SweetLife Entrepreneur Podcast
Trainings for Online Coaches & Lifestyle Entrepreneurs
This episode is for those in Phase 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 of the Lifestyle Entrepreneur Roadmap™ Not sure what Phase your business is in?
Schedule a complimentary business triage call here.
This episode is for those in Phase 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 of the Lifestyle Entrepreneur Roadmap™ Not sure what Phase your business is in?
Discover your business growth phase by taking the SweetLife Entrepreneur Self Assessment
Schedule a complimentary business triage call here.
You’re listening to the Sweetlife entrepreneur podcast, simplified strategies to grow your service business and launch a life you love faster with business mental and entrepreneur activator, a probate. Hi guys, and welcome to episode number 237. Here it is the end of July, 2021. And we are so glad you’re listening to this episode. I’m April beach host here at the Sweetlife entrepreneur and business podcast and founder and CEO of the Sweetlife company,
where we help entrepreneurs did not design launch and scale a business for high profit, deep impact lifestyle. Freedom today’s episode is really special. You’re going to love this guest. She is an absolute delight, and we’re talking about the actual proven step-by-step process to build a global empire. This woman did it starting only 11 years ago with a baby on her hip.
And she is breaking down her exact formulation for how she did it without running high cost ads and really in a way that creates brand consistency and gets her message across. And so I’m very excited to introduce you to our guests today, and if you’re new to the show and you have never listened, thank you so much for tuning in. There are a lot of really amazing podcast episodes out there from different hosts all over the world.
And I’m so appreciative that you are here hanging out with us today. All of the show notes, everything we do as a company, to help you design, launch and scale your coaching business, your consulting business, or your expert focused business can be found by visiting us@sweetlifeco.com as well as all of the show notes and all of the resources we have available for you.
Let’s go ahead and dive into today’s episode. I am pleased to introduce you to Lorraine doll Meyer. She is absolutely literally an amazing woman. You’re going to be so inspired. She’s an award-winning CEO of formula. Botanica the organic cosmetic formulation and business school, which has trained over 13,000 organic cosmetic formulators and ND beauty entrepreneurs in 177 countries. And probably counting.
She’s voted the most influential person in natural beauty for 2020 and awarded the digital achiever of the year for the cosmetics industry by Google. Lorraine is on a mission to teach the world to formulate and in this process and you’ll hear her story. It is so cool. She’s going to break down what it was like moving from an employee role, becoming a mother,
realizing that that isn’t what she wanted and that she just had so much more that she wanted to do. And you are going to leave this episode, understanding the exact six pieces. I should say, being six steps to her formulation. She breaks it down very, very clearly her six step formula on how she created this global empire. So the end of this episode,
you’re going to know her exact six step formula. And it doesn’t matter if you’re in the beauty industry or whatever you’re in. If you were in the education industry, if you were a coach or consultant, this is the level of business that you want to design. You’re going to walk away knowing her step-by-step process. And you’re also going to realize that you can absolutely do this yourself.
So I’m so excited to dive in today’s episode. It is episode number 237. So all of the show notes, everything we’re talking about can be found by visiting Sweetlife co.com simply click on the podcast. And this is episode number 2, 3 7. All right, let’s dive into the show. Hi everybody. I am so excited to be joined by my new friend,
Lorraine Domar and she is going to blow your mind. You are literally going to be inspired just by the little chat that we have done behind the scenes here to get ready for what she is going to teach on this show. I am taking crazy notes and you are going to absolutely love this woman and be incredibly inspired and learn so much from this show today.
Lorraine, welcome to the show. Can you give everybody an introduction, share who you are, how you started out and all about this amazing online empire that you have built. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for having me on the show April. It is amazing to be here and I can’t wait for our chat. So I’m Lorraine. I run formula Botanica,
I’m a biologist, I’m a chartered environmentalist and I am on a mission to teach the world to formulate. So I run formula Botanica the online organic cosmetic formulation at school, and we train people how to make their own natural skincare and haircare using botanical ingredients are we are taking the world by storm with what we’re doing at the moment. It has been phenomenal.
So I’ve been running the school for almost eight years now, I guess. And I have 40 staff. We have over 13,000 students and graduates for in 177 countries. It has been a roller coaster to get here, but it wasn’t always like that. So just to give you a short intro into how I got here, I was on maternity leave with my eldest son who will be 11 in a few weeks.
And I decided that I couldn’t go back to my day job anymore. I had to work for myself. You know, I’d had really good jobs, but I just couldn’t handle working for other people anymore. And having listened to a few podcasts with you now, April, I think you probably heard that vaping quite well. So I decided I was going to start my own business.
I was watching the BBC’s apprentice. I was sitting there on the sofa with breastfeeding, my son. And I like, if these idiots can do it then, so can I, so that’s, I guess where it started. And then by the time I was on my second maternity leave, I had my business up and running. I was teaching people online already.
I had an app, I was teaching people how to make simple beauty products. And then I had the chance to actually buy formula Botanica in its infancy. It was a one woman side hustle. At that point I was, as I said, I had my second baby with me at that point. And I thought, you know what? This could be a fun hobby project.
And then I went back from attentively for a second time and my employer has ghosted me entirely. And so I thought I got to make this work and I have, so that’s like a potted history of, of how I got to where I am today. I guess You said something to me before we were recording. You know, you said I went from being this,
you know, mom would just a baby on my hip to having this global empire in 117, a hundred. How many different countries? It’s insane. Saudi 777 different countries, friends. Okay. This amazing woman has done this. And you literally have a formula just like you teach people how to formulate natural beauty products on their own. And I want to,
I want you to share your mission because I think that’s incredibly important. But what you’re going to share today on the podcast is the act is the actual formula from how you went from a mom with the baby on your hip, to where you are right now. But I think it’s important to know that for people to know, like, why are you doing this?
You shared this a bit with me before. Why are you so particularly passionate about what you teach women to do? Well, I love formulation because it takes us right back to our roots. It’s a skill that we’ve lost, that we’ve forgotten. And yet everyone used to do it. Like they’ve even found like fossilized face creams from Roman times. You know,
this is not something new and we can all formulate. Cause formulation is fun. It’s easy, it’s empowering. And most importantly, it disrupts the mainstream beauty industry because they want you to go and buy that product for 150 years. They’ve been telling us we’re not good enough. We don’t look right. We don’t smell right. We don’t conform to that.
Blonde stick thin what teeth person that they put, all the adverts, you know, everyone is different and we can embrace our own beauty by reclaiming that power from the beauty industry and learning how to formulate ourselves. And that is so incredibly empowering because then not only can you make your own skincare and haircare and even makeup whenever you need it. But it’s also more sustainable because the beauty industry produces over 120 billion units of packaging a year with that is just staggering.
And most of that ends up in landfill or in our oceans. And we can do better than that. And we can do that by learning how to formulate for ourselves and making things as in when we need them. So I am on a mission to make formulation as commonplace cookery and the entire world had to do it. And thankfully the world is very receptive,
which is a good thing. And you’re doing a very Good job out of that. You are doing an incredible job. And so thank you for sharing that. So before we even go into these six steps to how you have built this online empire in hearing these six steps, and I know our listeners after they hear them are going to be like, wow,
I can absolutely do this as well. I want to point something out. You are so incredibly deeply fiercely fire, really passionate about what you do. And you are very clearly leading with that determination. It’s not leading with the money because you want to build an empire to take over the world. You want to change and you want to create a transformation for women and disrupt an industry that needs to be disrupted.
So I say that. So as our listeners are listening to understand that underneath all of these things that we’re going to talk about in content marketing and all the other strategies to build literally a global empire with your online courses and your education business, that under that all is a fierce passion and conviction for what you are doing. And I think that in order to be successful,
frankly, anything, unless you just want to make a lot of money and not have a deeply purposeful company. I believe that that’s a requirement. And so I just wanted to point that out to our listeners and our listeners and pick up on that anyway, they’d be like, wow, this, you know, this, this woman’s amazing. She loves what she does diving into,
you know, history and, and the history of what she’s doing. So let’s transition. Let’s dive into that a little bit. How on earth did you go from this mom who was kind of working kind of decided she wanted to stay home, had an app, bought a company, having another baby to where you are now. You literally have a formula for this as well Through it.
Well, first of all, thank you for all those lovely things you said as well. I mean, yes, you have to drive forward with that passion, but then there are various steps that as you say, anyone can do. And the first one for me and I live in a brief there, so I absolutely love this is content marketing. Now I have been a prolific content creator since I was 15 years old.
And I badgered my parents to get the internet at the home. We were one of the first adopters of the internet where I lived. Everyone was like, why do you have the internet? I didn’t know what to write to, you know, web pages that really had anything of use for me. But I started blogging when I was 15. I started designing websites then,
and that has stuck with me ever since. So a big, big part of what we do is putting out content and I call it edutainment, which is a slightly pretentious word. I mean, you’re mixing education entertainment, but it says what it does on the 10 basically. And so we write, we film, we record content every single week that our followers want to read,
want to listen to what to watch. And a lot of people say to me, well, how’d, you know what to record? And I’m like, well, I go to ask people, you know, because they tell me what they want to know. And we put that content out there and that has been so, so successful for us because by showing up every week,
it doesn’t matter if it’s raining. It doesn’t matter if I’m on holiday, it doesn’t matter. What’s happening. That content will go out. And that means that our followers become dependent on it. They want to read it. And actually as a result of that, we’ve become like a publication as well as an online school. And we get more visitors now than the many of the sort of mainstream publications in,
on niche as well, which has been phenomenal. So let me ask you, where do you distribute the majority of your content? I know our listeners are thinking, okay, well, they’re doing this content. What are your, I know every industry is different. What are your primary social channels or content distribution channels that seem to have worked for you?
Well, social does well for us, but I have to say the main channel has been email. I mean, it’s all in the list, right? And I’m sure everyone listening who wants to do this understands you have to have a list. And I started off at 300 people on my list. I now have 125,000 and we clean that list rigorously.
Let me boot people off all the time because they don’t open our emails. Otherwise we’d have hundreds of thousands of peoples out there. So that is the primary outlet for content because people then sign up and they know they’re going to receive value in that inbox every single week. And that is so powerful because it means they stay subscribed as well. So you guys send a weekly email.
Yep, absolutely. We’re thinking of making that bi-weekly, but at the moment it’s just weekly and yet then the rest goes out on social. I mean our main channels, I suppose, are Instagram. I mean, we have, we’ll have over a hundred thousand followers by the time this episode ads, which quite exciting Facebook, we have big groups on Facebook.
I have a big networking group there with 47,000 people, which is free. So those are the main channels ready, but email first and foremost. And then, and I suppose that’s 0.2 and the sort of six step process. It’s all about the SEO as well. And I’ve only recently hired someone for the first time to do that before that it was just me writing lots of really good content,
then hiring people to write really good content. And I’ve always believed that rather than delving into what Google says about its algorithm, the best thing you can do is to just write top notch content, make sure it’s a good length and make sure people want to keep coming back to read it basically. So, you know, one of the things you said to me behind the scenes as well before we started recording this with that,
and I think this is important for people to know that you have been consistently hitting the pavement with content and putting content out for seven years. I think that’s important for people to know that consistency is king here. And I’d love also how you say that you clean your list. And I think people are afraid to do that as well. You know, get people that have an open things off their list.
I think people are really afraid to do that. And I love that you said that because we want a vibrant list of people that are actually absorbing your content in and really love what you’re doing rather than a dead list. And when people really don’t, who wants to talk to people that don’t want to listen. And so I love that you said that as well,
but I feel like one of the important things to say here about this number two is that you were just out there posting, like you said, rain or shine for seven years, and this is organic growth. You guys, we aren’t buying a hundred thousand people to end up on the reins list. This is, you know, fully putting amazing content out there that people want to absorb and organic growth.
And so I’m really admire how hard you’ve worked at doing this. And I just want to commend you for that. People want to shortcut all the time and it’s not that you can’t be successful fast, but there is, there’s much more to the iceberg underneath the water, for Sure. Absolutely. And I’ve seen so many people sort of try to shortcut or get bored of doing it.
And then if it doesn’t work within three months, they’re like, oh, I’ll do something else. And so many of the entrepreneurs who started in my sort of year group, I suppose, when I got going, they’re all doing something different now and I’m sitting there going why? And they’re like, I’m really impressed. You kept going with like, well,
yeah. And look at what I’ve achieved by just plugging away at the same thing every single day. It’s been amazing. Wow. Well that alone, what a great testimony and just a great amount of encouragement. That’s exactly right. And I think that we get so afraid that maybe we’re doing the right things, or we need a confirmation faster in that trust in what you’re doing and what you’re creating and the consistency in doing it.
And that’s a whole podcast episode on itself. So I just want to highlight that. And I just think that’s incredibly powerful. So we talked about step number one and then step number two is just really being out there consistently posting SEO, you know, really diving into that. And then step number three is one of my favorites in people. It’s not that I think that entrepreneurs don’t want to do that.
They all do, but I don’t necessarily believe that there are many entrepreneurs that fully understand how to fiercely protect their brand. So let’s talk about number three. Yeah. So three is all about the brand and I’ve created a really, really strong brand around formula Botanica. And when I look at a lot of digital marketers online, they often bypass that step.
They just go straight for the ads, the shortcut, as we said, and actually building that strong brand is something that has made the company so unshakeable. So rock solid that if something terrible happened to us, we would weather it because the brand is so strong. And I protect that brand fiercely. Now I have brand guidelines. I make people read them all the time.
I, I tweak little, you know, the very fact that I’m sat here in a green top, in a green office, it’s just all part of the brand. I live in every single components of it. And that comes down to how we speak the tone we use in the emails that go out, even in our help desk, the way we support people,
the way the courses are put together, the way we show up for events, just literally every little detail is overlooked by that brand. And people often come to me and they’re like, can I say this? And I’ll go, ah, let’s rejig it slightly. So it looks like that. And this is the reason behind it. So I’m constantly trying to educate my team as well so that they can live and breathe that with me because no one can take that away from you.
You know, if your ads bomb or if no one comes to a website, oh, you know, if something goes horribly wrong on social media, your brand is still there. And that is a thing of beauty that I think, yeah, as you said, lots of people overlooked, but yet it’s the core components to growing an online empire. Wow.
That is so powerful as I have my, my wave mug and my, my way of wall. And it’s what we do. If you guys are watching behind the scenes in the video, you have to, you have to go to the YouTube channel. You have to see Lorraine behind the scenes and see all her great. It’s fabulous. And this is an example of that,
but I also love what you said with the language and the tone and the brand personality. And I think that that is so incredibly important as well. So thank you for that. I love number three. So what’s number four. What was a fourth thing? What’s a fourth step in your formulation for building this online empire. So we’ve got the content,
we’ve got the distribution, we’ve got the brand step. Number four is all about the community. I mean, it’s the people who sits at the heart of all of this in some respects, they should be step number one, but I thought let’s walk through all of them in sequential order. So I’ve built a really strong community around formula Botanica as has my team as well.
And these are people who we know we love, even though we have over 13,000, almost 14,000 students and graduates. We know so many of them and we get really excited by them because we know what they’re doing. You know, I have, if you’re watching the video, I have all of that products behind me. I sit here with them on my desk.
I’m always sort of holding them up, going, oh, this is so-and-so. She lives in Denmark. And this is so and so she lives in India and you know, the community is what makes us who we are. We wouldn’t be where we are without these incredible people. And I’ve met so many of them over the years. I know their stories.
I’ve become friends with so many of them as well. And they inspire me to do better as well, because that constantly out there changing the world, being part of this global green beauty movement that we’re spearheading and yeah, they’re helping us drive it forward. So to do that, we’ve used social media. We use Facebook groups. It sounds really simple.
And it is in a way, and in the beginning I would be in that and I would show up all the time for our students and graduates. And that was how we built this incredible heartwarming community where are really kind and generous to each other. And that still exist today. Even though we have, I think about 10,000 students in our online classroom,
it’s got huge, but still that, that really heartwarming aspect is that. And if someone posts and says, I’m having a bad day, you know, there are hundreds of comments from people just going, we’ve got your back. And most of the people who go through our courses and launch a brand, go, I love the courses I learnt so much.
I can formulate, you know, you’ve empowered me, but oh my goodness, the community, I wouldn’t have got to where I am without my, my sisterhood, basically, because as you can imagine, it is mostly women who go through our courses and that has just been heartwarming and incredible to watch. So that’s step number four. And Question about that.
You have both a free, and so we’re talking, you know, we’re talking about business modeling, restructuring for our listeners. You have both a free and paid community, Correct? Yeah. We have a big free networking group as well, which has almost 50,000 members. And that’s incredible too. And now I have a community manager, but not just that.
We also have a whole team of people around the world, our student mentors, so that we have 24 7 coverage in our groups because otherwise, you know, it is like a groups. You have to be there to sort of support, to help, to moderate sometimes as well. And so I have staff members literally around the globe so that there is always someone on and they have a rotor.
So they’re going through the groups all the time. And that has been incredible actually. So the community is everything to her. I love that. I love that. And Facebook makes sense, you know, the global community Facebook makes sense. And, you know, it’s when we talk about structure and tech and enabling what you want to do and the experience that that does,
you know, it’s really completely make sense. Okay. So then number five, what is the fifth step to your formulation to building a global empire? So stage, you’ve got your ducks in a row and now you have to start really putting yourself out into the world. And so step number five is very much that I’ve made sure that we are viewed as thought leaders in our space.
And again, that can sound like quite a pretentious word. You know, what is a thought leader? It’s someone who has an opinion, the other people readily take on board and follow. And we have that. Now people follow us because we teach them all viewpoints and all sorts of what natural means and what green beauty means and what clean beauty means.
You know, we’ve redefined a lot of these concepts and we’re regularly tagged in social media posts where people go, I listened to this podcast from formula Botanica and I now understand that the three or four shades of natural, and I’m going to show you have made my own little infographic. And I finally understand these concepts and I’ve learned them from these guides. And we do that thought leadership through,
I have my own podcast as well called green beauty conversations, which is all about green and sustainable beauty and the science and indie beauty. But I’m also constantly on summits, on podcasts, giving interviews, speaking to journalists, you know, I out that all the time as is my team. And that means that people view us as the people to follow because we hold opinions on things.
We share those opinions. I make sure that they’re always balanced. They fit with the brand. They’re very sort of rational and scientific and the heartwarming and friendly and natural and people buy into that. So you have to have opinions when you’re running a business. And I see a lot of people really struggle with this because they don’t want to put themselves out there,
but it is. Yeah. Step number five, for reason, it’s been a huge part of our growth in becoming this global empire. It is so important. And I understand that. And I, I think that there is a, there is a fear about not having everybody agree with you, but that’s also part of the destruction and the part of leadership and,
and most leaders don’t have, you know, everybody that loves them. I mean, that’s the way it is when we’re doing works. That work, that really matters. It means it’s work, that’s different. And to do work that’s different. It means that you’re probably going against the grain on the way that the commonplace has been. And so I really love that.
You said that. And I think that that is, that’s just very encouraging for some of our listeners to hear. Okay. And then step number six, what is this final icing on the cake to bring it all together? So following on, from what I said about putting yourself out there, now you have to go and form a network. And that means getting to know people,
big players, small players, any players, really people who also hold opinions and who are active in your world in your sector. And we now have partnerships with NBC brands, with our graduates, with bloggers, with influences, but also with the mainstream beauty industry. You know, I have stood on major stages in front of the big players, the L’Oreals,
the Unilevers, the Proctor and gambles, but also the indie players at the same time. And I’m trying to bring people into our world so that they understand that we’re the bridge that brings everything together. So for instance, we are, we’re the formal NDBC partner for the world’s largest cosmetic ingredients exhibition. They have 12,000 visitors a year. You know, they tour around Europe.
It’s like going into three aircraft hangers. You know, when you go and visit these trade shows and we’re there in DVC part in that. Now I have spoken at major industry events because of a lot of the work that we’ve done and the networking that we’ve done. And because of that, that’s opened the door whereby people don’t do formula Botanica as Lorraine’s little side hustle with her baby on their hip anymore.
They view us as a big accredited award-winning online institution. And obviously that’s all part of the seven years of just showing up every week and just putting yourself at that. But you have to make a network and you have to invest in that network and be kind and really give back because it will come back to you tenfold every single time. And that’s certainly what I’ve found over the years.
That’s Incredible. And so let’s recap these six steps, and then I have one last question for you. So Lorraine’s formula to build a global empire, but not just any global empower you guys that really matters. It’s really, really making a change in this space are your six steps. Okay? Step number one, content creation, educate and entertain your followers at the same time.
