Your Dream Business

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. How are things? As I record this episode, it's a super frosty day and I am sat at my desk with a blanket on because it's a bit chilly and I'm wearing a new dress that I really love, but it's not very practical. So it's more of a summer dress and I'm wearing in winter, hence why now I've got a blanket on because I've not been very practical.

I've got my dogs, uh, one by my feet and one outside the door who are both fast asleep, which is lovely when they're like that. So if they move, I apologize that you might be able to hear them. And I am batch recording episodes and sometimes I find it really hard to get into the swing of things, of, into the swing of the episodes.

And one of the things that, you know, I've changed, obviously I no longer have interviews because I just fancied a bit of a change and a rest. Although it's not to say I'm not gonna do any. In fact, I've got a couple lined up that I'm thinking I might do. They tend to be a bit different, or one of them is a friend that I'm gonna bring on and we're just gonna have like a chat.

But she's in business too. And she's a coach too. But yeah, I, and the reason I'm kind of talking about all this is because sometimes we do things for the sake of doing them because we've always done them and we always feel like we need to do them. And I think it's worth just taking a step back every so often and going, "Is this what I wanna do? Is this bringing me joy? Is this doing the purpose?"

Because some things don't bring us joy, but we really have to do them like our accounts or admin or whatever. Well, they're for me anyway, but they will help and they do something for the business. But the reason I wanted to say is I just wanted say that if you are sat there thinking, "God, I'm so tired of doing this one thing", or "Actually this doesn't fit me anymore." then why do it?

Who says, you have to do it now? I'm not stopping the podcast. That's not why I'm leading to in this. I'm just saying like it's worth giving these things some serious thought because sometimes we, we don't, sometimes we just keep going because we feel like we must have to, or we must be on all the social media platforms cuz that's the thing to do.

Or everyone has to be on Facebook. Well, they don't do they. You can do what you want. It's your business. You get to decide. But one of the things I want this year, and one of the things that I am thinking about and that are in my goals, is I want more bliss and pleasure and fun and joy. And I think sometimes we work super hard on our businesses and super hard on things that we forget to add in the joy and the bliss and the happiness and the pleasure.

So one of the things that I am working hard on is making sure I get some more of that in my world this year. And, and actually I wanna ask a favor while I'm here, one of the things that I am doing, or I'm planning on doing is doing something new, fun, different, interesting every month. Almost like testing out loads of different hobbies.

So for January, I went to a dance class and then, I've got a few other ideas kind of lined up for different things. Like I want to go and have a lo around a garden because I haven't done that and I really did wanna do that. I just paid yesterday for the Happy Place Festival. If you're in the UK you know, fearne cotton.

I just booked that for September and yeah, so like what do you do that makes you happy and brings you joy and fills you up because that's what I'm trying to do more of this year. So it kind of brings me onto my, my subject for today. Kind of not, but you know, we'll go with it and pretend. One of the things I thought I talk about today are affirmations.

And the reason I wanna talk about this is because every single month in the club we do a mindset exercise where me and whoever club members wanna join me. Get on the call and I run through an activity and an exercise, and we all do it together, and then we often share and we often discuss it and we often look at the thing and it's really cool.

I love it. And I know they do too. And sometimes I open them to things that maybe they haven't thought about before. Sometimes it's very practical things like the Wheel of Life or the values exercise and they've done it before, but we repeat it because it's really important to keep repeating these things because as we change things change and as time moves on, we change.

But one of the ones we did this month was affirmations. So we talked about what they were. We talked about how they work because there is some science behind it. As you know, I always like to bring the science in. I always find it's funny, like I always worry that people think I'm frivolous and silly if I like things that are a bit more woo.

So therefore, I think I try and compensate by putting the science in. But actually if you like it and it makes you happy, then you don't have to justify it. So, so I'm just going with it. So we talk about affirmations, what they are, and then we look at some of the ways in which we can create our own affirmations.

And I just thought as we had a mindset session about it, and obviously it wouldn't be as in detail as we have in the, in the club and obviously in the club we we do the kind of back and forth and we give each other advice and support, and I help people write their affirmations. But I thought I would talk you through in case it's something that you've never thought of or in case you do do it and you want to tweak your affirmations.

So affirmations are phrases or statements that when you repeat them regularly, either out loud or to yourself, can shift negative thought patterns, promote positive thinking, self-esteem, and motivation. They work. There's a good reason in which they work. Now, I've talked about this in the episode I did, which was the science behind the Woo, and we'll tag to that in the show notes.

But at times your brain can't tell the difference between reality and imagination. So when you create a mental image of yourself doing something, it activates many of the brain areas that experiencing these situations would. So I think I said in that episode, there was an amazing, amazing study done where a scientists bought in some pianists and they got them to sit at the piano and play their favorite piece.

I'm probably adlibbing very much, but this is the gist. And while they were playing, they were wired up and they were watching their brainwaves. And then, what they got them to do is they got 'em to step away from the piano, to sit down, to close their eyes, and they got to imagine playing the piano. And exactly the same parts in their brain lit up whether they were actually playing or just imagining. So powerful. So amazing.

So regular repetition of the statements about yourself encourages your brain to take these positive affirmations as fact. When you genuinely believe you can do something, your actions will often follow.

This comes down to what I talked about in that episode, which is neuroplasticity, oh gosh, I can't say it. Neuroplasticity or your brain's ability to change and adapt to different circumstances so your brain can move. So the more you tell yourself something, the brain has this neuroplasticity where it can start to change based on what you're telling it.

So that's why affirmations work. But there are some key considerations. Now, when I did the research for this session. I went online and I was looking at affirmations and I looked at like some of the affirmations that you can have that you just get offline. And God, they were awful. I say they're awful. They didn't fit me and they didn't feel real.

And I think that's the key thing. It's gotta be personal to you and it's got to be. It's gotta feel like something you would say. So having an affirmation that says, I am strong, I am powerful, I am successful. Just wouldn't wash with me because I need a bit more evidence than that and I need a bit more personal stuff than that.

So some of the things you might want to think about when creating your own affirmations is now. Obviously lots of the evidence kind of say make 'em short. Now I don't wanna make 'em too short, so something like I am enough is not long enough for me. If you like them short, then great. I need a bit more sort of meat on the bones as it were.

The next thing to remember is when you're writing an affirmation, start with an I or a my statement, because you want it to own to you. You want it to be very much attached to you as in I am this, or you know, my whatever is this. So it is attached to you. You wanna write your affirmation in the present tense.

So it needs to be as if it is happening or has happened. And you don't want to begin your affirmations with, I want, or I need, because that just basically says you haven't got it. And if you're sat there going, Hmm, this is all sounded a bit much, then I'm gonna give you some practical examples of how I think this can work and how, how, not so much. Make sure your affirmations are in a positive statement.

Obviously there needs to be positive things. We do not wanna create affirmations of negative things. Our brain does that perfectly well enough for itself all the time. And if you can add emotion into your affirmation. A bit like marketing, if you add a emotion in, it just hits a bit deeper. So if you can add that emotion in, then great.

So one of the things I got them to do in the session was I got them to think about some negative thoughts that they have, and it's almost very similar to limiting beliefs. But obviously these are more generic thoughts, not specific thoughts. So I got them to think about things like work, their abilities, their relationship, their money, body, their happiness, and think about some of the things they might say to themselves or some of their thoughts that they might have.

And I got them to write them down. Now I gave them some examples like, I am not good enough to make this work. I don't have enough time to invest in myself. I'm not smart enough to understand the tech. I hear that a lot. I don't have enough experience to charge that. I also hear that one a lot. I'll never be successful in my industry. I don't have enough money to enjoy my life.

So I just gave them some examples of what it is they, they might be thinking. And then we need to turn them into positive. Now I am very realistic in the fact of like, let's take a body one. Let's say you are unhappy with your weight and you wanna be a size 10.

UK and American sizes are a little bit different. I think size 10 is our size 12. Anyway, it doesn't matter. So let's say you wanna shift like four different sizes. Well, there's no point saying, I am a size 10, cuz your brain's gonna go, no you're not. Like, so for me, As well as those other things that we talked about.

One of the things that we really need to think about is making them feel real. Because if you have an affirmation that just says, I am thin and I am this, then you are proving it wrong if you are not those things. So I would much rather choose a different type of affirmations. So for instance, so the example I gave them of, of kind of the silliness was money.

So I am so grateful and happy to have a hundred thousand in my savings. Well, if you haven't got a hundred thousand in your savings, then your brain's gonna go, but you haven't and it's not gonna believe it. So what you could do is you could say, I am so grateful for the abundant life I live, and I'm excited to see how money flows to me.

So that sounds much more. Realistic, but also positive also in the present moment, also emotionally kind of charged. That sounds good. I like the sound of that. You might listen to that and think that sounds terrible. And like I said, it's a very personal thing, but you can see the difference between saying, I'm so grateful that I have 10,000 pounds in my savings opposed to, I'm grateful for the abundant life I live, and I'm excited to see how money flows to me.

So you can see the difference. That one just isn't fact and one is fact actually, we live in a, if you're listening to this podcast, the chances are you live in a very abundant life. You know, you have running water and food and shelter and all the good stuff. So that is fact. And yet still aspirational.

So some of the examples I gave, so some of the things that you might think about are all I need is within me right now, and I'm so thankful for that. I also put down I am proud of myself for getting me this far, and I'm excited to see what the future holds. I'm allowed to say no to others and say yes to myself to lead a happy life.

I give myself the care and attention that I deserve because I am worth the effort. I am so fortunate that my business gives me the freedom to live how I want.

So I wrote some really nice examples of affirmations down there, but like I said, they might not hit with you. They might not resonate, but just have a think about creating some for yourself. And when you've created some for yourself, you.

And one of the things I got them to do in the session was tell me where they were going to use them and how. So some people decided that as they journal every day, they're gonna rewrite them out. Someone does a weekly review, they're gonna write them out on a weekly review. Someone is gonna have them on their phone screen, someone is going to put them in front of them on their desk, like someone is gonna put them in their bedroom so they can see them before they go to sleep and as they wake up.

