go to events and forget handshake because we're so far past handshake like that was like that was an issue ten years ago now right everybody is like hogan everyone yeah which is great if you're a h yeah i'm not a h the best of times like yes my religion to one side yeah hug people i don't know it took me ten years to be able to hug my best friends so yeah it's a very uncomfortable situation me and can i just say also i have i i have friends who are orthodox jews who say i they took i had this conversation i i think i posted something about link something buy linkedin and i had friends who orthodox jews who put who commented and said i had no idea that that you know that that's part of islam right that's also part of an the orthodox judaism days too and then friends and people get involved in the conversation who said i'm not muslim and i'm not you i just don't want people to touch me i don't be touched i don't wanna be hook on be touched and so it creates a situation where yeah i'm at events and of course i don't blame anyone because the normal like natural thing that were used to on this side of the world because yeah just to be clear on the other sides of the world in other place in the world this this isn't normal on our outside of the world in the west you would take someone's one hand so i then have to like prepare a little like thing where i let them know you know very quickly under a lot of pressure because you have like a split second yeah in this situation as well what i don't wanna make the other person feel uncomfortable i don't embarrass them i don't wanna make them feel uncomfortable i don't wanna make them feel like less than i don't wanna make them feel wed in any way people form yeah that have things i say hey i'm so sorry i don't i don't shake hands i i don't hug but it's really great to me i'm so excited to meet you you know etcetera etcetera and then we just kinda like trying to move along and the last event i went to it went really well but i just spent the entire two days literally duck out of hooks and avoid hooks gosh meant specifically because it with women i and it was usually women that i knew and that i felt comfortable with they'd hug me and it it'd be fine with men specifically i'd be like dodging hooks the for the whole two days to the point my fat my friend he was with me she was like i'm exhausted just watching this like i don't know how you deal with this because she probably don't even notice it until like you see how would make some kind of just really quickly i i have like a oh my goodness moment last year i was at a conference and i remember i'm a hug right and i remember i went up and i hug this woman that i i met her online like i know her online we're were connected and i was so excited to see her and i hugged her and then later on like maybe the next day i saw it and i hugged her and i could feel she didn't want me to hook her and and i was just like oh like i felt so that like i realized too late right like and it's been a year and i'm still thinking about i wanna crawl under a rock like you know but it was one of those things where i was it made me more aware of like how do we give cues to make it easier or even as like how can we as we're planning events make it easier so people don't have to do like this dodge hug olympics or put that discomfort so that it makes it clear like hug me don't hug me right like shake do you like you know what i mean but i think like how can we yeah better help like you know how we do pronouns to help you not miss gender or someone yeah might be helpful even to do something from like a physical touch standpoint i'm okay for the physical touch i'm not okay okay well here's the thing covid was clearly a very difficult time period with a horrible time period but it was also great for me in that people aren't touching you yeah that nobody was touching anybody touch was gotten out the window for a good two years yeah and so it was nobody was i didn't have to think about the handshake i didn't have to think about the hoods i didn't have to think about any of it and when i you know during covid yeah when there were i think it was right after i mean the pandemic still not over yeah and towards the end of the worst of the pandemic and the lockdown right certainly in the uk anyway when we started having events again yeah events started maybe like introducing kind of one yard yeah would say whether you were comfortable yeah with someone shaking your hands yeah before hugging you or whatever else and that was because of covid yeah and i went to an event i spoke at an event in in spain that did this and we had lanyard that color coded that basically told people whether we were comfortable with shaking hands etcetera etcetera yeah and so the event that i just spoke out a couple of months ago after i kind of brought up this conversation we had this conversation that event hosted i think we'll we'll go back to doing that mh next year and so and because it it's not just me it's not just and yeah i'm speaking as a muslim form of consent it and i think that we have to sort of let go of our own personal styles and preferences so that we're not as i did last year infringing or or not getting consent yeah whether it's verbal or implied right like you know from the other person before we touch them no absolutely and you know i some people think that this conversation is really silly but i think that it really does go back to just consent yeah like in what world would we force physical touch on someone else you know when would we touch someone who doesn't want to be touched or he doesn't feel comfortable being touch you know so sorry i just thought of an example i don't know if you remember during the fifa women's world cup test chair there was this big scandal where whatever the i think the team from spain one and i think with a male coach or trainers or whatever he kissed on the lips one of the players she was very upset about it like it was like a forced thing because it's like you don't have my consent right so yeah yeah yeah and yeah and it's so shocking that there was even debate about whether it was okay or not and you know just just so you know i feel like it happens it's especially when you know someone and you're excited to see them yeah and you're happy to see them i'm can i just say that's what was happening with a lot of the men that i'm at these people that i work with online that i know yes a couple of the ones who i thought would really like jump in for a hug because group work go for so long i sent them i sent one in particular i sent him a message beforehand because i really just wanted to make sure that i i didn't make him uncomfortable yeah or embarrassing or anything like that and so i just sent him a message beforehand i said hey you know i'm really excited me meet in person just so you know for religious reasons i don't i don't engage in physical contact with men who want my relatives so that's why i won't shake your hand hug you and he was so lovely about it yeah as i expected and he's just like thanks so much for letting you know i i actually said as well because you know i wanna i don't wanna create an good moment for than like thank you so much let me know that fantastic so you know there are ways that i can try to navigate it as well but it would be really fantastic if if events considered things like this because again this is not a muslim thing there are people who you know have i mean all the reasons are valid you have especially valid reasons yeah through you know trauma yeah and whatever else that the health reasons yeah yeah it just can't be done yeah there's a long list right so yeah there's a long list yeah yeah and it could just be i don't like it right and that's a very valid that's wanted i to know exactly okay so we talked about some solutions i think he mentioned that one of the events you went for ice cream like you proposed the idea for ice cream a bunch of people went okay so this post went absolutely viral basically because i post by on linkedin afterwards basically i was at this event and we had we had a really great time i think it was like the second to last night mh and i was in spain and we were all you know we wanted to have fun and so then the conversation kinda starts and the conversation is hey let's go let's it go to a club let's go to a club i was it a bar i can't remember but let's go to a club and i'm remember thinking oh i'm gonna have to go i have to go home and just like do nothing now i was like well maybe i don't have you let me i saw i turned to my friend and i was like hey trying go fire ice cream instead and she said oh it's on the amazing and yeah okay let's do that so she tense some she was like drunk fire ice cream we're go for ice cream they're like yeah and then she tense to chunk go ice cream and then suddenly the entire group about twenty of us that's amazing like yeah we'll go over ice cream yeah yeah no one did go to the call at least not first anyway yeah we we all ended up walking down like the valencia promenade all twenty of us from this event and it went for ice cream and it was just so much fun it was so much fun yeah and then i posted right on linkedin a few days later it went absolutely viral there were people comment and saying like i had chose me ice cream many you can go yeah and it just opened up a really great conversation about inc and know just alternatives just altered because i'm not i don't expect events to be catered for my particular needs i know right you know everyone has everyone has needs everyone has preferences yeah and i'm not more important than anyone else i would just love all tentative yeah i'm not asking i need to replace anything to get rid yeah i would love all alternative yeah no i think that's completely reasonable and as we just start to acknowledge that there's a broad there's a broad diversity of people and there's a broad diversity people who have similar challenges but for different reasons right and so all the more reason for people who are planning any type of event or party to help people feel like they belong by providing options that work for them okay i've got another podcast recommendation for you it's marketing the grain hosted by kit and kirin flanagan and it's brought to you by the hubspot podcast network the audio destination for business professionals so if you wanna know what's happening now in the world of marketing what's and how you can lead the way then this podcast is for you i listened to an episode a while back that i love so much i sent it to some friends in a mastermind that i'm a part of and it was all about to rank number one when ai is taking over featuring ross simmons definitely worth a listen if you like cheese may like i do you might wanna have a listen to the episode where they covered did hubspot lose eighty percent of its blog traffic here's what actually happened and another recent episode that looks super interesting that i actually wanna make sure that i take some time to listen to is how to rank number one in chat gp results ai seo strategy listen to marketing against the grain wherever you get your podcasts can you just talk a little bit i think you covered it earlier but i i just wanna make sure put the right amount of attention on this how does not having this options impact the success that you have at these types of events and like in in the success of the events and it it's it trickle down it's beyond just the event because it has career impact on your business too i'm imagine yeah absolutely so the first thing is that i i'm i'm actually actively excluded from being able to partake in certain things because it's not like again it's not like they have a oh his our network and event this one you know this one's at bar and then this one is like in the events room yeah you know over here whatever there is no alternative me nowhere else for me to go this or a bar not over yeah isn't there's nothing else and so i i can't partake in and the activity i choose not to partake and so i miss out on meeting people which is the most important thing yeah when it comes to events you know that the goal and the opportunities are just and talking to people and so you wanna be that talking to people yeah and then i'm very open about why i don't go to like certain an event yeah and not in a not in a judgmental way but in a i'm just i i'm very passionate about inc and so these are conversations that i'm always having and people know about this so for me this isn't an issue but i imagine for other people who maybe don't feel as confident or comfortable talking about this they then just appear maybe to just be excluding themselves intentionally just i don't wanna i don't want to partake i'm interested party yeah you know i'm like remove myself from this and it i don't wanna be around people and and when that's not the case at all yeah it's just not the case and so i think it's really i think that i it has a very like direct impact i think yeah because those connections those friendships are just come be so strong and so valuable lucrative as well yeah and i just i don't get to i don't get to have them if i can't like find a way around this and so often i think that people forget that so many business events the most important part of the business event is the things that happened with the people who are attending like it's not necessarily on the stage or the content or material that your get it's depending on this type of it it's so much of those connections that you make i remember whenever i was pregnant with luna i spoke at an event and i was sick i was in my first trimester and i was getting invitations to go to different dinners and connect and i remember after i had given my talk which i'm so thankful i was able to make it through i thought i was gonna throw up in the middle of it but after the talk i was invited by the founder of the company who organized the event plus like a few other people and it was like a very exclusive thing for dinner and i had to decline it like i i didn't make it to one event that entire conference and i just remember feeling like a failure feeling like you know i missed out on so much opportunity to connect deeply with people yeah in a way that could impact my business positively and that there's nothing the event organizer organizers could have done nobody knew that i was pregnant but it's just that feeling of wanting to participate but for some reason why there you can't it does have like this ripple effects beyond the event right and i think that if as organizers we think about customer success how do we ensure the success proactively by thinking about the people's various identities and what it is that they might need or how might the things that we want to plan how can they be catered for the maximum number of people to achieve success i think that it lends ourselves to think more broadly and not just kind of you know take the easy bin there done with that cookie cutter approach because increasingly it's not working for a broader as as many people as it used to or or as maybe they thought maybe it never worked for a broad number of people but people just kind of force their way through it but it helps more the people that they're trying to serve achieve success and that's the whole point right like you want the people that you're serving to achieve success yeah absolutely and and to be clear that the too big events i'm thinking of i traveled internationally for them and i was a speaker at both yeah and so it's it's an even bigger deal yeah and not you know as a speaker you want to be talking people yeah actually people wanna be talking to you as well yeah it works both the ways yeah and so yeah it's difficult and and i think another thing with with the a cause situation is it's it's actually not fun being the only sober person in a place especially when things get sometimes a little bit rowdy yeah and a little bit uncomfortable it's it's on it's sometimes just not fun yeah so yeah totally get that yeah alright if you could wave a magic wand right and make it so events and these are any type of events right they're particularly the ones that we go through for work what would you do to make sure that like if someone who's trying intentionally to make sure that you're able to include the most people as possible and helped them achieve success what would you change well the first thing i'd do is i'd actually ask people if they had a new requirement mh because i don't think that's something that's usually done anyway mh i think that events are getting a lot better like i've been into events where obviously there is various like food options now mh the last event that i went to had a room for people who were neuro and mh you just needed a quiet space that it was available for them all day they could just pop in and stay as long as they wanted to leave whenever they wanted and so i see event host caring about this stuff care i went about making for people feel included and and making them feel like they belong which is amazing but i i still don't see a lot of events asking that's yeah because all their attendees like hey is there is there anything that you require i see them asking what are your dietary requirements which is fantastic yeah you know do you require any additional support in terms of accessibility which is fantastic yeah and but these these are very specific questions for very specific circumstances and there are lots of some outside of us outside of things that i haven't even spoken about today there are things that i know that i haven't even thought of or can't even imagine because it's just not in my i don't know i don't know i think interesting think this is why it's important to ask yeah and i would say it's important to ask the question and i'm glad that you said that i think that sometimes at the point where people are registering it might be too late for that event so let's say you have an event that's happening already you're already further down in the planning cycle i would love to see like a post event questionnaire where people are able to do that or feedback session or even during the event like is there something because who never like you they might be able to scramble like on sight and create like an ice cream social right like where everybody has an opportunity but if we get into the habit of asking people more frequently then whenever it comes time to plan something which the lead time for event planning and a lot of instances is very long if you already have like a good idea of what people are saying that they need or what would make it better then you have this time to organize your resources in a way so that you can have that continuous improvement and invite people even i would say to c create that with you so that you don't feel like you have to do all of it or come up with all the ideas on your own yeah there was even there was an event that i was a speaker and then i was traveling to internationally that actually took place on either day and read for anyone who doesn't know wow is our biggest religious festival you can compare it to christmas if we're trying to find things to compare it to you it it's like imagine going to speak an event on christmas day oh yeah and i said yes to a year in advance having not looked at my calendar got it and hundred percent that's my fault but also events this is where i asked the want to do the event yeah but also hosts should be looking at calendars yeah to check on a on a bigger scale is this going to conflict with any any religious festivals any major holidays any you know because again there are so many holidays right that are not christmas yeah that also deserve to be seen absolutely yeah so much good stuff y on so much good stuff okay i won't curious if you could tell me about a time as a consumer and it doesn't have to be event related or anything where a brand made you feel like you belonged okay does it have to be a it doesn't have to be a brand that everyone knows right it can be a no okay yeah okay this actually happened really recently so this happened last weekend i actually me and me and my husband booked a vacation for me and my son me and my oldest son okay because i go on big occasions every so often and then my son he's eight is always just like why are you going without me i feel that why are you going by yourself why don't you ever take me so i just we decided that i take him this time and we haven't been so excited about it like we planned it all out you know takeout out harry potter around repeat just you can't yeah we just was so excited about it and then two days before i slipped i tripped on a pavement had a really bad fall yeah i thought i broke my uncle in the moment i was convinced it was so bad it turns out it was a torn like meant in my uncle and so i have been in a cast since then and will be for the next three ish weeks k so i like i i couldn't walk that that day i was i was in a wheelchair at the hospital and i can sign this wheelchair thinking this world is not equipped for wheelchair this is this is absolutely terrible and again that was me just being in wheelchair for six hours you know seven hours so i get this cast i can't walk i cannot walk and i'm thinking how are we gonna go to this vacation how we gonna do this counseling is non option we get into my eight year old well yeah never forgive me and we're both so excited and it was not refundable and i was just like i am gonna make this happen by hot quote cro it's gonna happen i don't know how it's gonna happen everybody so anyway planned it all didn't have to walk very much took taxis everywhere we needed to go i decided that i was gonna call the hotel in advance it was the day of mh it was the day that we were going in the morning and i called them and i said hey i had an accident i'm in a cast i can't walk i've been to this hotel before so i knew a big hotel and required a lot of walk gets the rooms yeah so is there any way that you can put me in a room that is accessible for me and they said yes absolutely no problem and it was so easy and so simple yeah and they went out of their way to put me in a room that was again this room that was very accessible it was right next to the lift so i barely had to walk at all yeah the the room was bigger just to give me more space yeah bathroom was bigger to give me more like just over space the shower had had a chair in it i'm was so funny i was now i'm not gonna need that because i'd only been off i didn't long been this costco for twenty four hours so this i don't leave the child that's really helpful but i don't need a because that i did need the child yeah that was great i'm it had you know hand everywhere yeah again i didn't realize how much i needed especially when the injury was so kind of you know new yeah and they were just absolutely fantastic and they could've have said no you're due to check in a few hours we don't have one unavailable we can't make this open they just made it so easy and i had an amazing time and mh and then we got there and then they were just so lovely the arrival it's just such a pleasant experience and really made me feel like i'm i they cared they cared about me coming about me enjoying this day about me not being in pain and i i don't know if i'll ever go to another hotel in the city and that my only vacation hotel yeah that's a real testament to like they made you feel seen supported like you belong and it leads to like some real strong loyalty and i think it's amazing i really think amazing i love that story where can people find you they wanna learn more about you and your work thank you you can find me and my team at ema man copy c dot com that's our website if you well you do love listening to podcast because you're here check out my multi award win in hopes hubspot podcast podcasts mistakes that made me that's where i interview extraordinary business owners and asked them to share that biggest business mistake and i have had sonia on the podcast though it's latest episodes so go check it out that was a brilliant conversation and i'm also on instagram at email copy c so find me over that cool i will link up to all of those including our podcast episodes yeah so people can access it easily i love love love love love your podcast so i'm excited for of people to have a listen as well any parting words of wisdom for marketers and business leaders who find themselves working with and serving people from different cultural backgrounds norms identities you know just whenever they find themselves working within and serving a broad diversity of people how can they do a better job of serving them at events particularly this answer is not very specific but i think just people seeing knowing and hearing that you care you actually kept because we've come such a long way well it wasn't that long that nobody cared this wasn't a conversation people rolled their eyes at the idea of inc or diet diane i know some people still do boy yeah yeah a lot of people care and so i think just having these conversations making people feel seen and heard and understood and like they matter i think that that's just the direction that we need to keep going in it goes a long way and whenever i go think back to like the actual definition of inclusive marketing the first part of it is like acknowledging the many ways in which people are different like yeah we just have to acknowledge like if we start by acknowledging that there are differences and not everybody's is the same it goes a long way it's towards helping you be successful in other areas and this is the thing can i just add that yeah again we remember when i said i don't speak for muslims things mh i think you know a really good way to like figure out like hey if if you see a muslim slim especially the one who's wearing jab heads off like me you might just wanna ask hey is it is it right hey i speak it okay if i hook you and it's yeah it's as simple as that that's that yeah love it love it i learned so much thank you so much y it's been it's really fun and insightful conversation thank you so much oh my goodness emo had so many wonderful insightful things to share and i bet well if you're anything like me you've created some of these faux pauses as well that a lot of people are guilty of not because they're bad people but because they aren't thinking enough about other people and their identities in different norms and preferences that they have but we can all change that one by one each and every day so i'm curious was there anything in particular that stood out from this from you let's continue the conversation on email on social media because i have a feeling there are a lot more you that have stories that are similar to emo months and the more we talk about it the more change will we can create if you like this show i also would appreciate it if you would share it with your friends colleagues in your network and leave a rating our interview for and your podcast player of choice both of those really do go a long way towards helping more people discover the show another quick question for you are you getting the inclusion in marketing newsletter if not really what are you even doing each week i send inclusion news insights tips resources and all kinds of other good stuff to help you attract and retain a bigger more diverse and fiercely loyal customer base go to inclusion and marketing dot com slash newsletter to get signed up until next time remember everyone deserves to have a place where they belong let's use our individual and collect power to ensure more people feel like they do thanks so much for listening talk to you soon

hey quick thing i'm on maternity to leave having my third baby right now so the next few months of podcast content is gonna be a mixture of me appearing on other pee podcast sharing things you've never heard me share before on this podcast never before publicly released extended interviews with the stakes that make me guests like belinda weaver jordan gill steve fallen and more and of course mistakes that made these aldi book good episodes some of my favorite interviews that you might have missed but really should catch up upon just a reminder that even though i'm our maternity leave my email agency is not we work with business owners like you and we're still taking on new clients an email and launch project so if you're ready to take your email list from has potential to highly profitable head over to man copy c dot com and get in touch with our amazing team of experts and strategist the link is in the show notes okay let's get into today's episode

hey quick thing i'm on maternity to leave having my third baby right now so the next few months of podcast content is gonna be a mixture of me appearing on other pee podcast sharing things you've never heard me share before on this podcast never before publicly released extended interviews with the stakes that make me guests like belinda weaver jordan gill steve fallen and more and of course mistakes that made these aldi book good episodes some of my favorite interviews that you might have missed but really should catch up upon just a reminder that even though i'm our maternity leave my email agency is not we work with business owners like you and we're still taking on new clients an email and launch project so if you're ready to take your email list from has potential to highly profitable head over to man copy c dot com and get in touch with our amazing team of experts and strategist the link is in the show notes okay let's get into today's episode fair fair was the reason that into twenty eighteen i was interviewing for traditional ninety five jobs even though i wanted to start my own business but i had low self esteem and little confidence that anyone would actually pay me to write so i carried on scouring job until i found a communications role that sounded like it was meant to me and it paid almost double what i was earning working for a local charity within days of applying in i got an interview i prepped so hard that i even memorized the organization's missions values and goals and i walked into that interview with an entire folder of writing samples i was ready now the interview was divided into two parts a question and answer styling interview with three different department heads and then a writing test the first part went amazingly i knew they were impressed i was confident that if i just ace the test the job would be mine my inca would be doubled there'd be no more commute between cities and i'd be able to pick up my son from nursery every day and read him about time story every night this job would change my life all i had to do was ace this right test i sat in front of that computer try not to cave into the pressure of knowing that this one test could change everything and then i panicked i wanted this job so badly that i started overthink every question and couldn't even understand what i needed to do when i left the interview i was trying not to crap i there was no doubt in my mind that i'd failed the ryan test even though i was a writer after they formally rejected me and told me what i already knew about my performance i i added the interview was on linkedin ten because hashtag networking one of them responded to my message hi man i don't know whether you requested any feedback my view was that your interview was excellent but your written exercise wasn't quite at the level we were looking for the shame four years later i still feel embarrassment at the thought of those interviewers reading my linkedin posts watching jimmy me grow my copyright in business part of me thinks they probably think i a can complete fraud who knows was nothing about her industry there's nothing quite like failing in your own field that feeling of failing in the thing you're supposed to be great at is something called knows all about that was devastated absolutely humiliated not only that i had been fired but that like this was all based on the one thing that i did in the business that like nobody else was really doing so it was horrifying on today's show i'm speaking to claire pellet facebook instagram and conversion optimization expert and the host of the get paid podcast about how one mistake got her fired but then read her up to build the thriving business she has today the the mistake maybe had been like brought to my attention on a monday and i think this was a wednesday and so i i said the night before as i said to a friend i wish she would just fire me because i'm never gonna leave but i never thought she would welcome to mistakes that made me the podcast that asks extraordinary business owners to share that biggest business mistake so you know what not to do on your role to success my name ema matt and i am an email strategist and copywriter for online business owners and e commerce brands i'm a podcast lover a piece of a proud mama of two and i have this radical idea that if maybe us business owners were a little less guarded and a lot more open about the mistakes we've made we could help each other grow a business that brings us a more joy and less regret hey claire thank you so much for joining me how are you doing i'm doing great i am so excited one to be here as a guest but two to actually hear your podcast i have been waiting for a long time and i'm just so excited that the weight is almost over it's almost over the number of people who are like can't wait to hey podcast oh like give me something give me some details i'm like not yet not yet so as we're recording not very many people know even like the name the the what it's about what's happening so yeah i'm super excited to get this out in the world be you to listen to it and all guests to listen oh yeah it's gonna be great it is thank you so much for being in here well tell us a bit about who you are and what you do sure so i am known for teaching people how to run facebook and instagram ads without tearing your hair out in the process i have been doing this for about eight years and now like just as the natural progression of my work we've also expanded we i say me in my very small team we've expanded into helping people with like conversion optimization in general because just putting out the ad is really only the beginning then there's everything that happens once someone interacts with your ad takes the next step with you there's a long path before somebody becomes a buyer so we wanna shorten that path for people and really help them like build relationships with these new subscribers and these people that they're coming from ads so that they are likely to buy soon and this is a change of direction for you right this is and this is quite recent so we're talking about the get paid mastermind here mh and it's still all very new so what made do you kind of change direction and start mentoring and and coach people in that way sure so in the beginning of twenty twenty one i launched a program called the lead lab and the lead lab was just facebook ad focus facebook ad plus led a very very brief funnel just an attempt to basically get paid to grow your list right make some or all of your ad spent back from your new subscribers getting them to buy like a small product and it was like almost everyone in the program needed help beyond that because we worked on their sign up page we worked on the sales page for their just you know for their small product we looked at their emails and things but but everything really needed to go beyond that we needed to really work on the their launches their messaging are in their launches their emails the frequency of emails the why don't you get to the point and actually ask for the sale part of the emails what we kept seeing is that people just there was so much t interpretation around really saying hey here is the value of what i offer and here's why you won't should get in now right and without that it doesn't matter how cheap your facebook ad leads are if you can't turn them into buyers in a launch if you can't get them on a webinar if you can't get them to book calls with you if that's what you do you know one on one work things like that so also in twenty twenty one there were big changes with facebook ads i mean it's there have been changes every year since i got into this business but the biggest change was ios fourteen made it so that tracking became a huge problem types of ads that had gotten very popular which was like just ads for these really like low priced products they stopped working almost overnight oh and the other thing was the whistleblower of last year i just kept getting on these calls with my students and giving them the worse news like this is facebook this is the landscape of facebook ads now the evergreen funnel that you pay ten thousand dollars to learn how to set up it might break even with ads and you're in good shape if it does but like it's not going to get you the twenty k months just from ads that you were hoping for so i was giving this bad news but i can't hold back am i'm like you know me this just like you know straight as an arrow so i mean i stopped selling i stopped selling the lead lab even though it was an evergreen program because i hated just giving people this terrible news all the time and so when i took a little around it like well what else could i do if it if it's not all facebook ad focused what could it be and that's where i saw the need for you know people wanted they wanted more eyeballs on their work but they also didn't understand what it would take to then convert them and so this is where we decided to okay we're going to stop enrolling the lead lab we're gonna switch over to get paid marketing which we launched as get paid mastermind we have since like tweak to the name and that has been like a really interesting experience it is a higher price it brings in a different kind of business owner and we're seeing a lot of success for the people who are in it which feels so much better than constantly giving terrible news i love how honest you are i with yourself and i love the fact that you actually just stop and thought or what can i change i'm not happy with what's happening what can i do about it i wanna move on your podcast because you have an amazing podcast called the get paid podcast on which i was a guest on episode one five nine is mail welcome to the get paid podcast thank you so much for having me as you know i i would love to know show how it came about how did it start for you because you focus on asking anyone who's on your show and you have some big names on your show how they get paid which i imagine is slightly terrifying sometimes like we're talking like a rachel rogers who i know you're quite friendly with lisa so maybe it's not so terrifying but that would terrifying me i can't even i can't even think of all the other big names that you've had on but we've had loads of people on that so tell me how it came about and and how you came up with that theme actually well it's funny because just before people go like looking in the the archives for an episode with like marie fo or amy porter you're not gonna find those because i don't i i have specifically not tried to ask the kind of celebrity entrepreneurs to be on the show because and this is just an assumption of mind that they won't share in the way that i want them to share you know like how much do you pay yourself and i get that when you are at a certain even just like take home pay level it can be dangerous it can actually be dangerous to tell people like how much you pay yourself so i get it so the podcast came about because when i was just like starting out in in my in my business which is the same business that i have now i've always done facebook and instagram ads well at the beginning was just facebook and i had a wedding to pay for my husband was like mostly covering our bills and things and i just i was like searching for how to get clients and i would find these blog posts but nothing was really actionable right and i just was like i just need somebody to start to pay your rent podcast like literally how to pay your rent right because i i was renting at the time and at the same time this was like the rise of the facebook ads that talked about making six figures i started my business in twenty fourteen but this must have been around twenty fifteen where to see all these ads that are about you know how to make six figures in six minutes or blah blah blah and i was just so curious about what the business model was that allowed someone to make a hundred thousand dollars because what i was doing was maybe making me two or three thousand dollars a month and then maybe i like my very first launch i mean five thousand dollars but that is all all a very long way off from a hundred thousand dollars so i wanted to know how many people do you have to have on your list for this how much are the things that you're selling what is the deliver what does the delivery look like if you if you're selling a two thousand dollar offer what do people get mostly because i just wanted ideas for my son and so in june twenty fifteen i launched this podcast i went to a conference in may and i was telling some people that i met who became really good friends you know this is what i'm thinking of they loved it so some of them offered to come on the show couple other people who had been clients of mine who like the idea i just reach out to them and and from the very beginning i was like so how much money do you make and how do you do it what is the offer what's the list size what are your expenses how much you spending on ads and instead of the pay rent podcast i did decide to go with the get paid podcast because i just kept asking how do you get paid i love it and the fact that you just go so deeply into not just how people get paid but also how much of that money they actually take home like that's huge and i opened my eyes up to a lot of things as well and what you mentioned about it potentially just be dangerous for like huge names and like celebrity entrepreneurs to disclose their figures that never occurred to me until you had rachel rogers on the show and then you were like so how much do you make and then she was like yeah i can't even say because it's just like silly figures now and i'm worried about my safety you i have to be serious i was like oh wow firstly rachel rush is making them money knee secondly wow and that actually made me think like it clearly i'm not on a rachel rogers leveled but it did make me think a little more carefully about how much i share because i am quite open and transparent because i think it's helpful to be but then also that made me think okay maybe you shouldn't be so transparent all the time so yeah there is a bit of that just give and take and considering mh because i don't mean things i've never considered before yeah yeah i i have i heard nik kayla from side hustle pro which is a great show she once said like where i come from you don't talk about how much you make and i have been i have been pitching her to be on the show and it will happen eventually but i had to go in with the pitch saying listen i know that this is a hard line for you and i will not cross it there are some people who have agreed to come on the show but not disclose even how much revenue they make and i typically make them explain why and there have been you know like a variety of reasons but a guest on my show was also like listen we have family i wanna say it was guatemala we have family guatemala it is not safe for me to talk about how much i make publicly and i was like oh well me and my privilege over here just like constantly talking about numbers so yeah it's just it's it's great for people who it's great when somebody is able to share those numbers because i think has really been eye opening for people and i also respect those who are not willing to do it mh well i'll tell you that it was always has been really hard for me to kind of talk about numbers and i do it despite it feeling hard and having that resistance mh because i think it's i think it's important for me to too i would have loved when i was starting out to have seen someone who looked like me talking about what is possible but there's a huge part of me that doesn't like to talk about it because first of all from oh my god there are just so many different aspects and like elements to this but the first one is almost shame shame about making money i'm still grappling with that and there's always been especially because i came out of the charity sector to stop my own business leaving the charity sector that was a conversation let me not mention it there was a conversation about it being money related like me leave in this sector because of money i'm not you damn right in because of money first of all it was because of my son i've just not been able to see him as much i to with the job that i had at the time and secondly he's i'm right it's because of money i'm not being paid where i think i should be being paid and i can't live like this i need to go make more money for me for my family as well and so i've always felt like there is no shame in in wanting to make woman money and i think that's something as well like the idea that the shame in wanting money because that makes you greedy and that makes you you know worldly coming from a background how i makes you world you too you want too much of of this world right so it was it it was a lot but i will say that a lot of people messaged me after my interview with you and were grateful that i opened door talks about numbers and it was also just a great opportunity for me because since then off the top of my head i know i got a client from that podcast episode do don't if i a told i got a client i got under another the podcast interview and i just got invited to speak at an international conference as well wow yes thank you it was oh that means a lot okay well let's move on to why you're hair right i'm super excited to to talk you about this cla what is the mistake that made you well i made a pretty massive mistake with you my boss facebook ad campaigns which got me fired okay let's go back tell us a little bit about the job that you're in the role that you're in and and and how it got to that point so i was hired in twenty thirteen by laura rod laura rod is the cofounder of b she had her own info product business and then she eventually launched meet edward the social media marketing tool she has since sold that and now does a different tech called paper bell but i was hired in twenty thirteen when laura had stepped away from the school i was now just focusing a hundred percent in her own info product business so she hired me to write for the blog to do analytics stuff and to run their facebook ads and this was like my introduction to the world of online business i had previously been in the like startup seen with my husband at my then boyfriend now husband's startup and so like i didn't know that you could be a business owner if you weren't to developer or i didn't know you could be a business that are online if you weren't a code that could build an app you know so i joined lara team a year in i get an incredible performance review really really good and one month later laura has discovered that i have been pouring money into an ad campaign that was getting us the best cost per sign up cost per like free you know email subscriber right but that it was not converting to the people who are like taking the dollar trial of the membership at the time there was another campaign that was doing that at a higher rate at the time i mean like here's me trying to put a little but trying to take some of the responsibility off me even though i really take most of it at the time being able to track that was very difficult but it was doable it was possible and i had missed it and here she was about to transition the business to a saas business model and she sees that her like one data person and that was the one area in my performance review that it was like okay we do need you to keep getting stronger in this area like you know we're collecting the data but we're not really at like we're not doing anything with it so actually at the time i'm literally talking to a data analysis guy who can come in and kind of like help me figure out tracking a lot better but she realizes just based on this one this is like literally one facebook ad a mistake that i am not the right person to sit at the head of marketing in her new company because if saas suffers a service it's all about data it's all about those numbers and it just wasn't my strong suit and so she pointed that out and then i think i tried to fix the mistake somehow and just literally the one thing i proposed to her made her see like okay she this is this doesn't actually make sense her solution doesn't make sense or it's not the the one that that she would take and so she was like i'm sorry have to let you go oh no yeah how did that conversation go well actually it's funny because she didn't say i have to let you go it drew out to a point where i was like okay so can you just tell me if this is it because it's she didn't want she clearly did not want to say the words or to make the decision but she had you know she had she knew that this is what she needed to do and so yeah i think the next day was my last day and i just like maybe finished up whatever i was working on and you know i got off that call and i i think i was already in tears but i absolutely sa hysterical i called my boyfriend i called my mom i did send one great email which was to the massage therapist that i've been trying to book with because at the time i was dealing with like terrible back pain terrible muscle i didn't even know the word in english the time we were living in argentina sorry i don't think i mentioned that but i was like hey my schedule just opened up so i i was able to get a massage pretty quickly but otherwise i was devastated absolutely humiliated not only that i had been fired but that like this was all based on the one thing that i did in the business that like nobody else was really doing so it was horrifying had you ever been fired before nope i i thought there was a certain kind of person who got fired and that certainly not me i feel like that happened pretty fast to go from having a great performance review to one month later to be fired that must have felt a bit like a world where yeah yeah i have since learned about things like performance enhancement plans you know my husband is also an entrepreneur and i know that there was one guy that they gave chance after chance to and eventually he was let oh but that wasn't the same as actually at one of these performance enhancement plans they're much more measurable right but there was none of that but mind like so that was in may i just came up on like the eight year anniversary of that actually and in january of that same year so you know four or four and a half months prior i had finally launched my blog about facebook ads an opt in about facebook ads and i started guest posting doing youtube videos so i had already started this business on the side and i literally told a friend of mine because it's not like this one call was when the mistake was brought up to call the the mistake maybe had been like brought to my attention on monday and i think this was a wednesday and so i i said the night before this i said to a friend i wish she would just fire me because i'm never gonna leave but i never thought she would quick thing as an email expert i've analyzed hundreds of emails and i see a lot of business owners making the same expensive mistakes in that email strategy and copy i wanna help you stay away from those mistakes which is why i've created the email rules my free thirty five minute email class that teaches you how to boost your conversions and sales through email without making any costly mistakes one business owner called this says it's the best email class she's ever taken thank you bi wanna get your hands on it it's totally free head over to email copy dot com slash email rules or hit the link in the journal notes and you'll get instant internet access oh and if you're not into write in your own emails and you draw me strat and write your emails for you get in touch let's make it happen okay so you have just been fired and it sounds like well you just said you thought certain type of person gets fired and that's not me so this is a huge shock and you are working under someone who is gaining popularity at this point was she was she the name that she has now she was bigger than she is now because she has stepped back from being the she's she hasn't been the personal brands since pretty much when i was working with her very smart mh very smart she i didn't wanna be the personal brand anymore so she built two companies that allowed her to run companies without having to be the face of the marketing so how did you feel once you'd been fired seeing her continue on like like what would go through your mind when you would see her name pop up in places you know what's funny any podcast episode that somebody came out with that had her as a guest on it i would listen to because she she has even phenomenal brain you know i used to when i would find myself like afraid to do something or resistance i would literally ask myself what would laura wrote do because she she had she was younger than me and like incredibly successful and i just knew that there was so much that i did learn from her and that i i could have continued to learn the worst thing i think was that i felt like i couldn't reach out to or even be introduced to any of her conte any of her peers because it would be like oh yeah this is the person that laura wrote her fired and guess what if i had just sent if i had sent ten cold emails that month i probably would have replaced my full time income in a month because this was a time when people were really just kind of discovering facebook ads she was she was quite the like you know early adapter have already having been using them for a few years but i could have i could have gotten so many so many clients so quickly and they wouldn't have cared they would not have cared like why i was let but to me it felt like the fact that it was so related to a facebook ad like mistake how could i possibly how could i possibly reach out to anyone so i didn't well not long after i think you built a whole business on the same thing so how do you get over that how did you go from i can't even show my face in front of these people to actually this is why what i'm good at and i'm gonna continue on doing it well what i learned like such an important lesson about cost per lead versus cost per acquisition that like i was just never going to make that mistake again and then just like literally making youtube videos where i'm talking about this with a modi of confidence at the time that was enough people would just be like up she's the one let's go she knows what she's talking about because again there were just there was a lot of mystery around facebook ads and i was somebody who had experience and was like clearly capable just by the way i was able to communicate so just like doing that and showing up as the authority in this thing despite the fact that you know i didn't really wanna say where i had just come from or what had happened or how like i didn't wanna tell story of how my business started in the beginning and eventually that just kind of like overshadowed like nobody cared nobody asked where i had come from until finally people like wanna know like the story and so then i would start telling the story but without naming her naming the company and just by saying like hey i made this mistake and i could also spin it i could spin it because she was adjusting her business model and so i think for a while i said laid off instead of fired with cause you know so yeah that's what i did that's what i did okay we talked about the mistake which was getting fired how did this mistake make you well i think it really comes down to what i just brought up which is this this focus since then on the metric that i wasn't paying attention to when i was running lara campaigns versus the one that like everyone and their mother thinks is the important one that's the one i was focusing on too the cost per subscriber mh and everyone just constantly harp on like well you know my cost per webinar sign up is this or my cost per leaders that or how come my friends getting fifty cent leads and so and so is good but i from from that time i have made my people the people who learn from me i have made them focus on cost per acquisition and like ro a return on ad spend because if you sell a fifty dollar product you better be getting fifty cent leads because that might be the only way you can break even but if you're selling a five six ten thousand dollar thing you should be packed for twenty dollar leads left right and center so long as you know how to sell them you know i would say man that i've done a bad job at showing off the results that like my people have gotten usually because i hear about it years later thirty days after somebody buys my ads course they're not usually reporting a five x return on ad spend because a lot of those people need the funnel they need the messaging help they need other things brooke castillo kinda changed that i think for me oh tell me about brooks yeah so she came on my show in april i think twenty nineteen and she basically told the world how amazing i am and i didn't really know that she liked me like that the funny thing is i had run her ads like through a team she i was part of a big team that took on her ads at one point but i didn't have direct contact with her and so i didn't i didn't know how she felt about me so she comes on the show she talks about how great i am about how my facebook ad course was like the thing that changed everything for her and then she also dropped some legs about seventeen million dollar revenue which since then is like laugh small for her but that was the height at the time that made that episode basically go viral so i had a big lift in sales after that because people are passing around this episode and then it was like oh wait i've been meaning to get facebook ad