Step to constantly promote that content, put it at that great SEO, social media outreach, but most importantly, your list, you need one step, number three, build a strong brand that you fiercely protect and build. And you’re constantly growing it. Step number four, create a thriving and happy community. Make sure that the people around you know, that you love them because they’re your biggest assets,
your biggest fans, they’re everything. Step number five, be viewed as a thought leader, have opinions and put those opinions out there and make sure that people buy into those opinions and hear you. And step number six, build a network and build a strong network that you pour your love and heart into because it will come back to you. Tenfold, how I Love that.
I love that. Thank you so much for sharing all this wisdom. This is an amazing lesson. You guys hear that you are hearing and I’m taking notes and listening right along, right along with you. And so I have one last question for you. And I don’t ask this. Isn’t like a set question. I ask all the guests. I just really,
I would love to know this answer from you. What have you learned about yourself along the way through this process? What do you believe about your, I know I didn’t even prepare you for, this is such a tough question, right? Sorry. You know, like what, what do you know and believe about yourself that only could have come through your tenacity,
your resilience, your consistency. What have you learned about yourself in this process? That is a great question. So before I took them formula Botanica I worked all over the world. I lived in multiple countries. I worked in high-powered jobs. You know, I ran all sorts of fantastic projects, but I kept coming up against this massive glass ceiling everywhere I went.
You’re too young. You’re too inexperienced. Lorraine. It’s too scary, too outspoken too. In your face, you voice your opinions too much. I do that. And it got to the point that it started to chip away at me because you start to internalize a lot of what you hear. And when you’re constantly told you need to tone it down,
you need to be less outspoken. Yeah. You need to put your opinions out there less. You start to do that. And I now know that the only way I think for women to achieve true gender equality in the workplace is by building something like this for themselves and driving it forward. And I know myself that I am more confident and more able,
and I believe in myself more than I ever have before because of the work that I’ve done here over the last seven years. And no one can take that away from me and I will never walk into a workplace ever again, where someone will tell me I’m too scary because I will eat them alive. Thank you so much for everything that you have shared.
I know our listeners just like Marriott, we just want to eat up everything you’re giving to us. So, you know, and just absorb from you. So this is, I’m just so honored to meet you. Thank you so much for applying to be on this show and wanting to come here and share your story with this audience. It’s incredibly powerful and proven and you know,
that’s what we, that’s what we do. We bring in experts like you, that have created their expertise through resilience and, and determination. And, and I’m just so glad that you’re here. So how can people find you? How can they connect with you? All of you join your, your formulation school. If we have listeners that want to start doing their own thing and they haven’t done it yet,
or go and follow you to learn and watch and observe how you are building and how you’re continuing to grow your empire, where can we find you? So wherever formula botanica.com, where we have a free online organic cosmetic formulation course that anyone can take Instagram is the biggest platform for formula Botanica as well. But I am also on Instagram and on Facebook where you can follow me.
And I talk more about the business side of things, the sustainability side of things. Cause that’s my bag. And I just want to say, thank you so much April for having this amazing podcast and for welcoming me onto it, because it’s fantastic to talk to you. And it’s a real honor to be here. It’s such A pleasure and Lorraine and I will be live in clubhouse.
You guys. So this is episode number 237. It will be episode number 237 when it drops. So Lorraine and I are going to be here to talk to you. And you guys get to come in, ask Lorraine all of your questions, whether it’s about formulations or how she went from baby on the hip to literal global empire creator through online business.
These steps work. This process works with consistency. And so we’re going to be live in clubhouse on July 28th at 12 o’clock Eastern time. Please come join us there. We’ll make sure all of the links to where you can connect with us in clubhouse are found in the show notes of this episode@sweetlifeco.com. Ryan, thank you so much. We really, really appreciate it.
Thank you. It’s been awesome.
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You’re listening to the Sweetlife entrepreneur podcast, simplified strategies to grow your service business and launch a life you love faster with business mental and entrepreneur activator, a probate Friends. Thanks for tuning. In this episode, you are listening to this sweet life entrepreneur and business podcast. As my friend, Alexa, so beautifully introduced in our intro for this show. I’m April beach,
the host here on the sweet life podcast. And thank you so much for being listeners big announcement. I can’t believe I’ve been forgetting to tell you guys this for the last, actually couple of weeks on the show, I was just named one of the top 50 moms in podcasting. And I just want to say, thank you so much to all of you guys,
because you are the ones that made that happen. So many of you voted so many of you voted for me and voted for this show. And I just wanted to say, thank you so much. I appreciate you guys so very much for being honored out of all the moms to be in the top 50 in podcasting, you know, this isn’t a moms podcast,
but having somebody recognize that it is hard to be a mom and run the businesses that we do and produce a show, especially for so many years consistently. I just want to share that with you guys and share with you. It’s all because of you. And I just thank you so very much. So just had to take a moment to appreciate all of the listeners here on the show.
This is episode number 231, as I said, and today’s guest is somebody who’s going to really help you get over the issues that may be in your way from scaling and growing your business to the next level. Today, we are talking about getting over your fear of hiring people. So first of all, let’s talk about why the heck this is a fear.
What is the deal? What is the matter with us? Here’s the issue as an entrepreneur, we have amazing ideas in our mind. And I’m saying, we, because this is definitely me. You guys, I have struggled with management over the years. It’s not my strength. I have had to work very hard to learn, to become a better leader and manager and delegator.
And so we have all these ideas in our head and we think it’s so much easier. It’s so much faster if we just do it ourselves, but I’m going to tell you that. And I learned this the hard way your business is not going to get to the next level until you know how to create systems delegate. And most importantly, find the right people find the right people.
You know, you need help. You have probably been doing most of the work in your business, and it’s definitely time to move your value time. Your dollar, your time is high is worth higher dollar, and we need to move you to that CEO role and to do so. You need a team or at least one person to begin your delegation process.
But if you haven’t moved yourself out of a mindset blockages to the place of taking action for a variety of different reasons and you know, that it’s time to do so then this particular episode is definitely one that you want to hang out and listen to. You might be saying things to yourself, like I can’t afford to hire help, or I’m uncertain of exactly who to hire and what role they should fill,
or you might be thinking, wow, I don’t even know how to help them onboard. I don’t have any systems in place. This is not just a beginner, entrepreneurial problem friends. We have so many clients that we can’t scale you guys into higher level online services until your delegation is in place until it’s not going to be a bottleneck. When we bring more clients into your business with higher level amazing programs and offers,
this is a problem that my multiple six figure clients face as well. It definitely something, as I said, that I have struggled with over the years and I’ve had to force myself to work through and you’ll hear a little bit of kind of some of my struggles and some of the things I do behind the scenes when we talk about this episode. So if you’re thinking about these things,
you are not alone. That is why we are recording a podcast this week about it. So let me go ahead and introduce you to our guest expert today. Her name is Theresa LOE and Theresa is a leadership and business coach for overworked entrepreneurs. She helps them streamline their operations to build self-managed teams so they can finally get their time back in scale with ease Theresa guides,
people through that sticky transition from wearing all the hats. Raise your hand if that’s where you are right now, to just wearing the most important, how to evolve the CEO in the visionary hat. Nobody else can wear that hat, but we can help you get some of the tasks off your plate with other perfect people. And Theresa specializes in cultivating small,
but mighty teams for online course, creators, coaches and other creatives. She’s amazing. And we’re going to be diving into all of this today here on the show. In addition, as you know, now, Theresa is going to be live with us on Wednesday, June the 16th, taking your team building questions in clubhouse. So join us under our club for this podcast.
It’s called sweet life entrepreneurs, of course, and join us at 12 o’clock Eastern time on June the 16th, 2021. If you’re listening to this show live this week, and we’re going to roll up our sleeves with you. And so what we’re talking about here on the show, then we take it on to clubhouse and we workshop it with you. That’s what we do here on the podcast to really make sure that you are getting implementation for the business strategies here on the show that you know,
you can’t take to the bank. So without further ado, let’s go ahead and dive into today’s episode with Theresa Lowe.<inaudible> Hi everybody. And welcome to episode number 231. My friend Theresa LOE is with us today. And you guys are in for a huge tree, especially if you are to the point where, you know, you’re ready to grow, but you felt like you have this bottleneck.
And the bottleneck is, is that, you know, you can’t do everything. You know, you need to hire help, but there are some fears around that and I can personally attest to these feelings. So I’m so excited that Theresa LOE is here today to help you streamline and scale your business by growing your team by overcoming these fears, Theresa, welcome to the show.
Will you please share everybody your background and a bit about you and how this became your area of expertise? Absolutely. Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me. So what I do is I help people, entrepreneurs who are overworked, they’re stressed, they’re stretched to the limits. I help them streamline the back end of their business so that they can get their time back.
But also I help them build self-managed teams. And it doesn’t matter if you are just starting out or you are multi-six multi seven multi-age you always want to have your team be self-managed so that you’re not doing all the managing and you can, instead of wearing all the hats, you’re just wearing the most important hat, which is the CEO hat. And so I work with people at different levels because the sooner you can start this the better.
And the way I got into this was I was a co-executive TV producer for nine years for the top organic gardening show on PBS. And as the co-executive TV producer, it’s what we would call in the digital industry and integrator or a chief operational officer. So I was second in command and I had to run multiple episodes at the same time. So it was a very project management heavy,
but at the same time, I had to have teams filming around the country and they all had to be completely self-managed. They had to understand what their jobs were. They had to be able to get all the episodes out the door, which is like little mini launches in our world of digital marketing. And so when I started my own business, six years ago,
it took off really rapidly because I started getting a team right away. And as I started coaching other people in the industry, I realized that team was one of the things that was holding people back, though. We all start out with our laptop and a dream, and we start out doing all the things and wearing all the hats. Well, the sooner you can bring in a supportive team and not just anyone but a self-managed team,
and you can have everything streamlined and clean on the backend that allows you to scale. So I help businesses scale with ease by streamlining and having self-managed team. Wow. And you’re right. I mean, I can imagine just the thought when you said that of all these little mini launches just gave me like a little like, oh my gosh, that sounds,
that sounds terrible. To me, 96, We did 26 episodes a season. So it was A lot. Oh my goodness. So you’re constantly living in this mode of like getting this produced, making sure our systems are streamlined and that people are doing what they’re supposed to be doing at each phase along the way. And I can only imagine how many different moving parts that that would take.
Yes. So you and your history, your experience, your expertise coming into online business totally makes sense. Why you can see things that most online entrepreneurs can’t in a way that it can make it completely easier. And I imagine really simplified compared to your project plans that you were managing and what you were doing. So one of the things that oftentimes we run into with new businesses is the fact that they either don’t know when it’s time to hire,
or they think that it might not be time to hire, but they’re really dealing with some mindset issues around hiring. And we talked about this a little bit behind the scenes and how I personally struggled with this for a very long time. But talk to us about what are some of these mental blocks? What is the mindset of an entrepreneur who’s ready to scale?
Absolutely. And before I even dive into that, sometimes like what you said, how do people know that they’re ready? So let me just address that. You know, that it’s time to get help when you are stretched too thin, you’re overworking, or you’re sacrificing yourself for the business. You’re sacrificing your time, your health, your marriage time with your family,
your weekends, your evenings. We all have these ups and downs in our business where it might grow. And we have little moments of that. But when it goes on for long periods of time, that’s when you absolutely need to get more support and structure in your business because you didn’t start the business to be working 18 hour days. That was not your goal or your dream.
And yet we can get stuck there because we don’t know how to fix this. And one of the things like you said, it’s a mindset issue. And I should also probably say right off the bat, that it doesn’t matter what level we’re going to be talking about, what the different things are that you can do in your business to get help. But it doesn’t matter if you’re just starting out,
there are different ways to hire. So you can hire someone overseas. If you are really strapped on money, you can hire a virtual assistant that’s part time. It can be a working mom who maybe used to work in corporate and has incredible skills, but when her kids are in school or go back to school and aren’t, she’s no longer homeschooling, then she was going to be looking for something that she can do in those other hours.
And so you can bring in someone part-time, but it can also mean when you are a multi-six multi seven multi-asset that you’re bringing in a full-time employee. So what we’re going to talk about here happens at all levels. So the first thing that happens with most people is they get stuck in a solo preneur mindset, and it doesn’t matter how much money you’re bringing in.
You can get stuck thinking too small. And so what I mean by that is that they’ll say to themselves, when my business gets to the next level, then I will bring in the next help that I need in my business. And then my business will allow me to be a higher level CEO. And what I want you to do is flip the script on that.
The truth is that you’re never going to feel ready to take it to the next level that doesn’t just magically happen when you wake up. So you have to start thinking differently. You have to step into your future self and start making strategic decisions. And so the truth is that when you start acting and making decisions as a CEO, then that means you would realize that you need to bring in help.
And that is actually what gets your business to the next level. So rather than just waiting for the next level to happen and then bringing in help, you need to bring in help to get to the next level. Can you Say that again? Yeah. Say that again. This is really please, as you’re listening to this, you guys are, you know,
hit, rewind on this or just hit pause Theresa. I want you to say that again in the reason why this hits home for me and I, I just appreciate it so much learning from you on the show as our listeners are learning right now is because I literally have on a whiteboard. I have my very own little whiteboard of what I’m eating each day and today’s intentions and kind of little notes to myself.
But on that whiteboard, just like two weeks ago, I put on there for my things I need to do each day was millionaire mindset. And I realized this. So I have built a 7, 6, 7 figure business in the past. But this company that we’re working with right now, the Sweetlife company is on our way to seven figures consistently. And I realized that this was,
I was not having that mindset. You guys, this is so important. And since I wrote this on the board, like Theresa is saying, and I’ll go and look at what I’m eating every day. And my goals, my workout plans, it’s all right there. That’s what I wrote. And I think that people think, oh, well, that’s just like a weird note thing,
a weird mindset thing, but it has shifted my activity significantly in my business over the last couple of weeks. So can you say that again? So people hear that. Absolutely. So what we’re talking about here is the be, do have model. And that means that you need to be the CEO of your future and do activities that they would be doing in order to have what your goals are,
your business that you want. Right? So people go, okay, well, how do I do that? Here’s a real, simple thing. Every single morning. When you’re looking at your list, I want you to ask yourself your, to do list. I’m talking about when you’re looking at your to-do list, I want you to ask yourself, what does my business need from me today?
Who do I need to be today? And which activities on this long list are going to get me to the next level that I’m trying to get to, rather than working in those smaller activities, those things that you could actually hire out for it makes you realize that you’re spending a lot of time in the mundane and not in the 20% that moves your business forward.
In fact, you’re so busy. You have like a 1% little sliver that you’re trying to fit. All those CEO activities in and the rest of your day is taken up with other things. So that’s why I started with this one. You want to be the CEO of your future. And so everything that you do needs to be aligned with that so that you can reach your goal.
Yes, Yes, yes. And you should see my notes behind the scenes. You guys like a million million Teresa low notes already from this episode. And I think that, you know, people look to strategies, they look to benchmarks to accomplish. They look to be able to check off this list when in fact doing exactly, as you say is going to then reverse engineer what those activities are each day.
And it’s just such a powerful thing. So I just wanted to pause there for a second. It’s a good one. Okay. Like this is not like, woo you guys. This is like, this is a set solid strategy. That is very important. And I can personally attest to it. So what’s next after we do that. So another belief that can hold people back,
because we want to hit people from all different angles. Maybe that was it. Maybe they were waiting because they’re waiting for their business. A lot of times we’ll say, and this is probably the most common one. They’ll say I can’t afford to hire anyone. Right. It doesn’t matter what level you’re at. You might say, I can’t afford to hire the next person or a high level person.
And so the analogy I like to give here is if I were to come to you April and I were to say, I’m going to open a hotel and I just want to tell you all about it. And you’re like, cool. Tell me all about the hotel. And I said, well, I am going to be the person who checks people in at the front desk.
And then I’m going to help everyone carry their luggage up to their room. I’m going to be the maid. I’m going to do the cleaning. And then when they come back down, I’m going to be at the restaurant and I’m going to take their order. And I’m going to cook the food and deliver the food and then run back out to the front desk for the next person.
You would think I was a nut. And you’d say, you can’t do all those things well, and you can’t grow. And yet that’s what we do in our businesses, because we started with just us. And we were doing all the things and we kept getting spread thinner and thinner and thinner. So when you’re saying, I can’t afford to hire a team,
what you’re really saying is that you aren’t putting yourself first and you don’t want to grow. And what I want you to do is realize that there are different ways to hire at different levels. So if you are just starting out, you can hire someone part-time. If you already have a business, then you can hire someone who is virtual, but maybe works more hours.
And if you’re at a higher level, you can bring in someone as an employee. But the truth is that you can always hire. It’s a matter of finding the right person for the right seat to do the right things so that you’re not wasting your time or your money. And we’re going to talk more about that as we go through the other ones.
Great. Thank you for that. And that’s a great analogy. So after this is established, right, we’ve established that you absolutely cannot grow without help. And this is very important. And certainly there are, some of you are listening who want to be solopreneurs. And this episode probably is not for you when you are ready to grow this, isn’t it.
These are important strategies. So what comes next, Theresa, after we have gotten over these mindset hurdles that we’ve discussed so far, Right? So then the another thing that can hold you back is that you’ll say, well, good. People are hard to find. So let’s talk about that piece right there. Because if you are holding yourself back, because you think you can’t like,
okay, maybe I understand that I will never feel ready. Maybe I understand that I need to hire, but I don’t even know where to start in hiring. And what I want people to understand is that there are good people out there. The trick is that you have to hire the right person by looking at character over resume. So a lot of people teach how to go out and hire,
and they’ll tell you to put a post out a job listing, and then you bring in the person and you’re just looking at their resume to see if they have experienced. And I actually teach hiring in a very different way. I want people to be really, really clear on the type of person that they want to bring in. And I’m talking about character,
what type of person do they need to be? Because even if you only have a team of one other person besides you, you’re building something here. So you want to start doing that right out of the gate. And as you get bigger, you want everyone on your team to have a certain character level. So when I’m hiring, I’m looking at character because the truth is that if I can get someone who’s a go getter,
a problem solver, they’re excited about my work. They’re excited about my mission. I can teach them anything. They don’t even have to have the experience on their resume. So when you are going through the hiring process, be looking for the type of person who can grow with you and can learn, even if they don’t have experience, if you just feel right about them,
because they’re like pumped and excited, then you were hiring more to character than to resume. Hmm. That’s such a good point. And that is, that’s how I hire is with, with an established skillset. But one of the greatest things that I, if I can just share for those of you guys who are listening, one of the greatest things that I have,
I decided to do about 10 years ago, when hiring was, I decided to hire people that wanted to see their future in my business as well, could see their own, what, anything they’d life they wanted to build the time they wanted to be working, the kind of work that they were fired up. And although it might not have been the actual activity that they wanted yet,
what was really helpful and how we’ve grown. Our teams is listening to them, trying to figure out what they want to do. What are their big, huge moonshots? What are their dreams and how can they accomplish those dreams underneath our brand. And I think that that’s why we have had a team who’s worked with us for so long is because of that now definitely skill set as well.
But then I will also pay to have the right people trained in this skill set. So I’ll pay to have the right people in my team learn a skillset that I want them to have, even if they were just totally clueless, because it’s more about the person Kelly Buckner who’s our director of operations is that she is like my dream COO. And I just don’t know where I’d be without her,
but the things she’s doing, don’t always align with her biggest dream, but she knows her biggest dream is within the future of our company. And so just wanting to kind of add that in there, as it is an example, for those of you guys who are listening. Yeah. Having lifelong learners is one of our core values. So we do the same thing.
I have had different members go through courses so that they could get up to speed and it’s a game changer and they feel even more committed to you because now you are helping them grow as a person. So we’re all about growth and stepping into a bigger you. And sometimes someone on my team will find a course and they’re like, I really think this would be helpful.
I would love to take it. And I’m all for it. I will pay for them to take that class. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. And, and I think that what we’re talking about is the future of culture of small and micro sized businesses. And it really is true that so many people look for the skillset we’re in clubhouse rooms.
You and I both are in clubhouse rooms all the time where people are talking about how do I hire and how do I do this? And how do I do that? And they’re getting great advice. Like, we’ll go to this and search for this skillset, but I love a warhead, the conversation we’re having here too, because you can have a person who’s really great at something,
but doesn’t fit into the culture in the future. And, and I think the hardest thing, and I’ll just share kind of this fear since we’re talking about the fears of hiring, one of the hardest things that I had to deal with before I really started hiring for the right person, rather than the skillset was hiring somebody, training them, investing that time.
And then they leave and being so fearful of so much time lost. And I know this isn’t just a, an April problem or a Teresa problem. These are problems that corporations deal with, you know, at this replacement costs in this replacement time. But I just, I remember feeling so fearful of going, gosh, I’m going to invest in this person and they’re just going to ditch me,
You know? Yeah. And will, that can happen. And so one of the things that I work with people when I’m, I’m helping them streamline their business, there’s really three pillars we go through. And it’s the structure, the support piece, which is what we’re talking about here. But what you’re talking about is the scalability piece and that is having contingency plans.
