Fireside

Today I’m talking with Cait Flanders, the author of The Year of Less and the new book, Adventures in Opting Out. I wanted to get Cait on the show because she really represents a way of doing things differently and writes around taking aligned control of your life. Today we talk about all sorts of things, like taking not-perfect steps into self-employment, the realities of being a self-employed author, money, opting out of marketing, and making friends with who get it.

Today I want to talk about launching, whether it’s a new service, digital product, or physical product. I know there are many podcast episodes and resources out there about launching with all the tips and tricks about how to have a massively successful launch. But I know that they can feel a little out of reach or out of touch. I’ve listened to podcasts where someone talks through the step by step of their launch by laying out what each member of their team did or bringing in multiple six figures from one launch, which was miles away from my own goals just not to feel applicable. Today, I wanted to share my lessons of what worked from a small launch that went well.

Today is a coaching episode with Kelsey Mech, a therapist working online and in-person in Canada. Kelsey’s business has grown and matured exceptionally quickly, and she now finds herself a little burnt out, needing to make things more sustainable and wanting to get a bit more of the joy and excitement back - a feeling I know well. In this episode we talk about pivoting a business model and balancing the different audiences you want to talk to, as well as the importance of getting a bird’s eye view and how to start to feel excited by it all again.

Today I’m doing a deep dive into one of the things I’m asked about most often - identifying your ideal customer. This is one of those things that you know you’re supposed to do, you know it will crack a code for you and help you to know what to do next, yet you always feel like there’s a secret you’re missing and you’ve not quite got it right. If this is something you want to uncover a little more, my new Customer Kit workbook is now available and linked in the show notes, and in this episode, I’m going to take you through the process shared in that Kit.

Today is a coaching episode with Charlotte Holroyd of Creative Wilderness, a designer who creates branding for conscious and ethical businesses. Charlotte has grow her design studio to a full roster of design clients, but with a few hectic years under her belt and the purchase of a camper van, she’s craving a way to reduce her client load and have her business enable a more remote style of working - and is working on a new e-course to help her get there. In this episode we talk all about some ways to think about making this change, some of the mindset blocks Charlotte has around the traditional ways of selling e-courses and some tactics and ideas to start selling her course in a way that feels good.

Lately, I’ve been working on my thought leadership. Working on these things hasn’t been something that I have ever really done consciously. I think it’s been fair to say I’ve been in a test and learn mode - being confronted with problems from clients and students and coming up with ways to help those problems, and those ways, when they work, become subsumed into the canon of things I know how to help with. Through this episode, I thought I’d explore more about this process and what it looks like to refine it.

Today I’m in conversation with Sara Tasker, who you will undoubtedly know and love as the business and Instagram brain behind Me & Orla and podcast and book Hashtag Authentic. After the release her book last year, Sara went off the grid for months and re-emerged with a brand new programme different to what she’s done before - and I have been dying to know exactly how that came about behind the scenes. So today, Sara and I talk about how she came up with a brand new idea, her process for putting a new programme together, her mindset and approach to business and how she began marketing something different to what she’s known for. We also, of course, touch on Instagram.

A week or so again I did an Ask Me Anything on Stories, and a question that came up more than once was “how do you find your niche?”. I found I couldn’t quite put into a couple of paragraphs what I think about niching, and as a few people had asked I thought it might be worth doing a podcast episode on niching - so here we are. I think niching is something that comes up over and over again in your business - it’s often something we want to get ‘right’ at the start, but it continues to rear its head as we keep developing our work. I have a mixed relationship with the niche, I change between thinking it’s a good and a bad thing, so today I thought I’d explore the why’s and wherefore’s of niching, and how to start thinking about your niche.

Today is a coaching episode with Bex Massey, the founder of Bramble & Fox, an online hygge store. After a brief hiatus, Bex is putting the shop lights back on and is struggling with managing her time around her family and knowing where her precious time and energy is best spent. In this episode we talk about creating processes and rhythms in the business, how to radically prioritise tasks, perfectionism and also, for good measure, whether it’s worth doing a newsletter.

Today I want to talk about self-trust. I have jumped into some many decisions and ideas without it ever occurring to me to check whether I actually wanted to do them - and as a result I’ve felt stuck and sad that my business reality doesn’t live up to my business daydreams. Because it is supposed to feel better than this. The pressure, the worry, the actions taken out of panic or uncertainty, the tasks you dread are rooted in a lack of self-trust. I acknowledge here my privilege as a white woman that the colour of my skin, nor my sexual orientation nor a disability are something that unfairly holds me back. It is reductive of me to say that every single problem for every single person is founded in self-trust. Yet I do know that everything becomes harder when you aren’t on your own side, when you are another barrier for yourself to get over. It doesn’t have to be hard, and it can feel joyful. So, let’s talk about trust.