But the idea is you want it to be somewhere that obviously you are gonna see fairly often, and you want those positive statements to be kind of coming over again and again and again. So have a think about places in your life that you would like to improve or you would like to be different, and think about how you could create a positive affirmation around that.

But meets those criteria. So let me run over what those criteria were again. So it needs to be short and easy to remember. It needs to start with an "I" or a "My". It needs to be written in the present tense. You need to make sure that your affirmations are in a positive statements. Don't begin with, begin them with I want, or I need add emotions so that they feel more kind of add that gravitas to it, but make them real.

Make them so that they are not absolutely ridiculous. So make them feel as real as you can while still being positive and aspirational. So I would like to know what affirmations you have and where you put them and how you came up with them. So come and let me know.

I would love to have a conversation with you about it. Let me know if you give this a try and share with me what your affirmations are. If you are happy to. I hope that you got some stuff from this episode and I will be back as always next week with another episode. Until then, have a wonderful week.

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. How the Devil Are You? I hope you're doing really well. I hope you are back fully in the swing of things now with a good way through January. So I really hope that you are back and feeling energized and ready to go. I know that lots of people had a slower start this year, so.

I'm really hopeful that you are feeling ready to take on whatever this year might throw at us. So one of the things I do in the Club and I thought I would share with you is we have challenges. Every so often we do a focus on a challenge where it just means that we are all focusing on the same thing, or that we are all working towards a similar goal.

And it just keeps everybody focused. It just keeps everybody driven and motivated. And at the beginning of January, one of the challenges I like to do, Productivity challenge because this is the time where we might be struggling to get back in the swing of things. We might be struggling to be productive.

But I think generally at any point, it's good to kind of go back to some of those productivity things. I know that even though I have kind of routine and I know what I'm kind of, I know what makes me work well and what doesn't. I still have to remind myself to do it. It's still not always as easy. Just once you've done it once you've got it, not at all.

So I thought I would share with you the things that I suggest that my members do to help them be more productive in their world and things that I do. So the very first thing I get to do them at the beginning of the week, they get one thing a day to do, is I get them to track their time. Now, this might seem like a little bit counterproductive given I'm giving them something else to do on top of the things that they're already doing.

However, when we track our time, we actually get knowledge of where we're spending our time. Now knowledge is power. If we don't know something, then we can't do anything about it. It's like when you know when people like they're nervous to launch or they're nervous to put a new product out there. And when I ask them "What's the worst that that can happen?"

And they go, "Well, what if no one buys?" Well, if no one buys and you've tried, at least you've got some knowledge about what you did and what results you got, and you can do something with that. Whereas if you don't even try, if you don't even do something in the first place, then you literally have no idea how it's going to work.

So the same with being productive. The first thing to do is recognize how and where you spend your time. And I think you will be surprised. We had lots of lovely comments in the group about things that they were surprised about, about how they were spending their time, how much time things took. This is always a classic, like sometimes when you're putting off something really big, it never takes half as long as you imagine it will.

However, sometimes when you think, oh, I'll just do that one thing hours later, you're still doing that thing. So for me it's about knowledge. Like I said, it's about not beating yourself up, that that thing took forever. It's about going actually in the future when I'm planning that in, again, I know it's gonna take me longer than I think.

So let's give that two hours instead of one. So that's the first thing they have to go through and track their time. So if you are gonna do this, if you track your time, then I would say literally have a piece of paper to the right of you. If you are old school, if you wanna do it online, there's lots of apps that can do it.

And for every 30 minutes of every day, you can literally write down what am I doing? And I will write down things like peeing around if I can't remember what it was I just did. So, yeah, but that in itself helps you be productive because then you start realizing. That's where I'm wasting time. And sometimes, like I said, just the act of writing things down makes you a little bit more productive.

So that's the first thing I ask 'em to do. And then I get them to kind of just give that some thought and have a look at it and think, is there places that is eating my time up? Is there something else I can do? So the next thing I get them to do is I get them to plan their day. Now I have to say, this is one of the most productive things that I can do in my business that makes me really productive.

Am I always good at doing it? Absolutely not. Sometimes I'm dreadful. But I can tell I've been dreadful because of how little I might have got done in a day. So I will plan my day every 30 minutes again. So, so I'll start with the meetings I've got. Obviously I'll book in any calls, any meetings. Then I tend to put a bit of time in in the morning for prep and do my morning routine and that sort of thing.

Obviously, I make sure I put lunch in and then I try and work out what time I wanna finish, and then I fill in the gaps. So I look at what's on my to-do list. I look at what's on my kind of plan for the week, and I try and fill in the things I need to do in between those things. If you've got a big project, what I find really useful, is if you're not sure, well, if you think just have right, this is a huge project.

It's gonna take ages. I would still put in an hour or two to work on it, knowing that you're going to stop after that hour or two, just because then it's, it gets it started. Whereas sometimes these projects that they're so big and you think, oh, I need like a whole two, three days for that, then you never get started.

So actually just giving yourself like an hour or two to start to work on it, just like gets it out the way started. So yeah, so that's the next thing I do. And basically, like I said, I plan in, when I'm taking breaks, I even plan in times where I put like, you know, emails, social messing around. So I just put in things like that as well, just so that I've got space to do all these things.

I don't pretend I don't do them, I just make sure I plan in the space. And then I try and stick to it. Obviously, I don't beat myself up if something goes awry and I don't manage everything I say. I just use that as more knowledge, more information, and then maybe put the things back on my plan for the next day.

But at least I've given myself a bit of a plan and somewhere to go with that. So the next thing I asked them to do was to look at removing any distractions. Now for me, distractions are the normal stuff that is for everybody. Social media, emails, voice notes, slack, all those kind of things that disrupt your day.

And I want them to think about is there actually ways they can avoid them or remove them and what can they do about them? So for instance, if you are distracted by emails, you could put your computer on do not disturb, so that you only look at emails twice a day or three times a day. if you are distracted by social media and if you work in social media, this is very hard.

But again, kind of keep focused. Keep bringing yourself back to it, saying, you know, okay, I got distracted, but I'm gonna stop now. One of the things I say all the time, we have an online event every year called SOAR in the Club for members only, and couple of years back, we had a phenomenal speaker called Laura Try, and Laura's rode the ocean.

So she rode from like, I'm gonna get this really wrong, and she's a dear friend and I feel awful that, I don't know this, but somewhere like from Spain ish, part of the world, all the way over to Antigua. So they were on the ocean for like 70 odd days, I think it was. I'm probably absolutely getting this wrong.

But anyway, it was a long play, long way and they rode and Laura came and did a talk for SOAR, which was so inspirational and everyone was in tears in the end. And. One of the things she said is the work that they did on the boat, because they were obviously rowing and they did something like two hours on, two hours off.

So she never slept for more than like two hours the entire time and maybe it's 40 odd days. Anyway, whatever it was, it was a flipping long time. So she, everything they did everything the how they spent their time have to be focused around, would it make the boat go faster. So they never did an activity unless it made them get to Antigua quicker than they would've done.

So things like having to stop the boat to take off all of the. See, I'm gonna get so wrong, but like barnacles is that right on off the bottom of the boat. So they would stop the boat, which would feel counterproductive because obviously they could keep rowing, but actually by stopping and cleaning off the bottom of the boat meant that they could row faster and that wouldn't hold them back.

So one of the things I asked myself all the time is, is it gonna make the boat go faster? So even though I'm not rowing to Antigua, you'd be pleased to hear, cuz I probably wouldn't manage 10 minutes, but I ask myself that all the time. So if I do get distracted by one of these distractions, I very quickly go, is this making the boat go faster Teresa? And if the answer is no, then I stop. And it's not always easy, but I think that reminder for me really, really helps me. So think about your distractions. What can you get rid of? What can you move? Even things like family. I have to say, like sometimes if my doors open in my office, people will interrupt me if they walk past.

Um, But if I close my door, they don't interrupt me. So if I need some focus time, maybe I just close my door for a bit. Okay, so the next thing cause this, like I said, over five days. So day four was eat that frog. Now you've all probably heard of this concept or read the book. However, I constantly find myself having to remind myself of this that often we will put off the thing that we don't wanna do and it will lure over us like something huge.

So, Whatever that big thing is that you are putting off, that's the thing you do first, cuz the sense satisfaction. And how happy you are gonna feel once you've done that is going to be huge. And like I said, weirdly with these things, they often take way less time than you think. However, with the things that you think, oh, I'll just change that one thing on the website, then three hours later you're still messing around.

Um, I don't, I don't mean messing around, I mean, still trying to do it. So yeah. So what is the one thing that you've been putting off and put it at the top of your list and do it first. And that's a really powerful one. Like I said, very simple but very powerful. If you haven't read the book, do read the book.

It's basically, it says what it does on the Tim, but you know, It's, it's good. And the last one that I did, because it was Monday to Friday, is plan your week ahead. One of my favorite things, and this is weird, I dunno why it's my favorite thing, but I actually really enjoy looking at my diary for the following week and writing down what I've got coming in.

Because I feel more organized, even though at the end of every day I have to remind myself what's tomorrow? And I have to make sure like, this is, this is terrible. But I, I used to be really good at waking up over early. Like I'd wake up at four or five and that was great. And I was good. And I've got out of that habit.

And now to the point where I have to look, if I've got something in at nine, I've gotta set an alarm for like seven to make sure I'm awake. I dunno whether it was Christmas. Lying in. I don't know what it was. But anyway, so yeah, so every night I double check what tomorrow holds, what meetings I've got, and every morning when I plan my day, I obviously put in my meetings that day.

So the, the final thing I got 'em to do was to have a look at what they've got coming up so they could stay focused. Note down what went well that week that we've just had, what didn't go so well. Were there places where you were distracted? Were there tasks that took longer? Like I said, the only way we're gonna improve is to measure what we're doing and learn from it.

So like I said, planning the following week coming up is always something I do as well. So as always, these episodes are now gonna be kind of short and sweet just for you to kind of take something in. Hopefully I'll give you something. I'd really love some feedback from you guys.