help i'm gonna go to whoever brooke loves and it was me wow i not actually listened to that episode and it was another really great interview and as well as doing work for brooke you've also worked with jasmine star who i am like i found jasmine stuff so happy too me too it's it's amazing so so that changed a lot for you and i'm guessing that brought in a lot of lot love of clients love customers a lot of clout you know it's funny because when jasmine became my client and she was fine with me telling people that that gave me more confidence as well because when you can talk about your clients roi and i never yell like really share numbers but i would i remember doing a screenshot of her ad account and like looking at this is the return on ad spend and it's they which is just like a percentage right it's not actual revenue you know it was it was fantastic the funny thing about that is jasmine found me from my blog she reached out this was twenty seventeen when i like had a baby in twenty sixteen and took a very long maternity leave and came back and facebook ads were very different and i felt like a total fraud and so she this is not the first time this happened she finds me and i send her to my friend tony who was is still he has a very successful ad agency and i said like okay well maybe at the time i'm like moon moonlight for tony's agency as a sub contractor because i get to play in the ads manager with big big spends but i don't have the pressure of the actual client mh so we do a call with her and we are hired i am on the team and not like i'm getting paid pennies but compared to like this was a big client for for my friend a big money maker and i was there were some special deals there so i would get a percentage of things because it was such a big client but he basically let me talk about her as if she was my direct client and i think was because i mean i'm not sure really why he never said anything about that maybe it was just because we have such a great relationship but maybe it was because i was on i brought in the account i don't know but it gave me a lot of confidence that could use her as a case study she's on my website i've had issues with confidence so many issues with confidence that little things like that were really important for me that's amazing and i think it's it's justin as soon as you said jasmine starr came to me and i passed on to someone else the first all that had it was oh my gosh jasmine stocking can you pass it onto to someone else that's surprising and then i thought yeah no that's not surprise at all because i think i would have the edge to do something like that as well i can only imagine especially having just come off maternity you leave and just knowing how rusty you feel how your confidence at that point is at an all time low can you imagine jasmine start pop into your inbox yeah i think i'd be said i would say about larry she was i didn't know that she was a big deal at all so for me i was just you know i remember somebody coming into my inbox somebody who was a big deal for me and me and tony getting ready for this sales call and getting the email that day listen we've decided to go with somebody else before we even got a chance so i remember that and i you know somebody who i respected so greatly and i couldn't believe that you know their person had reached out to me but i didn't know jasmine so it was just like i can't i can't i can't come up with like another i don't know how to price my services once again tony so you'd you handle that and i'll be like the little brain child behind it it's a good partnership you know this reminds me of what have his me very recently so while i was on a sense leave i pull up a waitlist and i had some you know names coming through and whatever else and i'd i'd check and read every so often here in well in the uk the equivalent of shark tank dragons den right so when i came back off maternity leave i was looking through my waitlist and there was a name that sounded a really familiar and i was like why does this person i was familiar and it was her product as well sounded super familiar so i went on her website and realized that i've been watching her on tv on on dragon's which is basically shark hank just like two weeks before i i was like oh no no no so time past from what she's on him inquiry and to be honest i wouldn't have so suggest anyway because i was in the throws of having a baby but it was just it was super it was it was the it was a sad moment but what i got in touch with her and she was like you know priorities have changed slightly now because she was so busy after the she got the investment and so she's super busy yeah with everything that came after the show and she was like in let me get back to you soon so she's on my follow list but it's it's that idea of yeah coming back from maternity leave and having you know great people come to inbox and dealing with all that all that kind of stuff that comes up so what i'm hearing is you made this terrible mistake that was you know data related i know you now and i know that data is your strength so how this made you was it made you get really good really good at data really good at what you do is that right it made me very good at these handful of data points like if you if you were to bring me into you know let's say convertkit calls me up and they're like okay here's our churn and here's our you know lt tv and here's i'll be like but if it's like here's our ro on the ad spend here's our cost for acquisition here's our lifetime value from that i'd be like okey dokey let's go because yeah now i'm now that that is like my biggest focus and and facebook has made it harder and made it harder to track all of that but i mean this just makes me like one to brag but all of the stuff that you have to do now in order to track add results from facebook ads i've been doing with my clients since like twenty sixteen because i never wanted i never wanted like that vague did they come from an ad or didn't they so i didn't really have to update anything i just it it is still hard to get clients to do what i'm asking them to do because it's more work yeah yeah i've heard you talk a lot about you wanted to be a ballet dancer growing up and and then going into act in and one of the things i've heard you say is that that world made it very difficult for you to deal with rejection and that really stood out to me because i my entire life wanted to go into action too i a lot of acting and so that whole like audition and not getting the thought over and over again really resonates with me and makes me feel some kind of way when it comes to rejection so i wondered how that plays into your business today and also how it played into you bouncing back from you know be fired oh well it took me a really long time to bounce back a really long time i mean i it was not fast i mean i i would get like these handful of clients that really weren't a very good fit i wouldn't say i bounced i kind of like crawled out of that pit of despair like bit by bit by and then i would have like a a a little win like my the first launch of my course and then i would make five thousand dollars and blow all of it as if it didn't like if it wasn't all my revenue for several months but in terms of like rejection now you know i still shy away from it i still shy away from putting myself out there which i ought to you know i really i ought to go pitch myself on bigger podcasts i ought to pitch myself to speak at conferences and there's an element of me now that it's just like i can't be bothered you know like i would actually rather go the very it's pretty low cost and also no stress method of like growing my podcast with ads then by going and trying to get on these big name podcasts and like oh what am i going to you know what's the pitch gonna be yeah but i i definitely hold myself back in ways i'm not sure if i've gotten over that is really the answer yeah well i do wanna add that you said you can't be bothered but there's a whole of side to this where you also have a family you have two kids and husband so you have a lot going on can i just say that you've changed my life let me tell you how you're so open about the support that you get with your family and your kids so you have a cleaner you openly whenever you talk about your kids you always say my kids are in daycare or school you have said you have family close by you've set up like support systems to help you and also you talk a lot about going out with your husband a lot and and and getting a babysitter center i had this thing where i could not allow myself to hire a babysitter center i don't know why i thought the babysitter was gonna do to my kids but i couldn't do it then i heard you talking about just how life changing it is and i actually went out and got a babysitter so i've done this like a few times now and i feel well like a different person there was one point where i thought i was losing my mind a little bit and i i now feel like a different person just having a few you hours a week to myself has changed everything so thank you for being so open about the support systems you've created you mentioned at the beginning that when you first started your business you were making like two to three k a month do you mind sharing how much you're making now i i pull out of the business six thousand dollars that goes into our family like that's and then a thousand for my retirement and then it's been only fifteen hundred into my own like money but it it had been up to nine excuse me it had been up to three so about ten get between eight and ten k really what i'm paying myself and that is after taxes so all that take home pay is you know it usually equals out because i might take a big chunk here there it usually equals about a hundred thousand after taxes excuse me yeah after taxes this year it will be more because i took out a big chunk to pay for this new house that we're closing on on friday so so this will be a year where i definitely pay myself more but that also means i just have less less savings now in the bank i mean it's pretty amazing to me to hear you say that having just heard you say about laura when you're working under laura i wish she would just fire me because it sounds like firing you was the best thing she could employ you oh my god it was i never would have left that job it was such a great job it was completely remote it was flexible the team was amazing none of those this like toxic bullshit i've never known the toxic corporate non corporate anything it was a dream job and i never would have left so thank you laura she gets some message from me every year or so where wait to just say that exactly so she doesn't need to hear it again well i was gonna i was just gonna ask you have you spoken to her since or have you spoken about the firing since oh yeah just on the actual anniversary of it i posted on instagram that it was the anniversary on a story and i tagged her really small you know really small and she wrote back right away this made my day thank you so much it was so hard to do because i think i said like something like you don't congratulating her on doing a making a hard ass decision you know firing somebody who is pretty good but not great and somebody who you like and you get along with and you know like having to worry about being thought of as like a bitch you know it was i mean really you gotta listen to our podcast episodes on other because she doesn't have a show i'm just saying on other people's laura rote r o e d e r she's got a great brain i will actually she came up on my you know apple podcast thing recently because she did an interview with nathan barry at convertkit kit barry sorry nathan barry at kit for his podcast is a really good podcast and yeah i immediately thought of you and was like a i'm gonna have to listen this reflux because i've never heard her speak oh god i might have to find something and send to you just like some of my favorites please do please do have you ever fired anyone yes both how did that go was really hard it was really hard and it was kind of mutual but kind of not we knew each other for a really long time so that was hard yeah that's hard yeah that sounds it okay what did you learn from all of this and what do you want others to learn from your experience nobody is paying attention nobody cares that you were fired or that you made a mistake everybody if you are showing your value showing what you know showing your authority showing that you are skilled that is what people are paying attention to and if they continue to pay attention to you it's because of that it's certainly not because of like the mistakes in your past so it's so hard in the moment anything humiliating any kind of mistake it's so hard but nobody's paying attention thank you thank you so much for being hair class and and for talking about this it's also been amazing to watch how how much you just own the story how when you talk about it now there is no shame and there is no humiliation and i love the way that you've just taken control of it it's inspiring it wasn't always that way that's all i'll say wasn't always that way yeah i can imagine that that took a lot of work i can imagine but i think i mean i'm on your newsletter so i got the email where you were talking about the anniversary and just hearing you share the story like that it it makes us on the other side feel like it's okay to make mistakes and also it's okay to share your mistakes it human you and you know people wanna hear about your balls as well as your highs hence this podcast as well because i really i really do believe that mistakes are just lessons to be learned and that's it mh yeah so where can people find you if they want to stay connected the best place is gonna be over on the podcast if you search get paid clear that's gonna be the easiest way to find the get podcast on whatever your podcast app is i am very rarely on again off again with instagram so i wouldn't even bother there then you could also come over to my site claire pals dot com especially if you're interested in facebook ad instagram ad stuff thank you so much clyde it's been absolutely amazing talking to you and i am so grateful that you said asked to be in hand oh i i feel honored that you asked thank you so much for me the standout moment of this conversation was when claire admitted i never would have left that job if laura had not fired claire claire would probably still be working for her today it just goes to show that sometimes we need a little push or to help us do the things we're too afraid to it makes me want to ask you how is fair failure discomfort and risk holding you back in your business at the very heart of k story is the reason i started this podcast in the first place sometimes your biggest blessing comes in the form of your biggest mistake you're listening at two mistakes that made me amy man mario and if you look this episode take a screenshot post it on instagram tell everyone you know that this is the podcast to listen to and tag me at email copy so we can say hi so i can share your post you can find the links to everything i've mentioned today in the show notes next time on mistakes that made me i was just being tram over walked over left and right from family expectations like intermediate family like parents expectations from colleagues from supervisors i was just being tram over left and right and it just was it was a horrible situation

hey it's steve fu here for an extended interview with our private membership hey steve what's nice in here isn't it i like what you've done with the private membership lovely hey everyone thank you thank you and so we were just having like a behind the scenes chat and i was like wait let me just press record because this is interesting stuff would we were talking about the reception of your your podcast interview which went down really well if you haven't already listened to steve's mistakes that made me goal listen to it we talk about a time that steve was let go of his only client when he literally just quit his full time job it's gone down so well we've heard such great things and i was just saying it was an hour and forty five minutes and i tried my absolute best to put it down but i couldn't because so much of it was so good and then just said thought you know what my people are used to long episodes at this point so we'll we'll throw in in one more hour and forty five minute episode and then after this i'll do my best to cut them to make them shorter but i was going to say oh no it's completely gone like i hit record for a whole reason because of something i wanted to say but it's completely gone it's hard it is hard or i i was apologizing for wang on with stories is like a i spotted as as you know can do a you know because i know stories illustrate things don't yeah i looked back to it and i thought maybe i maybe i went too hard on the stories like some old the on a chat show on you know like on michael park i don't think so the late show if you're american or whatever i re listen to every single episode because my podcast reduces missouri edits them and then he does the first draft and i listen to the whole episode and then give him edits and then he goes in you know rework it and changes can't speak revise it or whatever and so i listened to the whole episode really enjoyed it i was laughing along because if it was the first time i heard it and that's how i knew i was oh this is a good one and and i realized forty minutes in that if we had caught the episode forty minutes in before we actually got to your mistake that would have been one podcast episode in and of itself that would have been amazing without the mistake and i was like we did a whole podcast interview before we actually got to the mistake it was so good so if you haven't listened to it go check out i'm so excited to hear for an extended interview thank you for making the time nice are we on camera as well people watching this no people are not watching this they're gonna hear it but alright i i sometimes use this actually let me just i've got a i've got i was gonna say i you sometimes use the video to like promo the membership and i just realized i've got a photo of me my mom and my grandma i'm my grand dad behind me and i'm gonna just take them out of like the yeah because that the i don't think they wanna be on the internet yeah i've not the cats cat's permission i've just ripped my camera keeps going blurry and that's why i asked i thought i will fix it if if people can see it that's awful for isn't it cheese it it's blurry but it might be riverside because riverside does this sometimes and then when it downloads it's actually totally fine oh rich yeah here's me gradually making it worse but i try to fix it no i don't think it's your camera we'll see we'll find out i'll let you know but steve i have a good few questions for you and you know what i'm gonna start off with one question that was actually put to me but i feel like it would be really great to have your your thoughts on this because we might have different thoughts on it so are you ready for the the first question so the are these questions that come in from listeners yes this one the question actually yes and then others are ones that i didn't get time to ask you during our interview that i wanted if you would to get time do key yeah okay okay so the first question is when can a podcast finally take the leap and build a paid product or service and this is coming from someone who is a podcast broadcaster oh wow i mean you could do it whenever the heck you wanted as your business right i maybe this has come off the back of that comment i make in the episode which is about don't forget you need an audience in order to you know to sell the product too that's the trouble isn't it and so i feel like some of advice which is about creating products that it's a it's great idea lovely but you've gotta have an audience but how big does that audience need to be how expensive is your product you know it's i don't know what your feelings are this on email but you know you might you know if you have a thousand people then maybe ten percent of those might bind to something you know like also just something even that really was gonna say even less than that maybe i'm being generous yeah as a conversion rate we're talking about one to three percent like five would be really great yeah so also you really need to think about you know so i my biggest product that i created was a course for new freelancers but really that way it was a bit stupid of me because yes i have an audience of freelancers but lo the very small percentage of that audience to gonna buy right but a very small percentage of the audience to begin with are even new freelancers there's lots of established people who might have bought a course on any other manner of topic but not getting started so you've got to think about who that audience is what stage they are what might they be interested in and i also think rather than necessarily thinking about how big is your podcast audience how big is your email list so you wanna be trying to get those people onto a list because that is the way that really you're gonna be able to sell to them to tell them about it to encourage them towards what you might create yeah i mean i totally agree i heard rachel rogers say something really interested on this topic and i'm trying to i'm trying to find me exact quote but she said something like you can't build an audience and i wanna say a business at the same time i don't think the word is was business that she used but it was something along the lines of like when you're needing to sell something and what she was trying to say is that there are two different things going on here like building an audience is one thing and then building a business where people are buying from you buying your services that's a completely different thing and that when you're trying to when trying to build an audience i think get people's attention the attention is what you want that's a very different task than trying build a business where it's the money that you want like you want them to go into that pocket and buy from you and i think that's a really interesting point i mean i don't know i'm not saying necessarily that i agree with this but what i'm just saying is a really interesting point because when i think about it i mean i think about some of the podcast that i know who talk about like the the stats how many people are listening to the show they're downloads that kind of thing i was really surprised by one podcast broadcaster who is like she's a millionaire as she ends like millions a year in her business which i know is like unicorn but she has like seven hundred downloads a month on her podcast seven hundred and so and and she was told about the fact that she gets a lot of her clients from her podcast her service is a high ticket so she doesn't need a lot of people to buy she needs you know a certain number to start before she's even hit in order her to even hit these high kind of figures and so she's really not trying to grow an audience she is creating content that will encourage potential clients to buy and i think that those are two totally different things it's very interesting to me because i have been i feel like i i have been obviously building my business and now i'm kind of trying to figure out how do i how do i monetize this how do i monetize this and i feel like now i'm just kind of starting to grow an audience a little bit more but i think it's a very diff i mean i don't want my conclusion on that is but i think it's a very interesting point i think you like steve said can start i'm sorry there's something going on outside of my window i just one second just try i it i was gonna about if that is your if that is your laptop you need to close some terms it's laptop it's the whole world deciding to do something up my outside my window just one second let me close this when i was looking around me thinking is is a helicopter landing and it's so cold that my window would like iced open nice ice eyes open so yeah okay we're done i close it but i think this goes back to just you know you can start selling whenever you want to sell there are people who are selling from day one right and then there are all people who are building in building and building that audience and then are slowly working towards selling something i don't think there's the right way to do this and you know a good piece of advice as well is to probably start with something small right some yeah sort of small digital product right like i stupidly like i said created this massive of course i spent so much time on it it's huge and it's also you know cost a fair bit much more sensible to create some kind of small product and start testing nose waters some people would say you know get them on a list pre sell it and things like that but yeah just experiment with it and don't be down hardened as well or dish heart if not too many people buy at first because you've created something is gonna be there for quite a long time so that doesn't mean that people can't come back to it and i think since the question was orientated around podcasts a smart thing to do is to use a platform to host your podcasts where you can insert dynamic ab efforts i know you did us email and for that matter you can change across to one of those platforms like cap activate a podcast platform lets you go back and paint over in quotation marks old adverts or insert them into old audio you know like with a new advert so the whole point if you don't know about dynamic adverts is that the you know the podcast could be going like mine for nine years but i could create a product now and create an advert that thing goes into the old audio should somebody listen to it tomorrow which means it can be much more time sensitive so i didn't do that but that would be my recommendation because it means that you can adjust what your know even if you're not ready to sell your product now you can sell it to people who listen to your podcast years from now yes absolutely that's so true and so yeah there's no rush sometimes i feel pressured because i i feel like if i make a decision i can't change it later but that's not the case and it's sold true and certainly in cases like that i just wrote an email yesterday to my newsletter about how amy porter field is using dynamic ads to it's a great email i read that you did yeah yeah thank you so much really good email do you know what it's just funny though right and this isn't a on amy port okay i have have not consumed anything to do with ami port i know only of her name okay and after i read that email of you dissect amy ford i went maybe i should be paying attention to these people but it's almost like this so big before i god and that's it though that's the that's the effect it usually has on me because it's almost just so relatable on a achievable like for me anyway i don't and i don't even want a hundred million dollar business so that's not what i'm trying to do here you know and so it just feels a bit disconnected sometimes i totally get that but this email that we're talking about is an email that i wrote just yesterday yesterday sent out to my list and i was isaac amy porter field twenty twenty four email strategy now sharing what that was because she shared in recent podcast episode and then i was given like my take on that and i think one of the things i mentioned was that amy portability is now doing dynamic ads so that she can start selling the things and talking about the things she's doing now across podcast episodes that she created ten years ago and that's an a really amazing thing and so there's lots of scope to play around with this and and and just to clarify like what was saying about rachel rogers is you can't build an audience and like make money from audience at exactly the same time i feel like i don't know again i don't if i agree with that but i think if you if what she's trying to say is just be really intentional about what it is that you're trying to do with your podcast like what is the goal because you can have very different goals and those very different goals will take you down different trajectories so yeah interesting but basically the i guess the longer short that answer is you can do whatever you want when you want right okay i'm gonna move on to the next question and this is actually topic i want to talk about this is about the word freelance freelance versus business owner and i know you get this a lot because i've heard you talk about this but i think it's just such an an important question for all of us so i know that there are different camps in the business world when it comes to the use of the word freelancer when we're describing ourselves to our people our audience our clients what are your thoughts on this because some people think that freelancer diminishes kind of what we do and gives you know people the the idea that you know we work for free or that they should pay us less so that it's less professional and they they use business owner and some people you know lean into the word freelancer answer i i think you're one of those people who lean into the word freelancer tell us your thoughts on this whole topic well since i called my podcast being freelance i'd a bit screwed if i changed but yeah i don't change your mind okay what it's yeah it's funny so i i think it's important to realize if you are a freelancer that you are a business owner like i said in out episode of your podcast it to me is to realize that right so that's one thing i think you can call yourself whatever you want you could be a consultant you could be a strategist you could be a business owner a founder i don't know what an entrepreneur a solar like literally whatever you want to call yourself partly what matters is what your audience might be looking for so sometimes i get approached by people looking for a freelance podcast editor who have blatantly googled freelance podcast editor like maybe in that end street the word freelance is what they're looking for but maybe other people are looking for a copy writing agency maybe they're looking for just a copy and maybe they don't even know what a copy writer and they're just looking for a writer or somebody so as with most things i've realized there's no right or wrong i don't personally feel like freelance is a bad term i don't i i feel like the freelancers that i've met and i've spoken to are hardworking decent brilliant people i know people who call themselves freelancers who are also earning a lot of money and a lot of respect i e they're they're at the top of their game people don't think that they're working for free people don't think they're rubbish or anything so but it does matter what you feel about yourself and so if you don't like term freelance then you don't have to use it at all there's no you know and that doesn't and if you don't use it that it doesn't stop you being a member of freelance communities like being freelance or listening to freelance things a big chunk of for me freelance is also a i guess a kind of a mentality personally where i feel i do feel free i feel but i've created this flexible business for myself and i feel like i'm freelance because i can slot into other people's teams like it's not just you know i i don't i don't necessarily see that i'm serving or heading a production company i'm quite happy to build a team around me and serve you or i can fit into an existing team and play my role as a podcast editor or a script writer within your team so i don't know it's a it's a discussion point really isn't it rather than a yeah and an absolute answer you but you can call yourself whatever you think i certainly wouldn't be put off by the word i like what you described that i feel like it's almost like a you being so versatile being able to kind of change and mold into kind of what your client needs you to be and what they need from you at my experience with this word has been very interested in so i internally and with my peers i'm totally fine with referring to myself as a freelancer although interestingly since i actually registered my company here two years ago what twenty is where i am were called entrepreneurs as in like the government causes us entrepreneurs so even that was like oh so that was that was a a different kind of shift mentally which was interesting what i found my experience has always been as a as a woman as a black woman as a woman who's wearing a head scarf as someone who looks younger than her age and i don't say that in like a positive way i mean it's really annoying because people think i'm mean a lot younger than i am and then go oh my god you have two kids how old are you or how long have you been doing this or you know they they're underestimate because they think i'm i'm younger than i am not that young people don't also deserve respect but i feel like i already have the old these other things that i'm sometimes battle in with because i mean not internally but it makes it harder for people to take me seriously sometimes to respect me as i should be respected to even just appreciate my experience and expertise it feels like i'm fighting so many different battles that i can't i don't have energy for the freelancer versus business on a thing and so i feel like in in my in my kind of little world calling myself a freelancer to my clients would not help me so i've always been very very intentional around being calling myself a business owner and referring to myself as a business owner you'll never hit me call myself a freelancer to like people like audiences social media that kind of thing and again i have i have no issue with the word itself i have issue with how i feel people treat me when i refer to myself as a freelancer or when they think of me as a freelancer which is for korean because again like you said freelancers are hard work in people we are so good at what we do but it's yeah it's just it's interesting it was it was something that i was really i found very difficult to navigate initially especially because i felt this way about it but then also specifically in your community i identify myself i do identify myself i i do identify to that word with that word can't speak identify with that word and i know that because i listen to your podcast being freelance and it feels like this is for me i am part of this community so yeah this freelancer versus business are on a debate i think it's one that will go on for like till the end of time and there is no right or wrong answer no no i don't think there is and i think there's a certain degree of the word the word has almost risen in people's minds and that has come alongside the light of five and up work and i'm not even dismissing those sort of sites as a way to start your business but obviously a lot of those sites have a lower you know like lower value jobs or perceived but that's the case right and so maybe that doesn't help newer people coming into it thinking of the word freelance freelance also gets attributed to the gig economy mh and people who are like uber drivers or delivery drivers and you know like i e people who are freelance but they're not re you know that they are a long way away from a freelance creative yes and so that word is getting mud together even worse it's that it's even getting mud together within government policies and things where they're sort of trying to help the likes of a delivery driver by cracking down government policies or you know like employment policies to protect those people but in doing so that could harm us both you know around the world i think governments are kinda of struggling of like who who to protect but in doing so of sc us anyway yeah it's it's it's a hard one yeah and what you just said about the word freelancer are i think being linked to the gig economy is also very interested and i think what i have found is that with that and i think it's because of that relationship now between those two terms freelancers are sometimes seen as people who were like not in it for the long run like we are just kinda doing this temporarily almost like we're here today we might not be here moral kind of thing which of course is not the case at all but i found that that's that's another reason that i have i've stuck to business owner because i felt like because of that association with like this idea that it this the work that we're doing is temporary that people will maybe find more i don't know comfort in that you know i'm here for the long run especially because like the charge the rates that i charge and stuff like that my i need my guidance to know that i'm gonna i'm gonna i'm here for the long run i really am but again i don't have that opinion that's like not my opinion of the the definition of the word or the term i just feel like sometimes yeah that's how some people maybe cons screw it i don't know it's it's such a difficult topic but again it goes back to call yourself whatever you want yeah yeah for sure i i've i've heard some people call themselves you know like an an independent designer an independent graphic designer independent blood i quite i quite like that i do like that you know i do like that also know it's not the same thing sorry nobody's searching for independent so true my think it's something what are people searching for you're right it's so true it's so true because we can have all these ideas but actually what are people what are people looking for when i first started out that was one of my use i was targeting an audience so i didn't even know what a copyright it was and i realized that was like my biggest mistake initially was like okay this is not my audience i'm i'm spending way too much time i'm trying to educate these people on what a copyright actually is i need to speak to people who not only know what a copyright it is but they actually want hang on like i don't need you to con i don't need to convince you that what i do is needed they're like oh wow that's what copyright does i used to have way too many of those conversations and moment way oh my god but yeah super interesting topic let me move on to one more because i've got one more that i wanna talk about before i let you go sub contracting so i know you hire other audio and video producers and editors to work on projects with you so when a client you know has more work than i don't know maybe you can manage or you need someone with different professionalism you hire people and you bring them into work on that project i'm just really interested in how this how it works for you so and what the process looks like are you are you kind of managing it all from like like steve fu hq or is it very much like different business owners they've got their own business and then you know they just deliver you the way how this process work for you so yeah i'm managing it i i that's a this and this is one of the problems you become like a project manager mh you become quality assurance so that you know let's say i've got an animator at the moment who's you know work working on something the client has given me this thing the animator is doing it but i then need to watch that back double check that we're ticking all the things that the client had asked for and if we're not i wanna give it back to the animated before i give it to the client because it's reflecting on like i don't wanna waste people's times but also i don't want you know an an animation with a typo to get through when i should have spotted it so you become some sort of quality assurance and you become a project manager you also and quite crucially become the person who is paying your subcontractors probably before you get paid by your client and that's really important because sometimes dunno about your payment terms with people you work with maybe you insist on getting paid immediately but a lot of the times i will work with people where i have to go by their thirty day terms there was even one was forty five somebody tried to get me to do ninety day terms i'd chose not to work with them but the fact is some big companies have those terms forced upon them like ninety day terms so anyway personally i would rather pay a freelancer immediately once they've delivered the job once their a bit of the project is done but that means i need to have the cash flow in order to pay them very early on that was a delicate balance of zero percent credit cards and paypal and like it was it was it was it was on the edge but once that money starts coming in from the client you can start to sq it away build yourself a buffer so then you can start paying you know you've you you've got the money in order to pay those people which is also why you mustn't feel bad about adding on i know some people feel bad about adding on you know a percentage on top what you've got to remember is that the client doesn't care the client just wants that thing to happen they just want the thing and actually the freelancer answer to a certain extent i mean they might care if found out that you were charging two hundred percent more than their rate but they don't care they they want you to stay in business as well they also haven't had to go and get that client they had to deal with that client they haven't had to market to find that client like they this is an easy job to them because you have come to them and you're paying them immediately whereas you're waiting around for thirty days and so on so you have to shove that guilt i found about adding a percentage on top of other people so if i was advising you about hiring other people i would say add on you know in fact step back you have to imagine as well that you aren't the project manager this is what i've discovered so what if you were so busy in your business or you were sick or you just hated doing it that you weren't the quality controller and the project manager but somebody else was being paid to do that so now you have to think right i'm gonna pay sub to a but i'm also gonna pay my project manager and my quality assurance person and then on top of that i need to take the chunk of money for my business because my business needs to survive and be healthy and that is my price to decline or whatever now yeah you might be doing those tasks so you're paying yourself that money but what if you weren't i think that's important to remember that's such a good tip for such a good tip and i am actually in the middle of kind of transitioning so i have been working with subcontractors for the past year or so kind of testing the waters not unlike every project but where maybe i've needed some additional help and it's worked really well because i finally found like people that i really trust who i know are really great at the job and who also you know will deliver on time and all that good stuff and i think one of them is is a little more junior than the other but she's so open to feedback and learning and training it like she's just great and so i am wanting to kind of transition to like a very very very micro and i'm mean very micro micro agency where and i feel like is strong word because i never wanted to be an agency but i do want that when people come to me to know that it might not just be me working on their project and that actually not that that's that that that's not a bad thing that's a great thing because i'm bringing in even more people that i really trust to do this job well onto your project so we can deliver like the best project so that i can you know pass on the parts that i don't love doing it to someone who is who really loves doing it and who is amazing at doing it and so i'm i'm in the middle of relaunch my website to kind of reflect this and there'll be some new people on my website which is exciting and also bit nerve wracking but this process has been very interesting for me for me my experience has been that people that work with one payment upfront which is totally normal kind of in my industry so that means before they start the work i'm paying them usually in full and obviously i have a lot of trust in them and their work so i feel comfortable doing that but that means i have to be very careful with my cash flow i have to plan very carefully and it could so easily not go too well so this has been a very interesting balance in act and yeah it that i think was a really great tip yeah yeah also i think it's worth saying that if you have a bad experience with sub contracting reflect on what that is but don't let it necessarily put you off trying again it might just be that you had the wrong person or the wrong process or it was you see kind of like it i this where you know you i don't know make maybe you didn't give the feedback you should have done then therefore they keep doing something in the same way and then you keep changing it yourself without them knowing that you so you're getting annoyed that you're paying them for something that you're then rewriting or whatever when really that's kind of also on you yeah so yeah it's it's a good area in which to reflect and learn but also ultimately if the thought of sub contracting stresses you out or the act of doing it stresses you out then don't you know don't do it yes that's so true it's so true for me it does the opposite because it frees up my time it means that i can yes i'm project managing so you know i'm not it's not completely hands off my job changes but it gives me more time to to do other things which is really helpful for me in the kind of stage of life that i'm and that kind of thing sometimes i find myself just really tight like i wanted to do a project that i'm exhausted and i'm like you know what i think i'm gonna hand this over to someone else bring them on this project so they can help me with that and i've also found yes when things i've gone wrong with a sub contractor it's been me it's been me i've usually not either not paid enough so i've actually got someone who's not experienced enough because my budget wasn't high enough or that feedback thing where i don't wanna be rude i don't want be really nice to the person so i don't wanna give them constructive feedback but actually constructive feedback is great for everyone because then i'm not annoyed and then they're doing work i'm happy with and i continue to give them works all that happy everyone needs constructive criticism it's at feedback it's okay it works it's healthy steve i realized that we are up with a half an hour i'm so grateful for you being here thank you so much please remind people how they can stay in touch with you good to being freelance dot com because that's got all links so i'm at being freelance on instagram but being freelance dot com so search for being freelance go find the podcast and come say hi in the community yeah yes steve has a really great community and it's totally leaf wait no sorry it's not free anymore it i feel is it's totally free free of what free of nuts free of not it's not nice you yeah it's free of hustle bro culture that's what it's free of but it's totally worth the price it's a really great community and they you just had like a a bake off thing right where you all baked together and i missed it a big longer was so sad we took a tuesday afternoon and we just went and baked to get it was so much aren't cool because you know while it was in the oven we all just sat around chatting without tea for like twenty minutes or whatever and at the end of it we had brown like gosh got to was so good i'm so sad i missed it hopefully you'll do it again i hope thanks so much for being here steve and thank you for listening i will speak to you listener next friday

it's november twenty eight teen and i am two months into start my brand new copyright business i'm sat alone in a window less basement office grateful to have somewhere i can get my head down and work the guy who owns the office works next door he's a business on a two and he's letting me use his space for free no strings attached until one day he comes over and asks hey since you're you know already here i was wondering if you could maybe answer the phone every so often print my emails that kind of thing say what i'm in need of some clarification so i ask you mean be a secretary no no no just you know answer the phones print some stuff even though he already knows this i explained that i have a business i wear comfortable time and that i don't have time for a second unpaid job especially considering have a baby at first he accepts the answer until he asks me again to basically be his secretary i say no again this time i tell him i have a friend who'd be perfect for an admin role if he's looking to hire someone he says no that's fine some time passes and then he asks me again but third time to be his secretary that's when na me realizes there are definitely strings attached to this arrangement within weeks i return the key he gave me thank him for his kindness and leave that workspace and i've found a c working space where i can meet other business owners who actually respect me most business owners know what it feels like to be underestimated especially women and especially black women like me most people don't get what those business owners are trying to do they don't see our vision and often they don't believe in us like we believe in us for that reason being a business owner can be a really lonely experience you usually working alone you don't have colleagues to complain to you or grab lunch with and you're figuring out how to run a business completely by yourself but being a business owner doesn't have to be lonely the experience you don't have to do it alone moving to that c working space helped me realize the importance of community the importance of creating your own network of freelancers and business owners whether in real life or virtually so you're surrounding yourself with people who do understand you who do get and believe in your vision and who never underestimate you one of the first people i think of when anyone talks about business on our communities is steve fo he's the host of the be freelance podcast and the creator of the be freelance community he's created this safe warm welcoming him biscuit loving corner of the internet for freelancers and business owners who refuse to do this alone steve is usually the one who's interviewing freelancers and talking to them about their businesses i thought it was time we flip the script and got him to open up about his business and his biggest business mistake for well over a year i've been making regular stuff for them and it got to the point where we were making like a regular kind of like a video show for them i would go in every week we'd record a couple of episodes but go out every single week and and it was good i mean it was a lot of work but it was good money and it was almost as much as i was earning in my i mean immediately i wasn't earning that much in my full term job but it was almost as much and so the logic was like one i've got that i just need to find some more with them and we're good to go and in my resignation that was my business plan that was that was the whole business plan on today's show i'm speaking to steve holland video one podcast producer host of the beam freelance podcast and the award winner doing it for the kids podcast about the time he put all his client eggs in one basket that didn't work out so well when this won an only client let him go just when he'd quit his job to go full time in his business i didn't realize i was starting the business it it it changes everything when you have that mindset where when it changes the way you deal with your finances it changes the way you think about your pricing your rates investing in yourself like when you're a business owner you'll suddenly think you know businesses have research and development and human resources that la car than employees and all of these things which you have to do for yourself it makes you think much bigger and much better welcome to mistakes that made me the podcast that asks extraordinary business owners to share their biggest business mistake so you know what not to do on your road to success mistakes that made me is brought to you by the hubspot podcast network the audio destination for business professionals my name emma mi and i'm an email strategist and copywriter for online business owners like you at ema ko dot com i'm a podcast lover a pizza a proud mama of two and i have this radical idea that if maybe us business owners were a little less guarded and a lot more open about the mistakes we've made we could help each other grow our business that brings us more joy and less regret it's q and that means new goals more growth and upgrading your day to day workflow while most salespeople people are stuck in the mode of manual scheduling digging into data and tracking down leads let me share a better way for you to win the new hubspot sales hub is an all in one platform for converting contacts into customers accelerating sales with smarter sequences managing deals with simple and powerful tools and forecasting targets and smarter sales insights plus you can super charge your work with ai powered apps like chat chat combines the power of chat gp and your hubspot smart crm to give you a gen ai powered personal assistant that helps you manage every stage of your sales pipeline with ease the hubspot sales hub is tailor made to help you grow your business and increase your revenue you can ask it to track down contacts research competitors summarize last week's sales or draft on message emails in seconds it's time for you to work smarter not harder so you can hit your twenty twenty four goals close more deals and get on track for your best q one yet explore the new hubspot sales hub and ai tools like chat at dot com slash sales steve you were the first person you ever listen to an episode of mistakes that made me so this feels extra exciting to have you on thank you so much for being here oh yes oh that was so cool that was see yes you you you were in like a being freelance master i don't call it mastermind we call it a cookie collect collective but that's what it is and you've been talking about it and you shared it with me and i couldn't believe like because it's at the intro oh it was so good you man and now i'm on it i hope i don't ruin it it's so good it's so good i love the care that you put into it yeah thank you so much so you've seen a show go from dare to i'm thinking not doing this thing to okay think i wanna do it okay here's a sample what do you think to here we are today to saying you've got entry for rewards i've got awards winning is that yeah you were like i i don't have to enter rewards what yes yes yeah it was you it was you actually who told me you know i wouldn't have done it if you hadn't told me to to do it because i had this thing in my head about i can't submit myself for an award and then and then it was you telling me to do that that made me realize well well that's what you do that's how that's how these shows win awards otherwise like you have to put yourself forward but the just nominate you to get the award otherwise no one's gonna no one's gonna do it for you and no one's gonna submit your podcast i was like wow mind blown mind blown so yeah after that conversation with you i did i did apply for the black podcast in awards and we want to awards best new podcast best business podcast congratulations thank you right be excited to have you here steve you are known for so many things you do so many things you are a video and audio producer an awards winning podcast do yourself you have two podcasts being freelance and doing it for the kids with your c ranking you have the being freelance community but let's start with your main or your first business shall you say because i i wanna know more about that i've always followed your vlog love your vlog so i know a bit about your your main business but i wanna talk more about that so tell me how did you get into video audio production how did i i i always loved creating stuff when i was a kid like would always be making like radio shows on this little tape recorder in my room and would be filming like we had a little video recorder for our holidays and then using this really rudimentary way to make video editing and i just decided that i wanted to work in radio more than anything and so eventually i went and did a a degree of media production or new media production so we did like online stuff we did video stuff we did audio stuff and so i learned all of these different skills and off the back of that i went and worked in radio for about ten years maybe more but i would always freelance on the side so that i could like you know work for bigger companies do more exciting things meet other people and it was really though only when i had a family that i realized ro it could do with some more money i could do extra freelancing stuff and that's when i realized it was it was like at a point when video was becoming more useful to businesses to be online so it's more recognizing what my skills were i i start started actually thinking i would do writing so like somebody hired me to write a script somebody hired me to do some copy writing from people i knew and so i joined people per hour which was like sort of what what what are they now up work and five like that yeah well it's not yeah up work was el elon and o autodesk i joined those two actually but there was one based in the uk which was called people per hour and i sort of put on there and i thought i'll i'll do copy biting i'll do you know write scripts and and then people started saying oh it says in your skills you a presenter as well so suddenly i started like presenting videos or writing videos scripts and then people like oh we're looking for an animator and i was i can do animation so i started oh we're looking for voice over like oh i can do voice overs so i i've got a microphone and so i started so it was kind of like realizing what my skills were were were much broader than i thought my skills were recognizing what people wanted and it was just at the time as online video started to pick up so whereas today yes i made lots of podcasts but then people weren't interested