Today’s episode of the podcast is all about how to put the mindset tools, tactics and strategies that you hear me talk about all the time into practice! In this episode I share a vulnerable and recent real life story where I took everything I teach about mindset and put it into practice to actually make a difference to something I experienced, at the moment it happened. So get ready to learn, and if you think there is someone out there that could benefit from this episode, then please go ahead and share it with them. I would really love for you to do that!

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

• What mindset is and why it is important
• How to reframe thoughts into facts
• The importance of knowing and noticing your triggers

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Join my monthly mindset sessions in the Dream Business Club Teresa Heath-Wareing Instagram Teresa Heath-Wareing LinkedIn Teresa Heath-Wareing Facebook Teresa Heath-Wareing Twitter  

Transcript

Ep 291 You are listening to your Dream Business Podcast, and I am your host, as always, Teresa Heath -Wearing. So if you are a regular listener, then right now you might be thinking, this doesn't sound right. Normally, Teresa does an intro. She tells us what episode it is, and then some music kicks in and it's Teresa again telling us what this podcast is all about and why we should listen to it. Not today and not from now on. I am mixing things up a little bit again. Uh, I mix things up at the end of the year by stopping interviews and now I, I'm on a quest for simplifying things in my life. We have busy and full lives, which is lovely and beautiful, and we are very privileged. However, I am no quest to kind of bring it back to almost like not when I started, cuz I can assure you life is nothing like when I started business, but just bring it back a bit. Like do I need all the things that we do and should I do them that way? And I just questioned a few things. So one of the things I've decided to do is give you entirely what I'm calling clean episodes. And what I mean by that is as I speak to the recording now, this is what you're gonna hear. No editing, no tweaking, no improving the sound of my voice or whatever it might be. And I am hoping that it doesn't sound that different. I'm hoping that you don't notice a huge difference cuz we were always very careful about the editing, but I just want to simplify things. I just wanna have things a little bit kind of less complicated, one less step in the process. And if me just hitting record and you hearing me as rawly and as authentically as I am when I record it, then great. I am happy with that. And like I said, I really don't think you're gonna notice a massive difference. I don't record it and make massive errors that my lovely editor had to edit out. If I swore, which was more likely the case because I'd messed up, then I would go back and delete that as I'm recording it. So it wasn't like he had to get rid of any of that. It was just that maybe if I took any sharp intakes of breath or paused for too long, like I just did then, then he would probably clean that up. But we're going with it. And this is a. I think this is in line with some other stuff. Like I did a story today on my Instagram saying that I don't use filters anymore. I used to use filters because I used to think I don't look good enough. I don't, my skin doesn't look clear enough, or my eyes don't look bright enough, or my teeth aren't white enough and I dunno whether it's an age thing. I don't know whether it's a confidence thing that has come with all the personal development stuff I've done. But no longer, like, this is who I am, this is how I show up. I am very confident in who I serve and what I do, and I know I do a great job. So does having a filter on an Instagram story change that, does having a perfectly edited podcast with amazing intro and outro music and all that jazz change that? No, it doesn't. It's, it's exactly the same, regardless. So that's what I'm doing. I am showing up perfectly imperfect. And I am debating, and I really wanna get your feedback on this, so I would like you to take some action on this if you could. I would be very, very grateful. I am debating recording myself on video when I do these episodes. This is not something I've ever done before and I'm debating about checking it up on YouTube like, It's the same. I'm recording it sat at my computer. Um, and I'm actually co-working as I'm recording this, so I'm actually currently on screen with the co-working, uh, people in my executive club. Um, but yeah, just wondering what you think it, you know, does that interest you? Do you think that could be good? Let me know. Anyway, let's get on with today's episode. So, have you ever thought that when you've heard me talk about mindset, tools and tactics and strategies, and you've thought, yeah, that's great, that all sounds brilliant, but how do you actually put them into practice in real life? Well, that's what I'm gonna share with you today because this is what happened to me a couple of weeks back. I have the most amazing story, which is very vulnerable, uh, but in my quest to show up even more vulnerable than I do. I'm gonna share this story with you as how I took all these tools and strategies and tactics that I have used over the years to actually make a difference in something at the moment it happened. So get ready to learn, and if you think there is someone out there that could benefit from this episode, then please go ahead and share it with them. I would love for you to do that. So someone asked me the other day. What mindset was, and no one had ever really asked me that before. I think one person had, and I sat and thought, and I said to them that I think mindset is just the fact of noticing, slowing down and being conscious of stuff. That's what I think mindset is. That's what I think it comes down to. But how do we get conscious in the moment? How do we stop during that moment when if we could just master our mindset, then it could make a world of difference, because that in itself is hard. Like knowing the tools, learning the tools is great, but actually when we need it in the moment, that's the bit that's really, really difficult. So how do we do that? So, The first thing I wanna say is like everything. This is a practice, and I know people don't wanna hear it. Like they don't wanna hear that things don't work. Because if I could give you a magic tip or trick or something tomorrow to make all this perfect, I'd take it. I would happily give it and I would take it because this stuff is hard. But I promise you it's worth the work. So let me tell you my story and then I'll share how I did this and how you can do this too. So I went away from my birthday. I went to Amsterdam and I chose Amsterdam for two reasons. The first reason was on my goal list this year is going new places. My husband and I have very favorite places that we go, and we go there all the time. And as much as we love it and we really do, I really wanted to try somewhere new. And the second reason I chose Amsterdam was it's very close to the UK so the flight time for that is about an hour and a bit if that. Now, I don't like sitting in economy because I'm not built for it. And when I say I'm not built for it, I don't mean from a high maintenance point of view. Although I do love the nicer things in life. Who doesn't? I mean, physically I live in a larger body and sitting on a plane in economy is physically painful because the seats will dig into me. Um, it is. Actually quite humiliating sometimes having to squeeze yourself in and I get a little bit claustrophobic, so I don't like how much space I take up in the seat and how close the seat is to me. If you are brand new, this is a very vulnerable episode. They're not all this vulnerable, so I. And, and, and I didn't want my poor husband to have to pay for a premium or a business class flight. I will do economy if it's under four hours because I can just about manage in those four hours. And if over four, I can't manage. So anyway, we get our flight to Amsterdam and my husband being an absolute, well he works in the, um, he used to work in the military in the RAF and now works for Boeing who build planes. So he loves planes, he loves flying. So he always gets a window seat, and I was in the middle seat. So as we get on the plane, and we're normally one of the last ones to try and get on, because who wants to sit on a plane longer than you need to? So we get on the plane and there's a woman sat in the outside seat. So, um, I get on and my husband goes, we have to get this woman to move, and my husband goes into the window seat and I squeeze into the middle seat, and this woman looks at me in a way that makes me feel as if I don't belong. And as if. I am taking up too much space in this world. She almost looks me up and down and has a element of disgust on her face, and huffs and puffs a little as I'm trying to get comfortable and get myself sorted. And already feeling pretty anxious about the fact of being in an economy flight. This starts to send me over the edge and I start to get really anxious and I can feel myself, uh, my heartbeat quickening, my breath quickening. Uh, I can feel it in my throat, I can feel it in my chest, and I am starting to get hot and I am starting to feel very uncomfortable, and I am doing everything in my power to make myself physically smaller than I am, which obviously is impossible, but I have got my hands and arms tucked in as tight as I can. I am leaning as far over on my husband's side as I can, and I'm starting to get really upset. And I tried talking to my husband, but obviously she sat next to me. So I'm trying to like sign language and whisper to my husband that this woman has just looked at me in a way and I'm so upset and I'm so angry and in my head I start thinking of all the many things I might say to her. Now, the staff, she was from the Netherlands, so I'm not entirely sure that she'd be able to understand me. But in my head I start thinking about all the things I would say to her, all the many reasons people live in a larger body, and if it was only down to calories and calories out, what a lovely thought that might be, but it isn't ever down to that. And actually there are many reasons people do to do with trauma, to do with, you know, many, many things like treatments, some drugs make you put on way. Like there are so many reasons why people live in a larger body and lots of them might not be anything to do with them. And also, it's none of this woman's business. But in my head I am like, you know, if this is what you think, you need to educate yourself because that is a very shortsighted view, but of course, I'm doing this in my head, right? So this is taking about five minutes for me to start to spiral up, and I'm literally holding back tears, feeling like I'm about to burst into tears at any point, and then a moment came in my head and I took the tool that I have been using for a very long time. But I was able to see it at that very point cuz I was able to see me getting triggered. I was able to feel that I was having these emotions. So then at that point I went, oh, hang on a minute in my own head while still sat there and I sat in the seat and I closed my eyes and I breath. Okay. And I literally took some really long, slow, deep breaths and I got fully in my head. And when, I mean in my head, I mean, I kept my eyes closed. I had my noise canceling headphones on, and I literally was like, it's just you, you, you know, you're just here. And I thought to myself. What do I know as fact? Okay, so one of the tools I use we look at circumstances or we look at what's fact and then what's thought. Because often we take the thought as fact and it's not. So what did I honestly know as fact? Well, what I knew as fact was she looked at me in a way I didn't like. Now, I didn't know what she was thinking behind that. Now I can guess, and I'm pretty sure I was right, but I had to say to myself, what did I know as fact? Fact was she looked at me in a way that I didn't like and I assumed the rest. So once I had got to myself, okay. All the fact is, is that she looked me in a way I then was able to start to change my thoughts. My thoughts changed into ways of, there could have been many reasons she looked at me that way. She could have looked at me in that way because she thought she'd got a whole seat to herself, and suddenly these two people come in and sit next to her. She could have come off a horrible trip into the UK because something awful had happened. Like there could have been a million things that happened to her to make her look at me in that way. But none of them were to do with me. Even if it was, it still wasn't to do with me. Her thoughts and opinions and, and whatever of me were none of my business. And I started to relax and I started to feel my chest calm and my breathing slow, which I did on purpose. And by doing that, I am telling my body there is nothing to worry about and telling the anxiety to calm down. I am safe cuz when your breathing speeds up, your body thinks you're not safe. So I brought my breathing down and I, I was telling my body I am safe. And I went through and thought, well, I don't know the reason she did that. So actually it's none of my business why she looked at me like that. And what do I know for a fact? What I know for fact is I deserve to sit here in this space. I deserve to take up space in this world, and there is nothing wrong with me or anybody else's business, how much physical space my body takes up. And actually how she looked at me should not impact me one little bit. And I did this and I went through all this process in my head and I reframed the whole thing. And within probably 10 minutes of being on that flight, I had almost dropped into this kind of spiral of I'm gonna have the most horrific time and I don't wanna be on this flight, but I couldn't go anywhere to actually, I don't know this woman, and she's done nothing to me and I'm gonna smile and be my normal self. And just because she chooses to be a certain way that has no reflection on how I should be and how I should show up in the world. And I sat there and I tried to communicate to my husband how freaking proud of myself I was. And I don't know that he necessarily got it, but like I was like, I just did that. I just like took myself from potentially spiraling outta control to changing my thoughts. The thing that I have been practicing for such a long time and it worked and I have sat here with a big grin on my face, feeling very happy about going away, being on this plane sitting next to this woman, I am not trying to shrink myself. I am sat very comfortably in my seat and I deserve to take up space. So that, for me was an absolute revelation. Like I've been doing this work for a while, and sometimes you do the work in faith that it's going to work, but you're not really entirely sure how and when. And that's what happened. I'd been doing the work and then it got to the point where I was able to reverse a situation in a very short space of time. A situation that previously probably would've ruined the weekend, and I know that feels like a complete exaggeration, but my filter of me and my body and the space I take up brings a lot of shame like it has done in the past. There's a lot of shame that I am the size I am. So for me, that would've spiraled out of control and I would've felt very uncomfortable for most of the weekend and I didn't, I genuinely, and I wasn't even kidding myself. You know how there's the whole fake it till you make, it wasn't even that. It was absolutely deadly serious. I was fine, genuinely fine and happy. So how do you do that? How do you get to that point? Well, the first thing you have to do is notice. You have to pay attention to yourself, and you have to notice these triggers. You have to see when things are starting to affect you, and one of the ways in which you can do that is noticing when you get an emotion or a reaction that you don't like. Now, there is no bad or wrong emotions. Emotions are fine. They are all perfectly human to feel every emotion. Someone, people think mindset is like just walking around with a big, that grin on your face all the time. Well, that's not the case because things are gonna happen that are gonna make you sad. People will die, people will get ill. Life will be rubbish and they will make you sad. And it's not the fact of you shouldn't feel those things, it's the fact of you wanna move through them as quickly as possible or as as appropriately as possible because they just don't feel great. So for me, it's about paying attention when you feel feelings that you don't like. For me, it might be anxiety, shame, frustration. My anxiety often comes out in anger. So anger is a big trigger for me. It's about noticing those things. Then once you've noticed them, it's about then slowing down and giving yourself the chance to breathe and just pay attention. And it's about then trying to separate your thoughts from your feelings and your thoughts and feelings from the actual facts. So, For example, uh, you might have put a proposal out there to someone or I, and this is definitely been true for me. Um, I'm sure you guys will relate as well. I have asked to speak. It might not be someone to speak, but you've put yourself out there. You've said, I want to do this thing, or I want to, uh, Work with you or whatever it might be. But I put myself out to speak on a stage once of people that I knew very well and they said no, and I was devastated and I got upset and I got frustrated and I felt shame because I thought they don't think I'm good enough. And I read so much into that no of my own thoughts, which equated to my own feelings, but the fact is all they said was no. They didn't say, "No, Teresa, we think you're a terrible speaker, and we'd never put you on our stage in a million years." In fact, they gave me a really good reason why they couldn't pick me. And it was a perfectly reasonable reason. It had nothing to do with me. In fact, the reason they didn't have me was because I wasn't part of their membership. Oh, no, no, no. It wasn't. It wasn't. It was because I didn't have the product that they were speaking on, so I wanted to speak on a particular subject, and I didn't own one of those products myself. I helped other people with them, but they only wanted people there who had those products themselves. Perfectly reasonable explanation. But of course, instead of reading that, I read everything else into it. But again, you need to take yourself back to the facts. You need to become the scientist. You need to become the investigator and go, what do I know is true? And then you are able to say, okay, so if that's what's true, Are the thoughts and...