So that’s really having the structure behind the scenes so that if someone steps out, someone else can step in and having systems and processes. So that, that happens. But absolutely, we are also investing part of our heart when we bring someone in because we’re small businesses. So it’s a very small but mighty team. And there’s a lot of heart that goes into bringing someone in.
But here’s the way I like to look at it. When someone is leaving for me, it’s happening for me rather than to me. And I want them to grow and go find a better fit because something that was not a good fit for them. And if it’s not a good fit for them, they’re not going to thrive. Just like if we take a flower and put it in the desert,
that flower might be beautiful somewhere else, but in the desert, it’s going to wither and die. Right? And so if we have someone on our team who really is not aligned with staying with the team, it’s better that they go sooner rather than later. So sometimes we’ll have signs. And that’s some of the things that I coach people through. There’ll be little signs that we missed or along the way that we weren’t really paying attention to.
But when someone is going to leave, I’ve had people leave to go on and start their own business. And I actually give them some of my coaching programs because I want them to do well because we’ve built a relationship. But if someone is stepping out, it’s actually happening for you because there’s going to be someone else that can step in that will take you even further than that person ever could.
What a great set mind you have to read it. Yeah. Mindset is like everything. Yes. Thank you for sharing that. That is an amazing different viewpoint on that. Thank you for sharing that. I think that’s so incredibly powerful. So let’s get back to some of these fears that our listeners might be feeling. Some of these, almost like we could have named this like that,
the four, the five lies you’re telling yourself, but you really need to be hiring by now. You know, what are some of the, what are some of these other thought processes that people need to overcome to really get into this let’s scale? This business let’s hire I’m ready for the next level. Absolutely. So one of the other roadblocks and this actually tends to happen with people who have,
are already a little bit more further along is that they worry that they have to manage the team, or they are currently managing the team. And that’s why I specialize in self managed teams. If you are managing the team, as the CEO, something is wrong, you should never be managing the team. You want to be bringing in people who are in the right seats,
doing the right things. And they are self-managed. So the way that you can tell if you are in the management, rather than the CEO role is if you are helicoptering them, right. We know we all know what a helicopter parent is. There’s also a helicopter CEO and it’s where you’re hovering. Like, are they doing it? Are they doing it?
Are they doing it right? And some of that can be your systems that you have set up. Like maybe, maybe you don’t have touch points where you can kind of keep your finger on the pulse without being in the weeds. That’s something that I help people set up so that they don’t have to be in the weeds to know what’s going on. But sometimes it’s really a matter of learning to let go and let go in the right way.
So what I want you to realize is that what we want to do, what we want to be stepping into is mentoring our team, not managing the team. This means having real clear expectations and results that we’re looking for. So they have a very clear lighthouse and we can have like, you know, 30, 60, 90 day check-ins and be able to say, okay,
you know, we’ve got a little off track here, but as long as they know what lighthouse is, we shouldn’t have to helicopter them. They should be able to figure out how to get there. Does that make sense? Absolutely. Helicopter CEO. I’m definitely, I’m definitely writing that down. It’s so it absolutely makes sense. It was a great analogy.
Yeah. And this is a random question. Just putting you on the spot here for our listeners. Is there a favorite team software for communication that you have that you like to recommend to your clients? Absolutely. So most of the industry uses a sauna and a sauna is great. I have used a sauna, but for project management, I really like monday.com.
That’s actually my favorite. And the reason is because not everybody adapts well to a sauna and monday.com is much more visual. And I find for entrepreneurs, they’re very creative and they tend to have a lot of creative people on their teams and the team. If you have never used any project management software, and you currently have a team, it’s a much easier transition onto Monday than it is to a sauna.
Now that said a sauna is great. I’m not saying a is bad. If you’re already using a sauna, don’t switch. If you love it. And it works for you. Great. But if you’ve never used project management software or you’re intimidated, or your team is Monday works really well. It also is very intuitive. And so it makes it easy for the team to,
to adapt to that. If that makes sense. It does make sense. Thank you for sharing that. Our listeners always want to know everybody’s software stack of what we’re using. And I know a lot of our listeners use Trello air table is where we manage our, our podcast production. But back in the day, we used to use Smartsheet and Gantt charts and all these things that were just not user-friendly at all.
And they were so detailed that we would send it to people and they would just be like deer in the headlights. And they’re just done. What is this? W w what is this? And so I absolutely loved Monday. We’ve had a guest recently who is talking about, is it like click up? I mean, whatever works for you guys. And I think that is the thing here,
but I’d love, you’re an expert in this. And so I love hearing of what, what you recommend and what works for you. So thank you for sharing that. And any, yeah, go ahead. I was just Going to say what’s most important is that, is that you use it. So if you try something and it doesn’t work, try something else because everyone’s brains work differently.
So it’s okay. If something else works for you, right. Perfect. Yes. The great advice. And then any final thoughts to, you know, this hesitation to hiring that you want to leave with our listeners, any like actionable steps. You’re saying, okay, listen, you’re listening to this episode because you know, you need to be hiring,
but there’s a wall. There is a mindset shift that needs to happen, but there are actually things that you, as a leader are putting in your own way. And those are the things we talked about today. Like, I can’t afford to hire a team or what if they leave, or, you know, how do I actually go through the process delegation?
And you shared some really important thoughts that people are already having. I know our listeners are hearing being like, oh yeah, that’s me. I’m thinking this in this process, what do they do now from this episode, from listening to the show, what are some actual actionable items right now where they can leave in that they can start fixing this problem today.
Right? Well, if we circle all the way back to stepping into being a CEO and thinking like your future CEO self, what I want you to do is start doing a time audit. Now, when I say time, audit people’s eyes glaze over and they go, oh, that sounds so corporate. And I have to write down all the things I did all day,
but here’s what I want you to realize. You may think, you know what you’re doing every day, but you’re probably doing some things you shouldn’t be doing, and you don’t even realize it. And you keep thinking, oh, I’ll just do it real quick myself. And it ends up taking an hour, or I can just whip this together. And you end up your whole day is totally shifted because you got down a rabbit hole in Canva or something.
So what I want you to do is to do a time audit on yourself so that you can see, where am I currently spending my time and then put on your CEO hat and take a hard look at that. Are those the things that I should be doing? Which of these things do I know I just shouldn’t be doing, or I’m not very good at them?
Which of these things could I hand off to a current team member or do I need to bring in a team member? So really doing a time audit should be your very first step. And then absolutely every single morning looking at that to do list, do I really have to do these things, which of these things are going to move the needle the most in my business,
which of these things are the moneymakers, which of these things are driving me to my goals and make sure that you’re working on the right things, because we can very easily get busy, busy, busy doing the wrong things, and nothing can slow down your growth faster than doing that. Great. Teresa you’re you are so wise, thank you so much for your leadership in this.
And you coach entrepreneurs who are in six figures, seven figures to eight figures, and you have a couple of different programs. So if you guys are listening here, you know, this isn’t a podcast where we sell you anything. We don’t even accept advertisers on this show. The deal is, is we want you to have the next steps to take action.
So Theresa, can you tell people how they can connect with you and based on where they are, what phase they’re in, what do you have available to get them to that next level with their teams? Absolutely. So where people can connect with me is streamlined and scaled.com, all one word. And on the website, I have information, lots of free resources.
What I have in the way of programs is if you are just hiring your very first team member, or if you have just hired poorly and you need help hiring the next team member, I have a program called team up like a boss. It’s a very low, very inexpensive program that has all my templates and processes my whole methodology for hiring to character first.
Okay. Then the second program that I have is a group coaching program, multi multi figure, and multi seven. And that’s where we streamlined the backend of your business and get your team to be self-managed and make your set you up to be scalable so that you can scale with ease and have your time back. And that is streamlined and scaled. And then I do consulting for multi eight figure businesses who already have major teams and headaches going on,
and they need someone to come in and check out where are the issues? And I do that as well. Theresa, thank you so much. So based on where you guys are, there is a program, there is a solution start like Theresa said with going through your activities today, really focusing on the things that only you, and you can only,
you can do, maybe like me write on your whiteboard or a sticky note or on your mirror and lipstick or whatever it is that you need to be honing in on the millionaire activities in your business. And that is, it starts, it sounds very basic, but this is truly, I can personally attest to this. This is truly where it all starts rolling from there.
And we do have a very special tree for you guys, as you know, that we promote and share in network with you and help you link arms with you and coach you in clubhouse now. So if you’re an active subscriber to this show, that means it drops on Monday. This particular episode is dropping on Monday, June 14th and Theresa and I are going to be live answering your questions workshopping with you,
taking your specific team, building questions, helping you strategize through the struggles or your concerns or your fears or your issues of growing your team on Wednesday, June 16th at 12 o’clock Eastern time. It’s totally free for you to be in there. If you’re really ready to take your business to the next level, it starts by taking action. And that starts by joining us at 12 o’clock on June 16th in our clubhouse room about this topic and to find the clubhouse room,
you can very simply follow our club, join our club, even all you Android users now, by going to sweet life, community.com, again, that Sweetlife community.com. You can talk to Teresa, she’s there for you, and we’re, we’re all here to support you and all of the show notes of course, to reach Teresa beyond. What we talked about here will be in the show notes for this episode.
This is episode number 231. Thank you so much Theresa for your time and your wisdom and your expertise and pouring into us on today’s show. We really appreciate You. Thank you so much for having me. It was fun. It was fun. Thanks.
This episode is for those in Phase 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 of the Lifestyle Entrepreneur Roadmap™ Not sure what Phase your business is in?
Schedule a complimentary business triage call here.
You’re listening to the Sweetlife entrepreneur podcast, simplified strategies to grow your service business and launch a life you love faster with business mental and entrepreneur activator, a probate. So two 20 here on the suite live entrepreneur and business podcast. I’m April beach, your host, and I’m super glad to be chatting with you. And yet another week here on the show,
this is episode number 220, and I can’t wait to dive into today’s topic. This is one of those ones where behind the scenes here, I was taking so many notes based on what our guest expert was teaching today. So there’s just gold inside this episode, as we hope to deliver to you within every single episode. First of all, before we get started,
if you’re new to listening to the show, thank you so much for tuning in here. We also go live and talk about the podcast and take your questions every single Wednesday at 12 o’clock Eastern time on clubhouse. So if you are not yet following me on clubhouse, please do so. I would love to connect with you. We can really dive in and roll up our sleeves regarding your business questions.
Every single Wednesday, faithfully at 12 o’clock Eastern time. And my handle is at April beach on clubhouse. So I would love to see you there also, if you’re new to listening, or maybe it’s been a while since you’ve tapped into this important powerful resource, we have our lifestyle entrepreneur roadmap quiz, and this is based on my start to scale up system.
It’s a totally free tool. If you’re a listener to this show, you can go and take a very short quiz, just six simple questions. And it’s going to tell you what phase of business you’re in and based on the phase of business you’re in, we give you an exact checklist of what you should be focusing on and what you should be working on to scale your business,
or just really get your business to that next level. And you can take that quiz any time you can go back and take it again and again, by visiting sweet life co.com forward slash quiz, or you can simply text the word quiz to the number (805) 254-0880. And we’ll send you a link to that. So those are our free tools. In addition to all the gold,
you’re going to hear her on the show that I wanted to make sure that you have upfront so that we can keep your business implementing as we move forward through the entrepreneur podcast here. So I appreciate you listening to this show. This is what we’re talking about today. So let’s set the stage. This show is great for those of you guys who are in the first three stages of my start to scale up system.
So that’s based on the quiz. So if you’re in phase one, two or three, this is a great episode for you to listen to. If you’re in phase four or five of my start Taylor scale system, you’ve nailed this strategy. And so I recommend going to find a different podcast to listen to that applies to your stage of business. I want to make sure that I value your time so much.
And the strategies we’re talking about on today’s show are for those people in the first one, two or three stages of the start to scale up system. So what we’re talking about here is how to literally write emails that are so good. They lick the screen. You’re going to be mind blown about what you hear on today’s show. This is for small businesses who you either currently use email marketing.
You’re not sure if you’re doing it right, or you’ve never used email marketing before, and you want to learn how to leverage email marketing in your business. Email marketing is an important way for you to connect with your warm audience. It’s also important for you to hold an ongoing conversation and to increase your sales. However, most businesses flop when it comes to writing emails,
it’s truly because it’s, it’s actually a skill it’s not as easy as you would think that it would be in your emails really need to compel your audience. So in the show we have Kate Doster, who’s a copywriting expert. She’s going to break down the process of writing great emails in an ethical way, by wooing the hearts of your ideal clients and their wallets open.
At the end of this episode, this is what you can expect. You’re going to know what is the difference between a good email and a great email. You’re going to know how to use calls to action correctly in your emails. And you’re going to know the process of writing emails that convert. So let me tell you who is here today. She is absolutely amazing.
Kate Doster is the host of the inbox besties podcast. Creator of love your list. 2.0 email marketing mega course, it is dangerously obsessed with helping ethical entrepreneurs carve out their slice of the interwebs by winning the hearts and wallets open of their small, but mighty audiences. Thanks to funny bell marketing and easy yes, many offers. So that’s important as we went through our bio,
her bio here, that what Kate’s bio says is she helps you. Even if you have a teeny tiny small list, increase the engagement in the sales based on your list. That was one of the key things. When I was reading her bio and why I asked her to come on this show because listen, you guys, you only need a hundred true fans to build a great business.
That’s what it starts with these huge audiences. I mean, this can be an illusion. So those of you that don’t have huge lists with 10, 20,000 people on it. This podcast is great. And it’s also for those people that do have huge email lists. And perhaps you are failing at connecting well with your list. Kate believes you don’t need to bleed the alphabet or be a dirty rotten spam face to write emails,
adult subscribers, and to taking action gobbling up your paid offers like candy or kale, if that’s what you prefer. So let’s go ahead and dive into today’s podcast. All of the show notes can be found by visiting Sweetlife co.com simply click on the podcast button. And this is episode number 220<inaudible> All right, you guys, I am joined by Kate Doster and she is going to give you the complete strategy that you probably didn’t even know.
You’re actually missing to write amazing emails because what she teaches, what she talks about, isn’t just the fundamentals. It isn’t just like how to section out the content in your email. She literally teaches you how to write emails for so good people lick the screen. And that is her quote. I stole that from her to name this podcast. So giving credit where credit is due,
Kate, welcome to the show. We are so excited to have you here tell everybody about your superpower in your company. Sure. So I’m Kate Doster of Kate doster.com and hosted the inbox besties podcast. And my super power is really being able to help people. Not only feel like they can do anything, but actually give them the tools to get them there.
I think that there’s a lot of people that kind of hype you up and make you feel amazing. But then when they’re like, but how do I do X there’s like, go figure it out. But like, no, like we do the whole approach because our mission is to put money in the hands of good people so they can do good with it.
So our business is primarily a digital course business. I am extremely selective about the one-on-one clients that I take on, but primarily it’s courses digital products. We just we’ve got to help the good people out there. Right? And you teach people how to like create these insane bodies of copy that totally bring to life what it is that they do, their super power.
And there’s such a disconnect. I’m so excited to have you on this show. I need to give Angie true blood, our favorite person credit for connecting you with us. And when Angie was like, okay, this is an amazing guest for you. First of all, anybody Angie sends to me, I know it was just an amazing guest, but then I saw your,
your topics. And I’m like, Oh my gosh, yes. Emails that not only like convert, but emails that give an experience. So let’s dive right in and talk about one of the things you said behind the scenes, as I was getting ready here and taking my notes for what we’re going to talk about today is you have kind of like this four things that you go through.
And the first one you talk about is something that really other copywriting teachers don’t, and that is all about mindset. Talk to me about mindset and how that plays a role in copywriting. Sure. So like I said, good people do good. Most good people have very bad associations with things like selling. They don’t want to be annoying. They don’t want to be lumped in with a spammer faces.
Are there really bro Hames as we call him the world, he’s our arch rivals. He has a whole voice as he does. So because of that, they tend to really freeze that when it comes to emails, you know, Oh, I don’t want to be annoying or I don’t want to be spammy. Oh, you know, like I haven’t emailed them in three months.
So now they are literally psyching themselves out because either they feel bad, they feel guilty. Everyone’s been telling them everywhere. Like you need to have an MLS. Why don’t you have an email list, email, your email list, you dummy. So they get all up in their heads and they do no thing because everyone’s been on the receiving end of really bad emails.
But here’s the thing. The sheer fact that you are having this thought of, I don’t want to annoy people. I don’t want to be a spammer means that it is physically impossible for you to be there. And it is physically impossible for you to write one because the really broad themes as a world who are those farmers, they do not care. The fact that you care proves that you are going to send them high quality stuff.
So who guys think you already did it? And when I talk to people like 100%, it is always, Oh, I feel like, or I think it’s like, so it’s not truly the mechanics. It’s I need to get your finger to, to hit the sand on the good old convert kit, Right? Oh my gosh. Okay. Like we can just end the podcast right there.
Like, okay, you need to fix your mindset. You’re amazing. You’re not like a douche bag. You’re going to send grace. So I think that’s so cool. Okay. And then the next thing that you talked about is, you know, being on your list is a privilege. Let’s talk about that mindset all together. What do you mean by that?
Okay. It is a two side of the coin. One. When you realize that people are honestly lucky to get your enthusiasm, your encouragement, your knowledge, your expertise, they are lucky to be there. So all of a sudden that scarcity mindset of, you know, if I send a newsletter, a hundred people are going to unsubscribe. So no,
like I don’t have this mystical thousand number. Like who cares the people on the other end of the screen, do not know if they are one of, 100, one of five or one of 10 million. They have no idea when it is our mission to help you need to help regardless of that number. So when you’re like, Oh, bring it on my list as a privilege.
And somebody sends you a nasty email back, you laugh at them and then you kick them out. You’re like, no, like literally I send a lot of emails. I send a lot of what’s called sales emails. I got two last year. One was because I said home slice. And the other one I think had, but face in the subject line,
I literally went to go see what these people had signed up for. I’m like, how did you get here? I was mad at my landing pages, my gatekeepers, my content like allowed you in here. So when you go out with that mindset of being on my list is a privilege. Not only are you not going to care about the heaters because you’re like,
whatever, Sally, there’s a way more people for me to help. I hope you go find your own teacher is that, then you’re going to have a plan for it. So it’s a two side of the coin, like on next again, you’re allowed to have that human experience. If somebody sends you a me an email back, but then you get to laugh at them and be like,
man, I wish I had so much time that I could sit there and complain and whine and have my day ruined by somebody else. But like I’m too busy out there making a difference. So I can’t, Well, you just like blew my mind. That is so profound because I mean, what are the things we’ve talked about in the, the last four years is having somebody on your list as a privilege and,
and treat them with care and all these things. But what you’re saying is just so true to every single thing that I know, I feel as an entrepreneur bit like basically, like, I feel like you have just given people permission to be like, you are valuable. What you say is worthy. Your content is amazing. If somebody doesn’t resonate with it,
see you later celly, like you said. And then the next thing I said was really important, which we can even get into in this episode. Was that the gatekeepers is that making sure that your opt-ins, we’re totally not going to go there. Cause we could do a whole show on this, but making sure your opt-ins disqualify people at the same time as they qualify people,
the right people, that connection that you meant, I’d love that you mentioned that too. Okay. So when we’re writing email, the next tip kind of mindset strategy that you have is, is really treat people like people. I know I’m literally doing the shocked face. You guys can hear it. So again, because good people doing good things, right?
No one wants to be a spammer face. You tend to forget the, like there’s another person on the other side of this screen. So like how many times have you gone to like check your email, but then like the dog knocks over the plants and I need to clean it up. And then by the time you get back to your email, it’s like the next day or two days later.
So like, if you have this amazing product, you have this amazing coaching program and you only email people about a once you’re being the jerk. Ironically, it is the other way around because what if they just didn’t check their email that day? Now they are never going to know same thing with, and I know that this goes beyond the scope of this particular lesson,
but same thing with launching, like when you’re actually doing a launch. Yeah. If all of your emails are, you’ve got one day left, you got five minutes left and all of those are awful. Awful. You do need to send things about time limits because people do need to know. So I have nothing against timers, but you need to understand what actually goes through a person’s brain.
People are not logical. And when my students kind of grasp that around their heads, they’re like, Oh, Piedmont logical. If there were, you would have all exercised today, there would be no smoking industry. There’d be no drinking industry. There would be no drugs because people, if they were logical, why would you start smoking? When you know,
it’s only going to hurt you. Cause they’re not logical. So realize that they’re not logical trying to be like what? There’s eight modules. And my competitor only has four. You dummy is never going to work because they’re not logical. You have to actually compel them. You’ve got to cut through the crap. You need to know how a human brain works.