I'd really like to know what is it you want me to talk about? I am always. I love talking about the mindset stuff and I love talking about the slightly kind of woo stuff, although I did say, I wasn't gonna say that word, but I really struggled to find another word for it. Um, But do you want more practical things?

Do you wanna a mix of both? I'd really love to hear what you think. Anyway, that's it for today. Hopefully you will now have a very productive week. If you do something particularly brilliant that helps your productivity, please let me know. I would really love to hear from you. I love hearing from you. The, one of the things that brings me joy is community and hearing from people and connecting with people.

So if you've never dropped into my dms or commented on a thing, please do so. I'd love to hear from you. Okay. Have the most wonderful week, and I will see you next week.

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. How are Things? So how have you started off in the year? Now, it's been really interesting speaking to my community and seeing how I've been, because a lot of them have had a very slow start of the year, and I did the very first week. You know, I said to you before Christmas that basically during Christmas, I always plan to do so much work that I feel like I must have three months off.

I did nothing. Now, this must be for the first time ever that I didn't use that time between Christmas and New Year to get some work done. And I don't really know why I didn't do anything. And I'm quite happy that I didn't do anything. And it does mean that I perhaps came back into this year thinking, oh, I feel behind, but not really behind when no one's behind.

We just set ourselves a kind of, you know, task of when we want things done by. There's no race. I had a pretty slow start to the year. Also, I dunno about you, but I was so tired. So even though I did nothing over Christmas and New Year, pretty much nothing. I was still absolutely shattered. And also there's been loads of illnesses.

I know I sound a bit funny. I've just been sneezing. I'm absolutely fine. Yeah, there's been loads of illnesses and people have not been right and. Anyway, so I feel like lots of us have come into this year not quite firing on all cylinders that we might want to be. One thing that was really interesting was I went on with a session with Mary, my coach, at the beginning of the year, and I said to her, I'm really tired and I don't feel very motivated, and I'm just really exhausted.

And she's like, is that you or is that someone else? Now, You might be similar to me, where I am a bit of an empath and I take in people's feelings, which is a really, like, it can be really positive. It means I can understand very quickly how my members are feeling and before they've even opened their mouth, I normally know whether they're not very happy or if things aren't going right or you know, or if they're super happy, like I kind of get a feeling straight off the bat. But it also means that I take in a lot of other people's feelings and I can sometimes forget whether they're my own or whether I've taken them from someone else. So of course, me listening to everybody saying, I'm so tired, it's been, you know, really hard start to the year.

Of course, I was saying the same, and Mary sat there and was like, and just want us to have a minute and decide, and we did some kind of, you know, meditation exercise and, and is this you or is this someone else? And you know what was so fascinating? We got to the end of the meditation. I was like, oh yeah, no, that's not me.

Yeah, no, it's not me that's super tired. I've obviously picked that up from somewhere else and I'm carrying around as if it's my own, and I was like, I can put that down now that's not me. And suddenly then I felt absolutely fine and I've been fine ever since, which is really, really funny. How the world works. It's very odd.

Anyway, anyway, just a little bit of a weirdness to get started there for you. So today I want to talk about, and I know I talk about it a lot and I know you're probably getting a bit annoyed, but I'm gonna talk about it anyway. I'm gonna talk about these goals that you might have set. I have done all my goal setting now, by the time this episode comes out, I've done all the sessions for all the different people and for my members and for the exec club and for people who signed up to do my goal setting stuff.

And everyone is walking away with a set of goals that they've put together for themselves. And part of the work I do with them is we use one session to set the goals, and then they have a follow up session to work out how these goals are going to turn into fruition.

Because what happens is we set a goal, we don't actually think. It's like we set a goal, we write it on a piece of paper and then at the end of the year we just revisit it and go, oh, did we get the goal? I dunno. Like it's, and, and most people goal set like that, you'd be amazed the people who goal set, like the amount of people goal set like that, and they don't actually think, and, and I get it, this is actually a really hard thing to do and it's taken me a lot of time and a lot of is to do this and to help other people do this, to actually take that goal and break it down into actions for them to actually help complete the goal.

So, I did a session yesterday with the people who had their goal setting session in December, and one of the people on the session, and I thought it'd be really good to bring it to here, because as I was going through kind of the hot seat with her, other people were like, oh, I'm so glad you did that, because now I understand what I've gotta do.

So basically she was saying that she wants to be more visible. That was one of her goals for this year, I need to be more visible. And quite honestly, I would imagine lots of people have that goal on their, their goal list because as we know, and as horrible as it sounds, it is a numbers game. And the more people who know about you, the more people you have a chance that can actually buy your stuff.

So unless you have a very high-end exclusive stuff, Maybe you don't need to grow your audience, but this person was saying, I need to be more visible. And that's what she wrote on her goal. And I was like, so what are you gonna do in quarter one to get you more visible? And that's where everybody kind of stopped and was like, I don't know.

So what we did is we did some action straight off the bat. I did it with her. So the first thing I said to her, so if you've got this on your list, this is what you need to do. The first thing I said is, let's look at all the different ways that you can be visible. So you can be visible by showing up on social media.

You could be going live, you could go on other people's podcasts. You could start your own podcast. You could go on other people's YouTube channels. You could write a guest blog. You could write your own blog. You could speak at people's events. That's definitely one of the ones I use. You could create a summit for yourself.

Like there are lots of different ways to become visible, so the very first thing to do is write it down all those different ways that you can become visible. Then once you've got them all written down, look at them and the ones that you think, I'd love that. Like, I'd really enjoy doing that. So for me, I love being interviewed.

I find it very easy. It's very natural to me. I really enjoy it. I don't have to prep for it hardly, and I just rock up and I talk and it's ace. So for me that is like, oh yeah, love that. Speaking on stage. Love that too. Again, admittedly, that takes a lot more work in terms of prep, but I really, really enjoy it.

That's the first thing to do. You wanna pick something that you actually like doing. Now, this might sound really obvious, but you'd be amazed the amount of people who do stuff, and when they get on a coaching call with me, I go, do you like it? And they go, no. And I'm like, why are you doing it? Because I get that there are things in our business that we've gotta do that we might not like.

However, If this is something that you've gotta show up consistently throughout the year to do, to help hit one of your targets, if you don't like it, you're not gonna do it. Or if you do do it, you're not gonna enjoy it, which makes you miserable and therefore you're not gonna give it your all. So pick the things that you like to do.

Oh, she had networking on there as well. So one of the things that she said she liked to do was she was more than happy to do training in other people's groups as like, brilliant. Let's look at that one. So we picked that. So that was action one. Write down all the things. Action two, pick which one or two or three.

Don't give yourself too much work to do that you might pick and go, yes, I, I think I could do that, and I'd be happy doing that. Then once you've decided, so hers was, she's happy to go into other people's groups. So her next action, which we put in for January, so bearing in mind we're looking at quarter one at this point, so I said, right in January, by the end of January, what I want you to have done is I want you to have decided what you can train on.

Give me a title, give me some description and tell me what my audience is gonna get from it. So as someone who has people come in and do training in their membership, that's what I wanna know. I want to know, what do you wanna talk about? Why do we need to know about this thing? And what am my audience gonna get at the end of it?

So I said, you need to write them and probably give yourself, like for me now in podcast interviews, I give myself like at least three or four different topics that they can pick from. But you know, if you're just starting off there, maybe one or two. That's the next action. So in January, she is gonna write down and make a plan in terms of what she can actually train on, so that when she does speak to someone, she can just hand it out to them and say, this is what I speak on.

Then in February, what she's going to do is she's going to identify, and if you've got a team, maybe the team can do this for you. But identify where you can possibly do that training. So for instance, she might come to me and say, can I do it in your group? She might come to me and say, who else do you know?

She might look at other people who have similar groups to me, or she might think about where her audience is and think, oh, that's a really good group. Well, that's really good group. So January, she decides what she's gonna talk about. February she decides where could she possibly speaking. And you're literally just gonna write a big, long list.

And you could be, as, you know, as ambitious as you want. It's literally just a list at this point. Okay? So if that fear starts creeping in and starts going, well, that person's never gonna let you speak in there community. Well, doesn't matter. That's not what we're doing at this point. All we're doing is making a list.

Then what we do is we think about how many a month or a week or a quarter might we wanna reach out and ask. Now, bear in mind that everyone you reach out to is not necessarily going to say, "Yeah, great. That's brilliant. When can you do it?" Let's say that if you want to do, and again, you need to decide how many do you want to do a month.

So she might wanna do one a month, she might wanna do two a quarter. So let's say you wanna do one a month. Well, as a minimum, I would say you've gotta be asking at least three a month, and that's good odds. Okay. Like if one of the three say yes, and you don't know, all three could say yes at the moment.

And this is the other thing to note, right at the beginning of the year when you're starting these things, You don't know. So what we have to do is action. We have to take some action and then we can learn from the action. So let's say she has planned in to reach out to two people a month and say, can I come and speak in your group?

So let's say for the first quarter, that's what she does. So obviously she's only really got March. So January we're working it out. February, she's making a list. March, she starts asking. There's two things here. First off, we need more than just one month before we can make a decision as to whether this is working or not.

So I'd probably recommend that she reviews it at the end of month two. So she's got her plan. She knows what she's doing at the end of month, not the end of month Teresa, so at the end of quarter two, I'd recommend that she goes back and looks at how she's asked. What the feedback was, how many said yes, how many said no, and all that good stuff, and then she can tweak as needed going forward.

That's something that people often forget as well. The other reason we make the plan the way we have is we take the, the fear out of reaching out because the, the thing isn't like, oh, I've gotta ask someone. It's just ask. It's like my task is ask two people. Now, we're not putting any expectation on the yeses.

We're just saying ask two people. Now, if we get to the end of quarter two and no one has said yes, There's a problem, obviously we need to look at that is other people were asking wrong, are we asking in the wrong way? Are we offering the wrong training? And we'll only know all that from the feedback we get from those people when they say no.