Today’s episode of the podcast is all about why I used to think coaches were full of a lot of rubbish, and what made me change my mind! In this episode I talk all about what a coach really is, what you can expect to get from working with one and why every business owner would benefit from having a coach in some capacity. I’d really love to know where you’re listening to this episode, and what you do whilst you tune in - is it whilst you’re on a walk, whilst you get ready in the morning, as you work or somewhere else? Take a photo or a screenshot and tag me in your Instagram stories to let me know!

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

• What a coach is and why you need one
• Why I decided to invest in a coach and how I got one
• The difference between group coaching and one to one coaching
• The difference between coaching, mentoring and accountability

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Find out more about my One to One Coaching Join my Dream Business Club or Exec Club Teresa Heath-Wareing Instagram Teresa Heath-Wareing LinkedIn Teresa Heath-Wareing Facebook Teresa Heath-Wareing Twitter

Transcript

Hello and a really warm welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. How are you doing? So, I was getting ready the other day and I went down an absolute rabbit hole of watching this really funny guy on reels and it got me thinking, cuz normally when I get ready, I listen to a podcast or I listen to a book or I normally do something. So where are you listening right now?

I want you to like take photos, screenshot, whatever it is, and tag me in on Instagram stories and let me know where you're listening. I'm really interested to know, like I said, normally mine is kind of getting ready in the morning in the car. Not that I go in the car a whole lot really, cuz I don't travel unless I'm speaking.

But yeah I'm fascinated to know where are you listening to this? Please come and let me know on Instagram by tagging me in a post. So a few weeks back I sent an email to my lovely community and it was titled Why I Think, or Why I used to Think coaches were full of, and I won't say this swear word, but you can guess.

And I also shared it on social media and I got a really good response and I got a lot of people coming back to me saying, yes, this really resonates. This is what I thought. And I thought it would maybe make a good episode to talk about why I thought coaches were full of absolute rubbish and. What is coaching and why you need one and why I don't think that anymore.

Because I did. I genuinely thought for a really long time you don't need one and, and I and I, the problem was the coaches that I knew and saw when I first started my business were middle-aged, white, straight men. And. They had no idea about me and my business. And the problem is, I guess this comes a lot from me, not necessarily from them.

I'd worked in a very male dominated industry. I'd worked in the car industry. I worked with a lot of white, middle-aged, straight men and corporate guys, and they were really patronizing. And I was a girl and I was young-ish at the time, and they really did patronize me and made out like, because I liked to laugh because I was chatty, that obviously I wasn't very smart.

And I guess my problem was that I looked at these other guys and thought, you can't relate to me. And by this point, I was older and I'd got my daughter and I'd gone through a divorce and all this kind of stuff. But I genuinely still thought, you can't relate to me. You don't know who I am. You dunno what my life is.

And I had fallen into the trap that most people fall into. And I'm not saying it was all bad cause I think there is an element of it that's good, where you find these big, massive gurus and. You start to follow what they say and then after a while when you get confident, because actually you find someone who does pay attention to who you are and makes you feel worthy, that you realize that all the stuff they were telling you to do you can't do because that's not your life.

And when you've got a four-year-old waking you up at God knows what time I can't get up and do a morning routine and work out. Not that I want to. Thanks very much. And actually, you know, now I'm much more empowered to do what I wanna do and what works for me and my season of life and where I am. But back then I wasn't.

And I guess, like I said, I looked at these coaches and I guess the coaches I knew were only local and thought. Yeah, no, you don't know me. I'm not interested. And I actually used to think, if you're that flipping good, why don't you do it yourself? God, I was so naive, so naive. And then I found my coach and, and all I knew was, and it was actually my team member at the time, lovely Katie, who said to me, do you think you need a coach?

And I was like, I don't even know what they do. I dunno why I'd want one. I dunno where I'd find one. And I was really kind of like, I don't understand it. And I really didn't, I didn't understand what the purpose of a coach was and why I would need one.

And it was through having a conversation with her that kind of got me thinking about it. And as the universe would have it, and I'm sure, well, I'm not sure. I know I've told this story before, but I'm gonna tell it again about how I got my coach Mary. So I was sat in San Diego and I had been to trafficking conversion, and I was on my way to social media marketing world.

Just so happened that in one particular year they were right next to each other, ie. Like trafficking conversion were the first three days and then the next four days were social media marketing world. So I ended up being out in San Diego for about two weeks. It was Ace. Obviously I'm heading in San Diego and at the time there weren't many people who did that.

Like not in my world. Now a lot more people I know go out there and do social media marketing world. But back then it wasn't like literally no one I knew would do this sort of thing. Anyway, so, and I was out there with my team member at the time, which was Ace that we both went and we were sat in trafficking conversion and it was huge.

It was like 4,000 people. And all I could think was, who the hell do I think I am. Like what on Earth am I thinking this is what is gonna make me different from any of these other people. There's too much competition out there. There's, it's ridiculous. And instead of feel all inspired and motivated, cuz I was in San Diego at a conference with loads of business people, I actually felt completely overwhelmed and a little bit like just not good.

I felt really kind of sad and just not in a great place. So anyway, I wake up at four o'clock in the morning, which you do when you got jet lag. And I'm sad and I can picture myself now cuz we had a really lovely room on the harbor looking over the boats and I'm working away and the sun's coming up and while I'm working away I've got my headphones in.

Cause my husband's sleeping. Obviously he was in the military at the time. He's very used to jet lagging and could sleep through it and I'm listening to Amy Porterfield, who at the time I was a huge fan of, and very much wanted a business like hers. And as I'm listening to a podcast, she starts talking about her coach Mary Hyatt, and she talks about the fact that Mary is Michael Hyatt's daughter, and how the Hyatts are a phenomenal species, which I can confirm they are.

They are amazing humans. I basically, You know, amazing She was, and all this sort of thing. So I thought, let me check out this person, Mary Hyatt. So I went onto Mary's website and I can't remember what it said on her homepage, but I remember just thinking, oh my God, that's me. Like, yeah, 100% totally me. So she had a form which you could fill out and it had a, a salary requirement, as in you had to earn X amount in your business.

And I did in dollars, but I didn't in pounds. So I thought that'll do, filled it in, sent it off. Go off to the conference. A couple of hours later, I get a message, an email from Mary go in. How weird is this? Oh, that was the other thing. Sorry, I missed a bit in the form. You had to say why now. What made you at that point decide to reach out to her?

So I put, I'm in San Diego, should be feeling amazing and all pumped and excited and I'm not, I feel completely overwhelmed and sad and all the things. And she messaged me going, oh my God. I'm in San Diego. Well, she was actually in Carlsbad, just down the road, not like, not too far. And she's actually based in Nashville, so she's like, and I've got some free time before I go to the airport.

Do you wanna meet for lunch? And I was thinking, are you kidding? Like, this is crazy. So I was like, yes, obviously jumped at the chance to have lunch with the, you know, amazing Mary Hyatt, who I didn't realize at this point how amazing she was. And. Anyway, left the conference, met Mary for lunch. Had a really lovely chat to her, started to understand more about what she did and what she could do for me.

And then she told me her price. Right? And Mary at the time, this isn't the case now, but Mary at the time was, I think it was $15,000 for six months. And I was at the time. I was like, that was lovely. Thanks for lunch. See you later. Bye. Never gonna see you again Mary cuz I obviously could not afford that.

And I, she said to me, get back to the UK, let's get on a call. Let me show you what coaching is and what it can be and then make a decision. So said my goodbyes, thought you're amazing. What a shame. I'd love to coach with you. Looks like I'm gonna have to go with one of the, you know, dudes from my local chamber of Commerce or whatever it's gonna be.

And anyway, get back to the UK. Mary contacted me, let's book in a call. And I was like, okay, thinking I can't afford it, but I will book the, the call in and see what it's like. And anyway, book the call in. It was really good. Had a great session with her. And so she's like, you go away, you have a think about it.

So I messaged her going, can you do part payments? She went, Nope. And I was like, okay, can you do this? Nope. And I was just like, oh God, would you do three months? Nope. Anyway, I. She messaged me going, what's, what's up? And I said, this is huge amount of money. Like let's get on a call and discuss it. She said, I thought I don't wanna get on a call and discuss it.

Just realized I've been telling this story for a really long time. I hope you're not bored. So anyway, I get on a call with her cuz she makes me and she says, what's your concern? And I said, what if you're not worth it? And she went, good point. What if I am. And I was like, yeah, I don't know. And basically crazy.

Long story short, I signed up and I paid the money in full and it scared the living bejesus me. And within a very short space of time, I'd made that money back because of something that she coached me through. I basically was working with two clients, and both clients were seriously going over their hours.

And she coached me through how to ask them, have the courage, how to reach out to them, and how to put together an email, which she read. And basically both of them ended up paying me big chunks of money, which I would never have got if I hadn't have had her as coach. So that is the very long-winded story of how I met Mary, but she completely changed my mind in terms of what a coach is.

So what is a coach? What do they do and why do you need one? The first thing that you have to remember and think about is if you are a, if you are Beyonce or if you are an athlete, or if you are anybody else, you have coaches. And no one bats an eye at that. It's really funny, like no one thinks, you know, well, if Beyonce's coach was so good, why aren't they Beyonce?

Well, because that's not what they do, is it? And if you know, I don't know. Michael Phelps's coach is so good. I literally just pulled a random sports person name out my head. I dunno where that came from. You know, if his coach was so good, why isn't he doing it? Well, cuz that's not the job they do. But none of those people have an issue having a coach, none of them.

So why do we think we can do it without one? So when I did my coaching qualification, one of the things they talked about was like some of the basic stuff was, you know, what is coaching and all that sort of thing. And I got a few different definition. So the Association for Coaching, which is who I'm qualified with, says it's collaborative solution focused, results orientated systematic process in which the coach facilitates the enhancement of work performance, life experience, self-directed learning, and personal growth of the coachee. Did you get all that? Bob Thompson, who has got a book who I've read is says, A relationship of rapport and trust in which the coach uses their abilities to listen, ask questions, and play about what the client has communicated in order to help the client to clarify what matters to them and work out what they want to achieve in their aspirations.