And that’s why my students get like astronomical results. And they’re like, Oh my trip wire, it’s converting at like 5%. Can I go higher? I’m like you to realize that normies only get it at one to two. Right? And they’re like, Oh, so then we’re just like, you know, going against ourselves. But when you understand how a human brain works,
treating people like people it’ll all work, which is why, if you haven’t emailed your list in a while and your first emails is big sob story about why you haven’t emailed them in forever. Everyone is going to be like, I don’t like you. Cause like they don’t care. But if you go in with some type of value and then you’re like,
Oh yeah. And if you’re wondering, how would I get your email address? Again, treat people like people because you signed up for this. Oh, all right. Help me out with something. You tell me what I’m thinking. We’re good to go. I’m not going to hit spam. I might just unsubscribe quietly. So treat people like people realize how their brains work.
So many good things that you said there. I love that. Okay. So let’s actually talk about, and I was actually laughing. I had to put myself on mute cause I started coughing. You’re totally. You totally have me. Correct. You know, leverage really love it. So talking about like I know, right? Like talk about, let’s go into actually the mechanics of writing an amazing email.
So walk us through the mechanics of actually doing it after everybody deals with all the mindset stuff, which I’m so grateful that that’s how you open up this training. I mean, you just have to, again, just like set up. So you can’t do one in seventh grade and have a six pack forever. I mean, I wish present witness tasks could have just been like take that postpartum weight.
Right? So again, it can be a daily thing, you know, it can be a daily thing. So don’t just think like, Oh, but I thought I worked on this. It’s always going to have a thing. So when it comes to writing emails so good, they can like the screen one getting out of your own head is important too.
Like we had just talked about treating people like people is important. Why do you check your email? Cause you don’t want to have to write that sales page you’re supposed to, because you don’t want to have that awkward conversation with your VA because you’ll know that you’re supposed to be pitching podcasts, but you don’t want to get around to it. So they’re like,
Oh, let me just check my email real quick. Right? So you’re doing it as a distraction. You’re doing it as an escape, which is why when people are like, Oh, but I send these big, long, huge emails. Yes. I know being in spam is probably a bad thing. Promotions it’s all right. People check that tab.
The thing you do not want to be in is the all read this leader email. Okay. So you cannot info slap people in your emails because people are not going in with the mindset of an email of I’m going to do hardcore learning. That’s what a blog post is for this sort of podcast is for that’s what a YouTube video is for. That’s what a course lesson is for an email is that short hit of escape.
Okay. So you need to realize that. So when you’re doing your email, yeah, you can have on that super long, as long as it’s entertaining. No one’s going to care. And as long as you’re not trying to tell them a hundred different ways to get clients, they’ll be fine. So when it comes down to actually writing an email like that makes them want to like this screen one,
you need to realize what your actual goal is. So your goal might be for them to reply back. Your goal might be for them to read an email, your goal might just be to build comradery. Then you’re going to want to make sure you have an action. I say, every email needs a call to action. It doesn’t have to go someplace else,
but it can be a reply back. I think that reply back is one of the strongest calls to action. Because next time it is more likely that your email is going to be in the folder that you want to be in. Or again, it can be a follow me on Instagram. It can be on this, but you’ve got to give people a reason to go over there.
You just can’t send an email being like, Hey, are we connected over on clubhouse? No, you need to entice them. What is in it for them? Treat people like people. So in order to make your emails more entertaining, I get constantly, but Kate, I don’t have a big personality like you, but I’ve averaged, but I’m boring.
I guarantee you, there are something about you that you can start putting into your emails, whether it is the name of your cat, your favorite song. You can, one of my favorite things. If I can’t figure out, what I want to email about is I’ll go to a website called holiday insights. You can just Google any of them and I’ll see like what day is it?
Like a national nacho day? Okay. So like say if I was a food blogger, then I could just send Nasha recipes because it’s natural nacho day. If I’m somebody else I could talk about like know like it’s natural natural day. And you know, since that’s pretty cheesy, I want to tell you about the three things that are going to make your website cheesy.
Like you can just rip off of these things. And now all of a sudden, not only are you just using just stats to like 200% of blondes, make more money, I’m making that up. But again, look for stats about your industry stats, about what day it’s going on and then just make some correlations. And the more that you get used to doing that,
the better that it’s going to be. Again, there was a reason why you created a blog post or why you’re going Facebook live, which got me thinking about, which is why in the slide. I don’t just necessarily give them the link, give them the link, but then put a little bullet points because you got to remember, people are reading on their phones.
So when it comes to structuring things, you want to make sure, honestly, if it’s longer than two sentences, I say, give it a paragraph. It used to be three. But I feel like if it’s a wordy three, the probably should be a paragraph. So you’ll see that a lot. Cause people will skim, you know, make sure you use things like bold texts,
but have, you know, little bullet points underneath to talk about like, what’s so great on there. Like, Oh, okay, it’s going to tell you the one thing never to send in your email. She’s going to tell you, if you haven’t emailed your list in forever, these are the two words you used to not having your email, like think of what can I do to make these a little bit more interesting.
And then it’s like, Oh, because every email guys spoiler before, really every email is a sales email because you are selling the fact that you get them, that you understand them, that you’re going to be there for them, that you’re consistent, that you want to interact with them and that you are not ability to borrow him. So whether you’re asking for cash or not,
every email is a sales email. So now you don’t have to get over sending any cause they all are. Oh, I love that. I love that. Oh my gosh. It’s so good. You’re just gold. Okay. I mean, that’s just, you just nailed it. That is so good. And I have learned so much here. Okay.
So I’m going to throw out a couple of common questions that we receive as a company. And since you’re the email queen, let’s see how you answer these. So, and you already answered the first one was does every email need a call to action? And so you’ve already answered that. So we’ll just skip through that. And I love how you answered that in some form.
Oh, you know, let me ask this question in case anybody’s thinking, could the call to action, be giving them steps, like now go outside and look up at the sun and take two deep breaths. Like could the call to action be something that doesn’t have to do with replying or interacting back to you at all? Or is it just having some sort of a call to action?
So definitely give them action steps. Like quick wins are huge, which is why I love how you said go outside and take two deep breaths. And you didn’t like tell them like this whole giant routine to do, but there’s nothing to say at the end of it that you can’t be like, and when you go outside snap a pic and tag me on your Instagram stories.
So that way it’s really organic. And so that way you can share them on for doing something. So if you’re going to give them a little task, give them a place where they can brag about themselves, treat people like people, they like feeling good About themselves, post About it. And some people will, some people post in the Facebook group tag me on your eyes,
your story post on my business page. So I can say how awesome you are. Let’s go outside together. You know what I mean? So that way you can incorporate them more in the world and then treat people like people they’re going to associate that good feeling with you and that’s what you want. Cause then So cool. Okay. And so along those lines,
we’ll just say, if you’re listening to this podcast and you absolutely love everything that Kate’s saying, make sure that you take a screenshot, I’ve listened. He does put it on your IgG story and tag Kate and tag, thus we live company, or you can just tag April beach life and okay. So cool. Now next question. Newsletters versus emails,
you know, the newsletter was kinda dead honestly like seven years ago, but now we actually have clients that like their newsletter is so amazing and they only send it out like once a month and it’s like long and juicy and almost like a calendar. What is your take on the strategy and the difference between newsletters in regular emails? How have you seen those playing out?
If you will only send a newsletter and by newsletter, I want to make sure that we have the same definition. Are you saying something where it’s like multiple calls to action, multiple sections? Is that what you’re defining as a newsletter? Yeah. These are huge newsletters that some of our clients, which are larger companies already, that you know, are in the process of scaling that they send out these newsletters,
people like go crazy at one of them could be sign up here for this. And one of them could be, did you remember to join this? There are multiple calls to action. In these things. We call that more of a magazine style email. If that is the only one that you will do, so you will actually send it, then send it.
So I had an interior designer who was a student and when she tried to do of that one call to action type of a thing, she really mindset got into her head a lot. And so what we did is we went ahead and we turned it into like her Wednesday newsletter. We gave it an actual name and I told her just like magazines have repeating sections.
You need to have some repeating sections, but realize that if you are trying to sell, say an ebook and you’re still having all three of those sections, then the likelihood of them buying is going to be a lot lower to people. Like people, you give them a lot of stuff to do. They will do everything else or they’ll do nothing. Like there’s actually a scientific study.
The jam study. If you get 12 choices versus 24 at 24, you’ll just walk by because you’re just like, that’s too much for my brain. Right? So when I told her, that’s not to say she can’t have flash sales or launches because I feel like, Oh my goodness, she’s emailing on Monday. It’s gotta be important. So then she can just do the one that has the one call to action.
So make sure that you are strategic realize with those newsletters, that the likelihood of them going to spam or promotions is going to be higher. The more outward links to different places that you have, the more likely it is to trigger something. So you can link to your Instagram five times if that’s your call to action, because it’s going to the same spot,
your Instagram. But if you’ve got an Instagram one, that’s going to a deal that you have one that’s going to a blog post one, that’s this one that’s that it can go in there. But again, if you are more likely to send us a magazine style newsletter than send nothing and send it, just realize that your sales aren’t going to be as high because you can’t focus them on one particular action.
So like I would never send a new style in the middle of a launch that would make no sense because people would get derailed. So that’s just the difference if what you want to go with. So if you’ll never do anything, just one of those, but again, try to keep it consistent because then people that are interested in certain parts, they’ll always go right down to that section.
Okay, cool. And now I have a couple other questions that are coming up that I know people are probably thinking. So I’m trying to be in the mind of our listeners right now, a question about the frequency of sending. Is it better to send more frequently, you know, less frequently? Does it depend on the relationship between the business and the audience?
Is there like a regular consistent, like rhythm that you recommend with email sending? Okay. For most people, if you only send once a month, this is nothing. That’s your client. And again, if they’re a larger corporation, they could probably get away with it once a month. Especially if you’re a smaller, more personal brand is not going to necessarily be enough because people are going to forget about you.
You’re not top of mind, they’re their goal. Fishes. Everybody has a goldfish treat. People like people. You’re going to hear that a lot. What I would say for people, especially if you are a personal brand, especially service owner, you’re selling your own courses, aim for once a week. That’s four emails a month. Y’all handle writing four emails a month and what’s gonna end up happening is you’re going to get so good.
You can batch them, meaning, sit down and write them all. Sometimes w a lot of my students really love to do is they will come up with a topic for all four and then they’ll write like two at a time. Right? So again, it’s done, they’ll load them into the convert kit. They’re active campaigns. Doesn’t matter whatever tool you’re using.
And then they know that they’re settled and then people get so hyped about this. Or they do some casual selling, which we teach in the course. And then I’m like, okay, I’m going to add another day. But I would never say like, email this. Now, if you’re doing a launch or you are doing a flash sale, you’re going to want to send more than one email.
Because again, people might not check. They might forget treat people like people they procrastinate so that you’re going to have a little bit more. But as long as honestly, what you have to say is interesting and it’s tackling different doubts or your habits that people have, you can keep sending Austin repeat yourself. Okay. And then the one last question I had is when somebody does have a launch,
you know, it’s normal that people unsubscribed from the list and people get so afraid of that. They’re like, Oh, like the whole mindset thing, which we already knocked out of the ballpark, that’s gone. Now, we already dealt with that. What the question here is, is there like an average expectation for a percentage of unsubscribes that you have seen during launches or is it totally vary based on different brands and businesses?
How frequently they launch? How big obviously, how great the relationship already is with building the relationship? Is there like a average percentage that people can quote unquote expect in unsubscribes around a launch period or no, I don’t know if it’s necessarily during a launch period. The only stock that I could find was in general and it’s actually does hold true. If you guys go look at your analytics is usually when you send any type of email,
you can expect about a 1% unsubscribe rate, which is pretty interesting. So again, if your number is a hundred, then your percentages are going to be like very skewed. So keep that in mind. We need to have some logical, even though I don’t do logic, but like, so keep that in mind, right? When it comes to a launch,
the biggest reason that people are unsubscribing is because you started talking to them about something they didn’t care about, or you never gave them an out. So like the launches that I do, even though, like, I teach email marketing. If you didn’t sign up for a launch, trigger a webinar, a challenge, all of that. I’m not going to send you all my launch emails because you’re not going to want them.
I will send you two. And one of them is just a recent it’s like, Hey, I know you didn’t sign up for this webinar, but I know that you were struggling with ABC and D this is open until Wednesday. If you want to come, come, if not, that’s cool. And then in my launch emails that I have, and I always tell my students to do this too.
I always have that link bottom of the email, sometimes top of the email, Hey, if you know that love your list is not for you. This round, then click here and we’ll chat after the launch is over. Or Hey know that you have a great relationship with your list and you’re making more than $10,000 a month with it. Click here.
I won’t tell you any more about my course, because you don’t need us right now. Just give people an out, treat people like people. But again, if you are setting that one hour to go 30 minutes to go five minutes to go, and you’re making everything about you, then I guess if you could take anything away from this, especially when it comes to launching,
you need to be more excited for them than yourself, because nobody, I mean, we do care that like you have expertise. So I’m not saying any of those fake it till you make. And I hate that line. What I’m saying is I am so disproportionately passionate about seeing Sally earn money from our food blog. When everyone else in our whole fricken family thought that she was nuts.
Like, I am like hardcore rather than like, love your list. And I make all of this money. And like, yes, obviously in each of them, a copywriter, not some rando that hit like big with a pin, obviously that’s important, but it’s not like, Hey guys, my course is open. Never it is. If you are struggling with this and I get very,
very specific, we call them moments. We don’t have time to talk about them. Now y’all are going to have to tell me to find out that’s right. Then I got this and it is going to help. And here’s how it’s going to help because I am so excited. Literally you can see my face to see my people succeed. You have no idea.
And when you come at anything that you create that way, and I don’t care if it’s a meal planning guide, I don’t care if you help cleaning products, I do not care. We are more excited for what they’re going to be able to avoid and achieve. It’s like, I know, yeah, I’ve got this thing they’re going to buy. This is why my students and I get a logical Results and people like that’s bananas.
Like no that’s treating people like people. You are so good. I’ve appreciated you sharing and totally pouring out your crazy good expertise into our audience. This is amazing. Okay. So you have, of course an amazing free thing that people can have. Like if they want to connect with you further, or if they just want like these amazing results, you have two years worth of emails that you are giving to our listeners.
Tell them what that is. That’s amazing. Sure. So what it is is two years worth of email idea prompts. So if you’re ever sitting there looking at your screen, you’re like, I’ve got no idea what to email about. Or even if you’re like, I don’t know how to make this next thing sort of interesting. We do have it dated.
Now, keep in mind if you’re listening to this and it’s like July, it’s like, Oh, well, half the month is wrong. Spoiler alert. January is going to come back. So as April, so it’s may, so you can just restart it over. Like there’s no problem. And some people will actually they’ll follow it verbatim. Like,
Oh, may it sets in this, this, this, and this. And we’ll do it. Some people mix them up. Some people go and just peer in other months. And that is 100% there because now, you know what it is. If anything is time-based because a couple of months we’ll have something like, it’s not Neil national hug your cat day,
but if there’s something that’s going to be time-based to be, well, we make sure that at least once a month, you’re really highlighting some type of paid offer, whether it is an affiliate deal, whether it is her own stuff, any of that sort of stuff is in there as well. So you can hand it on over to Kate Doster dot for slash Sweet life,
either with a hyphen or without I got you both. And then you guys will be able to get that. And you can always listen to my podcast, wherever you’re listening to this. It is in a box of besties and my Instagram, which I’m working on. Let’s say it that way. I spent so much time cultivating my email list, social media.
I kind of forgot about, so it is Kate underscore Doster. So y’all can see the name and I’m sure we’ll have it in the show notes. Yeah, we will. And yeah. Yeah. Instagram followers does not equal amazing experts. Definitely. There’s not an equivalent therapist. I want people to be able to connect with you more. And also you are newly on clubhouse.
So I’m like talking to you behind the scenes. You guys, if you’re in our Sweetlife club on clubhouse, I’m talking to Kate about getting on the calendar. And so we can do a clubhouse room for you guys where you can connect with her directly and ask her your questions, which is so cool. So we’ll put all of that information in the show notes as well.
Kate, thank you so much. It was so awesome to get to know you and to hear everything that you deliver today. We really appreciate your time. I think you’ll ever remember guys being on your list is privilege. So treat it like one<inaudible> Thanks so much for hanging out with us at the end, you are the a game players, right?
You were the winners, the ones that stay and apply all the strategies. As a matter of fact, I was speaking in a clubhouse room recently that if people actually just listened to this podcast for the last four years, they probably would save up to a hundred thousand dollars in startup and scale business coaching that they might have spent on other coaches. We really are here to dedicate true and proven business strategies that you can take to the bank.
So thank you so much for listening to this show do join us in our clubhouse room. We would love to meet with you and clubhouse. We’ll be speaking live at 12 o’clock Eastern with Kate Doster herself. If you’re listening to this live, that will be Wednesday, April 2nd, at 12 o’clock Eastern. And you can find that room by visiting sweet life business.club.
I’ll say that again. Sweet life business.club. And all you have to do. If you are a clubhouse member is you can quickly simply click the button and join our club and you’ll get a notification of this room. All right, you guys have an awesome day. I’ll talk to you next week. Bye-bye
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You’re listening to the Sweetlife entrepreneur podcast, simplified strategies to grow your service business and launch a life you love faster with business mental and entrepreneur activator, a probate. Hi everybody. And welcome to episode number 218. And I’m April beach, your host founder of the suite Life company. And I am so glad to be talking to you again, usually on this show,
we’re talking about scale strategies, online, offer creation, how to create your courses or your mastermind and funnels and marketing. But we are all about building a business to give you the life that you want. And so that requires a holistic view on strategies for both business and life. And so I love doing shows like the ones that we were doing today.
And let me be completely clear with you about why this show really hits home for me. About two weeks ago, I landed in Philadelphia from Denver for a weekend to visit my oldest son who plays lacrosse for the university of Delaware. And I was on my laptop. The whole entire time got out of the airport, got in the rental car, turned on clubhouse,
and I was really tired. You guys, I had just gotten to this point where I had been going, going, going, by the way, I thrive on going, going, going, but I turn on clubhouse and I was browsing through the rooms of what I should listen to. And there was a room that popped up regarding sleep and it really hit home for me because I knew that this is something that I do not do well in this area.
Now a little bit more behind the scenes. I don’t like sleeping. I love being awake. I do really well from 10:00 PM to 1:00 AM. You know, the world falls away, everything’s silent. And that’s when I really thrive as a creator, frankly. And so I would much rather be awake living life than be sleeping. And that’s the way I’ve been my whole entire life,
but it’s really taken a toll on me and let’s even go a little bit deeper in transparency behind the scenes. What I used to think when people talked about, Oh, you know, I hit quote unquote, that wall. These are the things that I thought, Oh, you’re going to love me. Or you are totally going to hate me and never listened to this podcast.
Again, here’s the honest truth. When I heard anybody say or tell their stories about how they got like super tired and hit a wall. These were the things that went through my head, keeping it real. I thought I am stronger than those people. I thought that will never happen to me. And I thought I am born to thrive in like this balls to the wall type of a life.
It’s always how I have been. I love living like this. These people just aren’t built like me. Okay. Talk about really, really judgmental. And that’s when things like hit us on the face because it is in the face because that’s exactly what happened to me in over the last couple of months, I have gotten completely exhausted. The second part of this and why this episode is so important to me personally right now is that I lost my father to dementia.
And I realized that the way my brain is functioning is not the same way. It was 10 to 12 years ago. And for whatever obvious reasons that is, you know, age, maybe being one of them, I’m not taking care of my brain. And it is one of my greatest assets. And so when I heard our guests today speak on this clubhouse room about sleep.
I knew that I personally needed for her to come in here and deliver some insane wisdom to me as a CEO, as a business owner. And I believe that there are some of you guys out there that need to hear this message and what she’s talking about as well. Now here’s the deal. If you’re like me, you haven’t seriously, no desire to listen to a podcast that discusses everything you already know that you aren’t doing right?