in podcasts like ten years ago not really for businesses or anything they wanted to make online video for their websites for youtube so i started helping people do that both through people per hour but also through people i knew in the real world and it's that that's how i kind of ended up realizing that this was kind of like a business by accident in a way and just seizing the opportunities that were come in my way i built a relationship with we used to go and have our radio photographs done in the studio in a nearby village with a self employed photographer called mark and he he had this awesome studio and i said to him honestly actually you've got all these cameras would you mind like filming me like reading these scripts for my client and so he and i started build it i he would then start offering video editing team services to his clients and i would edit them and all we did so much to together me and him that yeah so it's an yeah of it all came from recognizing that people were willing to give me money to do things that i knew how to do essentially and then it was a case of finding those people and doing it and it got to the point where you know i had this full time job i was doing extra freelance radio stuff but i was also doing all of this extras writing presenting editing on the side and i just was maybe going to bed at midnight and getting up at four am and it's just like not sustainable and that tied together with us having our second kid and our first one getting to be the age of i don't know maybe four five so they were about to start school and so the conversation starting in the house of well how we're gonna get our son to school i'm my wife i'm going back off after maternity leave who's gonna yeah have their baby and i was like well actually i've got all this work off the internet maybe i could work from home and look after the kids and do all the pickups and how hard can that be how hard can that be it's gonna be so easy just working from home and managing all the family started the swim be so easy i learned so much from you in that aspect this there's so much that i wanna pick from what you just said but i learned so much from you in watching you manage your family life and you know picking up your kids taking them taking to school pick them walk from school all that stuff and working making a business work around all that stuff and for me one of the lessons that you taught me was to use those like pockets of time that you can productively use like small pockets of times to get stuff done so yes it's stressful driving your kids head down and everywhere but while your kid is in i don't know whatever activity they're in and you know you'd record yourself in the car just finishing up some editing or or doing a bit of work and i just thought oh my gosh it's so true because you feel like i can't do anything this hour it's just the waste i'm just gonna i don't know do nothing and you can do nothing when actually an hour forty five minutes of like productive work because you know you've only got that one hour or forty to five minutes so you could comes back out you can really get a lot done so i don't know if you know that well that's what you taught me watching you and i was like yeah i this is this is what flexible working is all about very flexible when you curled up on the floor at a swimming pool with a laptop with no chair yeah that's so called here but you're right it was that at first it was quite overwhelming that stress of getting to and from places and picking up on time and things like that and then he realized i mean the sm levels were high if you got to the school gates like an hour early you got the prime park outside gotta got i'd get out my little i get out my my flask of tea i get out a ceramic mug because i'm not mu about a pour into that and then i'd have my biscuits in the little it turns out those cup holders of perfect size with digestive and then i'd have my laptop and i'd carry on editing until it was and then i'd see the gradual light thing of people driving past for park and not being able to get one i'd see the queue of people standing in the rain and i'm just sitting there in my steamed up little also turns out cars at excellent vocal booths if you ever wanna be recording in them left they are they are so i used to do voice overs for my old job my old like traditional job the one i left for this and they used to ask me do voice overs for their videos and stuff so used to running my car and and and record on my phone and the acoustics are amazing in a car i recorded an episode podcast interview in the car as well and i know that the car is great for acoustics because if you know me you know this by now i always wanted to be a singer and so i've done a lot thing in my car anything you know when you're sing a new car it's like singing the bathroom you're gonna sound great no matter how good or bad your voices yeah so yes yes to do invoice all yeah during the pandemic we managed to keep the doing it for the kids podcast that i also do going through obviously the house out of the house was tiny and it was full of people who never left the house because we were lockdown but i could go and sit in the car and record using like the four g on my phone with frankie my c host all of those were done sitting in the car love it love it so when did you start your business what would you say was like the start date or start year for your business well actually it's ten years ago well it's basically i quit my job in autumn twenty thirteen the year that our daughter was born but i had like a three month notice period so my last day was november the t and then just a few days later we got on a plane and we bugger it off to australia where my wife is from for six weeks because she was on maternity leave i'd never been able to have more than like a couple of weeks off so we went mh came back in january after christmas in new year and she went back to work and i was sat there with my laptop and a baby she didn't actually start nursery until the april so she and i were hanging out all the time and then in april she started so it's the reason i said that is so if you're saying when did my business die it kind of started as soon as i finished that job but first of all i went to australia then it was very busy you you know what it's like to actually work around a baby who isn't in any other form of care mh but once she went in four days a week we always had wednesdays hanging out i was in april of twenty fourteen that's when i could actually get things moving i think you took me back to my my youngest son yeah my youngest son because i did this whole thing where i was like he has to be home with me for a full year that's what i want and i ended up i started working again when he was about six months old but i made the mistake of i thought i was taken on like part time work i thought i was coming back part time i was actually doing was doing full time work and taking on like a full roster of clients and trying to make that happen around sleeping in newborns like sleep schedule which was insane so yes i know how hard that was and it wasn't fun was not fun either and then they start nursery and then they just get all these viruses and are at home anyway for weeks and weeks and then you're sick as well and everyone's sick and you just like maybe i just kept them all oh my gosh you said something what you initially started off doing video video editing producing because that's what everyone wanted you saw that that was the demand and then you started doing that you you also said like podcast in back then wasn't really a a thing right now you record not record you produce and edit a lot of podcasts i'm really interested in that ability to see what's changing in in your industry and being able to keep up with your industry and keep up with with demand and i guess skill or changing your skills to to meet that demand especially as you know ai enters the the fold and so many of us are worried about how to stay relevant how to keep our work relevant tell me a bit about that i guess about see in podcast and comment into the mix and and figuring out well actually i can do that as well yeah because because that's the thing like ten years ago podcasts did exist in fact as a radio station we had our own podcast so i had already made hundreds of things but businesses wouldn't have seen it as a thing so i think it's about paying attention to what is happening in like the wider wider world like what what are people doing where is stuff happening and it's quite hard to rewind your head ten years and think about the state of social media to think about youtube like even to think old yeah because to think about the state of broadband for most people was it like and the state of our phones like we weren't watching things on our phones really back then and actually all of those things do matter because i remember i started to realize actually maybe we should be making vertical video which seems so obvious now it's just a thing but there would be people who i knew or people on linkedin who would be like steadfast video makers who were like no people who film vertical it's like you know it's heresy to filmmakers isn't it you know films are meant to be in the cinema they're meant be here this sort of landscape saying and i would be sitting there going yeah but people people are starting to if people are picking up their phones and filming vertical then that's the instinct plus people are starting to watching on their phones and that's how they said sit so i started to try and find video players that would let you share vertical video because not all of them would so like an early one was wi that would let you actually share vertical video on your website knowing that people would probably be watching it on their phones and things like that so it's kind of keeping an eye out for what those trends are how people are using things like suddenly you're thinking okay people are watching a lot on their phone but often they're on silent are they skipping and so suddenly you're thinking okay how can i add captions to the services what i'm doing not just subtitles for accessibility sake but for everybody to see the captions embed like because that is another thing people didn't want burn on captions they want subtitle files but something like that people some people do want burn on captions because i've otherwise you don't know what's happening if you're watching this in silence or you're watching it while you're on the bus and it's really noisy so it's kind of keeping an eye out for some of these things even if it's taking away the art of filmmaking like i didn't you know thankfully i'm not a filmmaker i didn't care i'm about that side of it i wanted to make you know accessible communication i guess stories things that people would actually wanna look or listen to and then yeah podcasts start to become more of a thing and actually to be fair i accidentally got really good seo for a freelance podcast person because i make a podcast called being freelance and i'm an editor and all sorts so if people were to google you know freelance podcast and then they're starting to look for editor or whatever obviously i pop up so people started to approach me i was like now the world is starting to get more ready for freelance podcasts oh not freelance book now the world is starting to get ready for business podcasts okay yeah and then in terms of like the vlog actually that came more from at the time i was watching oh god it's gary v i was watching his videos and so this again it's like ten years ago but i have mixed feelings about gary v i think we all do right apple we all do you cannot like take away the fact that he spots trends and where attention is and what is happening and is often ahead of the curve and i remember him saying is like i i wanted to start making video content i didn't quite know what that was and i remember him saying document don't create that was his thing document don't create document don't create and he started doing his daily v vlog where he would actually have a cameraman following him around they would create this thing every day which was an insane thing to like such a huge thing to do production wise so that's when i started my vlog i thought okay i don't really know what else to do but i'll stop documenting what it's like but actually it helped me as a business owner because it helped me it's almost like journal i was discussing to the camera what i was going through and that kinda helped as well as being able to show people because a lot of the stuff i was creating was for businesses and behind closed doors like i wouldn't necessarily be able to show it so i was able to show what i was doing as well and in fact i remember going into a client pitch once and even before i was talking to like the person i was with walking down the corridor and as soon as we got in the lady in there had heard my voice and she was like i recognized that voice and she was excited because she's been watching the vlog she felt like you knew me so we thought we were going in there to pitch and it really once i sat down felt like it was a done deal because yeah this person had been watching me for for months yeah isn't that amazing isn't that amazing it just goes to show that all that that hard work really really does pay off and funny that you mentioned your voice because i was gonna say you have the most radio perfect voice i've ever heard him in my like like you can hear your voice this this guy is podcast radio person and voice over like it's so funny and i feel like you're born to be in radio i don't know what made do you wanna be in radio but you're born for your voice me made for it it's the face isn't it man is that what you're saying right thanks very much such a backward compliment of oh my gosh it's no it's not it's really not so when we were talking about this you said you said something to me which was that you were working at the radio station for years and years and years before you started your business and you were just kind of weigh in to be hired by one of the big radio stations one of your kinda dream dream jobs dream radio station i'm really interested in that idea of way in for something big to happen to you tell me about that if it it was just i don't know quite what i know i do know what happened i got comfortable so there was this point in my life where i had this goal and the goal was to be on the radio and so even when i was like fourteen in fact even when i was like seven i wrote an auto biography at school we had to like pretend it was us in the future and i said that i was a radio one dj radio one like being in the big uk radio station and i drawn the london marathon neither of which i've done i'm quite glad about v latter but yeah i had this goal and and i've you know my my family my teachers were all like well okay if you wanna do that maybe what if you don't end up on the radio maybe you need the skills to work behind the scenes so i work to like volunteer at hospital radio which was kind of i guess almost like the podcast of youtube of its day it's like a way to learn and to to develop your skills mh and then i went to university and i it and then i managed to then i actually got offered a job two jobs one at this big london production company who makes stuff a radio one stuff or at an t radio station who had heard me when i was fourteen on the radio remembered to me and come back when they were launched in their radio station like when i was twenty one and i thought we he never get offered a job on the radio like this never happens wow and i had a conversation with the big production company and he was like we'd love to have you but that never happens i was like i'll okay i'll go and take the job on the radio and see what happens and what happened was i just got comfortable like we we were we ended up making this really and i'm normally very modest but i have to not be at this point what we did like our breakfast radio show was awesome like it was so like funny like the people i was with we just the chemistry that we had was just brilliant we will we were based so close to london but in any right nobody in our area should have listened to us because they could all listen to the big london radio stations mh but they did we had this big audience and we had them writing in and doing crazy things for us and it was so much fun we had this podcast which was so funny we had all the local media on our outside and i always just thought well we just keep doing this and eventually like the radio one will come looking because you know that's that'll happen and of course it didn't happen it didn't happen we would just we've got consumed in creating the thing every day which is why it was really good but what we didn't do was start sending our stuff out like think about trying to leave and go elsewhere yeah i just thought that the big media people would come and find me when of course were actually having in real life is that i was i wasn't the only person who thought they were brilliant and should be on the radio the the world the country was full of them and they weren't just sitting at the end of the drive of radio one or the bbc waving hoping they'd get noticed they were knocking on the door or climbing through the window or coming down the chimney and working from the inside waiting to get noticed which that's what happens and i didn't see that i just i got too modest and i just sat there and wait and too comfortable frankly i was having so much fun being able to play what you wanna play which never happens being able to just laugh solidly for hours every single day like i had so much fun but i also took my eye off what i had hoped to end up doing and if you don't go it and it it taught me you wanna get things you gotta go and do it now everything i have as a freelancer answer as a business owner pretty much i have to go out and get it sure some stuff comes to me but it's only because i'm creating things to draw people to me isn't it so yeah and you know if you wanna sponsor for you po us if you wanna win that award you have to actually enter them you have to reach out and put in that work because most yeah a i wish i'd re reload well actually i don't wish i'd done it differently because otherwise i wouldn't have the life i have now but yeah i love it and that that that was almost the mistake that made you but are we decided that we chose and i we you rover another the one i did i did i did on a technical inequality because you weren't in business you were a business owner so i was like i'm steve i'm sorry it's a great one but it just doesn't count but we can talk about it still because i think it's a really great point and when i sit down and even just like list the great things that are going on for me whether it's clients whether it's opportunities often it's like more times than not it's things that i've put myself forward for that i've pitched for and so actually someone just tagged me in a post that i wrote a few weeks ago on instagram if you're not following on following me on instagram go follow me at email copy code because sometimes i come i come out with these nuggets right here's my post stop waiting the things to land at your doorstep stop waiting to be invited start demanding the world sees you because we do we just kind of sit around and think you know what someone's gonna notice me someone's gonna invite me someone's gonna you know give me that thing that i'm waiting for and no one is but you know what often the opportunity is so close it's just it's right there but you have to you have to be proactive in in making it happen in in like planting the seed in someone's mind you know i just pitch i don't know how this is gonna work out but i just pitch my dream of dream dream clients as in one of those that you know i told someone and they were like oh and i was like yeah i pitched her one email sequence i was like i i this is what i can help you with and she came back and she said you know what i'd i'd really love to work with you but i don't want you to just do one email sequence because actually i you to work on a whole email strategy so let's book that call my yes amazing yes so the call is happening next week and i guess by the time this goes out we'll kinda know how it how it went which will kinda be awkward an embarrassed and if it's or no but it was that close it was that close to me i just had to i just had to ask and so now obviously it's on a meter nail the sales call and all that good stuff but you sometimes you just gotta ask so you gotta put yourself forward you do there's this i i gay i got invited to give a talk to a load of year nine students which instantly year so year nine is what thirteen yeah fourteen years fourteen it's one of the scariest rooms of i've ever entered like a hundred year night you not just a hundred g nineties she's a hundred year nine students who didn't want to be there well i was think that was the thing a bunch and i student who were just like who was the sky why is he hair why are you making us sit hair there but i remember i just sat there and i went do you know what no one is the sun you realize that no one is gonna make such stuff happen for you the better right yes your parents love you yes your teachers are looking out for you but actually they're all consumed with their own lives you've got to get on and make your own stuff happen you could you don't just sit there weighing and like you're thinking all maybe one day i'll do this no do it now you have no idea how much better time you have when you're kid do it now and maybe you know creating that vlog or videos or something now will suddenly put you higher up the chance of getting a job further anyway anyway i went off on one at these kids but nobody cared about them really and they had to care about themselves and and afterwards his teach teacher came up to me and thought oh god i'm gonna get told off but the teacher came up to me and knowing went that was exactly what i needed to hear i need to do something else and i thought oh no oh no steve what me done they've just this lost so it was a teacher who went and made it happen of i don't know what happened to the kids this was about ten years ago good place what happened so funny you've gotta look it up and find out because as she probably or he they probably handed in the reservation that day i feel i feel like this is something that i am trying to teach my son so he is almost eight and sometimes he'll like he'll ask me for something and it's very like you know hinton beating around the bush you all that thing and i've actually i've started this is this something that you want to ask me is this something you want to ask me and he'll he'll say yeah and i'll say so ask me directly ask me exactly what you want to ask me and then he'll he'll change that he'll change the the question the conversation and actually directly asked me exactly what what he wants to ask me because i want him to get into that habit of asking for exactly what he wants and i told him and i sat him i'm down and maybe this is a bit too early but you know know i feel like it's never too early i sat him down and said if you want something you have to ask for it and you can't assume the person on the other side understands these hints and these these things that you drop in if you want something you ask for it and you go for it and so that's what we're working in this household i also don't ask i also don't let him win any of the games that we play so right now we're into uno no never uno connect for the whole shebang yeah i don't let him win and if so if he beats me it's because he's seriously skilled at these games and he actually really is and then it's so funny because other adults will come and i'll say don't let don't don't let him win don't let him win play him seriously and he'd be i wanted it i'm like yes yes i do you know i kind of so i used to let them win right and you're absolutely right because i tell you what when they are suddenly ten fourteen years old whatever they take no prisoners with you like they don't it's like dude let me win sometimes and it's like no and i'm not come i you know how many times i used to let you win i love it no obviously i'll never be able to say that because i never like went ever sometimes i know sometimes oh okay maybe one time when he like actually cried and i was like maybe i'm taking this maybe i'm taking this a bit take bop like i'll let you in a one time what generally no finally like these i'll let you win that arm wrestle right yeah i'm trying to prepare you for the world mh and i'm also it's really funny i've got him into like wanting to be a business owner and he's like i wanna do whatever whatever mom does like this podcast said this what it awards things this always said to me i i won't i wanna do that it's like i don't want a boss i wanna be the boss i'm like yes no yes yeah okay steve this has been so great i mean i had all the like a bunch of questions that i wanted to ask you that we're we're just not gonna get time to to go into because otherwise we'll never get to the mistake so we'll have to leave that for another time but we're gonna get into what i actually invited you here for are you ready yes okay you gonna ask it though emma i've gotta ask for i've gotta ask for it steve what is the mistake that made you so i thought i had great regular freelance income lined up so i quit my job and then within weeks the freelance work was gone and all my eggs were like in that one basket and it was just sitting at my feet and i wanna add your wife was pregnant at this point and was about to go maternity leave oh my gosh yes she was on maternity leave we have baby yeah oh okay stick around don't go anywhere we'll get right back to this episode after this quick break business owners have been rolling into the new mistakes that made me private membership and i'm inviting you to join them this is your chance to unlock exclusive weekly bonus content on my private podcast which only members have access to content like my private q and a series submit your business questions to me and get inside my business brain kate an interactive workbook designer has already submitted her question how do you pitch yourself to other podcasts and i've published a twenty minute answer that includes the cold pitch that got me onto one of my favorite podcasts so members can see one of my called pitches in action kate says she re listen to my answer and took notes that's how much i'm sharing inside this membership you'll also get access to my bite sized business diary if you love getting inside scoop when it comes to how i'm building my business if you love my solo episodes you'll love my twenty minute bite sized business diary follow me in real time as i shared the behind the scenes of my business mistakes i'm making lessons i'm learning and the business and podcast related projects i'm working on one of the bite size business diary entries i've shared is about why i decided to let go of my amazing social media manager i know shocking you'll also get access to extended interviews with mistakes that made me guests and yes you'll get to submit your own questions to them jordan gill extended interview is available for you to listen to right now and you'll get access to my private podcast newsletter if you've been looking for some informal business coaching or at the very least an honest insight into how my six bigger business works behind the scenes this is your chance membership costs just eleven dollars a month no commitment cancel anytime this is also just a really great way for you to support the show to get the details and become a member head over to man copy dot com slash membership or click the link in the show notes i'll see you in there okay when you told me this i felt i told you i felt sick i felt physically sick my stomach turned because that is literally your worst nightmare so you you you quit your radio job yeah thinking you had it was one client right thinking you had this one client in the bag and then they let you go yeah had nothing because foot for i don't know well over a year i've been making regular stuff for them and it got to the point where we were making like a regular kind of like a video show for them at that studio photo studio down the road i would go in every week we'd record a couple of episodes they'd go out every single week and and it was good i mean it was a lot of work but it was good money and it was almost as much as i was earning in my i mean immediately i wasn't earning that much in my full time job but it was almost as much and so the logic was like well i've got that i just need to find some more with them and we're good to go and in my resignation that was my business plan that was that was the whole business plan can do the reservation and this one client is the whole business plan let's rewind let's go back take me back to the beginning so at what point first of all did you think did you start to think okay i could actually do this as a business so maybe i i should have dimmer resignation i think it it was a chip chip chip there was two things one was the fact that because we did a breakfast show i would literally get up at four am and i was tired i'd i'd sometimes be working on client work until at midnight and we had a baby so not even that sleep would have been asleep you were sleep deprived that's why you did what you did fraser but also the fact that was my wife is the organized one she's the one who actually thinks about our future and plans things thank goodness i'm a bit too like make things up as i go along really and she was quite rightly thinking well if i'm going back to work who is gonna what we gonna do with our children and and when the older one is no longer nursery needs taking to school and the nursery and the school drop offs so at different times types like how are we gonna do that and so it was that thing of well i mean to be fair like i'd i was kind of that by this point i'd kind of i didn't wanna become like no it sounds disrespectful to people who are but i didn't wanna become like this bloke my forties who was still on the local radio station and had been doing it since he was twenty like i didn't i didn't wanna be doing that i'd kind of maybe had enough of doing that i'd had a lot of fun i'd done that dream job but i had this other opportunity and it was an opportunity that meant i could work from home that wasn't some thing but i thought i could have done maybe ten years earlier it just wasn't technologically and things that people were asking for so here's this chance to look after the kids thing be there and you know i was the only dad at the school gates it's very different now after the pandemic but i was the only one pretty much squeezing in a bit of work here and there but it it all came from that sort of conversation with my wife where it's like well what we can do well maybe i could do it and if it doesn't work out i thought well i can always just go and get a proper job in quotation marks you know but goodness knows how we'll actually look after our children but still okay you've quit your job yeah you're excited about starting your business your wife has just had the baby you novo funny sorry to interrupt but you say you're excited about starting your business oh i didn't necessarily see it that way i remember us going to australia and my wife going to people oh yeah yeah yeah steve started his own business i'm not doing the accent steve started his own business and i would think she was saying that because maybe she was ashamed of what i really work because i thought i'm not am i i'm not starting a business i'm just freelancing i'm just taking money off of people on the internet and yeah i honest so sad which is why so now she's what she's embarrassed i don't think she was what she was was she was what what she was was right she didn't tell her that no but i had started a business and i wish i'd realized it soon so now like i have a course for new freelancers and the very first lesson is yes the course is called how to get started being freelance but really this should be how to get started being a business it took me maybe a year or more to realize i was a business so you say i was excited about being starting a business i i didn't realize i was starting the business that's so interesting and i'm totally with you there's one of the things that i say to the business owners that i coach as well because the more seriously you take yourself the more seriously other people will take you it's only when you don't take yourself seriously that others also won't so i totally agree with you you're a business owner it it it changes everything when you have that mindset when it changes the way you deal with your finance it change the way you think about your pricing your rates investing in yourself like when you're a business owner your suddenly think you know businesses have research and development and human resources that look after their employees and all of these things which you have to do for yourself but no i was just kind of like gonna make yeah make do keep getting up each morning and doing the thing it makes you think much bigger and much better it does it really does so i don't know if you remember this but can you take us back to the moment that you've found out that the this one freelancing job which was was paying you how much like it was a few thousand a month rights so you were thinking we can with this is a thing this is gonna be a thing this is great get a few more of these i'll be good can you take us back to the moment that you that they let you go oh my gosh i mean i i can't honestly remember it entirely i do remember feeling a bit sick because i'd already handed in my notice we had plane tickets to australia like i mean oh gosh i don't know like it it's that thing where you i mean it's quite a good lesson to learn itself in that i'm just gonna i'm i found them i'll find other people like i remember i didn't wanna panic too much i didn't wanna like worry too much because i didn't wanna panic my wife about where the work was gonna come from and things like that i knew that people per hour in itself was full of people wanting jobs done and i was just gonna have to put more effort into applying for things and reaching out to people who i knew in real life and but it did it's it's quite a sick feeling to have that kind of ripped away from you when that was the one constant reliable thing you were banking on it will i didn't have a much of a plan but that was that that was that was a big part of the plan they were a plan i love that you will feeling that optimistic because i mean i don't know if i would have fell up to the optimistic to in that moment but i'm glad you did i'd love to just dive in a little bit into the arrangement that you had with this client did they owe you any kind of like advanced notice when they were letting you go was was was a contract in place anything like that i didn't have a contract they owed me nothing actually in fairness do you know what they were really decent they were really nice they didn't just whip it totally out from under my feet as if we carried out making you know know the four episodes that we had planned or whatever you know like they mh because they didn't have to they could've have said so what happened was they the company and i had a really good relationship with them got investment and those investors were like okay let's look at our marketing plan and basically i no longer or video content in general no longer but me in particular they're not feature as part of that and that's fine but yeah they they were actually pretty decent they i still got to finish the ones i was working on even though at this point you know i wouldn't have been asking for anything upfront i wouldn't have been you know i would have delivered them in and then invoice them and yeah gosh okay it sounds like from what you've told us about your wife that she's super supportive and not at all embarrassed just super supportive and and i feel like not everyone has that in fact some people have the complete opposite so i'd love to know if you're open to sharing what that conversation was like with with your wife when you told her as as as someone who's just given birth oh my gosh if she's still on maternity sick steve feel sick what was that conversation with her like hey by the way i cannot for the life of me remember and i know that isn't a very good story no nope but that might be a good thing i think i think based on what i'm like i would have minimized it because i wouldn't have wanted to put the panic on her like i'd you know i imagine it would have been ill be okay i'll get other things and yeah it was up to me to figure that out really it's what's not her problem it was my to fix officially your problem to fix i love the way that you approach this in that okay well it sounds like you were like there's no point in no point in panicking let's let's just figure this out so what happened next what were some of the steps you took to find your next client i would just be a lot more diligent about searching for the online jobs on people per hour and the reason i sit because i i did also sign up for like elon and o autodesk which became up work i don't think i signed up for five because at the time that was very much low grade stuff as look the whole concept was literally here's something i'd do for five fiber like i need a bit more than five dollars thanks people per hour actually had some really good jobs on it and so i just i think i just went heavy on a plant like because the thing with those sites is you need to get in early so you need to visit them a few times a day see when the new jobs come available pick the ones that you're right for and then apply for them so like i remember there was like a ski resort in the alps who wanted a video made of their cha and stuff so suddenly i'm making that the video producer who i knew learned it's not video producer the photographer who whose studio i've been using he and i you know i started making more things for him and through some connections that he had we started making some videos for light local businesses one of those led on to some other work what else i did oh and then i'll tell you what i really did i sent a lot of cold emails yes but the the the thinking that i had was who might need me what if you're a web developer for example who wants to offer videos for your website so i i put lots of feel out for that kind of thing i built up a relationship with an animator who i met on people per hour i would voice and write animations and then he would animate them and sometimes the jobs will come via me and sometimes they will come via him and things like that and we still work together often ten years later but from that i remember somebody contacted me and said hey we need an animation like this can you do it like that and i was like i can't but i know someone who can and he was like oh just kinda wanna deal with you was like okay well so i hired the animator and he's like okay we need script i see great and oh and we need it done in twelve other languages as was a what and i was like okay well how how do okay fine that's not a problem leave it with me i need to work and i went and found at the time there would be a lot easier to do this these days i went and found translators i went and found voice over artists in all of those different countries we created scripts over because me and the animated didn't over languages so we created it so it it's very obvious what language he needed to put where because each one had to have different text but what was really good about that moment was that it made me realize that i and this was kinda critical for the next few years in my business was that i could hire other people to do the things that i can't do and that all the client really cares about is me solving their problem doing their things so they don't care how it's getting done necessarily they just want these videos made and at first i was like oh i feel bad like charging extra on top of you know like because i'm giving this money to that voice over on and and then i was like no they don't the client doesn't care they could go and do this all themselves but they're not because it's a nightmare but i'm being paid to take that nightmare away and make it this beautiful dream so that was crucial because so much of the next few years of my business as it really did become a business were based on me providing services but i couldn't necessarily do myself but offering them to people anyway sub translation hiring different voice overs other than myself because i only do this one voice i can do it slightly lower but that's about it i can do serious and happy but that's it but one of the crucial emails that i sent and i so i would sent it when i even when we were in australia i was checking freelance job sites and things like that and partly me wishes i hadn't i wish i just enjoyed my holiday a bit more but i was really conscious that i needed work when i came back and one of the emails i wrote was to a local company as in local to where i live but they're actually an international company they just happened to be based in my town and every day me and my son would walk past their office on our afternoon walk he'd go to nursery in the morning i pick him up at half twelve with go for walk wave at the trains you deal mh i'd walk past these offices and i'd often think oh wouldn't it be great if i could just work for one of these offices in this stable block i wonder who is in those offices so i went on google and found out who they were and i found this one particular one and i thought oh maybe i there's something i could offer them this thing so i sent them an email and i just essentially got lucky that was the one cold email that really paid off because it landed on someone's desk who had their eyes open to the potential of what we could do with animation and things for their businesses and i had a meeting with them on the very first day that my daughter went to nursery in that april i went in and met with the guy and i have been working with them on and off for the past ten years creating videos for like big international companies because what happened was we made marketing big videos for this company but their clients saw them and went oh you do that we'd like that and suddenly we were yeah it it was it was well it was lucky but i also seized that opportunity taking on that thing that i'd learned that i can hire other people to help me create the bigger thing all this company wants is the video a video is much bigger than just me and one person i don't even feel anything but we can do it sure that that kind of became the thing i did mh so much wanna to talk about the first thing is i love that what worked for you ten years ago it's still working for me now called email picture like i mentioned before has been really great for me and i think it's it's about what you said it's it's all about getting the timing and right and you don't know if your time in is gonna be right you've just gotta send the pitch and on the other side of that you might you that email might reach someone who actually was has been thinking about this and you know it's been on their mind it's been something that they wanna do but actually maybe they don't have the resources or they don't have the energy or they don't even know where to begin to find someone who might be able to do something like that so for you to just send the pitch is you put in yourself in front of of people and it might it might be the exact right time and that's that's all you need and guess what if it's not the right time then great they still know you and they still know how you can help if the right time comes if they change their mind and and they still need someone one so that is really great to see as i'm not biased at all as an email strategist yeah it was it i i i did also i got some other work out of those cold emails and i i used the word cold because i really didn't know know the people but they were they were tailored to each person i did in stuff that was about them and what they did and what i thought you know we might be able to do together but it's not like i'd spent time getting to modem on social media or linkedin or anything but maybe i might do these days but yeah thank goodness i sent them thank goodness i do wanna say that's so important not just blasting people with this general template that you've come up with it really is about personal the pitch about thinking specific about how you can help that one business yeah what might they most be interested in and i i spend maybe i say i wanna say i spend maybe an hour and a half doing research on the business this is the whole process an hour and a half not an hour and a half doing research but i do research on the business you know what they what they've got in place already what they haven't got in place where i could come in and help them and i actually i actually use loom now to record videos like video walk throughs of like hey i'm in your email funnel because i'm an email strategist and copywriter so i'm always gonna wanna gotta go in and help with them with the emails i sign up to that email list you know maybe a few days a week before i wanna send the pitch i'm planning this is all planned ahead of time and then i i actually you know analyze it and then and then i record them a walk through and say look this is this is exactly how i can help you this is what i do this is how helped the people do a similar thing hope you don't mind that i did this give them loads of compliments as well in that because you know you don't wanna be sure it don't piss the ones inbox like hey this these are all the things to do entirely wrong no because we opposite and then and then i said that pitch and so it it really is personalized but that one and a half hours of of just like dedicated time to this can mean like you said a very long and profitable relationship with with a business that although otherwise would have no idea who you are yeah definitely you know not knocking on doors or on email inbox like like i said i sat there comfortably for years nobody noticed me now i realize i should be going out there and actually knocking on doors yes i love it so you've spoken a lot about using people per hour and el elon el lamps and kind of those those kind of websites because this was you know ten years ago are you still using those websites now if you so if no how do you get clients now this short answer am i okay yes technically i still am on people per hour the only thing that i do on there so i never look for work on there anymore but i have a thing up there for voice overs and so basically it's like so if somebody would to search for voice over it brings up a load of profiles and it would have my video and they can literally click by on me doing what's eat voice over like it's the easiest sell and frankly because it's voice overs it's the easiest job sorry voice over but but it's not like it's not like you know like if somebody would hire me to write a script that might take your day right so i need a day in my schedule but if somebody asked me just to record a voice over well i can carve out ten fifteen minutes half an hour however like i can easily sweet that in so since i have such a good profile on there i have left it on there but i haven't added that to five or up work or anything like that mh so maybe i should i do think those sites you know for other freelancers those sites are very crowded i got in there very early so i built up a reputation and you know like because every time you get hired to get reviewed and things like that so i look like a trusted person to to buy from on there so how do i get clients mostly it is a case of word mouth i guess referrals occasionally me reaching out to people maybe if i've seen them posting on linkedin about something or they've asked for somebody and somebody referred me and then i've reached out to them if i think i'm good for it i still get a lot of work through clients for maybe i cold pitched two years ago and they still come to me but a lot of it is word mouth because the the simple fact is one of my guests on being freelance once said that the secret to their business was to just keep meeting people and that really stayed with me the more people you meet the more people know what you do so long as you talk about it and you sort of stay on their radar the more they're likely they're gonna refer you to somebody so now are somebody's like oh i'm thinking to starting the podcast somebody's gonna think of me most likely maybe amongst other people but they're gonna think of me in fact a lot of people who know me because of podcast podcasts probably don't even really know i make videos and stuff but maybe they've seen my youtube channel i used to do and stuff like that or they've seen me creating things like social videos for podcasts where i make an experiment with online so creating all that content and keeping putting it out there keeps me known by people creating the community by accident that i created for freelancers again builds this sort of network of people who i know and that they i know what they do they know what i do so it's i think it's really that it's definite i definitely long long long ago did not get i didn't need people per hour like maybe a year or so after that first incident that first incident yeah so that's that's it's it kind of sounds a bit random there's this sort of like relying on chance that the work will keep coming to you but i think so long as i keep putting myself out there and my reputation speaks for myself then people will keep sort of passing my name around seems to be what happens love it so we haven't spoken very much about your other i don't know if you think of them as businesses but your other the other stuff that you do you do so much the other project you're very much i mean when i think of you i think of you being as so good at creating communities so you have the being freelance podcast you have the doing for the kids podcast both of those each have communities really active like really valued communities and you're so good at that so i'm interested in knowing whether starting in the being freelance podcast because that was the one that came first your first episode came out in january twenty fifteen i did check this that's a long time right did you create that as a potential source of of of of clients of market yourself of being able to get more clients k no look in hindsight if i was doing that and maybe i should have done that was i would have started a podcast where i was exploring the ways businesses could use video marketing and podcasts and spoken to businesses who were doing really well and things like that like that would have been the sensible thing no what i did was go with just what i wanted to do and that was in that first year because you say it was january twenty fifteen so that's a year after i first went full time freelance albeit looking after a baby and in that time when i didn't have much work on you know i'd be potter around the house or going to the park and i'd be listening to podcasts and i want i didn't know any freelancers i didn't know what the heck i was doing it seems weird to think this now but there weren't any podcasts like this one there just weren't any fruit there weren't podcasts telling you how to do social media there weren't podcasts telling you how to run a freelance business believe it or not there were some entrepreneur podcasts but they were all notice for disrespect americans they were all very american entrepreneur podcasts i didn't see myself as an entrepreneur for start but i started listening to them and thinking oh i've only there was something like this that was about freelance so i started searching and i found people speaking about their freelance businesses like maybe it was graphic designers talking about graphic design or web developers talking about web you know but nobody talking about actually being freelance and how to survive doing that so i thought well i'll do it then so that was my that's what i did in that first year and then in the second year i started it it was never meant to get me clients it was never meant to be a business it was just like a side project it was a year after that but i've started to vlog being freelance of vlog filming myself doing all these things it was kinda keeping me creative in and learning frankly i was mh learning from people how yeah how to do this because i had no idea so for context of being freelance podcast if you've not listened to it go listen to this it's a great podcast one of the first that i was started listening to you when i started my business you you talk to or the freelancers and they share their kind of journey freelance and how they do freelance and how how they run their businesses is it's a really really great podcast also you have recently monetized the podcast you have you have sponsors sometimes you have the beam freelance community you have really cool merch which i have bought you've inspired me to talking to merch with this podcast but i'm also like you man stops spending money don't get too excited calm down i don't think out the merch stage yet maybe i don't know if you think we all let me know maybe i'll look into it so that's some other kind of sources of revenue that you have at the moment as well just just to i just wanted to add that information just so that we have like a a full picture yeah what your business look like know though it grew it grew very organically accidentally like i didn't mean it to be a business i would until even a year ago i was i was calling a side project and yes when you show up enough and you creating something which is quality luckily like a company reached out to me and was like you know can we respond to your podcast we wanna reach an audience of freelancers to and that then made me go oh here's a thing so then it was like okay i'll i can get sponsors for the podcast and i got some really good sponsors for the podcast as well but even that like this just kind of like keep creating keep doing it it was never my main thing was the business of making podcast custom videos for other people being freelance was this thing i did to help myself and then in a obviously helping other people and it was more just philanthropic and in fact i would i would go and speak at events about freelancing in order to try and grow the podcast and i had some people come up to me was like really love what you're doing steve but how do you monetize it and i would just feel a bit stupid because i was like why i don't really i i have some like they they they could see something that i hadn't like they could like why would this guy put so much time and energy into this thing if he wasn't trying to make money out of it or off of people when i was like i just wanna help people and be nice yeah so it accidentally became a business but this is why it's so important to to do things that you wanna do versus doing things that you should do because like you said you you you just said if i had thought about it i should have done a podcast about video editing in audio editing that kind of thing to bring in more clients but instead of doing what you should have done you did what you wanted to do and i think when you're pull to do something and you have no other reason to do it other than because i want to kinda like this podcast actually you just never know what that's gonna bring you you just never know what it's gonna lead to so i really do feel like if you wanna do something just because give yourself the permission and the space to just do it just because i want to and not everything has to be monetized no has to make no it really to it's a it's a danger isn't it but you think everything has to be a business and actually it doesn't have to be but it did become it did become you know you talk about merch but really that started almost by accident as well and that was because somebody was moaning this was five years ago they were moaning about awards being given to freelancers and like this person on the internet had been you know emailed saying hey won this award and they were like oh brilliant and then it was like so send us two hundred and fifty pounds and you be at this thing and he was like oh hang on so he was moaning about it on twitter and i was like right enough of this next week we're having our own awards ceremony and he live at eleven am at gonna be called the non employee of the week awards and the winner gets biscuits and everybody was like yes this was on twitter and so the next week so yeah the night before i made a glittery envelope me and my daughter it's may well in fact i asked her do you have any glittery card and things so i can make an envelope pulse will you help me and she was like no it's your thing and went off to watch pep pig so i sat there making a glittery envelope and put a gold card inside it and i i opened it i went live on twitter and i opened the envelope and and then said some nice things about the person's business said their name and then i did this run around this empty office block was next to my c space cheering and it just kinda caught it took off but i thought in order to like give away like a price like this you got to have a trophy so i had a mug made and on one side to put the being freelance logo and on the other side we put the words non employee of the week and that was the first bit of merge it wasn't even then it wasn't made to be sold and make me money i was literally losing i was paying to make mugs out of my own money buying biscuits and posting them which isn't cheap by the way or well to i so i've i've was given away hundreds of these trophies so even the merch wasn't monetizing it was giving stuff away but that's what is what not that's what that's why it works though because you were responding to something you were listening to your audience and you were responding and while it was you know suck your money at the weekend beginning it was taken money well it turned into this