And then Tony Robbins says, the life coach definition is someone professionally trained to help you maximize your full potential and reach your desired results. They are like a supportive friend and a trusted advisor rolled into one. They are someone who will push you to identify your goals, hold you accountable, and provide encouragement throughout the journey to become a better version of yourself.

I actually really like that one. I think that's a really nice example of what it is. So that's basically what. You know, the professionals describe as coaching, but then. The general consensus is that a coaching relationship is between a coach and a coachee. They have an assumption that the coachee has all the resources they need inside them.

So sometimes coaching, it's not about like, you know, yeah, there's tools and things to help you get to them, but ultimately, if you know you want a coach and need a coach, you've got the resources inside you. You just need someone to help you get them. The coach helps unlock their answers and potential through gentle questioning, listening and playing about what they've heard from the coachee.

And it's about, it's about facilitating a move towards something, whether it's growth, development, goal or aspiration. So basically, My role and how I see A, me being coached, and B, me coaching is that I get to understand you. I get to understand what's important in your world and what you want. And sometimes that is a task in itself.

Sometimes people don't know what they want and that takes some work to get it out. So that sometimes is like the biggest hurdle that they're not entirely clear, but when they are clear, it's like, oh yeah, now I can see it. And then that next bit's easy for both of us. Sorry, if you can hear my crying downstairs he's moaning cause he's just been put back in his bed.

So yeah, so sometimes it's that space and then once we find out, think they want, then it's about going, let's put a plan together. Now the way I differ slightly from coaches is I kind of do three main things. So I coach, I mentor slash strategy, and then I'm account, I hold you accountable.

For me, a coach will hold you accountable. A coach won't always give you strategy. So for instance, I've been on a coaching call on a group thing, and I've told you this story before and it makes me laugh so much. And this group I was in had different types of coaches for different types of things. And one of the coaches was a Facebook ads coach, right?

And this Facebook ads coach was great, by the way. She was really, really good. And. Kind of, you know, had a conversation with me in private that basically she was told she wasn't allowed to give answers, she had to coach. So what would happen is someone would come on and go, I've done this ad, you think it's any good?

And she'd go, well, do you think it's any good? It's in a Facebook ad. Like, tell them. And obviously she couldn't cause she was looking for someone else, but it just really makes me laugh. And sometimes you just need to be told, okay, do this, do this, do this. Like here's the strategy. So for me, I span all three. I offer the coaching side, I offer the mentor strategy side, and then probably the most importantly of all, I give you that accountability.

So that's what I see and define as coaching in terms of what they actually do. How does it look? Well, you'd get on a call with me and the first call would be, let's sit and talk about who you are and what you want as your business and what your business look like today, and what's your family done and like, what's important to you and what's the dream and all this kind of stuff.

And then that's where I would kind of flip a bit over. I'd probably do the coaching side there, but I'd flip a bit over then after that first session to the kind of strategy mentoring. But then what happens inevitably is we will get to a strategy that we both agree is a good idea and for some reason you don't wanna do it.

So then we'll go. Why is that? And then the coaching comes back into play. And then once we coach through that, then we get into action and go, right, when are you gonna do it by? But by that point, you're feeling much more confident and much more happy about it. Okay, so what's the difference? I wanted to address the difference in group coaching programs.

Dog is crying again, real life over here. Group coaching programs versus one-to-one now. None of these are good or bad. They're just different ways of doing it, and it's just important that you know the different ways of doing it. So I have been in group coaching programs that have been massive, and I have been one of 80 plus people, which I would say is not a group coaching program.

It's no, okay. It is a group coaching program, but it's not what I needed at that point. I needed...

Today’s episode of the podcast is all about how you can come up with your perfect customer. In this episode I talk all about why we can't just look at the demographics and how we can now go much deeper than that.  I’d really love to know where you’re listening to this episode, and what you do whilst you tune in - is it whilst you’re on a walk, whilst you get ready in the morning, as you work or somewhere else? Take a photo or a screenshot and tag me in your Instagram stories to let me know!

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

• The problem with only looking at demographics
• How to understand your customers behaviours, motivations and aspirations
• Why you need to focus more on the benefits of what you sell, rather than the service or product itself

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

heath-wareing-b3a9.mykajabi.com/visibility">Join my Visibility Challenge Teresa Heath-Wareing Instagram Teresa Heath-Wareing LinkedIn Teresa Heath-Wareing Facebook Teresa Heath-Wareing Twitter  

Transcript

Hello, and a really warm welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. How are you doing? So this week I am going to talk all about your perfect customer. Because I was putting together a freebie that I have about visibility. If you want it, you can go to teresaheathwareing.com/visible, and basically it's like a five day email challenge where I email you every day and I give you something specific to do.

And it's all about getting more visible, getting in front of other people's audiences through things like podcasts and speaking on other people's in other people's groups, or doing a guest blog or whatever it might be. But it's a really brilliant way to increase your audience and a really successful one.

So I've put together this visibility challenge, and when I was putting it together, I was going to record a video about how you come up with your perfect customer, how you know they are. And I just didn't get time cuz I really gave myself some tight deadlines, which. I'm actually finding that I really need to do at the moment to get stuff done.

Sometimes you're over productive and sometimes you need a kick, and I'm, I'm in the season of needing a kick right now. So I was gonna do a video, didn't do a video, and then I thought, oh, I know well, it was actually not my idea. It was one of my lovely members' ideas. Why didn't you link to an old podcast?

Well, I couldn't find one for ages and ages, and I thought, surely I've done an episode recently on how you come up with your perfect customer. But evidently I haven't. So I am going to do that today, but it's quite good actually because I've recently talked about this in lots of talks I've given. And I've got some new examples and some new things to maybe put your way, which might help you come up with your customer a bit easier, or at least give you a different way of thinking about it.

So if you've seen me speak about this before, you will have seen me talk about that we can't just look at the demographics. So when I started back in marketing all those many, many, many, many years ago, when I did my degree in it, We literally used to just look at like what age is our perfect customer? What sex are they?

Where are they based, or what's their location? What's their marriage status? Do they have children? And what kind of job might they? It was really basic information, and that doesn't work any longer, and it doesn't have to because we have so much more information available to us now and in this amazing world that we're in.

And the example I gave when I did this, I talked about an estate agent, so I was saying, let's say you had an estate agent and I went to them who's your perfect customer? What age are they? Well, there could be any age, you know, basically from the over 18, right the way up to whenever it is, someone might buy a house.

Well, what sex are they? Well, they could be any gender. What location? Okay. You could argue that they're going to be in the location of the estate agents, but. You've also got people moving into the area, so what location are they coming from? Well, anywhere. Are they married? What's their marriage status?

Could be, might not be, could be divorced, could be separated, could be single. Do they have children? Well, some do, some don't. Some won't ever, some will. What jobs they do? Well, there could be any jobs. So this just doesn't work because the whole point in getting to know who your customer is, is that you are marketing, you are messaging your social media, your, your content should always be leading them to, to you and your stuff.

I, as your perfect customer, should read your content, should see a social media post and think you're talking directly to me, and that's really hard to do when you don't know who these people are, or you are only looking at them from those points of view. So for a long while I've been talking about can you answer the following and it's do you know what their behaviors, motivations, and aspirations are, what their pain points are and how do you meet their needs?

Now I put together in one of the many presentations I've got, I've gave a few different examples. One example is my business. And another example I've done recently because I did a talk for a big, big company over in Greece and they had like FedEx there and they had like the Greece's largest telecom company and it was huge.

So I didn't wanna use me as an example cause I felt a little bit small. So I ended up using Dove as an example. And actually it's a great example and, and I'm sensed kind of falling in love with them and their marketing. So let's talk about behaviors, motivations, and aspirations. So when I look at my customers, so if you are a customer of mine, I'm assuming you might resonate with some of these.

So you have a business that you love and you know you want to make a difference to the people you serve. All of my customers are that you work really hard, but just not just in the business. So you. It isn't just about the business. You have other things, and it might be that you have a family. It might be that you have a partner, you might have hobbies.

This is okay, but could be better. I think that's standard for everybody who's in business. You might get nervous meeting new people, and you might lack confidence in your business skills and your own self-belief. So you know that you are good. Well, you might not always know, but I'm telling you, you are good at the thing you do.

Sometimes you just might lack a bit of that confidence in terms of running a business. And you want your business to grow and be successful, but you don't necessarily want it to grow at the risk of something else. So if I said to you, well, actually, some of you might say yes to, and I was about to say to you, if I say to you, right, you can't see your kids in the week, but you can have a successful business, some of you might say yes, some of you might go, no, I love my children. I want to see them.

But you know what I mean? Like if I said to you, okay, you gotta work every hour that God sends and then you might be successful. A lot of you are gonna go, yeah, no, I don't want that. And you wanna grow at a pace that's realistic, right? So you want to know that you do wanna succeed. You do know you are, you are meant for more.

You have got huge aspirations, but actually your behaviors and motivations are around doing a good job and showing up authentically. So that is my customer. So then if I whip over to the one that I did for Dove, When it came, so in case you're not sure, I'm sure you know who Dove is, but they are a brand in the uk, not just a UK brand.

They're an international brand and they do skincare and haircare, and they do do it for males. They do male products, female products. But when you look at their stuff, their marketing is predominantly aimed at females. So behaviors, motivations, aspirations for Dove customer is that they want to take care of their body, but they don't wanna spend a fortune on skincare.

So dove's customers do want nice products, but they're not willing to spend a huge amount of money. They care about their planet and themselves, so they are not necessarily into. Like, you know, really fake toxic type stuff. If it makes 'em look good because they do wanna look good, but they don't wanna spend a, a fortune and they don't wanna put it at the risk of the planet or themselves.

They love and value natural products. They want to see real women and they want to see themselves represented. So when they look at their people's marketing when they buy from companies. Dove's customers want to see themselves represented in the marketing and they love seeing empower messages about women.

So these are kind of the behaviors and motivations and aspirations of a Dove customer. So as you can see, they're much, much deeper. They're going in on a really personal level. So now let's go to the next point, which was pain points. Now, what often here happens here is people get really focused on the thing they sell and the thing they fix.

That's not always the case. So in my instance, in my business, some of the pain points that I help with, or some of the pain points that my customers have is they're worried their business will fail and they'll have to get a job. Now that's like the ultimate fear and the ultimate pain point. It's like, I really, God, I couldn't imagine anything worse than myself.

Honestly. My husband tries to convince me that I should get a corporate job because he sees how hard I work, and he's like, but you could earn really good money really easily. You wouldn't have to do half as much as you do already. You're like, yeah, but I love what I do, so no, thank you. So, you know, the idea of getting a job is just the worst in my head, and some of that pain points might be then not making enough money, and they want their income to be important, so, They are bringing in money.

That's without doubt. People in my world, they do tend to be bringing in money, but it's not enough, and they want it to be important. They wanna feel valued about the money that they bring in. They're not sure if they're doing all the things right. So they've been delivered a million different ways to do things.

They've heard that many different experts. They're a bit lost in the weeds as to what is the thing they actually need to do and what is, what is the next step for them? Like they just wanna know the next thing. They get overwhelmed with everything they should be doing in their business, and they wanna be taken seriously.

Like they don't want people to think they're just playing at this and they are serious business people. They really wanna be taken seriously and they want to become more confident. Not only about their business, but also with them. The people who come into my world, they do the work on themselves. You know, they've maybe had a therapist, they've maybe had a coach in the past.

These people cared. They've probably done the Enneagrams and the Myers-Briggs and all that. And now they just want it to make sense. And they want, they want their, their life and their business to become more of one. And they wanna work out how they use all these amazing tools and bring it together to be the best possible version that they can.

So those are the pain points that my customers have. So let's whip over. I'm literally going between two presentations. If you hear my mic's moving. To the Dove presentation. So what are the pain points of people who buy Dove products? So they're a busy person who doesn't have time or money to spend hours on themselves.

So people who buy Dove products, they're not the kind of people who necessarily go into a department store a weekend and spend ages at makeup counter, like having everything tried on and you know they haven't got time for that. They're tired of seeing what women should look like. They're tired of seeing the filtered, perfect versions of women that once felt like we had to be there, but now feel like that's just such a rubbish, so let's just be truthful about it.