But this episode is different. Our guest today is going to dive into tracking your sleep and understanding technology behind sleep trackers. And she’s talking about simple steps, okay? Simple things that you can do. You know, we’re not going to come in here in this show saying you got to get sleep, but that’s not at all with this show is about,
which is why I personally appreciate this episode so much. So let me introduce you to who our guest expert is today. Molly McLaughlin is a creator of sleep as a skill, a company that optimizes people’s sleep through a unique blend of technology, accountability, and behavioral change. She created this company from her own experience when she literally has had not slept well her entire life,
she had massive, poor sleep habits. And all of a sudden she found herself in for months. She dealt with insomnia in her background is in behavioral change. And so she went down this rabbit hole to figure out like, what is going on with these disturbances in my sleep. And she really went in a way that did not include sleep AIDS. And because of her experience,
now this company was born and she is an absolute expert at helping you know, how to really get the sleep that you need and understand sleep. And that’s what we’re talking about on today’s show. So at the end of this episode, you will know how your circadian rhythm affects your peak performance. You will know how to read the data from your wearable technology,
which was super cool because I wear sleep technology, but frankly, I really didn’t understand how to read the data. And so that is very cool. We’re talking about this on today’s show as well. And you’re going to walk away with some basic things you can do. First thing tomorrow morning to move towards more productive sleep in more healthy sleep. So here are the background notes,
everything we’re talking about, including a link to join the Sweetlife entrepreneurs club in clubhouse, where Molly and I are going to be going live. And she’s going to be chatting with you about your Entrepreneur sleep and peak performance questions can be found by visiting the show notes for this episode. There’s a lot of things in here and even more tools that Molly’s given you.
So if you want to know more about, we’re talking about Connect with Molly further, be part of this conversation and frankly learn right alongside me, visit Sweetlife co.com click on the podcast. And this is episode number 218. So let’s go ahead and dive in with Molly.<inaudible> All right. Hi, you guys. Welcome to another episode of the Sweetlife entrepreneur in business podcast.
I am so excited to be joined by my guest today. I’m actually found her on clubhouse. Many of you know, who’ve been listening that I am bingeing clubhouse and can’t get enough of it. And this is exactly why, because I get to dive into spaces that I never would have been able to before in find people like Molly. How do you say your last name off?
Yes. Perfect McLaughlin. Absolutely. Yes, I know. Is it phonetic? Is it not? Yes. And find people like Molly McLaughlin. I am so excited to welcome you here on this show. Can you introduce everybody to your area of expertise in super power? And just give us a little bit of background before we dive into what we’re talking about today.
Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me here. This has already been a pleasure. I can’t wait to get into more with you. I am the creator of a company called sleep is a skill that helps people optimize their sleep through a blend of technology, accountability, and behavioral change, and a little bit background on me and why I’m so obsessed with the topic of sleep and why it’s totally changed.
My life is that for so many years, I did everything not to do for your sleep. You know, every article you read what to do. I was doing the opposite in a lot of ways, but it really didn’t think it was much of a problem. I didn’t think much of it at all. Living in Manhattan as an entrepreneur, burning the candle at both ends stressed to the max.
And I just thought of my sleep as a lot of labels. I thought of it as I’m a night owl, I’m a short sleeper. I’m not the greatest sleeper. Oh, it must be in my jeans. That’s just how it is for me. And, and you know, a number of different things, but didn’t think of it as something that I would have much of a say of how to transform.
And I didn’t correlate when I was starting to get more and more sick at different things, you know, just getting run down anxious. I had guessed straight as I had shingles. I had a number of things that were just indicators, right. That you are stressed and things are not working. So, so yeah, and then it was not until I went through my own period of insomnia while traveling internationally.
So in different countries, you know, not speaking the same language and I cannot sleep. And it was really a lot of the entrepreneurship part of it that, you know, our businesses weren’t ready to be taken on the road yet. My fiance and I, and how it manifested was suddenly I can’t sleep. And the amount of anxiety that was happening during that period,
I went to the doctors in Croatia, got, you know, with Google translate and leave with their version of Ambien. And in that moment, kind of like, what is the game plan here am. I’m supposed to just take something like this for the rest of my life, that doesn’t align with my identity of who I think of myself and yet I’m desperate to sleep.
So what do I do? So what ended up happening was really just getting up under this area, going really down the rabbit hole of what it would take from a, what I learned to chronobiology and circadian rhythm perspective to transform my sleep. And then from that place, it really just snowballed into like podcasts, newsletters, courses, all of the things.
Okay. So you said so many things and we’re just going to kind of come together and pack it. But right now, I mean, your super power is helping high performers and entrepreneurs and small business owners have a healthy life and sleep. Yeah. That we all identify just like you said, I mean, I am you back in the past, right?
I definitely, I do not sleep as much. It goes in flows. I have an inconsistent sleep. You know, I have kids which brings a whole nother dynamic into that and I travel about five months a year. So with that being said, I think I have like a recipe for disaster relief disaster. And so I’m so excited to learn from you today.
And I know our listeners too, are going to be like, Oh yeah, that’s probably me. I’m like, so let’s start by just really unpacking this. So you said circadian rhythm. What is that for anybody that is not really aware of that term and what part of our bodies function in that capacity? How does that work? Yes. Perfect.
And I also want to say for what you’re sharing too, despite that being one of the lowest points at the time of my life was what it felt like, you know, just nothing is working. This is the worst thing is horrible. And yet I do now look back on it as being one of the best things that could have happened to me.
So if you are at any given spot in your journey around sleep, I think there really is so much to learn from it. It really, no pun intended woke me up and had me transform my life in ways that I don’t think I would have, unless it was at such a rock bottom place. So having said that, Well, just along the lines to thank you for saying that.
Cause I do feel like, I mean, I’m really transparent here with our listeners on the podcast. I mean, I do feel like, like I had hit a wall, I just turned 45 this week and I’ve always been able to push and push and push on a high performer, had tons of energy, always been able to do it. And it was just finally a couple of months ago as a first time in my whole entire life where I was so tired and I couldn’t push through,
I’ve still always been able to do that. I like, literally couldn’t think I literally couldn’t speak, like the words were coming out of my mouth incorrectly, but it was the first time ever where I feel like I hit that wall and I couldn’t keep pushing it forward. And so I knew at that point in time, and this was prior to Christmas that like,
I’m not healthy. I’m like, it doesn’t matter. I go to the gym every single day. All those things don’t matter. Like I knew that I was literally aging my brain and frankly, as with my father had dementia and these are all things that I’m starting to think about. And I’m saying, listen, I have really hit this wall and I need to sleep.
This is no longer something that, and I don’t want any of our listeners too. And this is the whole point of the show. Like, don’t get to the point that Molly did. Don’t you get to the point where I am, where I’m like stalking this woman on clubhouse. You guys help me. I have hit a wall. So we don’t want you to have to be to the point where I frankly am literally at this recording and where Molly was,
because how much more are you capable of being before you ever, ever get here and so on and so forth. So thank you for saying that. And that’s why I stopped you. Yeah, absolutely. It’s really important because I won, you know, I was reading nonstop, all these different things around how to improve my sleep and speaking with all these different experts and one thought leader in this area had made the point that when your sleep is not working,
there’s something that your body is really trying to tell you. And I’m not trying to say that in a loose, like esoteric way or anything, but I think that’s really important because how I was running my, this didn’t come out of a vacuum. This was from, you know, years of kind of a mismanagement of my time, my days my,
you know, keep pushing it to the next level. And, and so it occurred from a snowballing of that. And so what it really took was that to actually, for me to listen. So I don’t know the plus side while I at the time didn’t want to go through it. It actually was a blessing. And so I hope that there can be that message and that there is,
there are so many success stories on the other side of people being able to shift this area. So one, I acknowledge you for the sharing and the, the vulnerability there, because it’s so important. And to, you know, so then the, how, so what you said about the circadian rhythm, why this is important in this conversation is one just to kind of bring it back to the basics.
So no matter where you’re at and where your sleep journey is that we can always start to come back to one that this is a skill that, okay, so this is learnable. So let’s just let’s learn. So from the strategic rhythm perspective, one that exists on a spectrum was something that I didn’t understand. So the circadian rhythm is this 24 hour rhythm as human beings that we function within.
But that rhythm, the queuing system for that rhythm can either be on the spectrum of, from a strong side or weak side. And you might be falling somewhere in between that spectrum. Then I would make the argument that many of us are on the weaker side of that just as a modern society, how we’re, how we’re functioning and as diurnal creatures.
Yeah. This is all kind of coming from this concept around chronobiology the science of really time and how that impacts our biology as diurnal creatures. We are meant to be active during the day and at rest at night. And of course, in my example, I was doing the opposite, like, you know, upside down living. So we’re looking to,
how can we bring things back and align with those cue givers that will help our rhythms be strong? So we, you know, those people, those friends of ours that might go out, everyone goes out and out super late, but they still wake up at the exact same time, you know, early morning. And you’re like, how are they doing that?
That’s crazy. That’s actually what we’re looking to train for is that kind of specificity around just the automaticity of waking up routinely going to sleep routinely around the same times, but there’s tons of things we can do to get to there. Okay. Fascinating. And I know those people I’m married to one of those people that it doesn’t matter what time he goes to sleep.
It is like, this is what time he gets up every single day. Yeah. Okay. So talk to us about, you know, really why is this important for fully understanding for those higher achievers busy entrepreneurs? How does this fit into our, you know, whole life business strategy? Because to me, as a business strategist, the way I need to form it within my own brain is say,
this is part of my strategic business in life design. This is just as important is marketing and selling and other things. So it’s a very holistic approach to business and life. And so how for entrepreneurs and small business owners are really just high achievers who are listening to this, why is this so important? How does this really affect their everyday? And honestly their profit and their performance.
I mean, that’s what we’re really getting down to get to if that’s the driver great, that’s the driver, are you not making as much money as you could be because frankly you aren’t sleeping. Right. I’m sure that there’s some data and some correlation there. Absolutely. Well, so there’s so many places we can go with that, but I can just even say anecdotally that my fiance owns companies that help train poker players at the table that are high stakes,
lots of stress, and how to make those decisions, that their decisions in their thinking from a cognitive athlete perspective will impact, you know, possibly thousands and millions of dollars as a result. Right? So one of the first places that they begin is the sleep optimization perspective. And I work with tons of poker players in the management of that. And so I share that just because that’s a very tangible experience of at the table,
you can either walk away with lots of money or not. And so it’s kind of entrepreneurial in nature, but you apply that in the high stakes of your days of your, you know, business interactions with people and just that cognitive ability to show up consistently and reliably, like, you know, so in the example of myself for years, I, there wouldn’t be accountable illness around how I would be when I’d wake up in the morning.
It wouldn’t be like, Oh, okay. So for that next, really important client call or what have you, I will be bringing my a game. It wasn’t like that. It was like, I hope I get a good night’s sleep and you know that I can have that functionality. Right. Like, That’s me, I’m raising my hand. If you guys are watching the video,
it’s like, this is me. Yeah, for sure. Yes, exactly. Cause that, you know, and there’s tons of studies that will point to this. So whether it just error rates, if you’re sleep deprived and the amount of errors that you might make, if you’re taking scent, you know, test, or this is important for pilots,
you know, these would become life or death elements, but certainly from a productivity perspective, like you’re gonna have all your faculties available to you in those really times. So just to scale it back, I think of it as a couple of things. One, I think of it as super, super important for that productivity perspective. And also because I had so much of that mental health component in there with anxiety and stress and moodiness and crankiness and freak out,
then, then with that just, it provides for me just a really important space to be at a equilibrium with how I’m approaching the world around me and stress levels and anxiety levels. And we can get into some of the wearable indicators for that. So it’s not so esoteric. It really has some kind of quantified data behind it. Right. Okay. So yeah,
let’s go ahead and do that actually. Can you, I definitely want to talk about the wearables at the time of this recording. Probably if you’re listening to this six months or eight months from now, the wearable part will probably not be accurate enough today because the technology is evolving. And that’s what we’re kind of talking about behind the scenes, but let’s go ahead.
Can you start just by sharing a couple of steps for those of our listeners who listened, they’re like, okay, this is, I am April right now. I mean, just tell me like, what should I be doing to get on top of this, the process of bringing this into order. Yes. Great. Okay. So step number one.
What I actually say is despite the fact that a lot of what I’ll be talking about from the circadian rhythm kind of lifestyle perspective is that a lot of it’s kind of how to harken back to almost Hunter gatherer days and like, you know, aligning with sunrise and sunset. I’m not saying everyone needs to rise with the sun. I’m not making that at all,
but I’m saying that there’s a lot of things we can do to bring about that workability with those rhythms of nature, because that’s going to really result in higher sleep efficiency and quality of our sleep. And at the very same time, despite the fact that I’m saying that I’m also gonna promote the marriage of technologies. And so much of this technology is at the source of our kind of being off-kilter with the,
that relationship, ironically, then bringing in tech, I’ve found to really make a difference to game-ify this. So again, you know, down the road, you’re listening. What I would say is the first place to begin is a logging system of where your sleep is at right now is really, really eyeopening to people because often people say, I know I’m not sleeping well,
but then we try to get up under will. How much, how many hours are we sleeping? What times are we sleeping? How many wake ups, what’s your sleep onset look like? All of these sorts of things. And a lot of it is like, well, I don’t know some gray areas, a lot of question marks because it is it’s,
it’s such a hard area to track. So getting a proper or getting a sleep tracker of whatever at the time of listening to this is known to be one of the most effective on the market at the moment. Right. And follow them On Instagram or club ads. Cause I’m sure she’ll be up to date with this. So yes it is. She will.
I’m sure be talking about what is the most up-to-date thing when you are listening to this episode? Yes. I’m often fondly known as gadget girl by the end of the clubhouse. So we were talking about that was my name and not from a perspective that these are infallible, there’s still things you don’t want to just blindly listen to whatever stats are coming back.
You want to be aware of what they’re good at, what they’re not so good at, but either way, what they tend to be pretty solid at is are you asleep or are you awake? What time does that look like? But then also some health metrics that indicate the, your recovery that you attained throughout the course of the night. So all of those things will give us,
you know, kind of a window or insight into your sleep. So I say, start with that first place because, and years back, what it was, one of the first recommendation was keep a sleep diary, you know, write it out manually. And now you could do that, but also, you know, to begin to start tracking, it will be automated for you and often provide a way more insight that you might be surprised by some blind spots.
And along those lines, I have a question for you about one of those metrics with one of my slit trackers that I, that I had used in the past. And you mentioned it when, before we started recording this, which was heart rate variability, can you explain? I mean, I saw it on my sleep tracker. I, when I’m like Googling it online,
it was actually really hard for me to understand why that was so important. Can yes, it was a one Oh one on that. I’m so glad you said that. So this metric, this one metric you could devote into multiple podcasts, there’s actually entire podcasts that just talk about how to kind of understand this one metric and influence it. You’re not alone in the confusion of it better.
I’m like, why don’t I get it? So it, but it’s the reason why it’s I foresee one, it’s already ballooned in popularity around understanding this. And I foresee it being even more and more influential in our health. So the one, what is it? It’s heart rate variability HRV is basically the time interval in between your heartbeat and indicator of your recovery.
So if you can think of heart rate as kind of your load, that’s put on to you, you know, moment to moment, then HRV is reflective of how quickly can you recover from moment to moment? So it’s recovery of both mental elements of recovery, but also physical elements of recovery. And that physical can be about like the foods you’re eating the workouts,
you’re doing the air quality in your space, preexisting conditions that you might have going on. But then the mental component is really eye-opening to just how you’re relating to the world around you as entrepreneurs to, Oh my goodness. Like that can be really eyeopening. You get a lot of stuff on your plate and suddenly that that number will show that impact. And that can be a really cool way for those of us that might want to do that.
Push through, push through mindset. And I’m so one of those to start to respect the importance for recovery time and almost relating to our body, like an athlete would to build in that really next level of recovery so that you can take on all the things you gotta take off. Okay. Yeah. And I can see that I do understand a certain aspect and the correlation of that because when I used to train for fitness competitions and we used to do the heart rate training,
and when you know, between the things I was doing, like how fast would my heart recover between sets? And so is that kind of the same thing that we’re talking about here that’s happening in sleep that we’re measuring? Yes, exactly. So that’s why a lot of people are excited about particularly longitudinal nocturnal HRV. So there’s, you can measure, of course your HRV 24 seven and the nighttime HRV can be really eye-opening because that’s giving us an indication while there’s not presumably as much noise that’s happening because there’s a lot of noise on your measurement of your HRV during the day.
Cause you’re, you’re eating, you’re, you’re talking, you’re working out all these things. Whereas when you’re sleeping, presumably that’s largely recovery time and that is what HRV is all about. But so if you wake up and traditionally, this is very simplified because there’s way more nuances to this metric, but often the higher it is from your baseline, the more recovered you are and the more you see it kind of dipped down,
then that can often indicate that you are being more taxed, you’re stressed or you’re getting sick. So it’s actually really popular right now. That’s why it’s trending to with COVID that a lot of people are looking to this as indicators and days in advance of when you might even feel that you’re getting rundown, that that number is shifting. Then that can be a signal to really prioritize that recovery.
So those are just some of the ways that you can relate to it. But in the practical application, what I see with my clients is so all the clients are wearing wearables. They’ll see, Oh my God, my HRV is really dipping like significantly. So then they’ll prioritize recovery from whatever that looks like. So if they’re big time athletes, then they will adjust their training to really lower that.
And to take that off time, if they’re just entrepreneurs and they might kind of scale back some of their calls or what have you to really make a difference with that number and then get recovered in a way that can make a difference. The following day, That’s amazing. This is so much great information. Okay. So number one, log, make sure that we’re paying attention to what we’re doing.
Get a wearable let’s, you know, we’re not going to do with the archaic way of tracking when we go to sleep. I mean, there is just absolutely so much data out there that I’m hearing you say that it’s important for us to track know and be able to understand so that we can adjust things. So what else would you recommend for those people who are listening after they go through these first steps?
Like what type of common adjustments are typically? I know every single person is different, but are typically beneficial that you have seen with high performers and entrepreneurs. Yeah. So one asterisk that I would put for the wearables is just ensuring that you’re, we’re not getting like a no CBO effect by saying, Oh my God, I have so many friends that literally would come because I’m only getting 20 minutes of deep sleep,
30 minutes of REM or whatever. And so one just know that as of, at least this time, the recording, most of the hand and wrist wearables, they are said so much great information. I love what is available there. And the sleep stage classification in particular. So knowing is this deep is this Ram is this light, it’s not the best.
So to not get yourself all riled up around that part, instead focus on those basics that we talked about, what time did you go to sleep? What time did you wake up? And then some of those recovery metrics, so to stay in that zone. So that’s just my aspect around that. But then what I would say for, for all humans and particularly entrepreneurs is this concept of circadian rhythm.
Entrainment is really, really valuable to have a framework by which you set up your days so that you can strengthen that circadian rhythm. So you can be like your husband, right. And just kind of the goal is to be like your husband and to basically wake up around the same time off to go to bed at the same time, all of that comes from that.
So this is actually a term you can find in any kind of chronobiology textbook of understanding that you are in training your circadian rhythm, but that is from a number of what they call time givers that are external to you, that you are playing a role in from a behavioral perspective of getting so a couple of those that’ll just rattle off real quick. The top down most important one is light,
particularly sunlight. And the timing of that. So if you get nothing out of what I’m saying, then I would definitely say that first thing in the morning, how to train yourself to get even just a few minutes. I mean, ideal would be more, but a few minutes of sunlight outside. And unfortunately behind a window, doesn’t really count. It counts,
but takes much, much longer estimates with Jamie’s ICER out of Stanford, puts it at anywhere from 50 to a hundred times a longer to reset your master clock each morning, if you’re getting sunlight behind a window versus outside. So you want to just get yourself outside, but also expose particularly your eyes to that morning, sunlight, you know, you want it to be wherever you might be on the globe.
We’re aiming for that to be in the morning hours usually before like 10:00 AM of getting that morning light. And the reason for that is that behind your eyes is the super charismatic nucleus, which is your master clock that influences all your peripheral clocks as to what time it is. And why that’s important is then a whole cascade of kind of hormones and functionality happened based on what time the body perceives it to be.
And so we want it to be as consistent, those triggering systems as possible. So that’s that light in the morning and then dosing it throughout the day. But then you want as bright days as possible and as dim nights as possible. And when I say dim, it’s like post sunset, you want to be getting, I mean, really the, the actual recommendation is like candles,
but I know that’s not always so practical. So even like, I got like red lights over here. So, you know, you can, that can be another thing that you can bring in if you’re not willing to do the candles. But so we’re looking for very, very dim lighting that allow us to have our cake and eat it too. So versus like how things used to be sun would set.