amazing thing that that that we all love and enjoy and by the way i i was a non employer of the week award winner i was number thirty six when a number thirty six out of now eighty eight oh no no no exactly it's it's way over for a hundred i stopped having the eighty eight on your website yeah i stopped adding them to the website too much yeah i've i'm busy i'm busy going to the post office all the time i can only imagine but i i i love my mug i love my pack of biscuits i think he even had the bookmark that said yes like don't was it what was it don't stop me people or the the quote that you just just keep mean people and on the other side it said don't freak out too great yes love it so yeah i was very excited to get that award by the way and ask someone who i was quite new to freelancing when when you gave me that and it was so nice and it was so i i really valued that because it felt like just being seen by my you know pears i was really early on and start my business when i won that so thank you for that do you know i that's lovely to hear and people do like it really does mean something like it started like it was meant to be silly but the person who first won guy called ga hancock i did mean everything i said about his business and every single winner like i meet i look into their business and i see what they're doing online i see one they're nice to other people not i genuinely mean it and celebrate it and we get so little recognition don't we it's just us doing our think week week out so i think just having somebody go actually you're doing a great job meant meant something and that that yeah that was exactly five years ago it's just before christmas in twenty whatever twenty five years ago maybe twenty eighteen i think i think it was twenty eighteen because then the following january i start or february i started the being freelance nuts community mh because i'd already always resisted creating a facebook group because everyone's existed but off the back of the non unemployed week awards i thought i actually i'm having all these conversations with all of these people who email me about the podcast or about you know wouldn't it be great if they all could speak together so i sort of created a facebook group and just hundreds joined almost immediately and suddenly there was like a thousand and i was like oh my god again not monetizing it but it was such it was just the best best thing really and it or yeah just came off the back of that yeah i mean definitely go check out steve's being freelance community the podcast the vlog all of it is just so valuable so much fun and the people in the community are great as well so let's move on to the next part of this how did quitting your a job and then being let go how did this mistake make you you know how did it help you become the business owner you are today i think a couple of things one it made me realize to avoid having all my eggs in one basket and when we were in australia we stayed with my brother law that he had this big plot of land up in darwin to be fair everybody in darwin has a big plot of land because there's so much land but anyway they kept chickens and my son and i went and collect these eggs and he was four and he ran so happy with these eggs literally in his basket and he tripped on the way across the lawn and all but one of them broke and i thought oh my goodness how much more do i need to spelled out for me so yes quite literally in front of me was this that do not put all your eggs in one basket and so i've always been very keen since then to try not to let now i've heard many different rules one of which is like don't let one client be more than twenty percent of your revenue because that's the power in freelancing if we have all these different streams coming into our river if one of them dries up we've still got a river but if you're just relying on one stream to fill it suddenly the river has gone mh that's that's the beauty of it should be having all of these different things but it's really hard when you have a client who keeps coming to you for stuff like why would you turn that away why would you turn my leg because it's brilliant you want the work so i still struggle with it but it is always in my mind never to let myself be in that position again but also what came off of it was the fat that like we said like looking for work reaching out people inadvertently i didn't realize growing a network and creating content and being known all of that came from that moment so that ultimately i would get work for more than just one source and if to the point where work would be coming towards me you know something that stood out to me was that you said most of your clients come from word math referrals and i think one of the mistakes that business owners make is only relying on word of referrals and i do just want to i guess highlight the difference between what you said and solely relying on word referrals because here's the thing you get most of your clients from word referrals so do i but at the same time you never stop marketing you're always marketing you're always sharing your content producing content you're always point yourself out there that people know that you're you're available to be hired than you're available like pay me this is how you can pay me and and i think some business owners make the mistake of relying of word referral and that's it they're not doing anything else so either the even maybe caught up so much in the work that they're doing maybe they're super busy that you know that they're they just look up one day when they finished all that work and then realize oh wait there are normal more clients there's there's no one up i i was so busy doing this work relying on word map referrals and i wasn't doing anything else so i do just wanna say that that's not what you are doing you are getting your work from word map referrals but you're also doing the marketing into yeah sometimes it can feel like their word where really something else is triggered that something else is fed into that as well isn't it yeah yeah where where has why has that person referred you well it's because of this this this this knock on effect yeah of doing great work being nice to people of putting yourself out there staying top of mind maybe reaching out to people and like just being genuine like it's so many different things and some yeah it's hard to you it's hard to look at your own internal analytics and figure out what all of that is and so people say oh yes it's word a mouth yeah mess yes which is you didn't do anything well exactly exactly and you said exactly what i wanted to say which was it's sometimes it's not as black and white as it was this one thing like you know i have on my contact form how did you hear about me and then i give him the option to select one way that they heard about me when in reality it's usually someone told them about me but then you know they then they join my newsletter then they follow my instagram or then they start instagram podcast and so it's these all these different things working together to to bring that person to me absolutely i've started asking people when they join the being freelance community which is now a paid membership that was like that's when it really felt like that became a business that was really only so we could get off facebook now when people join i say out of interest right what why why today why did you join today what was it and the answers are so brought like it'll be some people will be like oh yeah but and i'd sm right bear mind i might never have heard of this person and they'll be oh alright yeah i've been listening to your podcast on and off for years i used i watched your vlogs when i started freelancing and then somebody meant mentioned in this c working thing i was doing and i thought oh yeah i used to do that and that look it's just all these balls sort of like knocking together and eventually building up enough momentum for somebody to go oh yeah maybe i should check out what the heck that is yeah it's it's crazy how all of this stuff sort of builds up rather than just one you know i i think we grow up thinking that we buy something because we saw an advert but we saw an advert on tv that made us want a toy or a coke or whatever and actually that's it's not that at all is so much more than that absolutely and also it's the constant reinforcement of that same message over and over and over and over again until like you said it builds up that momentum of okay let me go let me go try out this thing let me go check out this thing let me go by this thing let me go hire this person hundred percent i wonder if you have any any tips or strategies or a device around how business owners can prevent something like this happening to them where you know they they they think they have this job lined up and it's gonna go on for a while but then the client ends ends the contract or whatever or just you know let she go type of thing anything that we can do to prevent this just make it a little bit safer for us as business owners well i know like i should probably say oh have a contract and yada and you probably absolutely should but ultimately if that climb wants to let you go even the contract isn't gonna keep you there you know so i think you always have to even with like a some kind of retainer relationship assume that that could end like at some point it probably will somebody who hired you will move on they won't need you anymore financial pressures will mean they take it in house somebody will leave and they'll bring it in and give it to somebody else that they happen to know from another company when someone new joins like so i think you have to assume that it could end and therefore what are the other things which could take its place and so hopefully you have more than one thing possibly lined up at at a time and that's tricky like if you like i work on lots of different things at once i know some people work on just one thing focused and then they move on to the next thing so it's it's slightly different but yeah i think that's the main thing assume that it won't but it won't keep going forever because if it does brilliant but otherwise you've got all of these other potential things going on also you can do things where maybe if if you you know if too much work in quotation marks start to come to you yes you could simply say i can't take that on there and refer it or you could say i can't take it on right now can we come to it in a month or you could say i can't take it on right now but a member of my team will or however you wanna phrase it and start to do what i did which was to think okay i've got this massive project i can't possibly write all these scripts now even though i'm capable of writing in the scripts i will go and hire a team of script writers or whatever i need more animators because why one animator can't help me with that so it started to think more and you know that doesn't sue everyone so don't go thinking you have grow business don't go thinking you have to hire people and all than that i don't want you to think that's the answer but it's just sometimes thinking how could i take on that work and do it without necessarily doing it all mh the and then and then i think because of that you can have perhaps more revenue streams coming in but i think also the thing that i wish had done was to realize that you could have you should be having savings so that if a project disappears you can still keep paying yourself your salary in effect but you've got a buffer of cash but in order to do that you need to be pricing all your things properly so that you can afford to put a bit of money over a side for that rainy day or that slightly dented basket if not dropped basket so it all kind of like you know it's all it's all easily said and done steve thanks very much but last year in twenty twenty three in june this client who i have been making their podcast for two and a half years not on a strict retain the contract or anything just this assumed thing we all having a lovely time everyone was happy financial pressures meant they took the editing in house and just like that not even any notice they they they dropped me and that was a huge like making a podcast cost every week that's actually quite a big chunk of time and money and that made a huge difference but because i had savings i was able to sort of like keep going and like kick everything into gear but was gonna bring me other works over you know all those i know poker that were in the fires sort of came to i the wrong analogy there must be a thing we we got it you're totally right though be totally right i think the savings thing is a huge part that i think enough business owners and like business coaches that kind of thing think don't talk about that it is so important to have savings to be constantly saving to not yeah maybe pay yourself all the money that you could when things are great because this really is an in like you said it's going to happen it's going to happen that your clients let you go at some point and i guess the the the answer in this is well how well have you prepared for it how well can you prepare for it and i think that's what changed the game for me was to stop expecting this this i i guess this this whole business thing to be like stable and sustainable every single month and stable every single month and it's just not the case being a business owner and having a business means this is that this is a roller coaster so how well are you prepared for the roller coaster it's one of the things i did have savings the past few months things have really picked up now but oh my gosh the past few months were completely quiet was so quiet and in that time because i'd manage my money well when things were good it meant that i didn't have to let go any of my team i don't have to let go my social media manager i didn't don't have to let go my my online business manager i could keep those people and keep my business running in the background i could still pay myself and not have to like start panicking and cancel everything and you know i really makes a difference and i think i mean you said so many important things let's talk out the contract thing for a second i remember having to retainer a client who signed my contract and agreed that she would give me thirty days notice i didn't even ask for that much like just give me thirty days notice you don't wanna continue that with this retainer a contract but actually what she did was and i'm she was the love less person but maybe she just didn't get how retainer worked because one month to be like yeah let's do this and we do the work in the next month she'd be like you know actually don't wanna do it this month let's do an month instead i'm thinking yeah that's not how our retainer is work this is not how retainer work so very quickly realized that my contract is more of a let set the expectations and requirements for one another versus if you break this there gonna be lawyers involved that's not it's not what it is for me anyway at my business size but i think a contract is really helpful because it does the expectations and it does set requirements and i i think with my social media manager now nay i just had a conversation with her where she said look i'm gonna ask clients from now on to sign a three month contract like every three months we're gonna check in do you still wanna move forward i'm like okay that sounds good so i know up until you know ex date that i'm locked in for this and then she also said as well if you decide to break her contract or you know you don't wanna keep working together can you give you a month's notice and me as someone who you know likes to keep her promises i know now that that's what i will do and so yes not everyone will accept your contract and follow your contract book some will some will and that's how it becomes really helpful yeah and it think becomes really helpful i think what you say those was great about we can think of contracts as being these lengthy word legal agreements but we don't necessarily look at what we get from our mobile phone company or you know dropbox or google or whoever but really like the the the the actual legal bit of the contract is is almost like this fail safe to get you out of trouble and them out of trouble if something goes wrong the important bit is right there an email or in the discussion and backed up with email to say here's what we're gonna do together here's how it's get like so it you need to kinda lift it out of the contract so it's really obvious for them what you'd like what your boundaries are what your expectations are what you're gonna deliver how it's gonna go and and to think as well that a lot of clients don't they might not have worked with someone like you before to do the thing that you're doing before as well so it's a chance for you to set out how you want it to work and like you say like they might just think oh it doesn't matter would just drop them the same as we drop out milk or whatever but i don't know why i pit milk if for if to if our milk is if our milk is listening i have no intention of dropping your mate you do a cracking job but yeah it's i think if you put it out there but that is what you expect then they're like oh yeah okay actually yeah i need to think about this a bit more carefully i can give this person more notice mh what you said is just so important communicate it to them in another way as well because just assume that they're not gonna read it just assume that all those things that we do when every time we take that box that's like you agree to our terms or conditions so we don't read them and we just take them and we keep going assume that that's what your client is doing so if there's anything really important that you want them to know then you wanna communicate that verbally just have the conversation with them let them know by the way this is this is in the contract is in our in our agreement by signing it this is what you're agreeing to so that you know that they've had this communicate to them in another way you've had this conversation yeah and you know hopeful you have nice you're working with nice people who will respect that also just wanna say i loved i mean check out steve's vlog if you wanna hear more about how he's sub contracts i really wanted to get into that today but we have so out of time but i also now sub contract i when if i have clients like dream clients dream projects that come to me there's no way i wanna say no to them especially knowing when that business is a roller coaster so that's also what i do now it's a yes let's do it and then i i have a small team behind me where we can we can work together but i just i do wanna say i tried this in the past and it did not work it went terribly actually i ended up like redo all the work so it does really take time to build that team to find people that you trust and this is why it's so important to build relationships way ahead of the time that you actually need them figure out who's good at what who's doing what who can help who's interested in potentially working with you on stuff in the future because then when the opportunity comes you can just get everything and everyone into action for sure yeah yes yes okay so steve what do you want others to learn from your mistake and your experience do not let your son carry all the eggs no i mean it the trouble with sayings like don't put all your eggs in one basket i they sound so simple and obvious and stupid don't they but there's a reason that's saying came about and it's because everybody put their eggs in one basket and dropped it and then went man those chickens aren't gonna lay anymore till tomorrow or whatever seriously don't put all your eggs in one basket it's as simple as that it's but it's so easy not to do it's so easy to rely on certain things and if you think that it's not going to be okay that maybe be that one client won't be there forever then you will broaden your horizons you'll reach out to things and your maybe accidentally create some sort of marketing system that will start to feed your business but it comes out of realizing but you can't just rely on that one thing need lots of baskets lots of baskets and that that can like manifest in so many different ways so one way that you did it was offering video editing producing and then add an audio slash podcast in produce and editing so now you're offering two different types of things so you're you know double in the chances of getting more client work and for me in the quiet periods of twenty twenty three i was so grateful that one of the ways i didn't put all my in one basket was i don't just do client work i also sell digital products you and courses and so when the client work was a bit slow that kept me go in you know what other ways can you can we dives diversify those streams that you were talking about yeah yeah but i think it's also important to realize that you see things like courses and stuff like that and digital products in order to sell them you kinda need an audience yes in fact you maybe need a fairly substantial audience need a mailing list and things like that if you wanna really make it work and so i fear sometimes that people will think oh stuff is quiet i'll just create these things and then people would buy them but actually it's a kind of a longer game of creating useful content building a reputation blah blah blah blah building an audience and then if you need if then you could potentially because otherwise it like creating a decent course takes a lot of time mh what could you have done with that time how many cold emails could you have sent out or you know insightful articles or building up the seo on your website or you know so many things that you could do rather than relying or maybe one sale or two cells because you hadn't built the audience so it's kind of like a danger that you can see people like yourself like me even and like creating these things and thinking oh okay i'll get extra revenue streams but those things can that that's more like a long yeah term picture that you do if you want but i'm not trying to put people off building courses but it's a it it's a trap that you can put time into those things when actually there's no audience to buy them yes no it's so true and it can totally be a distraction and that nearly happens to me so i have been working on building digital my audience digital products causes for the entire time i've been in business so five years and even now still it's not it's not making me millions i'm no me portugal to be old but it it helps me enough that i was like okay i don't have to let go my whole team it kept me going right now here's the thing i actually launched a boot camp i was gonna do is online boot i'm gonna do this and i'm gonna do that and and it's gonna be great and i'm gonna sell you know tickets to this boot camp and it was like seven hundred and fifty dollars i charge dollars and halfway through i was just like what am my what am i doing why am i spending all this time focusing on selling seven hundred fifty dollar tickets to i don't know how many people gonna buy let's say max maybe ten twenty people when i could be called pitch pitching and i can land a ten thousand dollar project if i just put my energy in the right place and i'm not being distracted by this idea of making loads of money through via you know course creation and digital products and it's so true so i'm glad you said that because it can be a distraction so you really have to think okay i'm gonna create these different streams but which ones are the streams that are like those levers that i can pull in immediately make money from and which ones are the ones that take a while to get going in yeah yeah i mean honestly so we could talk for ages we could i'm could biting my tongue i know i had so many of other questions for you but you know i i you've stayed over so thank you so much for it's the light i wanna keep talking but i just feel like you and i could just get yes there's nut and nut and this this there's so much to talk about okay well steve where can people find you if they want to stay connected do you know the best place ahead is being freelance dot com because it has the podcast it has the vlog which incidentally i don't really make anymore because we've talked about it quite a bit which is nice but that was one great well that was catalog though that was yeah there is and actually some people still go back and watch those and contact me about them and i did try making a few last year as well but the the what i realized is a literally it takes so much time to create that form of content how better can i use my time also i used to edit those like my family would be sitting in the other room watching a movie or whatever on a sunday night and i'd be sitting in a different room editing away and the pandemic kinda made me realize actually maybe i rather be sitting in the room with them watching the film so it kinda changed my priorities and also made me think where's my energy best spent so yeah anyway the vlog is still there there's a course for new freelancers which i only made a couple of years ago but it it's built off the back of the podcast and i should oh and the community as well so that you can come and hang out and have fun but i should also say that because you mentioned doing it for the kids that that doing it for the kids is separate community it's not my community that's run by somebody graphic designer called frankie tour and she and i became friends online and then started doing it for the kids podcast but she started her community before i did and i probably would never have started one if i hadn't have seen what she was doing with hers so yeah doing it for the kids it's her thing but we do a podcast again yes a great podcast that's one awards and it's it's a podcast for a freelance parents but also everyone's welcome and it's kind of like an agony kinda style show where people are asking questions and you're giving them business advice yeah it's so much fun thank you so much for joining me receive i'm so happy to have you here i know everyone's gonna love this interview and at yet i hope you enjoyed our chat it's been so nice so nice thank you man thank you when i was little i told my dad that my favorite band club seven would never break up he told me they would that it was inevitable well i didn't believe him when i was eleven it finally happened club seven broke up my dad was right but wasn't an ina no matter how much i didn't want it to be client relationships are exactly the same you don't ever want it to end especially when that client is a great regular well paying client but like all great pop bands that relationship will inevitably come to an end and you need to prepare for that moment as well as you possibly can i feel like steve's mistake one we can all relate to it happened to me a few years ago i had one big client that i really relied on and they eventually stopped sending me work it taught me the hard way to never rely on any one client to bring me work i've gone even further than that and created my business in a way that means i also don't rely on any one of my services to bring clients i have multiple services that serve different needs and different budget included an email strategy consultation for five hundred and fifty dollars a vip week for six thousand dollars and custom email projects starting from two thousand dollars i also don't rely on any one revenue stream to bring me work i make money not just from working with clients but also from my digital products courses and speaking engagements too one of the biggest freedoms you get as a business owner is knowing that other the people no longer control your income or your future but sometimes we accidentally put ourselves in a position where we give our clients that power don't feel bad about it we've all done it but hopefully this interview serves as a reminder for what not to do how to come back from it if you do do it and of course how to prepare for the of your favorite pop breaking up ever wondered what goes into create in this podcast what my production process looks like how i came up with a concept for this show how i choose which guests to invite and how exactly i research them well i'm sharing everything inside my bonus episode behind the scenes make the podcast for this special episode this show's podcast producer z barry takes the reins and interviews me so you can find out all the juicy details and behind the scenes stories i reveal for the first time ever how i landed the hubspot partnership and what that agreement involves as well as the key to send in a podcast that'll i'll get my attention the interview methods that help me nail my podcast interviews and the resources and strategies i've used to help make this show a success if you want instant access to this bonus episode click the link in the show notes or head over to man copy dot com slash bts s that's behind the scenes man copy code dot com slash b bts s put in your email address and that's it it's yours

hey quick thing i'm on maternity to leave having my third baby right now so the next few months of podcast content is gonna be a mixture of me appearing on other pee podcast sharing things you've never heard me share before on this podcast never before publicly released extended interviews with stakes that make me guests like belinda weaver jordan gill steve fallen and more and of course mistakes that made these aldi book good episodes some of my favorite interviews that you might have missed but really should catch up upon just a reminder that even though i'm our maternity leave my email agency is not we work with business owners like you and we're still taking on new clients an email and launch project so if you're ready to take your email list from has potential to highly profitable head over to man copy c dot com and get in touch with our amazing team of experts and strategist the link the show notes okay let's get into today's episode i don't know about you but i feel like there's a lot of same in the online business world everyone is same the same stuff doing the same stuff learning the same stuff from all the same people it's just this sea of same but caroline and jason z a a breath of fresh air they are two married business partners who are paving their own way in this online business world where idea of people we come of the ideas all the time nonstop always new ideas c jason was an influencer back in two thousand and nine before being an influencer was even a thing before instagram was even created he started a project called ay or shirt where over one thousand six hundred small businesses fortune five hundred companies authors and non nonprofit organizations paid him to post photos and videos of himself online wearing a shirt that had their logo on it what if that knots sell luxurious hotel room has a really weird smell what if that hotel room only has a bid day and not a toilet what if that hotel room is infested with squirrels okay so the squirrels might be a stretch and then i found out about travel sort in just a few years jason gentlemen over a million dollars in revenue wearing these shirts and he was featured on shows like the today show and in publications like forbes magazine then there was the time in twenty twelve when jason auction off his last name it and a company called headsets dot com bought it for forty five thousand five hundred dollars by the way headsets dot com got a lot of attention because of jason's popularity and they reported an increase in sales of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in the months after jason changed his name jason auction off his last name one more time before finally settle in on z so while jason was working on his business caroline was working on his caroline a talented artist built an art and design brand called made vibrant it started out as a freelance design business then grew into an online course hub for creative in twenty eighteen her first book was published and she became a tedx speaker she delivered this brilliant talk about shifting her personal definition of success from achievement to alignment when jason and caroline decided to start a business together they launched by our future a project where they sold access to their life's work it was a one time purchase where the buyer would get everything jason and caroline had created in the past and everything they'd create in the future plus a private community that project along with jason's original version of it which was called by my future generated over half a million in revenue together they've built an un onboarding coaching program called wandering aim seek they're creative that fun they're intentional they're full of wacky genius money making ideas but it turns out being an ideas person can be both a blessing and a curse hey it's so gratifying to make new things like you get the excitement you have the idea you're going through all your task list you're using your productivity tools and then this this shiny thing exists that didn't exist before and you put your heart and your soul and you're branding and everything into it but then who's gonna buy it because all you've done is spend time making things and now people don't know that it exists they don't know why they should care they don't know what problem it solves hip you're you just sort of like emerge from this creation cave and you're like look at this new and everyone's like cool but how does it help me haven't heard from you haven't heard from you you know like you've just been like in a cape on today's show i'm speaking to caroline and jason z a husband a wife duo and the founders of wondering aim and tree they talk about how focused too much on creating shiny new things in their business left them burn out and force them to be in a state where they were perpetually launching and reinvent reinventing the wheel all while making little long term or sustainable progress in that business there's a danger in being the ideal person because without any self restraint you can find yourself creating new things and new things and new things all the time and we just found that it was exhausting trying to create a profitable business when we were always in this create and launch mode welcome to mistakes that made me the podcast that asks extraordinary business owners to share that biggest business mistake so you know what not to do on your role to success my name emma matt and i'm an email strategist and copywriter for online business owners and e commerce brands i'm a podcast lover a piece of a proud mama of two and i have this radical idea but if maybe us business owners were a little less guarded and a lot more open about the mistakes we've made we could help each other grow a business that brings us more joy and less regret hey jason and caroline thank you so much for being here thank you for having us we're so excited it was so much thank you tell me a little bit about who you are and what you do wow we're to start we are a husband and wife duo if you will and we currently just move to portugal three months ago so that's a big exciting thing for our lives but we run two businesses together and have for the past five years i've been an entrepreneur for now fifteen years caroline has been for ten years and we like to think that we bring a little bit of onboarding to the online business world and that's kind of our focus that's i'm gonna go with that for me yeah also i love cinnamon rolls i just need that very important in my intro at the end it's very important kind of his brand yeah but yeah and just to clarify the two businesses that we run so we run wandering aim which is in what we like to call an onboarding coaching program for intentional online business owners and then the other business is called tea tree and that's a software platform that allows you to create online courses yeah okay now i have not been part of your i'm not part program but every time you launch i'm like i'm so close to join every single time just because i love so much how you run your businesses how you do business how you show up in business why you choose not to show up and that idea of doing business really intentionally has always just really stuck with me and that that's what i love most i wanna know before we dive into more of that because i'm gonna ask you some questions about that i wanna know how he's got into business together like how did that happen yeah so to funny enough that our first experience kind of working together was back when jason had his own kind of interesting marketing company himself it was a business called eyewear your shirt it was basically influencer marketing before that was a thing so he would this is two thousand this is two thousand and nine way back companies would pay him to wear their logo on his t shirt and then he would promote them on facebook and twitter and yada yada again two thousand nine okay so for instagram had a flick account yeah just to like for anybody who remembers that yeah that was i used that if you wanna learn more about that era of business there's plenty of podcast interviews and and plenty of good stuff there but interestingly enough so around that time he it was sort of the height of that business and i had just started my career in advertising and i worked at a few different agencies and then i started to get really jealous because we were living together at the time and i was just in this advertising agency job as a social media manager and i was not enjoying myself i did not like the corporate politics of the agency world and every day i had a forty five minute commute downtown to my office and i would almost get ready to to be out the door and jason be like oh babe can you like paint my face like a lion for like a video that i'm recording today about like a halloween costume company and i would do this like really creative thing and then i would be so jealous because i would have to go to my boring advertising job and he got to make videos all day and and work for himself and so it became very clear that i was gonna find a way to figure out this on online business thing and work for him so cut to about a year later i convince him he needs help with the operations the business is growing and we start to work together because at that point the business could kind of support both of us and that was our first kind of dipping our toe into it and it turns out we didn't break up so it went pretty well and a few years after that that was sort of my first taste of what it was like to be your own boss what it was like to grow your own company and i really credit him with like kind of guiding me through that process because a couple of years later that business ended up closing down and i thought am i gonna have to go back and get another advertising job and that was really my plan and he said you know it was kind of that point where he was like i really think that you are ready to do your own thing you know you've been doing it for me for a long time start your own business and so that was when i had to take a hard look at my skills and go what can i monetize like what do i think i can add value and that was where i started my own design business and so i credit him with really encouraging me to just go for it and that's not to say that it was a success right away i had to learn a lot but after about six months that's when things started taking off so we did a couple of years apart he sort of had his own thing going i had my own thing part but we worked like really like we're in the same room just on different businesses separate separate businesses we you know at that point i'm doing design services then kind of four that in digital products online courses he's doing the same thing and then finally around twenty eighteen twenty yeah twenty seventeen because twenty seventeen it took a whole year of convincing for me to convince caroline that it was a good idea to come back together like and i think the point i was like i'm kind of doing my own thing yeah the phrase that i kept coming to is just like we're better together like we we collaborate a ton on our different businesses and we always bounce ideas off each other again we're working like eight feet apart so it's not like we're working separately and never talking to each other and i just i kept seeing like caroline at that point had like four or five of her own online courses i had four or five plus i had some software products plus i had this like really weird idea that i did by my future and all of it was kind of like just just c ming you know it's was just like the venn diagrams were overlapping the venn diagrams and then it's just like all of it and and i think it took about six to eight months of daily walks at the end of the day which is like a ritual for us that we've just had forever that helps us clear our minds for me to be like okay let's combine everything and let's just like make it all one business and like create an ethos and that's what caroline is amazingly good at i'm good at wearing lion makeup so it tells you where the real skills lie and and let's like actually make one business out of this and so that brought us then back together to work on what was wandering aim and started in two thousand eighteen that consolidated everything into one business amazing okay now i am a user of tea teacher your course platform and i'm a huge fan i've been using it since i i think i since i started my my since i created my first course back in twenty nineteen i've been using i can say since it was ugly since it was our i could say i've been using it since it was ugly because and it it it's a great lesson just for all of your listeners that like anytime you make anything it starts ugly and and okay you have to have people that believe in it enough to buy it or use it or whatever and you're a perfect example of that like you use tea tree in the ugly phase of tea tree but it did a good enough job and now it's it's beautiful because caroline redesigned the whole thing in a year so yeah i just wanna commend you for sticking through the ugly face for our own business i hey i love to there was definitely a glow up they would that's a much better way of putting you yeah but i i loved it and it's great and i am really interested to know how well why you create a tea tree and how that came about as well that's a great question i we were at a conference together in two thousand thirteen and this was like the end of my eye were your shirt business journey that had just shut down so caroline was just starting her own business doing art and design and things i had no idea what i was gonna do and a developer actually came to me at the conference and this conference was small it was like a hundred people was in fargo north dakota and he came out to me and like hey like i really i love the ira reassure project i think it's so great if you ever need a developer for any idea like obviously you come up with weird ideas i would be happy to work on something with you and i was like oh that's cool like i've worked with a couple developers here and there but nothing really stuck and it was right at this time as i was transitioning into something else that someone had told me you know hey you should make a course on how to help get sponsorships because you've gotten you know at that point i was like two thousand total sponsors between i reassure selling my last name sponsors in a book like all these crazy projects and and i was like oh you know what like i i do know a thing or two and which is another great piece of advice of anybody who's looking to get started is like go where you know something like you like i'm saying like i had these skills like let me put them to work and so i i started to look around this so this is two thousand and thirteen i started to look around for course platforms and there were like three at that time and all of them were terrible inexpensive like they were than teacher teacher was when you use treat and so i was like well this can't be that difficult of course that's like the entrepreneurs dilemma right you get an idea you're like it can't be that difficult to make a course do you know yeah i gave myself like a handful of hours to design what i would want a course to look like because i wanted it to look better than all these other platforms i did and be branded and custom have some nice colors yeah not just like you know everything out there looks very late kind of corporate and just like nothing branded about it so i think that's the heart of tree like where it began is really customization and wanting it to look like your own brand yeah so i i designed literally a photoshop file which is hilarious and i actually had a different developer at the time when i was working with other things and so he quickly did that and as i got like a working prototype in like a wordpress version of this course i send it to some friends to ask them about the content and i was hey what do think about this content in this course like does it help you understand like my methodology is getting sponsorships and they're like i don't really know or care but what platform is this and i was like oh that's interesting like every single person who's looking at this is asking me about the like the platform itself and so i actually went back to that developer and i was like hey i put together this little working prototype would you be interested you asked if you could do some development stuff could we make something and so that was like the end of two thousand thirteen i was already selling the the sponsorship course through this like cobb together wordpress thing which is great because that actually provided some of the money to like help us build the first version of of tea tree and so roland yolanda was the name of of my development partner at the time he's no longer with tree and it was ami so i don't have to like hide that story but he he basically helped build the very first even u version that we still have one customer for our very first paid plan who has been with us since two thousand fourteen i don't know that she's ever used t tree but but she has stuck with us for now nine years which is just incredible but yeah that's that's how you restarted and then yeah it just evolved from there in really trying to help people have a creative course platform a of course platform that lets you customize things and so over the years it has definitely evolved into what we hope is one of the most customizable platforms especially from like a styling and branding perspective we don't have all the features that everybody else might have of like doing everything but that's not what we specialize in we just want the course to reflect your brand and look amazing and you can get the rest of the features in other different places yeah i think one of the things that i love most about tea tree was well at the time when i joined it was really common for course creation platforms to charge you like for every student so like for every buyer that buys your course you're bet they're charging you a little bit for that that course student so you're essentially like the more successful your courses is the more you're being punished could just more and more of your money and so that was something we did not do you just charge a fat fee to use the platform and that was it and it just felt so wholesome and just like you know this has been created by someone who gets us as small business owners and who is a small business owner like us and who just wants to help the community and so that was one of the things that really attracted me to teach you at the time i'm so glad to hear that yet that is a big kind of guiding principle for us in every decision we make in our businesses it's always like would we like how would we feel if we were the customer and this was the decision and that the software made or even with our program like i you know no fault to other business owners who are all about like don't leave money on the table like that's fine if that's what your primary goal is but something that's never been our primary goal like we really believe that our businesses are a tool in order to support a life that feels really good and so we are big fans of leaving money on the table mh we will leave money on the table if it means trading something like our integrity or if it means trading something like our peace of mind or if it means doing something that we know that we wouldn't like as a customer like that's usually what we defer to and again like it's usually we have to then balance that decision with like okay well is this still like sustainable and for us a flat monthly fee like without charging per student like that's still a business that can run very well so why trade that just for that little extra bit so yeah yeah i love i love it and i appreciate it so much and still do i was just listening to your podcast and obviously we're kind of was still kind of in goal set season we are recording this in february twenty twenty three and so most people have either set goals or are feeling really crappy because they still not set their goals coming me only of your podcast you spoke about this idea of having an enough number and for your own financial goal you've set this enough number tell me about the enough number yeah the i mean this i think this really stemmed for me way back at the beginning of my ivory shirt project in two thousand nine where i just had this like arbitrary goal like i wanna make a million dollars in my business and and i chased after that goal for years and i never got there i got to like six hundred some odd thousand dollars which is amazing like that's a mh prolific amount of money to make in a business especially when you're just like doing everything by yourself or you have a wife who does line makeup up but also caroline did so much else i'm just excuse as the joke but what i found in chasing this like gigantic financial goal was it always made me feel bad when i didn't hit it and so it was like this giant number that for no other reason other than just sounds cool to make that money i was chasing after that so i think over the years we've really kind of honed on this idea of enough across a lot of things in business enough customers for teacher who don't wanna to pay transaction fees and like give a bunch of money to a platform for really no reason like it doesn't cost that much money to run a course platform but for us from a like a revenue standpoint every single year it becomes really easy to sit down and go okay well this is the year wondering if makes a million dollars but why like we don't we don't need the deliver a million dollar lifestyle and that's no offense to anybody who wants to make a million dollars fantastic if that's your goal but what we found is in chasing these giant numbers it leads you to make decisions that you don't really like it leads you to go down a lot of different like marketing and advertising avenues that maybe you don't wanna do and also your expenses always go up you make more revenue right and so we really started to come come back to was what if we make like a really achievable number it's still a bigger number and that number doesn't have to stay our enough number forever and we actually so we said at the beginning at water we set it enough number it was to make thirty three thousand dollars a months with wandering gameplay it's a monthly recurring number yeah and the thing with enough numbers that i think there's like three pieces to it of why it's just a methodology that works for us and the first one is speaks to what jason just said about chasing arbitrary numbers and the thing about an enough number is you come up with that number based on what like you break it down into what actually a good life would look like for you so you're not just going a million dollars you're going wow okay so if every month i could you know have this amount of living expenses to live this level of lifestyle that makes me feel good you know maybe travels important to me so i wanna be able to take two trips a year so that's what that would cost okay i have like an aging parent and i need to pay for their you know care so let me add that in there i have kids i i wanna pay for childcare care so i have time to work on my business like you really break down what does my ideal life look like into financial numbers and they're not gonna be accurate a hundred percent but it just it it gives you a number to work towards that actually has some tangible bearing on what your life is gonna feel like the thing with a million dollars is i have no idea what my life then feels like if i make a million dollars right but i know what my life looks if i make thirty three thousand dollars a month because i've broken it down by every piece of it so that's the first piece is like that goal now means something to you in terms of the life you're trying to achieve mh the second one for me is just this notion of satisfaction and so the the the mental image that i always have with enough is like the thing about being satisfied in your life is i think it's about defining the size of the container and what i mean by that is like our our human brains are always gonna want more more money more this more that like we're just wired for that right and so it's this container that by not defining it it's endless it's infinitely large and so it just keeps filling up everything around you the thing to me about defining enough is it's me saying here's the size of the container because i know if the container is this big so let's say in financial terms it's thirty three thousand dollars that's the size of my container when that when that starts to get filled up and i hit that number i look around and i go oh my gosh that feels so good that feel i feel satisfied because i i set how big that container would be as opposed to never setting the container and always being hungry you're always wanting more yeah i'm like in my case when i hit six hundred thousand dollars in revenue i i was like bummed out right and how many entrepreneurs do we hear like similar stories like that where they're like oh my business is a failure like work you're like your business made go of money you know like in the grand scheme of things like you you made a good amount money but you never set that upper limit what that would look like and again it doesn't mean that it can't change it doesn't mean because as your life changes your goals will change so what that number could change but i think just going through the exercise of asking yourself what does that money mean intangible terms in my life how much will it take for me to feel good and satisfied and like i'm living like a rich life whatever level that is for you i think that's a good question now yeah and one one last point that we have some like actual anecdotal data that are wandering gameplay members so many of them go through this enough number exercise themselves so it's just like caroline saying it's like you take care of all the minimum stuff that you need your rent payment your mortgage payment your grocery bills you know all the life you know your life insurances and things like that but then you look at okay what are the things on top that like i would need for my so day care we do need to buy new car cars really old you know like of two vacations a year you total that number up and it's almost always to a tea and we've seen this through a thousand people being through monitoring way less than people think and they're actually shocked when they go oh i i put this number to paper and it's like way less money than i thought i needed to make to actually live like the ideal life that i wanna live and again that's not to say that your enough numbers aren't gonna change like ours ours has changed from two thousand eighteen it was thirty three thousand a month and now it's almost doubled that and there's a very good reason for that and it's because we wanna buy a house and so we know that we need to save more money and put money aside we also have aging parents so we're trying to save for that to know that that's gonna be something that we're gonna be also hope we will have children at some point we hear they're kind of expensive sure they take money to that you know operate but yeah it's it's one of those things that i think it for a lot of people when they first hear about setting in enough number they're like oh i don't wanna feel limited by that and it's like caroline i saying it's not about feeling limited it's about feeling satisfied and it's about feeling like oh i actually hit a number in my business that makes me feel really good and now like i don't have to keep chasing other numbers i can just exist and run my business and be happy yeah and before i forget because i will i did mention three things and for those people out there listening going what was the third thing because like set up this whole three thing the last piece of the enough number that i think is important to note is it's an also an acknowledgment of trade offs and it's what we alluded to you before which is let's say let's say thirty three or let's say fifty is the number by trying to go for a hundred thousand dollars a month you're acknowledging that that extra is going to require extra things of you as well that you don't want and this is something that a lot of entrepreneurs don't talk about which is they're like i wanna grow i wanna grow my team i wanna grow my revenue but there's almost always some type of negative trade off to that growth and so it's an acknowledgment of like okay as a business owner i want to be aware of what those trade offs are so that i can choose which of those i want in which i don't this is so refreshing to hear and when i first heard talk about this it was but jason you just said some people feel limited by it i just feel liberated by it like it just makes me feel so free and it makes me feel like you don't just have to just follow any kind of random numbers that are floating around we all have like those numbers that are floating around and i'm in a really weird place in my business i was