They want a good product without spending lots of money and they wanna be seen, they want to feel beautiful. They want to feel empowered, and they want to educate themselves on self-care. So they know that self-care isn't just about taking a bath. It's a lot more than that, but they want to be educated around that. And they want, they know they're beautiful and they want people to see them as beautiful and therefore the world to kind of be a bit more realistic about what beauty is.

Okay, so then the last thing, how do I meet their needs? So let's go back, flip back to my business. So in terms of how I meet their needs, what often happens here is we often go, well, I do one-to-one, I do one to many. I do, you know, small coaching groups. I speak on stages. I have the podcast. That's not what we mean.

So when we say how do we meet their needs, how do I meet those problems? So for me, it's things like I have a community of like-minded business owners for support. So the people in my community are the nicest humans. I say this all the time, and people don't get it until they come in. They really don't, they don't understand.

We're doing a, an open house soon, so do come in for that cuz people don't quite get what I mean until they come into my world and then they're like, these people are phenomenal. They are phenomenal. So I provide that. We obviously have online training that they can do in their own time and doing in their own time is really important because of the fact they're busy and they're juggling a million things.

We give really straightforward and no BS and no fluff advice. So they can get those direct answers. We offer accountability. Now, in my mind, what has been the biggest change in the online world, and certainly for me and what I offer, is that people are getting a bit tired of the courses, and I've actually stopped offering any new courses in my group because they've got a shed load of them.

And if there was something in particular that they were all like, we really need help with this, then of course I would bring someone in to do it. And actually instead, I'm offering up the space to my members and I'm saying, come and teach us what you know. So one week we'll learn about Feng shui, then we're gonna learn about art, then we're going to learn about Google ads.

Like it's really cool. Anyway, so we offer that kind of space where they can learn things, but it's the accountability that people need. So for me, I have been bringing in more and more and more accountability to get them to get the work done. We give them live coaching calls where they can ask me anything.

So when they're overwhelmed and they're not sure what to do next, that's why they have those coaching calls. We do the mindset stuff so they can develop themselves further in terms of becoming a more kind of, you know, I was gonna say rounded human, that's not the word I wanted to use at all. But you know that they have these tools in their toolbox in order to whip them out when life gets hard.

Cuz it does and it, well, we run businesses this stuff is not easy. And they want the safe space to grow where there's no growth shaming. So I've been in groups before where it really has been, unless you're bringing in this amount of money, you're really, you're not important. And that is just shocking because.

First off, if we all go back to the last time we were employed and how much we got paid, you know, it's probably kind of unbelievable that we could ever earn the money we earn now through a job. So somehow when you get into your own business, people just kind of lose their minds and think if they're not earning seven figures, they're not successful.

Well, that's absolutely madness. And the other thing that I, how I meet their needs is I get to know them and their business. So if I genuinely know the people in my world, I had an amazing testimonial written for me the other day. Which fyi, I just paused this recording so I could run off and get it not physically run off.

It was on my computer, so it was on LinkedIn, which was really lovely. It was as a recommendation and it was lovely Sarah Jane, and she put, I've been a member of the Business Dream Club and I don't know. Dream Business Club. I don't know the name of my own club. I've been a member of the Dream Business Club for about a year, and I followed her free offerings for a couple years before that, when I wasn't her client, she always had time to personally reply, to answer my replies to her emails, which gobsmacked me, but is part of the course for her.

She genuinely cares about helping people, and that's part of it to her. Now I'm in a membership. I can tell you there's nothing she wouldn't do for our members to help us help ourselves. The monthly group coaching calls is always helpful even if you listen, because she digs down right down into what's going on and make sure she understands not only the exact situation you're asking about, but also the most important.

What's most important to you? I hate reading, you know that. She deeply understands that different people have different priorities. There's no one size fits all answers in business, she's cultivated a fabulous membership filled with similarly kindhearted, positive minded entrepreneurs already to help and encourage each other.

In many Facebook groups, I see people routinely bash for not, for not somehow already knowing things, but never in the dream business club. And she goes on and says lots of other things, which is just amazing. But that was so, so lovely to hear. So when we talk about meeting their needs, it's not necessarily about here's what the product is, is about how you meet the needs.

Like so I could have a different type of product and still meet the needs. Does that make sense? So for instance, if you do Facebook ads for a living, someone doesn't have the need, they might, but most often they don't...

Today’s episode of the podcast is all about what journaling is, how to do it, and what it can do for you and your business. In this episode I take you through an overview of one of the Mindset Live sessions that I have recently delivered in my membership and give you practical things to go away and try yourself! As always, I’d love to know if any of this resonated with you and whether you journal or might now give it a go. Please feel free to connect with me on my socials and let me know.  

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

• The benefits of journaling
• How journaling improves writing and communication skills
• How journaling helps you to process things
• How to get started with journaling

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE

There is no right or wrong way to journal, so let go of judgement and how it should be done and make it what’s right for you.

 

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

The science behind the woo Join the Dream Business Club Teresa Heath-Wareing Instagram Teresa Heath-Wareing LinkedIn Teresa Heath-Wareing Facebook Teresa Heath-Wareing Twitter  

Transcript

Hello and a really warm welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. How are you doing? So this week we're gonna be talking mindset again, and I decided that I wanted to share something that I did in the Club. So every single month in the Club, we do a mindset call and the aim of the mindset call is to teach the members some new mindset skills or to go through an activity with them that helps them get unstuck, helps 'em move forward, helps 'em understand them better, their business better, how they work better. And for me, things really changed in my business when I got the mindset, like I was gonna say, like under control or sorted, but it's never, ever sorted it. Managing a mindset and working on a mindset is a constant, constant thing. It just means that I know what tools I have so that I can pick on a right tool when I need it, and also that I move through things quicker. So rather than being stuck for a long time or being fearful of a long time, or I'm able to move through it a lot quicker and move past it a lot quicker than I used to be able to because I have all these tools that are at my disposal. So, One of the things we do like stuff is I do this every single month, so if you are not finding a place to work on mindset. And actually this is something that is really unique to our Club and to my community. Lots of other places I've been don't offer this. So if you don't have a safe space to learn and, and actually this is the sort of stuff that I do with my coach, so. We do it on a one-to-one basis, and what I'm doing within the Club is I'm allowing that to be available for a price that you wouldn't get a one-to-one coach for. So do go check out the club if you think you might find that useful. So today I'm gonna take you through one of the sessions, not completely through the session obviously, but I'm gonna give you an overview to one of the sessions that I did in the Club. And this is all about journaling. Now, I don't know if you've ever journaled, I dunno if you've ever thought about it, looked at it, or whether you are a proficient journaler. But it has been quite impactful and changing for me. I don't, I didn't wanna put the word life changing before that, but it, it has had a huge impact on me and how I manage things. And therefore, I did an exercise so that my members could understand what journaling was, how to do it, how to go about it, what it can do for them, because it is an amazing and amazing tool. But I have to say, when I first started journaling, when someone said to me, oh, you should journal that, I was just like, what are you on about? And it took ages. Really, really did. It took at least I would say a year before I really understood what they meant and then started to see the benefit of doing it. So if you are sat there thinking, yeah, try that didn't work for me. Give it another go and just bear with you yourself. It's a bit like meditating. People go, can't meditate. Everybody can, to a degree. They've just gotta find their thing and their way of doing it and how it works for them. So, so one of the things we started off talking about is why you even need to journal or why it's a benefit. And I gave them a few of the stats that I shared in my episode about the science behind the woo. So we'll link up to that if you haven't listened to that episode, it's a really good one, especially if you're a bit skeptical about this stuff. Because I do like to back it up with some evidence because I am really passionate about it and I get really frustrated when people are like, oh, it's just such a load of rubbish. It isn't. It's actually very smart and it has some real good science behind it. And whether it did or not, like if that's what you choose to believe, I choose to believe if that makes my life better than Amen to that. Some of the stats or some of the facts that I find. So there's, there's lots of benefits to journaling. So let me run through some of the benefits. Journaling can help you achieve your goals. So when you use your journal to write down your specific goals, and you can better keep track of them, it'll help you stay accountable and also remind you what you need to do for your goals. And there's something about, and there's proven, and I should really research this stuff before I get on here and talk, but the chances of a goal coming true once it's written down is a higher percentage than if you just say it. Like I said, it really helps track progress and growth. And one of the things that I have been really, that actually has really impacted me is being able to go back and read my journals from some time ago and someone had a question about keeping journals, so I will get to that. But I've been going through a bit of a personal journey, which I will talk about at some point. Not sure when, but I will talk about it. And actually, one thing that has been really good is I have been journaling about this, this part of my life for a long time, longer than I care to remember i.e. Frustrating. Well, I'm not frustrated that it's been going on longer than I care to remember, but anyway, so being able to look back at those journals and see that, oh my gosh, you know, I was having trouble with it then, or I was dealing like that then and now how I am is just so amazing. So being able to, and, and often as well, we, we forget, like, so you know, when you do something and you really annoyed at yourself that you did it. If you took time to kind of write that down, then that might be a slight step towards not doing it again, because it's that kind of realization of, okay, this is how I feel when I do that thing, or this is what happened when I did this thing, and so next time you have almost a reminder. So the tracking and progress thing is really, really helpful. It can gain self-confidence. So again, seeing how things have moved forward. It makes you feel more positive. It makes you feel happier that you've been journaling different things and talking about different things, and those things have improved. Journaling actually helps you improve your writing and communication skills. So the writing skills are the fact that your writing and I tend to journal and they recommend that you journal with a pen and paper, that you don't journal with a computer or typing or that sort of thing. It's just something to do with the natural process of writing, but it can help improve your writing skills. Now for a long time, I've said I'm not a very good writer. And I'm not gonna say that anymore. You know, I'm not gonna say a brilliant writer, but it has actually really helped me. Maybe could help me speak, help me write better, because I'm writing every single day. And communication skills, it absolutely does help because I have been writing how I feel about things and when I'm proud of things, and when I'm frustrated about things or when things have not gone well or have gone really well. That communication has really, really helped because I'm learning how to express myself well by journaling. It also helps reduce stress and anxiety, and I'm gonna talk about that a bit in terms of some of the ways that I've journaled. But when you can journal something out, Then it can actually really help in terms of bring your stress levels down. And if you listen to last week's episode, we talked about fear and one of the things I talked, I mentioned to you was about the chimp and the human. And actually how writing down what the chimp is saying then helps you wear it out to then do the human side and go, what would I do about that? It's almost the same sort of thing. You know when you are letting, it's a release for your emotions. It can help you find inspirations. So sometimes when you're journaling, it might be that you are asking yourself questions. It might be that you are asking yourself for some help. And sometimes just through the process of writing and journaling, you can actually find some inspiration from yourself in your brain somehow that maybe you didn't have before. It can help strengthen your memory. So by writing things down, it can improve your memory, but also the, the act of writing it almost tells the brain you want to remember it. So it's almost like when you note take, when you make notes, it's because you wanna remember that thing. It almost helps the same sort of thing. And it does help you overcome problems. Like I said, it really does focus on those kind of, when you are writing down, you are kind of working through a problem. It can really, really help. In the, in the training that I did with the Club, I actually read out a part of my journal and it was a really vulnerable part and I, I am not comfortable reading it on a podcast where I know my people in my Club and I was just about comfortable enough reading something. But the reason I read it was I wanted them to see how I use journaling because one of the things that people think is that they have to do it a certain way or it has to be a certain length or they have to write about certain things, or is it just writing about your day? So the first thing is if you are going to journal, is you have to let go of all that judgment. You have to let go of like right, wrong, should be this way, should be that. Absolutely not. It's whatever it is to you. And at the end of the day, your journal is for your eyes only. There's not a right or wrong way. There's not a certain way you should design the journal. I mean, I look at bullet journals and think they're stunning and think, oh, I'd love to do that. Mine look like an absolute mess. And half the time you can't even read my writing cause I write So Scrawly, so. It's not, you know, you don't have to worry about the spelling or the neatness of the thing, like none of that. It is your one space. Do whatever you want. It's only you that's going to read it. Which brings me on to one of the questions I had, which was, do I keep my journals and I have kept my journals. I might one day get rid of them, but actually right now, going through the stuff I'm going through, it's really helping going back and, and looking at them. Although I never write them with that in mind. I never write my journals thinking, oh, I can't wait to come back and read this. Like, I really, really don't. But their concern was, What if they write something and then someone reads it? And it was because someone was watching a program on Netflix called Sex Life, which I hadn't seen. And then I started watching it and basically she writes this kind of really raunchy journal about her ex-partner or something, and her husband finds it in, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, it's not that good, fyi. Well, it's definitely not, you know, Not a, like a serious brain thinker type thing. It's an absolute like, yeah, whatever. So anyway, they were kind of saying about this and I said, well, first off, My husband knows I journal and he wouldn't read them. That's just him. He'd probably be very bored if I'm honest. But the other thing is I write in such a way that I would have trouble reading them back, let alone someone else. So I don't worry about someone reading my journals. But if you did worry about someone reading your journals, then you might want to get rid of them. You might wanna get rid of them because it's something very cathartic about burning them or binning them or whatever it is, and getting rid of that old stuff. But it's entirely up to you. Like I said, this is your thing. You get to decide whether you keep them, whether you don't. Well, some of the things that the journals have really helped me with, and when I think about what I read out to my members, It can really help me process things. So one example I have, and I've talked about it before, is when I first got together with my husband, my stepdaughter was 15. And you can imagine how that went. And it was hard. It was really, really hard. And at times I felt like I wanted to give up. Throttle her and throttle my husband and like just generally, it was really, really tough and it's very emotive and the like, going back to last week's episode, talking about the chimp and the chimp paradox, the chimp was on full force with me and I am quite an emotional person anyway. So I stuff would really get to me, and I would use journaling as a way to let all that out. And in all honesty, the stuff I used to write like would've upset people that I was really mean, and I said really harsh things, but I was so head up and so angry and so wound up because of things she'd done or the way she'd spoke or behaved or whatever it was. And being able to journal all that out, got that frustration out. And was able to really kind of then get to the end and breathe. And my amazing coach Mary said to me and has said to me many times, what if I came from love? And I started working with her when all this was going on. So I. I would then at the end of the journaling write, what if I came from love? And then I would approach the same scenario. So if, for instance, my stepdaughter had done something that I wasn't happy with and I went to my husband and said I wasn't happy and he defended her and I got angry and blah, blah, blah, blah. Like I said, you could imagine, and maybe you've even been through it, and if you have then I feel for you, but. I would then come from love and go, same scenario. What? What? You know, what do I think now if I'm coming from love and I'm now a bit calmer? Well, my poor stepdaughter, you know, her life has just been turned on its head and there's this new woman coming into her dad's life and her mom went off as someone else. And my poor husband is very much in the middle cuz that's his daughter, but I'm his wife and. And suddenly you start to kind of really rationalize it and, and work through it. And there was a fair few times where I would've lost my, you know, top of something and then I would've journaled and then would've come back to my husband and gone, listen, I'm sorry about that. Like actually, I shouldn't have acted the way I did. Now when he started saying to me every time I got a bit upset about something, he think you should journal that out. I wanted to hit him with the journal. So yeah, I think he thought it was a magic trick for me to apologize every time. No, that's not the point. Like it is okay for me to get upset about stuff and it's okay for me not to apologize if I'm not in the wrong. So yes, it really, really helped with that. And then the other thing I did with the bit that I read out was I had done something that I was annoyed with myself and frustrated with myself. I kept asking myself questions, so I was like, why did I do this? And I would journal why I did it, and then I'd go, and did I think that helped. And then I would journal the outcome to that. And then I said, what would I do if this was Bea, if this was my daughter? And then I wrote what I would say in that situation if I was talking to my daughter. So if my daughter had done the thing that I had done, or if my daughter was angry and frustrated about something, what would I have said to her? Sometimes just taking that time to kind of step back and look at it from a different way is brilliant. So some of the things you wanna think about if you're thinking about starting journaling, if you've not done before, is, like I said, you let go of all judgements. It's how you wanna write, so what you wanna write about. Sometimes. Sometimes I'll sit down and write a paragraph and go, I'm done, and move on with my day. And other days I'll write pages and that's fine. Some days I'll go, I've had a lovely morning. And this is what's happening in my day, and it looks more like a diary, and other times I am literally pouring out my heart on the page. Again, it doesn't matter. Be really realistic if you're getting started. So don't think that you are gonna write pages and pages of heartfelt, deep, meaningful things on day one. That might not happen, and that's fine. It might not ever happen, and that's okay. I'm sure it at some point will. And again, if you are going to get into a habit, which is one thing that is really helped me. So I, you know, I've got a routine where part of my daily habits is I journal and it tends to be one of the first things I do in the day. So I'll meditate when I wake up and then I get ready and I do all the breakfast things and all that jazz. And when I sit at my desk, the first thing I do, pray, open my computer and look at stuff from the day is I journal. So is there a point in your day where you can include it, where you can go? That's the point I'm gonna journal and that's the point where I'm gonna sit down and write some stuff. It might be that you wanna journal at the end of the day, like you might wanna journal like what happened in the day, or how you felt about the day or whatever. And it doesn't matter again, whatever suits you. And then you can journal about anything that comes to mind. So some people find this really good, some people find this really like disabling, as in they sit down to write and they're like, I dunno what the hell to write. So if you are stuck, then you can absolutely go and use journaling prompts or you can just literally write down what's ever in your head. And I've done that. There's a book called The Artist's Way, which has...

