Your Biz, Your Rules

Streamline your systems and get yo'self set up for business greatness!

The key takeaways:

• When we start a business, it feels like our baby. It’s something that we’ve nurtured and cared for, something we’ve protected fiercely, and it can feel scary to put it into someone else’s hands. But if you want both of your to flourish and grow, it’s got to be done!

• Track what you’re doing each week, and how much time you’re spending on all of these tasks… is that really (objectively) how you should be spending your time and energy?

• When faced with shiny new tools, be discerning. Do you actually need it? WIll you be using it to its full extent? Eliminate all the tools you can’t get into or are only half using. You’ll instantly feel a lot clearer.

• Stop feeling ashamed every time you need to ask for help.

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For the full show notes, including all the links mentioned in this episode, go here >> http://dairepaddy.com/episode34

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Schedule your way to content planning success!

 

The key takeaways:

• Google Docs win for content planning ease. You don’t have to train anyone to use it, and you don’t end up with a bunch of revisions flying around the place.

• There’s no right way to plan out your content. Lea like doing it a week at a time. I like doing it once every 90 days. You’ve got to make that bad boy work for YOU.

• Don’t eat into your own time so much that you haven’t actually got the energy to do your client work when you’ve scheduled it because that can also be an epic fail in terms of how you maintain your creativity. You need to schedule in time and whitespace so that your whole life isn’t being eaten up by work otherwise, you’ll fall into the procrastination trap or end up hating what you’re doing.

Tips for coming up with brilliant content ideas:

• If inspiration strikes, note it down in your phone with a bit of detail, including any connections that come to mind, rather than just a jumble of notes.
• Listen to podcasts and respond to the topics covered by your faves.
• National days provide massive inspiration – you’ll find a whole round-up of RELEVANT national days in Lea’s series of content planners.

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For the full show notes, including all the links mentioned in this episode, go here >> http://dairepaddy.com/episode28

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Amp up your productivity. Today.

In this episode, I'm chatting with Merilyn Beretta about all things PRODUCTIVITY. We talk goal-setting, planning systems, books worth reading and more.

The key takeaways:

• Your health suffers if you don’t honour all the different parts of your life.

• Consumption – whether that’s from books, courses or blog posts – can be another form of procrastination. And this is often based around fear – fear of progressing, fear of not being good enough… there’s a lot that whirls around each of our brains.

• You’re never going to banish perfectionism. It’s about being aware of it and not letting it dominate you.

• There are two things that are stopping people moving forward in their business, mindset-wise. Their money belief system and their productivity, which is really their time belief system. The funny thing is, if you get your time sorted and you get your productivity mindset and methods sorted, suddenly you start achieving things… that’s when the money obstacles dissolve too.

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Join me on Instagram here: 
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Sign up for my weekly (ish) jolts of genius here: http://dairepaddy.com/

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For the full show notes, including all the links mentioned in this episode, go here >> http://dairepaddy.com/episode27

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If you enjoyed this episode I'd love it if you could:

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To grow as a leader, you have to actually lead.

That means stepping outside of the solopreneur mindset, and putting together a virtual team, filled with people who excel at the things you don't want to be spending your time on. In this episode you'll find a whole bunch of tips for finding the perfect people for your virtual team and a few steps to help you be the best kind of manager once you've found them.

The key takeaways:

• When hiring for a virtual team, you’re looking for somebody who has that micro niche expert status and experience in something particular. You’re not necessarily looking for somebody who you can groom and who you can teach, you’re looking for somebody who already has that specific skill that you can outsource and delegate that specific area of your business to. And more importantly, entrust it to.

Mary’s 7 steps for building an unstoppable virtual team:

1. Get clear on the vision statement – that’s what your company stands for and where your company is going. Why do you exist? Who do you serve?
2. Put together an organisation chart (yes, really!)
3. Determine what you actually need.
4. Write a creative brief where you list out every quality and skill that the ideal person for the role would have.
5. Get out there and start looking for someone to fill the position you’re after.
6. Set up a 15-minute screening call to figure out if they’re a good fit personally.
7. Follow up successful candidates with a 30-minute call and go deeper. Find out how they work, what tools they use, what their micro-niche is.

