Fireside

In today’s episode, I’m going to be talking about structuring your days and weeks. This is an important part of staying the course, as routine and structure a) helps you to get things done and b) helps to reduce stress and make you feel comforted by the predictability of it. I will share with you how creating a daily routine has helped me as someone who really didn't want one, and my tips for thinking about your own.

Ordinarily I’d be sharing an interview or coaching episode with you this week, but this isn’t an ordinary week. I have decided to keep the podcast going to give you a little support, direction and normalcy week to week, but with a few changes. For at least the next four weeks, I will only be publishing solo shows. I thought I'd do a series on staying the course. One particularly apt for our current times, but not so peculiar to them that you can’t revisit these episodes when we’re on the other side of this thing and need to stay the course for another reason.

In today’s episode I’m talking about wiping the slate, re-evaluating and getting mentally ready to stay the course. I’ve also put together an email support series for the next four weeks if you’d like to get more active in this topic. After the podcast goes out each Friday, I’ll send you an email with a worksheet to help you go deeper and enact the themes discussed in the episode. There’s no pressure of course to be doing anything if you’re not feeling up for it (productivity is not the measure of how well you’re dealing with things), but if you’d like these extra resources and feel at a bit of a loose end at the moment, you can sign up to my list to get the email series.

Today is a solo episode that follows on from episode 63 from last month because I’m answering the second half of the questions you guys submitted on Instagram. These questions are all about content and about strategy, planning content, Instagram, business growth and transition, finding your values, dream clients and many more.

In today’s coaching episode I’m talking with Hira Sameer Ahmed, an artist with a multi-passionate creative practice and creativity coach. Hira is finding that she worries she confuses her audience by having lots of different artistic projects and can feel like a jack of all trades, and that this a block to getting paying customers. Through this episode we unpick this, thinking about how to own your status as a multi-passionate creative and bring everything together so it make sense, how to talk about your product more often, and also realising how many of your worries are caused by what you see others doing and cultivating self-trust. Let’s dig in.

One of our challenges as creative people running or starting businesses is idea wrangling. For sure there are periods where we think we’ll never have a good idea ever again, but there are also times where it feels someone’s plugged a cosmic USB stick into us and we’re just downloading and processing all these different ideas. Sometimes they are really specific this product or that product kind of ideas, sometimes it’s a billion blog posts ideas over a weekend, sometimes they are more general, around your approach or offering that feels like a levelling up. Having these ideas is great, it makes you feel alive and like you’re really existing within and in tune with your business and your purpose. But it does also leave you confused, overworked, uncertain, ready to rip everything up and lacking in clarity. In today's episode, I dig into all of this.

Today is a coaching episode with Kim Heemskerk of De Alchemista. Kim started her business 18 months ago and it’s exceeded her expectations but now it’s starting to feel like it’s not entirely under her control - it’s been growing organically, but not necessarily in the way she would choose. Today we talk about ways to reclaim the control and managing a business which sells both physical and digital products - we discuss the customer and customer journey, defining how you want the business to be, creating objectives and strategy and how to make free content work better.

Today I am answering your questions that you submitted via Instagram Stories last week, so thank you to everyone that did. In fact, you submitted more questions than I could answer in one episode, so I have split them into a doubleheader. Next month I will answer your strategy and content questions, but this week we’re talking about productivity, motivation, habit setting work/life balance, and I’m throwing in a couple of questions about creating and selling online courses for good measure too.

Today I’m in conversation with Nicole Antoinette, the host of the Real Talk Radio podcast and someone who is the best example I could think of of creating an income from your passion and values. I was keen to get Nicole on the show because she is always so honest and frank about money and the realities of life and business, and because I knew she would have so much wisdom to share from her 12 plus years navigating the internet. In this episode we talk about community-building, Patreon and subscription-based business models, pricing and finances, the very practical application of your values in your business and experimenting and finding your way. There are just a ton of a-ha moments and permission slips in here and I’m so excited for you to listen.

Today I’m talking about a topic that someone mentioned in a survey I shared - so if that was you, thank you for the great question! We’re talking Instagram. So often the default when we think about marketing - it’s the first place we think of to be able to talk about new products or share a piece of coverage or introduce changes. As consumers too, I know that if I hear about a business or someone is recommended to me, I go off and find them on Instagram as a first stop, following or saving like the app is my own little Filofax. Yes, Instagram is often our first and last resort when it comes to marketing our business, but we’re always being told not to rely on it. ‘What if Instagram disappeared tomorrow, what you have?’ is what people like me always say. We get it, it’s not good to have all your eggs in one basket, but how do you actually get the eggs out? How do you move people away from Instagram and onto your own channels?

Today is a coaching episode with my friend Jo McCarthy, who you may know as Firain Shop. At the end of 2019 Jo closed down her online shop, despite enjoying it and it being in profit, to pursue work that felt more aligned with her values and the life she wanted to live. Of course, that then opens the door to a new set of problems! In this episode we discuss the decision around changing the business model, naming a transitioning business, the difference between freelancing and business owning, niching, defining offerings and content.