Today’s episode of the podcast is all about overcoming fear, and I am chatting all about what to do when you are scared to do something and how to step over that, and also why you shouldn't make decisions from fear. As always, I’d love to know if any of this resonated with you and whether you had any lightbulb moments. Please feel free to connect with me on my socials and let me know.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

• How feeling fear can be helpful
• What The Chimp Paradox is and how to deal with it
• What to do when fear kicks in

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE

We do need fear and we're always going to have fear, but what we don't want it to do is to paralyse us or stop us from taking action.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Teresa Heath-Wareing Instagram Teresa Heath-Wareing LinkedIn Teresa Heath-Wareing Facebook Teresa Heath-Wareing Twitter

Transcript

Hello and a really warm welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. How are you doing? So this week I decided after a couple of weeks where we talked about practical things, I was gonna mix it back up and we'll do some mindset stuff. And this is kind of my plan going forward. So I really wanna make sure that I give you some of the practical things that we really need for business.

But I also wanna make sure that we look at the mindset side because that is as important. If not, I might argue more important than knowing how to do a strategy or something like that. So today we're going to look at fear, which sounds like a really fun podcast episode, but I promise this is gonna be a good one.

I am gonna give you lots of practical things that you can do to help you get over fear or move past fear, or to make sure that you don't make terrible decisions when in fear. Fear is a very natural thing. We all feel it and it's like nature. It's important that we do feel fear. Obviously back in the days where we were cave people, we needed fear to basically help us protect ourselves.

And even though we are unlikely to be chased down by a lion today or whatever it might be, I dunno what it was back then, I wasn't around obviously. What we do is our brain still perceives things the same kind of way. It still thinks that we need to kick into that fight or flight or freeze or thorn kind of situation.

So it gives us fear and, and it's doing a good thing. It's trying to be really good by going, this is a bit scary. I need to tell you, this is a bit scary because what I want to do is keep you safe. and it wants us to stay in our comfort zone. That's what it's trying to do. It doesn't want us to get those emotions of feeling nervous or scared.

It wants us to stay where we know in our brains that we are safe and we will stay alive. But obviously the difference is now it's not a matter of life and death, it's the matter of doing a live or not doing a live or posting that thing on social media or not posting that thing. And it might seem like these are really little, silly things that I'm talking about.

But really fear can be anything and something that one of you might think, well, that's easy. Like I'm never scared of that. Someone else might be absolutely petrified and that's absolutely fine because we're all very different people with very different life experiences and very different feelings.

So, like I said, the main gist of it is that it wants to keep us safe. It wants to keep us in a safe place. And like I said, the brain unfortunately has not quite caught up with the fact that keeping us safe doesn't mean protecting us from death or being malled or eaten alive. That actually thank you, but I'm not gonna die if I go and post something on social or send that email or put my price up.

So we need to be mindful that that's the case, that that's where the fear is coming from. However, we also, there are some advantages to having fear, like I said, one, the initial thing of let's not get malled by a bear, but actually having fear can be really helpful. So for instance, as you know, I speak a lot and I love it, but does that mean I never get scared before I go on stage?

No. And I actually really like the fact that I am nervous because it proves to me that I'm taking it seriously, that I'm not at a point where I'm thinking I'm so good at this stuff. I'm not scared, I'm not bothered because I think at that point I'm probably not giving it the respect that it's due. So actually sometimes that fear, that feeling of fear can be really helpful.

It can make us just understand actually this is, you know, this is something I'm doing here and I need to, to bear that in mind. What I tend to do when I speak though, when I feel that fear, cuz obviously I do love it. What often happens is the minute I get on stage, it goes like within the first minute of me talking, I then start to relax into it and it's fine and great and I love it.

What I do, just out of interest, is I try and do the reframe thing, which is a, a Mel Robbins thing where basically the emotions for fear and the physical feelings in your body for fear are pretty much exactly the same as excitement. So lots of people, when they're nervous can go, I'm just excited. I'm really excited and try and kind of trick the brain that way, but I ground myself so I will breathe.

I will do some breathing exercises. I will imagine. This is where I'm like, does this sound weird? It's not. It's not weird, but I imagine kind of roots coming outta my feet and going into the ground and really steadying me and I'm breathing as I do this. And if I can, and I'm in a position where I can take my shoes off, I'll take my shoes off to do that.

But sometimes I'll be stood at the side of stage waiting to be called on and I'll be imagining and doing that grounding at that point. Now I do grounding because I am way too excitable. My nervousness and my excitement comes out in me speaking really fast and breathing really fast and just being a little bit much.

So I like to ground and kind of bring myself down a bit just and steady myself a bit just to not be that excited when I go on stage. So, , we do need fear. We are always gonna have fear, but what we don't want it to do is to paralyze us or stop us. And that is sometimes what happens, that the fear, and you won't know it's the fear.

Like you'll come up with every single excuse in the book as to why you can't do something, and it's not until the digging down and digging down or working with a coach that eventually the thought of fear might actually come out and you realize that it stopped you and paralyzed you. So what I've got is a couple of things I want us to look at today.

I want to talk to you about what to do when you are scared to do something, and how to step over that, and also why you shouldn't make decisions from fear. It doesn't normally have brilliant outcomes. So let's talk about the when something is stopping you. So the first thing you gotta do is kind of recognize that it's fear stopping you and all the other things you are telling yourself might not be the reason.

So it's not perfect enough. I don't like the way something looks. I need better copy. I need this. This isn't right. Like, I'm not saying those things aren't true, but usually it doesn't need to be the level that you are thinking it is. It can absolutely go out. And I was saying to someone just the other day, one of my one-to-one coaching clients, I was saying to her that she was putting together a website and she was like, you know, I need to, I and I, I said to her and she said, she just needs to get it out now.

And I said, listen, what you've produced is really good. I've seen people who paid people to do their websites and they're worse than what you've done. So there is nothing wrong. It can go live as is now. And I think. Like I said, that that's the kind of thing that stops people.

So that's the first thing to recognize. Am I saying something can't happen because I'm scared and because I'm actually fearful of what might happen, but I'm actually making every excuse under the sun. So if you identify, and you might need to work with someone to help you identify this, but if you identify that actually I'm just a little bit scared of what's gonna happen, I want you to.

Well, let me go back. I wanna explain something. So have you ever read The Chimp Paradox? So I did this in a talk recently and I dunno whether I've talked about it on the podcast, but if I have, I Well, I say I apologize. I don't apologize cuz it's flipping brilliant and like the reminder is well needed. So there's a book called The Chimp Paradox.

If you've not read it, I highly recommend it. Personally, I find it quite a hard read. Maybe I'm not smart enough. It's by Professor Steve Peters and basically in the book, he simplifies and gives an analogy for parts of the brain. So, and I am simplifying it further. So if you are very smart and you know about the brain, please don't come and tell me that I'm an idiot cuz we know that already.