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Join me on Instagram here: 
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For the full show notes, including all the links mentioned in this episode, go here >> http://dairepaddy.com/episode25

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If you enjoyed this episode I'd love it if you could:

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Creative spirit is just the ticket.

Listen on for how Jenny and I both use creative play to SAVE OUR SANITY, the importance of creativity in business and HOW you can start bringing it to life in your own world.

The key takeaways:

• This skill of creative thinking, this outside the box thinking, it’s what we as entrepreneurs do pretty much every day. We figure out a strategy. It’s not just A plus B equals C, it’s not a mathematical equation.

• There’s something magical about creating in a sketchbook or in an art journal because you can just turn the page and it’s gone.

• We collect all these thoughts and feelings of, “I can’t be creative, I can’t do this, I can’t do that.” Sometimes we just need to take a step back and go, “What if I could?” How do some of us start these little businesses? By going, “What if I could fill this gap I’ve just found?”

• When you’re creating, you’re working through something, and it’s meditative. It allows you to connect with fears and with emotions that you wouldn’t normally go anywhere here. Especially if you’re a grade A perfectionist, art journaling helps you release some of that grip on perfection and helps you let go a bit.

• You can only take on so much at a time. If we start to look at these sort of connection activities, like art journaling, or even just regular journaling, we start to recharge, we start to see those connections, and we start to see the stuff that we find is a problem, so we can deal with them. Whereas if we’re forever numbing and forever hiding, we don’t see those things, and then 20 years down the line you wonder why you feel really unfulfilled.

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Join me on Instagram here: 
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Sign up for my weekly (ish) jolts of genius here: http://dairepaddy.com/

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For the full show notes, including all the links mentioned in this episode, go here >> http://dairepaddy.com/episode26

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If you enjoyed this episode I'd love it if you could:

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Break away from all the terrible habits, for good.

The key takeaways:

• When we actually allow ourselves to feel what’s going on for us, we stop engaging in these numbing behaviors, whether it’s with our nutrition, how we’re beating ourselves up in the mirror, how we’re constantly busy, and stressed out and strung out at work doing all the things, or perfectionism, or trying to control all the pieces, or taking care of everybody to our own detriment, or constantly saying yes all the time and then wondering why we’ve got nothing left for ourselves… If we just pause long enough to appreciate ourselves for where we are, instead of constantly beating ourselves up over where we think we should be, or where we’re not, life gets a lot more peaceful. Beating up on ourselves can take up a tremendous amount of bandwidth – it really robs us of being present in our lives and enjoying the things that are here now.

• While you do have to pay attention to the food you put in your mouth, you also have to pay closer attention to your self-talk, and how you’re showing up in the world, and any other behaviours if you want to change anything.

• When we say that we have to do everything alone, we actually put a choke hold on our business, because our business can’t grow if we’re doing all the things. We become the bottleneck in our business. We stop ourselves from actually creating the wealth and abundance in our lives because we’re not hiring somebody to help us.

• With copywriting specifically, you really have to take the time to find the right person who can really capture your message, and you have to be prepared to put your hands on it. You have to be willing to collaborate because you can’t just hand over to your copy to someone and think they’re going to nail your message right at the offset.

• Being busy and constantly doing things is a numbing behaviour, make no mistake. If we’re not giving ourselves that time to rest, and recover, and be creative, and get out and play, we actually aren’t moving our businesses forward. We’re just in this hamster wheel, making up this story that being busy is moving us forward, without actually doing anything that’s super productive. It’s just busy work.

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Join me on Instagram here: 
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Sign up for my weekly (ish) jolts of genius here: http://dairepaddy.com/

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For the full show notes, including all the links mentioned in this episode, go here >> http://dairepaddy.com/episode24

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If you enjoyed this episode I'd love it if you could:

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Take care of yourself and you'll take care of your biz.

The key takeaways:

• Your body is made up of energy channels called meridians, when all of those energy channels are flowing, it affects your health and your emotional wellbeing and your mindset. If everything is flowing really well, you will feel healthy, happy, and balanced, and in the flow with everything in life. Kinesiology clears and balances those energy channels when they need it.

• Women are cyclical creatures and this can be seen in our businesses to. We go through changes throughout the month, and, sometimes, when we’re really connected to our cycle, we get different insights from different times of the month. Kind of like downloads, in-cycle downloads from the universe that make us see things in a different way.