talking about this in a in one of the previous episodes with a guest called laying ka where she spoke about her like obsession with making six figures when she first became a business owner and she had no clue why she wasn't even making a thousand pounds a month but this coach promised her that she could make six figures a month when she wasn't making a thousand and so yeah she joins its program and you know that whole we all know that so we spoke we were talking a lot about and the fact that i have i have just kind of exceeded six figures and so and then you kind of look at this and you go okay so there's a difference between revenue and profit there's is a difference yeah yeah gonna want him take until so then i start thinking about your enough number like this idea of the enough number and it's like okay great i would be really happy like i'm happy now cool but i would be really comfortable if i could just if i could double my take home pay that's that's the like the simple goal right yeah so while it's not maybe like easy to to do that's a really simple goal for me and i can think okay this year that's what i'm gonna focused on is just double in my take home and pay how can i make that happen amazing and so yeah and it's this felt really great i am i'm in a place where i feel like you know i can say no to the projects i don't feel great and no of the idea that you know don't make me excited and i know that's a really privileged place to be in course but i have a goal simple goal and i'm not aiming in full like what feels like the moon this feels doable and realistic yeah and i love them it's a specific goal for you exactly like that's the thing that we we really try and hit home with this because it's like you said like we all know these people that are out in the world and and maybe they're well intention that are trying to teach people how to have six figure business months or even five figure business months and it's fine and like we're we're saying that as people who make that amount of money in our business not six figure months but make decent money is that there are always trade offs to trying to hit those goals and it's like you're saying like when you start to really get into your business and you see like okay my business made over a hundred thousand dollars a year but it actually cost me like sixty thousand dollars to run my business so i am only taking home on forty thousand dollars i could make more than that getting a regular job you know like what and and it feels like a struggle to run my business so i think that there's a lot of realities that people run into mh that they they hear these dreams and they hear these things but they don't hear all the nuance that comes along with what it takes to get to those places as opposed to if you were someone who said i just wanna make i want a business to make sixty thousand dollars a year but is ultra profitable like it cost me like five thousand dollars a month to run it or five thousand dollars a year to run it you're now making more money with a business that makes less on paper and doesn't seem as sexy to other people but it's more profitable like you're actually taking more money out of the business which goes back to what you were saying at the top which is it's about you and it's about the individual and we probably should've have preface this entire conversation which we often like to do which is take everything we say put it through the lens of your own self awareness put it through the lens of your own circumstances we certainly don't wanna be out here saying that like the right way to do business is to set enough number all we wanna be is an alternative way of thinking about things because i feel like the narrative out there which is the dominant narrative is the one about chasing the arbitrary numbers and all we ever wanna be with wandering is to kinda be like the kid in the court being like but what if we don't have to do with way yeah i love it and also i feel like your question is but why why wanna do it that way yeah yeah right and i love that and you've taught me to question myself and my own intentions which i absolutely love yeah okay i have so many questions i could ask you that we would talk so let get to the mistake no but let's get to the reason i invited you here are you ready right we're ready okay jason and caroline what is the mistake that made you are you gonna go for it sure i mean i think specifically we'll go with what made wandering aim turn from a business that didn't feel like it was going to succeed in the beginning and we were making like fifteen hundred dollars a month and not feeling like the business was gonna be successful and meet our goals and that mistake was focusing too much on creating new things and not marketing an existing thing that was working and so i think we see this all the time we all run into this where it's so it's so gratifying to make new things like you get the excitement you have the idea you're going through all your task list you're using your productivity tools and then this this shiny thing exists that didn't exist before and you put your heart and your soul and you're branding and everything into it but then who's gonna buy it because all you've done is spend time making things and now people don't know that it exists they don't know why they should care they don't know what problem it solves yeah you're you just sort of like emerge from this creation cave and you're like look at this new thing and everyone's like cool but how does it help me haven't heard from you heard from you you know like you've just been like in a cave and so yeah i think that mistake for us was really the big turning point in wanting game and we can actually see it like in our revenue chart we can see the the time that we basically drew a line in the stand and said we're not gonna make any more things we need to focus on how this thing can actually be marketed promoted how the positioning could be changed how we can make sure we're attracting our right audience how we're putting out good consistent content and that was a lesson that it took a long time to learn which i know we'll dig into eventually but i think we had to experience the the detriment that comes with focusing too much on creation for long enough until the pain was so great that we were like there has to be another way yeah so sure we'll get to that point but that was our mo for so many years because we're idea people we a hundred percent the place where we shine is ideas we will never run out of ideas there's a confidence in that that's not me trying to be boast that's just like that is where our brains both live but there's a there's a danger in being the idea of person because without any self restraint you can find yourself creating new things and new things and new things all the time and we just found that it was exhausting trying to create a profitable business when we were always in this create and launch mode that makes so much sense i i totally it and feel like a lot of people listening will be nodding in that has like yeah yeah yeah essentially in that stage right now so paint a picture of what business look like back then you had one name fully like you'd already start this coaching program it's making fifty eight hundred dollars a month did you say yeah yeah yeah at the at the beginning so it was we've changed the revenue model over time which is in an interesting probably podcast in itself that we should probably do it at some point but yeah in the very early days it was a subscription model of a hundred dollars a month and so we did a pre launch where we got fifteen people kind of this is before it even existed and yeah good goodness we had an audience at that point because that just shows you like fifteen people who also by the way we're paying monthly for about it took we thought it was gonna take us five weeks to build wandering plate took us five months they're paying five months and just because they believe in us and so in those early months we just had the fifteen hundred dollars a month and they really were like the funding that got it off the ground so yeah growing it from fifteen hundred dollars a month and and at that point it was sort of this umbrella that housed all of our courses all of our pro you know products like teacher tree and jason had several other software products that are now in our lovely idea graveyard and so it was just it was sort of this umbrella membership for all of these different tools to grow your online business okay so why were these other ideas coming from like what were they and why will you like busy create other this stuff yeah i think we were so really to tell that story we kind of have to back up to that the previous years before jason convinced me to do wondering because that period of time between twenty fourteen to twenty eighteen when wandering info came on the map we were just in utter creation mode and it was i think it was because the little bit of success that we got that was somewhat repeatable income was this idea of creating a course and launching it right and and we loved the process but it was this feast famine and i think a lot of people will understand this about creating new products it was this feast famine kind of thing where you would the money would dry up and then you'd come up with a new idea and you'd launch a new thing and then you'd get a little bit of a bump of sales and that would fund you to the next thing and i think a little bit of that was because the we would see the money dry up we instead of going there the customer journey might be broken here in order for someone to kind of market this effectively consistently instead of trying to solve that problem we would go to the the comfortable thing for us which was just spin up a new thing and spin up a new thing and spin up a new and before you know it you have wandering flight and it has like forty courses of it you know and you're just like how long can we really do this and you end up feeling scatter brain you end up feeling it's it it becomes incredibly hard to market you know the the idea of wondering was first of all our desire for simplicity it was like let's get a vehicle to pull all this stuff together but then it becomes incredibly hard to market wondering when you're like well it can do this and it can do that and it can do this and you can learn art courses but you can also do email with list growth and that's actually still we've figured that problem about to a degree but we still because we are people who have a lot of different skills we still struggle with that a little bit because we're a very general program but yeah we were just in that place of always relying on that comfortable kind of profit lever which was let's create a new thing yeah i totally relate i'm kind of in a moment right now where i've had this idea for a year and it's been bugging me and it almost got point where i almost created it just because it was it was just annoying me that it in my head right it's almost like to just quote the tension and to just get it out of your head you'll just do the thing right yes it's causing that much tension in you and then i stopped and spoke to some coaches i'm working with right now and they were like we don't love this idea you but if you love it like we'll support you but here's why it could be problematic for you and then walks me through that it's a subscription like model dare as well and they were yeah it's a lot like it's a lot and this and it was great because they actually came to me and they said you told us that you want things to be simpler and easier and this is not helping you get that goal you're actually making things more complicated for yourself right so is there anything we can do that already exists like where we can help you maybe market something that already exists a bit more and sell more of an existing thing than create anything so i totally relate and i guess my question is how i mean i can imagine how it and why this became a problem but how does it show up in your life and business that okay this is seriously a problem like we're creating too much we're doing too much is all just too much yeah it's a couple of different things it's you do a launch so like you know we were we were kinda doing these little like monthly enrollments once wandering employee was going i mean okay we're just gonna let like a handful of people in and that was good and it helped us get a good core group of beginning users but then after a while like people stop signing up and so we're like oh that that kinda sucks and then at the same time as wandering employee as a thing existed it's you know a membership it has a dashboard it has access to all these courses and things we've created people started canceling and we're like oh crap like people are canceling so we would send cancellation emails and be like you know we're so sorry like this wasn't the right for you we tell you understand can you just tell us why you cancel so we can learn from it and almost to a t every single person was like i just didn't know what to do you know there was just so much stuff i felt overwhelmed i didn't really know what problem you were solving and they were one hundred percent right we weren't solving any specific problems it's like caroline was saying like you could take an art course for you could a sponsorship course you could take a copywriting course so you could use tea tree it was just a a a big pile of stuff and that actually is a big lesson that we learned amidst all of that which is sometimes when you're a creative person it can be easy to just wanna create stuff because of and there are lots of good reasons like you said of like i just this idea has been bugging me and like i just wanna get it onto to the world and i think i think that's fine but tell you up forty courses but that's how you ended up with forty courses and then and and what re we realized is that turning point was when we said okay the past four years have been about kind of serving our creative exploration needs maybe the next four years is about focusing on what are the needs of our audience and really trying to solve problems for them and it and it sounds so simple because this is advice you hear a lot in in business which is just understand your audience understand what they need and position your offer so that they're solving a problem right but we were not living that very simple like tactic it at all in any way we were just sort of like well wouldn't wouldn't you love a course about you know something else all the things and rather than positioning it in such a way that it was solving their problem so i don't know this is too harsh terms but i'm just putting it in simple terms so it's easy to understand those four years from like twenty fourteen to to twenty eighteen were kind of the selfish years of exploration and the next four years we wanted to be more the selfless years of like really focusing on what are their needs really focusing on creating the things to fit the holes of whatever they're experiencing in their business yeah and i i think one of like the biggest turning points for us to get out of the the phase of only making fifteen hundred bucks and no one buying and people canceling was we really said like what is the what is the one problem that we are trying to solve for people like what is that thing and what we what we started with at that point in like late two thousand eighteen early twenty thousand nineteen was people are burnt out like they're burnt out from trying to transition from working with clients to building a digital product business so that they don't have to work with clients and they're just like they can't find the time they don't have a system to do it and everybody that's trying to sell them on this is saying you can do this in thirty days you can do this in sixty days and guess what happens you try really hard you do as much work as you can and then you just don't accomplish it at sixty days and you feel burnt out and you feel terrible if you didn't accomplish it mh and so what we did is we put together a six month program that was like just take it slowly and it's kind of like we've talked about with so many other things it's like the anti ent of what everyone else selling like we were just open and honest with like it will take you longer than everyone is telling you and it's funny because this was like one of the big jumps and wandering employees revenue and people signing up because they said oh that's a problem i have that's a problem i want solved in a way that i haven't tried to do it before i've only tried to do the like get your course up running in thirty days and make six figures at your first launch and it hasn't happened for people they made a thousand you know dollars or pounds in in a launch and that feels very def and so we really shifted from a lot of the other ideas that were out there around this topic and this problem to like let's just do something where the the stakes are really low for someone to feel like they've succeeded and they also get supported in a community of other people trying to do this thing and going back to your original question which was how does this show up in your daily life i would say one of the most frustrating things at that time was it felt like we were always reinventing the wheel so it felt like we would get a wheel kind of like moving down the road and then it it would just slowly slowly slowly slow down and we'd have to throw it out and build a whole new wheel and then get it going again and so this turning point that jason's referring to is when we started to really shift our thinking into what problem are we solving shift our thinking into really trying to get in ahead of our our ideal customer and how can we make their life better make their business better once we started doing that and and building out the offer based around that the the biggest thing happened which was it didn't feel like we were constantly rebuilding the wheel it felt like we would push the wheel a little bit and it would keep spinning and then the next thing we would do we would just get it going a little faster and suddenly this momentum and that's the biggest difference i feel in our business now compared to those four years before is you're not in to stop and start and stop and start and driving up and then push it again it's like the wheel and now i i feel like last year was our big test of this because we traveled throughout europe all of last year and it was not a growth year for you for us our entire goal was just to keep the businesses going and to still serve our customers in a way that felt good but not to add anything new or really improve you know too much but just could we just really enjoy the hard work that we had put in for the past four years and to see that without even an extra push last year that we'll kept spinning on its own is the most gratifying thing to experience as a business owner i mean i just so many things so many things were when in my mind right now first of all i told you before we start recording that i absolutely loved to follow in your year in europe it was amazing and also to be able to hear you say that you had the goal of just keeping the business at the same level like your growth doesn't always have to be the goal you know have to grow every single year because you do feel this pressure to just grow go go grow grow like yeah even i've been quite open about the new kind of levels i've been hit and and there's pressure with that and you're like oh crap wait no i have to do even better next year and the and the year after so it's so refreshing to hear you say that first of all and one question i did forget to ask you which i think is would be is really interesting is do you have anyone else on your team helping you now at the the full time team but you can tell yeah for what our kind of like support team looks like for wandering thankfully it's essentially just us and then this past year actually while we were traveling we brought on a person to help with accessibility so that we have better transcripts we have better captions in all of our videos for our members and she helps with our podcast and so we're just trying to make our content more accessible to more people so and i think we're all seeing that shift happen like we all are watching shows with captions more now and we're you know it's just these different things so we have a person who's helping us with that and she's actually a wandering member which is amazing because this just fun like bring them up from our community and then so that's it for wandering employee that we do everything else caroline basically does like well we both do strategy caroline is probably a little bit she's like it's like fifty one forty nine carol a little more strategy than me yeah well he's really trying to get some bonus points candy and then from a design perspective it's like ninety eight percent caroline two percent me and then from a like running a community and like all the admin of wanting employees like it ninety nine percent me one percent going but it's great because it works right the relationship works and i think the next step for us is we are thinking about probably bringing someone on maybe this year maybe next year to kind of just help with a lot of the admin stuff like i don't need to be doing that's up and then on the t tree side we have two developers we have one full time developer and the one who's kind of part time ish and then we have dabble with a designer as a freelancer for a while but that's basically it and and i think one of the things like when i was running my previous business i were reassured i i there were a bunch of employees of that business and it just was really stressful because every day i just had to think about all of their energies and all their things and and so you know we hear so many people in the online business space who talk about like you gotta outsource you gotta get a va you have to all this stuff and that's all well and good and i think some some people really thrive in those the situations some people really love the collaboration and really wanna grow a team for us it's just it's it's stressful you know because it's someone's expectations of us that we have to manage yeah and we're already trying to manage two businesses completely along you know everything else so yeah i i i think there's a time in a place for people to grow and i do think if you know you have a very specific weakness in your business definitely try and outsource it as soon as possible so that you could focus on where your strengths really long yeah this is a perfect example of a how we try to do things a little differently and b kind of what we were saying before about knowing yourself because we just wanna be an alternative to the advice out there that says in order to grow you have to grow team and that that might be true in order to grow to a certain degree but we again definitely know for a fact we can hit our new enough number without trying to grow our team and so we just wanna be an alternative in the business space to let people know if they're like us and you're yourself aware enough to know that managing people is something you don't wanna do in the day to day that's okay like i really think it's okay to know that because guess what if you force yourself to grow a team you're probably gonna be a bad boss because you don't you don't wanna be managing people and you don't wanna probably learn how to do it really well i don't wanna be a bad boss so i think we that's one of those trade offs that we talked about is like could we grow could we ten x our business if we grow a team no questions asked yes but we would also ten our expenses we would ten our expenses we would ten our headaches and i'd be doing something day to day that i know is not a a skill set or a a gifted area of mine and so that is a discipline that i say i will choose not to do that yeah i love that and as was talking it made me think of paul jarvis who i know he's a friend of yours and i used to listen to your podcast with him jason brilliant podcast his book company of wands this idea that you don't have to just keep growing and growing to have a you know a better business whatever better means to you i love the idea that and the reason i asked is because when i email teach teacher support and when i did email teach support it last year when you were traveling in around europe jason would literally be the one who was reply the emails that's valid it we we looked we actually found this number i didn't even realize it i've answered fifteen thousand support requests since tree has existed wow so i don't know how many that breaks down to in like days of the tree existing but it's it's one of those things that like i think it's a great number and i'm proud of it but it's also like a clear thing to me and we've this is one of our goals this year as we talked about on our own podcast is to hire a support person for t tree so that like i don't like i love answering your questions i wanna help you but i don't think ten years running teacher and i need to keep doing that and i think that that's an area where it's not my zone of genius and someone is going to do it better because i can actually already tell too and i think this is a a good lesson for anybody listening to this in any part of your business like i have less enthusiasm to respond to those messages and that's just something that happens over time you know you if you design squarespace sites for ten years eventually you're gonna be like i don't wanna design the squarespace sites anymore or i don't wanna do the implementation like i wanna do the design i want someone else to implement them and so you find someone to kinda fill that gap and so i think for me like the next step for tree is to maybe just have someone pretend to be me don't know but just to have someone who replaces me but has the enthusiasm to support course creators and people through their journey and using tea tree yeah and that's a perfect example too just to bring it back to what we were saying where again none of these rules are hard and fast you have to go i just i just went on this whole thing about how we know that growing our team is not something that we wanna do however you as a business owner you have to sit down and go okay which trade off is worth it so is it is it what's more important to us is it to keep the team small but jason's gonna be answering customer support requests for the rest of us life meeting yeah or is it to grow the team by one member of having a customer support person trying to really be diligent and trying to find like the right person and that's worth it to us and so you just you're always kind of doing that that calculation because you're never gonna just be able to adhere to your rules hard and fast all the time right it's just about that flexibility and figuring out as you evolve as a person how do i want my business to evolve yeah and i mean i i ask that question about the team because when you are talking about you doing and everything you are you know spinning you'll creating this wheel and then creating a anyone like from scratch and doing an over and over overnight it really is too like it's you youtube doing in the thing by yourself it's a it's a lot so if you don't mind i'm really interested to know what like your monthly revenue looks like from tea teacher tree today in comparison to when you first start out so let's give some context of so tree will turn the idea of tea tree turns ten this year it existing as a platform turns dine this year it has never ever had marketing so it doesn't have there's no articles there there's never been there's no seo strategy nothing it's had a website with a homepage a pricing page and then you could join so its intention was a side business forever which is now changing for us now that we have time and focus i'm saying all that because the number is not gonna be impressive and i wanna make sure people understand that takes the new uni unemployment number passive impressive to whom is a relative so teacher yeah teacher makes twelve thousand dollars on average a month right now and so it's gotten to that place again only through word so we're actually super proud of that number you know it it doesn't compare to the other course platforms but in a platform where like you have told someone you know about tree and they have signed up we've earned that trust with you and we feel really good about that and again that business making a hundred and forty four thousand dollars in revenue a year it's a pretty lean business as far as it goes and it's a pretty self sustain sustaining business like if we didn't build a single other feature moving forward i love our developers we're not gonna stop doing that but like we wouldn't have to have developers and like it could just exist and just have it may sense i also just wanna zoom out the lens and i want the listener to picture a a graph that is ten years long and it's starting at zero and going to twelve thousand dollars because i really feel like this takes our ethos of slow growth to like the next level yeah mh because when we say that we believe in you know that it's okay to take as long as you need to take in order to grow a business we really mean it because this business that we are equally i would say even are probably more excited now than one exactly what you're saying well no then it would then yeah like we're still ten years later still so invested in it but that's ten years to get it to twelve thousand dollars a month and again whether that means a lot of money or not a lot of money or whatever your expectation was of it i don't know like jason said i'm proud of the fact that we were able to grow it in such an organic way over such a long period of time because i think that speaks to the place that we wanna carve out in the business world which is like it you doesn't have to be hockey stick growth all the time yeah mh it it's amazing i'd actually i actually knew that already about tree in terms of the no mo thing i've forgotten it so i'm glad you mentioned it and by the way i am an affiliate and every time every month like a little bit of money he comes in and i'm like would century so exciting we dream money and we appreciate that like that's that's a huge thing i mean wandering aim has now turned into that too like we we do marketing and we do stuff are wondering if more than we do for tree but our affiliates the people who are wondering employee members are some of the most helpful and in helping grow the platform and what we've seen is it's not just help grow the platform and then we make more money and then like the community kind of dies it's like no it's it's great people bringing in great people like and we feel really lucky to have that both in tree and wanting and so i think anyway listen this is like you know our affiliates still a good business model absolutely we have two businesses that thrive from them and that are actually very healthy fun businesses to run with great people who wanna be there and wanna be doing the work and and having common things oh amazing if affiliate stuff is definitely something i wanna look into a little bit more this year so that gives me the motivation i need and then in terms of wondering aim fully in terms of that revenue monthly what is that looking like now so wandering meaningfully has an interesting pricing model as caroline alluded to earlier it started as a membership that was just a hundred dollars a month ongoing and we so it it evolved from a a project before that i mentioned called by my future and then we actually did a kind of like a preview of wondering if that was by our future and so was this idea that you basically bought like all of our stuff and then anything we create in the future for like a one time set price and so that price is fifteen hundred dollars and then we started wandering aim it it got up to two thousand dollar so right now wondering if you think about it it's just a two thousand dollar product coaching program yeah coaching program but we kinda sell it as like a lifetime yep so you can pay via a hundred dollar monthly payment or you can pay via a four hundred dollar per month payment paid off faster mh so the reason i say that is because our revenue goes up and down as people pay their memberships off and we love that so like one of my favorite things that i do a couple days every single week is i get to send someone an email and say you just finish paying up on you will never pay us another dollar for anything we create and they get everything we create in the future lifetime access to it and it's one of those moments that like i think you have when you hear back from me and tea tree support and it's like oh that's actually it's like oh this is actually a real thing like it wasn't just a note on the sales page like you you live eating and breathe this i'm like i'm actually not going to pay anymore there's no secret upsell into like a mastermind or anything crazy so anyway to get back to your question all the caveats on a revenue right now as of today i think wondering employees is making twenty seven thousand dollars per month in recurring revenue so we hit our enough goal in the end of twenty twenty one twenty twenty one which is thirty three thousand we crossed that thirty three thousand threshold at the end of twenty twenty one which was an amazing feeling yeah and then like we just said twenty twenty two wasn't a growth year for us and if and if you're gonna take a back seat because of our lifetime pricing model you're going to dip so that was why jason said all the caveats because you might be like oh you went backwards like you lost all these people and it's like no actually we were gaining people but if you don't gain at a rate like if if our twenty twenty two rate of new customers was not the same as our twenty twenty one you're gonna see that revenue number dip a little bit which is totally okay for us and we would so much rather kind of have that unique pricing model and and we have found we wouldn't recommend it to everyone i will say that we've done a a podcast episode on lifetime pricing to give some of those caveats i i think it's there are challenges to it for sure mainly the one that jason just mentioned which is you are gonna see that number dip and if you're you know kind of freaking out you might which we did early on like you know you start to see it go down you're like this is going with the we're comparing that to like when we were reinventing the wheel every five seconds so we were like i don't care the wheel is still turning it could be turning a little bit more slowly and then i'll just give it another kick and it'll start turning more quickly and like that we like that but yeah so we really love that that's amazing and so how long has wandering aim fully been running now from like beginning to now march of twenty eighteen was the first nikki may was our first buyer thanks nikki she she was the very first person who bought wandering gameplay and so we do we had a couple different various versions of membership and like monthly launches but now we have pretty solid system that we've really honed and has worked well as it especially proved last year while we were traveling full time we do two launches a year spring and fall two enrollment periods and that's where all of our members end up joining us and our affiliates can invite people year round which is kinda like one nice caveat of like that they have a friend like we don't make them wait for an enrollment which is which is fun and we we've we've just found that like we didn't do that in the beginning but then people be like hey like my friends here really wants to get him right now we're like well that would be crappy of us to to like if we were the friend to be like i to wait three like i'm not gonna join then so yeah that that's how that business model has evolved so two rolling in periods every year we feel really good about it we we now help people hopefully see the value in like caroline was saying like you get the wheel built you stop creating all the new things you really hone the process of people to discover the wheel exists and to know the value of the wheel and to understand the benefits of the wheel and and that's something we've had to learn and we're still learning like you we wanna sell tree and wandering and we see all the stuff that we've poured into both all the features all the courses the road map all this but that's really not why someone buys why someone buys because we tell them like wondering if it's gonna help you have more fun in your business it's gonna help you carve out more free time for the things you want in life and it's hopefully gonna help you like feel some more balanced and just feel like you're not every single month going what am i gonna work like no i know they're gonna give you one thing in their monthly coaching i'm gonna get to enjoy like focus on my business and that gives me clarity and so i think those are the things that we have continued to learn as well and another mistake is just we haven't talked enough about the benefits we've talked more about like this is yours yeah this is a a membership program this is a coaching program like you gotta join it's like yeah have why and you get these calls and you just you spend all your time talking about what's in it instead of what's in it for the person yeah yeah yeah absolutely i mean i i i think people listen in world so relieved and me too hair that you started off was it how many years ago was it i've was five it'll be five years march in a month yeah you so you know those years in there that just sort of blend together yeah yeah right exactly yeah so it's been five years of this of this kind of just continuation of just working on this thing and then watching it become what you wanted it to be and it didn't necessarily start off like you know you launched and was like six figure launch and yay and wow you know yeah what a relief and what this way and i i just to underscore that point i want anyone listening to know that there was a point probably in actually i know exactly when it was it was late twenty nineteen there was this point where we were still doing the monthly model of the recurring model we had yet to do we had yet to transition to the our only buying option was the two thousand dollars a month payment plan option or not a month two thousand dollars total payment plan option so we had yet to really get the pricing right and there was this moment we we had yet to even come up with the coaching like the positioning of it being a coaching program we were still kind of marketing it as a membership of you get access all this stuff there was this moment where it was not working and it was you know we financially too we were in a really precarious place and and we were just like we didn't do it like we didn't figure it out and we almost so close to going back on exactly what we told you our biggest mistake was we were this close to going let's blow it all up let's create a new thing let's we know we can make something we know we'll at least get drum up excitement about a new thing right and this is what this is what we so easily fall back into the comfort of it's so much easier to get people excited about a new thing than it is to do the hard work of repositioning an older thing or getting yourself re excited about an old thing so we lean too much on that novelty and it's just a flash in the pan and then you've created a new wheel but the wheel doesn't turn you know and so we were this close to falling back on that and we just i remember the meeting so so specifically and i was just like what if we're this close yeah like what if we are this close to figuring it out and just because we didn't spend enough time trying to solve a problem better trying to understand our customer better trying to let's apply that new build a new thing energy into this same thing let's just put it back into this thing and that was when we came up with the idea of okay what who is our person what do they struggle with and and the struggle at that moment in time that we felt was really pal was the notion that there's so many things to focus on in an online business there's email marketing there's growing your audience there's getting your foundation right there's coming up with offers how do you come up with it there's a million things to focus on that people were being felt pulled in a million different directions and so i said what if we just solve that one problem by giving someone one thing to focus on every month let's let's pour that new energy into creating one curriculum every month let's get on a call we do live video we love live video let's do that and now in retrospect it's like yeah obviously it's a coaching program like you do calls like that's so obvious but at the time we were like why okay and so we reposition it from a membership to a coaching program we didn't know that it would even sell so we actually created a smaller tier which was a six month option so you could do the six month option that was just the coaching for six hundred dollars so again it's the same price it's a hundred dollars a month at that point but because you're marketing it as a program someone doesn't have to make the decision every month of whether they cancel or keep going yes so six month coaching program you could still pay the two thousand if you wanted to get access to all the stuff and when i tell you that was the turning point in our business and we were this close to not coming up with it we were this close to just scratching the whole thing and starting over and so i only underscore that because if there's someone listening right now and they feel frustrated because they're they haven't broken through that financial threshold yet and they're considering scrapping the whole thing this wasn't me being like don't do that but just like take that little extra pause to go is there still some juice that i can squeeze out of this is there still maybe some un ex territory in terms of marketing or repositioning or solving the problem better or making the benefit more clear to my audience that you haven't explored yet and maybe just maybe just try that piece before you decide to scrap it i love that okay and i actually feel like you're talking to me at trade because i got that yeah yeah yeah i need this advice so the one you think about this mistake the idea of creating new products over and over again and just we relaunch in like launching new things over and over again instead of just sticking to your one core business offer how did this mistake make you and help you get to where you are today yeah i i think it really especially once we had the turning point like caroline just saying into a coaching program it started to work and so we started to see people were signing up when we were doing our launches and they were really excited and then they were showing up and we were starting to get into this cycle of like okay we would we would launch we would be able to position as a coaching program we would say we're solving the problem like one thing to focus on every month and like not overdo it and we would execute on that thing and people would give us the feedback that this was fantastic and this is great and so it was almost the like return to us of hey you you did it this way before and it didn't really work now you changed you made a mistake and you learn from that mistake did something different it's working keep doing that thing and so i think that really kind of like changed the way that we because like caroline said we're we're idea of people we come off ideas all the time non nonstop always new ideas but it really helped us i think create this filter where it's like okay we have a new idea of like is this going to serve the we wanna run a calm business we wanna focus on our enough number we wanna make the existing customers we have happy we don't wanna overload our work schedule so that we're working eight ten twelve hour days like we wanna have a much like more spacious life and no adding a new project this new idea is not going to do that and so let's not do that and so i think that that was really the big turning point at least from my side of things of just like it showed me that we don't need to keep making all these new things we can just keep promoting wandering if as a thing that people like and understand and it will work as a business and the revenue will grow and then we can just keep doing our two launches a year which feel very easy at this point i say easy in quotes but like they feel honed in it feels like we have a a system for it to process whereas in the beginning it was just like please buy email buy email you know it was just over and over again we've all been there yeah yeah and i think it just it definitely what what i learned from it too is just the power and i know i've said it a few times now but the power of of empathy for your customer putting yourself in the shoes of your customer and really trying to understand what they're struggling with and sometimes it feels like that's marketing one zero one but i think it becomes so easy to forget because we live inside our own heads and so you know we this is not our phrase but we've heard it before we've said it many times but still it's our yeah but we often remind ourselves of this phrase that says you can't read the label from inside the jar and so it's like i know that a lot of our customers they can't see what is perhaps not working in their business because they're just inside the jar and so our job is to re read that label and to be that coaching program that can hopefully point out some of this stuff that that might seem simple but it's not simple when you're in the thick of it and you feel like you're just like falling through the quick sand of your business all the time but for us to step in and kind of say like hey did you remember to put yourself in the shoes of your customer and understand what their problems are and be were like i always forget that part you know yeah and and for a long time we actually thought this label of being a coaching program because you know there are people who i do feel like sometimes just decide that they're gonna be coaches without necessarily too much intention paid to what that really means or how they're really gonna help people or the experience that it's experience we don't come at being coaches because we took a coaching program to teach us to be coaches we come from ten years of running all my businesses in different barrier and that's sort of the different perspective that we wanted to bring to it but i only mention that because sometimes i think we we get in our own way a little bit by some of these conception that we have and we fought it for a long time and then we asked ourselves what really are we doing here and it's exactly what i just said it's helping people it's it's being that person who can look from the outside looking in and remind people of the things that that they need to be reminded of and to motivate people and to get them rein inspire re inspired in their business and like that's a coach so like let's just call spade to spade and say we're a coaching program you know mh it's just it's amazing listening to you both in your journey and one thing i've noticed is your content marketing is just mind blowing good you're really intentional about where you wanna be and where you don't wanna be e g you used to be on instagram and your content was amazing on instagram but you decided to step back from instagram so your account is still there but you don't really use it right now you don't market certainly don't launch on there but you do launch over email and you have your podcast and i think an i think you podcast your newsletter and your youtube right or maybe the the strongest like three areas where you really focus on i feel like one of the benefits of focusing on just quan aim and letting go of all the other stuff is that your content your marketing just becomes so much more focused is was that the case and and i would love for you to give me some insight into how you plan your content marketing around you know i want you love to tell you that you can start first part it yeah i think it's hard to tell people if you're at the beginning of your journey social media is almost a must have at this point right because it's just like that's where everybody is that's where the attention is but for us who have privilege an advantage and an email list that we built for years we didn't have to be on instagram anymore and and we didn't know that but we did have the data that like eleven percent of our new wanting employee members heard about us through instagram and i think we just had this like really big moment at the end of twenty twenty one before going on this full time year of travel where we just like caroline was basically running the instagram account fully and you know i would be there for the reels that was really it and it's it's like the lion makeup comes full sports well circle just being an idiot that's me on your set of rolls sorry they the said those did not get enough on instagram break still be doing it i was a little jealous so yeah they didn't get a lot of play my content plan of that but we we just looked at this and we said okay if we lost eleven percent of our revenue and didn't use instagram would our lives be better for it and we're like yes it's it's very stressful to like constantly be in the hamster wheel of fighting the algorithm and things changing and oh now we we don't do posts we do stories oh now we don't do stories now we do rules oh now we don't you know what not to mention just the mental health effects of being on it in the first place i told you we love leaving money on the table yeah this is another perfect example love it yeah but i think i think what and is exactly what you you surmise which is when we removed instagram from the equation of time spent because it takes if anybody uses social media for their business you know how much maybe you don't your time in that it takes a lot of time out of your day but once you remove it you go i now have like three to six hours in my day where i'm not scrolling i'm not creating i'm not posting i'm not in the dms what can i do at that time and so for us we basically just said well let's turn that time into the strongest email newsletter series that we can create every single week for intentional online business owners and just like give them a really good email newsletter that we spend hours on like i think the amount of hours we spend a news there which shock people like it's probably every week ten to fifteen hours for one newsletter and then it's also from there it's like okay we don't do a lot of editing in our podcast we don't do a lot of production but we do a lot of thought and caroline writes like very thoughtful notes now i episode if we're up to me we would just sit down on the mic and it would be like mike what's going on this morning which it often turns into that but i like to let start from a place of note we definitely saw a turn in just the the interest in people sticking around for the podcast and like the length of listen of an episode when we started doing that and so i think all of that to kind of wrap up my my part part of this which is stepping away from instagram gave us the time back to then invest in other things and so if you're a person who's early in your business you may not have the luxury of doing that but i would also say maybe challenge the assumption if you have the ability to go well i've got six months runway kind of like set up you know so that i can build this business that i wanna build let me try and do it without social media let me try and do all the other things that i can do in writing articles and starting an email newsletter and starting a podcast starting a youtube channel investing in pinterest marketing like all the other options besides just the shiny ones that everyone's g toward that are gonna affect your mental health and leave you maybe burnt out in a couple months anyway and this is also why we did a a episode on our podcast called your social media off ramp actually don't know if that's the title of it it's probably just we're not convex we should we should reach but i really wanted to record this episode because i wanted to acknowledge the fact that it would be bad advice for us as business coaches to just go like don't be on social media and use that as a blanket statement right because someone who's starting out is like well where am my it's gonna take months to years for my seo juice to start paying off or all these other ways right not that there aren't ways but we recognize that social media is low hanging fruit for people getting off the ground however the reason we wanted to call your off ramp is because just because you're out a season in your business where like you may feel like that's the right move for you doesn't it mean that you can't create a plan to get off in the future you know it's like it's it's goes back to that intentional piece of if you think that this is not good for your mental health believe the fact that there are people out here including us who run businesses and now going on over a year off of social media and really you could argue that like it only contributed to eleven percent of our business like it right it's it's we have the numbers to show that it it was not a huge contributor so the amount of time spent on it was not worth the return so there are other ways yeah and then going back to your question about how do we plan our content i love planning and so we actually at the end of twenty twenty i think we made the move over to notion i would like to get credit jason gets credit because i introduced you to notion in two thousand like eighteen yeah we laugh about this often because jason's was like hey you soon think called notion it's like and then just proceeded to give the worst explanation what didn't understand what it was and don't forget what it was okay cool like it can do like spreadsheet stuff and like also google docs i'm not currently using it but i think you should because you're the productivity so person in our i i discovered it in twenty twenty and i'm like babe this is mind blowing i think this can really change our lives and he's like hey i told you about that i'm like yeah he did it a bad job i did it you did about i also didn't use it after that i just saw i didn't thought it looked cool so in case people are curious about our tool we use ocean and we love it and so what that looks like is it kind of our strategic process starts with zooming out and then zooming in so what i mean by that is on a yearly level zooming way out wow at the top of the year we assess all of our marketing channels and we say what are our priorities and so because we you know on a yearly basis we're establishing that that financial goal we're saying is our enough number the same cool what does that look like in terms of launches how many sales are we going for like we really break it down starting with that financial goal then we say what are the content channels that we think will help us get there usually email is always gonna be top for us because that that's just the way our business runs and so we say okay what does that look like we're gonna keep like and and we just basically established like a top level strategy for each channel so we're like okay great newsletters i think we we stumbled a a couple years ago into this idea of doing series so instead of having like a a newsletter that's this you know kind of the same idea we do like an eight week series a six week series and that gives us freedom to play with different ideas and so okay and so we just basically go great we're gonna keep doing we go podcast podcasts what's the podcast gonna be this year last year it was literally just kind travel updates and some business sprinkled in this year it's like hey i think i wanna go back to doing more real time stuff where we just we think back to what we worked on the week before we come up with kind of a theme that emerged we we kind of deliver that as the podcast episode which is kinda cool because this year the podcast feels a little bit more behind the scenes you see we we're in a different season of business this time because we have all this creative energy because we didn't work you know create new things last year and so we at the top of the year that's when we're establishing that youtube that's where we go okay we don't know yet and that's tug the shoulders and and that's okay we just go i know yet all i know is that it's not as important as the podcast and the newsletter cool let's just you're mark that for now and just really quick the reason why youtube gets that kind of deli litigation is because it's kinda similar to instagram where it's like we could spend yep ten twenty hours a week working on a youtube video but for it to only get a couple hundred views and for us to not really love the process of creating those videos why keep doing that like let's put that time and attention elsewhere and not do that thing and i think where you'll you may see us really crank up youtube is maybe in the second quarter of the year because well let me get to that so that's yearly so then we go youtube i don't know instagram do we wanna go do we wanna stay off stay off cool check so top level strategy on the yearly level then we check in quarterly and we say what are our quarterly goals this is usually where the the emphasis is on projects what big projects or initiatives are we trying to create for us we really wanna get our traffic to our website back up because it's kind of been dwindling over the years without new articles fresh in a good way because i think we had a bunch of articles that were driving traffic that were not really that like i wrote a social media detox article in two thousand fourteen and that was on the numb it was the number one result on google for a long time for taking a break from social media or quitting social media and while that's kind