So the prefrontal cortex and the limbic system, these are the two systems in the brain he's talking about. I just like the fact I get to say those big words. So the prefrontal cortex, he calls the human and the limbic brain or the limbic system, he calls the chimp.

And basically the difference between the human brain and the chimp brain is that the human likes to find evidence. They like to be rational, they like facts, they like logic, they look at perspectives. They see shades of gray. So they know that it's not just a yes or no answer or a black and white decision, and it's normally the real you, whereas the chimp feels the feelings.

And I make this joke that I'm 90% chimp and my husband's 90% human. It feels all the feelings, it's all the emotions. It's irrational sometimes it's paranoid sometimes. It sees black and white. So it's like, so if you're not with me, you're against me type thing. And it wants to win and it wants more. So it's the chimp brain that doesn't let you celebrate when you do a win or when you have something amazing and it basically just goes. Actually move on to the next thing.

So what happens is when you have an idea in your head or a thought in your head and something happens at very quick speed, there's also the computer in other parts of the brain, which, like I said, I'm gonna keep it really simple for the, for the purpose of this. But basically it looks and goes, have I've done this before?

Have I got any experience of this? And if it hasn't, It kind of goes to the chimp and the human, except the chimp is so fast and so strong, the chimp will kick in first. So the example I give is, let's say you have cooked dinner for your partner who's coming home and they're late. So they're late leaving work and they're late coming home and you've ruined dinner.

And you think he's late and your chimp kicks in and your chimp is like, oh yeah, that's brilliant. Yeah, just perfect. I've been slaving here all day. You've been at work and you turn up late. I dunno why I bother cooking dinner for you. You're so selfish. You're really horrible, blah, blah, blah. And your chimp is having a field day, right?

And your human has got no looking right. Your human. Try as it might. It cannot compete with the chimp. The chimp is too powerful, too quick part of the brain, and it's the emotional part. So it's getting really upset and really angry, and really frustrated and really annoyed and saying all sorts of words about your partner.

If your human brain could have kicked in, your human brain probably would've gone, oh no, it's he's late. I wonder, you know, he's obviously been stuck at work. Even as I'm saying this, I'm thinking, I'd never say this, laughing to myself, like, in what world would I ever be this calm, like you might be thinking to yourself, I feel bad because his days run longer.

He is probably really tired. He's probably fed up that he hasn't left work already. He's probably really annoyed. He's gonna be even more tired when he gets home. and you might think differently if you're human. I'm still laughing about this cuz like I said, I can't see me ever doing this. But also I can't necessarily, well, no, I can, I can't necessarily see me waking at home and cooking his dinner.

I do cook dinner obviously, but, but yeah, I don't start it until he is way on his way home. So, or I wait for him to get home. So anyway, that's a side. So you see what I mean? The chimp is super powerful. The human doesn't get a look in, but normally what we try and do is we try and shove that chimp down. We try and stuff down all those feelings, and we try and like hush the chimp up.

So what I want us to do instead is when fear kicks in and it's the chimp that's kicking in. The chimp is the thing that's like, oh, I don't wanna do this because this might happen and this is gonna happen. And what if no one, you know, if you're talking about going live, what if no one shows up? What if people do show up?

What if they hate what they're saying? What if they show up and then they leave? What if like all the things. So what I want you to do is get a piece of paper, obviously not right now. You can if you want, get a piece of paper and I want you to write down what's the worst that could happen and let that chimp go to town.

So I did this exercise with someone who is gonna be speaking. and we work through all the things that could happen. The slides don't work. I fall over. That's always a fear of mine. I, another fear of mine is I pee my pants on stage. I thank God touch word today. I've never done it, although I like. No, we're going into too much information here.

I was gonna say , it's not too much like, doesn't matter how many wis I go for, I still write from on stage. I'm like, I really need a wee. I don't. It's just my fear. So too much info. So yeah, so like we wrote down all the things. So instead of trying to shush the chimp and hush the chimp and squash down all those feelings and that fear feeling.

We allow the chimp to have it say, so we write down all the things. I might forget my words. There might be someone in the audience that knows more than me. There might be someone who thinks I'm an idiot. There might be blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever it is. What is the worst that can happen? Then once you've written down, and I want you to imagine your, your page is in columns, so that's one column, and then in the next column against each of those points, I want you to then think about what would you do about it?

So, If I went on stage and the tech failed, what would I do? Well, luckily it has happened to me, so I can tell you what you would do. I blagged it a bit. Wonder they had a complete power cut, so I had to do it without my slides, but luckily I had a laptop so I could look at my slides, so they just couldn't see them.

But it's not my fault. Like, so it's like, well what would I do? Well, I carry on as best as I can, but they're not gonna judge me about it cuz tech things happen. I forgot my words. What would I do about it? Well, they don't know what I'm going to say, do they? So, and worse comes to worse. And I've done this fyi.

I have gone, oh hang on, I've lost my train of thought. Let me come back to it. I think that was in a much smaller group talking thing rather than a big stage thing. I think I wouldn't be happy to do that. I would try and blagged it. But exactly I would blagged it. What if I tripped over? I'd be really embarrassed.

I'd feel a bit of a fool, but I'd get up and carry on because I'm not the first only person ever to fall over in my life. So you basically, the human then kicks in. Once we've worn the chimp packs, that's the only way to get past it. We ask the human, what would we do about it? If that happened, what would we do?

And by the time you go down that list, you start to realize that I'm not gonna die. Like speaking on stage. I'm not gonna die. I might like look a bit stupid or I might feel a bit stupid, or I might not be the way exactly how I wanted to be, but that's not that horrific. That's okay. And it helps calm the brain down and it helps calm the chimp down and it helps you see very logically.

What's the fear with it? And I've told this story a million times, but it's such a good one that I was too scared to launch a course. And the coach I was working with at the time did some like deep diving with me and, and discovered this. And then they said, you know, what's the worst that could happen?

And I was like, well, what if no one buys it? What if like, I'd never sell it. This is what I do for a job and I, what if I can't sell my own stuff? And they said to me, Well, how many of you sold? And I was thinking, well, none cuz I haven't launched it. And he said, well, you failed already then, haven't you? And that is the truth.

That is a hundred percent the truth. I was so scared that no one would buy it, that I never offered it, which meant no one bought it, which meant my biggest fear was coming true, but through my own hands. So, That's what we do when we think about fear. And then the last thing we write is what could be the best outcome?

What if it went really well? What if I stood on that stage and gave a talk that was a good, great talk and people loved it. What would that do for me? What would that do for my business? What would that do for your brand? What if, what if I launched that course and someone bought it? Well, what's the best that could happen?

They'd give me money. Fyi, I did launch that course and I sold 28 of them, and I was dead pleased and proud. I didn't make the six figures that the coach is promising, but 28, I was happy with that. So yeah, what is the best that could happen? And start to visualize that. Start to get it into your head that like I walk on stage and people clap and I get to speak and I love it.

And they love it, and people come

Today’s episode of the podcast is all about how to grow an audience, using a lead magnet. Lead magnets are one of the key ways in which you can get people onto your email list, and so they’re a really valuable tool for your business. As always, I’d love to connect with you on my socials and hear what you thought of this episode!   

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

• How to get people on to your email list
• Types of lead magnets you can offer
• Whether PDF lead magnets still work
• How to know what format is best for your lead magnet
• How to make sure your lead magnet leads to the right things

 

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE

Your lead magnet needs to fix a problem and add value, if it doesn’t, you’ll lose them after they’ve downloaded it.

 

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

  My 5 Key Steps To Starting Your Email List! Invest in my Build My List course Teresa Heath-Wareing Instagram Teresa Heath-Wareing LinkedIn Teresa Heath-Wareing Facebook Teresa Heath-Wareing Twitter  

Transcript

Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. I'm your host, Teresa, as always. How are you doing? Okay. We've done a little theme these last few weeks, so if you've been listening, which hopefully you have, two weeks ago we did an episode on creating an online course, and the three things that I thought were key in order to have in place, if you wanted to think about having an online course.

So the first thing was content. So last week I did an episode around content and looking at the kind of long form content and how you maximize that content, especially if you've been doing it for some time like I have. And then this week I want to talk about the second thing that was on that list for an online course, which is an audience.

Now I have seen some unbelievably crazy, what is the word I'm looking for claims. That's the word I'm looking for around audiences and whether you need them and don't need them. One I saw on a webinar where basically they said that they sold an online course and only had an email list of a hundred and like 30 people or something, and they made 30,000.

That was the first amazing claim. Now, am I saying that's not true? No, I'm not saying it may not be true. What I'm saying in this case is they may not be telling you the whole picture, i.e. they could have had a Facebook group, they could have had a podcast, they could have had like any number of ways that audiences came to them other than on the email list.

They could have had a ginormous social media following. So I feel like you, you just weren't told the truth with that one. And then the second one I heard was that you should be getting 10,000 people a month on your email list, or you're doing it wrong. Absolute rubbish. Like I can assure you, I've been teaching this stuff for a really long time and no one organically is getting that many people on their email list.

Now, if you wanna put a ton of money behind ads, and actually this person who said it, obviously, as you may or may not know, you can actually view if anybody is running any ads, and this person consistently runs huge amounts of ads to their lead magnet. So yes, they might expect to get that, but God knows how much they're spending on it.

So organically you are not gonna get anywhere near that far, far from it. But I wanted to talk about lead magnets cause I haven't done an episode for ages, and that is one of the key ways in which you can get people onto your email list. I'm not gonna go into why you need email list. You are very smart.

I'm sure you know that by now. We do. Everyone does. Every business needs their own list of people and prospects, and an email list is that way. Social media is lovely, but we do not own it. We are marketing on borrowed ground. So. When we talk about lead magnets, we talk about things that are going to attract someone to get onto our email list, so what I call hand raises.

So basically something where they might have seen some content about something and then it says, do you wanna find out more? Or, those aren't the exact words, FYI or so for instance let's say I am talking about lead magnets, and I tell you, I have done a step-by-step how to create a lead magnet that you can have for free.

You just need to gimme your email address. Well, if you are sat here listening to this thinking, Actually, that's great. Could you, Teresa, then you would download it and you would happily give me your email address for it. That's what I call a handraiser. So I've introduced you to something, into a concept or a content or something and I've said if you want to know more, I do have something, but it's behind this wall.

And then to get past it, you've gotta give me your email. But I would make sure it's good enough that actually you'd be more than happy to give me your email address cuz you haven't gotta pay for it. I see lots of things out there that people are saying you know the downloading pdf, the five things doesn't work, and I just thought I would do an episode about lead magnets, but address that specifically, is it that PDFs don't work anymore?

Is it that we have got much cooler things and much more exciting ways in which we can get people on our email list so that actually the PDFs are a waste of time. So let's look at how you can get people on your email list for starters. These are all effectively lead magnets. These are all effectively ways in which people can go, yes, I want some more.

So it can be as I've already. You know, said it can be a PDF download, it can be quizzes, it could be challenges, and they can be email challenges as well as full on five day challenges in a Facebook group. It could be things like video series. It might be like a white paper or something a bit more in depth.

It might be things where you're getting them to sign up to a webinar or some free training or something like that. It could also be things like freebies, like a 30 minute discovery call or an entry to a competition. So there are lots of different ways to encourage people to get on your list. Also, if you're a product, it could be a discount off your first purchase, that sort of thing.

So when you look at all these cool and fancy things that we can do, does that mean that the PDF thing no longer works? Now. First off, I would say there's one thing more important than the media that you are using to give away your thing, because that's all it is. You are just using, I could talk you through a process, which I could do on a video.

I could do it via quiz, I could do it via a challenge. I could do it in a pdf. So really you are just looking at the medium in which you are using to get it out there. So the first thing to know and make sure is that whatever you are giving them in whatever format is good. I have just opted in to two lead magnets.

I used to do this all the time and I have it for ages, and now I'm like, well, one, I genuinely wanted to opt in and what I wanted to see what they were doing, one was by someone who's this huge, absolutely massive and it's an email challenge and it's like five emails over five days and it's rubbish. Like seriously, seriously bad.