But if we get to the end of quarter two and they've all been yeses, then okay, we probably only need to ask one a month. Or you know, how many ever they want to get. And we might, we might be able to have a break for a little bit, or we might decide that actually it's easier than we thought and we could up it and do some more.

But again, until we've done something, we can't actually make that decision. So then instead of there being a goal of, I wanna be more visible, which is still the goal, and that's fine. We've attached some actions to it. And then what we can measure is we can measure were we, did we complete the actions? We can't necessarily always guarantee the outcome.

And I've said this many, many times. We can't always guarantee that you know, and I mean, and the other thing is with a, with a goal, like I wanna be more visible, well is that three more people or 3 million more people? So we really need those actions in order to, one, give us something to physically do to get towards the goal, but two, to actually have something that you can physically tick off, that you can physically measure.

Cuz you need to be able to measure these things. Like I said, you know, for that goal in particular, I would probably go, well, what does more visible look like from a numbers point of view? Do I wanna double my email list? Do I want to increase my followers on social media? Do I want to just say I've got in front of X amount of people over the year?

So I'd probably, probably drill down a bit more on that goal itself to give myself more of a SMART goal. But yeah, like I said, then going forward, you've got this action of I do this every month, and then at the end of the month when you're reviewing yourself, which we should do at the end of every month, we should do at the end of every week a very quick check-in.

But at the end of every month when you're like, okay, I reached out to those people, what happened then that helps for you decide and develop, okay, what am I gonna do going forward? How might I need to tweak and change this? So you can see hopefully how. You've taken that one goal and you've pulled it apart.

You've worked out what steps you need to do first, and we need to make sure we plan those steps in this. There's no good saying quarter one, I'm gonna reach out to five people. Cause at this point, you dunno what you're gonna say to them. And you don't know which people you're gonna reach out to. So be realistic with yourself and say again, in January, I'm gonna work out what I'm gonna say.

In February, I'm gonna gather together all the names and you might be able to do it faster than this. And if you can, great. And then I'm gonna start asking, and then like I said, at the end of quarter one or the end of quarter two more likely in this case, I'm gonna review and see what happens. How many people have said yes, how many people have said no?

What were the reasons for them saying no? And then that's gonna help me decide. And obviously at the end of quarter two, you're halfway through the year. Okay. , is this working? If it is, great, do I need to do more? Do I need to do less? If it's not working, what else can I do? And it might be then that you tweaked something else, but at least you've done something rather than just going, I need to be more visible this year.

And then getting to the end of the year and going, "Was I?", well, I don't really know, cuz I can't really think of what I meant by that. So I just wanted to give you that example. Cause I think it's a really, really good example of how you take a goal and you break it down and break it down and break it down and you, you give yourself some actions.

So if you have written your goals, great, well done you. Go back and look at them and decide actually, have I given myself actions against that goal? Are they realistic actions and are they something? And it might not even be something you need to do throughout the whole year. It might just be something that you do.

like in the first quarter or the first two quarters. There's something I have on my goals that basically will hopefully be done by the end of quarter two, and that's my goal to get it done by the end of quarter two. So, come quarter three and quarter four that goal, in particular, might not have much to do. So I really hope that's helped.

I hope that gives you a different way to look at your goals. As I've said to you before, and if you are new to the podcast, if you're regularly, you will know I'm not doing interviews for a little while. I'm gonna do random interviews of like cool people or cool types of interviews, but it is definitely not gonna be a kind of every other week like I've done for all 270 something episodes that I've done so far.

So there are a million different interviews you can go and listen to, and please go back and listen. But from now on, we're just gonna be having a lot of solo episodes, occasional odd interviews. Someone cool I think obviously I've gotta leave the door open for Brene.

You know, I'm still manifesting that Brene Brown might one day pick up our email and go, is there a random woman in the UK that I can be interviewed by? Oh yeah, let's go and pick Teresa. Please help me manifest that. If you know Brene, by the way, please go and have a chat with her. But yeah, so that's how it's gonna be.

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. How are you doing? Okay. As we are in the new year, you might be thinking to yourself, How am I gonna show up this year? How am I going to launch my products and services? How am I gonna make a fuss of them? So I wanted to talk about launching. Now, traditionally, I would say that online businesses that sell like courses or memberships or masterclasses or masterminds or coaching programs, tend to do launches more than say maybe a physical product.

But I do think that some of the things, even if you don't have the online business side. I do think you're still gonna get quite a bit from this because I'm gonna take you through the launches that I have done last year and the years before, and I'm gonna talk to you about how effective they were, and I'm gonna talk to you about what is coming up for this year and what sort of things am I thinking about doing.

Okay, so let's jump in with what I have done so far. Now there's pretty much no launch I haven't done so, I've done challenges and webinars and workshops and boot camps and open houses. I've done longer launches where it's been over seven to eight days. I've done short launches where it's literally just been one webinar.

I've done multiple webinars of the same thing. I've done loads of different ways of launching, and it's really hard to sort of say, actually, you know, I can compare them all fairly cuz I can't, because they were for different things and different effort went into them. Let me talk about what I did last year.

I did a challenge last year. I did a five day email challenge, which I have done previously to promote Build My List. So if you are not sure, I have a course call Build My List that literally takes you step by step through the entire process of creating a lead magnet. And also the tech side of it as well.

And then it includes things like onboarding emails and ideas of what you can email them. And lots and lots of good stuff and it has a huge success rate. But I did a five day challenge, which I've done before and has been successful before. However, this time not quite so successful. What was super interesting is the challenge is meant to introduce you to each step of building your list.

So for instance, day one would be like, How'd you come up with your perfect customer. Now, obviously that's a lot of work coming up with your ideal customer, but I give people a kind of thing that they can do. So the challenge is definitely something where they can come away and have stuff done. And when you are launching anything, if you're doing any of these kind of things, I think that's really, really important that you give your audience something to take away whether they buy from you or not.

I can't tell you the number of webinars I've been sat on that have told me nothing because all they're trying to do is sell to you. So in my opinion, I want someone to get value from me, whether they buy the thing I'm selling or not.

So the challenge was great because people got lots of value. The problem was they did too much work. Like so, whereas normally no one would build a lead magnet in that timeframe because there's a lot more to it or kind of the the work it takes is a lot more to it. And like I said, my idea is I just introduce people to it.

They did it, they did the work, and I was kind of blown away and super pleased in one sense because they came away, a number of them with live lead magnets by the end of that week. But then of course, the other half of me was like, well, there's no need for them to have the course. And in my right mind and my fair mind, I couldn't sell the course to them.

That wouldn't have been fair. Like they didn't need it. So when I had a number of them ask me at the end, do you know, do you think this is suitable? Do you think I need this? I was like, "No." And I had to be honest with them. I had to say, you, you know, you've taken what I've said in this this challenge and you have ran with it and you've done a really good job.

Now, are there things that will add value in that course? Yes. Is it worth you spending all that money on that course? Probably not. So that was super interesting. So the sales did not go as I would've liked for that. Although the challenge itself was really successful, the engagement was really successful, the results for the people and the challenge was really successful.

But because it was all so successful, it meant that they didn't need the course, which was super interesting because of the fact that I've ran it before, I've ran it exactly as it is, and this never happened. So for me, I think that's really fascinating that if people are going to get involved, they're gonna work really hard at it and try really hard to make it work for them and do the stuff.

And, and I always talk about the fact of, you know, use me, use my brain, pick my brain when you are doing these things with me. So, That was really interesting. Will I run one of those challenges again? No, I don't think so. will I run a challenge again? Yeah, I'd absolutely run a challenge again, because the beauty of a challenge is that they get to see you every day.

That you show up every day and you get to see people and engage with people and have that connection with people, which is really important. Will I do my five day challenge as I've done it before? No, because like I said, they were amazing and they did all the stuff and they didn't need to buy the course.

However, one thing that was interesting was a number of people who were brand new to my world took part in that challenge, then joined the membership. So that was really interesting. So it's not like I'm sat here going, the complete thing was a flop. It wasn't. And like I said, the Challenge was fantastic and what people got from it was fantastic.

And the results they had was fantastic. But as a sales exercise, it didn't hit the hit the mark. However, Having people bought them into my world and see what I'm like and show them what I'm like actually did really help when they looked at the membership. So that was really interesting. But challenges are great.

They just take a lot of work and you gotta show up every day and that takes a lot of energy. The other thing I've done this year, the beginning of the year, I did a bootcamp and the bootcamp's aim was to bring people into the membership. So the idea of the bootcamp was during that week, I would do certain select things that were similar to what you might find in the, no, actually it wasn't that it was.

I did three lessons and then I did a coaching call and then I did a Q and A. But the three lessons covered the main areas at the club cover and, and obviously they got to do a coaching call with me and they got to do a Q and A with me. And I'd done a bootcamp previously that worked really nicely. And again, this year, for whatever reason, at the beginning of the year, didn't quite hit.

Now it wasn't too bad. I can't remember my conversion rate. I should have had my conversion rates actually, in order for me to tell you these, but I can't remember my conversion rates off the top of my head. But they, they weren't amazing, but they weren't terrible. But again, running a bootcamp is a lot of work and effort and even things like.

So it's not just the case of showing up every day, it's a case of, right. So you've gotta plan out the bootcamp or the challenge first, because these things tend to be done over a number of days. So you've gotta plan it out. You've gotta create the content or create the presentation or know what you're gonna say, then what you've gotta do is you have got to do things like create the Facebook group for it.

If you're gonna have 'em in a different Facebook group, you've gotta create posts to go every single day to say, this is what's happening today. You've gotta create emails to go out every single day to say, this is what are happening today. You need some kind of landing page or kind of dashboard where everything gets stored for them.

You need things like, I have a schedule at the beginning so they know what's happening when we have an addevent thing. So they know again, they can add all the things to the calendar. So, Yes, it can be done simpler, but for me it's quite a lot of work. So like I said, that was good. I liked it. I liked showing up, I liked having those conversations.