of close to our audience it's really not our ideal audience so it's actually been nice that it's it's come down because we don't just want inflated numbers on our website we'd rather have like well way less numbers that are way more qualified to we want right so at the quarterly level we say projects so okay a big project is to get new fresh articles on the website that are attracting our ideal audience then we go how does content play into this how can we amplify our projects or or how do our content channels kind of strategically fit in that's where youtube comes in and we go oh you know what i think we could experiment with every time we publish a new article turning it into a video linking to it that could seed some of the traffic early on so then we'll go great q1 one is for creating the new articles q two is gonna be youtube amplification so then it's a little bit of prioritization on those levels right and i know this is sounding like a lot but truly it's really just setting the time aside for like an hour at the top of the year an hour every quarter right so so i'm saying a lot of the stuff that feel strategic but like it's really just you're marking that timing in your calendar to think strategically that's all it takes so quarterly is projects monthly is where you break it down into let me put the episodes on the calendar let me come up with rough ideas podcast we don't have to do that anymore because are the way it's working this year is we record on tuesdays we sit down for thirty minutes we talk about what was the theme last week we write down our notes then we just get into recording so that takes that off the table not a ton of planning involved but the you know other stuff like the email newsletter again we set aside one hour and we planned out the entire series for the entire year we have the series planned that's the first this is the first year we've ever had that so i just wanna to be clear thing that if you don't have it nailed in like do not take five years it might take you five years to get there the only thing i want people to take away is two things number one if you can get some sort of project management system going because i'm the type of person who like i tried to keep it all in my head i tried and that was or in like disparate places a note here a google doc here of this here maybe asana and i never found the centralized system and until i found the tool that worked for my brain it was a game changer also we have an in article on how we use notion if anybody wants it's wandering info dot com slash notion i'm not sure if you do show notes or not but yes very easy to find yeah it's it's our exact system so it's it's literally everything caroline saying we call the soar system and we get you eagle emoji with it which makes my hard happy but it it goes into detail of kind of like what we're talking about and how we kind of set everything up there yep and then so on the monthly that's where i can i have a content calendar so i can see these are the podcast episodes these are the newsletters that we have this is what we're doing with our projects and then as we tackle things we're just checking them off change in the status and then we you know we get into busy season like anybody else right were you like have a perfect plan set for the month and then like something falls into lapping like oh now the whole monk feels derailed and that's okay instead of it derail us we go okay let's rep prioritize okay what is this week's focus what is next week's focus and then when we get into super busy season we do daily meetings so we'll just do a meeting every morning or even maybe at the end of the day sometimes it's both and we go okay what what do we need to get done today to not feel super overwhelmed like what what are the three to get cut yeah what can we let go of and i i think the one of the things that we've just definitely learned over the years is a lot of times you you you feel like you're playing business because you're like okay i'm sitting in my computer and i'm i'm doing stuff but it would be much more beneficial to actually sit back and go like let me like take my ego go out of this and like maybe i don't know what i'm doing like let's just chat about the day like what do we need to actually get done today instead of me like sitting here like trying to like brute force my to do list to get done like i'm not feeling good today or i don't feel motivated today and and i think for so many people they might have the luxury like we have each and we talk about this often like it is truly we are very lucky that we have opposite skill sets we have similar brains and like ideas and strategy and we can really work together and if you can find a business buddy if you can find someone that you can work with if you can find anybody you can do c working with it becomes so helpful to then have that person even just to like we call it now vent latte whenever we wanna just like something went wrong and we just wanna talk about it which just like i need vent latte right now and it's not a place where like the other person helps it's not a place we has very specific rules we are putting the frustrations here it is not here yeah you just look just wanting to myself i'm pointing to go okay alright you that thing okay but those those subtle things i think really help even if you work for yourself just creating little and processes that you can better understand how you work because you may be someone who gets really motivated on a monday and like you need to put all of your heavy work at the beginning of the week don't put any heavy work on a friday because you're just gonna know by the of the week you're fried and like you don't have the time for it so i think it's just a lot of like the self awareness part of working for yourself and understanding how you work and not trying to go oh well this is how six figure per month entrepreneur work so i need to try and use that system or this is how jason caroline work so i need to do that exactly i put it through your own filter yeah that was amazing thank you so much for sharing and i'm i don't actually use notion yeah i tried it and i got into it and then i got out of it and i was like oh okay it's not from me right but yeah you wanna check out your system so i'm gonna go have a look school i knows maybe there's like one or two little things that you're like oh i can apply that to what i use and what's good for my brain right exactly this has been so amazing i've got one more question before i let you go what do you want everyone listening to learn from your experience yeah a perfect batch cinnamon rules starts the know mh my my thing is just like in everything that you do ask yourself how can you do it differently so it's really great to learn from successful people who have businesses that make a lot of revenue and have big teams and beautiful websites and and that's all well and good but like they're already doing it that way what's a way that you can do it that's only something that feels unique to you or that feels interesting to you or just feels different like it doesn't have to be you know this unicorn business that like no one's ever heard of you can still be a squarespace template designer but you can do it differently you know like every template comes with a video of your cat like helping build the temple like it's just silly stuff but like those are the things that people remember that help you stand out from everybody else and i think that that is something for us that like we're we're online business coaches like there's so many of those but we're onboarding online business coaches who talk about enough numbers and we talk about living spacious lives and having more fun in business and you know spending longer periods of time working on things that most people want you to and those are the differentiator that people see and go okay well yeah i'm gonna buy that program because it resonates more with me than the like make six figures in sixty days because i've tried that and it doesn't work and i just feel crappy about it and so i think whatever it is that you're trying to do just keep asking yourself maybe if it's not working or even if it is just how can i continue to do this differently in a way that really resonates with me and like matches my values love that thank you what too so mine is i think the one thing that i would want people to take away is kind of a little bit of an inconvenient truth but i think you can't think your way to your ideal business you have to act your way to your ideal business wow and the reason i say inconvenient is because i know that people are probably listening to this right now to get wisdom right they're looking for insights they're looking for things to apply to their own business and i think that's wonderful and i i get tremendous value out of that as well but the unfortunate part is you can take all the nuggets that you want from this episode and you can try to throw it into your your plan for for where you're gonna steer your business but the only way to see if those nuggets are even applicable to your to your unique path is you have to take action you have to risk learning your own lessons do you have to risk making your own mistakes and i think normalizing that and and going like maybe you don't make our pitfalls because we just we mentioned them out to you but you're gonna make your own and when you do just remind yourself that that's perfectly normal and actually it's a really good thing because that means you're one step closer to your ideal version of your business so just this idea of take all the wisdom that you can but don't don't take it all and get so stuck in trying to think your way to to your ideal business get out there and take action and make mistakes and do it your way mother thank you so much for coming on this show and for spending them amount of time you have talking to me for this show how can people find you if they wanna stay connected give drop the urls babe very easy everything would be at wandering gameplay dot com if you wanna get on a newsletter that's maybe the thing we probably preach the most that we spend the most time on so wandering info dot com slash newsletter especially if you're an online business owner who is just looking to be more intentional if you're a client business owner who's trying to transition to digital products we're really talking about that a lot this year that's our big focus even our positioning is changing on our website here soon so wondering if dot com slash newsletter and then if you want our not ugly anymore online course software that him on uses you can go to t tree dot c and you can sign up for a free trial and try fully featured you can use mon video code yes do that show notes yes do that better use that affiliate yeah that'll make your course better faster amazing amazing the theater could been just like using that link yeah and then if you like hearing our the sound of our voices now if you like talking about all types of things like this that we've had in this conversation you can also find our podcast podcasts which is called what is it all for so just search that on your favorite podcast player of choice and it is a brilliant podcast so go go listen to the podcast thank you so much jason and caroline as i said i've been following you for years so i already feel like i know you and it's it's just been my pleasure chatting to you and and picking your brains so thank you so much for being thank you for inviting us this was so fun and thank you for asking such wonderful questions and it was really enjoyable yeah soon thank you caroline and jason don't just talk the talk they walk the walk they live for intentional slow and steady sustainable business growth that lets you create a beautiful life you can truly appreciate and enjoy i mean they just moved from california portugal after a year of travelling around europe how's that for love and life after listening to this interview i think you'll agree there are really special and much needed part of this online business community they're exactly what we need when you consider all the grow more earn more spend more hire more move fast break things business advice we're getting today i'm all for intentional decision making and intentional growth i initially plan for twenty twenty three to be an idea for me one filled with lots of new projects new ideas and new experiments but if speaking to the z has taught me anything it's that there's a time for creating and then there's a time for book down and optimizing what's already working in your business so it can work even better so my plans have changed this year i'll be focusing on optimizing my existing offers and services as for the z you might have heard caroline mention their next exciting venture having kids iv one cannot wait to see them become parents you're listening at two mistakes that made me amy mario and if you look this episode take screenshot post it on instagram and tell everyone you know that this is the podcast to listen to and tag me at email ko so we can say hi and so i can share your post you can find the links to everything i've mentioned today in the show notes next time on mistakes that made me i didn't really feel accepted in the industry i felt like an outsider i felt quirky i'm like i wasn't taking like these amazing photos on the beach of me living my laptop lifestyle like wasn't doing any of that and i thought like well then who's gonna buy from me if i'm not popular who's gonna buy from me if i i'm not promoting this big flashy life like here i am waking up at six am to go take a bus right like this is the opposite of flashy popular and all these things but i just realized that there are more people who were like me then who were out there taking photos on the beach

hey quick thing i'm on maternity to leave having my third baby right now so the next few months of podcast content is gonna be a mixture of me appearing on other pee podcast sharing things you've never heard me share before on this podcast never before publicly released extended interviews with the stakes that make me guests like belinda weaver jordan gill steve fallen and more and of course mistakes that made these aldi book good episodes some of my favorite interviews that you might have missed but really should catch up upon just a reminder that even though i'm our maternity leave my email agency is not we work with business owners like you and we're still taking on new clients an email and launch project so if you're ready to take your email list from has potential to highly profitable head over to man copy c dot com and get in touch with our amazing team of experts and strategist the link the show notes okay let's get into today's episode hey welcome to mistakes that made me the podcast that ask extraordinary business owners to share their biggest business mistake so you know what not to do on your road to success mistakes that made me is brought to you by the hope hubspot podcast network the audio destination for business professionals i'm you manage my earlier host and this episode is not an interview instead i'm sharing thirty two of my favorite things to celebrate my thirty second birthday so i should kind of start this off by just saying that i'm really not much of a birthday celebrate i'm not that friend who be offended if you forgot my birthday like i really don't care it's always nice year at birthday tax but i i'm not that person i don't expect gifts i don't expect people to make a big k i don't expect that because it's my birthday like we need to spend the entire month celebrating like it's i honestly for a long time didn't understand like the hu har on birthdays not a big help by wear her birthdays right but then i watched an episode of gilmore girls which i absolutely love and i've seen this episode multiple times i still remember the first time it made an impact on me like the specific line rory has just made logan's breakfast and just made a really big deal of his birthday she's made in breakfast she's like made it roy to his better always had breakfast in but like the whole thing is just she's gone be a little bit over the top for him and he says logan b rory boyfriend you don't need to know all the characters you don't need to know what's going on the story just know that it's logan's birthday and rory his girlfriend has made a big hu hard about it and so logan says somebody's pretty into this whole birthday think and then rory says well if by birthday think you mean the celebration of the miracle of your birth the anniversary of the day when this world went from being a world without logan hunts to a world with logan then yes i'm pretty into it and that one line and we all know if you watch gilmore girls gilmore girls is just masterpiece from that to finish so every line is amazing in gilmore girls but this one line specifically made me understand the relevance of birthdays and why it's special and so i guess i now well i still don't do a whole lot i now just take a moment to be thankful and i make a point of thanking god that i am here that i am happy that i am in the world i know that a lot of people don't get to reach their next birthday and so i just kind of switched my attitude from being really completely different to at least just being grateful and expressing gratitude and and you know i don't expect everyone else to celebrate me but i i now like to celebrate myself so i give myself a day off and i allow myself to just do something nice it's just for me and so i'll be taking the day off and i will my i might go for a massage i have planned dinner with my friends and i'm also gonna be spending the night in a hotel of by myself which is exciting so that wasn't actually a birthday present it was an reed present because just happened however i decided to make it coincide with my birthday so that i can have a night to myself in a hotel how exciting okay super excited about that so yeah that's that's really the story of i guess the history of me and birthdays right i have decided to do this episode in a way that is basically sharon thirty two of my favorite things because by the time you listen to this i'll be thirty two years old which is still crazy to me by the way i feel super young like life starts twenty many thighs right except maybe if you have a baby twenty two like i did but really okay life gets so super enjoyable in your face i feel like so i feel super young but also can't help but notice that i'm eight years away from forty which is really just like wow because you know as a kid i remember they're looking up at the thirty year olds was thinking oh your ancient and now i'm one of those totally not ancient we still have our entire lives ahead of us and i will say that so far this decade has been my favorite of them all if you follow me on social media but you should be if you're not because you would get to you'll get to contribute to episodes like this if find me on instagram or linkedin if you follow on social media you'll know that i actually asked for your import on what i should talk about as part of this kind of my favorite things episodes so here's what i decided to do and i did get a little bit of inspiration from someone else so it totally wasn't just my idea but i'm gonna talk about thirty two of my favorite things but i'm going to split that into eight categories and in each category i'll share four of my favorite things from that category so here are the categories of my favorite things the first one and i've tried to keep it business were also fun right the first one the first category is favorite hires that i've made not people necessarily but like functions i guess like things that i've paid for the second category is my favorite business podcasts the third is my favorite business tools slash software my fourth is my favorite business owners then my favorite mentors my favorite sources of inspiration my favorite ways to decompress or unwind and then finally the eighth one of my favorite tv shows though i'd bring it back to to you know some fun some light lighthearted fun at the end also thank you to the people who helps me come up with some of those ideas favorite mental favorite source of inspiration favorite ways to decompress unwind those were all things that came from you so thank you for contributing in okay stay with me we'll be right back after this short break we're gonna have so much fun with this episode so stay tuned is it just me or does it feel like the marketing playbook is always changing much like the age old question to skinny jean or not to skinny jean marketing strategies come and go and then come back again i cannot keep up luckily hope spot makes it their job to keep marketers on trend and on track to hit their goals the twenty twenty four state of marketing report is the only in one guide for everything happening in this year and how marketers can best approach at all hubspot surveyed more than fourteen hundred marketing pros across the world and curated the top trends they're thinking about sure there's ai but there's also so much more the report covers everything from increase in awareness and engagement to ensure privacy and boost in efficiency and growth you'll get all the info you need to shape your strategy for the year and keep on winning into next year don't get caught hopping on all trend visit hopes hubspot dot com slash state of marketing to get your free copy of the report let's get started first category favorite hires okay so i just hired someone to create a brand voice messaging guide for me now this kind felt like a luxury before i did it and now that i've done it it's actually so crucial just so foundational i've been hiring people and and working with people hiring know the writers work whether the writers bring them on projects with me for about a year and a half now and i'm just i guess i'm i'm really blessed that i work with a bunch of really talented copywriter so they didn't really need my brand voice and messaging guide they just kinda got it but then i started working with someone who i won't like tell you who but i started working with someone where it was just difficult for them to grasp my tone to get me to get what i'm about and just so you know it wasn't that i needed them to pretend to be me or anything they weren't right in as me but they were right as part of my team and so and it just felt so kind of misaligned the way that they were would communicate externally and even internally sometimes honestly but externally was just didn't sound like my brand and like at this point i'm not even talking about i'm talking about my brand it just didn't sound like my brand and so i was very clear to me that's kinda something needed to be done at the same time i realizing this i was also hiring a website agency to work on my new website which i'll tell you a bit more about that in a second and i realized it could be super helpful for them to also have my brand voice and messaging guide and then i was also hiring a photographer and although the photographer obviously is working on stuff visually i figured you know what she could probably do with my brand voice and messaging guide as well because it's so much more than just about my brand voice so let me tell you a bit about what's actually inside i mean it's i i won't tell you everything because it's a forty five page dot and i do just want to credit the copyright if you did this because she's amazing she's called natalie gates she's in canada her website is natalie gates dot c a she's absolutely amazing i honestly she's on the best highest that i have made i wanna say hi i mean she's not on my team anything and she has her own business i hide her to do this brand voice and messaging guide for me and honestly it was one of the best hires i've made in my five and half as a business she is so good at what she does highly recommend so she created this amazing forty five page brand voice a messaging guide which clearly just so much work went into this and when i tell you she pulled what's in my mind out of my mind and into this stock i can now send this to new team members who i'm onboarding i can send this to the copyright copywriter who are writing in store for me as my brand i just have this extremely valuable guide that helps everyone in my team just get on the same page which i'm super excited about so natalie kind of created this this guide in it it starts off by explaining my core messaging about email topical positioning brand personality industry stance mission brand promise values differentiator our audience we have two audiences primary and secondary voice guide them voice guidelines this is super interesting voice guidelines is things like like tone and style how to sound like my brand and bear in mind now we're not trying to sound like me i'm trying to not this is not just about me anyone anymore it's not like right this is not about right in like amount of sound in like man this is about creating a brand personality and honestly a brand identity for email copy go so it's not just about me so it really is about you know how to create email copy goes tone and and style and and what we want to sound like the vibes we wanna give off one of the things that i really like is is trends set not trend followers this is one of our like the key elements of our brand identity trends set not trend followers clever thought leaders on ap ourselves we do it our own way not how the world tells us to our goal is set the conversation and shift perspectives whilst staying true to ourselves that means we don't get caught up in online business ads or unfit expectations how this comes through we push against standard advice we disagree with depending on the topic we can do it with a light hearted but still passionate tone and then she gives samples and oh i just love it like so much work went into this and i have to say like i i i also worked really hard on natalie brief and then she also did a really great job at like pulling this information from me and then like code if i it for me in this guide i'm just so passionate and i'm just so in love with this and i just feel like this is a really i you can probably hear i'm super passionate about it and this is gonna be i think really great for the future of of my business things like a tone and style as well something that we that we hit upon was opinionated but also bright passionate but polite well for out kind charming we've got thoughts we say what we say and we mean what we say while our delivery is clear we also tend to soften it a little this is especially true and client in internal communication what comes through in our marketing this is the most relevant when we're saying something controversial or talking about how awesome we are if you're writing something spicy approach it confidently but politely so there's just so much in this guide i mean that wasn't even like wasn't even half of it as she goes on to talk about like one liners brand v vocab imam specifically me man personality references how to sound like you ivan go how not to sound like man copy coke internal communication oh my god grammar and style choices services origin story but off just so much so that was an amazing amazing hire i'm very happy with that so next up my next favorite hire website agency i hired a website agency i did because although i love my current website and if you've seen my current website i mean i hope you love it as well at this this was a website that i created back in i mean i say i created no people who created it created it back in twenty twenty tea no twenty twenty one and i love my website currently i were old copy for it i love it so much it's got me a good number of clients in that you know i've had clients say to me this is like this is specifically why i love most about your your website the copy was just like spot on made me really like he made me wanna get in touch and so i'm very proud of my current website however i'm very aware of the fact that when i did write the copy for this website i had just really gotten into email strategy and i didn't feel like much of an email expert and now that i've been doing this for like i've been in business for nearly oh my gosh nearly six years this year in a few months will be six years but i've been an email expert specifically an email strategist for four years and so i know i just know myself so much better now i know the industry is so much better i know whom i know my ideal clients so much better so i feel like the website that i have now got me to six figures which is which is great and i'm i'm so happy with but i feel like it's it's done its job now and now it's time to move on to another website that's gonna take me to mid six figures and maybe maybe seven who knows so yeah so i hide a website i just need to do that for me they're doing the copy they're doing the design i'm they're doing the build and i'm super excited about the book i don't have to do to write my own website because i mean it would just it would take me six months like it did the first time versus when i'm doing it for client and it takes four weeks because of course it's so hard to prioritize what what you what your business needs and it's hard to prioritize the stuff that they needs to do for yourself right so i had someone else to do it and i'm so happy i did so far i'm living the process so we've just done the briefing we've done like us website strategy call and my website copyright is currently basically like piecing in this all together i'm figuring out like the navigation of the website how it's all gonna work so yeah it's been a great process so far but we have so much to do still we still have well kristen still has to write the copy i believe the seo research has been done by now she still has to write the copy and then into that design it and then build it too i'm very excited about this projects and so hopefully in a few months you'll see my new website and also the podcast doesn't have much of a presence on my current website because i was just kinda limited in what i'm able to do with it right now and so this new website will have its own dedicated space for the podcast and the podcast will hopefully really shine which is exciting to okay next favorite hire i hired a photographer to do my new brand photos from my website because if i'm i just thought at this point it if i'm getting a new website there's no way i can have my photos from twenty twenty on my new website this same tenfold i've been recycling four years like i'm done now we're done we're done thank you so much for serving your purpose we are done so i hired an amazing for photographer oh my gosh she's amazing and just so much thor went into just so much effort so much love went into this from like choosing the locations yes multiple she chose one location i chose the other for the the brief process the like the pinterest board i even sent her the brand voice and messaging guy that natalie did because again even though my photographer was doing like visual stuff i felt like it would really help her understand my brand and it did natalie is that good and we just had the best time she was so great at directing to me helping me figure out like what to do how to do it we talked through props i came prepared to these thought sheets with like these huge these two huge bags and i'm like eight different outfits like just so much thought and effort went into this and also investment as well and then of course once i invested in the photographer i usually should know what means that i really struggle like fashion wise okay so if i didn't wear an art buyer which is the long kind of islamic dress that i wear if i didn't wear that and before i wore this because i haven't always want you would seen me outside in just like jeans and a hoodie like nice jeans and a nice hoodie but that's it like and you that's it and so i've have never been someone really who dresses up or who feels comfortable dressing up i i love dressing up for a good wedding or you know something like that a good party but it has to be for an occasion i don't just like go around dressing up because i enjoy it i actually despise clothes shopping i despise shopping for clothes i despise the whole thing and i despise just dressing it up for no reason i can't do it can't do it so i thought well if i've invested this much in a photographer oh my gosh what am i going to wear i was like okay i'm gonna have to tired personal stylist now so i did i hired a virtual personal stylist and oh my gosh was it a fantastic experience my personal stylist is someone called m and she is someone who specializes in modest fashion for muslims so basically she works with muslim women who have very specific requirements around how they dress and just so you know what's interesting is that that doesn't mean like one set thing like we don't all have one way of dressing so much of what we were like okay so the general requirement for those of us who do cover that were covered how we cover as in how women cover differs from culture to culture and country to country so you'll see like a wearing like the most just divine like you know gorgeous buyers and dresses and then you will see maybe sam wearing something completely different and a job bag which is like a like more of like a one it's one sheet like from your one cover from like your head to your toe or like or your head to half your body there were just so many different ways to to cover so m helps you figure out like what you feel comfortable with and then she helps you look amazing in that and so she had a whole process where we figure out like what i feel good in what like what my body shape is the areas that like i'm not too keen on that i'm like let's like you know find a way to figure that section out and she was just brilliant this was old on virtually by the way and so basically once we done all the brief in my has sent over like this this virtual closet and she'd picked out a bunch of all books for me oh my god looks this is not this is not me i don't say things like looks but we're gonna say it because that's what that's what it was it was a bunch of looks and i just got i got to choose which ones i wanted to go with i chose eight different works and then we went with that and i wore them for my oh god first of all what nightmare was trying to get them all to you me like ordering them from all these different places and it was also shoes was also it was like the outfits and then and then the the corresponding head sc for each of the outfit i'm then different shoes as well i say shoes i mean canvas because i was just like i am not a high heels person m i don't do high heels anymore not for me let's stick with the converse and she was like great let's do it so you know i went to the photo with all these different things of like these huge bags and these eight different outfits and all these two boxes of shoes it was a lot and then me and the photographer had an amazing time and the photos i think turned out amazingly i head it over to my instagram and check out one of my most recent reels to check out the the photos and the outfits and i mean i think people liked it because last time i checked i had three hundred maybe three hundred likes that real which is a lot for me considering my my followers eyes and like three thousand five hundred ish views i think that went down very well i'm very happy with the photos was honestly these hires that i have made and and these are all like hires that i've made in the past for few weeks okay over past couple of months and then all the kind of projects are really tight and so it all kind of happened all in this same amount of time best hires as i've made in my business and so excited about each and every one of them and i'm excited for them all to come together because all of these things kind of supported one another and and were i you know i made it happen so that they would work with one another but it was like four different people actually more than four working on these different things separately and trying to bring all those together so it's felt and feels cohesive that was a challenge where i think we did it the only thing left to see is if we can do it with the website okay next category favorite business podcasts first podcast boss by katie got and tara reid both of whom are highly established business owners they are absolutely fantastic and i think that these podcasts well this podcast specifically is a podcast that we really don't i don't think we have anything like it i really don't this is two hugely successful business women talking business and i mean i know it sounds like we have a lot of those podcasts but i feel like the level of just amazing that comes from these two business owners and also like the the quality of the conversation like they're not talking about things that are i guess it's that they're not talking about things that me and my friends will talk about because they're like multi time bigger businesses running you know tara read runs a without code so it's a tech company katie also known as money with katie runs a media company and so two kind of different very different businesses they just have the most amazing chemistry and they just power women and it's just so exciting to learn from these women and also to just be in like in the room with them while they're having conversations about business i've been learning so much from them and i just really enjoy that their conversations as well next podcast create a science by jay class this is one of my favorite business podcast i really just love everything jay class pulls out quite frankly i'm actually part of his membership the lab but there are different tears i'm not on the high here i'm just on the basic tier so i can get access to his workshops and courses because he's just brilliant i really enjoy his content and his podcast interviews are just so beautifully produced i so much thought and time and clearly effort it goes into it and the content is always great the guests are always great and basically jay classes creator science is all about helping you become a better creator and that it's four creators by a creator next podcast i absolutely love is billion dollar creator you sent in a theme creator i'm definitely leaning into like my creative aside since we'll start this podcast well the next the next podcast the third one is billion dollar creator by nathan barry and rachel rogers okay so the first thing i gonna say is a lot of people get triggered by the title of this podcast billion dollar creator thing is i can maybe understand that if you are of the opinion of like oh my god i'm sick to my six figures and now it's seven figures and now it's eight apex and now it's billion now we have to make a billion dollars no no one's saying that no one is saying i love this podcast because they are breaking down the playbook of different creators and business owners and how they've kind of built their companies and that empire's so they break that down and then they talk about like what they would do to take that business and just scale it as far as possible and while like my interest is not necessarily scaling my business just so you know it's so fascinating to hear them break businesses and companies down and different strategies down and it's so fascinating to see how they would change a business or improve a business or bring something new to a business i really enjoy like listening into like the strategic conversations like that it just really opens up my mind to all the things that i don't know and all the things that i wanna learn about business still and obviously we're having a different level of conversation when it's need them bury the the founder of convertkit and rachel rogers we should all be millionaires as rachel rogers you know they're having totally different conversations and again the conversations that i would be having with my business friends so again i'm just it feels like i'm in a room with people who would just you know a million times smarter than me i wanna learn from these people they also in terms of the billion dollar create a name this is not about how to create a billion dollars necessarily what i have understood is that well just so you know yes they do talk about well how would they take this business from a million to a billionaire they talk about that but it's this whole premise i feel i wonder if rachel rogers will love be on the show to tell you home right but the premise of this podcast and the name of the podcast is really to challenge you to think bigger and i absolutely love that because it's that's absolutely always done for me it's challenged me to think bigger and it's challenge me to stop thinking small and think were okay well how could i how could i do this even better or or bigger and i know bigger isn't than always necessarily the goal but sometimes it is the goal final favorite podcast growing steady by caroline and jason z so i had the pleasure of interview in caroline and jason z a married business duo on this podcast go check out their episodes in season two they are absolutely brilliant i'm also i'm in that membership i'm wondering employee just so know i'm in quite a few memberships but i'm not like super active in all these memberships i take what i need from each membership as i need it versus being like super active in all of them so yeah growing steadily by caroline and jason look formally what is it all for they just recently rebranded and i really love the new name growing study they are just brilliant business owners they're married the dynamic and their relationship is so amazing and interested to watch and just observe and listen to they work so well together it's almost like they they can just finish each each other's the sentences but not in like an annoying way because i it's like for me that could you know i there's cute and then there's you know cute but jason and caroline lines look finish each of the sentences and it's just the most enduring thing they they just work so well together their podcast is about how you can grow a study business so actually it's almost like a complete opposite a billion dollar career this is not about making a billion dollars or thinking bigger unnecessarily it's really about figuring out what you want and then finding a way to really get there to reach your specific goal and this is not about being bigger or making more money necessarily it's about building a business that you really love being in and that serves the purpose that you need to be served so yeah those are my four favorite business podcasts right now third category favorite business tools and software again i'm gonna go straight to loom and i'm gonna say loom with the ai the new ai feature because that ai feature is just chef's kiss it's a little bit of extra money is you gotta pay a little bit more but it it's so worth it so loom is a tool like a video recording slash screen recording tool that allows you to really just work asynchronously i mean i use loom every single day of my business i don't think it's a day that goes by that i have not used loom and i remember signing up for loom in the pandemic and i'm pretty sure since twenty twenty that i've used it every single day every single day now the the plans are different now i think so the on the free plan you can only use it for up to five minutes i can know your videos can only be up five minutes long i think i believe the last time i checked but i have the paid plan i also have the ai plan as well which is honestly it's just amazing and i use it to replace meetings so that i'm not meetings all the time get on calls because as a moment of two that is not why i wanna be doing i need to minimize calls and yeah i'm using it to send my team members instructions i'm using it for standard operating procedures i'm showing them like how to do stuff i am showing i'm am onboarding people with this i am sending pictures with loom to completely cold pictures by the way i just do so much with it i've recorded my course on loom like a boss actually and i believe it can it can host videos as well i'm i upload videos on there as well on honestly it's just amazing so loom this comes first when it comes to favorite business tools and software next up convertkit okay i have to say that i am a paid partner of convertkit so anytime i mentioned their name i now have to state that and make a disclaimer hashtag ad okay i don't know if i'm supposed to say that it i just says in my contract that i hashtag add hashtag paid partner i got a little bit nervous because i just wanna make sure that i'm you know saying everything correctly pretty sure i didn't have to say that because this is not actually a hashtag ad i'm not trying to self convertkit to you but also as signed a contract that said i have to say hashtag ad hashtag paid partner so there we go there's that done i just wanna mention convertkit because i again use it a lot in my business and i use it to send newsletters and emails to my subscribers and i absolutely love it because emails make me a lot of money in launches passively with digital products weekly on a weekly basis now and also my course like a boss also service literally for my as a service provider i finally cracked how to sell my high ticket services through my newsletter which honestly something i struggled with i work mostly with course creators and coaches and digital product makers membership makers that kind of thing so give me a digital product to sell an email and i'm just like yes absolutely and what is i think is harder is to sell high ticket services through your news newsletter three year emails but i have finally started doing that i i feel like i've cracked it my most recent success was that with this is landed a client who was on my newsletter who'd been on it for a while he'd been kinda following me for a while and through a range of like different trigger automations and that kind of thing and follow ups i landed this client she's amazing and it was a sixteen thousand dollar project in the end so yes yes for email marketing yes for convertkit highly recommend i've used a bunch of other email service providers i've used mailchimp and campaign and convertkit is definitely my favorite okay currently is the one absolutely love conley will never leave call no matter how many times people tell me that google has a free appointments set like whatever let's not compare apples and oranges okay there's google's free appointments set or whatever is and then there's currently i totally understand that not everyone needs all the bells and whistles for currently i get that the bells and whistles are really very great also i love the ceo of conley i i love his story i listened to his story on how i built this with guy with guy ra and his story is just fascinating like he's actually a actual like child prodigy he was genuinely like a child genius and he's african as well which i always love love to support my fellow africans and he went to the us study and then ended up building this amazing tech company which is currently and i just feel such affinity to his story that i could never leave currently at this point and i will never leave it for tidy color or anything else and all the other like tools that i want talk about and it's it's just i find that really interesting in because it just shows you the importance of a great founder story or a great brand story and just the importance of the the no i can trust factor because i could be paying a lot less somewhere else but i really i really love what i know of the ceo and i just i really love the tools and its features i mean i could go into like the specific features that i love comedy but i won't do that because that's like that would be very nerdy of me i mean i am a ed so that's okay the final favorite business tool software that i'm gonna share it's many chat money chat allows you to create automation triggers for your instagram and facebook i think it's both like it's math right but how i use it is basically people will like share post or real on instagram and then i'll say oh you know comment dream team if you're interested in working with me and then someone will comment dream team and then the or whatever else or rules and then basically that word triggers something to happen in the dms usually for me so it it's basically it basically creating funnels in your on your instagram like automated funnels and it's amazing because i have been able to so many new subscribers moved from my instagram over to my email newsletter because of money chat i have been able to really just handle leads better because i have like automation to help me it's absolutely fantastic so i would highly recommend many chat explore it if you haven't it's so fun as well i mean there are a few things that i don't love about it so you have to be really careful about the trigger words that you choose because if you choose something that people use all the time people will start getting triggered messages in their dms when they didn't really want it they were just using like a normal so you has to be really specific about the words that you choose that has been a little bit difficult but i guess that's a my fault thing rather than a any type thing next up favorite business owners stick around don't go anywhere we'll get right back to this episode after this quick break business owners have been rolling into the new mistakes that made me private membership and i'm inviting you to join them this is your chance to unlock exclusive weekly bonus content on my private podcast which only members have access to content like my private q and a series submit your business questions to me and get inside my business brain kate an interactive workbook designer has already submitted her question how do you pitch yourself to other podcasts and i've published a twenty minute answer that includes the cold pitch that got me onto one of my favorite podcasts so members can see one of my cold pitches in action kate says she re listened to my answer and took notes that's how much i'm sharing inside this membership you'll also get access to my bite sized business diary if you love getting inside scoop when it comes to how i'm building my business if you love my solo episodes you'll love my twenty minute bite sized business diary follow me in real time as i shared the behind the scenes of my business mistakes i'm making lessons i'm learning and the business and podcast related projects i'm working on one of the bite size business diary entries i've shared is about why i decided to let go of my amazing social media manager i know shocking you'll also get access to extended interviews with mistakes that made me guests and yes you'll get to submit your own questions to them jordan gil extended interview is available for you to listen to right now and you'll get access to my private podcast newsletter if you've been looking for some informal business coaching or at the very least an honest insight into how my six bigger business works behind the scenes this is your chance membership costs just eleven dollars a month no commitment cancel anytime this is also just a really great way for you to support the show to get the details and become a member head over to man copy dot com slash membership or click the link in the show notes i'll see you in there jay class actually this is not in any order there is a bunch of amazing business owners i'm about to that i'm about to share so first up is jay class though he is absolutely brilliant everything i said about his company and his podcast is the same like it's the same for him basically he is so smart i believe that he i mean he's been working at this for a really long time but i believe he really started to see like huge success in twenty twenty so he's been a short amount of time really and it's been really just really great to watch his business journey and he shares so much as part of the reason i'm in his his membership the lab because he does these monthly retro trolls where he goes over he goes over like how his wants spin i'm just really shares a lot of information in detail about what's going on inside his business and you know he has like fifty k months and talks about his goals being like eighty k eighty k a month and while that isn't necessarily my goal i just love being around people who normalize those numbers for me just just normalize it i think a few years ago i could never imagine that i'd have you know twenty five twenty six thousand dollar months and so i'm like well if that as possible who knows what else is possible i just wanna be around people who make me feel like those members are not out of each but it's totally possible and that is just totally normal so yes jay class i just i love his newsletter i love his podcast i love his membership by i pretty much of everything that he puts out that's like he's on there next up is katie ga ta and she's also known as money with katie money with katie is basically a media company she has podcast podcasts she's blog she has a newsletter that has like a hundred and forty or a hundred and seventy thousand subscribers and money with what i was gonna call her money with katie the brand is called money with katie but katie herself first of all i've actually spoken to her and she is just so lovely she's so lovely and just so smart and yeah it was it was it was funny actually it's one of those calls i was like oh my god i love this person so much i feel like actually a little bit say what i got on the girl but you solo lovely so it went great now katie was just like a business owner like me and then what happened was morning brew decided to buy her company well they offered to buy her company and so she went ahead with that deal morning brew actually bought her business her company and they own the brand money with katie and as you can imagine there'll be a lot of pluses that come with being acquired by by morning brew in terms of just resources and the the access that you now have to think so katie is now an employee of morning brew but she runs money with katie like it's hers and she also has a book coming out that's a traditionally being traditionally published so that she's been also sharing like her journey around that but those that's been really interesting too so yeah podcast blog newsletter book coming out and the way that her business structure is just super interesting in because yeah it was her business it got acquired by morning brew she's now an employee morning brew but it's still like hers she runs like she well she runs i mean i don't know is it i don't know i don't i don't have details but she runs it it's still her name on the door and she has her own team as well which is super cool so this is the same katie that i mentioned under favorite podcast who who has also the boss podcast i will say her other podcast money with katie is also brilliant and i should also mention that money at money with katie katie is a personal finance expert with definitely a feminist twist and she is just four women and i yeah she's just brilliant next favorite business owner i'm gonna say rachel rogers i love i love me so rachael rogers she is i think she's fabulous she's brilliant i understand that sometimes there are like conversations that happen around super wealthy coaches specifically and business owners but i i really enjoy the content of richard rachel rogers that i can consume i've never joined any of her programs or anything like so i have no experience of those but i have read her book which i thought is brilliant and i just absolutely loved her podcast which she's stopped to doing but i do listen to billion dollar creative with nathan barry which she does now i just i just love her and it's also really inspiring for me to see a a black wealthy female business owner i absolutely love it and also she's a mother of four and i'm just like yeah okay these are the role models i need i need the mother of four role model i do i really need that because some days this is just so hard and i'm here with my like two you know and just seeing what she's been able to achieve and how she shows up and she's just she's just so una herself i will say as well her other podcast with her business best it's called the most that's also really fun to listen to okay next up oh final favorite business owner and by way there was so many of the people i could have mentioned but just don't have transformation everyone so anyway final favorite business owner ellen yen ellen yen ellen has a podcast called cubicle to ceo i've actually featured on our podcast so go check out that episode if you are interested in hear me talk about how to nail niche now i love ellen yen because again actually she runs a media company i feel like in another world maybe in the future i don't know media company would definitely be my thing like i just elevate it so yeah i mean ellen has same with katie how she has the podcast newsletter she has wait podcast podcasts news newsletter a blog and also i will add brand deals and like sponsorships and strip buy out katie also has that too and so yeah it's just it's really interesting to watch like and understand the structure of her business of you know based on what she shares anyway so i just love seeing what she does and she's also really really lovely lovely business owner it again she's so smart so kind as well like i said i did i was on her podcast and she was just brilliant and one thing is what i will say about ellen is when i was on her podcast like going through that experience i was like a podcast gas that onboarding in an interview and like off boarded in it was truly magnificent like i literally i can't think of any other way to describe it it was truly magnificent and it taught me so much like i thought my onboarding stuff was like great for my guests honestly and i've been complimented on my onboarding off boarding like whole guest experience for the podcast also my clients too like customer service is that like whole servicing a systems processes onboarding boarding like that is what i live for you know and i thought mine mom was pretty good and then went through ellen and i was like oh