Like these emails are saying nothing, absolutely nothing, and the thing that they are saying is not that good. It's like, yeah, no, I got that in email number one. Now what's next? So that's really disappointing. And the other one I opted into was a quiz, and I am a fan of the quiz. And again, the quiz was rubbish.

So basically it was like, tell me which of the following you prefer to do. So I said, which of the, I can't give away what the subjects were, but I was like, this is what I prefer to do. So then at the end it went, Hey, the results are, you'd prefer to do this. No shit Sherlock, like honestly, sorry, I just swear, yeah. Really?

So that was completely ridiculous and a waste of my time. So that's one of the problems with lead magnets. It's when you opt in and they're pants. It's not about the, the format. It's not that like it's a boring PDF, it's that it's just not very good. So that's the first thing. It really does need to fix a problem.

Now let's say, okay, let's take my course, Build My List. Lovely course. If you've not done it, do go check it out. And where it teaches you how to go through this whole lead magnet process, literally from start to finish. Now I have this very detailed, very good course that literally shows you like what your headline should be and how you should make it exciting sounding, how you should structure your pages.

I give you like Canva templates for it. I write your copy for your emails. I give you the onboarding stuff like. Literally everything, including the tech. Okay? So I go into all the detail. Now, obviously, I want to help you solve a problem, and that course solves every single problem you will have in creating your email list.

However, if I'm going to do a lead magnet, if I'm gonna do a handraiser running up to that course, then. I can't give you the hold of that course, but I have gotta make it good. So what I could do is look at that whole course section and I could take a section of it where I could, let's say I today kind of the terms that we use and what they mean, so I could explain what a lead magnet is.

I could explain what I mean by tagging, I could explain by what I mean by an onboarding like email sequence. So I'm helping you and I am answering a problem. However, I'm not giving you everything because otherwise how would I sell my course, or that's kind of across the whole thing. Or I could just take one section and I could say, okay, the section where the layout of how a lead magnet should look.

So there is, in the course I give you a template of the actual lead magnet. I give you loads of different templates and there's certain ways to lay it out that helps our eyes like want to read it. Often when people lay out lead magnets, they've got great information in there, but it's too much on a page and it's just big blocker text.

So I've created these templates to go, look, this is much nicer looking. This is how you break it up. So I could do a lead magnet about the fact of how to lay out a lead magnet. God, this is getting confusing, but I could show you in that. So I'm not giving you the whole course, I'm giving you that one section, but again, I'm answering a problem.

So I'm saying this is a problem people have. Here's the solution. So that's the key thing. Most people are so focused on. I just wanna get people on my list that they're forgetting to actually give them some value. Now, once you've got 'em on your list, if your lead magnets rubbish. How well received do you think your emails are then gonna be?

Not particularly like. I'm literally waiting until, I think I've got one day left on this five day challenge, and then I'm unsubscribing because it's been an absolute waste of my time. So I'm half thinking, well, what's the flipping point? Because I don't wanna get the other emails if they're all gonna be like this.

So like I said, the key thing is, Do you really fix their problem? Are you really helping them? The other thing I want you to think about with the lead magnet for you, and I've kind of demonstrated it in my example, is what is your next natural step for you and your customer? So having a lead magnet's great.

So this would be here, if I'd had a lead magnet for this episode, this would've tied it up just beautifully. So I've done an episode, I've done content on what is a lead magnet. You are listening for free to this episode. You have an act to opt in. You have an act to tell me, I don't know who you are, and then you could be going, this is brilliant.

I really want some more on this. So then I could have given you a lead magnet. I have actually got a lead magnet, which is the basics of starting an email list, which I think. I'm gonna check what that URL is. Okay? By the power of recording things, I've got the url, even though I've been paused for like five minutes finding it.

So if you go to teresaheathwareing.com/startyouremail, your email, then that gives you the link to get my five key steps to start your email list. Okay? So that's not a perfect lead magnet for this episode. However, it's, it'll give you the example. So I've created the content in terms of the free episode. I've created the lead magnet in terms of here's a natural next step, and then my lead magnet naturally leans and goes to my course.

So I knew when creating that lead magnet, where's that leading to? Now I'm actually in the process of creating a new lead magnet around visibility, which by the time this episode comes out, it may or may not be out, but at this point. Yeah, as I'm doing it, I'm not entirely sure what the natural next step is, and I've gotta make sure that's clear cuz otherwise I am bringing people into my world.

I'm attracting them onto my email list and then I've got nowhere to send them. And it doesn't always have to send them to a sale. It doesn't always have to go, okay, now buy this thing, because some people getting new to your email will not wanna immediately buy a thing. So understanding that next step.

So in all that being said, Do I still think PDFs still work? Well, if you've got those things that I've just talked about, if you're really fixing the problem, if you're really helping them, if it's a quality lead magnet and you understand what their next step is, I don't think the medium matters that much.

The reason I am not averse to creating PDFs is because they're one of the simplest things to create. It's one of the easiest ways to get started. Now, I have done quizzes. My quizzes currently paused, but I have done quizzes. I've done challenges. I haven't done a video series as such. I have been in lead magnets of video series, and they are immense.

The production that goes behind those other things is way bigger. So if you are getting started, I would much rather you got a PDF out there, A S A P, than spent forever trying to work out how to do a quiz or a challenge or a video series and recording all the videos and coming up with all the stuff.

So for me, I still think there's value in it. It more comes down to what you are actually giving them in it. If I said to you, I could literally tell you, how, to make a million, if I knew that I'd have done it myself, but if I could, you wouldn't give a hoot whether I said it was in a video or whether it was on a pdf.

You just like, give me the information, tell me now. So I think. Yes, there are fancier, more interactive ways of doing these things, but if you are getting started and even if you're not getting started, that is a PDF I've just sent you to like, I've done many different types of lead magnets. I still think there's no problem with doing those things as long as the content is good and as long as you download it and go, yeah, nice one. That really helped.

I don't think they're going out of date. I do think that if you can do other things, then they can be cooler. Quizzes gives you lots of information back, but I'll be really honest, one of the reasons I paused my quiz is there's a huge cost involved because my quiz is very technical. I couldn't have the basic version of the system that I used and therefore I have to have the more expensive one and I have to weigh up and go actually for the amount of leads I'm bringing in.

Is it worth me paying that money out? The new lead magnet I'm doing is an email challenge, which is just basically five emails over five days. And actually that's pretty basic. That's a good one to start with. When I say basic, the content isn't basic. The content's amazing, fyi. If you wanna be more visible and grow your audience and become bit more of a go-to expert in your industry, it's gonna be a phenomenal lead magnet for you.

However, the process of creating it, Is not that difficult. You know, you can just do five emails over five days and you don't even have to create a pdf. So like I said, it's not so much about the medium, it's more about the content and the quality of the thing you're putting out. So don't be disheartened when you see people going, PDFs are boring and they don't work.

They do work. They're only boring if you put boring stuff in them. One other thing I wanna say. So you might be listening to this thinking, yeah, great, I've got pdf, I've got a few lead magnets. So great. We're onto the next stage. So the next stage for you to think about is the customer journey. So you might have one or two lead magnets, but now it's time to think about where do people come into you in your world.

So for instance, I have people come into my world when they're just getting started, but I don't have anything at a Just getting started cost at this point. So my membership is $222 a month, or $2,220 a year. My executive club, which is my mastermind, is $444 a month. $4,440 a year, you get two months free when you sign up for the year.

And my one-to-one work is, well, that's negotiable on a conversation. But if you were to have the standard 90 day package that's around the $10,000. So I don't have anything that is a getting started price. So for me, when I say that some people come into their business with a chunk of money and that's fine, and they're willing to invest from day one and amazing go them, but lots of people normally have to wait until they bring some money in.

So for me, I need to think about my...

Today’s episode of the podcast is all about how to create content, and what you need to do to repurpose those ideas and really make the most of them. Over the years I have done a fair few episodes around the theme of content, and they've always gone down really well. So, I hope you enjoy it and as always, feel free to connect with me on my socials, and let me know what you think!   

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

• The difference between long and short term content
• How to maximise and repurpose your content
• Finding the type of content you like creating

 

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE

Successful content creation is about consistency, not how frequently you do it.

 

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Find out more about joining The Dream Business Club Find out more about 1:1 coaching with me Teresa Heath-Wareing Instagram Teresa Heath-Wareing LinkedIn Teresa Heath-Wareing Facebook Teresa Heath-Wareing Twitter  

Transcript

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. How are you doing? Okay, so last week I talked about having online courses and the three things that I felt were super, super important to have in order to have a more successful chance at having an online course and selling it, and those three things, were creating content, building an audience, and making sure that you understand your customer's problem and the transformation there're after.

Because obviously that's effectively what your course is. You're helping them get a transformation. So what I thought I would do is this week I thought I would talk about content. Now, we've done a fair few episodes over the many, many, many episodes of the podcast around the theme of content, and they've always gone down really, really well.

And one of the things I thought about was the fact of like, is there ever any new content, right? Not only from a point of view of there is a ton of content out there in the world, and obviously I'm talking about my industry, but your industry too. There is so much out there. We are all content producers now, and we have Google and you can literally search anything.

So is there any new content from that point of view, but also what do you do when you get to my level of 285 episodes of the podcast? So effectively, like every interview was round an hour and every solo is probably less than half an hour. Like that is a ton of me talking for starters, you poor people, but also a ton of content.

We have talked about so much stuff, so what do we do? Like how do we keep coming up with content ideas or what do we do with the fact of we already have so much content out there? So today I wanna talk about that. I wanna talk about coming up with ideas and then what you need to do in terms of repurposing those ideas or how you make the most of them.

If you are serious in your business, if you are actively trying to grow and you know, be seen by more people, then content is one of the ways you're gonna do that. Even, and I'm gonna kind of stick my neck out here. Even with a product-based business, there is still content that you can produce. So what do I mean first off, by content?

I'm confident you all know by now, but let me just cover it of. So we've got long form and short form content. So long form content tends to be things like podcasts, blogs, articles, videos, lives, anything that's a bit more meaty where you're going into a bit more depth. Short form content tends to be things like social media, tends to be posts, tends to be kind of quick, short stuff.

So often businesses are pretty good at the short form content. They know they need to be on social media. They know they need to show up. They're not always great at the long form content. Now, I'm not gonna sit here and say you have to have long form content, cuz no one has to have anything. It's your business. You get to decide.

However, it is a very helpful thing to have, especially when you are in a knowledge based industry. If you are offering something that is based on your knowledge or that you think needs some explanations. Let's just take one of my lovely members of the club, one of my members does inflatables and soft play hire, and for instance, long form content for them might be blog articles around some of the common questions that they get asked.

So even with something like that where you think, well, I don't need a blog or a podcast for that, somewhere where they can go and get more confidence and more comfort around the thing that you are selling or how good you are at your service. So yeah, so I would recommend that most businesses have some kind of long form content.

Now, the first thing is you need to decide what you like to do. I do not like writing, therefore, a blog is not for me. I do have a blog on my website. If you go and look those three blogs written ages ago, I should probably just remove this now. But I tried. It really wasn't for me, and I'm just not big on writing.

You know, I do write, I'm gonna stop saying I'm not being write. I do do a lot of writing, I journal and stuff. But when it comes to this sort of thing, put me in front of a mic, put me on a stage. That is where my zone of genius is. Writing is not where that is. So the first thing to decide is what do you actually like to do?

And start with that. So if you like talking, then a podcast or a live might be good for you. If you like writing, then a blog might be good for you. So, and I didn't really wanna get into too much of like getting started cause I'm hoping lots of you are well and truly started with your long form content. But it's about then taking that bit of long form, which takes time and effort, and how do you then maximize that time and effort to really, really work for you.

Now one of the things I think I'm gonna do an episode on, like things I wish I'd thought about when starting a podcast. because if I was to start my podcast today, I'd do it very differently. Anyway. One of the things I was thinking about and, and maybe you guys should think about this too, is we are put in a world where I produce weekly content.

So every single week I do a podcast episode, or every week you might do a blog or that is a lot of work. So who says, we've gotta do it that often. So what if you did a podcast that came out every other week? What if you did a blog that came out every other week? What if you over went only went live every other week?