Conversion wise wasn't the best. Then in September I did my first bigger in-person event. So I've done my VIP retreats previously. I did one this year and one not this year, cuz we're now in 2023. I did one in 2022 and one at the end of 2021. I did my first in person, bigger in-person event that wasn't a VIP event in Birmingham in September.

And purely as timing would have it, I had my in-person event. And then the following week was an Open House, an Insider experience is what I called it. So the first thing that was really interesting is the people who came to the in-person event who weren't members were already convinced that they wanted to be members. Cuz one of the best things that works for me from a launching point of view is having my members in the room.

I have members who have been with me since the very, very beginning. I have a very loyal group of people who are very kind and love the membership and love the club, and they love what I do and they are big, big advocates of it. So what were, and again, I didn't plan this, this was just a byproduct, but I wanted to share it cause I think this might be interesting to you.

What happened was when I did that in-person event and people came that weren't in the membership, they actually interacted with my members and they saw how real I was with my members and how real my members were with me in the relationship we had, and they were really kind of like, this place is amazing.

This space is so safe. They loved how we all got on, how well I knew the members. And to be honest, if you have any kind of thing where you have existing customers and you do a good job because if you don't do a good job, then your existing customers are not going going to want to rave about you. But for me, it worked as one of the best things because I didn't, I never went into that live event saying, can you not tell these people who aren't in the membership. How amazing the membership is. Like Not at all. It happened super organically. Super like naturally. It was great. Anyway, so lots of those people who came to the in-person event didn't know the following week was an Open House, so that was the first step. That was really interesting.

So we got lots of them onto the Open House that weren't going or didn't know it was on. Then the Open House was the first time I'd ever run it, so it was called the Club Insider Experience. And the idea was we'll put extra things on for that week. So obviously in the club we do various different things and it normally spans out like one thing a week because I don't wanna overwhelm you.

I don't, you don't need hundreds of things extra to do in your world. And this is a reason I think lots of people are nervous to invest in a membership because they think, because they think that they've gotta invest all this time and they don't have the time. They get overwhelmed. And then also, if they don't invest the time, then they're wasting their money.

That is not the case at all. The case is you take what you need from it, and if that is just coming on one coaching call with me and I answer a very direct question and you go away and that makes a difference in your business, then that was more than worth the payment for that month. Anyway, so I think, so with the insider experience, what we did is we added lots of extra things on for one week.

But what was really lovely, and I think what was the thing that really worked for it, is I invited them into the Facebook group, i e, the Facebook group that is my members only group, and they got to be in there with everybody. Members came to everything because these were members' activities. We were just opening them up to the wider world.

They got to experience what it was like to be in the club. They got to experience, and one thing that I get a lot, which is. People have been in so many things where they've been sold to in a certain way of like, I'm like this and I'll be there and I'll help you and I'll do this, and I da da da, da. And then they get into the membership and they never see that person again and or you don't get access to that person or that person isn't really the way they are.

And one thing that I get, which is lovely, Is they wanna see me and do my thing and then they go, you're the real deal. And I am the real deal. I do show up. Like I say, I show up. I do give the advice. I do know my members incredibly well. So anyway, so the open house was a really wonderful experience, not only for me but for the members cuz they got to meet new people as well.

And we got to see new faces and we got to share our amazing club and it is ours, it's not mine, our amazing club. And at the end of that insiders experience, one thing that was really helpful from a marketing and sales point of view was because I had added them into the group, I obviously had to put a time in which I removed them from the group.

And again, this wasn't even intentional. I actually stumbled across some of these brilliant ideas last year, not even thinking about it. I just thought, I don't wanna set up another group for them. The part of the membership is that community and they are so very supportive. So actually I'm going to let them into the big group and then I'll have to remove them.

And I initially thought this is gonna be a bit of a pain because this is like an admin thing, a real logistical admin thing. Anyway, I am so glad we did because we literally had a deadline date. Now, as you know, I don't like using the kind of FOMO thing at all, but it was very genuine and very real that obviously you can't stay in this Facebook group if you're not a member.

So they had a point in which they had to decide whether they wanted to stay, and if they did, then they signed up. But at that point, They then got removed from the group if they didn't sign up. And, and it just worked really, really well. I would say it was my biggest percentage conversion from anything I've done.

Like, and it might be because we're doing things differently because I wasn't trying, and in fact, I hardly had to sell at all. I didn't feel like I sold to them. I didn't feel like I was pushing it on them. I was literally saying to them, this is us. This is what we do. If you wanna stay, then cool. This year I have, so this is coming out very early January.

I have a number of in-person events this year, which I just love doing them, quite honestly. And I love providing the people the space to connect with other business owners, but also to work on their business. So yes, so we're having a number of in-person events, which is cool. And I'm doing another insider experience, another open house in February.

Now. How, this'll go, I don't know, because the price has gone up considerably, and I'll have to see what happens from the result, you know, once I've done it. But until you do these things, you don't actually know. So the other thing I wanted to just touch on was a couple of the other, the other launches I've done over the years and my kind of thoughts on them.

So really these are things like webinars and workshops and masterclasses. So these tend to be like a one-off thing as in come and join me at this time for this long, and you'll learn this. I don't mind doing webinars or masterclasses. I quite like them, but I think they're becoming more dated. I really, really do.

I think that people need more than just a one hour to go, "Yes, I wanna buy." I think people need to see you more. They need to invest more on you. They need more time with you in order to then make that commitment to say, "Yes, I've seen enough of you that I trust that you are the type of person I wanna work with or the type of person I'm willing to hand money to."

So, so for me, it's not that they don't work, and workshops I see is a little bit different. So I ran a workshop that was like four hours, that was a free workshop. And again, all of these things are free. I've never charged for any of these things and whether I do a kind of paid workshop in the future, which I guess you could argue the, the goal setting is a paid workshop, but that is designed to be a standalone that's not necessarily designed to get you into my club or any other additional sale on top of it.

It's just something I like doing, so. So yeah. So there's a few different options if you are thinking about launching, I think for me, what feels the nicest is the key. Like what do you like to do? How do you like to show up? And ask yourself, how has it been easy to get customers in your world in the past?

Like you'll have some customers that you were like, that was so easy. I could do that all day long. So try and think about stuff like that. So for me, doing what I naturally do by doing my open house works really nicely. I really like it. So yeah, I think, um, I think we need to change and think about how we show up and how we launch and how we get customers into our world.

I don't think we can do what we've always done. I genuinely think that the tide is changing and I have done for a while and I've changed a lot. If you go back two years ago and listen to my podcast, I'm sure I say stuff now that I would not agree with, but I had to go through the process and I had to learn.

So, and I do think change is happening and we need to change with it, so, so yeah, those are my thoughts on launching and kind of a little bit of what I'm gonna do this

Hello, and a Happy New Year. So you might be listening to this at any other random time of the year and think what you're talking about, but this episode came out on the second of Jan, 2023, so happy new Year if you're listening live. I hope you had a good one. I hope you are, I was gonna say all pumped and excited for the year, but it's the 2nd of January and you're probably still feeling the strains of Christmas and New Year, so you're probably thinking I'm not ready for anything Teresa, which is absolutely understandable.

So, isn't it weird? Actually, I was just thinking, if you're new to this podcast, this is me, so I'm sorry. I apologize for my randomness, but I'm literally just sat here obviously recording podcast episodes and I've just realized that as if by some amazing perfectness. My last episode with an interview was last year, and this is the first of my only solo stuff that I'm now doing.

And I absolutely didn't plan it out like not at all. I had no idea when the interviews had run out. How weird is that? That is cool I'm glad. So this is it this year pretty much probably gonna be me. So settle in people it could be interesting. At least you got like a bit of relief when we had a podcast interview.

I want to kick off the year and I want to talk about how to build a beautiful, amazing, supportive, loving community because that's what I have. I have the most beautiful, amazing humans in my world. The reason I wanted to do this episode is because I was directed to a podcast episode and someone else's podcast episode, and this episode was talking about the fact of basically how horrible the online space is, which, you know, I, I'm not saying it's perfect by any stretch of imagination cause it really isn't, and there are some pretty not nice people in it, but like with any industry to be fair.

But they were talking about the online space and they were talking about how basically some of their customers, the problems they've had, how the abuse they've had and like some of the stuff that they said had happened to them, I was absolutely gobsmacked, right? And I'm sat there listening to it and I'm, size wise, I'm probably not as big as this person from a community point of view.

I'm not far off though, if I'm honest. And I thought, and this isn't the first time this has come up where I've heard of people who are in this space basically get absolutely, you know a, I'm trying to think of a way to say this without swearing, but a bit of a kicking from their audience and I just, and I, and it kind of blows me away.

And I, so I sat there and thought, this is weird. This has never happened to me and then I started thinking like, what is the worst things that happened to me? What are the, what are the things that I can go yet that sucked? This happened, this happened from a upset audience, or an angry audience, or a people doing certain things to me?

And I, and I'm gonna talk you through them. There's not loads of them but the and that was the thing there wasn't low to them. So then I thought, oh my God, I've got like the nicest people in my world. Like how did I manage that? And it's something that I say all the time in my club, like if we get anybody speaking in the club, if so, the speakers that we had for saw at the end of last year, I get those people coming in and genuinely saying to me afterwards, oh my God, you have the nicest people.

Like supportive and engaged and encouraging and keen to kind of learn and see people succeed and just, it's a really lovely space and a really safe space, and I was thinking to myself like, why is that the case? So I did a little bit of thinking and I thought, I'm gonna do a podcast episode on this and talk about why I think I've got such a beautiful community and why I haven't experienced some of these problems that people have had and why that might be the case or how I've managed that.

And it is a bit by fluke, but I did try to work out some things that maybe I do that others, no, I'm not gonna say that others don't do cuz I'm sure that's not always the case but just me, just what do I do that I think helps me have this amazing community. So let me tell you some of the stuff that's gone wrong and the mean stuff.

So like, like I said, I was listening to this podcast and this person was literally going, I had an abusive email, I had someone message stuff on my ads saying that I was this that and the other, and I was just like, oh my goodness. So the worst stuff has happened. Have I ever been asked to do a refund?