We kind of go to sleep not long after for thousands of years now, we want to be able to still like, you know, do things, but we don’t want to impact our melatonin production. So that kind of red light candles or worst case scenario, incandescent lights that have more red in them, those can make a difference. So that getting that light right,
and then the next step would be temperature. So being mindful of really having this arc of your body temperature throughout the course of the day. So high temperature throughout the day movement activity, eating, you know, having engaging in lots of dynamic, cognitively demanding tasks, all those things during the day. But then in the evening, shifting over to fasting,
you know, relaxation, resting, connecting kind of calming everything down. So for entrepreneurs, what we do is create really like say layout of your day, where you have a set wake up time, he was set bedtime. And then from that place that had a Creek kind of two parts of your day, like a day mode and a night mode.
And then even just these little things like understanding like, Oh my God, when I have my food will influence the timing of when I fall asleep. And when I wake up and, or the amounts of wake-ups that I have throughout the night, things of this nature can be super, super empowering for people I learned so much. I never knew that about the sun in the morning.
Thank you so much. I’m like, literally I’m here taking notes. It’s just incredibly fascinating. And so the sun and the light, obviously all makes sense now that you explained that, but that would never be anything that would be, you know, just obviously common knowledge to those of us who aren’t experts like you. And so thank you so much for sharing that.
Okay. You have given us a ton of information. I have one last question that I’m curious about how you’re going to answer. Obviously I don’t know it, and that’s why I’m asking it. Is there a minimum amounts of sleep that general and I’m sure everybody’s different, but generally speaking that you believe people need to function in a healthy capacity. Oh yeah.
That’s the million dollar question. Everyone wants to know that one for sure. And you know, so some of the, the known recommendations are having us as it, a healthy adult, as it changes throughout the years, basically what age you are. But as a healthy adult than getting anywhere from seven to nine is the recommended amount that we’ll have thrown out.
There are other people that will speak to that you can, for some people might make sense to be in the, you know, six is range and what have you, based on their, the quality of that sleep. So I will say that it’s kind of split on that, that topic, but certainly what you can do is through the tracking element of things,
start to get up under that. The more we have some of these kind of top down, most important things addressed, then what often begins to emerge because, you know, sometimes you got to get past all of this sleep deprivation and built up time of variability, of sleeping all kinds of hours, and then not enough and ups and downs. So once we start having those structures often,
what emerges is more of your kind of set point for your sleep at the age that you’re at and at the health level and energy expenditure that you’re at each day. So you can have a clear understanding of that once everything else just kind of falls into order as well, is what I’m hearing you say. Okay, I lied. I have one, one more question.
Can you catch up on sleep? Mm, yeah. Good question. I know. Cause then it’s like that sleep debt topic was very popular for a number of years. So that is another one that is a bit of a point of contention, but there’s different schools of thought so well, if we go back to the conversation around dementia that you mentioned,
that’s a really big topic that’s come out of. This looks like a really strong correlation between sleep deprivation and neurodegenerative disorders. So whether it’s Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s dementia, different things of that nature really linked because of the lack of proper cleaning. So glymphatic drainage was the coin, the term that was coined around this. So glymphatic drainage meaning versus lymphatic it’s glymphatic and glymphatic is the cleansing process of the brain each night during sleep,
during deep sleep in particular. And what it’s doing is it’s basically rinsing out with a janitorial process of your brain, of the buildup of waste products in the brain each night. And that’s what amyloid beta plaques are. Basically what’s left over. It’s a kind of calcification in the brain if we’re not having that proper amount. So the concern, so the reason I mentioned that is that we don’t see a lot of great ways to counteract that.
So say if you’ve been doing that for years and years, and there’s this buildup of this kind of a dirty brain, if you will, that buildup, and it’s very similar to brains that we see for late stage Alzheimer’s dementia or what have you. It looks a hand in hand and we don’t have a really strong way to then reverse that. So what I would say,
even from that perspective alone, is that we don’t want to rely on this kind of messy relationship to sleep where I’ll make up for it on the weekends, or what have you, because also if we just get back to the basics of what we know for great sleep, that the more we have that variability and the up and downs, one of the term for it is actually social jet lag.
And so social jet lag being this concept that, you know, Oh, around five days of the week, I’m really great with my sleep. I do pretty consistent, but then on the weekends, you know, I want to let loose and then you stay up late and it’s like three hours difference and, or more or whatever. And so with that,
then it’s, you’re having the experience that’s similar to, from a biological perspective, similar to jet lag. When you try to get yourself back on your normal schedule on Sunday night or Monday or whatever, but you didn’t go anywhere, but you’re still having that negative impact on your body. So the long and the short of it is it doesn’t seem to be a reliable method to build that sleep debt and kind of knock it out by having these long stretches of sleep.
Because then that also impacts cause quality sleep is a measurement of how your sleep was the night before the night before that. And they, before that. So it kind of all plays a role in there. So if you didn’t sleep so well, one night, often people will benefit from what’s known as kind of rebound sleep because you now, the body is really craving to get itself back on track and it will,
you know, kind of greedily get the sleep staging that it needs, but you can’t rely on that as a sustainable element because then that throws off your circadian rhythm. And now you’re getting tired at the same time. And it’s so frustrating. Right? All of that makes sense. Oh, thank you so much. I learned so much today. Thank you so much for being a guest on the show and we’re going to make sure everybody knows how to find you in the show notes,
but can you tell everybody who’s listening to this? Like, Oh my gosh, I need more of Molly. I need her help. I need her in my life. You know, what does that look like? How can people work with you more? Yeah. Well, number one, just thank you so much for having me. Thank you so much for your also just transparency and vulnerability about how you’re relating to your sleep.
And, you know, just gives us all hope in these different periods when we are struggling to hear, okay, I’m not alone. Cause you know, that’s really what I was dealing with with my sleep. So, and it’s takes courage to share that cause you could be like, Oh yeah, I’ve got my whole life together. And dah, dah,
dah. So, you know, I really, really admire that. So great work with that. And then yes, if you are struggling with your sleep, this is a real mission-based thing for me. so1@sleepasaskill.com, there’s lots of things that are available for free. We have a weekly newsletter, so I call it Molly’s Monday obsessions, cause I’m pretty obsessive about this topic.
And so all of these, you know, things that I’m obsessing about in the world of sleep and also kind of asleep experiments, lots of graphs and fun charts and whatever. And so that’s every Monday when you sign up for that, you also get a free downloadable PDF. That’s optimized bedroom, how to optimize your sleep environment comes right along. And then we also have a sleep assessment that you can take.
So whatever you’re dealing with with your sleep, then that will get you some kind of tailored advice around those areas. We have weekly podcasts with different sleep experts and you know, sleep tech and what have you. So all of that is available for free. And we put out a lot on social media and we’re really amping that up as well. And then if you are really struggling,
you need more than that. Then we do have courses and one-on-ones and different ways of working together as well. Wow. All right. Thank you so much, Molly. I’m definitely going there and I appreciate your time and your expertise and pouring into me and our whole entrepreneur community. And I am sure that this is going to be an important topic. It has been,
but really, as you said, moving forward. So we just really appreciate your expertise and, and being here with us today and it was such a pleasure to get to meet you same here. Thank you so much. You are welcome. Thank you.<inaudible> What a great show. Thank you so much for learning alongside me and hanging out. Most likely you knew a lot about this information.
Probably a lot more than I did, but it’s just such a pleasure to, to learn. And I took a million notes if you’d like to join Molly and me in a clubhouse room where we are talking all about sleep, wearable technology and all these things so that you can function at your peak performance as an entrepreneur, whatever that looks like for you go to sweet life,
community dot and There you can join by link our clubhouse club. You still need to join separately on clubhouse if you’re not a member, but you’re going to get an email with reminders and, and an invitation to this room with a direct link to this room. So again, you can go to sweet life, community.com to join our Sweetlife entrepreneurs club on clubhouse to talk to Molly live about this.
And of course, all of the show notes can be found by visiting Sweetlife co.com click on the podcast. And this is episode number 218. Have a great day. And I’ll talk to you guys soon.
This episode is for those in Phase 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 of the Lifestyle Entrepreneur Roadmap™ Not sure what Phase your business is in?
Schedule a complimentary business triage call here.
This episode is for those in Phase 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 of the Lifestyle Entrepreneur Roadmap™ Not sure what Phase your business is in?
Need faster business growth? Schedule a complimentary business triage call here.
Schedule a complimentary business triage call here.
This episode is for those in Phase 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 of the Lifestyle Entrepreneur Roadmap™ Not sure what Phase your business is in?
Need faster business growth? Schedule a complimentary business triage call here.
There’s no doubt that COVD-19 will affect how some businesses run. These are hard times, but on this show, we’re talking about great opportunities to grow and scale your business online. These strategies will help you continue to reach and serve your clients while developing new streams of income and developing a new business model that leads to more lifestyle and location freedom for small business owners.
Schedule a complimentary business triage call here.
Join Commitment Week 2o20
You’ve been dreaming big and know that the next decade will define your life, you just may not know exactly how yet.
Now is the time to claim your leadership, influence, and role in your own future – and that starts with your business.
Based on what we’ve seen the past few years and what the trends and research tells us about the next decade, there are five core areas you should be focusing on when planning for 2020 and beyond.
This podcast episode will help you lay out your strategic plan to kick start your best decade ever.
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Take the Lifestyle Entrepreneur Roadmap Quiz to find out where you’re at in your business so you know what to focus on in 2020!
Join Commitment Week 2o20
As a mom who owns two companies and has three boys, the reality is that sometimes my life gets a little messy.
Unfortunately, this carries over into my businesses and I just can’t do great work or produce very well when things are cluttered and disorganized.
I know you’re planning big things for 2020 so, if you’re anything like me, let’s help declutter your business so you can focus on the things that will bring you those big results.
Whether you’ve just gotten your first idea for a business or you’ve been in business for years, this episode is going to help you sort through the mess in your mind, clean-up your business, and start this next decade off on the right foot so it can change the course of the rest of your life.
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Links Mentioned:
13 Outlook Productivity & Organization Tips
Grab your FREE copy of Joy Wilder’s Top 11 Apps That Will Change Your Life!
December is a chaotic time of year for most people even if they’re not running their own business like you are. If you’re feeling especially overwhelmed you can’t miss this episode with Joy Wilder.
Joy is the founder of the Brilliant Life™ Business and Micro-Planning™ Systems where she helps women design insanely successful businesses around a life they love without sacrificing their family or themselves.
Joy’s a certified business coach and specializes in Micro-Planning™, helping others turn their passion into profit and optimizing existing businesses’ profitability. She’s the mom of four children under the age of eight, owner of three small businesses, and former Location Pastor.
She has a passion for coaching others to live their Brilliant Life™ while impacting their communities for good.
When not raising her businesses and babies, Joy loves date nights with her husband, is a spinning junkie and a Settlers groupie.
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Links Mentioned:
Joy Wilder’s Podcast | The Brilliant Life Show
FREE LIVE WORKSHOP: How to Plan Your 2020 Lifestyle Business Calendar to Live Your Best Year Yet
This is a time of year where we’re spending a lot of time focusing on giving gifts to those around us, but I want you to use this episode as a time to focus on giving yourself a gift that will last you all throughout next year.
Taking the five steps mentioned in this episode will help you have a business that will finally allow you to have the freedom lifestyle you’ve always wanted.
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It was a bittersweet moment in the Beach household recently when my oldest son signed his letter of intent to play lacrosse at his future university. It helped me realize that not only does this signify a major personal life transition, but it also signifies a pretty big professional transition as well.
My business has evolved as my children have grown. Each stage of their lives has been reflected in how I structured my business and now the time’s come for me to think about the next evolution.
The great news is, once you’re over forty, it only becomes easier to start and have a successful business.
Take a listen to this week’s episode to found out the statistics that back that statement up and why the world needs you to stop being intimidated by the idea of starting a business midlife.
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Links Mentioned:
40+ Entrepreneur | The True Potential Podcast
How Old Are Successful Tech Entrepreneurs?
Four Secrets To Success As A Midlife Entrepreneur
Beth Rees Jones (@midlifemomsadventureclub) on Instagram
Susan Goodkind Wideman (@ goodkindoflife) on Instagram
Stefanie Pollard (@wearemidlife) on Instagram
Angelique Miles (@angeliquemiles) on Instagram
Join Advance Your Reach Nov 4-10, 2019 only!
Learn About Our Speakers Summit Mastermind Retreat – FREE when you join AYR with Pete through our link above.
Speaking is the most powerful way to grow your business. In fact, every time you get on a stage.. be it a podcast or a local venue… your business will grow.
Last week, my friend Pete Vargas was on the show and we broke down the exact steps to outline your signature talk. This week I’m giving you the exact steps to land almost any podcast guest spot you want.
In this episode, I guide you through 3 simple steps to land any podcast, but of course, we go deeper so you really (really) know what you’re doing.
I also reveal the secrets to what podcast hosts are looking for when they accept guests, and I get very transparent about what not to do when pitching yourself for a show.
If you’ve been in business for years, or you haven’t launched your business yet, podcast guesting is a powerful way to get started.
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Speakers Summit Mastermind Retreat Boulder, CO.
Get your FREE chapter of Christine McAlister’s Book, The Income Replacement Formula!
I’ve never worked for anyone else a day in my life. I have no idea what it’s actually like to work a nine-to-five job.
However, I know that’s not likely to be the case for you. So, if you’re feeling stuck in your nine-to-five and you’re looking for a way out, I’ve brought you the perfect guest this week to help start creating your escape plan.
Christine McAlister is a business coach, the founder of Life with Passion, and the bestselling author of The Income Replacement Formula.
Christine helps high achievers all over the world replace their incomes, and then some, and quit their nine-to-five jobs.
Take a listen to this episode to find out the seven steps you need to take in order to leave the corporate world behind!
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Links Mentioned:
Christine McAlister on Instagram
Christine McAlister’s Facebook Group | The Passionate and Profitable Entrepreneur Society
The SweetLife Entrepreneur Podcast | Episode #00: Lifestyle Entrepreneur Manifesto
Dan Miller’s Book | 48 Days to the Work You Love: Preparing for the New Normal
Join the Reset & Refocus Challenge to get your FREE action planner!
You’ve spent the last few months traveling or transporting your kids to all their summer events and you’re needing to back into your business flow now that they’re back in school, but how? Over the past several years, I’ve developed a way to do exactly that.
Last week was my annual Reset and Refocus Challenge that I do every August with my community. This is honestly something that I have to do every single year in order to make sure I make the most out of the next 90 days.
In this episode, I’ll be explaining the five core areas we covered in the challenge this year so you can do one of your own.
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There’s a lifestyle entrepreneur movement happening and each year more and more families are pulling their kids from traditional schools for two reasons:
1) The system isn’t preparing their children to be entrepreneurial independent thinkers.
2) The traditional school system is cramping their family’s desire for time and location freedom.
In this disruptive episode, we dive into the difference of homeschooling, unschooling and traditional education, how each is affecting our kids and if it’s time for you make a change for your lifestyle, kids and future.
I also share behind the scenes of how we’re navigating these questions in our family and how we handle three kids who thrive in three separate structures.
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Burn The Picket Fence™ on Instagram
Pay Flynn’s Book | Superfans: The Easy Way to Stand Out, Grow Your Tribe, and Build a Successful Business
Online business is rapidly changing, and authentic relationship building is taking the lead.
That’s why I’ve brought the incredible Pat Flynn on the show to talk about how to create a deep connection with your audience and have people follow you faithfully.
Pat is a father, husband, and entrepreneur who lives and works in San Diego. He owns several successful online businesses and is a professional blogger, keynote speaker, Wall Street Journal Best-Selling author and host of the Smart Passive Income and Ask Pat podcasts; which have earned a combined total of over 60 million downloads!
Pat has won multiple awards and has been featured in publications such as The New York Times and Forbes. He’s also an adviser for ConvertKit, Leadpages, Teachable, and other companies in the digital marketing arena.
If you’ve been trying to build your followers, but the connection just isn’t there or if you’ve been trying to apply automation and funnels to your relationship building, this is an episode you can’t afford to miss.
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Links Mentioned:
Pat Flynn’s Podcast | Smart Passive Income
Keoni and Pat Flynn’s Podcast | All Of Your Beeswax
Check out the trailer for Burn The Picket Fence™
This episode is unlike any of the episodes I’ve ever put out and it has been feeling completely uncomfortable.
If you’ve been listening to the podcast for a while, you’ve heard mention my behind-the-scenes family vlog, Burn The Picket Fence™, several times.
Historically, I’m not someone who cares what other people think about me, but this project has me feeling incredibly vulnerable. In fact, even recording this episode had my heart racing.
Take to the listen to the episode to find out why I felt called to undertake this project, why I held back on releasing it for as long as I did, and the five strategies that will help you Burn The Picket Fence™.
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Links Mentioned:
The Ultimate Guide to Choosing the Online Business Model That’s Right for You
Donate $100 To Join The SweetLife Project – Online Business Building Course (100% of Proceeds Given To NonProfits)
Even though entrepreneurship can feel lonely at times, it’s impossible to grow your business without relationships. That’s why this entire month has been devoted to various types of relationships and today’s episode is no different.
Whether you’re still in the planning phases of your business or you’ve been at it a while, there are key relationships that are critical in today’s world if you want to grow your business and I couldn’t go through relationship month without breaking them down for you.
[Tweet “Even though entrepreneurship can feel lonely at times, it’s impossible to grow your business without relationships.”]
Links Mentioned:
Burn the Picket Fence Release Date Notification List
45 Statistics on Millennial Spending Habits in 2019
Consumers are more likely to spend money on companies that care, a new study finds
Laird Hamilton and Julian Borra’s Book | Liferider: Heart, Body, Soul, and Life Beyond the Ocean
Download Andi Forness’ FREE Guide: A Dating Profile That Attracts Your Ideal Guy
Andi Forness is an online dating coach who’s been published in Mind Body Green, Greatest, Austin Woman Magazine, Thrive Global and has been quoted in Forbes, Bravo TV, Men’s Health, and more!
Andi helps single, high-achieving, analytical women use online dating as a personal development program so they can finally find Mr. Right and feel fulfilled in all areas of their life.
One of the ones Andi relates dating to entrepreneurship is by pointing out that online dating is just like online marketing.
Whether you’re single or have been married for 20+ years as I have, this episode has something for everyone. So, take a listen now to find out the other ways dating (even your spouse) can help improve your business!
Below is a list of items Andi mentioned in the episode as examples of things that might be on your daily list of activities:
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Join me on Dr. Cheryl Fraser’s Love Bytes mailing list
“Falling in love is easy. Staying in love takes mindfulness.” – Dr. Cheryl Fraser
Sharp, frank, and fearless, that’s Buddhist psychologist, sex therapist, author, and speaker Dr. Cheryl Fraser.
Dr. Cheryl is a sought-after media psychologist and relationship expert who combines cutting edge love and sex therapy with mindfulness to help couples cut through resistance and ignite the connection and sizzle they think they’ve lost.
Speaking from the wisdom of others and my own personal experiences, I truly believe there is a connection between our intimate relationship with our spouse or partner and the success of our business.
So, whether you’re married, planning to be married, or seeking a more intimate and passionate relationship with your partner, this is one episode you do not want to miss!
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Watch Selena Soo’s FREE Publicity Training:
From “Best-Kept Secret” to Industry Leader:
3 Publicity Secrets to Multiply Your Revenue, Reach More People, and Change the World
Episode Highlights:
In order to become the go-to expert or influencer in your space, you need publicity.
That’s where Selena Soo comes in …
Selena is a publicity and marketing strategist for visionary entrepreneurs, experts, and authors who want to reach millions with their message.
Selena has helped clients and students get featured in places like O, The Oprah Magazine, Forbes, and INC. and land interviews on popular podcasts and national TV.
Selena’s signature approach comes down to building powerful and long-lasting relationships with influencers in the media in a thoughtful, authentic way.
Many of Selena’s clients have become industry leaders with seven-figure businesses, raving fans, and hundreds of thousands of followers.
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Links Mentioned:
The SweetLife Entrepreneur Podcast | Episode #00: Lifestyle Entrepreneur Manifesto
Get Amber De La Garza’s FREE High-Value Activity Identifier
You can’t expect to be profitable in your business if you’re not productive first.
Amber De La Garza is The Productivity Specialist. She’s a sought-after coach, trainer, speaker, writer, and host of the Productivity Straight Talk podcast.
Amber helps driven entrepreneurs execute actionable solutions to maximize your profit, reduce your stress, and make time for what matters most.
In my conversation with Amber today, she’s breaking down the four “buckets” you need to fill in order to be productive and profitable.
[Tweet “You can’t expect to be profitable in your business if you’re not productive first.“]
Links Mentioned:
Amber De La Garza’s Podcast | Productivity Straight Talk
The SweetLife Entrepreneur Podcast | Episode #02: Don’t Make Perfect the Enemy
Take the FREE Habit Finder Assessment
Steve Hultquist has been an engineer, founder, senior executive, ski instructor, industry analyst, and more. He’s currently a coach for people who want to get past their mental blocks.