wow so yeah i just i love that i learned so much from her just being a podcast guest so i mean that just tells you how smart she is next category favorite mentors this was a hard one because i've had lots of mentors so just because i don't mention someone just went the all doesn't mean that that i don't love them as mentor or they weren't a great mentor just means that i could only choose four and so first favorite rentals mentors i went with is p and mayan an p and my an are mara duo they've run a writing agency called content bi and i joined the six month mastermind early last year was it last year can you believe it was last year that's insane at for a second i thought it was this year but it really was last year from january to june and i just love learning from them they are fantastic they are so smart they work so well together they are both the brains of the business but prone is like the face and brains of the business like it on you know for everyone's to kind of see and then mayan is the brains of the business behind the scenes as well and they just they work really well together they are parents stood for me they were perfect they were perfect mental mentors and that their parents they were they were run in an agency which i loved to see and i want to understand more of and also they are in india which was really important for me and in picking them as mentors because i mean i've had a lot of mentors from the us and i love my micro mentors don't get me wrong but i also i think i realized at that point that i'd never had a mentor who wasn't white and my industry anyway is very white and there aren't many there aren't honestly there isn't a lot of diversity quite frankly i think the diversity that we do have like people experience a lot of discrimination especially in terms of like if english isn't there that first or native language they'll experience a lot of discrimination a lot of stereotype and a lot prejudice it's it's it can be difficult and i realized that you know i have a lot of challenges and internal and external conversations that happen for me as a business owner that sometimes are very difficult to explain to people who just don't have this lived experience who just can't get it as much as they want to get it and as much as they you know really try to get it they just they can't they can't understand because they haven't lived it and so for me having mentors who live in india who weren't necessarily in the west in the us in the uk who weren't white who were who were in indian like it was just it was really important to me to experience that because there are so many there are so many like just some nuances to be in a black business owner sometimes i just like i don't wanna talk about it i just need i just need the person to understand make song talks about this beautifully in her but so like i'm finding it difficult to communicate this but make aka song talks about it in her episode where she talks about the fact that sometimes it's difficult for coaches on your mind to create safe a safe space for you will accidentally create an unsafe environment for you completely accidentally simply because they just have like they just have no idea what of what your experience is like for what of what it's like to basically just walk the world in your shoes right it walk through the world in your shoes and i was just like so learning from mayan aunt and prone and seeing their success and seeing that wealth it was all just it was all brilliant for me and just to be very clear like i said all my coaches have been white and like it's it's not a thing right i loved all my coaches and they have i've actually had the the i can genuinely say that all my coaches have been amazing all my mentors have been amazing to me and i've loved every single one of them and led into every single one of them but it was also shocking to me that i'd never had a non white coach that's that like that was shocking and so it was like okay well let me let me let me go fix that and add some diversity to this mix right so there we go next up tasha booth tasha booth is a new mentor of mine actually she's a some figure black agency owner and i say buck because again it's super important for me to be able to see someone who looks like me just doing amazing stuff in the business world you know and so i've really loved learning from tasha i'm in her membership i can't told you him i'm in a few memberships i'm in her membership i'm really enjoying it i'm very new to it who's really i've been in it a month and a half but i'm just really enjoying learning from her and i know i have so much muscle learned from her which is exciting next up for favorite mentors amy pos abe pos is also a copywriter i will say by the way tasha booth is not a copywriter she her experience i believe is like in like business operations like operations that kind of thing so i loved i love learning from a non copyright as well but amy pos is is a copywriter which she coaches i i think creative freelancers or just freelancers in general now so she works with more than just couple now but amy i think will always be a special for me because i started working with amy i joined her mastermind in twenty twenty one and it's so funny because we had our first quarter together and we made the whole plan for the year of twenty twenty one when she was like right this this is what i wanna do this is the plan so great we were we were done and then i think it was the next day i found out i was pregnant and so and just to like be clear my my youngest son was a very welcome accident so he wasn't planned he was not planned and we made this like whole palm anyone i think like the next day i called so she's was one of the first people that found out i was pregnant i i spoke to her and i was like hey amy so you know that twenty twenty one plan that we did yesterday yeah we're just gonna have to just throw that in the bin and start again because i'm pregnant she's like oh we explanation okay it's we'll we'll figure it out we'll figure it out so we like redid the whole twenty twenty one plan and yeah we've we did figure it out and my goal then with amy became to to be able to set myself up with a with a nice lengthy financially comfortable maternity leave and amy amy's guidance and amy's coach and help me do that and so i will be forever ever grateful will always have a special place in my heart she's also just a really fantastic coach so i'm empathetic so kind she's also i will say she's also someone who made me feel very welcome and safe in her community she was very understanding of the some of the challenges i experienced as as a muslim black woman in business and she was very like open and willing to have those conversations with me which is always great and then finally my favorite my final favorite mental who's not actually my final favorite because i do have lots of favorite about belinda weaver belinda who's also been on the show or by the way amy poe has been on the show too with a k fountains so go check out her episode well belinda weaver her episode are mistakes that made me which was episode two of season one i believe yes episode two is still a fun favorite to this day nelly i wanna say yeah two years later to go listen to that episode well belinda is my first ever coach so blender has my heart and will always have my heart and blender belinda started off as my first ever coach and is now a friend which is so is just been so nice to experience that you know relationship go from oh someone who by the way i was absolutely fang girl and because i was a center her podcast before i became a business owner and it was the belinda podcast that helped encourage me to quit my full time job and gave me the confidence to quit my full time job and start my own business and then i immediately joined her coach in membership this was back in twenty eighteen now and i mean the rest of this history so i went from fang gel in her completely fang girl her to being coached under her to work with her for years i worked with a for number of years as as my coach to now be in friends and so it's just a a beautiful relationship and she's the coach that i will always recommend to to people who come to me and say especially especially people who are new to cover in world i'm like oh belinda gives we'll give you all the foundations i specifically don't work with service providers who are new to business the belinda does and she is fantastic she's fantastic at what she does so that's the first person i'll point people to okay next category favorite sources of inspiration this was one that's the one requested as was favorite mental is actually but favorite sources of inspiration newsletters is the first one i'm gonna say i have an entire inbox that is dedicated just to newsletters let me signing up to newsletters i love reading people's emails and i'm just experiencing like good email and bad email as email strategist i feel like that's not a huge shock next up shows are a huge source of inspiration for me honestly shows films that kind of thing popular culture quite frankly because it gives me just things to think about gives me material for my social content for my emails and honestly i just enjoy i enjoy kind of being up to date with popular culture i will say there's a few things i will not i will not get myself into downtown abbey is one i will not do it i won't get myself into downtown abbey be because i know if i start i love it and i'll get hooked and i don't have time to get hooks onto to something that has a million seasons same with game of thrones haven't touched game of thrones never will i hope and then there's another one there's another one there's another one that everyone goes on and of oh yeah like love is blind and all that stuff i will never because yeah i just don't have time to get hooked on shows that have like load seasons but i just can't it so there are something that i stay away from but other things i'll dive right into i know this favorite source of inspiration is the gym i i i mean okay so i haven't been the gym in a little while i'll be honest with you but that's because like we've just had so much sickness in our household and i've just been exhausted for like months but when i'm feeling like not this exhausting jim the gym is definitely a source inspiration for me because it allows me to just be completely mindful like when you are focusing on working out and just on your body and just specifically it's strengthening as well with weights and stuff when you're focusing on that you don't have time to think about work and think about other stuff so that's been that's been really great for me and there's a period of time where it was like it was just essential it was actually my therapist i was doing therapy a couple years ago for a few years my therapist recommended that i try as well as therapy that i that i go to the gym basically to help me with my anxiety and at the time depression as well and so i did like i went as if like she prescribed the gym to she'd prescribed working out and so as much as i took going to her seriously i also took going to the gym super seriously and she was right it was life changing and like the physical benefits of just being in in the best shape of my life that was just the bonus it really helped with my mental health and so i i'm hoping i can get back to that level of just enjoying the gym and loving in the gym and definitely how have more ideas when i come when i come out of the gym i also say actually showers too i didn't that's an nut unofficial extra one bonus bonus faith but yeah shower is definitely saw inspiration for me and finally the final source of favorite source of inspiration is life honestly like ob observing and listening just in life i'm a storyteller i lived to tell stories i love to tell stories but that means that i have to pay attention to what's going on around me i always wondered why i was that person in the cafe you have to sit by the window or in know at a restaurant i have to sit by the window i have to be able to look outside and see what's going and i have to be able to watch people as people would walk past me and still i do this like i'm making up stories about them in my head and them i just find it amazing that they've my life for just those few seconds as they walk past and i will likely never see them again but for those few seconds they were part of my life you know and i'm the main character in my life and i'm a side character non character in theirs and they are a side character to non character in my it's just i've always just found it so fascinating and so life in generally the happenings of life the and downs of life just observing and listening to life around me is definitely source inspiration okay we're on the second to last fa category so the seventh category is my favorite ways to decompress and unwind okay so the first one has to be going for a walk i love a good walk that can be in nature for that walk that is like the best the best thing i can do for myself i try to break up my day like if i'm picking up the kids from from from school i will try to stop working just a little bit early that i can go for a walk before i pick them up to kind of transition from that like work to parent mode and i'll do the same in the mornings as also so in the morning if i drop off in morning i will try to to have a walk before i sit down at my desk and start working because again it helps with that transition but also it's a really nice way to just d compress and unwind especially in the spring and the summer when the weather the weather's is really lovely my second favorite way to decompress or unwind i actually kind of mentioned this one already is hotel vacation so i actually don't travel anywhere like i still i stay in our city but occasionally i will pick a hotel in the same city as me and i will stay in the hotel for night and just have some alone time as much as i love my kids this one is without the kids and last time i yeah i just i just had a really great relaxing in time i at way too much food way too much junk i stayed up a little bit too late but then slip through the entire night for the first time in years and it was just glorious so that's definitely something that i'm gonna keep doing the third favorite way of mine d decompress unwind is to go for massages so interestingly this is you know what no i've always been a fan of massage like in college back when i was like sixteen seventeen i used to celebrate my exams with a massage like people must have just thought i was great just literally crazy like what are you doing anywhere you're sixteen years old but i knew the value of a good massage at sixteen and so i mean i've always been going for massages i think my mom is probably is probably the reason for that my mom a good massage too and it was also again my therapist who when she suggested me working out and getting in a gym membership and going to the gym moore she also suggested going for more massages like going for a massage a month type of thing because again while she really prescribed the jim to me for the physical benefits that and i mean when say physical benefits i mean like the release of anxiety and actually like depression she suggested i go from massages to again physically release the tension the anxiety in my body went physically and so i did that as she prescribed and and that really helped as well and i've always just kept it i've always just kept it and so i occasionally i'll go for my massages i mean wanna i ideally i'd go once a month but really don't go once a month i would say probably go once a quarter and i do wanna increase that because i want more massages i'll probably go for a massage very soon and my final thing like i just i wish i had a better one for d decompression unwinding but honestly just just watching watching a show on netflix that is for me a nice way to unwind i enjoy it so i'm not gonna a little bit guilty afterwards but also like i just mostly enjoy it okay we're we're finally on the final category of my favorite things and i decided to kind of move away from business to this one so that you could just get to know me a little bit more so i'm gonna talk about my four favorite tv shows but the first one might surprise you actually maybe it won't i don't know but i mean it's in spanish it's just not in english maybe thought that was why i think it's gonna surprise you but my my favorite tv show is del i hope i said that right i'm not a spanish speaker but del queen of the south and del is is a tele villa about a woman called theresa mendoza and she is just the average woman who gets like coop up and basically draw cartel and this is who when i wow i think there are sixty episodes and might even sixty eight for some of them in each season and then i believe there are there are three seasons and but this this this was like a long this festival this is a big thing i believe i believe and yeah i know this was a huge show in south of but obviously i'm not in south america so i felt like i have no clue but it started this the show started a long time ago let me just search this la arena del season one okay yeah two thousand and eleven two thousand and eleven when i in twenty twenty four and season three just came out not long ago season three oh wait yeah season three came out in twenty twenty three so this is a very long series a lot of episodes it's sixty the episodes in each season each of those are an hour long generally is the best thing i've ever the watch on tv it is the best thing i've ever watched on tv and let me tell you how i started watching it because it's really funny it kind of it happened totally accidentally so i saw my mom watching the queen of the south which is the american version of this and i saw what i was oh this looks for right let me check it out so i check it out on my netflix and i i search queen of the south and then end up watching like the first six episodes of season one and bear in mind that this is all in spanish and also bear in mind that this is at this point is like quite like very interesting shall we say like style like weird camera stuff going on like a little bit cheesy in like the best of ways and i just i'm watching this thing and i'm thinking i i'm at six hours into it now and i'm thinking i can't imagine my mom my mom like watch and this doesn't feel like something you generally like you usually watch simply because it is in spanish and it's not in english i feel like my mom isn't a big watcher like and i international kind of stuff in different languages i know i was like well maybe i just don't know that one at all i don't know but i did wonder why she never mentioned the entire thing was in spanish so i contact my mom and i'm like hey just wanna check i'm del is it are you watching look are we watching the same thing because this is this is spanish and i'm a go to in english so i trying to keep up and she's like no i'm watching queen the south is in english so i go back to netflix turns out the queen of the south in english which is the american version and there's lora del which is the original tele all in spanish titles i was oh okay well it's was too late because i was already six hours into it and super invested actually what i did was i went to watch queen the south the finished queen south which was also really great then i went back to la they'll saw and realized oh my gosh la del saw is a million times better also shout out to neil fellow cabrera who's on my newsletter who when i was talking back in like my maternity lead mode when i was on maternity to leave her plenty of time so i this is when i got into la learning sort was watching the episode seasons neil emailed me back on my newsletter because i've mentioned on he's newsletter that i was watching this and he was like oh my gosh it's brilliant season three is coming out soon you need to you need to keep watching it's just either to gets better and baron and better i was like festival how excited i had someone else to talk about it with because literally nobody i know was watched letting know they'll sort accept neil after i finished and the letting know what i was like right mother you need to watch this thankfully got my mom hooked and so finally had someone to talk to you about this thing obsessed with theresa and mendoza and like the whole situation anyway love love that's it i love next up gilmore girls i already mentioned gilmore girls i love me some rory la i really do i love them so much i've watched gilmore girls more times than i could possibly possibly tell you and i've been watching it since i was a young teenager i remember you know coming home and watching it in the afternoon as a teen i mean it's just been in my life for so long at this point and really love it really street i was very annoyed with a year in the life the you know the sequel for anyone who doesn't know yeah that wasn't fun but i mean i will never say no to tomorrow boring laura so there we go gilmore girls is about a mom and a daughter and just there like amazing relationship their amazing close relationship i think one of the reasons i love a gilmore more girl so much is because it reminds me of my relationship with my mom and with lore and rory and it just being them too it was just it was just me and my mom my mom was a single moment raised me basically by herself and i never cease to be amazed by single mothers and that relationship definitely reminds me of my relationship with my mom and also just like to just so much about it the right is brilliant the character is are brilliant also recently found out that there are podcasts about gilmore girls so definitely gonna be listening to some of those oh god i just realized talking a podcast podcasts about shows like the office needs a special man mention and also breaking bad as well but you know let me not go there because i could forever just like keep adding shows to this but the next one on the list is grey's anatomy i i mean i just i love grey's and anatomy me so much i actually just don't have the words i actually don't have the words again i've watched it more times i could possibly count s rh is just something else she's amazing and so that's it allegedly i don't have the words for grey's anatomy don't have the words and then scandal also one of the s production love me some olivia pope as well often think what would olivia pope do before she turned a little call and evil towards the end but she she know she got back on contract but there was a there was a moment there i was looking bit iffy but scandal is basically about our community a crisis communications agency they probably get a little bit too big for the boots and they are in the like the political world and i mean there's a whole bunch of other this stuff going on with olivia pulp and the president what we won't talk about that because i am team jake and olivia forever and you will never convince me otherwise also gilmore girls team dress always always always we cannot argue give that's it that's all i'm gonna say loves scandal it was it was a great show that got me through the hardest hardest parts of my studies okay that's everything those are thirty two of my favorite things for my thirties second birthday i hope you enjoyed just dive in through all these favorites with me i really enjoyed going through this also i just about hit my target for the the the length of this episode i was hoping it coming in an hour or an hour and fifteen minutes okay i did my best i hope you enjoyed it let me know once social media if you did enjoy this give the episode a screenshot and tag me at man ko or i on linkedin i'd love to know how you found it and if you found or discover anything interested in that you're gonna try out watch listen to anyone knew that you're gonna follow we'd love to hear from you thanks so much for listening and i will see you or speak to you soon

hey quick thing i'm on maternity to leave having my third baby right now so the next few months of podcast content is gonna be a mixture of me appearing on other pee podcast sharing things you've never heard me share before on this podcast never before publicly released extended interviews with stakes that make me guests like belinda weaver jordan gill steve fallen and more and of course mistakes that made these aldi book good episodes some of my favorite interviews that you might have missed but really should catch up upon just a reminder that even though i'm our maternity leave my email agency is not we work with business owners like you and we're still taking on new clients an email and launch project so if you're ready to take your email list from has potential to highly profitable head over to man copy c dot com and get in touch with our amazing team of experts and strategist the link is in the show notes okay let's get into today's episode hey belinda hey milan it's so nice to have you back the last time you were with us we recorded your episode going and growing too slow do you remember what we spoke about we talked about my mistake that made me which was growing too slow like it was all in the title and how how much friction i felt around the pace at which my business was moving and one of the big influences on that pace was having a baby mh and we talked a lot about introducing children into your workflow and being totally unprepared for what a massive change that it was and it you know i i remember liken it to to being like a race horse still in the holding you know so you just can't you cannot get going and you got always this energy to get started and i also remember us talking about ideas when you have ideas for things and you don't get to implement those ideas necessarily when you have them for whatever reason and and all that feeling of of watching other people do something cool that you thought you were gonna do it was a pretty juicy one yeah it it was a very juicy one and in case you don't know when you listened to best belinda was my very first coach i was super inspired listening to belinda podcast while i was driving up and down the mo to my nine to five job back in twenty seventeen twenty eighteen and then with the help of your podcast i really felt like i had the confidence i had like those first steps to be able to set up my business so i ended up resigning for my job i started the copyright business i joined your membership confident copywriting which is still available today and is amazing i still direct so many people to you and yeah i i mean when we've been friends ever so belinda out from my coach and now we're friends and it's been so long i've well i've been in business six years this year so it's been at least six years that we've been known each other really well which is absolutely and it's nice when when you work with someone really closely that it does spill below over and as like in confident copywriting i talk about members graduating when they hit a point where they're like i have the confidence now to take all the next steps and we really i celebrate that moment but it's lovely to stay in touch and we talk about our kids in dms and what's happening in our lives and and that's really nice to be part of each other's lives in that way because you know is not many people get it so it's really important to have business friends who are real friends where you can talk about what's happening in your business and they do really understand it yes i totally agree and i feel like you come in back to talk to at this stage is very timely for me because like i just said i'm almost hitting my sub a six year anniversary actually in a couple in a few weeks and i had this moment a couple of weeks ago where was thinking about it and i just thought i'm not where i thought i'd be six years of my business like i should be much much further and i felt a little down about it and then i pretty quickly got myself out of it and i thought of all the reasons i shouldn't feel like that all the reasons you know my business isn't maybe growing as fast as i wanted it to like it's doing so many great things for me like i have the life that i stop to have when i started this business that was unimaginable unimaginable to me and so i had to just kind of like just stop with the thought and start reframe and really just like it just be just just be a whole lot more positive and less harsh myself but i did have that thought and it yeah it was straight without i had that thought but it's the truth i feel like and i have very high expectations for myself and i know this is why but i feel like six years my business i should be way further than i am well i'll take your six years and i'll raise you to fourteen years because i recently had exactly the same way where i was like doing this little fourteen years what is happening but that's the trap like that's mh it's just the trigger thought and i think how you responded is is absolutely how we have to do it like i think of it as like catching catching the thought mh like catching it in a bubble and going hang on what's that i'm gonna stop that before it it's really takes root mh and it's good to separate yourself this is what i had to do and go alright what's what's really going on here and being able to dig a bit deeper and then do those reframe and then for me i'm catching the thought then i'm letting it go so it it's not taking root because it can it can be a bit of a spiral and one thing i think about is we all go through these cycles i know you and i have talked about the cycles the developmental milestones lines of our kids and how sometimes everything's on fire and you're like yeah i have figured this out and then and then they hit the dip and that's when they're about to hit a growth stage so everything breaks apart and i love that that phrase and i don't know who it's wrong but this idea that everyone everything feels most broken just before it's about to be put back together and when i learned about these cycles with kids development i was able to take a step back and go oh i can see what's happening here this is not forever this dip it's just part of the process and i absolutely apply that for myself and i'm like hey hey go what's going on here you feel like you're in a dip but let's zoom out and what you just said about looking at what you have achieved that's so important and the book the gap in the game by dan sullivan is was such a game changer for me because it it he talks about how our goals and our aspirations and i our ideals are like a horizon like we can never reach the horizon keeps moving away from us and what we need to do to stay motivated is always be looking at what we have done like keep working towards the horizon but measure our success in quotes by what we have gained rather than how we are falling short and i use that all the time i have heard so many people recommend this book so i think i need to read this book is exactly yeah and i think what's really hard as well is when like i have all these different things that are i wanna say working against me but like perfectionism which i'm really trying to and i for a very long time and i'm talking since university so probably at i mean twelve years now thirteen years i've been actively trying like push against my perfectionism i always grew up thinking i was always praised for it as most perfection star so i always was praised first i always thought it was an amazing thing it was a great thing i used to tell everyone really proudly i'm perfection and then i realized like how damaging it was it was actually the university psychologist that said to me when i said to her oh i'm in intersection and she was like that's not a good thing that's actually a really good problem and i was like oh is the first time i was twenty as old as the first time anyone had ever told me is a problem and so yeah i've been trying to work on the ever i think just generally when you're when you're a high achieve you expect you expect a lot of yourself yeah and then realistically i think as a parent you become a parent and your your time is just not your time anymore and then even when you have time you're tired and you can't think straight and that you even if you wanted to like you can't focus on like there's times when i really wanna do work and i'm like i really i need to do this thing i wanna do this thing but like my brain is not there can't do it and so and sometimes i think about like i think about all the people who are pushing ahead and you know doing all the stuff that i'm not doing you know because we're all looking at the instagram version of other people's business yes and still not to yeah and everybody doesn't show no what's not working and how difficult it things can be sometimes and and right now i think we're in the ripple effect of still in the ripple effect of the pandemic where people are not only becoming savvy about their buyers and about marketing and all that kind of stuff but we still have this kind of ripple effective and massive global trauma event yeah and because that's changing that's an external influence on our business then we have this internal thing going on of like well i've only got this far is this all i'm capable of maybe i need to lower my bar a little bit and that's just we have to kind of compensate for these two things happening at the same time yay and i just think zooming out and going what's the business i've got and if i went back and told myself in the first six months of being in business about the business that i have now how would i feel about that i'd be effing ecstatic and that was a moment for me where i was like oh yeah actually actually it's not it's not bad we don't need to burn it all down mh and going back to what you said looking at the life alignment like why am i actually doing this i've spent a little bit of time on that recently as a kind of a reset i was like why do i feel like i'm going too slow again alright what is the business i've actually got what have i achieved what am i proud of but also what do i love about this why what is this making possible outside the business which is a really big focus for me and all my coaching because the kids have just started back at school i'm dropping them off i'm picking them up i'm working in the classroom i've somehow found myself volunteering for the safety patrol lead and there's all these things where i'm like this back if the if the compromise for seeing my kids excited for me to be at school for example is me taking a slightly slower pace then i'm okay with that but it it needed me to hit that reset and go okay i'm living the life my business is fueling my life and yes i have tons of ideas and yes i wish everything just worked all the time but it doesn't and it's not so what am i gonna do about it it's so true and i think i think it's really helpful for me when instead of thinking like i can't do a thing because i often say like i can't work weekends in comparison to all the people who do work weekends and get loads of stuff on the weekends and like get ahead and you know essentially have two four six eight eight extra days in that month when i flip that around and actually tell myself well now i choose not to work weekends i choose to spend that time with my kids i choose to take them out and do cool stuff with them i choose to prioritize my family and put work i'm a back burner knowing that yeah i do have less time in my business but that's what matters to me most that's my priority i've chosen i've made my priorities have i've chosen my priorities and now i get i i get to do that i get to do one what i want to do essentially and that really helps me because i mean it's not a i i can't do that this and i can't do that no i've actively chosen this is the life that i want and it's exactly as you said like i wouldn't have it any other way that's exactly this exactly how i want it to be and if anything as i'm telling you like oh i i you know i thought my business would be much further than it is actually i'm still trying to scale back the work that i'm doing like i'm trying to like court evening calls and i get a lot of my a lot of calls and like podcast podcasts record and episodes and stuff done in the evenings and i'm i'm trying to cut that back as well even if it means that i have to say no to some opportunity that i'm i wanna say yes to you because i'm choosing to prioritize my health and wellness i don't wanna be on calls all the time in the evenings i don't actually wanna be on calls really ever moving forward and so i'm like trying to get to a space where i'm i i need to figure that out because i have a lot of us clients so how do i speak to people when me you asked when i don't wanna be available in the evenings it might mean i i just can't speak to some people well you know that's the situation that you get to now go how okay how do i solve this problem where are my boundaries on this what will i say yes to and what will i say no to going forward and i think it's really important to keep checking in with that because otherwise the big reason we started our business bleeds away because we get caught up and i was chatting with a confident copywriter amanda she was out members of spotlight for and she living on her property and i remember years ago she said i once a dairy cow and she sent me a picture just a couple weeks ago going i got the cow i got the cow and it was such an amazing moment to celebrate and when i talked to her in her interview she said my vision of what i wanted my life to be like was so clear to me that at each step i kept checking will this decision bring me closer to the property and the goats and the choke and the garden and the cow or will this take me away from that life and that conversation really energized me in that kind of strong sense of alignment like why are we doing this for and you know we've just finished summer holidays here a vacation as the americans would say and american kids get ten weeks ten weeks of vacation time so what i've done in previous years is i've just run my business at the same pace and overlay days out and playgrounds and library visits and i've just figured it out and kind of taking a little bit of like look at me getting it all done everyone's having fun and where we're in summer and my business hasn't float down but this summer i was like you know what i wanna have some fun i once to i have some fun mh so then i was presented with the challenge how do i figure that out what does that look like and what do i need to say no to in order to make that happen and in truth i was got really clear on when my work designs were and when our adventure days were which were the same times every week i got clear on when my regular program calls are and then i said okay well with x many hours per week what are my priorities and it meant i couldn't fa around in my inbox i couldn't stuff around on social media i had to pull back on all the ways i honestly waste time and i had to let my va step in and go i'm just not even looking at that can you just make sure my inbox doesn't get out of control and i found that really hard but very quickly when i was at my desk i was focusing on my priorities and everything else slid and i realized that no one died the business didn't fold and me actually working on the things that were actual priorities instead of the busy work that i just put on my list because i feel like it should be done was better so i'm trying to bring that lesson into into the rest of the year because it was fun i love that so much and actually i have two things to say so the first thing is i take your eye off every year and also had a great summer with my kids and also got to visit home and have great time with family all all that stuff and i came back to work at the beginning of august and i just told my va look i have a lot to do i'm trying i'm in middle of launching my name my c email agency and i'm gonna talking about this we used a catch about we have it seen it coming out and i'm it's coming for you yeah i'm hoping the website is gonna lunch next week so i'm i'm very excited but it's meant i've had to do a lot of work and i've had to prioritize stuff and also my kids also got a lot of time off in the summer so my oldest only just went back like last week and i just is maria va who's fairly new poor girl i said to look i'm just not even gonna be my in my inbox so please just let people know that i'm it's gonna take some time to get back to emails and that's exactly what she did like people it's so funny it was so funny watching my inbox like people would send an email and then she would reply to them and let them know that i'm gonna get to it when i can and then they would follow this how long i took to respond people and they would follow again and it should reply to them again saying that i'm i'm basically i'm not available right now which i'll get back to them when i can it was just fantastic it was it was literally actually fantastic and so i am all for that i really am that permission yeah to drops some balls yeah to drop some let some plates stop spinning yeah and knowing that i was gonna take off more time over summer forced me to go okay what's what are the important things if i my desk i can't be fa around i and it didn't always work out that way but that was my mindset mh and yeah now the kids are back school as i said i wanna be able to go i don't wanna feel that like oh my god i'm tired and i'm at my desk and what am i even doing here i wanna read more books and take walks with my dog and but i have to choose in the moment to prioritize that and i think that goes back to yeah prioritizing life forces you to prioritize stuff in your business mh and let's just focus on the stuff that makes me money and brings me joy yeah absolutely i thought it was really interesting disclaimer i love ko i love jo i have nothing bad to say about either ko or jo weed i'm i just but i thought i was really interested in over the summer that joe over at copy was running i think it's called separation summer camp and the idea was basically to at a time when most people were like off work to ram up your business so that you could basically be the go to person the people the person is available while everyone else is like often enjoying this somewhere which is really clever especially because i realized not everyone takes time off in this my or wants to take time off and some or can take time off in summer so it was really interesting watching a big group of copywriter talking about well yeah just going going after clients and working hard and not taking a break this on that and me thinking that is so not for me it's just so up for me and it's we we need everyone like it's totally okay to go we do at it because we have that stage where we are going after it in a sprint yeah putting the extra like said that's the growth mode and there's nothing wrong with that yeah but it's also it's okay to go alright now that i'm pass that and i have some stability what else do i want in my life and it doesn't mean that everything's easy in the business and that's what i mentioned like there are everyone's facing a lot of challenges right now where if you have digital products sales are slow if you're working when i'm among with clients it's it's it can be half which is why i think it's important to remember why you're in your business mh and then also realize like really provoke yourself to answer the question what is the most important thing i can be working on right now what is the most impactful what will actually help me keep moving forward and it's not all the things and one of the challenging things i think as well is when things stop working like oh they used to work whatever i was doing before used to work yeah it's kinda not working anymore which all of us are going through yeah but it's forcing us to think of a little bit more creatively think a bit more naturally but what i kind of did is i went oh well i'm not good enough anymore because it stopped working i i made it about me and then i went no i blinked it's not about you but it's that moment we all catch and it's how much we indulge that thought yeah can determine what we do next and what i also went when i separated myself from that moment as i went oh that's just my amygdala going let's stay in a safe own let's not try and new stuff i can feel you having ideas and and you're gonna try and new stuff and it might not work and i went okay yeah it's i can see what's going on here right i'm gonna separate myself from that storyline and i'm gonna let it go and i'm gonna move forward and i think that's the people who are doing that in in challenging moments other people who are working through it yeah it's so true i mean i'm seeing that even with my clients the people who are just like launching in in the way that they always have are seeing like their sales you know d decreasing in people just aren't buying the way they used to people expect a lot more now which is very good expect a lot more from their coaches and the course creators and things like that and so we have to change we have to change what's being done i see that in my own launches you have to we have to change we have to just we have to keep it evolving in adapt and evolving yeah that's exactly it in every business designer like as soon as when the internet became a thing and you know chat gp you came to think we we have to we build up our resilience muscles when these new influences come into our world and it's how we talk to ourselves get us through it but mh you know it just it doesn't end and i i say that to copywriter right like impostor syndrome yeah it end and i don't mean that to be depressing but i think it's kind of to it's it's okay to see the long game to go alright we're just in a bit of a dip but the dip isn't the whole story it's just another part of the process so if you can figure out how to get through this like there's always gonna be recessions and there's always gonna be a new tool and there's always gonna be some new thing that makes us think everything we're doing is broken but it's just an influence and if we can evolve and survive it and be resilient then we and also keep people lined with our life mh then i i don't think that's too bad even though i wish everything just worked all the time you know that would not be just so much easier i totally agree well linda this is a bite sized interview so it's not like i we job i'm gonna keep you for an hour and a half and i'm gonna do that to you again so i'm gonna stop you here and thank you so much for coming back and just yeah just giving us insight into into what you're thinking or you're feeling it's also really helpful for me to know that someone so far ahead of me experiences the same feelings and emotions and so it's not just me and hopefully you listen also know that it's not just you either it's all of us yeah isn't this this fun so fun like you said just when you think you got the hang of it yeah so hope think goes on over bed just keep going just keep going thanks so much for being evelyn it was so great catching up with you and compact and join us another time we'd love to have you love that i would love that and great speak to you soon

hey quick thing i'm on maternity to leave having my third baby right now so the next few months of podcast content is gonna be a mixture of me appearing on other pee podcast sharing things you've never heard me share before on this podcast never before publicly released extended interviews with stakes that make me guests like belinda weaver jordan gill steve fallen and more and of course mistakes that made these aldi book good episodes some of my favorite interviews that you might have missed but really should catch up upon just a reminder that even though i'm our maternity leave my email agency is not we work with business owners like you and we're still taking on new clients an email and launch project so if you're ready to take your email list from has potential to highly profitable head over to man copy c dot com and get in touch with our amazing team of experts and strategist the link is in the show notes okay let's get into today's episode you know email marketing is about hearing that relationship that makes people wanna buy from you that helps them trust you they don't know you if you email them once a month then i'm gonna do best email marketing doesn't always come that easily to me it's something that i've i definitely enjoyed at different points in my business but it's something that i have to really think hard about and i have to work on to stay consistent with it so i was really excited that today i am getting to chat to man from email copy cove or about email marketing i have seen man speaking person i've enjoyed her content per ages she has a private podcast that i really enjoy and i really wanted to get her on the podcast so that i could pick up brains and ask all the questions that hopefully you would wanna ask too and honestly this is such an amazing chat for me it really got me inspired and excited about working on my email list again and growing it and sending out emails and she just has such brilliant tips and she shares them very generously so i hope you enjoy it and i can't wait to hear what you think if you wanna come and let us know head to atlas mo or at building your brown podcast and yeah let's carry on the conversation over there hi welcome to the podcast hi liz thanks for having me maybe to start off with i think a lot of people know what you do but maybe you can just give like a little summary of what it you do yes so i am the founder and head email strategist at email copy that's where we help you take your email list from has potential to highly profitable so we're email strategist email copywriter who are not just trying to make you more money through email yes that is one of our goals but also to really like strengthen and nurture those were that relationship that you have with your audience as well okay so my first question that i'd love to ask is what is the thing that like made you fall in love with email like why do you love email marketing so much okay so i was a generalist for i wanna say about two years so i kind of learned how to do all the stuff and i really like i really tried everything when i first started people used to come to me for everything i'd say yes to anything and everything you know what it's like yeah i was like posters yeah sure brochures yeah you know anything i did you know all the sales pages websites everything and i used to do email as well i used to email for clients i used to work with a lot of charities when i first started my business because i came out of the charity sector my in house job before i started my business was in the charity sector so naturally kind all those connections kinda came with me and i used to offer at one point like really like a cheapest email service and a more expensive emails like so there was one that was like choose email with strategy and i'll do the strategy for you or without strategy and you just tell me what you want me to write and i'll write it and the only reason i did that was because i was basically scared that no one would choose the more expensive option i preferred that one because i knew that was one that was gonna be the better one and actually what happened was everyone did choose the email without strategy because it was a cheaper and they would tell me what to write and then what happens is these people aren't email experts so they would tell me what to do and as i'm writing in it i'm thinking this is a terrible idea but i didn't have the confidence back then to say this is a this is a bad idea we don't wanna do this and i realized that i guess after my confidence bill up and i'd i've been doing this for couple of years that it's actually to my clients kind of detriment that i don't tell them and i needed to figure out to just basically take the bite horns and say i'm gonna do everything i'm gonna do the copy aspect and i'm gonna do the strategy as well because i know how to do this and the reason that your emails aren't doing as well as we want them to is because you're telling me what to do and you don't know what to do but i know what to do so that was like that was my experience i i was i was doing an email and a bunch of the stuff for clients and then what happened is i really started experimented with my own newsletter and i would do like local workshops in partnership with floyd bank and so i would meet all these people at the workshops and then at the beginning of at the end of every workshop i would put a little jar at the the top of the table and i'd say if you wanna do my email list put your name and email address on this piece paper this post it note and then put it in the in the drawer so what happened is i've kind of accidentally built this localized newsletter where i basically knew everyone at the beginning on my newsletter like i knew them by name by face and then i'd see them out and about in c working spaces and all this stuff and they used to tell me when we'd meet i love your emails your emails are like the only emails that i read i really enjoy them i love the stories it's so know they're so helpful so valuable and here that like face to face feedback which is really rare got me really excited and i was like wait a minute i i really love by doing this as well i really love it what if it was the only thing that i did and it took me it took me about six months to even really get serious about the idea of of specializing in an email because i think now there's a whole bunch of us in terms of email copyright email strategist but five years ago there there wasn't there were only a handful of people that i could see who would do in email and only email so it was terrifying and i just thought what if no one wants to hire me what if it's too niche i remember one of the first calls i had with my one of my dream clients she said in the call i didn't even know that there was such a thing as an email copywriter writer that i could hire someone one to just do my emails and that was the kind of you know the like bulb moment where you were like exactly yeah exactly so from then on i think it at the end of twenty nineteen i decided i was gonna do it and then literally january twenty twenty i was like everyone i'm an email specialist now but it did take me a while to kind of change the projects that will come in for that like transition to happen so i was still doing a lot of kind of a bit of everything in the background because i needed to pay my bills but of course i was kind of positioning myself as an email specialist and then and over time i feel like it's just one of those things went where when i said it enough off people you know started to believe it yeah that information kinda start to spread and and yeah that's how i ended up as an email strategist okay let's get into turning by email because i so i always say this i'm very selfish with my podcast in that i basically invite people on that i wanna learn from and i hope that i asked the questions that everybody else wanna hear and with my email marketing i would say maybe like a year ago or so i was just like loving it i was really going for it i was emailing so consistently like people were messaging me to like similarly to you people like were messaging me saying that they really enjoy my emails and i feel like i just had all the ideas and then i think this is quite normal in business where things ebb and flow and maybe like other think maybe like it might even have been this podcast i other either guess other marketing endeavors maybe like took priority and i'm still emailing but i feel like i've lost my way a bit with it like it's it doesn't you know when someone's that something's just clicking and you just feel it flowing out of you and it just feels so right and easy and i feel like i'm not there like i've got a bit more resistance now so i guess this or pre ample is leading up to like you must work with loads of different people get loads of different people's emails like what are some of your tips for someone who might be feeling like i am where they're feeling resistance they're like struggling like they know email marketing is a really important and good thing to do but they almost like haven't found their way to do it yet well i'm really glad you said that because i've been working on something recently because i see this so often and i think one of the biggest reasons that business owners struggle with their newsletter is because they haven't figured out what is like my way of doing this like you will try to replicate the way others are doing it and not like it and i i and and really struggle with it because it's just not for you it doesn't work for you and i think things like storytelling in newsletters has become so popular because it's so effective but now i feel like everyone feels like that's maybe one of the only ways to do email like it has to be it has to be stupid detailed and in it has to tell like the most amazing stories and you know and that's just not true there are so many different ways to do email as a matter of fact i have identified i i i did some research and i came up with eight different newsletter styles okay and i double i double triple quadruple check this because i i mean i'm signed up to hundreds of newsletters i have an entire inbox just dedicated to newsletters right and i went through as many newsletters as i could that i've been getting into that email and tried to categorize them into one of these eight different types i identified and i thought so i found these eight i identified these eight different styles and i have just finished creating a quiz right that helps and gas that helps business owners identify their perfect newsletter style so the idea is we wanna make email marketing more fun more faster as why we wanna make it faster so you're not like struggling to write more fun and also just easier as well and it's gonna be easier faster and more fun when you are doing it in a way that works for you based on your personality and your preferences and so this is what the quiz works to find out it's ten questions and then once you finish the the ten questions you get your result it tells you what your ideal newsletter style is