Yes. Once. Literally once. I've never ever been asked to give a refund ever before other than this one time. And basically it was someone who worked one-to-one with me. Well, no, they were part of the 90 day program when it was a group program, cuz I ran it as a group once and I didn't like it, I preferred it one-to-one.

And they had a business that was severely impacted by the pandemic and their program that they were on ran through the pandemic and during the sessions, we made plans for the now as in what was happening, but we also worked on when the world gets back to normal, this is how you could approach this, this, and this.

Anyway, I was pretty happy with what went on, even though I didn't see the person definitely made some progress. She made some progress, but I didn't see it. As successfully as I would've liked, cuz obviously we were in a pandemic. Anyway, a few months later, she came back to me and said, actually, I've been thinking I'd like a refund for part of it because I couldn't do what it, you know, what was going on because, and she was very polite and nice about it because of what was going on.

And I sat and thought about it and I went back and said, no. Which is very brave of me, and I'm really not that brave. But I had to ask myself, did I do the thing that I promised to do when they pay? Yes, I absolutely did. Could I control the fact that during the pandemic she couldn't do some of those things that I suggested?

No, I couldn't control that and I did try to help her where she was at. Anyway, so I went back and I said, you know, I really appreciate you reaching out and thank you and this has never happened before, but, um, no, and unfortunately, I'm not happy to refund. However, what I am happy to do is once the world gets better and you are in a better place, I am more than happy to give you a couple of extra sessions so we can review what we talked about during the pandemic and you can start to put them in place.

And she came back and she was very happy and thanked me and that was that. So that's the one person who said they wanted a refund. The other, so I was thinking, have I ever had an nasty email? And I've had. I wouldn't say nasty.

I've had two emails that weren't happy with me and you know, and I'm not laughing cause it's not funny, but I did an email when Donald Trump got thrown off social media. I was in the point and yeah, okay, maybe this is bad taste now I'm talking about, but I was in the point of selling, build my list. It was just too good an opportunity not to miss in terms of like, and it wasn't even, I didn't comment on what I thought of Donald Trump.

I didn't say I agreed or disagreed. I literally named the fact of if it can happen to him, like someone of that size has been thrown off social media and is lost his voice. And that then I went on sort of talk about the fact of, you know, that's why we have email list. So yeah, you could have said it was a little bit bad taste, but it was a fact.

It wasn't, I didn't give my opinion on him. Anyway, I had two people email me back going, I didn't like that, and therefore I'll be leaving your email list. And I was again like, that's okay, fine. Like, and the funny thing was I'd even passed that email by a few different people and gone, is this bad? Like, is this, and, and they were very, and they're much, well, I am very cautious actually, but they were like, no, there's not literally nothing wrong with it.

So, and the fact that only two people messaged me, I couldn't have been that bad. So anyway, they left my email list and that's absolutely fine. Again, that's okay. Then what else has gone wrong? The, so the other thing, I've had a few comments on social media. Oh yeah. I had a song write a blog about me, didn't we? But that was flipping ages ago.

Have you heard this story? I've said it on the podcast for, but if you haven't, I basically did a talk somewhere, another marketer was in the room who had a huge chip on their shoulder. And basically wrote a whole bullet blog about me, about how terrible I was as a speaker and how I didn't talk strategy, but my talk wasn't about strategy.

It was about like what to do on social media now, it was a very basic talk and it said things like, and she claims she's a member of the charter and supermarket, which I was at the time. And you know what was funny, God, I'm such a child, right? So, this person wrote this blog and it, the day before I was about to speak on another stage.

The only reason I found it, I wasn't planning on going into this big story, but let me, it is a good story. So I was sat in bed the night before I was about to speak at a big event in the in not far from where I live, and, and it was probably one of the biggest I'd done, this was years ago, literally when I was getting started.

So it was probably one of the biggest events I'd done at that point and the event company had tweeted out saying, if you've got any questions for our speakers tomorrow, no. You can tweet them here and we can ask them, put them to them. So I'm looking at this and obviously they tagged me in. That's how I saw it.

So I'm looking at, and this person basically responds to the tweet going, does she agree that da da da da da. Does she agree that da da duh da da. And basically like we're really high level marketing stuff. Like like I said I've got a freaking degree like I know my stuff and I can use the big fancy words if you want me to, but absolutely there's no point.

It's just being ridiculous. So anyway, I was looking at it. I was like, Jesus woman's a bit aggressive, and I started looking back through her stuff and found her sharing this blog post about this Speaker anonymous speaker and I went to it and it was me. It was about me. Obviously she didn't name me, but obviously I knew it was about me because I could just tell.

And basically she had put, she was a member of the Charter Institute of Marketers and I was like, hang on a minute, I've met you. I've met her a couple of times actually. And you know, when someone's energy is not your vibe, you're like, Hmm, we are not friends. Like we are not gonna get on, or, you know, you're not my bag.

But anyway, so she told me her history or in the networking, she had said her history and I remember thinking when I saw that she was a, a member of the charters institutes marketers, there's no way you can be, because I know what it takes to be a member. You have to have x amount of years experience. You have to have had many like certain roles at this and da da da.

And I think to myself, I'm sure you haven't got that. Anyway, when I dug a bit, cuz I am that pathetic and I don't think I'd do it now, but I did back in the day. She was like an associate member or a student member, so she wasn't a proper member and she had the goal to say, she says she's this. So I immediately contacted the charter and shoot marketers and asked if I could be a fellow.

And I'm laughing at myself cuz I know how stupid I am because I wanted to be like, screw you man. I, and I'm, I was literally one year off being a fellow. Cuz to be a fellow, the amount of experience you have to have had and the amount of like level director level of roles and whatever. And I got it all barred the number of years and I literally was one off and I was like, please, can you make me a fellow?

And they were like, no. Anyway, I left cuz I realized once I grew up and stopped being a child, that actually being a member of the Charter Institute marketers was not that important in my world. Ah, that is a funny story. Anyway, so that happened but other than that, I really genuinely can't think of anything bad that's happened or anybody that's left the membership.

I've never had anybody leave because they're like, this isn't what I thought it was gonna be. I've had people leave who go, I can't afford it. I've had people leave who go, I just haven't given it a time. The people leave who go just isn't for me right now and that's absolute fine, but none of those people have ever gone on, not that I know of to say she was terrible. It was terrible.

So, and that was the other thing I was thinking about like having people say and oh, believe me, there are people who flip and hate me. . Right? And I laugh about it cuz I honestly it, well, I now don't think about it now. Like back in the day I'd like, it would kind of make me chuckle every time I saw them do something that kind of was a slight dig at me.

But I have got people in my world who hate me and do not like, who I am and what I do and that's absolutely fine. So it's not that I don't think everyone loves me, cuz they really don't. But I don't know anybody who's been in my world that has worked with me that could sit there and go, you are terrible. It was terrible and I'm really proud of that fact.

I'm really proud of the fact that I do. I am very honest about what you can expect and I exactly give you what you can expect. So, so yeah. So back to the whole community thing. So obviously I just wanna say that, you know, that was interesting for me to kind of go actually what's happened to me and nothing really that bad.

So other than people talking rubbish about me or not agreeing with me, which is fine if they're not my customer and they're not. So the community I care about are my community, like you guys listening to podcasts, people on my email list, people who buy stuff from me, people in my membership in executive club.

So, Nothing. No one in those worlds have ever said anything really awful, which is wonderful. So how have I created this beautiful, amazing space of people who are just wonderful and rave about me, which is so kind of them. And I was thinking about what is it, what have I done? And I think there's a couple of things.

And I know if you are listening to this and you are in my world, there's no way that you are not like this. I think the first one is, that you genuinely have to care. You genuinely have to give a crap and I think there are lots of people, especially in the online space who don't. Who don't care, who aren't that interested in seeing their people succeed.

They, they're in it for the money and, and I think that is a huge mistake. I think it's a huge mistake to try and come into the online world just to make money because it doesn't freaking work or seldom works. Believe me, I'm in it. I know, but yeah, like for me, you, I actually, I actually genuinely care about my members.

I actually genuinely care when people email me when they DM me and like the other week I missed DMing someone back for like a couple of weeks. I felt so bad. Just some lovely random person who had it DM me before, sent me a DM, thanking me for the podcast, which was just so kind. And I dunno about you, but I'm one of those people if I don't do that thing right then it's gone.

And you know, luckily my dms get busy and it of course drop down, drop down, drop down, drop down, and then suddenly I wake up in the middle of the night, one day thinking one day, one evening thinking, oh my God, I didn't get back to that person. So yeah, I think the fact that I actually genuinely care about the members, I think is a, is a huge one. It's a massive one.

Also, it's been interesting watching the online space and watching, not that I say watch it, like I'm, I've got tabs on it. Hearing, I guess from other people, numbers in memberships, how they were once quite big and are now very small, or not very small, but they've dropped and I mean by hundreds.

And that fascinates me because even though my membership is fairly small compared to, well, it depends what you compare it to. You know, it's normally around the hundred mark. It is been consistently in for a long time and I consistently keep my members and I haven't and don't do enough audience growth, so I'm not getting people in more.

But then there's a part of me that thinks I think there's a good reason for it. I like the fact that I know my members very well. I like the fact that I can probably tell you their kids' names or their partner's names, or you know, where they are in the world and genuinely actually care about them. So I think that's one thing.

I think the other thing, the other reason I've got this amazing community is, I think it's that consistency of showing up and doing what you do. So I've had the membership now for a long time. I've had the executive club for quite a while now. I've done 90 day for a long time. I've had build my list for a number of years and I still show up and I still do the podcast and I've consistently done it.

And I don't, it's not like I'm not using these things as kind of tactics to make money. So for instance, the podcast does not make me money, but like if I was doing the podcast just to make me money or build a...

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. How are you doing?

So, what are we gonna talk about today? Now, we're nearing the end of the year, and as you know, because I talk about it every year, because I have consistently been doing this for a long time, I do goal setting with my amazing community, with my club, with exec Club, and part of that goal setting, there's many parts to it because this isn't just a case of, okay, everybody sit down.