• If you find yourself being drawn towards the deep, dark tunnel of burnout, it could be time to do a major life review. Surround yourself with positive people. Surround yourself with positive work. Remove anything that drains your energy. And simplify your life so that you can avoid decision fatigue altogether.

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Join me on Instagram here: 
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Sign up for my weekly (ish) jolts of genius here: http://dairepaddy.com/

--------------------

For the full show notes, including all the links mentioned in this episode, go here >> http://dairepaddy.com/episode23

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If you enjoyed this episode I'd love it if you could:

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Bring your brand to life online with video.

The key takeaways:

• Youtube is still the daddy of video so you need to know how to make it work for you. Justina’s top three tips are…

  • 1. Make sure your channel looks like it’s operational, which means uploading regular content.

  • 2. Pay attention to your artwork – keep it all on-brand.

  • 3. Treat your Youtube homepage as you would your website homepage. With creativity and care.

• You can have more that one Youtube channel. Who knew?!

• Be careful about the call-to-action you use in your videos. If you send too many people out of Youtube on a regular basis (even if it’s to your website), your channel will be penalised.

• Every platform is pushing video at the moment but all of them function slightly differently. Check out the link to Justina’s guide below for tips on nailing each one.

• Before you start filming, whether it’s pre-recorded or live, do some relaxation techniques – whatever works for you. It might be just having a cup of tea and a biscuit, or if you’re into it, something like meditation or EFT. Once you’re on, try to regulate your breathing and avoid rushing through everything you want to say.

   

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Join me on Instagram here: 
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Sign up for my weekly (ish) jolts of genius here: http://dairepaddy.com/

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For the full show notes, including all the links mentioned in this episode, go here >> http://dairepaddy.com/episode22

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If you enjoyed this episode I'd love it if you could:

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Say goodbye to the Facebook fears.

 

The key takeaways:

• The biggest mistake people make when they’re getting started with ads is thinking that a bigger audience is better. You need to know exactly who you want to target and niche down. Use these smaller audiences if you ever boost your posts too.

• Tracking is the most beneficial thing you can do. Monitoring the results of your different advertising activities will help you determine exactly what works for you and your audience (and exactly what doesn’t).

• Videos are going to do great on Facebook this year because when you’re doing a live stream on your page, people will watch it and engage, creating a natural conversation. People will be replying to questions you ask during the video and then other people will be engaging with those comments. This is the type of content that Facebook will keep promoting heavily so definitely look into live streaming if you haven’t started doing that yet.

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Join me on Instagram here: 
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Sign up for my weekly (ish) jolts of genius here: http://dairepaddy.com/

--------------------

For the full show notes, including all the links mentioned in this episode, go here >> http://dairepaddy.com/episode21

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If you enjoyed this episode I'd love it if you could:

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Your story really does matter... so SHARE it.

The key takeaways:

• Both Marie and I would make excellent Pointless partners, so keep us in mind.

• The ultimate writing ritual is the planning, but that’s quite boring. In terms of the day-to-day stuff, it has to be getting up and out and getting some fresh air. It’s the movement that brings the motivation.

• Do not start writing until you’ve done the planning. It’s quite an overwhelming thing to think “I’m going to write a book”. You sit and you open your laptop and then you’ve got this blank screen in front of you and you genuinely don’t know where to start. The planning part is about knowing who you’re writing for, and about being able to structure each chapter, building in the time to write that, the research that you might need to do, the amount of words you’re looking at, the genre, how you’re going to write it. If all of that’s done first, then when you actually sit down and write you’ve got everything you need to write those chapters. And then it’s fun. Then it’s really, really good fun.

• Marie’s magical book-writing method:

  • Know your reader.

  • Understand the message you want to share.

  • Figure out how your reader wants to receive that message.

  • Do the scary planning.

  • Write the damn thing.

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Join me on Instagram here: 
https://www.instagram.com/dairecharlotte/

Sign up for my weekly (ish) jolts of genius here: http://dairepaddy.com/

--------------------

For the full show notes, including all the links mentioned in this episode, go here >> http://dairepaddy.com/episode20

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If you enjoyed this episode I'd love it if you could:

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