Your Dream Business

By Teresa Heath-WareingBusiness Entrepreneurship Marketing

Your Dream Business episodes

November 06, 2023Scaling Your Business: Why Facebook Ads Are A Non Negotiable
Today’s episode of the podcast is an interview with Michelle McCance, where we take a deep dive into why and how you should be using Facebook Ads to grow your business, after you've achieved organic social media success.
Michelle is passionate about making advertising accessible to ALL businesses, no matter their budget or tech ability and she is keen to share her knowledge with as many business owners as she can. So tune into this episode and happy advertising!

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST
What you need to get right before you run Facebook Ads

The mindset challenges you need to overcome to run successful Facebook Ads

The minimum budget you need to run a Facebook Ad and when you should outsource

What you need to think about and include when planning your Facebook Ad

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE
Connect with Michelle on Instagram at The Small Business Ad Club or Tiny Shell By The Sea
Join Michelle's Email List
Check out Michelle's Billy Basics Meta Ads Course
Find out more about outsourcing your Ads Management to Michelle
Connect with Teresa on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter
Transcript
Teresa: Hello, and a really warm welcome to this week's episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. And as always, I'm your host, Teresa Heath Wareing. How are you doing? So as I mentioned last week, we had our first interview back and I have another interview for you this week. And actually I've forgotten how lovely it is to do interviews.
And how easy, and I mean that in a nice sense, not in a, I can't be bothered to do podcasts, but like how easy it is to do the interviews because it's just so nice to have a conversation. And today I've brought you another expert and another amazing human. So we are going to be talking to the amazing Michelle McCance, who is a Facebook and Google ads manager on a mission to make advertising accessible to all businesses, no matter what their daily budget is or their tech ability.
Now, Michelle has a business called Tiny Shell Media because she is tiny and she lives by the sea. That makes perfect sense. And Shell, Michelle, I mean, it's, she didn't just make this crap up. You know what I mean? This is like some serious thinking. She's spent 15 years working in agencies across the UK and basically knows ads in and out.
Since then, she has spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on ads in 17 different countries and has worked with businesses of all shapes and sizes with her done for you service as well as offering training as well on how to do your own Facebook ads. She's super passionate about making advertising accessible to all, no matter, like I said, their budget or their takeability.
And she's keen to share her knowledge with as many business owners as possible. So I am super, super glad to have her on the podcast today. Michelle, welcome to the podcast.
Michelle: Hello. Hello. Thank you for having me.
Teresa: My absolute pleasure. So, I knew straight away that I wanted Michelle on because I have been doing some work with Michelle myself, and she is currently helping me with some ads for myself because I went to the Kajabi conference back in, I think it was June, I think, or roughly around that.
And I had this sudden realization, which quite frankly, after nine years in business, I probably should have had it a few years back, but I had this sudden realization that I had taken my business as far as I could take it organically. And the only way that I'm going to take it to that next step is through ads.
And all the people that I sat and watched and all the experts that were there, they ran ads. All of them. It wasn't one person who didn't, who had a considerably bigger business than mine. So. I A wanted to speak to Michelle straight away to be like, okay, we need to sort this out and how is it going to work for me?
But B wanted to bring you guys or put Michelle in front of you guys so that we can talk about ads. Because if you have a business and you've done really well organically, then brilliant. But actually, is it now time to step into ads? But before we get cracking on that, Michelle, I've given a brief kind of overview of your bio, which I am pretty.
Well, I was gonna say I'm pretty impressed that I didn't completely make a hash of it because I did read a bit of it, but tell us kind of like, what made you kind of get to this point here now?
Michelle: Yeah. So for me, it's been a bit of a journey really, as everyone, but I started off, as you mentioned, in digital agencies and I was actually originally a project manager.
Loved it. Absolutely loved it. But the 80 hour weeks eventually became a bit of a problem. And when I had my little girl, 80 hour weeks were just not conducive with it. And I saw so many parents putting their kids to bed over FaceTime. And I just didn't want to be that person. So, and I also found out around the time my daughter was two, that she was autistic.
She got diagnosed around that time and I realized that going back to work full time was just never really going to be something that I was able to do. So I found myself thinking, well, what should I do? And I took a bit of a whistle stop tour into upholstery and actually spent a year renovating vintage furniture, which I loved, but then got into social media and then quickly realized that as much as organic social media, and you will talk me to hear me today, talk about why it's really important.
It wasn't the thing that I loved. What I actually loved was the data, really, and being able to say, did this thing that we do cause this action? And I love the fact that with ads, you can track everything that you do. There's no just putting things out there and hoping it works, hoping the right person at the right time sees your post.
You know with certainty that it's getting out there, and I can see it got in front of X amount of thousand people, X amount of thousand people click through to a website, and personally, I just love that fact of it, and actually, I think it allows you to be really quite creative as well, and that's sort of like, it's sort of I don't know, it's sort of like, it scratches both of those itches for me.
Cause I actually started out as being a developer. So, you know, the actual, it scratches the tech itch and the creative itch for me. So for me, it's the perfect sort of thing and I love it, you know, and I've had the pleasure of working with One Man Bands, you know, people who are just, you know, like a little local business who are happy to stay a local business right the way up to global companies that want to get people, you know, they want to dominate the world and get people buying their products all over the place.
So, you know, I've had a lot of experience with a lot of different types of people and I love that variety.
Teresa: That's so cool. There's a couple of things I want to touch upon there. I worked for an agency. I've worked for a few agencies actually. And what is it with the big agencies, wasn't this when I was at a smaller agency, that they...
It's almost like a badge of honor to work that many hours.
Michelle: It's definitely the culture of it, and it's encouraged. And there is this whole culture of work hard, play hard. You know, everything became around, let's go to the pub after work, or on a Friday, we'll buy you some beers afterwards, or the drinks trolley will come out at three o'clock, or we'll buy you a pizza, but we'll expect you to give your life in return.
And I must admit, I made some of the best friends of my entire life in agencies, but it all focused around work and at the time those people were so important to me. But it's, but years down the line, I'm in touch with a few of them, but very few of them, you know, and given we were, we spent hours and hours and hours together, they weren't really true friends, but you sort of like, hoodwinked into thinking they weren't really were your friends, and you were happy to commit that time and give your life up because you got the social element too, and But yeah, it's, it's this real culture of you're expected to do it and I was one of those people who, you know, when someone had a child, when five o'clock would come, I'd be like, Oh God, they're leaving in the middle of the day, you know, and I'm embarrassed to say that now.
Looking back, I did judge those people at the time, you know, and your bosses judged them, and it was very frowned upon to just leave work on the time you're supposed to leave work, you know, so agencies, they have a habit of chewing you up when you're young and spitting you out when you're coming up to middle age and go, go figure it out yourself because you don't want to work in agencies anymore.
Teresa: But honestly, what a weird, now we have these businesses and we have our lives that we have. It feels like the most bizarre concept, and I remember like, the pride in almost people having to pull all nighters because there was a pitch that they had to get ready for, and it's like, when did someone decide that that, like, if you didn't have long enough for the pitch, or if you weren't organized enough, or there's not enough team.
Then surely you sort it out. But no, it was just madness.
Michelle: Yeah, it's the way. It was so fun. I get it time. But yeah, not sustainable for long-term life and not sustainable with having a young family as well.
Teresa: No. And then the next bit I need to pick up on is your furniture upholstery, which Brilliant. And I am in awe of people who can do stuff like that because like I'd love the idea of it.
I do not have the patience. Did you sell furniture? Is that what you did? You sold or you repaired people's stuff?
Michelle: I repaired them. So it was always a case of taking something that had been chucked in a tip or was about to be thrown in a bin. Like, you should see the state of some of the frames in my garage, which my husband goes mad.
I won't get rid of them because I'm like, one day I'll get to them. I actually have like a sofa, which was owned, which is like 102 years old, this sofa, or it was when I got it even a few years ago. It's got no base in it, nothing, it was just falling apart. It's a wooden frame, basically, and I would build them back up.
But yeah, I loved it. I loved it. But I could, I did sell, try and sell those things, but I could never get quick enough to make enough money from it because it's actually really expensive to get something upholstered because there's so many materials in it. And the people I learned from, they could. You know, took a sofa out in a couple of hours, that would take me a month to do it.
So I just couldn't earn the money from it. Loved it, but just couldn't. Couldn't sustain it, really.
Teresa: And I think that's the thing, isn't it? That is an amazing thing, but as a business model, it's a really hard one to try and manage, like, it's not the easiest way of making money. And often, and especially in the world we're in now, people don't want to pay for the time that it takes you to do something.
Like it's a, it's, it's going to take ages, but they won't want to pay that because they want the quick and dirty and cheaper solution, really, don't they?
Michelle: Yeah, but people only really want to do that if it's like something which is really sentimental or they've had it, you know, for a long time, it's a heirloom, you know, so that's why I tend to focus on my particular addiction was around mid century furniture.
Get me a mid century chair. Oh God, I'll buy it straight away. Like, but you get bargains for it. And that's why my garage is like a graveyard of mid century furniture that's not been finished.
Teresa: That is brilliant. I love it. I love it. So let's talk about ads. Like I said, at the beginning, I had this realization, which I totally should have had many years ago.
And I probably did. I probably, I think I was like a lot of business owners of trying to deny I needed to do it and thinking I could do it without it.
Michelle: And I think there's a lot of mixed messages out there, aren't there? And, you know, like I say, I am massively a fan and believer that you have to do things the organic way to begin.
You need to figure things out. You need to get your messaging right. Your organic social media page needs to act like you're shop front. You know, when we don't have a physical store. We need to think of our profile page as our store. That's what's giving that first impression. So I totally believe you should not skip the organic step.
But there are a lot of voices out there, aren't there? And there are a lot of people who hang the hat on, you don't need ads, you don't need ads. I had a 20k launch and I didn't run a single ad. But those people have spent years, maybe months if they've been lucky, you know, if they're on social media continuously.
But they spent months, if not years, building up an audience and building trust and loyalty with those people. And that's brilliant. That's absolutely amazing that you've been able to build an audience like that and monetize it and get that income. But what happens when the next launch comes, you know, how fast can you rebuild that audience?
If you're not relying on ads, you know, do you need to wait months or years again before you've got enough fresh people in your pot to ask for another sale, you know? And that's where. If you're an online business and you want repeated sales with repeated, fresh people coming into your world, it's very hard to do that organically unless you're going to spend your whole life on social media.
And let's face it, we don't have our online businesses to spend our whole life on social media. You know, if you want to... Brilliant power to you, you can definitely do it, but you are going to have to post every day, you are going to have to show up every day, you're going to have to be doing engagement, outreach, all these sorts of things, if you don't want to spend money on ads.
And even then, you are going to be a bit limited by scale, you know, so.
Teresa: There's no guarantees that.
Michelle: That's it. But, you know, there are many people out there and I see it all the time. I had this launch without using ads and I'm like, brilliant, that's amazing for you. But for most business owners, that's not the case, you know, and It's very, very hard to replicate that sort of success, and the sort of people I am seeing replicate that success have audiences of hundreds of thousands of people, you know, so if you don't have that, you've got to do something different.
Teresa: Yeah, I saw, I saw something the other day, someone sent an email which actually really resonated, so I replied to it, where they had, it was to do with, I'll just say actually, it was to do with ManyChat, they were doing a conference, and they showed two case studies by Amy Porterfield and Jenna Kutcher, And talked about how they'd organically got, like, I don't know, a ton of people into their ManyChat and into their DMs, obviously not, if you don't know what ManyChat is, it's basically an automated, like, it's AI really, it's a bot that you can have manage your DMs.
And they talked about this and it's like, and the person who wrote the email was like, I was livid at the fact that ManyChat went, look, you can do this. Because the fact is very, very few people can do that. The reason Amy and Jenna were able to do it, 'cause they have massive audiences, humongous audiences.
So again, it's that, it's that of like, and often the other thing that people don't talk about is when they talk about successful launch or when you see, and we've all done it, I used to do it all the time of like work at the math, right? So like you would watch like. You know how on lots of these launches with the big people, they'll have like post-it note for each person.
So then you hold the screen and you roughly work out. I wondered what's on there, honestly. And the other day I was looking at Facebook groups and I stumbled across a Facebook group that is for a paid product and the prep paid product is like two grand and there was 4,000 people in there. Right? So of course you'd do the math and you're like, oh my gosh.
But what you don't know, and I have been in conversations with some of these big people and they have divulged what they spend on ads. They spend an absolute fortune on ads to get that level. Because like you said, the thing that is the success of all businesses, but especially online businesses is your audience is getting more people in front of you.
And that way is the way you're going to be able to keep launching, selling your thing, showing up, doing all of that. So I think, I think let's talk a little bit about the fact of. You know, what is people's hesitancy to running ads? Why, even though deep down we know that these people run ads and we're served ads all the time, why don't we think we need to run ads?
Michelle: It's a funny one, isn't it? Because I think, my personal opinion is, I think there is a bit of a hesitancy because this was once something we had for free. And Facebook and Instagram and other platforms, they let us have all of this and they let us build a business for nothing. And then guess what? They're a business and they said, we want to monetize this and now we're going to make you pay.
And I think a lot of people really struggle to get their head around that. It's a bit of a blocker. And they almost like, well, I don't want to give them my money. Why should I pay for something that was once free? And. It's a bit harsh to say, but they don't owe you a business. They are a business themselves and maintaining these servers that, you know, allow us to use these platforms and get in front of our customers all the time are a bomb, the teams that have to go into managing them.
You know, there are huge, you know, huge, humongous teams, the research that goes into all of these things, it's an expensive business running a social media network and they have to pay for it one way or another, you know, and I do think I can understand it and I really do understand and empathize why people are frustrated
50 min
October 30, 2023Beyond the Hype: What You Really Need To Know About Using AI and ChatGPT in Your Business
Today’s episode of the podcast is an interview with Suzanne Frear, where we take a deep dive into the pros and cons of using Generative AI, such as ChatGPT, to create content for your business.
Suzanne is a Creative Copywriter working with passionate small businesses. She helps makers, bakers and motivators shine on the internet and connect with their audience.
KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST
The privacy concerns you need to consider when using AI generated content

The impact AI generated content has on your SEO

The limitations and potential for deception and bias, when using AI generated content