What do you wanna achieve next year? That doesn't, that's not how it works. But part of the goal setting is that we reviewed the year before and I just had, we just had our saw event, which is our members only event, and we had an amazing speaker called Nicole and Nicole Quiller, coach Nicole. Go check her out.

I will link to her in the show notes and she said she had this great saying that basically what gets measured gets improved. So that's why we look at what's happened. That's why we track back and go, okay, what happened? What did we do? How did it go down? What did I learn from it? So that's one of the things that we do obviously in the goal setting, is we go through and go, what went well and what didn't go so well in the last year.

And again, the aim of the didn't go so well isn't about beating yourself up. This isn't about going. Well, you've rubbish, aren't you? And you just don't achieve your goals. Probably should give up. That is definitely not what that's about. What it's about is giving yourself space to think about what didn't go so well and what can you take from that.

What can you learn from that? What comes to mind and how does that then lead you into doing your goals, because obviously we can learn by those things. And like I said, I, it's a very, the space I create for people to do this, it's, it's safe. And it's also, what's the word, am I trying to think of? It's, it's a positive space.

This, you know, it's not a space where we sit down and go, oh, this is awful. And if anybody's feeling like that, I managed to kind of move them through it pretty quick. So, one of the things, like I said, that I've done is I've gone through and I've listed what didn't go so well for me because obviously I practice what I preach.

I do all this stuff that I teach and I've written loads of different things there, and I'll tell you a few of my things that I've got on my list. So I spent too much money. That's what I did this year. Now I have to say in all the areas of my business, the finance one is the one I'm not brilliant at because I am one of these people and I'm having, I work very hard on this, so this is definitely something I'm working hard on, but I am one of those people, I have been one of those people that sees money in the bank and thinks, oh yeah, no, I'll just, I can buy that, that's fine.

And will invest and spend and do various things. Also, I have my VIP events that didn't make me money. They didn't make me enough money. They, the second one made a profit. However, it was not enough profit to warrant the work and the time that went into it. So I'm re-looking at how that might look this coming year.

And that's what I mean. So like, if I hadn't, it's a perfectly example actually. I'm so glad that randomly came to my head if I hadn't looked at that event after I did it and reviewed it and looked at what well, and what didn't go well, and what I made and what I spent, then I wouldn't know that actually Teresa, don't do it the way you did it before because it's not bringing you enough profit, profit in.

So that's the reason we look back. So yeah, I spent too much money. I didn't grow my audience as much as I'd liked, but again, when I look at it, I go, well, where was I focusing on that while I wasn't? So that might be wider either I, what else forgot down here.

I'd liked more people in the 90 day program and I think now I, I think that realization came quite late in the year that actually one of the things that really lights me up is people achieving and succeeding. And one of the easiest ways that people can do that is working with me one-to-one. And I think I had made the mistake at the beginning of the year thinking, I want to just grow the kind of more, want to many programs and not my, not my one-to-one.

And then I changed my mind, so that'll be why I didn't have enough. And then I spent money on things I shouldn't have. That was part of the spending many things. I did a launch for bill my List, and I didn't sell. Anywhere near what I thought I was going to, but it did something completely different, which was actually brought people into my world who had never spent time with me and then realized that I am who I say I am, and I show up the way I say, I show up, and they then joined the membership off the back of it. So that was really interesting.

So yeah, so like I said, I go through, but it got me thinking about what mistakes have I made in my business or what things have I done over the years that are just you know, things that I, I don't wanna use the word regret cuz regret's a horrible word, but, you know, kind of think I would not do that again and maybe should have done that differently.

And one of the things that I've got down is the fact of when I first started, I listened to everyone else. I listened to all the experts, I watched all the webinars, I did all the stuff. And back then, cuz bearing in mind I've been in this industry a long while. Back then it was very much, this is the way we became successful. This is what you should do.

And bearing in mind I'd come from a world of marketing where I'd marketed every different product that you, not every different product. I mean, there's a lot of products in the world, a lot of products in a lot of industry. Bear in mind, I had done that and I knew that there were, even though I would use common marketing threads through every single client and every single company I ever worked with, I knew that some things worked better for that industry and some things were better for that industry, and everything always had to be tweaked.

So why on Earth when I came into the online space did I think and I'm not angry at myself, although it sounds like I'm being here. But whyy enough did I think that I could literally cook a cutter, someone else, and that would work for me. I'm not entirely sure what my brain was thinking, but I looked at what they had, I looked at who they were, and I looked at kind of, you know, the money they made and I just went, I want that.

And therefore I did the thing that so many people have done and it's now my life's mission to try and stop anybody, anybody else from doing this? I went and bought their stuff and signed up to their programs and did what they said and, oh hell, that's weird. I am not the size of those businesses and I don't earn the money they earn because that doesn't happen.

Now, yes, there are successes, but it doesn't happen the way they say it happens. So that was a mistake. I shouldn't have done that. I shouldn't have gone and thought that copying someone verbatim would make me as successful as they are.

The other thing I made a mistake up with at which actually this leads into another, another of my points actually that I was gonna mention is getting involved with the wrong people. So with some of these big experts, I didn't do my due diligence. I didn't do my research. I didn't check what they had done, how they had created, you know, what they had created.

So some of these people now have had, back in the day, they had capital investment. They had, they had a partner that paid. They invested in them. Well, yeah, they're gonna be able to, do things. If someone goes, here's a chunk of money I didn't have that. They had key relationships, which are very closed relationships in the online space, and it is very much a who's who club of if you are in, you're gonna fly, and if you're not, then you blocked out.

And I didn't pay attention to actually, yeah, this person said they grew this way, but when I look at it, they actually were part of this person's world and they helped them by being an affiliate for them or whatever it is. So, I didn't do enough research around them and their expertise because again, there is a lot of people out there who only know how to do and be successful the way that they've done it not being successful because they've learned and worked with lots of different businesses.

And that's one thing that I pride myself in is that obviously, because I have had this years and years and years in marketing experience, cuz I have got a degree in marketing because I have you know, done all these things. I know. I know how to take someone else's business and help them for them and who they are and their industry.

So a lot of people that I maybe associated with or learned from, basically were only successful in the one thing that they did, and then they were trying to teach it to other people, and therefore their knowledge of the world was very small and very singular. So they couldn't, so if you went to them and said, I've tried the thing, you've said it doesn't work, what else can I do? They couldn't tell you.

So that was the other thing. But, and, and that leads into working with being associated with people that I no longer want to be associated with. Now, I, I am gonna do an episode on how I built my amazing, beautiful, lovely community that's coming up in a couple of weeks. But what I, the reason I was thinking about it is because of the fact of I have a really nice community and they are kind and lovely.

And I'm very lucky that I think I don't have too many people out there saying horrible things about me. I mean, privately they might be, they might think I'm an absolute idiot, that's absolutely fine. But from a professional point of view, I don't think, I don't think, I dunno to be honest, but I don't think anybody's saying she's terrible at what she does and she lies.

She doesn't do a coaching call and she doesn't do this. Cuz I do, I'm really honest, and I'm really transparent. So yeah. But what I have done in the past is I've worked with people, I've coached people, I've been friends with people that now do not at all align with me. And there are very specific points in which I went, Ooh, hang on a minute.

And I backed straight off for various different reasons. And I, you know, there's part of me that would almost like to be really honest with you and go, yeah, there's this person because of this. And there was this person because of this, but that wouldn't be fair on them because it's my own personal opinion about them and how they run their businesses.

So, but I think you can pretty much assume that if I used to hang around with them and now you don't see me hanging around with them, that might be, you know, that might be one of those people that I no longer align with. And it's exactly that, it's I don't wanna be a, I don't align with how they teach the stuff, how they show up in the world.

And do you know what, like the other thing that as a mistake I made is that I used to watch and pay attention and now I don't. I pay no attention to them. I've muted them on everything, even when I still have to be friends with them as such, I mean, friends is a strong word, but even when, God, this is really cryptic, I, you're gonna be sat like for Christ's sake, just tell us what you're talking about and who about, and, and I hate that.

I hate when people do, but yeah, even when I, you know, have to still be in their world at points. So I have to still follow them. I mute them all. I have a couple of very good close friends, business friends that would go, oh my goodness, like that person did this thing cuz they don't align with us and we don't like it.

Cause obviously now I only deal with people I align with and I stop them from doing that as well. I've, I don't wanna know, I'm not interested and I just wanna stay way out of it. So I literally am almost like a little mole in my house here, and I stay a hundred percent in my own lane. I don't pay attention to what they're doing.

I don't pay attention to what they're talking about, what they're posting about, and the people who are very close to me and know honestly who these people are that I don't align with. They don't tell me either, because they know I don't wanna know because it distracts me and frustrates the living daylights outta me.

And sometimes some of these people are crazy, passive aggressive and they will say things that are aimed very much towards me. And this is in the past, I dunno if they still do it cause I pay no attention. And I still, you know, I just can't. I just can't. So for me, one of the mistakes I made is, to kind of sum that rambling up, is.

When you first get to know someone, yeah, you don't know whether they align with you or not. So I'm not blaming myself for even working with them in the first place or coaching with them or spending time with them, or being in their world or buying their programs. Like I'm not, it's not that I'm blaming myself for that and saying that was a mistake and you're an idiot, Teresa.

I learned over time and, and some of these people, I've spent thousands and thousands with them, and, and actually over time I've gone, oh my word, you and I are not the same people. So, so at that point I distance myself. I mute it and block it and silence it all and just pay no attention. And I think that's a part of getting really confident about who you are and what you stand for, and who you wanna be seen with, and who you wanna hang out with, and being really confident in you and your values and your business, and also your audience.

So if you have an audience, you know, for me, my community are the most precious, valuable thing in my business. And I wanna make sure that I am serving them and bringing people into their world who adds value, who lights us up, who makes us happy, who, you know, is just a nice human to be around. So, and that was a real lead rambling.