In fact, Steve was my very first business coach almost fifteen years ago.
I was making some excuses for myself and Steve helped me shift my thought processes so that I could remove my blocks and stop playing small.
If you think you might be getting in your own way, this is one episode you can’t afford to miss.
[Tweet “If you think you might be getting in your own way, this is one episode you can’t afford to miss.“]
Links Mentioned:
The SweetLife Entrepreneur Podcast | Episode #02: Don’t Make Perfect the Enemy
Join me in my brand new business mentorship and mastermind, The Committed.
Kendra Hennessy is a mother of two, a home management expert, the Founder of Mother Like a Boss, and the Host of the Mother Like a Boss podcast.
Kendra’s mission is to redefine homemaking in the 21st century and make the difficult and tedious parts of running a home smoother through systems, routines, and mindset shifts.
In this episode, Kendra and I take a deep dive into the importance of having boundaries both at home and in your business. This is especially important when it comes to being specific about when you’re going to consume information and when you’re actually going to create things for your business because, as Kendra says …
“If you’re in consumption mode, you can’t be in creative mode.”
[Tweet “If you’re in consumption mode, you can’t be in creative mode.“]
Links Mentioned:
Sign-up for Ashley Matejka’s FREE Wellevance 101 Mini Course
It’s officially 2019 and now is the time most of us are setting New Year’s Resolutions or our goals for the year. However, I challenge you to instead focus on your intentions for the year.
Ashley Matejka is a passionate holistic wellness consultant and the creator of Wellevance; whose approach helps professional women struggling to prioritize self-care as they juggle all of life’s pieces to create healthy habits and align their lives.
In this episode, Ashley is going to show us how to set intentions in the eight different aspects of life wellness and she’ll explain how doing so will help you reach your intentional and purposeful goals faster.
[Tweet “Now is the time most of us are setting New Year’s Resolutions or our goals for the year. However, I challenge you to focus on your intentions for the year instead.”]
Links Mentioned:
Download the Entrepreneur Commitment Week 2019 Action Planner
It’s time for another Entrepreneur Commitment Week!
For the third year in a row, we’re doing Entrepreneur Commitment Week together so we can all start 2019 on the right foot and know exactly what we should be focusing on for the rest of the year.
#ECW19 is a five-day challenge covering five core areas where you can intentionally commit to yourself to make sure 2019 is the best yet!
[Tweet “#ECW19 is a five-day challenge covering five core areas where you can intentionally commit to yourself to make sure 2019 is the best yet!“]
Links Mentioned:
This episode contains explicit language.
Check out my ICA Masterclass
The first thing I need to say is thank you. Thank you for continuing to tune in. For sharing the show with others. For connecting with me on other platforms. And, for sharing how much this show means to you.
I thought long and hard about how I wanted to celebrate this incredible milestone and then I realized, it had be about you.
This show wouldn’t have reached 100 episodes if it weren’t for you, my amazing listeners, and the only way I can celebrate that is by sharing some of your stories.
The four women featured in this special episode are your sisters. They’re in the trenches building their business just like you.
You’ll hear from Kelly Bond; who talks about “rewilding” herself. As a former extreme athlete turned mother and entrepreneur, she’s finding her way back to her wild side and creating a business that will help other women do the same.
You’ll also hear from Monica Miller. Monica has been in business for a few years but is choosing to completely pivot her ideal client avatar and utilize a local market to grow her online business.
You’ll also hear from Paty Mariposa. The last year has seen Paty turn a hobby into a business, epically fail at her first big launch, and then have her most profitable week-to-date.
Lastly, you’ll also hear from Ali Zabel. While in business school, Ali never dreamed having children would become a priority over her career … until she held her baby in her arms for the first time and realized she needed to design a business that would fit her newly aligned priorities.
[Tweet “The four women featured in this special episode are your sisters. They’re in the trenches building their business just like you.“]
Links Mentioned:
Take the self-assessment to find out which phase of the SweetLife Entrepreneur System™ you’re in
The SweetLife Entrepreneur System™ is a roadmap consisting of five phases that will help you create your SweetLife Project™ (aka: your business life plan) and take your business from idea to impact.
This is the most important strategy discussed on this podcast for your lifestyle freedom business.
I use the SweetLife System™ when working with my private clients and now I’m sharing this system with you. By the end of this episode, you’ll have a better understanding of what phase you’re currently in and the knowledge to spring forward into the next one.
[Tweet “This is the most important strategy discussed on this podcast for your lifestyle freedom business.“]
Links Mentioned:
The SweetLife Entrepreneur System™ Self-Assessment
The SweetLife Entrepreneur System™ Roadmap
SweetLife Entrepreneur Podcast | Episode 01: Entrepreneur by Design
SweetLife Entrepreneur Podcast | Episode 03: Your 8 Step Business Launch Plan
Take Denise Duffield Thomas’ FREE Money Blocks Workshop
As a money mindset mentor for a new wave online female entrepreneurs, Denise Duffield-Thomas helps women release their fear of money, set premium prices for their services, and take control over their finances.
Like most entrepreneurs, Denise found herself bogged down with the minute tasks, daily frustrations, and shiny object distractions … until she realized she was going about it all the wrong way.
When it comes to business, perfection isn’t the goal.
Take a listen to this episode to hear how Denise came to this realization and how the concept of a keyless life changed everything for Denise and her family.
[Tweet “When it comes to business, perfection isn’t the goal.“]
SEE THE BEHIND THE SCENES VIDEO RECORDING HERE
Links Mentioned:
Download Tom and Ariana’s FREE Life Planner Worksheet
Are you getting ready to start a business and want to make sure it’s aligned with your dream lifestyle?
Do you already have a business and are concerned it’s not leading you to the lifestyle you’ve been working for?
Well, this week’s guests, Tom and Ariana Sylvester, have been and done that … multiple times!
Tom is a serial entrepreneur, husband, father, and occasional Call of Duty player. Ariana is a reality-checker, wife, mother, and chai latter-lover.
Together, Tom and Ariana own and operate three very different businesses; including one as business coaches and strategists.
As business coaches, their big-picture goal is to help entrepreneurs achieve fulfillment in both their business and life.
[Tweet “As business coaches, Tom & Ariana’s big-picture goal is to help entrepreneurs achieve fulfillment in both their business and life.“]
Links Mentioned:
Download Marian Bacol-Uba’s FREE PDF Guide to Begin Transforming Your Trauma into Triumph
Marian Bacol-Uba is a transformation coach, author, speaker, meditation coach, and holistic health and wellness expert.
Even though Marian’s marketing business was thriving, she found herself depressed and with alcohol and substance abuse problems that eventually led to an overdose and out of body experience that changed her life.
Now, Marian helps other women overcome trauma and empower them to heal themselves from the inside out and create the life they desire.
As Tony Robbins says, “Success in life is 80% psychology and 20% mechanics — what you do doesn’t matter if you aren’t in the right mindset.”
Basically … your mindset can make or break your business.
That’s why Marian’s here to help you recognize your current mindset and provide you with some techniques to shift your mindset to a more positive and productive one.
[Tweet “Your mindset can make or break your business.“]
Links Mentioned:
Download Regan Walsh’s Guide: 3 Life-Changing Ways to Shift From Survival Mode to Purpose Mode
Regan Walsh is a mother of two, speaker, and an NYU certified Life Coach whose gift is helping women get from a point of total survival mode to walking into their purpose.
She is a contributor to Forbes and the Harvard Business Review and has also been featured by Elite Daily, Bustle, FabFitFun, Smart Business, and more.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed and like you’re doing 1,000 different things without any of them actually moving forward towards your goals and purpose, this is one you won’t want to miss.
[Tweet “Regan’s gift is helping women get from a point of total survival mode to walking into their purpose.“]
Links Mentioned:
The SweetLife Entrepreneur Podcast | Episode 02: Don’t Make Perfect the Enemy
Greg McKeowon’s Book | Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less
Check Out Amy’s Free Webinar: The Ultimate List Building Catch-Up Plan
Amy Porterfield has worked with mega-brands like Harley-Davidson motorcycles and peak performance coach, Tony Robbins; where she oversaw the content development team and collaborated on groundbreaking online marketing campaigns.
Amy inspires over 250,000 online entrepreneurs through her bestselling marketing courses, thriving social media community, and popular podcast; Online Marketing Made Easy.
Even though I’ve been creating online courses for a decade, it wasn’t until I connected with Amy two years ago that I finally streamlined my systems and lowered my “workload”.
Whether you’re just starting to launch your first online course, or you’re a course creation veteran like me, you’re going to learning from Amy.
[Tweet “Even though I’ve been creating online courses for a decade, it wasn’t until I connected with Amy two years ago that it all finally clicked.“]
Links Mentioned:
Online Marketing Made Easy | Episode #179: The Real Truth Why I Hate Video (Hint: It’s My Weight)
Download: Suzanne Brown’s Know Your Why Guide
It’s that time of year when our kids are getting a fresh start by heading back to school. It’s also the perfect time of year for our families to get a fresh start as well.
Implementing strategies and structures as a family as your kids head back to school can lead to less stress and more revenue.
This week’s guest, Suzanne Brown, is a strategic marketing and business consultant, work-life balance speaker, and the author of Mompowerment: Insights from Professional Part-Time Working Moms Who Balance Career and Family.
If you’re finding your home to be a little chaotic with the start of a new school year, take a listen as Suzanne shares structural systems and formulas for ways we can capitalize on the current season we’re in and how we can leverage these systems, both for our business and our family.
[Tweet “Implementing strategies and structures as a family as your kids head back to school can lead to less stress and more revenue.“]
Links Mentioned:
Suzanne Brown’s TedxSMU Talk | It’s Time to Create Professional Part-time Working Mom Opportunities
Download: #CreativityCleanse Strategy Quadrant PDF
We’re approaching one of my favorite times of the year.
The kids are heading back to school (or three different schools in my case) and we can start shifting our focus back to our businesses.
However, sometimes coming back to a business after a hiatus can be chaotic or overwhelming.
As this week’s guest says, “Chaos is nothing but fear. That’s what overwhelm is.”
Cindy Van Arman is a highly sought-after accountability and kick-you-in-the-butt speaker who is super passionate about empowering solopreneurs to get stuff done and giving you the tools you need to conquer overwhelm.
In this episode, Cindy shares with us her proven system to help open the space needed to finally take control of your time and energy so you can have a business that you run instead of it being the other way around.
The great thing about Cindy’s system is that it can work no matter what phase of the SweetLife Entrepreneur System you’re in and it can also help you take control of your life outside of your business.
[Tweet “Chaos is nothing but fear. That’s what overwhelm is.“]
Links Mentioned:
The SweetLife Entrepreneur Podcast | Episode 30: Organize Your Thoughts to Get S*** Done
Stephen R. Covey | The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change
You’ve just read “Crush It” by Gary Vee…
You’re all fired up.
It’s time to lay it all on the line.
It’s time to be your brand and share your message.
And then…
Someone pukes on you.
You have to break up a fight over legos.
Or leave your white board to take your kid to lacrosse.
Welcome to parent entrepreneurship!
But guess what…
Your reason can’t be your excuse.
Gary Vaynerchuk is an expert at entrepreneurship, so I jumped at the chance to check out his latest book, Crushing It!: How Great Entrepreneurs Build Their Business and Influence-and How You Can Too.
Truth is… this book made pick up my big-girl-britches and get my act together.
When I first started listening I got a little pissed. Gary shares how spending hours on twitter and publishing massive content on a regular basis is the way to go…
I immediately had thoughts like:
“You have no idea what it’s like to grow a business with babies at your feet”
“Yea right… 11 hours a day on twitter. Whatever…”
“There is no way I can apply these strategies…”
And then I told my self to shut up and listen.
And instead, I developed serious strategies that would allow me to “Crush It” with kids, and not allow my reasons to become my excuses.
So tune in with me and let’s “Crush It”
[Tweet “I developed serious strategies that would allow me to “Crush It” with kids, and not allow my reasons to become my excuses.”]
Resources Mentioned:
SweetLife Entrepreneur Podcast | Episode 68: 4 Systems Every Entrepreneur Family Needs
Serious about growing your business? Get the podcast delivered to your inbox every Monday – Sign up here.
LOVE IT? Please leave us an iTunes review. Here’s how!
Being an entrepreneur and taking care of a family can leave you feeling like you’re being torn in a thousand different directions.
When you’re with your family, you’re worried about work and when you’re working, you’re constantly interrupted by your family.
Here’s the kicker, though …
It’s not just your business. It’s your entire family’s business.
In our family, there’s not just one entrepreneur parent, there’s actually two!
Between multiple businesses and three kids, we’d never get anything done if we didn’t stick to strict systems for running our family and businesses cohesively.
In fact, we’ve noticed that life starts to pretty much suck if we deviate from these systems for more than a week or two.
That’s why I want to share them with you.
[Tweet “It’s not just your business. It’s your entire family’s business.“]
In this episode, you’ll learn:
Resources Mentioned:
Serious about growing your business? Get the podcast delivered to your inbox every Monday – Sign up here.
LOVE IT? Please leave us an iTunes review. Here’s how!
There’s a lot of focus right now on business growth, diversifying your revenue streams, developing multiple services, programs, and courses, and a lot of other things that sound great in theory, but are not always the best move for your business.
I’m a firm believer in doing one thing so well that you become the go-to expert in your niche for that thing. Once you’ve mastered that one thing, then should you start to consider branching out.
Figure out your signature offer and then take the time to master it.
Today John Lee Dumas and I are taking about the importance of doing things that don’t scale.
John Lee Dumas is the poster child for mastering one thing. After having conducted over 2,000 interviews for his podcast, Entrepreneurs On Fire, and creating a wildly successful podcast launch program, he’s the go-to podcasting expert.
In fact, this very podcast would’ve have launched if it weren’t for a conversation he and I had during an event in San Diego.
Now, John Lee Dumas is at the point where he can focus more on passion projects thanks to the success he’s seen from sticking to one thing for several years.
[Tweet “Figure out your signature offer and then take the time to master it.“]
In this episode, John Lee Dumas and I talk about:
Resources Mentioned:
Memoir Podcast
How to Finally Win: Create Your Dream Life One Step at a Time
Serious about growing your business? Get the podcast to your inbox every Monday – Sign up here.
LOVE IT? Please leave us an iTunes review. Here’s how!
How’d you do?
I can believe we’re already in the second quarter of 2018! When I realized that, I was simultaneously anxious about all the ways the first quarter didn’t go as planned, and proud of the amazing things I was able to accomplish.
Are you ready to start a new quarter?
Whether you’re feeling disappointed or excited with the results of quarter one… I’m here to help!
If you didn’t quite meet your goals, let’s work on that for quarter two.
If you did meet your goals, let’s keep that momentum going!
Each quarter of the year is a fresh start so it doesn’t matter what’s happened in the last 90 days. What matters is what you’re going to intentionally do in your business moving forward.
[Tweet “What matters is what you’re going to intentionally do in your business moving forward.”]
In this episode, I talk about:
2. Serious about growing your business? Get the podcast to your inbox every Monday – Sign up here.
Resources Mentioned:
LOVE IT? Please leave us an iTunes review. Here’s how!
I don’t hide the fact that I’m a Christian but I also don’t regularly talk about it on the podcast.
However, I do strongly believe in being transparent about your core beliefs when you’re in a place of leadership and, seeing that it’s Easter week, I felt the need to address the often-confusing dilemma of mixing your faith with your business.
Alex Miranda is a former Miami nightclub promoter who, after having a “come to Jesus” moment, left the nightclubs behind to start the Daily Godpreneur; a personal development brand for Christian entrepreneurs.
One topic that’s always been of interest to me as a Christian entrepreneur, is the balance between needing money but not worshiping it.
During part of our conversation, Alex summed it beautifully when he said, “The profits are a byproduct of me doing what I’m born to do.”
[Tweet “The profits are a byproduct of me doing what I’m born to do.”]
In this episode, Alex and I talk about:
Join the SweetLife Facebook Community and practice going live in a safe space.
Serious about growing your business? Get the podcast to your inbox every Monday – Sign up here.
Resources Mentioned:
Alex Miranda’s Program | Launch in 2 Days
Alex Miranda’s Book | Discovering Your Calling as an Entrepreneur
LOVE IT? Please leave us an iTunes review. Here’s how!
Being a entrepreneurial mama requires a supportive community in order to stay sane and be successful.
In last week’s episode, I introduced you to Katya Libin and today we’re continuing our conversation about how she helps women just like you find the support they need.
Katya Libin is the Co-Founder of Heymama; a global community for entrepreneurial mamas.
After attending college with the intent of becoming a lawyer, Katya quickly found herself being one of the top sales staff at an emerging tech company working with brands like Nike, Victoria’s Secret, and American Express to name a few.
After she unexpectedly found herself pregnant while all her friends were still partying it up in New York City, she realized she felt alone in her personal life and unfulfilled in her professional one.
After meeting her current business partner, and fellow mama, she discovered that a connection to other business-minded mama’s was what she had been missing.
[Tweet “Being a entrepreneurial mama requires a supportive community in order to stay sane and be successful.”]
In this episode, Katya talks about the need to have confidence as both an entrepreneur and mother, why we shouldn’t be intimidated by the unknown, the importance of democratizing information, knowledge, and experiences, and more!
Join the SweetLife Facebook Community and practice going live in a safe space.
Serious about growing your business? Get the podcast to your inbox every Monday – Sign up here.
Resources Mentioned:
LOVE IT? Please leave us an iTunes review. Here’s how!
Being an entrepreneur is difficult. Being a mother is extremely difficult. Being both means you deserve a medal.
Neither of these two things are easy to do on your own and having a supportive community behind you who know exactly what you’re going through can make all the difference in the world.
My special guest this week is Katya Libin and she is the Co-Founder of Heymama; a global community for entrepreneurial mamas.
After attending college with the intent of becoming a lawyer, Katya quickly found herself being one of the top sales staff at an emerging tech company working with brands like Nike, Victoria’s Secret, and American Express to name a few.
After she unexpectedly found herself pregnant while all her friends were still partying it up in New York City, she realized she felt alone in her personal life and unfulfilled in her professional one.
After meeting her current business partner, and fellow mama, she discovered that a connection to other business-minded mama’s was what she had been missing.
[Tweet “Being an entrepreneur is difficult. Being a mother is extremely difficult. Being both means you deserve a medal.”]
In this episode, Katya explains her personal journey, how she founded Heymama with just $500 and an Instagram account, why she felt compelled to serve entrepreneurial mama’s, how Heymama helps these women by providing both free and paid content, and so much more.
Side note: Katya and I had such a great conversation that it ran quite a bit longer than usual so, I’ve split in the interview into two parts.
Be sure to subscribe to the podcast so you don’t miss part two when it’s released next week!
Join the SweetLife Facebook Community and practice going live in a safe space.
Serious about growing your business? Get the podcast to your inbox every Monday – Sign up here.
Resources Mentioned:
LOVE IT? Please leave us an iTunes review. Here’s how!
According to Elena Lipson, if you want to be a badass professional woman, there are seven things you shouldn’t do.
Elena is the Founder of Mosaic Growth Partners who helps women gain the confidence and strategic vision to get the promotion, raise, and respect they deserve.
While this typically a show about entrepreneurship, not every woman wants to start a business of their own or is at the point where they’re ready to take the leap.
If you’re one of those women, this is the episode for you!
By eliminating the seven things Elena talks about in this episode, you will get a better understanding of what you should be doing to protect yourself by setting boundaries to get what you want.
[Tweet “If you want to be a badass professional woman, there are seven things you shouldn’t do.”]
In this episode, Elena shares her story of how she unintentionally designed a business around her lifestyle and the seven things she says badass professional women do not do if they want to get ahead in their career and be respected.
Join the SweetLife Community on Facebook
Serious about growing your business? Get the podcast to your inbox every Monday – Sign up here.
Resources Mentioned:
Elena’s Article: 7 Things Badass Professional Women Don’t Do
LOVE IT? Please leave us an iTunes review. Here’s how!
Your mind controls your success.
This is something all entrepreneurs must come to terms with. Our minds are incredibly powerful and we need to be able to harness that by ensuring we have the right mindset for our businesses … an entrepreneur mindset.
Having an entrepreneur mindset is important to absolutely every entrepreneur; no matter what phase of the SweetLife Entrepreneur System you’re in.
There are certain character traits you’ll find in almost every single successful entrepreneur.
But, what if you’re not born with those traits? What if you don’t inherently have an entrepreneur mindset? Can you still become a successful entrepreneur?
[Tweet “Your mind controls your success.“]
In this episode, I explain exactly what an entrepreneur mindset is, break down the ideal entrepreneur character traits, and give my honest opinion on whether or not you have to be born with an entrepreneur mindset or if you can develop one over time.