I’d love to hear what learnings or light bulb moments you take away from today's episode – please do come and connect with me over on my social media and let me know.
LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE
Check out Suzanne's 'Things You May Not Know About Chat GPT' Blog
Join Suzanne's Email List
Check out the Dream Business Club Page that Suzanne wrote the copy for
Connect with Suzanne on Instagram and LinkedIn
Connect with Teresa on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter
Transcript
Teresa: Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. And as always, I am your host, Teresa Heath Wareing. But there's a bit of a difference today. After having a, almost a year, I think it was just short of a year off doing interviews, they're back. And I basically got a bit bored of doing episodes on my own and not talking to other people.
And also I am limited in the things that I can talk about. Now, obviously I can talk about a ton of stuff because I've been in this business for a long time and I do my own marketing and all that jazz. But there are things that obviously I am not expert in. So although I could probably give you the headline stuff on it.
Actually, I need to bring in some experts. So I have started by picking some of my most favorite people who are not only amazing at what they do, but also happen to be awesome people as well. So please welcome to the podcast today, the amazing Sooz Frear. Suze, how are you doing?
Sooz: I'm really good. Thank you very much for having me on.
Teresa: Oh, my pleasure. I am really excited to have you here now. Sooz has been in my world a little while and what's kind of exciting about her is that her business is fairly new and I've been with her since the beginning, which is quite rare for me. I don't often get to work with people from the very beginning.
So tell us a bit Sooz, about what you do and how you got to doing the thing that you do now?
Sooz: Okay, so I am a creative copywriter, so I work with predominantly small businesses to help them write their copy to make real connections and build relationships through website copy, through email newsletters, blogs, et cetera.
I have been doing this professionally for just coming up to a year now, although it was as you say, like I'd been doing it a little bit on the side before, but yes, a year ago I decided to quit my day job, so to speak, and I took the plunge and yeah, it brought me here because I've always loved writing and so to be able to do that as part of what I do for a living is just a great joy for me so I'm, I'm, I'm really proud of myself for getting here and yeah I'm just so happy that I get to do what I love as a job.
Teresa: So I've watched you, Sooz's in executive club, she works with us there. I've watched you go through already some roller coasters of running a business. So talk to me and in case anybody's out there, cause actually surprisingly there are a number of people either in my world directly or perhaps listening to this that have jobs or do a part time job and they're not quite ready to take that step.
So talk to me about actually taking that step of going, "I'm going to leave my job and leave my income and I'm going to better myself."
Sooz: Yeah. It's, it's a big, big step and I would never be one to recommend it and say everyone should do it because obviously everyone is so different. Everyone's situation is so different. The situation I was in, but the job I'd been doing for a little over 20 years.
I had to come to an end for a lot of different reasons. I was working within the European Union and following Brexit, obviously things had changed. Also following COVID and the new normal, my working routine had changed and just, it wasn't going to work going forward. So I knew I had to leave that particular job.
So the situation I had was whether I was going to find a new job, a full time position, a part time position working for someone else. Or if this was, I was going to listen to what was actually going on and take the chance to do it myself. And I did go backwards and forwards on this. I know I discussed it with you more than once because there were times when I had the possibility of taking a job.
At the end of the day, I think betting on myself is the best thing I could have done. And it's a huge risk. It's a big thing to do. Walking away from that guaranteed income is a huge thing to do. But when, if you get the opportunity and you have that little bit of stability to be able to do it, that, that, position of privilege really that, you know, next month I'll be all right if I give this a go, then I urge you to take it because if you can enjoy what you do, it's not like going to work.
And that is a huge, huge thing. What I was doing before didn't light me up. This does, I enjoy what I do. I look forward to working. I don't mind working longer hours, things like that. And I get to design my own life, which is a real joy.
Teresa: And I think that actually, you know, to say that it feels like a privilege is, is true. You know, you were in a position where, you know, you, you had an option to leave, like obviously you still need to bring your income in. You still need to, you know keep a roof over your head, but there are some options there.
So that is a privilege. But also I want to kind of go, it's not a privilege. You took a risk. You took a big, brave, massive step to say I'm betting on myself. And, and that takes the most guts. I think of anyone doing anything, honestly, I constantly say to the business owners I work with that they should be high fiving themselves every single day.
The fact that they're even here doing this thing, like they are a hundred times braver than most people out there. So tell me, cause there was one pit that I'm thinking about in particular where you started, you were waiting to get your website up and running and the website went up. And nothing happened.
And I think that was one of your very first, like, oh, oh God, what am I going to do? Like, so talk to us about that, about what you thought was going to happen and then how we managed after that.
Sooz: So I think, yeah, I had this, this, this picture of, of, of what a successful business looked like. And it was definitely a website.
It was definitely, you know, a full and bustling email list. It was really busy socials, et cetera. And I'd worked really hard to get this to my website up and I was so proud of it. I'd put in so much work because anyone knows who does the website. Thank you so much. It takes a lot of work. Obviously being a copywriter, I wrote all the copy myself.
It's a lot of work and talking about yourself isn't always the easiest thing. And that's why I do what I do to help other people. But I had to do it for myself. So all this work has gone in. I was so excited. I remember doing, a little video to celebrate that you were part of it. All these people celebrating that my website was up and it had been up two days and I wasn't yet a millionaire.
And I think I came into the group and I was like, Now what? Because I'd worked so hard, nothing had happened and then, well now what? No, no one's seen it apart from you guys that I've shared it with. This was it. Yeah. Then the next stage is obviously really pushing yourself out there, getting, getting people to the website, talking about the website, talking about what they can find there and, and then encouraging them, following links and things. So that was it. . Yeah. Things don't just happen. You have to find them.
Teresa: The story really makes me like, it makes me laugh in a nice way, not in like a ha, stupid as a way. Like that, because that is the truth there. So many people, like having a website with your name on it feels, and like you said, it's a ton of work, right. Even when you've had a website before, like, if I ever do a website change or the last time I changed a website, it is still a ton of work. And, and like you said, it was just that whole, like, get it up there, like, what? Come on, they're the ones, all my customers, like, hello!
Sooz: They're that phrase, build it and they will come. They don't.
Teresa: No, they don't. It's absolute BS. But what was so great, from my point of view, is that you were working with us and you were in our world, which meant that when you went, Oh my God, like nothing's happening.
I'm failing at this. I'm doing, which you absolutely weren't by the way, because that is what happens that actually we could work on the next thing and work on it and keep you going and then get to the point where you are today, where you have clients and proposals and all sorts of things, which is awesome. But so many people would have got to that stage. And stopped.
Sooz: It's true.
Teresa: And you didn't.
Sooz: No. Well, I think there's, there's a few things that kept me going, but predominantly was like this, this, that I wanted to make myself proud and I couldn't give up for that. It was too soon to give up. I'd given myself, I think I've given myself three years to see if I can make this work.
It's already working, by the way, so there was very much that, like, don't give up, but I have to say, yeah, the people around me, and this is one thing I talk about quite a lot, is having the people around you that either have been there, have done it before, have some experience, or just that believe in you and support you, and when they see you starting to lose that faith a little bit in yourself, it's just so, wait, have you seen what you've done?
You've done all this first, remember that, and that, that's a big learning curve, that's something else I've learned over the past couple of years that I, actually, I have got quite a strong willpower, and I am a strong person, I can do something if I put my mind to it, but I've taken time to learn, you know, we've always relied on other people, like, but everything we do and think, oh no, it's not for me, or I'll find a different way.
But relying upon yourself is a big learning curve. And that's, yeah, definitely something that kept to come through when I've hit these little bumps. But yeah, the people around me and other people cheering me on, like yourself, like the group that we're in. Yeah, it's invaluable. Absolutely.
Teresa: And, and I love it because we're now a year in, almost a year in, and you, you have a thriving business that has always got room to grow because every business has, but you have got clients, you're doing work, you're showing up, you're, you know, you are getting people saying you are brilliant at this, Sooz, and you are brilliant at this, which is amazing.
In fact, Sooz, I should mention Sooz helped me write the club page, so if you go to teresaheathwareing. com/ the club. You can see Sooz's work on that page and it's lovely because she got to know me and understand me and she did pretty much anyway by this point. But, and what was lovely is she was in the club so she could very convincingly and, and authentically go, this is what you get in there and this is how you feel and that sort of thing. So do go and check that out.
Okay, so the next hurdle that come across, which actually is gonna be where we're focusing our time today, is that you start your copywriting business. And then the world explodes with chat GTP.
Sooz: Oh, honestly, you couldn't make it up, could you? I'll just wait.
Teresa: No, no. So basically.
Sooz: Yeah, I'll wait for it. I'll wait for an energy crisis when people are low on free up cash. And just something else that comes in that people can use themselves to write their own copy which is brilliant.
Teresa: Exactly. you know what? I am pretty late to the party with most tech things because I understand, like I'm still not on threads and I won't be, and now there's a surprise, everyone stopped talking about it.
But like, you know, I, I hold back a bit because I know that I've got to stay in my lane. So actually I didn't look at chat GTP and as you know, and people listening to this, if they're not new, I write all my stuff pretty much anyway, bar the page I got you to help me with. So, and the show notes, Becci writes the show notes based on what I've said on the podcast.
So, for me, I never really looked at it. And then I started to like dabble and look. And I remember sitting in bed, I've told you this, with my husband. And it was a Saturday morning, or Friday morning, we were both doing a bit of work in bed. and rock and roll life we need. And basically I'm doing something and I'm like, look at this.
And I wrote an email that I would send to my list and I put it into chat GTP. And I said, improve this. And it just started typing. And Paul, my husband is like, "What the world. How much are you paying for that? That's ridiculous." I'm like, it's free. However, what we want to talk about today is, and what you're going to share with us because you've done some great content around this, which is why I wanted you to come and share it with us, is we're going to talk about using ChatGTP, and when it's great and when it's not great, and when you need a copywriter, when you don't need a copywriter, and when you know, the things that you should use it for and the things that you should bear in mind when you're using it. So, where do you wanna kick off Sooz? What things should we talk about first?
Sooz: Well, I'll start with, with what you just said there. So, yeah, I want to talk about like, the fact, like you said that you, when you, you entered stuff in, you just said it, it is brilliant. I have to say like, I can't knock it really.
The fact that you can put a couple of really simple prompts in, I mean, you put in a whole, email, but you can put in just write me an invitation to, write me for social media posts about, it is brilliant in that the innovative technology behind it is fantastic. I can't knock it, but it just. I urge people to be careful with it.
There's so much we don't know about it. There's so much that we're still learning. And that is because AI in itself is a learning tool. So it is learning as well all the time. For example, the fact that you put in a newsletter, once you put in something like that, that could hold information, it could hold, it could hold customer data, for example.
Anything like that, then goes in there and stays there. It becomes the property, so to speak, of, ChatGPT, Claude, Bard, any of those. That once it's in, it becomes part of that system. So, be very aware that anything you put in is no longer private to you. It could be served up as information to another user if they put in just the right kind of prompts, it's using your information to learn from.
A lot of the time this isn't too bad. You know that there's things we're entering in a quite generic that questions and things like that. But sometimes people are putting in whole reams of an article or a whole magazine, something similar or course, I know someone who's put a whole course into chat GPT to find out how it sounds. And yes, you'd have to get the right product. It's mind blowing and it's really scary.
Teresa: That's mind blowing, isn't it? Like, you know, and, and also the fact is, and I, you know, and we talked about this and you told me that example, and I was like, so if someone else, so if someone saw that she'd put that in, because she talked about it publicly, that's how, yeah, how we know that she put her entire course in.
Yeah. So if someone saw her talk about it and knew the title of her course and then went back to chat GTP and said, write me a course based on or called the likelihood of them using some of that information back in that response would be really high.
Sooz: It could be. Yeah, exactly. But it's also. It's impossible to tell and then from there, you don't know how unique your answer is.
So it's really hard to, I couldn't say what the percentage chance is and I wouldn't want to put myself out of it because there's people who know a lot more about it and the data behind it, but it's just that there is a chance. I heard a story about someone in a separate group who she managed the social media for an accounting firm or a financial firm.
She'd put out a post that she'd put through ChatGPT. And her firm got in touch with her and said, This is not your post. You've, this is, you've stolen this from someone else. Basically, and the chances of this happening are slim, but two different people have put the same prompt into chat GPT, got the same thing out, and in the same field, and the fact that they were linked anyway, the same post went out.
So the second person to put it out looked like she'd literally copied the first person, but she'd got it from chat GPT. So it does happen, the chances are slim. And especially that you're going to get caught in that lie, so to speak, that lack of authenticity.
Teresa: If that's your job, and you're, you're a freelancer or you're a social media manager or you're a marketer, and it's like...
You know, you writing something and it being out somewhere else, like you just can't do that, that credibility. And also, I have to say now, you know, I've used chat GTP, and I've looked at it in different ways and we can talk about that, how, you know, how I've used it. But I, if I came to you to write some copy.
Or if I came to you to write my social media or went to someone to create my social media and I thought they were just plugging it into ChatGTP, that kind of, personally, that would put me off. Yeah. Personally, I would think, well, you...
50 min
October 23, 2023Falling Out Of Love With Your Business: How To Decide When To Pivot And When To Persevere
Today’s episode of the podcast is all about what do you do if you are not happy in your business, or if you think you might need to pivot.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST
What to do when you feel out of alignment in your business

The questions to ask yourself, to move towards a solution

Practical ways to explore all the available options

If you found this useful, then one of your friends might too - so please go and send it to them or share it on your socials, I would greatly appreciate it.
And if you haven't yet given me a five star review on Apple, I would love it if you did!

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE
Check out the Dream Business Club
Find out more about my 1:1 Coaching
Connect with Teresa on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter

Transcript
Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. And as always, I am your host, Teresa Heath Wareing. How are you doing? So. If you are new to the podcast, welcome. I forget to welcome new listeners and this might be the first episode you've ever listened to. So if you are new, welcome.
If you have been hanging around with me for some time, then I appreciate you greatly. And I'm so grateful you are giving me your time because I know the world gets busy and our time is so precious. So I do not take it lightly that you are spending your time with me. I appreciate it so much. So today, We're talking about What do you do if you are not happy in your business, if you're falling out of love in business, or if you think you might need to pivot?
So we're going to talk about all that, but before we do, I just want to give you an update. So as you will know, for those long term listeners, I used to do interviews and I got to a point where I'd done a ton of interviews and in all honesty, it was getting more work than, than my normal work. So. We were getting a ton of applications every single day, and the time it was taking me and my team to process them, decide, go back to them, book in interviews, do the interviews, and all of that stuff, it was just becoming like a beast, and becoming an unworldly amount of work.
So I decided to take a break this year, and pretty much at the beginning of the year, I paused the interviews, and I just did a load of solo episodes. And... I'm ready to go back to interviews, which is very exciting. So, first off, I have got a ton of interviews already recorded that are actually mostly people from my membership, but they also happen to be amazing at what they do, or I absolutely wouldn't have them on, just so you know.
I'm not just being kind to people who are in my world. But obviously if they are amazing, then why not get them on the podcast? So that's cool. So we've got people talking about social media. We've got people talking about, Facebook ads, like real proper experts. Who know what they're doing? Google shopping ads.
We've got people talking about how to be brave and put yourself out there on social media. We've got people talking about, how to set yourself up on Google and all that good stuff. So lots and lots of good and interesting, conversations coming your way. I want to buy chat GTP, which during it, I changed the name from chat G P T to chat G T P.
So you'll just have to excuse me for that, but basically lots of cool interviews coming. So they are coming back next week. I'm super excited about that. It's just really nice to have conversations with people again. And as I've said before, if I am not the expert or if there is someone better than me on a given subject, then it makes sense for me to get them to come on and talk about it, not the fact of, you know, me trying to bundle my way through an episode.
So that is going to be fun. But today let's talk about, what do we do if we are not happy in our business? Because one thing I want to get clear first off is you can have bad days in business, but still love what you do. Okay. And there is absolute guarantee that that is going to happen. There are going to be days and there are going to be points in your business where it is so hard and you doubt that you're cut out to do it and you feel unhappy and frustrated and all the other good stuff.
But that doesn't mean you're not happy in your business anymore. It just means that you are having a bit of a tough time and struggling. So that's the first thing. That I want to kind of get clear. This isn't about I've had a bad day. Let's change our business. This is a more ongoing thing of, do you know what? I'm just not feeling it anymore.
And when we talk about these kind of things, it kind of comes down to alignment. You know in your body and As people in general, especially females, we shouldn't ignore our intuition. We shouldn't ignore what our body tells us. There is a good reason why it's not feeling right.
So we need to kind of tap into that. We need to think about that. So. You know, I'm not suggesting you do all the woo things. If you want to, that's great. If not, don't worry about it. I'm just saying, like, normally if something is out of alignment, and you'll know it if you've had clients, I've had clients before where you've gone and met them and you thought, this isn't right.
Like something just does not feel right, but I can't think of a good reason why not to work with them. You work with them and it turns out to be an absolute disaster. So. That's what I'm talking about. That's when it's not an alignment and when your body is probably correct in telling you that this thing isn't right.
So, what if you've not been happy in your business for a while? What if it's not felt for a while? Now, how long is a while? It's really hard to say and it depends on how tolerant you are. Now, If you work with a coach or are in someone's world like being in my world where you're a club member and you can come and speak to me then it first step is really helpful to have a conversation because sometimes when we're in our own heads it's really difficult to actually be super subjective about what it is we are struggling with and whether it really is a case of actually this is not an alignment or whether we're just having a hard time and therefore In having that hard time, we're now doubting whether we want to do it and whether it fits.
So having a conversation with someone is really, really happy. And like I said, subjective, great. My partner, my husband is phenomenal. I love him. He's super supportive. However, he is not the person I would have a conversation like this with because he has his own agenda. Whereas a coach, if I go to one of my coaches that they don't have an agenda, so they can be really analytical with me.
So the first thing is to sit down and decide what is it that you're not happy about, okay? And this is where we talk about becoming the scientist and not the judge. So don't judge yourself going, well, I should be happy and I've created this thing or, you know, I should be grateful or it's not fair that, you know, this, this, this, that's, that's just putting a load of rubbish on you.
You don't need that and it's not gonna help. So becoming the scientist and asking your questions about what don't I like about it? What is it right now that I don't like about it? And that will really help you understand if it's in alignment.
I had someone come onto a coaching call once and they were like, I think I'm going to stop. I'm done with my business. I don't think it works for me. I'm not happy. I think the concept doesn't work. And was basically at the point where she was about to pull the plug. And we had a conversation and I said, if you had customers, cause she was struggling to get some customers.
If you were full, fully booked, would you feel the same way? And she said, no. And I was like, okay, so it's not the business. It's the fact of... Because you haven't got customers. You are concerned that your customers are validating to you whether this business will work. You don't feel great because you haven't got customers.
You feel like you are not good enough. And we worked through it and it wasn't the reason she wasn't unhappy with her business. She just was so frustrated and so down and so done for like she was so like basically, You know, felt defeated in her own business because she wasn't getting clients. So asking yourselves, what is it?
Why am I not happy with my business? Asking things like, what do I love about my business? What things do I enjoy doing? What don't I love about my business? And another thing to go back to, and we did this exercise recently in the club, every month we do mindset sessions. And one of the mindset sessions we do every year is the values exercise.
And it's such a good exercise. If your business is no longer in alignment with your values or your values have changed, then that might be why it doesn't feel great. So doing a values exercise is really, really helpful. So, what do we do if we've sat down and we've looked at it all and thought this isn't working?
The other things to think about is, whether you pivot or whether you kind of decide that actually the business is done for and actually want to go get a job, which personally, I couldn't actually imagine anything worth, was what isn't working? What don't you like? What's too hard? Like, try and find those things out first.
Try and understand what's not working. And then also, have you given it long enough? So we as business owners tend to hope and wishful thinking that we'll do one thing and it'll suddenly make a world of difference. And the truth is, It doesn't work like that. It takes time. So how long have you done something for?
Have you been measuring it and have you tweaked as needed? And that is really, really important. You've got to give yourself, it's like saying to a child, you know, I've had a, I've got a daughter who's 13 going on 23, went to a party the other day and someone said to her. God, you look about 17. I was thinking, please don't tell her that.
She terrifies me as it is. But anyway, bye bye. But like if she was trying to do something and she'd given it two minutes, would I be like, yeah, you gave it long enough. Let's crack on and you obviously can't do it. No, I'd be like, okay. You, it didn't work that way, let's try something else. Let's do it for four or five weeks a month and if it still doesn't work, then we'll think about doing something different.
So have you given it enough time? Can you honestly sit there and say, I've done everything I tried to do before you've given up on that thing? And like I said, if it's not in alignment, if it's not in your values, then That makes sense why it's not fitting and why it's not working. However, I don't want you to use that as an excuse as to pivot and do something else, because that's one of the things that I see in business a lot.
And thank goodness, not with the people in the club, but often someone go, this isn't working. So I pivoted and that's not working. So I'll pivot. And it's like, it's not working. You're just not giving it enough time or it starts to get hard and you pivot and therefore you're going to reach another point in your business going forward where the same thing happens where it starts to get hard and you'll want to pivot again and you'll spend your entire life pivoting and never actually creating the thing you want to do.
And I know that sounds a bit harsh, but the truth is, I see it. I see people doing it and they're no further on ever, you know, they don't give it long enough. They haven't really tried all the options. They haven't measured what they've done and then tweaked what they've done. They've just gone. This doesn't work.
Isn't for me. Pivot. When the truth is it's not that it's not for them. It's just that it got hard and that made them stop. So what do you do if you're not feeling happy, if you're not sure? So, like I said, there's a few things that you can have already done. Like I've just said, you know, ask yourself the question, sit down.
If you like journaling, journal. If you like meditating, do all that. If you have a coach, go and speak to a coach. If you haven't got a coach, come and check out the club and come and talk to me. But once you've kind of had a look at and thought about it, the next thing you need to think about is writing down the options.
Now what happens is we get overwhelmed and frustrated and disheartened when we don't have options and there are always options. Now that might sound like a very privileged thing to say but the truth is there are. There are always options but you get to Well, the truth is that not often people like the different options.
So, I have this conversation, and I always get careful about saying things about my family, because what if one day they decide to listen to this podcast? I don't think they will. But, you know, I had a conversation with, my sister, and she was like, I've got no choice. And the truth is, we do have a choice.
The choices, though, that we have might not be ones that feel nice. So, okay, I'll use the example of my daughter. Again, teenagers, she's obviously playing on my mind a lot. But she was having trouble with the teacher and basically she was marked down for being disrespectful, which quite honestly is like, one of the worst things in my book.
So I was like, you cannot be disrespectful. She's like, I don't like the teacher, it's awful. And I said to her, well, sorry darling, you've got no choice. And then I stopped myself and went, no, you have got a choice. These are your choices. Choice one, you stay at that school, and you learn to, you know, accept and behave in a better way towards this teacher.
You don't have to like her, that's fine. But you do have to respect her. She's your teacher. Option two, I pull you out of the school and we homeschool you. Which I was thinking, please God, don't say yes. And option three, I move you back to the school you were at, which I know she doesn't want to go to.
And so those are your options. So she had options, none which she likes. And so she said, okay, I'll stay. Okay. Will you stay? You've made the decision and therefore you need to, you need to now sort this out type thing. So that was the kind of conversation that we had. So she had choices. They just weren't. Any good choices.
But the minute you think you don't have any options or choices, you feel stuck and that's not a good place to be in. So the next step is if it's, if you say, you know, you're still not happy, it's still not right. What are my choices? You could go and get a job. I would rather stick needles in my eyes.
Quite honestly. I can't ever imagine a world where I would ever want to get a job, but it's a choice. I could change what I did. I could go back to having an agency. I could, stop doing some particular things and do more of something else. There could be lots of different things that I could do in my business if I'm not happy, and if I'm in a bit of a funk.
So that's the next option, working out what are your options. I could go and take my skillset and move out of the online space and do something else, or move out of marketing and teach something else. There are lots of different options that I could do. And even if they're the most absurd, craziest options in the world.
write them down because, you know, I could just not work and we could live a much more frugal life than, I mean, I could have a big garden, I could grow my own veg, I could sell it at a farmer's market. I've got it all planned out. But you know, there are options. So having options is great. So really giving yourself space and time to think about it, really deciding whether it's out of alignment with you or whether it's just you're in a bit of a funk.
Then going through the options, if you're sat there going actually it is more than just I'm having a bad day, then write all your options and then work with someone who can help you become clear about those things. Now, at the end of the day, only you can decide, only you can decide because you're doing the work, but having someone to work with, someone to talk these things through someone to figure these things out with you are really good.
Try to choose someone who ideally is a coach or a mentor. Try not to choose someone who has an invested interest in you or your business, because they're not going to be, subjective enough. They are going to have an emotional connection to it. So that's what I would suggest you do. If you're not happy in your business, if you're wondering whether you need to pivot, wondering if something else is for you, give yourself some time, give yourself some space to think about it, give yourself the chance to discuss through how you feel with someone else, and then come up with options as to what you could actually do about it, whether it's.
Literally doing a 180 and doing something completely different, or whether it's getting a job, or whether it's just making some tweaks. Only you can decide, but make sure that whatever you do, you tell yourself, I'm going to give it this length of time, before... I then make a decision as to whether this is working or not.
I hope this has helped. It's a bit hard to do when it's not someone telling me directly what their problem is and where they're at, which is why it's so good to work with someone like me. Anyway, I'm going to leave you to it. If you think this was useful, if you think someone else found this useful, please go and send it them.
Share on your socials. I would greatly appreciate it. And if you haven't yet given me a five star review on Apple. I would love it if you did. Okay, have a wonderful day and I will be back next week with an interview. I will see you then.
17 min
October 16, 2023Audience, Audience, Audience: Proven Tactics For How To Grow Yours
Today’s episode of the podcast is all about the importance of building an audience for business success.
So if you need some actionable insights to help you grow your audience, then this is the episode for you!

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST
The key to building trust and a loyal following in any industry

Practical ways to retain your audience and keep them engaged

Strategies to transition followers to an email list

I want every business owner to hear today's episode, because if you do nothing else in your business, this is the one thing that is going to help you be successful.
So please share this week's episode with all of your business friends!

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE
Connect with Teresa on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter

Transcript
How are you doing? So recently I've been in some quite short and sharp episodes, which I'm doing because sometimes these things don't need me to talk a long time about it. And sometimes you just need a reminder of some of these things.
And also I mentioned last week that I've decided to bring back interviews. There was a good reason why I stopped them. And, and I will talk about this maybe when, I bring the interviews back, but I, you know, stop them because it didn't fit with the business anymore. And I've decided to start them again because I've had a little rest and actually now I'm ready to have some conversations with people again.
And it just means that I, if I don't interview people, I can't talk about things proficiently about things I don't know. So let's take Facebook ads. I do know Facebook ads, but I am not an expert in it by all means. So if I get a Facebook ads expert on, they can talk about it and you can get a lot more decent content from them.
So I've had fun having some episodes on my own, but now I'm ready for guests. So they will be coming soon, but until then, we're going to be doing some short, sharp, quick episodes that you can listen to on the fly. So today. I want every business owner to hear this. Okay. So if you know anybody, if you have any business friends, you need to get them to listen to today's episode, because this is the one thing that if you did nothing else in your business, this is the one thing that is going to help you be successful.
And today we are talking about building an audience. Now I know I've done lots of episodes on different audience buildings and why you need them and things like that. But actually I was having a discussion the other day and everything comes down to audience, everything. Now, even if you have a high end service that you don't need many clients for, you still need an audience for that service.
If you have an online business, that is the absolute key and audience is crucial and trying to sell something when you don't have an audience is impossible. And I know there are lots of experts out there who give examples and case studies of they only had a list of this size or they only had X amount of following on social media and they sold X amount.
That is not the norm. That is not what happens. The people who are the most successful, the people who I have had the most success with, who I've worked with one to one or in the club or in the executive club, they have been able to achieve what they've achieved because they've built their audience, because they've shown up consistently and provided for their audience and therefore they have won.
Now, what tends to happen is in business, we sometimes think if we build it, they will come. So, If you get a website, the website gets put up and then you wonder why people aren't giving you inquiries. If you start a social media page, so I started a new social media page a while back because I have a new project coming that you will be able to see and listen to because it's a new podcast that's completely different from my business stuff.
And I created a new Instagram page just because I wanted to make sure I'd got the name. And I created it, I put up the logo, which has now changed, FYI, but anyway, I put up a logo, put nothing else up, and I've got no followers, right? And that makes perfect sense. And it's been months now that that's been up.
It makes perfect sense that I've got no followers because I've done nothing. I've put no posts up. I've done no interaction. I've done no engagement, but we often think as business owners, if we just put it up, then suddenly people will come to us. So having that audience is the most crucial thing in your business.
I would almost argue more important than having a product or service to sell. And I know that might sound crazy, but I would much rather you had an audience and been working that bit out than have all your products and services set out, laid out brilliant, perfect website, perfect sales page, and have not built a single audience.
So you really, really need to consider and think about what are you doing every single day to build that audience? I want you to ask yourself at the end of each week, what have I done today to help build my audience? So it might seem like a weird thing to say that you've got to build an audience. Like, what does that actually mean?
It's the same thing as you need to be visible. What does that mean? And it's not as simple as just post on social media. Now, don't get me wrong. And Becci would shout at me about this because she does my social media and she does social media. It's really important. However, it's not just that there is so much more to it than just maybe putting a post up on Instagram or Facebook or Linkedin.
You've got to work a bit harder. So it's about using every opportunity you can to bring people into your world. In an ideal world, you want to bring them straight into an email list. Fine, they can follow you on social media, that's lovely. In an ideal world, you need them on that email list because, and I, it was really sad.
One of my members recently lost her Facebook page and her Facebook page was like where she had all her customers. Now, thank goodness she has worked with me for a long time and she has an email list as well. But obviously there were still people on there that weren't on her email list and it got hacked and therefore it had gone, like she literally had to start from scratch.
So, you need to be trying your hardest to bring people into your world to then get them onto your email list. Now, when you are a smaller business, or when you're starting off, or if you are sat there thinking, I'm just not getting people on my email list.
The beauty of being smaller is that you can do things that are more impactful. So for instance, you could go onto Instagram and direct message people or have conversations with people. Now, I don't direct message people saying, please come on my email list. That is not how I do it. But you could have those conversations that opens up those things.
You could have coffee chats with people, you can join networking things where you share who you are and what you do. But the idea here is if you are sat in your office at home or if you are sat in your shop or wherever you might be, and you're not getting people come into your world, then you need to find a way in order for them to do that.
You need to build that audience. So the other thing about building an audience is they need to trust you. So one of the ways in which they're going to trust you is consistency and knowing that you're still there. Okay. So I have said many a time that I have done similar sort of content for about the whole time I've had my business, which is over nine years, almost 10 years.
So the fact is. I still show up. I'm still here. They can trust that I'm not going to take their money and run because this is who I am. This is what I keep doing. Now. I'm not saying you've got to wait 9, 10 years before you get that, but you can show trust by showing up authentically. And by authentically, I mean, don't pretend to be someone you're not feel happy to show up as you are knowing that not everyone's going to like you.
Not everyone is going to agree with what you say. And that's okay. Because you won't want to work with those people anyway. So you'd be more than happy to have the customers that agree with what you say, or have the customers who are open to listening to what you have to say. So showing up as you, showing up as your authentic self, and not being afraid to show who you are.
So that's the kind of being visible. That's the kind of step of starting to get them to trust you. Follow through on what you say. So if you are saying, I'm going to email you every week, then email them every week. If you are saying that you are going to go live on a Tuesday, go live on a Tuesday. So whatever it is, make sure that you follow through.
Make sure that you're doing what you say. Care about these people. You know what I nearly said then? I nearly said make sure you act like you care about this, but that is absolutely not what I mean. I mean genuinely care about these people. I have done things recently where I've not had as big a numbers on things as I would have liked and my big number compared to someone else's big number can be completely different.
So don't take that as it's got to be a certain amount of numbers. But for me and what I'm used to, it was less than I would like. But do you know what I did after I had a little pity party to myself for five minutes. I loved on those people. I made every effort to go look at their social media, comment on their stuff, make sure I was commenting in the group, having conversations with people because I could, because it was smaller numbers and being genuine about it, not just using as a sales strategy.
It's not a sales strategy, but I want people to, in any interaction they have with me, whether they buy or don't buy, I want them to go away and be like, she's really cool. I really like her. She actually is very authentic. She is exactly. She says she is so. That's what you can do when you have those lower numbers, you can put that extra effort in, you can have those extra conversations with people.
But like I said, knowing that you say what you do, you know what you're talking about, you're showing up authentically, you're showing up consistently. So you're not suddenly going to pivot next week into something else. Those are the things to help you understand or help them understand, sorry, that they can trust you.
So consistent and aim for longevity. I can't say that word, longevity. That's the word. So, consistency and longevity are key. So when you look at some of the biggest people in your industry, or when you look at the people that you aspire to be, they haven't been in this industry five minutes, even if you only discovered them five minutes ago, they have been in a long time.
So again, you might be looking at their audience thinking, I'll never get an audience the size of them. Well, how long have they been doing that? So again, it's that kind of being consistent. Knowing that this is not a short term game, it's building it over time. And then, giving them a reason to be in your world.
So, last week, was it last week? No, it was the week before. I talked about content and why you need content. And that's the reason you need content. Because you need to give them a reason to keep showing up in your world. No one's going to come and follow me on social media if I don't add some value. And that value doesn't necessarily have to mean I share my brain 24/ 7.
It could just mean that... I entertain them. I talk about my garden. That's what I talk about. My vegetables that I grow. But like even that, that's fine. That's something they can relate to me on if they want to. So give them a reason to keep coming back. And then, like I said, make sure that you're getting them on your email list.
Make sure that whatever you can do, you are encouraging them to come from wherever you found them and join your email list. So let's say you're doing a talk, put a QR code to a lead magnet in your presentation. If you're going to something physically where you're handing out leaflets, put a QR code on the leaflet to a lead magnet.
If you are on social media, share your lead magnets on your social media, maybe put some money behind them. There are lots of different things that you can do in order to try and get them onto an email list. But again, it's that consistency thing. As you know, I am a big fan or you may not know if you're new welcome But I am a big fan of a habit tracker.
So Have almost a habit tracker for work and almost remind yourself, okay, what have I done today? Even if it's like, I'm going to put up a post or I'm going to share something on my stories, at least you're doing something to try and encourage your audience to join your email list. And one thing I want to add is.
You may have seen people doing affiliate marketing, and if you're not entirely sure what I mean by affiliate marketing, basically, it's when people sell someone else's product or service and they get a cut of it. So, for instance, people who are in the club, if they bring someone into the club and they join, they get a cut of what the person pays me.
Because they've done a bit of the hard work for me in the sense of they've brought them along to join the club or they've told them about the club and then they've paid to join the club so I'm going to reward them by paying them. I've done a whole episode on affiliate marketing specifically how it is in my business but there are some people and I get served ads for them a lot which is irritating but there are some people who just do affiliate marketing so what they do is they just sell other people's products and services. They have no product and services themselves.
And this can feel and be sold like a very easy way to make money. Like, I just sent out an email and I made X amount of money. Or I just put up a social media post and I made X amount of money. You know why? Because those people had an audience. It only works if you have an audience. And if you don't... It's not going to work.
So you could only sell things if you've got people to sell them to. So, like I said, I've talked about audience loads of times. Take this as your reminder, take your, this one action point of put it on your to do list every week, put it in your diary to review every week. What have you done this week in order to help you build that audience?
And in an ideal world, how have you got them onto your email list? Or how have you encouraged people to join your email list? There is a ton of content in these podcast episodes around email lists and, growing your list and that sort of thing. So do go check out that as well. But have a wonderful week.
And I will be back next week to talk about what if you're not happy in your business? What do you do then? See you then.
14 min
October 09, 2023Closing the Deal: How to Follow Up Proposals and Avoid Getting Ghosted
In today’s episode of the podcast I am talking you through how to follow up with proposals and how to avoid being ghosted, and get an answer, so that you can save time and move forward.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST
What you need to qualify, before sending the proposal

My step by step process for sending out a proposal

The importance of setting boundaries and managing expectations

Did you take something from this episode that you're going to put into practice? Please do connect with me over on my socials and let me know, I'd love to hear from you!

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE
Navigating Boundaries as a Business Owner podcast episode
Connect with Teresa on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter

Transcript
Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. And I am Teresa Heath-Wareing your host. So on this week's episode, in my quest to come up with episode ideas, because after 300, and this is episode 315, after 315 episodes, it's sometimes slightly testing to come up with some new content ideas.
I went back to the archive of all of my coaching calls. So I do lots of coaching calls with my members. And obviously the whole point of a coaching call is that they come on, they ask a question. And when I went back, there were some that were way too specific. So, the whole point of working with me is that you asked me one question and inevitably I ask you about four or five back in order to make sure that the answers that I'm giving are the best answers for you and for your business.
So I decided to look back and I found a question that is suitable, that kind of works in its own kind of podcast format. Which I do get asked a lot, actually, and it's often from people who have businesses where they send out proposals.
So you could be a freelance marketer, a social media person, you could be a consultant, you could be, in fact, I think this is from a nutritionist. Someone who gave it, no, someone who did websites that's who gave the, ask the question. And basically what happens is they send that proposals and they get ghosted.
So they kind of asked, what do you do to stop being ghosted or what's the process for proposals? So today, what I'm going to talk you through is how I would follow up with proposals, which I've done in the past when I had an agency, and how you make sure that you're not being ghosted and you get the answer you require.
Because at the end of the day, you kind of don't care whether the answer is yes or no, you just need an answer because then you can move on. Obviously, we'd love it to be yes. So the first thing I check with them is I qualify with them before They actually have sent the proposal before they even get to that stage.
How much does the customer know? And the reason I qualify this is because if you have had an inquiry from a customer and a customer has come on and had a call with you and they don't know what you cost, And then you suddenly give them the cost and then they ghost you, there's a fair chance that probably they were not expecting the cost that you gave them.
And that doesn't necessarily mean it's always too expensive. It could just be actually for that level of work that was not what I was expecting either more or less either way. So in my in my experience, and what I've done is I've always made sure they've got an element of understanding at where I'm pitched from a price point of view.
So this could be either on your website, this could be in the initial inquiry. So if you don't have the pricing on your website, and even if you have to do a proposal because it differs, giving them a price from or giving them a rough cost straight off the bat is, is helpful to understand where they're at or asking for their budget.
Now, not everyone wants to give a budget and you know, that's kind of fine, but getting some kind of idea straight off the bat in terms of the, the amount of money they're willing to spend on this project or the amount of money you charge is really, really useful. So it could be that someone contacts you and says, I'd love to have a chat with you about doing X amount of work for me.
And you go back to them and go, "Absolutely fine. No worries." Just thought I'd send you a few bits of boops over, i. e. this is how I work. This is how I normally charge. But the best thing is that we get on a call. Do you want to get on a call? Then that way, you know, by that point that you're qualifying someone or you're having a call with someone that actually is willing to pay the money that you want to charge.
Which also helps generally with your time management and your time being very valuable, because you're not getting all these calls and doing all these discovery calls with people who can't afford your service or who would be willing to pay a lot more for your service. So that's the first thing, that's the first question I asked them.
Do they have an idea of your price? And in this particular case, they did, it did say on their website or I think on a, on a form that they filled in. This is what we start from. So then we talked about the process of sending out a proposal. Now what I tend to do, and people are different, and this is just what I do, so this isn't like set in stone, but basically once I have had a meeting with someone, I would give them the price on the call, if it was appropriate.
Now, it's not always appropriate to do that because you might need to go away and work some stuff out. You might be waiting on some more information from them. You might not be 100 percent sure what that price is going to be. So, if I can give them the quote or the price on the call, I will do that. If I can't, I will say to them, That I will be following up with an email and in that email, I'll give you the quote.
Either way, if they don't give me a straight answer there or then I say to them, I am going to be following up with an email. Now, where it comes to being ghosted and people not responding, you need to help manage their expectations of what you expect. And this comes down to boundaries and we could talk a whole nother podcast about boundaries, which we have.
So go check out that episode of the podcast. It comes down to you saying to them, this is how I work. So let's say you've had a call, regardless of whether you've given them the price on the call or not. The next thing you're going to do is say, I am going to send you an email and confirm what we have discussed and the price in the email.
And then I will give you X amount a day. So this is all depending on you. Now, personally, if I was doing a proposal, I would try and get it out that same day, if not in the next day, I wouldn't make him the, you know, unless there was a lot of work that I had to do to get that price together, I wouldn't be making them wait.
So you could be saying to them, okay, I'll get the email over to you later today, or confirm all the pricing. And then what I will do is if I haven't heard anything from you by, and I give them a day. So if I've had a call with someone on a Thursday, I would say. I'll wait till Monday. If I've had a call on a Monday, I might say, I'll wait till Friday, whatever it is.
But tell them when you're going to follow up with them, if you haven't heard anything. So, then they are expecting your follow up. So, if they don't get back to you, which I have to say, when I give people a deadline of when I'm going to get back to them, they actually get back to me before that deadline, because they know I'm going to chase them regardless.
If they haven't, that is the point I would chase them, I would stick to what I said, I'd put it in my diary or my asana or wherever it is as a reminder to say, contact them if I haven't heard anything. So I would email them and I would just follow up saying, as discussed, you know, I said I would follow up, have you had a chance to have a look at it, let me know what you think, and then email that.
So the hope is that they come back to you and they say yes, or no, or whatever it is. If they don't come back to you, then I would give it a number of days again. Now, I wouldn't give it, like, two, three weeks. Unless they have specifically said, I am not going to be able to give you an answer until three weeks time, because they're waiting on something, then... Put something in the diary for three weeks time.
But if they haven't said anything, then I put it back in my diary for a few days ahead. So maybe three or four days again, and then what I would try and do is email them, but I would try and email them something of value that they might find useful, or if I've given it a bit more thought, or if I've come up with an idea for them, and I don't give them everything.
Because you don't want to give them all the stuff that they don't need you. But you could say, Oh, I saw this ad today, and I think this would work really well with you. Obviously if you're in that industry, don't say that randomly, if that's not your industry. But whatever it is that you're going to help them with, try and add a bit of value.
Or I was just thinking about the conversation we had, and I wrote a blog about such and such that you might be interested. Also, please let me know if you've got any questions about the proposal. I'm really keen to get started. Oh, the other thing I should have said straight off the bat was when you do that proposal, make sure you have a deadline date of when that price is no longer valid.
So you could say in the email, this is my price to do the work. This price is valid for 30 days, or this price is valid for two months, whatever it is, and whatever you need for your business, because what you don't want is someone coming back to you in six months time going, Yeah, I want that. And you being a completely different price and therefore feeling like you've got to give it them at that price.
So, and also that gives you a timeframe in which you can chase them. It also helps with that timeframe. So like I said. The first email, here's the price. The second email is the, I said I was going to contact you because I've not heard from you. How have you got on? What's your thoughts? The, next email is, Oh, here's something that I think might be value to you.
Oh, by the way, haven't heard from you. And then if you haven't heard from them again, if they still have not contacted you, then I would probably give it another week. And I would probably get to the point where either in that email or tell them it's the next email coming where you say to them. This is my last email.
You could even confirm the price runs out in 30 days. If you do want to work with me, then great. I can give you a new quote if it's after those 30 days, or if you get back to me in the next week or so, then you'll still be in date. But please let me know. And then I might send another email that says, I'm not going to bother you again.
I'm going to assume you don't want it. And therefore I'll take you off my To do list or whatever it is, and then you close it down. So don't just leave them sat there hanging, you know, almost say to them, I'm going to not bug you again if you don't get back to me. So the whole point is that you are setting the boundaries.
You are setting the rules and you're saying to them, this is what I expect. This is what I need from you. So if you're not doing that, then there's no expectation. And also you're not setting them up to know that you're going to hear from them. And you could even say to them on the call, depending on how you feel, listen, if it's not for you, that's fine.
And again, write that in an email. If it's not for you, that's fine. Just email me back and let me know, and I'll stop bothering you. All you really want is an answer. You don't want them to ghost you. But like I said, if you're not getting responses, have almost like, whether it's a spreadsheet, whether it's a system in Asana or whatever it might be, have something that goes, okay, Day one, I sent the proposal.
Day four, I chased them. If I've not heard anything, I'll chase them on day nine. If I've not heard anything, I'll chase them on day 15. And you know what emails you're going to send at each point. So you've got that in. And then at the end of it, if they've not got back to you, you shut it down. It's gone.
They're off your thing. Stop wasting your time on them. So like I said, the, the aim of this whole process is to get a response either way, whether it's a yes or no, either one is going to be helpful to you. I know it doesn't feel like it because you really want to get that work. And that is totally understandable, but not knowing either way is just as bad.
So then, then a no, You might as well just know whether it's a no or a yes. So those are the kind of things that I go through with, my club members in terms of what I would do and the process I did when I had, agency clients. But the key thing to remember here in all of this, it's nothing to do with you.
And even if it is to do with you, it's still not to do with you. Let me explain. So it could be a million reasons why they haven't bought your product or service. It could be that actually they just needed to get three quotes and they knew who were going to get it. It could be that they've decided they didn't want the work anymore.
It could be that they realized they can't afford it. None of those things are to do with you. And therefore. Don't worry about it. And if they get on a call and think I don't like you or you're not for me or I don't want to work with you or I don't like the way you do it. Even though it is to do with us, it's still nothing to do with us because that's just that one person and who they are and how they like to work.
There are other people out there who will like the way you work, who do like you, and therefore let's go and focus and worry about them. So regardless of the outcome, do not let this reflect how you feel about the work that you're doing. You are doing brilliant work. You are showing up. You are doing things for your clients.
And just because someone doesn't want to work with you does not mean that you're no good at what you do. So putting your validation in someone else's action, it's really dangerous. Because it's basically saying that if you don't want me, I think I'm rubbish. So regardless of the outcome, still remind yourself, go back to your love folder.
If you've heard me talk about a love folder or go back to emails that you've had that says you're brilliant and reread them, remember you're brilliant and move on to the next one. So hopefully that's helped. Hopefully I've given you some ideas in terms of chasing up those, proposals. If you put proposals out there, I will be back next week.
We are going to be talking about audience and why a bit like location, location, location, why audience, audience, audience is the main thing that you should be focusing on. Also as a little heads up, I'm going to be bringing back some interviews because it's pretty tiring talking to yourself all day, every day when you do these podcasts.
So I'm going to be bringing back some interviews soon. So keep an eye out for them as they will be coming. Until next time. Have a wonderful week.
13 min
October 02, 2023Creating Successful Content: Why Blindly Following Experts Advice Won’t Work
Today’s episode of the podcast is all about the importance of creating content as an online business, but why it is important that only you get to decide what type of content that is.
In this episode I delve into the key things you need to be thinking about when choosing what content works best for you and your business, and why blindly following the advice of big name experts won't work.
If you have not consistently produced content yet in your business, I want you to take some action from this episode. I want you to think about what content would work best for you and then make a commitment to make it happen!
I'd really love to know what you choose, drop me a DM on my socials and let me know!