If any of that made sense then well done. You, you are much better than I am. But yeah, so basically if someone doesn't align with you, run, run for the hills. And even, and like I said, you know, I have paid to be in things, I have paid to be in a program that I've talked about. I've had people on my podcast that part of me now thinks should like, you know, should I just delete the episode because they are so not in line with me anymore.

But it's all part of my journey and I'm very honest about it. I'm very honest about, do you know what, if you listen back, you'll hear me rave about some of these people and not so much now, so, so like I said, if you are finding that you. I'll go in, do you know what? This doesn't align with me. Don't do it.

Don't give them new money. Don't be in the world. You know, you deserve to, you deserve to work with people who light you up and make you feel good and want you to succeed as much as you wanna succeed. And cheer lead you, but also have your back and your shoulder like they, you know, for you to come in and go, I've had a terrible day and this is why.

And for them to be there and go, okay cool I sympathize, I am so sorry, and I'm also ready to help you pick yourself back up when you're ready. Anyway, like I said, I just went outta nowhere. I have no idea where I was going with all that. What else have I done wrong? I have fallen for real sleazy sales tactics.

The best one. Do you know what I'm thinking about doing? I'd love to get your feedback. I'm thinking about doing a list of all the stuff I've paid for and then cuz you know I'm not allowed or you know, basically some of these massive programs that you buy, it's within the terms and conditions that you can't say anything bad about the program.

Now who has that? Who has like, there's a couple of things I don't understand about business and maybe I'm very naive, but first off, why would I put something in a contract that says you can't talk about my program in a non-positive way? Because if it's terrible, then, alright. Like, I get it. I really, really do.

So that I just find absolutely baffling. The other thing I find baffling is people trademarking stuff left, right, and center. Like especially in the online space, there is, the content that's out there is insane. I am not precious about my staff. I know, I hear my own words come back to me all the time. It is hilarious actually, because, you know, there'll be people, if I will, that do not speak and do the way things I do.

And even when we start having these conversations, they'll be like, that is not for me. And then six, 12 months later, those words come outta their mind, like as if, oh, we, we suddenly decided that this is how I think or, you know, so that's funny and I'm, but I'm really not precious. I'm really, really not, because A, that's not authentic.

They're not being authentic. So, and, and it can't stand. It can't, it's not consistent. It's not you can't be, you know, and also it doesn't fit, right? So if someone's saying one thing, but they act another way, it doesn't fit right. So for me, I'm not precious at all because I know that if you want, I show up saying the same things, doing the same things, be in the same way for all 200 and whatever episodes of this podcast.

Now, have some of my opinions changed yet, some of my thoughts change yet. Have I said things in the past that I now did not align with yet? So I'm not saying that we don't grow and change, but it is how I show up today is authentically 100% me and how I showed up back then was a hundred...

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. I hope you are doing well. So we're starting the run up to Christmas and the end of the year, and this is always a really busy, busy time for people in my world and for me and business owners and parents and everyone in general, it just is a time where you're tired because we've had a full on year and the kids are ready to break up and there's always some serious organization to go on, like presence and planning and getting together and all that sort of stuff.

So it's a crazy time of the year, a really, really busy one. Also, if you're like me, you look at your financial year from January to December. So you know, December is kind of the last month that you can earn money in that financial year, which again, can have a huge impact.

So how do you navigate and manage this time of the year? I wanted to come on and do a really sort of quick, practical episode about how you can take a break over the Christmas period or how you can tackle that Christmas period. So the first thing that I would suggest to do also, if you can hear the dogs, I have two dogs around me who no doubt will move and make a noise on this podcast, so I apologize.

The first thing you need to do is decide on what you wanna do. So have a look at your diary. Have a look at it against school breaks or whatever, different events. Make sure you've got that planned into your work diary. Now my diary and personal diary both show up on the same thing, so I know like where I've got personal stuff and where I've got business stuff and it all gets chopped on the same calendar, which means there are a million different colors going on in my calendar and so many different things.

But first thing to do is actually look what you've got going on. So I want you to be really realistic about what you can expect from yourself. Cuz you might have made some really cool plans for December. And actually when it comes to it, you just don't have the time. So be realistic and decide what time you wanna take off.

So do you wanna take off over the Christmas period? Do you wanna take two weeks off? Do you wanna take a week off? How do you want that to look? And then the next thing I would say to do, especially if you have clients or people who will rely on you in some way is communicate that to them. So I will say to the club that for the following two weeks, when you know I'm gonna take two weeks off, I am on holiday and you know I will see you in January, have an amazing time.

And we have a Christmas party the a few days before I finish. So that's our kind of hooray! Happy Christmas! We're going away. But if you've got clients, email them and say, just want to make you aware of the hours that I will be available. Don't be nervous about doing that. Don't be scared about being really direct with them.

In my experience, I find that clients only have an issue when they're not communicated to or when their expectation is different to what you deliver. So if you are really upfront with them and straight off the bat you say to them, this is what I'm taking off, this is when I'm available, this is when I will need your thing by if you want me to do anything before the Christmas break and be realistic about that.

Again, don't say, you know, I'm gonna break up on the Friday, so last request by the Thursday. You know, your last request should be kind of Tuesday, and then you've got a couple of days to do it before you finish on the Friday. The other thing I do is, I am more than happy to spend time in my business when no one knows I'm in my business.

Actually, I love it. I love nothing more than working away quietly when everyone thinks I'm off, which is why I quite like doing weekend stuff. So, there's no reason why you can't use some of this time to actually work on the business when no one is expecting anything from you. No one is wanting something from you, but also don't feel like you've got to, don't feel like you've gotta put yourself in a position.

Do you know I do this all the time. I don't want anybody else. In fact, I want you to DM me or like past, send something to me. I want you to tell me whether you do this. I put back things that I wanna get done in the business until Christmas and go, I'll do this over Christmas and New Year. I'll do this over Christmas and New Year. Oh, I'm gonna do this over Christmas and New Year.

And I think to myself, how many months do I think Christmas and New Year is? And also forgetting that, yes, I'm on holiday, or I'm away from the business. That period, but actually huge chunks of that period is taken up by Christmas activities. And actually, I'm one of these people that we've got, you know, grown up stepchildren and my daughter shares Christmas with her dad, so I don't have the whole of Christmas.

So for me, I'm actually one these people who doesn't do a huge amount for Christmas. If you guys have got children who are with you and family that are with you over the whole period, you've gotta be really realistic. And what I want you to think about as well, and you might go in a, you know, in my dreams, Teresa, but I want you to think about what time can you take off for you.

And I don't mean you're gonna take the time off when the children are broken up, or I want you to think about can you actually take some time off for you? So it might be that you take some time off for you before they break up or after they've gone back to school. They normally go back to school pretty swiftly if you've got children or when the family have gone home or when things have quietened down.

So when can you take some time when you're not doing anything on the business, you're not doing anything for other people, and you can just have a breather and do whatever makes you happy, go for a walk. Not for me, that wouldn't make me happy. I'mma like, "No. Yeah, maybe". It's not for me really. Mine is go for a massage and that's my do something for me.

But think about during that time, cuz again, the temptation is to cram so much stuff in and then go, oh, and I'll do all this work and then, oh, I'm gonna spend time with these people and see these people. And actually you come out of Christmas into the new year feeling more exhausted than when you went in.

So when are you gonna take some time off and sit and watch Netflix all day or you know, go and have a massage or whatever it might be. So have a think about where you're gonna plan that time in. The other thing I want to think about is, do you want to make sure you've planned in some time for next year?

Now, I am a as you know, cuz if you listen to this podcast, you know, I'm gonna go on about this again. And I was about to say, you have to now you don't have to do anything, but I strongly recommend that you set goals, whether you think they are pointless, unrealistic, whatever. Having goals honestly is a game changer in business and that's why this time I did the goal set in day and I've done it, it's already happened now by the time this episode goes out, but, and I might think about doing something in January for those of you who didn't get that or want to do it because it's so, so very important that you do that. That you plan what you want to happen next year, how you wanna work, who you like working with, what you wanna earn, how you wanna spend your time.

So I want you to think about that and have you done that? So is that something you can do over Christmas? Is that something that you are gonna plan in for you know, beginning of next year, but really we don't wanna be going into a new year without having an idea of A, how this year went and B, what we wanna do next year.

And then my last one is ease yourself back in. So, I don't want you saying to your clients, okay, I'm back on Tuesday the third. Is it 3rd of January, I think. And basically, Have it that from day one it's like boom, you straight back in. I'm nice going through my diary. Yes tuesday the third, unless you're in Scotland and then you get bank all day, but, and I think the children probably go back to school in the UK anywhere around the fourth I think.

I don't really know if I'm honest, but like I don't want you just throw yourself back in. So for me, I wouldn't have any meetings that first week, like the week of the second, that first week of January. I'd have no meetings and I would schedule any meetings I have for the next week. Just because it's, uh, you know, for me, I want to get back into the flow of things.

You gotta remember who you are, what you do, replan, put some new things into place if you've started some new goals. So I think don't try and rush back and do it all at once. Try and have that break. And like I said, if you weren't able to have that time for you, prior to Christmas and over Christmas, because understandably, it's a very busy time of year.

Then maybe that's the time to have that time for you. So maybe that first Wednesday of that week, Wednesday the fourth, maybe you take that day off to go and sit in a coffee shop and read a book or get yourself a massage or whatever it might be. So those are my kind of tips in terms of getting ready to take that break over the holiday period.

Let me know what you do. Let me know if there's anything I've missed that you think, oh, that would be good if I normally do this, and that works well, and then let me know how you get on. I'm really interested to see how many of you take time off over the Christmas break. Now I wasn't ever that good at it, and I am much better at it now even though I haven't got the children.

And even though, well I have got the children at some points, but even though I haven't got young children, have more time. And even though, you know, like when I do say I'm broken up, it just means I've broken up to the outside world. So I am more than happy to do stuff. You know, for me during that time period.

But let me know how you get on. Let me know. I really hope you're gonna take a good break and enjoy that festive period. Okay? They go, I told you that it would be a short and sweet episode. Let me know what you think and I will see you next week for an interview.