Learn More About My 3-Month SweetLife Launch Mentorship:
Join Commitment Week 2018 & Download Your Action Planner:
“Commitment Week 2018 Action Planner“
Serious about growing your business? Get the podcast to your inbox every Monday – Sign up here.
Resources Mentioned:
SweetLife Launch: 3 Month Business Mentorship
SweetLife Entrepreneur Podcast | Episode 51: Entrepreneur Commitment Week
12 Signs You Have an Entrepreneurial Mindset
Can You Train Your Brain to Think Like an Entrepreneur? Science Says Yes
LOVE IT? Please leave us an iTunes review. Here’s how!
It’s that time of year when people feel compelled to make resolutions even if they know they’re not going to stick to them. Empty resolutions are just a distraction and will keep you from making real progress with your business.
Instead of giving in to this behavior, I want to encourage you to set goals with some substance behind them so you’ll not only have the satisfaction of achieving them, but you also have a better business and life.
That’s exactly why I’m hosting my Commitment Week challenge for the third year in a row.
[Tweet “Empty resolutions are just a distraction and will keep you from making real progress in your business.”]
I break down the four core areas we’ll be focusing on during Commitment Week 2018 and in each of the next four episodes of the podcast.
Join Commitment Week 2018 & Download Your Action Planner:
“Commitment Week 2018 Action Planner“
Serious about growing your business? Get the podcast to your inbox every Monday – Sign up here.
Resources Mentioned:
SweetLife Launch: 3 Month Business Mentorship
LOVE IT? Please leave us an iTunes review. Here’s how!
We’re coming close to wrapping up the first calendar year of the podcast and I want to take this time to highlight some of the things I’ve talked about on this podcast that I think are going to be even more important in 2018.
The basics of growing a business are simple but they absolutely cannot be ignored.
Mastering these items from 2017 will help you have a more productive and profitable 2018.
[Tweet “The basics of growing a business are simple but they absolutely cannot be ignored.”]
In this episode, I break down the three themes and strategies I’ve talked about on this show that I believe are absolutely critical to your success in 2018.
Are you ready to master these strategies and set yourself up for success in the new year? Then check out my Wrap Up 2017 Resources:
Serious about growing your business? Get the podcast to your inbox every Monday – Sign up here.
Resources Mentioned:
The ONE Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan
SweetLife Entrepreneur Podcast | Episode 01: Entrepreneurship by Design
SweetLife Entrepreneur Podcast | Episode 05: Become More Productive Right Now
SweetLife Entrepreneur Podcast | Episode 06: Create & Dominate Your Block Calendar
SweetLife Entrepreneur Podcast | Episode 15: How To Write Your Business & Life Story
SweetLife Entrepreneur Podcast | Episode 29: Why You Should Stop Creating & Start Small
SweetLife Entrepreneur Podcast | Episode 31: How To Hire Your First VA with Trivinia Barber
SweetLife Entrepreneur Podcast | Episode 34: Why You Need A Lifestyle Entrepreneur Learning Plan
SweetLife Entrepreneur Podcast | Episode 41: Find Your Voice of Influence with Andrea Wenburg
LOVE IT? Please leave us an iTunes review. Here’s how!
I can’t fully explain how much joy it brings me to share this episode with you.
Jennifer Ferguson and Cary Goldberg, of the amazing company Handful, are here to talk about the emotional ups and downs of building a business and working directly with breast cancer fighters and survivors.
They’re ladies are committed to helping women, especially those who’ve experienced breast cancer, feel comfortable, confident, beautiful, and happy.
The Handful story is a perfect example of how unpredictable, stressful, and fulfilling starting a business can be.
It’s also the perfect example of how to do more than just make a profit.
It’s no secret that I firmly believe in building your business around your ideal lifestyle and Jennifer and Cary are living that belief while making the lives of those touched by breast cancer a little easier and more enjoyable.
[Tweet The Handful story is a perfect example of how unpredictable, stressful, and fulfilling starting a business can be.]
In this emotionally charged and powerful episode, you learn about the process of launching a business, the side steps all entrepreneurs must be willing to take to reach your goals, why it’s so important to have a purpose and vision behind what you’re doing, and the true power of building relationships.
Don’t Forget: Enter “sweetlife” during checkout to receive a 20% discount during the entire month of October!
Also, breast cancer survivors can receive a 30% discount for life on bras with their Breast Friends Forever program.
Serious about growing your business? Get the podcast to your inbox every Monday – Sign up here.
Resources Mentioned:
Handful’s Breast Friends Forever Program
Cary’s Portrait for The SCAR Project
LOVE IT? Please leave us an iTunes review. Here’s how!
Jeff Goins is a husband, father of two, best-selling author of five books, including Real Artists Don’t Starve, and currently helps aspiring writers hone their craft and find their tribe.
Not only do I love Jeff’s work but he also shares the opinion that your business should be there to support your life and not the other way around.
Jeff started a blog, learned how to monetize it, and created online course before they became the popular thing to do.
Because of this experience, he’s able to provide advice today that will help you finally get started with your business.
One of my favorite gems from this episode: “Clarity comes with action. We act our way into clarity.”
[Tweet “Clarity comes with action. We act our way into clarity.”]
In this special episode, you’re going to hear how Jeff took his creative ideas and put them out into the world, different ways he tested what his audience wanted to hear from him, what he does professionally to help other writers get started, and how he’s modeling his business around his family life.
Join us for The Gathering:
Weekly LIVE Coaching and Connection on my Facebook Page to extend the Podcast episode and bring it into your real life!
Thursdays 12:30 Pacific Time
Resources Mentioned:
SweetLife Entrepreneur Podcast | Episode 00: Lifestyle Entrepreneur Manifesto
SweetLife Entrepreneur Podcast | Episode 22: Book Reveal: Real Artists Don’t Starve by Jeff Goins
SweetLife Entrepreneur Podcast | Episode 04: The SweetLife Entrepreneur System
Jeff Goins’ Podcast: The Portfolio Life
Jeff Goins’ Book: Real Artists Don’t Starve
Jeff Goins’ Tribe Writers Course
Stephen King’s Memoir: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
LOVE IT? Please leave us an iTunes review. Here’s how!
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In this week’s episode, I’m building on the topics of the previous two episodes and diving into some start-up lessons you deserve to know but that few people will ever tell you.
Not understanding how a business launch truly works can lead you to believe you’re doing something wrong or that your launched has failed when it really hasn’t.
A launch is a rite of passage to creative freedom.
Once you understand this, and the other secrets I’m sharing in today’s episode, you’ll be able to confidently launch your business and be off to a much better start than most other entrepreneurs.
[Tweet “A launch is a rite of passage to creative freedom.”]
I’m diving into three specific start-up lessons you need know before launching your business so it can be the most successful launch possible.
Access Your Online Business Roadmap & Self Assessment
Resources Mentioned:
My SweetLife Project: SweetLife Entrepreneur Self Assessment
SweetLife Entrepreneur Podcast | Episode 00: Lifestyle Entrepreneur Manifesto
LOVE IT? Please leave us an iTunes review. Here’s how!
Becoming an entrepreneur means you agree to embark on a journey of endless learning. As with anything else in life, this journey will go a lot smoother if you have a plan.
And this is where the “Lifestyle Entrepreneur Learning Plan” comes in.
“An Entrepreneur Learning Plan is list of things you need to learn over a defined period of time, to grow yourself and your business.” April Beach
[Tweet “An Entrepreneur Learning Plan is list of things you need to learn over a defined period of time, to grow yourself and your business”]
It’s important to always learn, grow, adapt, and evolve. It’s the only way to keep your business relevant and healthy.
Having a plan in place for learning new systems, platforms, skills, etc. will allow you to not become distracted by the overwhelming amount of information entrepreneurs must consume.
With a learning plan, you’ll have the confidence and power to know exactly what you should be learning and when; saving you time, money, and frustration.
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I’ll explain exactly what a “Lifestyle Entrepreneur Learning Plan” is, provide examples of what one looks like, how it can help you solve problems, and why this is so critical to the success of your business.
4 Quick Steps to Create a Sample ELP:
Start Building Your SweetLife Project: Online Business Learning Plan Now
Resources Mentioned:
My SweetLife Project: SweetLife Entrepreneur Self Assessment
SweetLife Entrepreneur Podcast | Episode 00: Lifestyle Entrepreneur Manifesto
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We’re coming up on another season of course launches and program enrollments. Are you confident in your ability to look past the shiny bonuses and crazy discounts to pick the course that is the perfect fit for your life and business at this exact moment in your journey?
Well, don’t worry if you’re not because that’s exactly what we’re covering in this week’s episode!
I would venture to say every entrepreneur has been lured into purchasing a course or program they didn’t really need and, while it may have been loaded with valuable content, it didn’t yield the expected results.
Taking the wrong course, or even the right course at the wrong time, leads to a loss of time and money.
Both of those resources are extremely valuable and I want to make sure you never waster either of them ever again!
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I’ll explain five ways you can get really clear on what courses or programs are the perfect fit for you and your business right now so you don’t become distracted or lose any more time or money.
What you won’t get is me telling you my courses are the perfect fit for you. They may or may not be, but after this episode, you’ll be able to determine that for yourself.
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Resources Mentioned:
Reset & Refocus Entrepreneur Challenge
My SweetLife Project: SweetLife Entrepreneur Self Assessment
SweetLife Entrepreneur Podcast | Episode 32: Reset & Refocus Entrepreneur Challenge
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I took seven weeks off from my business this summer, to travel with my kids. Now that they’re heading back to school, it’s time to reset and refocus. I actually do a complete reset every August. It’s part of my #lifestylebusiness system.
I’ve you’ve taken time off, or your business just isn’t where you thought it would be by this point in the year, I highly suggest you reset and refocus with me!
… And that’s what we’re talking about on this week’s SweetLife episode!
As an entrepreneur, you’re solely responsible for the growth and success of your business. It’s critical to make sure you’re in line with your goals and make adjustments when needed.
I truly believe a successful entrepreneur never stops learning.
Not only does that apply to new systems, platforms, and skills… This also applies to learning and assessing your own business status and growth needs.
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I breakdown the five different core areas of resetting and refocusing and why they’re so important. You’ll learn about each and why they all affect your overall business goals.
Join my upcoming Reset and Refocus Entrepreneur Challenge
Resources Mentioned:
Reset & Refocus Entrepreneur Challenge
SweetLife Entrepreneur Podcast | Episode 28: Discover the Power of a Digital Detox
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It’s officially August so we’re switching gears from the relaxing summer topics we’ve been discussing, and diving back into business building strategies.
You’re a creative… and you’re never lacking new ideas and problems to solve. This is what makes you a great, typical, entrepreneur. It’s also what is required to successfully develop unique, innovative products that people want and will rely on.
But if you’re someone who always has new ideas for your business (floating around inside your head), to the point where it becomes overwhelming and you’re not sure what to do first…
This episode is for you.
Having too many ideas isn’t a problem –
It’s when you’re spread too thin, that creativity can start to slow you down. If your amazing ideas are sidetracking you, you’ll relate and appreciate this episode.
Multitasking, in business development, is not your friend. Learning how to focus and organize your thoughts and ideas will allow you to see which ideas you should follow, help you become much more productive, and help you find consistent work hours.
In today’s episode, I explain how the Splashdown technique helps me organize my thoughts and how you can utilize this technique as well. Give it a try.
[Tweet “Multitasking, in business development, is not your friend.”]
Thank you for sharing this with your friends! I really appreciate it!
Join me in my private FB community where I host weekly LIVE business chat sessions.
Resources Mentioned:
The ONE Thing by Gary Keller & Jay Papasan
SweetLife Entrepreneur Podcast | Episode 06: Create & Dominate Your Block Calendar
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In last week’s episode, I talked about our addiction to technology. This week, I’m challenging you to a digital detox. This is an idea you’re either going to love or hate and, if you lean more towards hating it, you just might need to take a digital detox more than anyone else.
Technology takes the authenticity out of life.
Relying on technology and social media to inspire new ideas makes us forget our own creativity and causes our brains to become lazy. This is dangerous for everyone, but it’s especially dangerous for entrepreneurs.
In today’s episode, I’m going to ask you some questions that, when answered honestly, will let you know if it’s time to take a digital detox.
I’m also going to provide four steps to help your plan for your digital detox to make sure it’s as effective and successful as possible.
[Tweet “Technology takes the authenticity out of life.”]
Thank you for sharing this with your friends! I really appreciate it!
Join me in my private FB community where I host weekly LIVE business chat sessions.
Resources Mentioned:
Lewis Howes’ The School of Greatness Podcast: The Power of Disconnection
Stealing Fire by Steven Kotler & Jamie Wheal
The New York Times: The ‘Busy’ Trap
SweetLife Entrepreneur Podcast | Episode 25: 5 Steps to Prepare Your Business for Vacation
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This week, I’m continuing to talk about how to grow your business while also growing yourself. The topic I’m tackling is our addiction to technology and how we can overcome it, so we can be more productive.
As online entrepreneurs, we have to use to technology. There’s just no way around it. However, when it gets to the point where we can’t even go to the bathroom without our phone, it’s become a problem. #keepingitreal
Our brains are always going… Thinking up new project ideas, worrying about deadlines, responding to emails … it’s overwhelming.
Taking a step back from technology allows your brain to rest for a second and it also allows you to focus on one task at a time – making your day much more productive.
Technology should help you run your business, not control your life.
In today’s episode, I’m giving you some of my best tips and strategies that I use every single day to help combat my addiction to technology and maximize my productivity.
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Thank you for sharing this with your friends! I really appreciate it!
Join me in my private FB community where I host weekly LIVE business chat sessions.
Resources Mentioned:
Lifehacker Article: When You Eat, Focus on Just Eating
The ONE Thing by Gary Keller & Jay Papasan
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This can feel scary when you have a new business. Luckily, your SweetLife Podcast is here today tips on how to prepare your business for vacation.
Small business owners, coaches, entrepreneurs, and solopreneurs all work very hard for clients. YOU work very hard for your clients. You give and give – and often don’t stop giving until you wear ourself out.
Taking a vacation from your business is oftentimes the best thing you can do for your clients. Sound counterproductive?
Not exactly…
A vacation allows you to rest your mind and recharge your soul; which means you go back to your clients with a renewed sense of energy and drive.
Listen in and see why –
In today’s episode, I’ll be providing five tips to help you prepare your business for vacation so you can actually relax, have fun, spend quality time with your family/friends, and trust that your clients will be there waiting for you when you get back.
[Tweet “Taking a vacation from your business is oftentimes the best thing you can do for your clients.”]
Thank you for sharing this with your friends! I really appreciate it!
Join me in my private FB community where I host weekly LIVE business chat sessions.
Resources Mentioned:
SweetLife Entrepreneur Podcast | Episode 00: Lifestyle Entrepreneur Manifesto
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Something you might not know about me is that I absolutely love to be a part of book launch teams. Being able to help spread the word about a new book from an industry and inspiration leader brings me so much joy.
While I’ve done book reveals in the past, this is my first one on the podcast and I couldn’t be more thrilled that it’s for Jeff Goins’ book, Real Artists Don’t Starve.
Real Artists Don’t Starve is a must-read for all creative entrepreneurs who are looking to thrive in their business instead of just sustaining it.
The principles in Jeff’s book will help you evolve your business, gain more inspiration for your creative endeavors, grow your skill set, and thrive in your business in a way that will allow you to also thrive in your life outside of the business.
In this episode, I discuss three of the twelve principles in Real Artists Don’t Starve that really resonated with me and that I feel will be very beneficial to every creative entrepreneur.
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Thank you for sharing this with your friends! I really appreciate it!
Join me in my private FB community where I host weekly LIVE business chat sessions.
Resources Mentioned:
SweetLife Entrepreneur Podcast | Episode 00: Lifestyle Entrepreneur Manifesto
SweetLife Entrepreneur Podcast | Episode 15: How to Write Your Business & Life Story
Jeff Goins’ Book: Real Artists Don’t Starve
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Now that it’s unofficially summer, it’s time to talk about how this season can have a major impact on your business if you work from home; especially if you have children who are going to be home a lot more than usual over the coming months.
The summer season accounts for about 25% of the year so allowing all the extra distractions to slow you down can cause you to fall considerably behind in your business.
The key to summer success is not trying to do everything. So, in this week’s episode, I break down some of the more common pitfalls that can derail your summer progress and provide you with three simple summer success strategies to avoid them.
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Thank you for sharing this with your friends! I really appreciate it!
Join me in my private FB community where I host weekly LIVE business chat sessions.
Resources Mentioned:
SweetLife Entrepreneur Podcast | Episode 06: Create & Dominate Your Block Calendar
The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance by Steven Kotler
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In this week’s episode, I talk about setting personal benchmarks and the importance of competing with yourself.
I even demonstrate the importance of self-competition by sharing an embarrassing story about how I learned this lesson the hard way.
Competing with yourself instead of others is incredibly important because we’re all on our paths. We’re all at different stages in our journey.
It’s also critical because it pushes you to be the best of version of yourself and to always give your best effort.
Competing with yourself is how you become stronger and victorious in work, health, relationships, sports and more.
This training will guide you on setting reasonable benchmarks and will take from being a person who has trouble sticking to a plan and meeting goals to someone who is consistently reaching that next level.
Consistent smaller actions in one direction are what creates results.
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Join me in my private FB community where I host weekly LIVE business chat sessions.
Resources Mentioned:
The Power of Pete Carroll’s “Always Compete” Mindset
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In this special Mother’s Day edition of the podcast, I go a little out of my comfort zone by talking about the 10 lessons I learned from my entrepreneur mom.
When you’re building a business around your family life, there are more things to take into consideration than when you do not have littles in the mix. The lessons I’m sharing today, I learned from my mom, who has been a Lifestyle Entrepreneur since before I was born.
Dive in with me as I share some of the things I loved, and some of the hard lessons I’ve learned not to do.
Entrepreneurs, and especially entrepreneur parents, need to take a conscious look at our day-to-day activities to make sure we’re making the most with our time choices.
It’s always a good idea to learn from the successes and struggles of others. I’m passing these lessons on to you, so you can absorb and implement them in your business and life.
The lessons mentioned in this episode can help every entrepreneur grow their business and lead a more fulfilling life. After all, one of the most important lessons my mother taught me was to choose my life and then build my business around it.
[Tweet “One of the most important lessons my mother taught me was to choose my life and then build my business around it.”]
Download the List: 10 Lessons I Learned From My Entrepreneur Mom
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Join me in my private FB community where I host weekly LIVE business chat sessions.
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How would you describe your life up to this point?
Have you been intentionally living each day in a way that ensures you’ll have the future you desire? Have you been following along with someone else’s plan without stopping to think if it’s what you really want? Have you been just going through the motions of life and letting years pass you by?
In this SweetLife Podcast episode, we’re addressing all of these scenarios by talking about intentionally writing a story for your life, and how to build your business to get the life you really want.
As wonderful as it sounds, you can’t base your future solely on your passions. You need to be strategic.
Today, I’m providing specific strategies for how to write your story and how you can take actions today based on that story.
If you need a little more guidance, download the “How To Write Your Story: Links, Tips, and Resources” sheet I created for you!
Intentionally writing the story for your life and business, is important because intentional actions create results. When you know what you want your future to look like, you can reverse engineer it to give you the life of your dreams.
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CLICK SUBSCRIBE on your favorite Podcast Player below to be sure you don’t miss any episodes.
Join me in my private FB community where I host weekly LIVE business chat sessions!
Resources Mentioned:
SweetLife Entrepreneur Podcast | Episode 00: Lifestyle Entrepreneur Manifesto
SweetLife Entrepreneur Podcast | Episode 01: Entrepreneurship by Design
Lisa Nichols: Motivating the Masses
Entrepreneurship By Design Guide
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In today’s episode, I’m speaking directly to all the driven mompreneurs who have ever felt stressed, alone, guilty, or any of the other negative emotions that can come along with running a business from home with your adorable kiddos running around.
I live this life and I know the struggles are real but, I’m here to tell you … you’ve got this!
This episode is here to remind you that you are not alone. Being a mompreneur does not make you selfish and you should not feel guilty!
This episode is also here to provide some strategies for how to run a profit-driven business from your home in the most productive way possible.
Knowing these things will help you feel powerful instead of guilty. You’ll feel in control, inspired, and motivated to continue building your empire for your family.
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CLICK SUBSCRIBE on your favorite Podcast Player below to be sure you don’t miss any episodes.
I can’t wait to meet you!
Join me in the SweetLife Insiders now!
Resources Mentioned:
Katy Takaoka’s Article: How I Went From Breaking Even To Turning A Profit
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