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST
Why creating content as an online business is an absolute must

Why you shouldn't try to replicate someone else's content

The key to success, no matter what type of content you choose to focus on

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE
Listen to my interview 'The Power of Content Marketing' with Marcus Sheridan
They Ask, You Answer: A Revolutionary Approach to Inbound Sales, Content Marketing, and Today's Digital Consumer by Marcus Sheridan
Connect with Teresa on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter
Transcript
Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of Your Dream Business Podcast. And as always, I'm your host, Teresa Heath Wareing. So this week is going to be a short and snappy episode because something was brought to my attention the other day and I just wanted to take a minute to talk about it and to kind of reassure you on something.
So someone said to me the other day, had I seen Gary Vaynerchuk's post where basically he said, everyone should have a podcast. And if you haven't got a podcast by 2024, like you're missing out basically. And It was really interesting because as you know, I'm a huge podcast fan and I am a huge advocate of content like content for your business is one of the most important things that you can do.
So. Why was I so triggered by Gary saying everyone's got to have a podcast? And I think one of the reasons that I am is it because it comes back to pretty much everything that I talk about and everything that I say In terms of you get to decide and you get to choose. And some people are just not designed to have a podcast or are not designed to do video or write or whatever it is. And I think what happens is people look at someone like Gary V and think, well, if he does it, I should do it.
If he says we've got to do it, I should do it. Or you look at someone who is in a different season of life or have a different team size, and you look at the content they're putting out and think, oh, I must be doing the same. But the truth is, You shouldn't and there are so many reasons why you shouldn't be doing the same.
The first one is You're not them. They are someone completely different to you. They have different skills. They do different things. They talk about different things So you do not have to Create what they create. You do not have to show up the way they show up and secondly they have maybe a team. Now, I googled Gary Vaynerchuk's team.
He apparently, and I wrote it down so I can just check my notes. Apparently Gary has a team of 20 plus people who work solely on his content. And those 20 plus people produce 80 to 100 bits of content a day. That is a machine. That is almost corporate level content to production. And no one in their right mind can manage that other than someone like Gary V.
Also, the other thing is when you think about how he produces his content, he is being filmed constantly every time he speaks to someone, every time he goes somewhere, every time he does something. He's probably got a... Camera crew following him around 24/7, which means they are constantly given the ability to create content out of what he does every single day.
So that's the first thing, trying to look at someone else's content and think I've got to replicate that. They are like, two very different things. You shouldn't necessarily recreate someone else's content, how they're trying to do it, because you're not the same person, you don't like the same things, you're not talking about the same things, and you don't necessarily have the same team.
But one thing I do want to stress, the essence of why he thinks you should produce content wasn't the thing that triggered me. In fact, that's the thing I agree with. Now, a lot of businesses that I deal with and a lot of businesses that I will continue to deal with in the future are online businesses.
So by online, I mean, they have memberships or courses or coaching, and basically they work from home over a screen and they are working online with their audience. There is not one single business owner or person I have seen who shouldn't create content. And when I look at the people who have succeeded, the people who are doing brilliantly, it's because they're producing that content.
Now, yes, some of those have got podcasts and the podcasts are 500 episodes old. You know, take someone like Louis Howe, his podcast obviously has got hundreds and hundreds of episodes, and it's not to say that you have to have a podcast, it's just to say that you have to produce content. So I'm going to get Becci who does, the show notes for the podcast to link back to an episode that we did.
Episode 200 and no 122. Yeah. 122. And it was with Marcus Sheridan, and if you don't know who Marcus Sheridan is, it was, he is an author of a very, very good book called, and I always get this the wrong way around, so I will double check, They Ask, You Answer. I always get the wrong way around. So basically he talks about how he worked for a business, a failing business that did pools, I think it was, and Basically, he started to learn about content marketing, started to produce content for this business.
So it was very much a physical product, bricks and mortar type business. And he started to produce content and it had the most amazing results. And like I said, there is not really a business out there that I don't think shouldn't produce content in some guys. But if you're an online business owner, then you really have got to produce that good quality content and something like a blog or a podcast or a video.
It could be going live every week on your social media, whatever it is, you should be showing up and going "I know what I'm talking about." But you don't have to show up doing it as a podcast.
If you don't want to do a podcast, you don't have to show up doing it as a blog. If you don't want to do a blog, so you get to decide the format in which you produce that content, but it is crucial that you are producing content. So if you have not produced content to this point, I want you to take some action from this podcast.
I want you to think about. What would I rather do? Would I rather show up live? Would I rather create videos and edit them? Would I rather do a podcast? Do I like interviewing people? Do I like writing? Whatever it is, I want you to make a decision to decide, yes, I'm going to do that. Now, you can change it.
That's fine. You can change as time goes on, not a problem. But today, let's make a decision. If you had to pick one of them, which one's the one that immediately comes into your head? And there's going to be one. As I say that, There you go. You've just thought of the thing that you would do. So, think about which one you do, then think about a consistency.
So, obviously, and this is the other thing that I want to mention actually when it comes to content. The consistency piece is so important because people start producing content. And they go, it doesn't work for them. And what happens is they did it for like 10 episodes and they stopped. Or they did 10 episodes.
They had a bit of a break and then they did two and then they had another break and then they did one and then they hadn't done one for three weeks. And that does not work. My episodes, my podcast has gone out consistently every single week. And I don't say that to show off. I don't say that to be like, look at me at all.
I say that to say. That's how it's been successful through, through showing up consistently. If you tell someone you're going to produce something and do something, do it. Because the minute they see that you're not doing it, they're going to lose the faith they have in you. They're going to think. You know, well, what's the point in going and checking if the podcast is there because it's probably not going to be. So Creating that content deciding what it's going to be deciding on the frequency of it And like I said, it doesn't have to be every single week.
It can be every other week It could be once a month ideally not once a month It's probably not quite frequent enough, but it doesn't have to be every single week or every other day it can be whatever frequency you want it to be and then Start thinking about what is it that your customers want to hear from you.
Go check out that episode of Mark Sheridan. Go check out his book cause they are great places to start. But also I have done a ton of episodes on producing content. So. You can go and find those and see what it, you know, what, what I say in those different episodes. We've got loads of different ones and especially producing content when you've done as many podcasts as I have.
And it gets tough. I'm not going to lie. You know, this is episode, in fact, I don't even know. Is it 300? I don't even know what it is. Like 314. This is like. 314 episodes. I have talked about so much different stuff that there comes a point where you think, okay, well, I'm not entirely sure what to talk about now, but that's when you start repurposing.
That's when you go back to some of your most popular blogs or popular episodes or popular videos, and you start repurposing that content and maybe giving a new take on it. Or maybe there are stuff I talked about years ago in the podcast that I don't agree with now, or I think differently now. So, There's always content, there's always something to put out there, but your customers need to see, not only that you know what you're talking about, but they need to see that consistency of you going, here's something new, here's something to learn, here's something else you can get from this.
So they need to see that you are producing stuff, you need to give them a reason to keep coming back, and one of those reasons is going to be your content. So, like I said, a really short and sweet episode, because... I think sometimes when people see things like, oh my gosh, I've got to start a podcast. Gary Vee said, if I don't start one by 2024, I've missed the boat.
Well, the podcast might not be for you. So if it's not, then that's cool. Do something else. So I hope this helped. I hope I've given you some action steps. If you haven't got content for your business, then really that is the number one thing you should be working on right now. Okay, I will leave you to it until next week where we're gonna be talking about following up on proposals.
So often lots of people talk to me about when I put a proposal out and they ghosted me, what do I do? So we're gonna fix that next week. I'm gonna talk you through the steps that I suggest they take and how many times you should reach out to them. So I will see you next week. Have a wonderful week.
10 min
September 25, 2023From Chaos to Control: Navigating Boundaries as a Business Owner
Today’s episode of the podcast is all about how to set clear boundaries in your business, to help you find balance and supercharge your success.
This is a huge subject, and so this episode is only an introduction, but in it I cover the things that put you off making boundaries, what you worry about when you do make them, and then how to actually make boundaries and enforce them.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST
Questions to ask yourself to find out what boundaries you need

How to have a flexible approach to boundaries and still ensure they're respected

What you need to do when you communicate your boundaries

Did you take something from this episode that you're going to put into practice? Please do connect with me over on my socials and let me know, I'd love to hear from you!

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE
Connect with Teresa on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter

Transcript
Hello and a super warm welcome to this week's episode of the Your Deam Business Podcast. And as always, I am your host, Teresa Heath Wareing. So this week, big subject and I think it's a subject that every business owner, well, generally anybody, but specifically business owners need to hear. And it might be one that you, well, not might, it's definitely going to be one that you want to share with your friends and share with your business friends, because this is one that I think everybody struggles with.
This week, we are talking about boundaries. I said it, the big dreaded word. Most business owners that I speak to either tell me directly they need to work on their boundaries or they share stuff with me that makes me think. You need to work on your boundaries. And I've been wanting to talk about this for ages.
And I've been doing research and learning and watching stuff and listening to stuff and reading stuff. And I like to really know a subject well before I talk about it. And this is a big subject, a really, really big subject. So the chances are we are just going to do a bit of a whistle stop tour around some of the key elements.
But most importantly, The things that put you off making boundaries, what you worry about when you make boundaries and then how to actually make boundaries and enforce them. So this week we are going to be doing an introduction to boundaries and I want you to listen up, take some notes if you need to and then try and put some of these things in practice.
Because it's something that anybody can improve their situation by working on. And. It goes for me too, like I can work on my boundaries as much as anybody else. And actually some of the stuff that we're going to be talking about is a bit surprising today. So get ready, like I said, share this with someone who you think you'll need and we will look at boundaries.
So. This is something that people really struggle with. They struggle to put boundaries in place. Because often they attach boundaries to something negative, or bad, or emotions, or bad feelings, or they might think it's rude, or they're being mean. People think that if they put boundaries in place, that people won't like the fact that they've put a boundary in place, or it will upset someone, or they might appear rude or selfish.
That's a really good one. And especially if you're a female listening to this, or if you're a woman listening to this, actually women putting boundaries in place, like the names that people can come up with for them, you might be seen as hard or heartless or tough, or like I said, not caring, not thoughtful, not doing something for someone else.
And this is something that in my work life, I don't struggle too much with the boundaries because I don't work direct one to one with clients or we don't do services for people. We do, you know, I have a membership and I have clients through one to one work, but boundaries aren't normally a problem because, I guess because I've been doing this for a long time, that it's, I don't see them as boundaries as much.
I just see them as, this is the way we work. But that's exactly what the boundaries are. In my home life, I've really had to work on this and not so much with my immediate family as in my daughter, my husband, and whatever, but with my extended family, in terms of them measuring me by what they would do, and me having to put my boundaries in place and not be sorry about it. Not be sorry for going, this is how I live my life, or this is how I want to do it.
And I think that's one of the things that we need to talk about first. This isn't you saying. You are not okay for doing something a certain way. This isn't me looking at my family going, you're wrong for doing what you do. This is me going, this is what I want. This is my decision and this is how I want to do life, basically.
So... The fact is that often people think we, when we put boundaries in, we're saying that there's something wrong with how someone behaves. It's not. It's basically saying this is how we are willing to do things. This is how we want to behave, but also this is what we are willing to accept and not accept, and there's nothing wrong with that.
And when people think. You know, things like rude and bad and mean and they think emotions and they feel like it's a very emotional thing. And the truth is if you have boundaries in place, it's not emotion. In fact, if anything, it's absolutely clear and it's almost emotionless, not in a bad way, but it's not like, you know, some completely over emotional person going, I don't like this.
Some terrible acting. That isn't what it is. It's a very clear headed, confident person who knows exactly what they want and where they stand, giving those directions. And the other thing that when people think about it, like the mean and the rude and the bad, they assume that you have to deliver it in that context.
And you don't. It can be... A very pleasant thing or a very direct thing or a very neutral thing to put a boundary in place. It doesn't have to be angry or mean or upsetting. Now, if they choose that they don't like whoever you're setting the boundary with, if they choose they don't like your boundary, that's nothing to do with you.
Your part of this, conversation is to deliver your boundary and say that's where I stand. If they don't like it, Well, that's nothing to for you to be concerned with because that's based on them and their things. If they choose to get upset by it, then that's their thing. That's not yours. So it's not your job to make sure that people are happy with your boundaries.
It's your job to make sure they understand them and they honor them. So one thing, one of the reasons we might not have boundaries for ourself, one of the things that I've kind of deduced from talking lots and learning lots and whatever, is that often we don't have boundaries when we don't have enough love or respect for ourselves.
So when someone else's boundary is the rule and it's not ours, and we meet them at theirs, or, so let's take something like, being around some friends who speak in a way that you don't like, and You're there for letting them do whatever they want, which is up to them that's their decision and you're not saying actually I don't appreciate this conversation.
I don't want to be part of this conversation. You're basically saying that you don't matter and your voice doesn't matter and your opinion doesn't matter and that theirs is more important to you or theirs is more important than yours. So by saying actually I don't appreciate this conversation. This isn't a conversation I want to be in, and therefore whatever the boundary is that you set, you enforce, that's saying I matter, my voice matters, I matter, what I hear matters.
And for you to say actually, you know, you can't stop them having that conversation or behaving that way, that's up to them. But what you can say is I don't have to be part of this. This is actually something I had to do last year. We have some friends and We go and see them a lot and stay with them.
And for years now, you know, this friend will go to me and try and have a conversation with me and then try and pick a fight with me. Or he'll, he'll pick a subject that basically we are divided on and then like go to town on it. And he actually said to me, because this is who he is, you know, you should be honored that I think you're smart enough to spar with me, which, Wow, like, yeah, anyway, for a long time, because it wasn't my friend, it was my husband's friend initially, and then our friends, for a long time, I was like, you know what, you know, I'll just keep the peace, keep the peace, keep the peace.
And it actually turned out that they ended up saying something that really didn't align with my values. And I just went, I'm done. And ever since that point, I've put the boundary in place that I'm not going to be spending time with them because I don't want to be part of that conversation and I don't want to have to put myself through that thing.
And although I appreciate it's very difficult for my husband because they're his long term friends and it's tricky, for me, I'm making a boundary for me. Now, I'm not saying that he can't go and see them or spend time with them, but I won't be because I'm not willing to be in that conversation. And again, it's not that I'm saying, well actually, Personally, myself, I am saying they're wrong for having some of the conversations they had, but they can ultimately do what they want.
That's their decision. But I can enforce a boundary on me and go, yeah, no, I'm not being part of that anymore. So by me standing up for myself, by me going, actually, this is what I'm willing to put up with. I'm valuing me. So often, especially in business, when we let a client walk all over us or where we don't enforce our boundaries, we're basically saying to ourselves, they're more important than we are.
And they're not. Because we're the most important person that we need to deal with because we're the only one who can do it. And it's not that you're more important than them, it's just in your world, you have to focus on you. So often it's down to that respect and putting yourself first. And you're the only one who can do that.
You know, you're the one that has to be in control because you can't allow someone else to control your boundaries because they're not you. So you've got to do that. The other thing I want to say at this point is it's not selfish to put yourself first. We are drilled into, and again I think this is a very feminine thing, that we're drilled into, you know, It's selfish to put ourselves first.
It's selfish to not think of the children first, and not think of the, our partners first, or our family first. It's not selfish to set boundaries and put us and our feelings first. Like, what was the point in me, every time we go to that friend's feeling upset, and angry, and anxious, and frustrated, and annoyed, I'm not putting myself first, and that's not selfish.
That's not selfish for me to go, I don't want to put up with this actually, so I'm not going to, you know, be, be part of that conversation and be in that. The other thing that is good to say at this point is this isn't about controlling others. Okay, your boundaries don't control others. Others can do what they want.
What your boundaries do is they limit, it's a limit you set around you and how people are allowed to engage with you. So it's not about trying to encourage them or change them. My job wasn't to change how that person was. My job was to go, do you know what? My limit is no, I can't deal with that anymore.
So they can still carry on doing the thing that they want, but you're limiting what you are willing to put up with. So when I was thinking about this boundary subject, I was thinking about the fact of how it's attached to our own self worth maybe, or how much we, you know, respect ourselves, i. e. why would we allow someone else to do something that we don't like?
And I thought back to how do we set boundaries well, and I thought back to being a parent and about one of the reasons we set boundaries for children, and obviously it's different because we're setting them for someone else, is to keep them safe and keep them healthy and keep them well. So one of the boundaries might be that I tell my teenage daughter to go to sleep at a fairly decent time.
We'll try and encouragement to go to sleep at decent time because My job as a parent is to parent her and to make sure that she is getting sleep. It might be like today, I said to her, how many vegetables have You had the past 24 hours and it was one mushroom and she didn't like it.
So I was enforcing a boundary where I was like, Well, I say it's a boundary, it's not strictly a boundary, but I thought the analogy was helpful to say to her, okay, you need to do that because you need to be a bit healthy. So almost, if it helps, imagine us as a younger child, imagine the little you and that you're having to parent yourself.
So imagine if you went to your, if I went to my parents and said, I'm going to laugh because I said this, because I'm sure they wouldn't care less, but, let's pretend my daughter came to me and said, There's this person who's horrible and I hate the way they are. And they're not kind and they say mean things.
Then I would encourage her to put a boundary in place. I would encourage her to go, don't hang out with those people. That's not nice. Or if my daughter came to me and said, I've scheduled back to back meetings all day. I've had no time for lunch. I'd be like, darling, don't do that. Next time. How about you make sure that you put in a break or whatever.
So if it helps for you to think of yourself as a younger self to give yourself, and I always, this has always helped me when I had to do this kind of work where I've had to imagine me as a younger self. And then I have a lot more sympathy and empathy and love. So it's about thinking what's best for you and you being the person that makes those decisions.
So how do you set some boundaries in place? And like I said, with clients, it's crazy important. Now, before we get into the how to, one thing I do want to add is boundaries are just the rules. Okay. And when it comes to clients, people need to know the rules. And we often, when we're setting them, we attach a lot of stuff to it.
We might attach the emotion of, Oh my God, they're going to think I'm awful because I don't do that thing. Or they're going to think I'm rude or they're going to think I'm expecting too much, all they need to know are the rules. That's all they need to do. Manage their expectations. And the only way you can manage expectations is telling them the rules.
Telling them how something works. When I work with someone new, and I say to them, you know, how does this work? I want them to tell me, right. You send me this, I do this, then this happens, then this happens. I don't think at any point, Oh my God, who the hell do they think they are by making these rules? No, I think, great, now I know where I stand.
So that's something really, really important to think about when you're setting boundaries in place from a work point of view, especially if you have clients or customers, which obviously hopefully most of us have because we're selling something. If we haven't, then it's a very expensive hobby. So. How do you set your boundaries?
Well, the first thing you've got to get clear on is you and what's important to you. What's Do you want from life? What do you want to know? How do you want to spend your time? What are your non negotiables? So that's the first question you're gonna ask yourself. What are my non negotiables? So I'm gonna use business examples.
So let's say I am working with clients. I don't work on a weekend I don't want to be contacted at the weekend. I don't want to answer emails on a weekend. So my non negotiable would be, I don't work weekends. My other non negotiable might be, I'm not contactable after 6 p. m. at night or 5 p. m. To be honest, most days it'd be like three.
No, you know, I'm not contactable. Another non negotiable might be, I can only be contacted through email and not via text. And that might be, this doesn't necessarily have to be a kind of control thing, this could be down to, actually I work so much better in email, and therefore I'm likely not to lose your request if you email it me, whereas if you text it me I'm likely to lose it.
So that's the first thing. What is it that is your non negotiables? And it could also be for you. So it doesn't have to just be for the client. It could also be, so one of the things that I am an absolute nightmare at doing, because when I make appointments, if I start filling up a day in my diary, I try and get everything into that day.
Purely from a laziness point of view. If I've got to do hair and makeup and be camera ready, then let's squeeze all the meetings in on that day. And I do think... My brain works better when I've got a full day of meetings rather than having like one random day here, one what here, one here. However, one thing I am a nightmare at doing is putting any gaps in them.
So one of my own might be a non negotiable for me to decide that actually I have to give myself a lunch break. So that's not affecting anybody else. That's my own boundary for me. The other thing that it might be is if you like going to the gym. I don't. That's not a problem for me. But, you know, if you have to go to the gym or go for a walk or whatever, then you might need to put that in and go, that's my non negotiable.
I need to make time every day regardless of what I've got in my diary to go for a walk. I had an amazing speaker at my online event for my members a couple of years back, called Chris Mullins, Dr. Chris Mullins, and he talked about it can be movable, not removable. So when it comes to those non negotiables, they can be movable, but you can't remove them.
So. If you know that one of your non negotiables, like I said, is you're going to go for a walk and you normally go at 10 AM and you've had to book something in at 10, then you can move it to a different time. You can't remove it. And that's that kind of like, this also comes down to self integrity because no one's going to check with you.
There's something so powerful and there's some stuff I've done this year where I've really had to work on my self integrity, where I've been trying to do something and no one would have known if I'd done it, but I had to go, I would know, and I am worth, you know, that much that I'm not going to do it. So that's the next thing.
So those non negotiables, what do you want them to be either for you, for clients or both? It could be for the family as well. It could be that actually a non negotiable is, I work late on a Thursday and you have to do dinner. Other examples of things it could be is that you don't do coffee chats, because people peak your brains.
It could be that you don't take on work...
23 min
September 18, 2023How To Be Successful: The Essential Qualities Every Business Owner Needs
Today’s episode of the podcast is all about the key qualities that every business owner needs to have, to succeed.
In this episode I dive into the things that you need to do to succeed and the common problems that stop this from happening.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST
The number one thing to avoid doing if you want to be successful

The 3 essential qualities you need to be a successful business owner

The key difference between a business owner who fails and one who succeeds

Know another business owner that needs to hear these things, and maybe needs a bit of motivation? I would love it so much if you would go and share the podcast with them!

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE
Episode 247: Why real joy can be found by staying in your own lane
Connect with Teresa on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter

Transcript
Welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. And I am your host, Teresa Heath Wareing. So this week, I mentioned last week that I had been and had a listen to some of my old episodes and I was just trying to get a bit of inspiration of what to talk about of the next few episode.
And I did an episode right back, I can't remember what number it was in like the first 15, and it talked about what I thought makes a business owner successful. And I listened to it and I was like, Oh, that still stands. I still pretty much, there's a few tiny tweaks that I'd make, but that's pretty much what I still believe to this day.
And it was actually really useful because sometimes I'm not, you know. In business, this is a lonely game and we all have bad days and we all need gentle kicks up the backside sometimes or reminding that actually we are so privileged to have a business and to not have to go out to work and even though it's incredibly difficult sometimes we are still really privileged and therefore we need to work at this and not take it for granted and all those various things.
So it was quite nice to re listen back to my episode and kind of get inspired by myself, which sounds a little bit weird. But that's what I want to talk about today. And I want to talk about the key things that I think every business owner needs to have to succeed. So if you think that this episode is going to resonate with someone that, you know, or another business owner that needs to hear these things and maybe needs a bit of motivation, then please do go and share it because this is going to be a good one.
Okay. So I was, looking back through that episode, and I talked about various different things, and one of the things I talked about was almost some of the myths or some of the things that stop us from maybe becoming as successful as we'd like to become. And again, they still stand today. So some of the things we talked about is the comparison thing and how we shouldn't be comparing ourselves to others.
And although this wasn't one of the three things that is on my list of what makes business owners successful, actually, this is something that they do in the sense of they don't compare themselves. They almost put themselves in a lane of one. So they're not looking at other people in the race. They are the only person they're racing with.
And when we compare ourselves to other people, we make it about them alongside us. And that is just a disastrous things to do. Because there are so many reason, probably, well, I think podcast on this and if the lovely Becci who's listening to this can remember it, she'll link up to it in the show notes. But the whole reason we do not want to be comparing ourselves to other people is because one, The first one, you don't know the truth. We never do. Had a really interesting conversation with someone the other day.
And we were talking about, you know, being a six figure business owner and what absolute BS that is because it doesn't tell you how much money someone made. It doesn't tell you how much profit they made. It just told you what they turned and it's all just rubbish. So even when people say stuff online like that, or when people go look at, you know, I've had all these people join my membership or I've had all these people buy my course.
No one knows that for real. You don't know that. So. Actually comparing yourself with someone else is the biggest waste of time that you can do and leads to such sabotage. Like, I purposely mute a lot of people on my social media feed, and when I say a lot of people, I mean a lot of people who do what I do, even friends who do what I do, I have muted some of them, because I get too distracted, and then I start beating myself up and going, look, they're doing this, because of course they might post the day they're feeling really productive, and look how much they've just done, and I might look at that the one day that I wanted to sit and watch Grey's Anatomy all day on the sofa.
So, It's just bad news. Don't, don't compare yourself to other people. The other thing that we do, and this is a little bit alongside the comparing things, is we think that other people are an overnight success or that other people just got it so much easier. And there's obviously some secret that we're missing.
There's some magic tool or special hack that we are missing that they've got to become really, really successful. But what we are missing is not that magic hat, because there isn't one, is the knowledge that they have been doing this for a long time. And in that episode, I give lots of examples about, and I think I gave the example of like, go back and look at Jasmine's Star and the amount of followers she's got, but look how many posts she's done.
And that would have meant that if she posted once a day, that she was consistently doing it for like six, seven years, which now would be more like 15 years, I guess, or something like that. So it's not about that, you know, they weren't an overnight success. You found them at the point that they're there, they became successful, but they'd already been doing it.
They'd already been showing up. They'd already done those things. Now, there are some people who get really successful really quick. You do have to ask yourself how and why and what's the longevity? But again, I'm not even sure I'd be interested in that and and worry about that myself. So the other thing that sometimes can come and scupper us as business owners, And it again is all kind of attached that comparison thing is shiny object syndrome.
Okay, it's a proper syndrome. I'm being facetious. I'm joking. But it is something that lots of us have where we see something and think, Oh, we need to do that. I need to do that. I've got to show up on that platform or I've got to, and again, I did a episode not that long ago about threads and why I wasn't joining it and it died down within a very short space of time.
So I'm glad I didn't make the effort. But like we do look at all these things that other people are doing and think, Oh, I must do that. I need a YouTube channel. I should probably start a podcast. I should do this thing. I should do that thing. And the problem is we let all those things distract us and the other thing that we do, and I am guilty of this, FYI, I am guilty probably of lots of these things, some I am better at now than I was, but is that instead of just going all out on one thing and selling it and selling it and selling it and selling it, we actually...
Create something else, and then we create something else, and then we create something else. And, unless your avatar's changed, unless your perfect customer's changed, unless your product offering's changed, you probably don't need to change those things as often as maybe we think we do. Now, reviewing them, yes.
We need to review these things, as in, Is my perfect customer still my perfect customer? Are my lead magnets still appropriate for those people? However, We don't need to necessarily create a new course every six weeks. Absolutely not. And again, when I look at the amount of content I've got, and that's where I did the summer sale because I've got all these courses sat there that I wasn't doing anything with that now wasn't serving the people who I want to serve.
And I just wanted them gone. So I did the sale, got rid of them done. So. Trying really hard not to get distracted by a shiny object syndrome, by other things, by other people and just be staying in our own lane is super, super important. So what are the three things that I think make a business owner successful?
The first thing is passion. You have got to absolutely love what you do. At times we can dislike what we do. At times we can feel like not doing it, but you've got to believe and love what you do. Like I can be getting to do a coaching call with my executive club or with the club, and I could be getting ready to do that call and thinking, Oh, I'm tired.
I don't want to do this today. But when I'm on the call. I love it. And I know I love it. And, you know, I love having conversations with people and I love helping people. It doesn't mean that I never not want to do a call, obviously, but ultimately I do love what I do. I love making a difference. And I think when you have a passion for something, I have seen people in this industry come in and out of this industry because they thought an online business was get rich quick.
They thought I've known people by a course on how to sell a course. And sold a course on how to sell a course based on the course that they've learned. Yeah, work that one out if you can. And they didn't stick at it. Because it wasn't their passion, it wasn't their love, it wasn't their... They thought it was.
They thought it was the thing that was going to make them rich. And it didn't because these things take a huge amount of time. And therefore if you don't have that passion and that love and that drive for it, those hard days are going to be impossible. The best days are going to be just okay. So, when I think about my business, there is nothing else I would rather do.
Like, I can't, no, that's a lie. I'd really like to just spend all day in the garden and get paid for that, but I don't think, you know, I haven't got time to create all that content to try and become popular on that to get an income from it. But like, You know, from a work point of view, there is nothing else I'd rather do.
So having that passion is key. So if you're sat there thinking, I don't love what I do. Like I said, you don't have to like it sometimes, but you need to love it. If I don't love what I do, or I am like finding that I am not enjoying this anymore. Then you can change your mind. You can go, "Do you know what? This doesn't suit me anymore."
The next thing in the three things that I think is so important is consistency. And I know we talk about it all the time and I know it gets boring and people get fed up of it, but you have to be consistent. I don't know how much like I can say this because what happens is that people start something new and it takes a long while to get going with it.
And in case you're new to the podcast, because one of your amazing friends or business friends recommended it, I'll tell this story just very quickly because probably the person who referred you is... They heard it many times, but I started my podcast. I agreed to do it for 12 months before I would decide whether it worked or not.
And it wasn't until month nine that suddenly it took off. And the only thing I can put it down to was the consistency. So. I didn't miss a day. I've never, ever missed a week, you know, since February 2018. I have never once missed a Monday and we had a tech issue once and it didn't upload, but it wasn't that it wasn't done.
Sometimes I've done it on Sunday night and I've uploaded it and I just did it and it probably sounded awful. But I've never missed a Monday because I decided that I had to be consistent. And it's only that reason that the podcast is still going and I have a following and a consistent number of downloads and yes, I would always love more downloads and yes, please do go recommend this to your friends, but I wouldn't have the downloads if I had that I have, if I hadn't been consistent.
And people like, I see a lot. They just don't want to stick at stuff like they start it and it doesn't change their world and then they stop and it's like the people who they're looking to have been doing this for years and I don't care what industry you're in, whoever you're looking at, the chances are they've been doing it a long time.
So, you know, when you look at some of the like huge people in the world, like Lewis Howes, I have no idea how many episodes he's got now on his podcast. But. A huge, huge amount. I recently downloaded the Growth Day app by Brendon Burchard. As you know, if you listen, I've seen him a few times. I met him in Austin not that long ago and he's excellent and I do really enjoy him and I got his Growth Day app and every day he does this little bit, this little voice thing, this audio thing, right?
And I'm laughing because he starts it off with, Hey, Striver. And I nearly did his accent. I'm not going to do his accent. And the fact that he calls you striver every day just makes me laugh for whatever reason. But anyway, like every day he's showing up and doing that and now he might batch record them and that's fine.
But every day I can go into the app and I can hear a new message from him. It might be that he does. I don't know, two years worth and then runs them again. Like, I don't know. But if I went in and he didn't show up and he was inconsistent, I wouldn't be in that app. So it really is about that consistency.
Now, it's not to say you can never change your mind. It's not to say that you can go, you know what, I've done that. It doesn't seem to work for me or I'm not gelling with it. I'm not loving it. And you can change your mind. That is absolutely fine. But you've got to give it a proper go. You can't do it four weeks, five weeks, three months, and then go, yeah, no, this didn't work.
Like, well, you can, you can do what you want. It's your business. But don't be annoyed by the results you didn't get by the action you didn't take. Let me say that again. You can't be upset about results that you didn't get because of action you didn't take. So you can't be annoyed that you didn't get a huge following when you weren't consistent with the podcast, that people aren't interacting with your social media when you're not consistently showing up and interacting with them.
And I know that might feel a bit harsh, and even I feel a bit harsh saying it, because I know it's not as simple as that. I know it's not as easy as that. It never, never is. But we've got to be honest with ourselves. So consistency, as much as we loathe it, it is important. And then the last one is you need to be relentless.
You are going to fail over and over and over again. And no matter what level of your business you get to, no matter what income you have, you will still fail. I still fail all the time. There are still things that I launch and they fall on their backside. Now, my version of falling on their backside compared to your version might be different.
However, I still have things that fail. I still have things that go wrong. I still fail. It will never change. There are people I look up to and aspire to be like, who are failing every day, who are struggling, but the difference between them and the people that I don't know because they're not showing up in my world is they're relentless.
I've been doing this nine years now and I still keep showing up and I have moments and times where I don't want to and I don't feel like it and things are difficult and I think I'm just going to hide for a little bit and that's fine. But I show back up again. I might take a few days. I might take a week.
I might take even longer than that, but I will show up again. And my level of showing up can look different. So we're always posting on social media. There's always a podcast episode out. I always show up in my club. However, it might look like I don't go on instagram stories with my face on all the time, or I might not do extra things, or I might not be speaking in many places.
That relentlessness, that tenacity to just keep going. I feel like sometimes in our businesses we get a no, or we get a something doesn't work and we just go that isn't going to work. We just fail and we stop and that is the worst thing we can do in the first episode Not in the first episode, in the episode that I re listened to that inspired me to do this one.
I gave some quotes and And they were really, really good. And then I went and Googled a load of them because I was like, I need some more of these quotes. But basically, if you search something like, I can't remember what I searched, but basically people who have failed before coming famous, you will get so many things.
Like Walt Disney being told that a mouse would never work. I also think, yeah, he was, fired from a job because he lacked imagination and had no good ideas. J. K. Rowling was on welfare when she did her books and they were turned down by loads of people. Oprah Winfrey was told she was unfit for TV. I mean, that's just disgusting anyway, but, you know, just proving that if you're not what someone thinks the idealistic look is.
Anyway, that's another complete rabbit hole I can go down to. The Beatles were dropped by their record label, Steven Spielberg was rejected from film school three times. Like what if he hadn't done the fourth time? What if he hadn't carried on? And then in the actual podcast episode, I give this quote, which is so good.
It's from Michael Jordan, and it says, I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games, 26 times. I've been trusted to take the game winning shot, and I've missed. I failed over and over and over again in my life, and that is why I succeed. You've got to keep going. If this is a time where you are like, I can't do this anymore, just try one more time and then maybe that will be the one time that makes a difference.
Honestly, the relentlessness and the tenacity are the things that make people successful. So I really hope you've enjoyed today's episode. I really hope that you're able to share this with someone who you think needs it and will benefit from it. And I know you've got all those three things.
I know you've got the passion, the consistency and the relentlessness to make your business a wild success. Have a great week and I'll see you next week.
18 min
September 11, 2023Behind The Scenes: Looking Into The Systems Behind My Business Success
Today’s episode of the podcast is all about the systems that I use in my business, that help to make my life easier and enable my business success.
In this episode I go through the main platforms that I use, how I use them and how they help me in my business.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST
Why it is important to have good systems in place