and then on top of that i walk you through examples of that newsletter style out in the wild so you can get inspired and see it in action and see what it looks like and start to think about how you could maybe make this as i to start work for you oh my goodness that that's like exactly what i need because i think i think that what you've said is exactly what my issue is is that i think i haven't identified the sort of emails that i wanna write so then when i'm coming to the blank page i feel lost and i feel like when it was going really well was when i had a really clear structure i was emailing the same day every week now so i stopped doing that because i was like oh why do i need to do that i'll just do it whenever i feel like inspired to write something and i've re and i think that does work for a lot of people but i've i realized that doesn't really work for me like i always almost need the structure are and the discipline and almost like planning ahead like being a bit more strategic with it where i'm like planning ahead and i'm like okay this is what i'm promoting so this is i'm gonna be talking about yeah whereas i feel like when i do it in a kind of like i'm just gonna sit down and see what i am feel inspired to say today just doesn't that doesn't work i don't be fine yeah no i totally agree and it's one of those things right it's like it's like with any idea when you're tryna to when you just kind of sitting around of waiting to be inspired inspiration doesn't work like that sometimes it does sometimes it comes like a ball of lightning and i get that but most of the time you have to sit down and do the work to be inspired you know you have to sit down and start trying to write an email be to get in the flow for you to then get inspired and think oh yeah actually i've got this like i love this this is this is gonna be amazing you know there was an email that i just put out a few days ago literally which days ago i'm gonna interrupt you and say honestly one of the best emails i have ever read i replied to it because i was just like this is amazing like it was i mean i'll maybe yeah we can put a link to it in the year yeah show notes but it was such a good email but anyway carry on with what you guys thank you so much well it took me a really long time to come up with that email as in the i had the idea the so the news the subject line was should you talk politics in your newsletter and i've been wanting to write about this for a few months now because of not just the us elections but so much that's been going on all over the world and i know that business owners is really feeling like should i should i be talking about stuff should i is it appropriate is it is it inappropriate for me to not talk about stuff like what do we do when it comes to when it comes to this and i was i've been i felt inspired to write this a long time ago but i knew that it was such an important topic and that it was so important to me that i just couldn't write it i had like this complete block and so it's been on my mind for about three months i'm not joking about three months and then there was a week just thought no you need to write it now and you need to send it now and then i still didn't do it for another week and then that's why i actually missed a whole week of sending emails to my newsletter i don't know if anyone noticed but i usually send three emails a week so if i'm don't out of your inbox for a week there's a reason and it is because i told myself the next email gonna send it has to be this email and so i did that thing where i just i was really just stuck i was so stuck and i was just waiting for something to come me and then and then i sat down that monday i thought no just sit down and start writing and in the end it only took me about an hour because at once i sat down and and started writing i really got into the flow really felt inspired i knew exactly what i wanted to say and i do think it's probably one of the best emails i've ever written and it's the one that definitely got the most responses of kind of emotional emotional responses and actually we repurposed it on instagram as well it went down really well that as well and so i think sometimes you just gotta sit down and just do the thing and just write get through that's comfortable get through the discomfort and that and it happens to all of us it happens to everyone i mean i do all i do is write emails all day every day for me for my clients and still i find myself getting you know blocks and stuff like that i think also when you put too much pressure on yourself as well to be like this i want to see something amazing that's really difficult too so you just you gotta push past it yeah okay i got two questions off the back of that one yesterday you mentioned about how you hadn't looked yet but you were gonna look at the unsubscribe on that email did you look i did look so that day i'm gonna i'm gonna look again now because it's been about three days but with after twenty four hours which is usually when i'll check stats i'd had twenty one unsubscribe oh that's it's not bad i think i don't think that's low yeah it's really low still actually i still have still have twenty anyone on unsubscribe and at first i was like oh maybe that's really interesting maybe the people on my newsletter were just really aligned with my kind of values way of thinking mh but actually i did get a response from someone who who told me that that they'd voted trump and were talking about you know why and that kind of thing and i the email wasn't even about trump i did mention i did mention a story but it it wasn't even about whether you vote trump harris or whatever else but i thought well maybe in that case maybe there are people who have different opinions to me on my on my newsletter which is great maybe they respected the way that i approached the the topic and maybe they are just respectful of of differences as well but only twenty one on unsubscribe i think i was really shocked i thought i'd get a whole lot more yeah and that's really interesting yes can i just say by the way i mentioned all that about the quiz and i didn't even tell you how to use it yeah well i'm well i'm definitely get it i'll definitely put a link in the show notes of the quiz because everyone's great yeah yeah helpful tell people how they can get to it okay so just go to my website man copy dot com slash quiz okay never that's nice and i really wanna know what you get and if you find it helpful i will do it straight after this and i'll message you and until you because okay definitely need it in january i'm gonna be launching the sixth cohort of my design your own branding course and you can currently sign up to the waitlist list i'm gonna be letting people on the waitlist have early access to sign up for the course before the end of the year and also they will get an early bird discount so if sorting out branding is on your to do list for your business in twenty twenty five and you're not ready to outsource it to a designer then i would massively recommend jumping on that waitlist list and letting me guide you through the process of designing your own branding the course is ten weeks long and there's lots of support from me with the group calls c working box days a dedicated facebook group where you can ask me in your fellow students questions and i aim to support you as much as possible at every stage of the course you'll have access to the course content forever and so you can work through it at your own pace or even go through it again at a later point if you would like to find out more head to liz dot net forward slash d y o b and get more information and sign up to the waitlist coming back to your email that you sent out this week i've got another question for you so you said about how you repurposed it at instagram now i always feel really weird about doing that because i feel like if someone signed on up to my email list like they have to be getting something different and special tell me your thoughts about sharing it on social media and like how like what the but you said that that performed really well as well like what yeah yeah give me your from a sort of like email strategist person like obviously i am a big fan of repurposing and i know that that works but i've got a block in terms of my emails and how i repurpose those yes well actually let me just see my insights so typically my posts don't get like a whole lot of attention but this one got a good number of saves got twenty saves hundred and fifty one likes and the graph that tells me of like your typical post views is like down and then this post is like sky high on the autograph graph so this particular post did really well and i think for me my strategy around repurposing my newsletter content because for me my emails come first that's where the bulk of my energy goes and then they're like what's left over usually goes to my instagram grid and i also repurpose my some of my emails to link my linkedin newsletter as well but i think what's important is that i don't repurpose everything okay so that's the key thing so neil do you one yeah yeah okay and i almost like it's almost like a testing ground for me i see which emails go down really well which people find really valuable and then those ones i'm like i don't want those to just disappear and never be right again because that's that's what i'll help that will happen with email it goes at once and then and then that's it and so i actually repurpose in different ways there was those one piece of content that i did that was a tear down of kylie kylie cosmetics email strategy that went down so well that i repo it to instagram it was a blog initially a repo to instagram and then i added it to my welcome sequence and it's been in my welcome sequence for about thing yeah i've been in my welcome sequence for four four and a half years maybe and i still get replies about how much people are enjoying that email it's still performed really very well i okay i never thought that is such a brilliant tip i feel like we need to stop here for this tip because i have never thought about how like i've got my welcome sequence and it's like i don't i can't remember it's like three or four email and it's like introducing me and i always felt like that was it then it had to just be welcoming but it makes so much sense to take an email that's performed really well and then just tack that onto the end it's like a first email that they get yeah give them your best content first the one that's been proven have the best value the one that gets you in the most responses the one that that's most enjoyed the one that people the one that people tell you is really valuable because your welcome sequences you wanted to put your best foot forward and it's in those few emails that people will decide whether they're gonna stick around and keep open your emails so you wanna put your best or first and even in by the way the actual welcome sequence you'll see as you go through the welcome sequence your open rates will usually decline because the the longer the sequence it's just totally natural for the the open rates kind of fall and so that it goes just goes to show that people are most excited about joining your list when they first joined so those first few emails are super super important so yes your best content you wanna put some value content in your in your welcome sequence excuse me because the point is that you want people to basically understand how amazing you are and how credible and authority you are in your field you know and one thing i've been working on a lot in the past year is kind of step it into like my thought leadership yeah like position which has been really scary because you know when you are for me thought leadership is is coming up with new perspectives and new ideas and talking about things that people other the people may not usually talk about or might may usually try not to talk about you know or be around the bush with and and it's been a bit scary but i decided that's what that's what i wanna do and so my first i think very real like thought leadership thing this year was at atomic presented my own email framework and i spoke at a tom love that and i was really nervous about that because it was something i come up with i was like people having love this i hate this thankfully you've got amazing response i was there i watched it and it was one of the best sessions i went to and what i loved about it was it was so practical like i went away being like right i know exactly what to go and do now like from this tour yeah so excellent yeah and then and then the other thing is that i've been trying really hard to push myself with the type of email content that i'm putting out e g should you talk politics in your newsletter you know mh and so going back to repurposing i take the best perform emails and the ones that i think reflect what i wanna reflect most about me and my business i e you know we're thought leaders we like when it comes to email where we're thinking about it differently with strategist first so we're not just like pen for hires were strategist all that kind of stuff those emails that reflect those values that i wanna reflect those the ones that get repurposed on instagram okay and those ones that get repurposed on linkedin lose newsletter those are the ones that live to see my welcome sequence you know mh so it's about being strategic for the repurposed and also remembering that your repurposing is gonna be like how it looks is gonna be different on different platforms so with instagram i turned it into a i think there's a sixteen carousel and that was the first time i'd done such a long carousel and it was very much essay style which was an experiment so i think again just experiment with what's happening and i didn't know how that would go down because i was like well this was an email and now it's basically an essay on instagram i wonder if people were gonna read it people did read it and then but i'm linkedin for example this is something that would be a linkedin newsletter rather than maybe a post and then you also think about how like what is the best thing to do with your email because with with care i use kit formally convertkit i can link to the email itself and have people just read the email in that browser so i could just put it as a post and say i wrote this email here's the link go read it and when they are linked out to that post you know invites them to join my subscriber to join as a subscriber as well so if my goal is i want more subscribers i would do it that way mh but with linkedin my goal is i want more followers and so i'm gonna go with like the native linkedin way of doing that linkedin later yeah that makes sense a very practical question for you how do you organize and store your emails like are they just all like all your old emails are they just stored in kit or do you have like a system an amazing system for keeping them all in up one place okay good questions so i have my email stored in a google doc and with the with the introduction of tabs in google docs i'm very excited to update my system but basically it's a google doc because that is separated by month so january emails email etcetera etcetera and then i use on a calendar so that i actually have the a constant calendar for my emails and i basically will link to the correct email in the correct date so then yeah so then my assistant goes in and this is another great thing can i just say email creation and the email process becomes a lot easier when you're not doing every part of it because i just i want you to note that like coming up with the email idea and write in the email is one thing and then put it into your email service provider to go out and do all the techie stuff around it it's a completely different task and a completely different job so i separate though so that i can just focus on the writing in which makes my writing in a whole lot easier so i'll put it in the i'll put the correct email in the correct like a date in asana and then my assistant will schedule it for me and put it into a kit i mean i you know i assign it to her and then done i will say that if there's like a quick email that i need to send i'll just go and kit and just like do yeah so yeah if it's not something that's like you know that i wanna keep a record of like i just did my pregnancy announcement yesterday i think it was on email and i was like i need to store that in my google dot com you're not talking me at the one i about your phone gonna be that anytime we're not repairs in that one so sometimes going and quickly like right i need to yeah okay and so is it like this is gay gateway ig granular just like one google doc but it's just like organized you can like it must be hundreds and thousands of pages point so one google dot it was very long it was getting very long and this is i i'm really grateful the tabs now because now we can break up like i'm gonna i'm gonna reorganize it so that the tab each tab is a month nice so you'll just be able to flick through the in the year that'd be so good and will be a million pages okay so another question i've got for you you mentioned that you sent emails three times a week and now i'm on your list that doesn't feel that doesn't feel overwhelming to like that feels like i don't even not that i don't notice but i'm not there thinking like oh my goodness emails emailing me all the time but when you said that i my natural reaction is like oh my goodness three times a week there's no way i could do that and i am totally like stuck in the i mean this is making me realize i've got so many like blocks when it comes to email and this is probably what this is helping me because this is probably why i'm not loving it at the moment but talk to me about three times a week like i'm totally stuck in the once a week camp but but i feel inspired hearing you talk about how often you email okay so the first thing i need to say is i totally get that reaction especially because you're like oh my gosh three emails a week and if they're not good emails like if they're bad emails it that's just it's annoying yeah so first of all the key is to make sure that your emails are not bad yeah yeah i good emails that people actually wanna read and the valuable as well and so basically i used to send one email a week and i still recommend like the minimum that recommend business wanna send is one email a week i i get clients sometimes you come to me and and say like hey you know will you like wanna hire you to just do my monthly news newsletter one a month and i'm like no mh i actually say no it's going to take a very long time for your emails to help you and your business in any way shape or form because one email a month allows people to just forget about your business about who you are and it really doesn't allow you to like create that relationship that that you know email marketing is about it's about creating that relationship that makes people wanna buy from you that helps them trust you and you know know you they don't know you if you email them once a month so it's not useless it's a great start but once a week is like the minimum that would recommend business owners email now i used to email once week then i went up to twice a week because there were a couple of emails strategist in my my atmosphere who emailed more than once week and i was like you know i like that i like that distracted you it makes sense to me i was terrified of doing it i thought well let me try it so i i started emailing twice a week and the moment i started emailing twice a week i started seeing more sales of my digital products i was finally able because by the way i've found i've always found it really easily easy to sell products courses that kind of think of email it's the a lot harder to sell services over the email market and i think anyway suddenly i found it so much easier to sell my services as well but i've noticed that a lot more people who hire my my car agency are on the newsletter first and get like a feel for us on and a feel for me mh to our newsletter yeah so once saw twice a week starting to work i was like now laura bell on my podcast mistakes that made me and laura belle agrees and an email strategist also an email marketer and she i was talking to her about this and she was like i challenge you to email three times a week and i was like i love that three times a week she said like yeah do it do it and just see how it goes smells like i can't people are gonna hate me people are gonna like mark me a spam i can't do it and she was like i i challenge you to do it try it and see what happens so i did and actually really interestingly the third email that i added is pure sales email so every week i'm sending a pure sales email which i think is really important because i think was business owners were so wrapped up in providing value which is great emails so should provide more value than you know buy this by that but then what often happens is we kind of like create an imbalance where we'll only have a providing in value and we forget to sell our services and promote our services and our products and our offers and stuff and so that third email that i added was a pure sales email that goes out every week and when i went up from two emails week to three emails a week i saw even more sales and i sent in two emails a week anyone all a week that that's so interesting and that's why i love about like one of the biggest lessons i running my business is is i guess trying to get like less emotional about it and that makes it sound like i was crying quite at all the time i mean like as in not i think we get so wrapped up in how we feel about things but actually sometimes just having data is so helpful because actually like there's your feelings about emailing three times a week but there's also hot cup oh i can't see it there's also cold hard facts that it's working you know like that you're making sales that it's making money and so then that helps like your mindset around it because you know that it's like an effective strategy and i love getting into that mindset of like well let's just see what the what do the numbers say like the numbers don't lie kind of thing exactly and i think what's really interest here is i think a lot of businesses have seen it that twenty twenty four has been a very different year in business than all the years i feel like that the sales cycle has definitely lengthen it takes so much longer for people to decide whether they're gonna hire you or you know spend their money with you on whatever is at the whatever way that they're spending their money with you it just takes some longer to decide and so it's the same reason why i think that sending one email month is ineffective because it that sales cycle just gone for so so long to get to know you yeah you think so long to get to know you i'm speeding off my sales cycle yeah and actually not my sales cycle and you're speeding up how how quickly people get to know you that's so interesting because i had a really similar experience to this and so i think this is like a philosophy that can be applied to more different areas of your marketing where i set myself a challenge with my friend hannah to make a real a day for a month right so i don't think i could continue i couldn't keep that up all year round but i was like for a month i can commit to that and i think it'll be fun we'll see what happens and like secretly in the back of my head i was like you know maybe i'm gonna go viral and this is gonna be like mega that did not happen but what was really interesting is that i had really struggled with video before that like my brain just wasn't thinking in a video format it was still thinking in like carousel get static post and what it did was it sped up my process of just learning how to do how i wanted to make videos for my content because instead of doing like two a week and it taking me you know like a year to get comfortable with it i basically like condensed the learning into a month because i was making myself do it so much faster and then what happened was two months later one of my reels did go viral and it was just so interesting to me like that actually the the what i learned from it was was by setting myself that challenge like it wasn't like it transformed my business straight away but it sped up my process it sped up something and i think that's the same like by doing the three emails you're speeding up like how quickly someone gets to know you how quickly they can work out that they wanna work with you i think yeah i just think it's i think it's really interesting yeah no i totally great first of all i love your videos so think that's really interesting to know and that it takes you so they didn't take you so long to do them is amazing as well because your videos are great as and they look like you spent a lot of time on them and i think exactly what you said it's totally right now that i'm sending three emails a week i feel like i'm a better email copywriter for it i'm a better email strategist i get to experiment more with my list first before i'm experimenting with anything to do with clients so i'll i'll always i get to experiment with my newsletter basically and then come up with new ideas and strategies for my clients based on what i'm seeing working for for me and then of course what i'm seeing working for all the clients too but yeah it's it's a whole process and i feel like i've in the past year of email in three times a week i feel like i'm a lot better at email it well yeah like you've sped up your learning process as well haven't you let for the same reason as like with the reels like you're just doing so much more of it and i think for you like your email list is kind of a little bit like your portfolio you know what i mean that's like it's if someone's on one of your clients email list they're not necessarily gonna know that you've were in the email whereas we know that you've were in those emails and so we're like okay here's like the perfect example of what a man can do yeah yeah i pretty much every client that hires us now is is on my newsletter and will often mention something about it say something like like for a while i had clients feel like just do for me what you do for you yeah yeah yeah just i want your emails but i want to do my emails yeah yeah and they've i've also actually had people find me because you know my clients i've written my client's emails they go out and then those quiet those people will email those clients like they'll respond to you must be like this is amazing can i kinda i just ask like who wrote this and then the person will usually be like oh it was so and so and then they'll come back to me and be like yeah you wrote that stuff i just do for me what you did for that and so it is really portfolio yeah it's it's really cool and so i put a lot of effort and a lot of time into my emails and i think this is the thing like it has to make sense for you as well it makes total sense for me to send through emails a it makes total sense for me to spend a couple of hours every week part of my email send in emails and that might not be for everyone like i have clients who you know instagram queens and that zone of genius instagram and email comes after instagram you know all their best content goes on instagram and then for them it's like the content that hits on instagram maybe we even email to an email yeah i think that's it and that's why i love about is that we can all find like our own way to run our business like i do think there's like really something about like leaning into your strengths and what you're good at and you know like for me i spend a lot of my time working on this podcast because it's you know i know you do as well with your podcast like it's something that i really love and i really enjoy i've totally seen like the fruits of it and the benefit of it but so like yeah often this will get prioritized and then the other things will like slot into place after but yeah i think yeah such a good reminder although i do feel inspired talking to you that maybe i'll maybe in a new year i might try going to two a week instead one and just as like can think of it as an experiment and just see happens and i like your point about because you know like it is really important to get that balance right of nurture emails and sales emails and actually by emailing more a week it just means that you can do the sales emails more regularly because you've got those extra two nurture emails in between them yeah yeah exactly i think that's really cool like not not to sound negative but like what are the some of the things that you see people saying doing that are just like really frustrating you about email mark where you're just like oh stop pe you know this story or stop saying this okay the first one is like a a technique that people use to get people to open their emails which is everybody's seen it when they use three to oh yeah i hate that too that's almost like an a medium and unsubscribe for me because i'm just like you've the this is too manipulative yeah it really is it really is and so there's that because you think that you have a conversation with someone you open it up and you're like that was so just un called for yeah now i have to have to delete out and subscribe there's there's that there's the when you wants unsubscribe from an email list and then they're like okay it will take up to seven days for us to remove the email what yeah yeah what and then i guess other things i think it's one of those things it's what i mentioned earlier where either people send in only like value emails were you are learning so much from person which by the way can sometimes have can actually be detrimental because sometimes people get so used to you sending out just free amazing valuable contact they don't wanna pay for they don't they don't wanna pay you they don't pay you because you've trained them to expect that your content is always free that it's always amazing why would they pay why they pay you know such a good point and then often also what i've seen is you know because i with every project that i do for clients we do audience research mh and you'll you'd be surprised how many times people will say in the audience research or the reason i didn't buy was because like i joined your free webinar hour whatever and it just it taught me so much that i didn't need to buy your product didn't need anything else so you you're given so much away for free that people don't even feel like they need they need the paid stuff anymore which is great if you're not a business owner whose still needs to make money yeah gonna be a versus what he needs during one it's not so great so there's that but then there's the other side where people only sell sell sell it's like i every email is like buy this and buy that and buy this and you know i think we have black friday coming up as we're speaking now i don't have anything planned for about friday i don't often do anything for black friday i'm not a huge discount of stuff mh i don't want people to get into the habit of seen me discount stuff i have evergreen funnels like that are kind of working constantly in the background between these emails that offer like money off of products if they if people buy within like a certain amount of time they get you know x amount off like it's always available for them to buy but if they buy within that time frame they'll get a bit money off and so i like to keep my office there basically so that people know that my offers are usually one time thing it's not gonna be something to see all the time i actually had i had actually was on a sales call from one recently and they're like okay this will sounds amazing so what's the best price you can give me i was yeah i don't do this counts price at the price so yeah so it's interesting another or in like black friday mode to see the offers that are going out i think a lot of businesses feel pressured lot small businesses feel pressured to do back friday mh i don't think he should i don't think you need to i think also you need to like sit down and actually calculate whether it makes sense financially for you to to take part makes sense be resource makes more sense for like product based businesses who you know like sometimes they'll wanna like move old stock or you know like makes space new product and stuff i feel i do think with service based like i've never done it because i i can't really like it just doesn't feel beneficial to me to do with this account on my services because actually all my prices is are already probably lower than they should be and i know that if i make them lower for like a black friday offer then i'm just gonna resent the work that i'm doing because i feel like the prices are fair as they are yeah exactly yeah i think i think the service based businesses is like a tricky one yeah here's what i like to do so i don't do black friday but what i do is at the end of every year although i didn't do it last year which is why i'm definitely gonna do this year i i generally raised my rates every year just by a little bit and what i'll do is at the end towards the end of the year i'll tell people that if they book in with me if they book in with me now in twenty twenty four even if we start the projects in twenty twenty five they'll pay my twenty twenty no instead of my twenty twenty five rates yeah and so in that case you're not losing money at all in fact you make money because people are wanting to book with you but they feel like they're getting a discount yeah yeah yeah and they yeah had they had they left people went twenty twenty five yeah would have been bit more expensive so that's why i to do yeah i like that okay last question for you because i know that this is something that a lot people struggle with as well what are your favorite ways or what have been the most successful ways you found to grow your email list i guess i could attract the right people so one of the biggest ways that i grow my list is i think speaking so i have one particular lead magnet that works really well it's called the email rules it's a thirty five minute email class that goes down really well and i've had that for a few years and actually that was a paid product i really low how i ended up on your list i think it was that one yeah i remember it so it was really low priced initially i created as a paid product but then it went down so well that i was like oh actually i want this to be my free lead magnet mh and so i feel like the the effort i put into it was a paid it was paid product yeah and what i like revert that and i made it free i actually refunded everyone who bought it i thought was like i can't i can't just like start giving this out for free yeah yeah sorry funny everyone who bought it told them that it was gonna be a free lead magnet and so that's worked really well i feel like knowing my audience these are not people who would read an ebook for example i is my very first lead magnet was an ebook and that went down well but that was back in twenty eighteen yeah that was long time ago i feel like the yeah i feel like i feel really differently now about the sort of ebook digital like even just like a pdf checklist or something just doesn't do it for me i don't think so and so this is why like i'm experimenting with the quits now as well i i think that this quiz is gonna be really great i think people are gonna really love it it's not quite out in the world yet like it's gonna be in the next few days but if you're listening to this think that out because it'll be out yeah yeah feel this yeah but i i think that i've like been able to strike a balance between fun but also super valuable my god i put so much effort into like coming up with the results first of all like coming up with the eight different newsletter styles and making sure that i was like confident of that mh and again this is like me coming up with my own framework yeah and then coming up with the results that help you understand the framework and how to use it and and so i think that it's a good mix of it's actually fun to do i hope people enjoy doing it and i hope they actually find out something really interesting about themselves and something really valuable and useful in the results so i think that the quiz is gonna be is gonna be good i know to hear the stats on that i know i know me too so interestingly actually i i'm using interact the quiz platform and so i have like a bit of partnership with them going on with this quiz where they also wanna know the data yeah oh okay i wanna know the data too so yeah so i will definitely be in my data because they'll be asking me about it and i i think we're gonna be working on a case study and seeing like the difference between my video lead magnet and my quiz lead magnet but i think this is it it's just about experimentation yeah it's about knowing your audience like what will they actually engage with because because i think most people think that growing your list is just getting people to download the lead magnet but it it's really not because the lead magnet is just the first conversion the next conversion is aiming to use the lead magnet so they they can see how good you are at what you do and how valuable what you do is mh there are two conversions there yeah and both of them are you know not easy so know your audience know how they like to consume content how you can provide them with know help and support know that i feel like we've entered a stage where people are exhausted of being just like taught at mh like i don't need three more tips i don't want five lessons in yeah and so we have to be a bit more creative now there's definitely shift for sure yeah yeah definitely and then don't be free to experiment and try new things and and feel like it sometimes as well yeah yeah for sure you mentioned that speaking had i had an impact on your email list talk to me about so i do a lot of workshops a lot of webinars that kind of thing and so i always i always link to it's always been traditionally with the email rules my free day wrapping an email class it's been a really great like continuation of like continue to learn with me and it just it works really well because obviously i have a room full of people who are learning with me and then those who enjoy it can keep learning and so that's worked really well and i i yeah that's worked really you well but the other thing i was thinking is i actually so i have a bunch of talks that i've recorded on different topics right and so whenever anyone asks me for a free talk hey can you record and you talk by email so that you can like be my summit wherever else i'm not doing so many summit anymore i'm basically not doing installments anymore but just an example i'll say yes sure and i'll send them the recording of an email workshop that i've already done so it's a it's a folder in my and google drive oh that's so small yeah yeah because if if it's a free thing then you're not gonna get original content because you're not paying for original content if you pay me you'll get original content you don't pay you're gonna get something repurposed anyway and so yeah i have that's how i do kind of that side of speaking the free side of speaking mh and if it's not live i i have a folder of like hey choose your topic okay here you go that's top your own yeah that's so good did you so one of the things you mentioned earlier your talk at ton and i know that at you like you gave really pratt school tips and then at the end you know you're like if you want to get access i mean like so many people i was seeing near the back of so many people were like photograph every slide because it was so much value on them and then you're like actually like if you sign up to my mailing list you'll get sent these slides and so many people did it like i was already on your list but i obviously did it did you like did you get a good bump from that like in influence i can't remember the figures but i remember being happy with the sign because yeah and and that was actually the first time that i did that like here's a qr code if you go to this link sign up to my newsletter you'll get the slide the delivered to your inbox the first time i did it so i was really interested to see how it go down and i think it was it was good i actually saw someone else do something in justin which was and it was another tom speaker actually they said dm me the word x on instagram and i'll send you the slide lever yeah using the chance yeah that's clever because they they don't even need so other yeah you don't even need to have it as a slide in your deck you're just like yeah exactly i like that and that's actually that's really easy for people to do they can literally do it right there before they forget yeah exactly and again it depends on where priorities saw if you wanna go your newsletter then it's sign up to get the slides if it's yeah yeah i wanna go on my instagram go find me on instagram before but that yeah oh i'm gonna steal that that's so good anyway yeah yeah amazing my goodness i feel like i could chat to you for ages but this has been so good i actually do genuinely feel really inspired i'm gonna go write an email right now i feel genuinely inspired yeah to do it i feel like this i feel like sometimes this is just what you need though that you just need to have a conversation with somebody else who like it knows about topic and loves the topic and then it too excited about it and you're like yes this is what i need for my business no i totally agree i'm in that zone right now with seo i i was yeah just i just was an episode and my episode well it will be a couple of weeks now after this comes out but i just did one with a friend of mine amy on seo and it got me excited but it as well yes yeah so i'm super like feeling inspired about i see you at the moment that was cool amazing if people mention the website for the quiz again and if you find you follow you mention and that's please tell people about your podcast as well oh okay yes so first of all i'm we're gonna assume the podcast because he here so you know and my podcast is a multi award winning podcast it's called mistakes that made me and that's where i ask extraordinary business owners to share their biggest business mistake and liz has been on mistakes that made me love you can start with liz episode such a great episode i'm just trying to remember which which episode was it it wasn't that long ago i'll i'll put all yeah i'll put a link to all green the shoulders sure yes so go listen to us on my podcast mistakes that made me liz talks about her biggest business mistake and if you wanna try the quiz head over to my website email copy code dot com slash quiz and do the quiz find out your perfect newsletter style and you can find me on instagram at man copy cool amazing thank you so much i love trying new liz it's been green

hey quick thing i'm on maternity to leave having my third baby right now so the next few months of podcast content is gonna be a mixture of me appearing on other pee podcast sharing things you've never heard me share before on this podcast never before publicly released extended interviews with stakes that make me guests like belinda weaver jordan gill steve fallen and more and of course mistakes that made these aldi book good episodes some of my favorite interviews that you might have missed but really should catch up upon just a reminder that even though i'm our maternity leave my email agency is not we work with business owners like you and we're still taking on new clients an email and launch project so if you're ready to take your email list from has potential to highly profitable head over to man copy c dot com and get in touch with our amazing team of experts and strategist the link the show notes okay let's get into today's episode hey hey welcome to mistakes that made me the podcast that asks extraordinary business owners to share the biggest business mistake so you know what not to do on your road to success mistakes that made me is brought to you by the hope hubspot podcast network the audio destination for business professionals i'm man my your host and this episode is not an interview instead i'm gonna share my february fail so if you've been listening into the past few episodes you'll know that i've been planning on updating and relaunch my signature business course like a boss and this is something i've been planned to do for a while and i was convinced that i was i was gonna get it done before i leave from maternity leave at the end of february it was always an ambitious goal but it was one i felt i could do as long as i worked longer and harder than usual and i guess over the past few weeks i've just had this realization that i don't want to work longer and harder than usual now that i'm wrapping things up for maternity leave though my agency the email agency will still stay open and run for clients and projects i want to rest i don't want to hustle i also want to be sure that when i do update and relaunch like a boss this already exceptional course only becomes more exceptional i'm not willing to take the risk of and re recording training when i'm tired one of my company's values is excellence and i expect excellence from me and everyone i work with and i'm just not sure that i can deliver a twelve week course worth of excellence right now so i'd rather wait until i can also i built this business though it could be a life first business that supports my health and the different seasons of my life so even though i feel like a complete and auto failure for not being able to get this done in time i've decided that right now i will not be updating and we launch in like a boss that's right now okay so i'm disappointed i'm super disappointed i won't get to share it with you this one like i plan to because like i said it is an amazing course especially knowing that i get on prompted emails from like a boss students telling me it's helped them run that first five figure project i just got an email in my inbox the other day from someone that said literally and i quote i just booked one of my biggest launch clients today and i've got module two of the l boss training to thank i revamped my proposal for this client following in a similar format to the one you showed us in the in the course and the client loved it so get in emails like that just make me realize how special this course is and how much i don't wanna try and revamp it when i'm tired i want this course to have the best of me and the best of my energy so even though i'm disappointed i know that this is the best thing for me and i know that it's the best thing for anyone who is considering taking like a boss in the near future so if you are excited about me relaunch this course i hope you understand and i hope you'll join me when i do relaunch possibly later in twenty twenty five when i'm when i am not so pregnant and struggling to breathe and struggling walk and all that stuff i will keep you updated best way to stay updated is to keep listening to these their podcast episodes and also to join my newsletter which you can do at email copy dot com but there's something else to be super excited about so even though you can't be excited about joining around it like a boss right now there is something else to be super excited about before i go into that and tell you what's happening that's exciting i i did wanna just follow on giving you this update about like a boss because you know this podcast is all about making mistakes and i guess come through the other side of those mistakes and i think i definitely put too much of on my plate and expected too much of myself especially when you know i'm also in the middle of of of training my my agency the team in the agency and we we've been doing so much and we've been working so hard and things are going so well on the agency side that i just feel like the last bit of energy that i have has to go to the agency and the clients that i'm serving and making sure that they get everything they need from me right but stick around i'll be right back after this quick break to let you know what's happening next you don't wanna miss this i wanna really quickly tell you about podcast and i think you're gonna enjoy sales evangelist hosted by donald kelly is brought to you by the hopes hubspot podcast network the audio destination for business professionals each week donald interviews the world's best sales experts successful sellers sales leaders and entrepreneurs who share their strategies to succeed in sales right now they share actionable insights and stories that i'll encourage challenge and motivate you to work your way to the income that you really want for yourself if you're someone who's looking to take off in your sales career and earn the income you really want this is the podcast for you now i would start with episode one eight six six a apollo sequence three sales practices you must abandon from twenty twenty four listen to sales evangelist wherever you get your podcasts it's twenty twenty and i've just sold my first ever vip day vip days are all the rage and all the big deal business owners are show about how easier to make two thousand dollars in a single day well twenty twenty me is broke and earning two thousand dollars in one day is definitely something i can get behind when i pitch this over to my client and she asks me the price my voice breaks and i mobile myself one four nine seven i tell her with full confidence in inward though i kick myself for not quote in one nine nine seven as planned let's do it my client replied i held it together for the rest of the call but as soon as i close that zoom window it was party time i jumped around my bedroom of in excitement the whole office face won't be around for another two years then i watched up my biz these nick moore's and brew rubber and we celebrated together she said yes to one nine four seven it was all fun in games and dollar signs until nine am on vip day i hated every minute of it i spent the entire day watching the clock i was a bundle of nerves stressing about things like whether i i'd get the work done in time if the final deliverable would even be any good my client would like what delivered the fact that i definitely wasn't being paid enough for the vast amount of work i was doing in that time but the end of the day i was absolutely exhausted never again i thought to myself one four nine seven was not enough money for what i just gone through i officially hated vip days but i still love the idea of making more money in last time my only issue with the vip day was the delivery in a day aspect and the stress that came with that so a few months later when i was pregnant with my twenty twenty one baby and needed to up my rate so i could start saving for myself funded maternity leave fast i sat down and started mapping out my own unique vip offer an offer that gave me more time to do the work and that paid me significantly more too i came up with the vip week priced at about four thousand two hundred dollars per week it's now priced at six thousand dollars by the way now that was an offer that was worth my time and energy my vip week worked and i was able to sell it to clients pretty easily so easily in fact but even i was surprised i thought there'd be more pushback more objections but once clients heard my pitch they were happy excited even to pay me vip week was so successful that it helped me hit almost six figures the year i was pregnant with my second baby even though i only work three quarters of that year thanks to this offer i was able to take on more projects at a higher rate while still working fewer hours than ever before it helped me fund seven to eight months of maternity leave as a business owner and it helped me have one of my biggest revenue months just weeks after returning into work post maternity leave if you hate the idea of the traditional day rate or vip day but you still want to earn more work fewer hours join me for design your vip week live the doors are open right now so let me tell you a little bit about it designing vip week is my two and a half hour pre recorded masterclass class that teaches you how to design and position and sell a high ticket vip week that both you and your clients love as soon as you join you'll get instant and lifetime access to the master class so you can dive right in and i'll walk you through my six thousand dollar vip offer so you can see and copy how i do it but what's different about this twenty twenty five version of design vip week is the live component join us for this round and you'll get six days of live q and a support in the pop that community so i can help you tailor your offer to your industry your niche and your clients the slot community opens up on friday the twenty eighth of february and is open until thursday sixth of march oh and you'll also get my done for you candy email templates that take your clients from onboarding to boarding in and saved you days of workflow mapping in and email writing el from me says she's a service provider who took this mask she says not only did i love designing vip week i already bought my first vip week is so easy and my client almost virtually fell on her knees when i said you'll get it in seven days now do i think you'll join this masterclass class and immediately start charging six thousand dollars for your vip week like i do no but service providers who taken this mask class have gone through it and immediately launched one thousand five hundred to two thousand five hundred dollar epi week so yeah seeing a three to five times return on investment on this master class is not just possible but it's actually been achieved by more business owners than i can count and i should probably count them just to really drive this point home with my vip week price and strategy in you back pocket two you'll learn all about it inside the master class those rates of yours will increase in no time as your experience with vip weeks increases too if you are a service provider a copywriter or a consultant and you're ready to earn more in less time join us for design vip week live and get coached by me as you put your offer together like i said the doors are open right now and i'm gonna leave you with john mc mcgee john mc mcgee is a service provider who took design new vip week and is one of the many business owners one of the many service providers who've seen great success with it now in john's particular case he actually gave me an update the private update that he's allowed me to share letting me know that he's generated seven thousand five hundred and fifty pounds from vip weeks since taken this master class that's almost ten thousand dollars usd he said looks at my glass clients and from the vip model i've generated seven thousand five hundred and fifty dollars worth of revenue all from this course not bad roi not bad at all john so listen to john mc share a little bit about his experience taken design of your week i'm gonna leave you with him so i purchased emma man's vip master class and it's he's potentially changing like the way that my business is is gonna run and function like i have children so i five children so for me like my time of juggling business and anything else with family and stuff is quite important so i i don't wanna be sort of like dragging myself here there and everywhere this kind of gave me quite a lot of clarity and a really simple kind like start to finish process i was sort of able to build out the systems so they were really fluent and it was really streamlined so i didn't have to be constantly like either worried about what i propose i'm gonna send or if it's completely bespoke or there were some variable factors in in each kind of project to a degree i guess but most of it was repeatable and technically it's scalable in theory like because it because it's so pan generic what the steps you go through i think i made probably the the most amount the money i did my business purely just from to vip weeks that i launched with clients and it is just takes a weight off your shoulder you don't have to be thinking nike i've got i've got find this project i've got find that project oh this is this amount this is at that amount like you know the set price you can increase it pretty much every time really because obviously you get there at you get quickly get more efficient and you get more time back so it's only ever gonna absorb of like go your favor and so far my clients loving it like because i've been able to use systems like up i'm able to like automate so much of like the onboarding in and the forms they fill out and i just kinda kept refining it so the more i did it i would document and then of like build out the process as we go really so and it's still only days for me and in terms of using this offer but already i'm like okay maybe this is just gonna be my main offer because i have so much more clarity i don't have to be kind of worrying about those different things kind i kind of know what i offer and unlike that as much as it's scary like the thought of letting go of other parts of work because obviously you don't limit yourself and like say no other work because it's that's the entrepreneur mindset but i i would recommend like anyone to to sign up for i man's vip stuff and and the thing is it's not just copyright right like this is this is transferable skills and transferable processes whatever service provider are so it doesn't matter if you're copyright i guess graphic designer or or kind of anything like that really the principles can be transferred anywhere so if you are considering or you dinner improve like i'm genuine brew and it is amazing so yes it's definitely worth definitely worth us if you to consider it so if design vip sounds like something you're interested in and you wanna find out more head over to ema man copy dot com slash vip week the link is also in the show remember that the slack community opens on friday so ideally you wanna join before friday so you can get the most out of the pop ups that community but the doors are open until sunday so i really hope to see you in there maybe see you soon