The platform that I couldn't run my business without

The things you need to consider if you're taking payments

Like this episode or have a business friend or someone that you think will find the content that I put out useful? I would love it so much if you would go and share the podcast with them!

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE
Get a 30 day free trial with Kajabi
Find out more about about the systems I've used and loved
Connect with Teresa on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter
*Please note that some of these links include affiliate links, which means if you sign up I may receive commission, but I would never recommend anything that I didn't use and love!

Transcipt
Hello and a really warm welcome to this week's episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. As always, I am your host, Teresa Heath Wareing. I hope you are having a good day. I was going to say a good start to your week, but I really have no idea at what point or when you, listen to this. So it could be Monday when it comes out and if it is happy Monday, if not happy, whatever day it is.
So I was just doing a bit of planning around what podcasts I'm going to do coming up. And I decided to listen back at a few old episodes. And the first thing that was really interesting is how some of the old episodes, I now can disagree with what I say, which is so interesting. How people who I really enjoyed listening to and learning from are definitely not the people I do that now.
And how professionalized side, maybe a little bit stiff, but definitely more professional. And as I was going through it, I look back at when my first ever episode was, and it was February the fourth, 2018. Like that blows my mind. And in fact, one of the episodes I said my daughter's age in it, and I think, so did I say she was eight and she's now 13?
Like that is crazy that I've been doing this long and I have to say, you know, and this isn't what this episode was about, but you know, I'm just chatting. I have to say there are points where I question still doing it because, you know, we're on episode 310 or is it 311 now? It's 311. And I have to say, you know, I've done it since 2018.
Do I still need to keep doing it? And there's a part of me that really doesn't want to stop, but there's also a part of me that thinks, God, imagine if I didn't have to do that. Like, obviously it's a lot of content I produce and it takes a lot of work and it takes work with the team. And what would it look like if I no longer did my podcast?
But anyway, that's not a question for today, unless you have an opinion on it. Then by all means, come and tell me. But it's just, you know, sometimes we think about these things and it's all right, it's all right to sometimes change our mind, that's fine. Now, if I'd been doing this for three months and I changed my mind, no, that's not okay, I need to give it a good go, but I think, you know, 2018 to 2023 is a really good go.
Anyway, I'm talking like I'm cancelling the podcast. I am absolutely not. Now what would be particularly handy and helpful and definitely make sure I won't cancel the podcast is if you could go and share my podcast. So if you have a business friend or a business buddy or someone that you think will find the content that I put out useful.
I would love it if you would go and share it with them. If you would put it on your Instagram stories, or even on your feed, or on your Facebook, or your LinkedIn, or whatever Twitter's called this week, wherever you think someone might be interested, I would really, really appreciate you sharing that out there.
Because even after all this time, it's still not easy to get people to listen. So Anyway, that was a weird side talk. So today, what I'm going to be talking about is systems. Now, it doesn't seem a particularly sexy subject to talk about, and it's probably not going to change your life or give you some amazing mindset skill.
However, it is incredibly important that We have these systems in place. And when I say systems, I'm meaning actual platforms. So I'm going to be talking through the platforms that I have in my business, what I use, how I use it, and how it helps. And it's a really, really important, although, like I said, it's not the sexiest thing in the world.
It is really important that we have good systems in place to make our lives a whole lot easier. And what can often happen and has definitely happened with me in the past is I get swayed by the latest new system. Now, this doesn't happen so often now, I have to say, but either someone shows me this new shiny system is like, it's brilliant and it's this and everyone must need it.
And therefore you get it and it's only X amount a month. Well, that's fine. But then having 10 or 15 of them at only X amount a month soon adds up. And one of the things that I do with a finance point of view is we obviously have a a breakdown of our outgoings and I have one specifically for the platforms that I use and it comes to a lot of money.
There's no doubt about it that we could spend a huge amount of money on all of these different systems. So do we need them? And which ones do we need and are vital? And which ones would I recommend? So I'm going to focus predominantly on the fact that I have an online business. And that's really easy for me to focus on that because that's the business I have.
So some of these systems, I will make clear whether it is specifically for an online business. So the main system I use and probably one of my most expensive or the most expensive, however, it is one that I could not live without is Kajabi. Now, not only Is it a really awesome system, but they're actually really awesome people.
And I really, really enjoy being part of their community. And as you will know, if you're a listener to the podcast, I have been to two of their conferences, they've only done two in person and I love them both and they just treat their, their customers really, really well. And they have a really good system that is constantly improving.
So. What I use Kajabi for, if you have an online business, you are going to need somewhere to host the online element of it. Now, there are lots of ways that you can do this and you can, if you're getting started, you can, if you want, pay for something or not pay for something more like, and put it on something like Google Drive or Dropbox or OneDrive or something like that.
So. You could even just have landing pages where you put your content, but it's going to be a bit clunky and I don't know about anybody else, but sometimes when you share stuff through Google Drive, maybe it's just me because I'm not that tech. So I don't think I'm that tech savvy that, you know, are the share permissions right?
And can they move it out or have they got access to it? Can they edit it? What if they edit it? Like, It can just get a little bit confusing. So for me, I started straight off the bat with a system. Now I used to use something else called Wishlist Member, which I then moved quickly to Kajabi. But basically Kajabi hosts and holds all my courses.
All my membership stuff, and believe me, over the god knows how many years I've had this for now, I have a lot of content on there. And it's not based, the cost for Kajabi isn't based on the amount of content from a kind of like, so my membership, my membership is one product, but there is so much stuff in there, and the videos, and the content, and the audio, and the, like.
A crazy amount of stuff and it doesn't go up the more I add into that membership. Now I have a limit on how many products I can use and I'm not over that limit. I haven't gone over it yet and I don't see myself going over it. So that's fine. I think it's 15 cause I'm on the middle level of Kajabi. But yeah, so you definitely, definitely need somewhere to host your stuff.
And like I said, if you're starting out and you don't want to spend the money or you haven't got the money, then you could always do it through something like a Google drive. You can also, I was just thinking about another system I used to use and still do a little bit for different things is Amazon AWS.
And you can host things within Amazon AWS. The problem is if you've got a video that you want to send out to people. It will literally only just be the video. It's not like it puts it on a nice landing page or that you can put stuff around it. It literally is, here's the link to the video. And the way AWS works is the more content you have in there and the more downloads, i. e. the more, the amount that people have to go in and get it. The more you get charged, but again, like it's, I didn't actually say, so I don't know why I said again, but it's absolutely minimal cost. Like I think I've had my AWS for years and probably a good eight years and I pay like 23 cents a month or something ridiculous like that.
So yeah, so that's when it comes to hosting your course or your membership or your online offering. So the one of the other things you're going to need is you're going to need to take payment. Now that might seem really simple and really obvious, but there are a couple of things you need to consider about the system or whatever it is that you use.
I use Kajabi, that takes payments. So does it have a multiple different levels of offer? So for instance, because the membership has been around such a long time, I have so many different offers for that membership because it started on a different price to where it is now. And then you can buy it annually or monthly.
And then there was the price for this thing or that thing. So yeah, does it give you the option to have all those different offers? The other thing that you want alongside offers is coupons. So if I am doing a percentage off or members of the club, you usually get money off if I'm doing something. Do you have the option to put in a coupon code or the ability to create a coupon?
Can you do subscriptions? Now this is really important if you have a subscription based business. And some payment platforms do not do subscriptions easily. Oh, the other thing that Kajabi have introduced recently, which is becoming really popular, is pay what you can. So you can actually set up a pay what you can offer, where you say between this payment and this payment, in increments of or These are my three or four options for the payment amount and the person who's buying can actually choose the payment they want.
Also, does it do affiliates? So, within Kajabi, what I can do is I can set up an affiliate thing so that if someone promotes my stuff, they can actually become an affiliate and I pay them based on, obviously, if they get people to sign up. The other thing that Kajabi's just introduced is, pop up payments.
So, instead of clicking and going to a new page for a check out, you can actually click the pay now button and it will just open a pop up and the, apparently the science behind it is that people are more likely to buy on that than a checkout page. So check something to take your payments.
What have you got for that? Then you're going to need things like. Obviously, an email system. Now, I've talked about a million different email systems over time. If you're just getting started, MailerLite's a really good one. But if you're having an online business, then that might not do what it needs, enough for you to need it to do.
ActiveCampaign's really good, but it's a standalone system. So, therefore, when it comes to some of the other things, like taking payments or managing... Hosting courses and things and also hosting things like, not all the systems host things like lead magnets or links through to documents. So what email systems have you got?
Can it tag people? Can you do onboarding things? Can you do automations? All of that's super, super important. Now I'm going to be completely honest here about Kajabi. Because I am very honest, when I use Kajabi, the email system is not as good as something like ActiveCampaign. However, I was paying almost the same amount of money for ActiveCampaign as I was for the entire of Kajabi.
And although it was great, in reality... It's not a deal breaker, the things that it can do, that Kajabi can't do, and they are constantly improving. So Kajabi can definitely do all the stuff, or all the main stuff I need it to do. Some of the fanciest stuff, it isn't quite there yet, but the reason for that is that it does everything, and therefore it's not as... You know, it's not just an email system like ActiveCampaign.
So yeah, and are those emails triggered when someone does something? Because obviously when someone buys, you want those emails to be triggered. Do the, so one of the things that Kajabi has is an abandoned cart sequence. So if someone goes to buy something and then abandons the cart it'll send them an email going, you were going to buy this thing and you left it.
So that's another thing that obviously you really need in any business needs an email system and some of that automation, regardless of whether you have an online business or not. Landing pages, sales pages, anything like that.
Every business will need that. So depending on what you're selling, if it's an online business, then you will want proper sales pages. So. Sales pages are standalone pages that are kind of separate from your website. Obviously, they could be still hosted on your website, but they're not a, in the menu bar as such.
I'm not explaining myself very well, but basically when you go to a sales page, you don't want to be able to click anywhere else. So the only thing, the only click you want that person to do is to buy. And therefore, if it's on your website and you have a menu bar at the top, They can click away and you don't really want them to do that if that's an online product.
Now it's not to say that doesn't work for every other product, but that is really kind of crucial for an online product, but you're going to on landing pages, going to lead magnets to sign up to your email list to get discounts or whatever it might be. So again, what system are you going to use? Now I used to use lead pages.
I think they're brilliant. I love them. My only reason I don't use them anymore is because Kajabi does this too and actually. Their landing page builder is a really good and you can do some really, really nice stuff and it's optimized for mobile and you can put animation in there and it's really, really cool.
So, for me, all that's in Kajabi. So basically for my online business, Kajabi has all of my needs. There's a couple of other little bits that I use that aren't Kajabi, which I'll tell you about in a sec. But for me, that's why I'm with them. Now, I used to say, and I've got to stop saying this. I used to go, they're not the cheapest, but the truth is they are when you think about how much they do, they are really affordable.
And for me, one of the reasons I decided I actually paid annually and I still do. And. One of the reasons I decided to pay annually and join them before, I mean, like I said, I did have another system and I had sold a bit of a course, but I hadn't got my membership, was to kind of put my money where my mouth was.
It was kind of a case of, right, I've got 12 months to make this work and to pay this back. And I have to say, you know, I am, I have more than paid it back, obviously. But I think sometimes putting some money, skin in the game will make you work a bit harder for it. So I'm going to put a link in the show notes.
And also I will tell you the link. If you go to teresaheathwareing.com/kajabi, you will find a link there that'll get you 30 days free of the system. And for me, this is brilliant. So you can go in and you can basically use the entire thing. You can set up a landing page. You can look at what the checkouts are like.
You can look at the product side. It has a load of AI now that kind of creates stuff for you. There's a lot of support and help so you can have those 30 days free in kajabi on me. If you go to teresaheathwareing.com/kajabi, obviously that's an affiliate link. But as you know, I don't talk about stuff that I don't love or I don't use.
So the next couple of few systems that I want to talk about again, specifically online business system is AddEvent. Now, AddEvent is the thing that I use. So basically when we schedule all the calls for the club and for the executive club, we put them into AddEvent and the members can subscribe to that calendar and it adds that calendar directly into their calendar.
So for me, this is like such a cool thing to do. Also, if we do things like insider experiences, if we do. Before when I've done bootcamps and things, then I create a calendar just for that and they can subscribe to it. So AddEvent is a real, really good one for me, especially when you're dealing with multiple different days and multiple different things.
And also the other thing that's cool about AddEvent is in the actual calendar. Like, event, you can put this is the link for it. This is what we're going to be covering today. So, again, you can add some additional things. And people can subscribe, and then you can unsubscribe them to it. But AddEvent 's really, really good.
Now, I should have had in front of me how much it was a year. I pay annually for that. I want to say like a couple of hundred dollars a year. So, it's not extortionate. But we'll make sure we put a link to AddEvent in as well. And then the other thing that I used to use, but I don't so much now because I don't do as much live now is when I go live, I would use Ecamm.
So really, really like Ecamm. It's a great system. If you are planning on going live, not Instagram, as I speak at the moment, it would be more going live into groups or going live online. In fact, I can go live through Kajabi, but I don't know how to do it because I've never used it and because I don't go live very often, everything we do is through zoom.
So I guess I should have included zoom in this. So all our calls are on zoom because I like to see people and have conversations with people rather than just talking to the ether. So, yeah, so if I was going to be doing lives and when I have done them, I've used the Ecamm, it's a really, really good system.
So a couple of other systems, generic use that I wanted to mention was Google storage, and Google drive and all that sort of jazz, my emails are hosted through Google, so all of our stuff is in Google on the Google drive. And obviously my team have
22 min
September 04, 2023Sabotaging Success: Understanding Self-Sabotage And How To Break The Cycle
Fed up of self sabotaging your own success, and need practical ways to break the cycle?
In this episode I help you understand how you self sabotage, and what you can do to prevent it from happening in the future.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST
The cycle of self sabotage

Signs of self sabotage

How to stop self sabotage

Is this something you struggle with? Please do get in touch and let me know, I'd love to hear from you.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE
Find out more about my 1:1 Business and Mindset Coaching
Find out more about the Dream Business and Executive Club
Connect with Teresa on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter
Transcript
Welcome to Your Dream Business Podcast. This is episode 310. And as always, I'm your host, Teresa Heath Wareing. How are you doing this week? So we had a bit of a break over summer. Well, I say a break, you didn't. We had replays of really important episodes, but I had a little break from recording some fresh episodes.
So I am back today with a new episode. So I want to talk about self sabotage. Now it's something that we did in our in person event in June, because what happens is we create these goals and we look at all these things and we, yes, we want that. And then somehow we managed to sabotage ourselves. And sometimes we are so clever and so good at it.
We don't even see that it's us doing it. We just think, Oh, well, that always happens. Or that's, you know, one of those things and it wasn't meant to be. But actually somehow we manage to sabotage ourselves really, really well. So often one example that's brought up, which is a really good example, is dieting.
So why is it when you want to diet, you manage to self sabotage yourself by, you know, well, I've got to eat that thing, or I've got to, go out for dinner, so I'll start tomorrow. And yet that always happens. So what we're going to talk about today is self sabotage is the act or habit of behaving in a way that interferes directly with one's own goal, well being, relationships, et cetera, as by comfort eating, procrastination, or lashing out at others.
So that's just what the internet had to say. But a really good quote from John Acuff is self sabotage is when you drill holes in your own ship because the trip is going so well that you feel uncomfortable because someone or something taught you that you don't deserve smooth sailing. And you might be sat there thinking, why would I even like self sabotage?
Why would someone do that? Surely they wouldn't do that. But we do, and we kind of can't help ourselves. So it's like this cycle that we can go through. So we have a goal, and the goal means that we try and take some action to do that goal, okay? Which inevitably means stepping out of our comfort zone, or stepping a little bit into something that we're not completely confident doing.
And our body and our brain perceives that as a threat. It perceives it as, I'm in danger. And your brain doesn't know the difference between I'm a bit scared putting myself out there and actually I'm in danger because a lion's going to eat me. So your brain goes, Oh, I'm, I'm, I've got a threat here. I'm in danger.
So then it very cleverly puts a self sabotage in place. So it goes, I don't want to die. I need to keep myself safe, even though we're not going to die. And it chucks in a self sabotage and we do something to sabotage our own success. And then we get some relief. So we're scared We throw in a self sabotage.
We don't do it. We then feel relief because it's like, oh, thank goodness I'm safe. But then the shame kicks in. Because we've self sabotaged again, and we feel bad about that. And then we start the cycle all over again. So we then go, okay, I'm definitely going to do it this time. You set the goal, you take the action, you have a threat, you sabotage yourself.
You feel relief, then you feel shame, then you want to start again. And it just basically keeps going over and over and over. So how do we identify that we're sabotaging and how do we stop it, more importantly. So the point in which you need to identify it and the point in which you need to interrupt this pattern is between the threat and the sabotage.
So often we don't even recognize that we're under threat. Our brain just does it very cleverly all by itself. So understanding that, ah, okay, I feel a bit scared now I'm doing this thing. And my normal go to is this, but what am I going to do instead? So. There's a really good reason that we self sabotage, a super, super good reason, and you need to remember this.
Your brain is trying to keep you safe. So when we get all annoyed with ourselves, when we get frustrated with ourselves, when we get that shame coming in, we need to remind ourselves and thank our brain for trying to keep us safe. That's all you're trying to do, brain, and I really appreciate that. So what kind of signs of self sabotage are there?
And you might be listening to this going, yep, yep, yep, yep. And you can use different self sabotages for different things. So you can have a lack of integrity to yourself. Exactly like the one I just said about the diet one, I'm definitely going to do X, Y, Z today. And then you break your own promises and you have a lack of integrity to yourself.
Procrastination. That's a really good work one, we, we like doing that one when we don't wanna do something that scares us. Overindulgence or addiction, an initiating conflict, self criticism, comparison. That's a really nice one. Imposter syndrome, disorganization. How many people go, oh, well, I couldn't do that because I wasn't very organized or that didn't succeed because I didn't get organized to do it properly.
Negativity, creating or joining in on drama. So if some drama is going on, well, I can't possibly do my thing because I've got to get in on this. So, and again, it's not that our brain is actually sitting there thinking those things. Our brain is doing it kind of subconsciously without us really knowing.
So the question to ask yourself, so it's noticing it first. So notice which one of those things that you do. So you have to get really quiet with yourself and understand, okay, I'm going to go for that goal. I tried doing that thing and then I did this thing. So which one of those things are you doing? So when you spot yourself comparing yourself to others, when you spot yourself being disorganized, when you spot yourself overindulgence or addiction or procrastination, whenever you spot those things, you have to stop and think about it.
Think about what fear are you trying to avoid, i. e. what is going to happen if you hit that goal? Now you might think to yourself, well that's a stupid thing to think of because Let's go back to our goal of losing weight. Well, why wouldn't I want to lose weight? Of course I want to lose weight. But what if losing weight means, what if someone once said to you when you were slimmer, Oh, I liked you when you were bigger.
Or, you look a bit gaunt, or, you know, thin pretty girls aren't fun, or smart, or like, it could be anything, and it could be, as you're listening to me say it, you might go, well that's ridiculous, I know that's not true, but sometimes our brain just doesn't quite realise that, so what it's trying to do is go, oh yeah, if I lose weight, then I'll be too much, or then I will be too confident, or then I will look too hot, and people will hate me, like, whatever the reason, your brain is trying to avoid you feeling those things.
So what I want you to do and what you can do is a little exercise is if there's a goal that you've been trying to go for and you're not getting and you're starting to realize it's because you keep sabotaging yourself, write down, do some journaling around, what is gonna happen if I hit that goal?
And you might start off by going, well, it'd be brilliant, or this, this, this, this, this, and then try and write down, well, what is the bad thing of me hitting that goal. Like it might be so often people self sabotage themselves as they get to the VAT register level in a business because they, or they hit, they don't quite get to the next money goal because they might in their head go, well, if I've got to be VAT registered, that's a nightmare and I will have to be a proper grownup business then.
And I'm probably not smart enough for that. And therefore they never quite get there because every time they get there, they do something self sabotage it. So, have a good think about what fear are you trying to avoid? What will happen if you hit that goal? So, once you've kind of worked that out and had a think about it, how are you going to stop it?
How are you going to stop that self sabotage? So, you need to notice the pattern. That's the first thing. As I said, slowing down and thinking. The minute you see it go, Oh, that's interesting. What was I going on doing then what was I planning on doing? And then I got distracted and I'm doing this instead.
So what's the pattern that keeps coming up? Identify the route. So this is exactly what I just said. The route is, how is this keeping me safe? So by me self sabotaging every time I go and do this thing, what am I trying to avoid? What is the thing that my brain is going? I want to keep you safe. Because if you put yourself out there to that podcast and they say, no, you're going to feel disappointment.
So I tell you what, I'll just self sabotage you every time you go to do that by procrastinating or by saying that you're not organized enough to do it because you haven't got XYZ, just so that you don't have the disappointment. And then address the need. So if it's trying to keep you safe by saying, you know, you might feel disappointed, then address that need and go, I might feel disappointed, but it'd be fine.
It's not about me. So. Really give those things, you know, some time. So notice the pattern, identify the route, i. e. how is it keeping me safe, and address the need. So this is where it comes back down to, and I've talked about this before, but the neural pathways.
So when a trigger happens, so the trigger is you're trying to do something to achieve that goal, and you can go down one neural pathway or go down another, i. e. the neural pathway that procrastinates you, or the neural pathway that self sabotages you, Or you can do the hard thing and go down that other neural pathway. This is where it gets tricky. If you've been doing this over time and time and time, which I'd put money on you have been, that you have been self sabotaging yourself in particular ways for a really long time, Then this isn't going to be an easy thing to shift across.
Remember what I said, if you've listened to that episode where I talked about neural pathways, that road is so comfy, so bright, so beautiful, so attractive that you don't want to go down that dark and scary route. So. Your brain will want to keep you safe and keep you going down that one self sabotage way that you've been doing for a long time.
It takes a lot of effort, a lot of time, and a lot of courage to make yourself go down that other route. So don't beat yourself up if you've noticed it and you do it again, and you notice it and you do it again. That's okay. It's going to take some time. Remember about you're trying to rewrite that story.
Okay. So you're trying to rewrite a story that has formed over many, many, many times of you self sabotaging. And it's about taking those small actions, those 1% shifts. So it might be that, okay, next time I, Go to self sabotage that I will do this one tiny thing and then maybe it gets a bit bigger next time and it gets a bit bigger next time.
So don't expect to actually identify you sabotaging and then just basically fix it tomorrow. It's not going to happen. And practice that self integrity. Self integrity is so important. I've been doing some work around boundaries and doing some learning and reading up on it. And a lot of that has to do with self integrity is that often we will let ourselves down or we will put other people's needs and feelings in front of our own and say they're more important than we are.
And that's just not true. So think about how you're going to rewrite that story. And if you think, you know, every time I do this, I self sabotage this, why not journal on it? How would it look if you didn't? What might happen? And like I said, think about what's going to happen if you hit that goal. Good and not so good, because it's that not so good that's keeping you holding you back and self sabotaging you.
So even though you might sit there and think, gosh, well, there's no bad reason about me earning loads of money. Well, there might be. So have a think about that journal out, take those small actions and practice that self integrity. So. a real whistle stop tour into what self sabotage is and how we can try and prevent ourselves from going through it in future.
But these things, like always, take time and are much easier and sped up with someone to help you. And it would be totally remiss of me if I didn't mention that I can help you with these things. So you have a few different ways in which you can work with me, and I can support you in getting past these self sabotaging things so that you can finally hit your goals.
So if you've had something on your goal list for a long time and you are tired of looking at it and you're starting to doubt whether you even want it in the first place, then maybe it's time to work with someone. So, you can work one to one with me. I have a couple of spaces for one to one clients. I only take a few every so often and I have a couple of spaces available now.
So, come and check that out if you go to teresaheathwareing.com/coaching. I also have the club where you can work with me in a group setting and we do mindset exercises and coaching calls and training and all sorts of amazing stuff. Or we have the executive club where if you are looking for a more mastermind type level, more accountability, in between the club and working one to one, then that will be for you. So if you want to find out more about the club, you can go teresaheathwareing.com/theclub. Okay. Have a wonderful week and I will see you next week.
14 min

About Your Dream Business

From the publisher's feed

Hi! I’m Teresa if you are a business owner who is striving to build a business and life you dream of on your own terms and doing something you love then this is the podcast for you!