It's more about the consistency than how often you are doing it. And the other thing is, if you are spending a few hours creating a blog or you know, for me it's probably like 30 minutes for 20 minutes worth of podcast. Now, bear in mind, I've done a ton of episodes, so I can do this fairly quick. Although I have to say I yawn every time I do an episode.

It's really weird. So the reason it takes me 30 minutes or a 20 minute episodes cause have to keep pausing so I yawn do like, am I really finding myself that boring? I think it's like constant talking about anybody interrupting you. So if you are spending a chunk of time doing that bit of content, then why do one every week?

Why not do it every other week? But the thing is, it's not about, I think lots of times people will create a bit of content and do one post and go, there you go. I've created a blog. I put it on social media. Done. No, no, no, no, no. You've gotta be absolutely maximizing that content. You have gotta be pulling out as much as possible.

And if you've been doing anything for length of time, and if you have a team with you or you have processes that you put yourself in place for yourself, then this is what you should be doing. Like you should be trying to maximize the core bit of content, and if you have a team, brilliant. You have to do the core content.

Okay, I have to record the podcast. If suddenly one day one of my team turned up on the podcast, you'd be a bit like, what the what? So I have to record this bit. That's fine. That's my job. But I don't need to do any of the things subsequent. And you know, hopefully by now, if you've listened to the podcast for a while, I have a team who helps me with all that good stuff.

But we could be doing more. And you know, we often talk about this, and it's probably me who's to hold upon this, but like when you have a bit of content, so if you are doing a blog, for instance, You might wanna think about like what happens after you've done that blog? Okay. You created a post, you put it out.

Brilliant. Can you create a quote post from a quote that you've said in the blog? Can you start a discussion thread on Twitter? Can you do a poll on Instagram story about something you said in that blog post? Can you create a reel about the content of the blog post or a kind of discussion point, and then go, go read my blog post to find out more.

Can you create it as an article in LinkedIn? And the other thing to think about is, Not only do we have to choose our long form content in terms of what we like and what it is, i e I like speaking, I do a podcast, but we need to think about the social platforms that we're on and are we using them in a way the platform likes us to use them.

So for instance, yeah, great. Say I'll hold my hand. I'm not the best of this. Becci, my social media person has been kicking my butt to do reels and for whatever reason I seems to have a bit of a mental block with it. But we'll get there. But like, you know, I could be doing a reel for every single episode of the podcast.

I do. I could be doing a live with a guest if I have guests anymore. Like there is so much we could do round it and that you could do round it. So if you are getting to the point where you're like, do you know what? I'm really tired, or, I've done a lot of episodes and I feel like this is. Like doing the same thing over and over, then why not either pause.

And I had this conversation with someone recently. They had an episode and not an episode, they had a podcast and it went into like the hundreds of episode and they were like, I'm just falling outta love with it, but I feel like I need to keep it going. And it's like, you don't need to keep it going if you are falling outta love.

And this is the other thing. Yeah, it's all about consistency, but don't do something you hate and don't forget you still have all that content just because you pause and do something different or you know, whatever it is you wanna do instead, doesn't mean that all that content goes in the bin. She could effectively re-release an episode every week for the next hundred and something weeks, because that's how many episodes she got.

I have that much content. In fact, I was listening to podcast myself, Dr. Chatterjee, I hope I've said his name right, and I can't remember what his podcast called. Anyway, I was listening to his podcast and he does these bite-sized podcasts of old episodes, and I was like, brilliant, we could do that. Like, and, and in my head I'm thinking, how could I make that happen without me being the person to make it happen?

Because I know I'm the one that will hold it up. So it's about kind of really using that content and stretching it and exploring it and molding it. The other thing I want to think about, and like I said, this is where I am currently. You know, 285 episodes is a ton of episodes, so the fear is about repeating myself.

So what I did, Becci and I did Next Size not so long ago, where we went through the stats of the podcast and we looked at the ones that were really popular. And content is a really popular like subject. Whenever we do a content episode that seems to get really good download. So doesn't it make sense to do another episode on content?

This in itself is creating more content. You know, it like this weird, paradoxical world we're in. But what is it that really gets people talking? What is it that people really enjoy to hear from you or what episodes are most popular? And do it again? Like there's a part of me that would love to re-invite some people back on because they were such good episodes.

But whether I could get them again and if I, you know, it's a big thought for me to have really, but, but yeah, like what episodes are really good? Why can't you do those episodes again? The other thing that we thought about and we talked about is my opinions have changed a lot. Like I have learned so much in, and I can't, it's it 2018.

I started my podcast, I think it was 18, 19 21. Yeah, I think it is 2018, like me in 2018 and mean 2023 is very different. Like what I speak about is different. What my opinions are on things are different. So again, there's no harm in me going back to some of my old episodes and rerecording them because I have different thoughts and opinions now.

So this episode's a little bit all over the place, but the key thing for me to talk about is, one, you don't need to keep creating brand new stuff. Also the other way to do it. So let's say you are thinking about starting some long form content. Go to your short form content and see what work. So if you've done a social media post and it really resonated with people, or got lots of comments or started a conversation, then great.

Use that as a kickoff to do one of your episodes if you're doing a podcast, or go live and talk about the thing or write a blog about it so you can use it in both ways. Don't think that you've gotta sit there with a blank sheet of paper every time and try and come up with more ideas. So next week I'm gonna do an episode on lead magnets because I haven't done one for a while.

And in this kind of little theme that I've given myself where I talked about the online course and about, first thing is create content. Second thing, as an audience, I thought a lead magnet would be great. And one of the things I'm gonna talk about is do PDF lead magnets still work? Because there is lots of people out there go and they're boring, they're dull. No one wants them.

So that's gonna be the theme of my episode next week. Now, the very first lead magnet episode I did was episode number two. Don't go back and listen to it. I did. I regretted it. I sounded very professional, like maybe I should take some hints from the old Teresa. I think so. I was probably very nervous.

Also like there was a lot of stopping and starting and probably a lot of editing in those episodes. But yeah, like so why wouldn't I do another episode, 200 and something episodes on? So, Think about that long and short form. Think about how they can support each other. How you can extend short form into long form.

How you can tweak long form to drop it into short form and think about maximizing that long form content. You should be really, really maximizing it and in an ideal world. I wouldn't be doing something every week, like I'm in the habit now and it's the way it is and it's the way it always has been. And personally, I don't think I'd wanna change it.

And I think podcasts are a wee bit different because they are, they do tend to be a weekly thing, unless you do seasons and then you check a season out. but, If that means you get to maximize, I nearly said milk that content. That sounds horrible. If you get to maximize that content by giving yourself more space in between, then great.

Do that. Like that is cool, but make sure that you are trying to maximize it as much as possible, but also put those processes in place. So like I said, I have the team now and once I've recorded it the rest just happens. And that's, that's brilliant. I'm very happy with that. So where can you bring in some processes in order to maximize the content that you're putting out there?

Okay. I hope that help. I hope it's given you a few ideas. If you are starting on your content journey, as in you are looking at creating long form content and you need some help. Then do please come and check out the club, and if you wanna work one-to-one with me, do please check out coaching. I'll make sure all that's linked up the show notes, because sometimes this can be hard and sometimes you need someone to walk you through the process and get you going.

I've had someone just start, one of my one-to-one people have just created a podcast. We've done it in a very short space of time because I was able to do it in a very succinct, right, do this thing, do that thing, send me this, do this, and I'm really excited for it. I think it's gonna be amazing. So yeah, if you are wanting to start it, then come and have a conversation with me. I would love to help.

Okay. Have a wonderful rest of your week. As I've already mentioned. Next week I'll be talking about lead magnets. Do they still work? Is it still right to do PDF ones? What other ways can you bring people on your list? So if you are interested in that, then please make sure you check that episode out.

Also, if you have a friend that you think would find these episodes really helpful, I would appreciate it massively if you would share this episode or share my podcast, that would be so very kind. Okay. Have a wonderful rest of your week, and I will see you then.

Today’s episode of the podcast is all about the basics you need to know to create a successful online course. I’d love to know what you think, and whether an online course is on your goals for this year - please feel free to connect with me on my social media and let me know!  

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

• 3 considerations to think about if you are going to create an online course
• The value of you having a live element to your online course
• Realistic expectations of success when selling an online course

 

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE

There’s no such thing as a passive income, but you can create a recurring income, if you do it properly.

 

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Build My List Online Course Sky Rocket Your Email List Growth Online Masterclass The ‘Billy Basic Ads Course’ - Meta™ Edition Online Course  

Transcript

Hello and a really warm welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. As always, I am your host, Teresa Heath- Wearing. I am very grateful to have you here listening with me today. So what are we gonna talk about today? If you are new to my world, the podcast now predominantly talks about marketing, strategy, tips, tools, but also with a whole host of mindset stuff. And I've done quite a few mindsety type episodes recently.

So I thought it was about time I did some practical stuff again. And one of the things that constantly comes up in my world, and this is probably because I'm an online business, is the fact of having a, now, I'm not gonna use the word passive income cuz fyi, there is no such thing as passive. But having a recurring income or an income that is from something that is created that can be sold over and over.

Now I'm not gonna make out like this is, you know, the easy dream and you can come rich it quick overnight, cuz that really isn't the case. However, there is definitely some real benefits to it. And one of the things that I'm talking about in terms of creating that kind of reoccurring income is an online course.

Now, often when I work with people on a coaching capacity, we are focusing on their main business, but always in the background and always as a thought is, how can I create something that brings me in some regular income? And often this comes down to a course. When we're talking about, like I said, I, I don't agree with the word passive because it's really not passive, but when we're talking about things like memberships, you have gotta show up.

I am in my membership all the time and I have to show up every week and every day and do the things cause it's my membership. That's what people expect when they join. I know that doesn't happen in lots of memberships, but it certainly does in mine. and that's what they're paying the good money for. They're paying for me to come in and help them and support them.

So that's not normally what my clients, my coaching students want. They want a course. So I thought it'd be really good to talk to you today about what are the things that you should be thinking about if you are thinking about having an online course or if you are at that stage in your business where you are like, do you know what, I'm killing it from a one-to-one point of view, or from a one to group point of view.

And I'm really loving what I do, but I really want to find another way I can bring in another element to my business. And normally this is the case. It's not normally the case with most people I work with that go, I wanna shut down my one-to-one or in-person side, and I only want the online and, and the course side.

They normally want it as an add-on, which is a great thing to do because the fact of if you've got, you've, you know, and not, if you have got so much knowledge and so much content that you produce. Like I know for instance, when I, when I first started coaching, I would suggest something or I would talk about a process and then think I could probably just come up with like a, a form or a worksheet or something for you to use, and actually that'll make it so much easier.

So then I would create it. So then when I spoke to the next person I was coaching and say, actually, you know, this could be good for you as well, I would then have the worksheet. So by the time I've done this so long and worked with so many businesses, I have created a lot of content, which you could turn into a course.

So this is where most people get come from. So there are really, for me, three main considerations that you need to think about if you are going to create an online course. If you are sat there thinking, I love my business, I'm very good at it, and now I want to find a way that I can bring in some additional income.

So the first thing is that you should be creating content about the thing that you do, which if you are like the people that I coach, then you are already doing this. I had an example once of, I was part of another group coaching program and I am a bit of a nightmare. I can't help myself. Like, because I have all these ideas and, and you know, I like to think I'm really good at what I do and I get good results.

So when I'm sat in a group situation and someone else is giving me advice, I literally have to sit on my hands and like hold my tongue. I just wanna give advice and I wanna give support, and I want to encourage, and I want to do all this amazing stuff, which I can't, cause it's not my, my space to do it in.

However, I was in a space once and this woman came to me afterwards and said, is there any chance you and I could have a, a call and, and inquired about being coached with me. This was quite a while back now. And I said, yeah, that's cool. So we get on a call and she said that the, the main coach, whose group we were in had said to her, "I need you to launch your whatever it is." and this coach was really kind of focused on people don't notch cuz they're scared. And they were so focused on that, that they basically blinded themselves to everything else. So she had started a brand, brand new business. She had done something previously.

She'd already had a business, but she had done something. She'd completely coveted, completely changed, and decided I'm gonna focus on this one thing now. However, she was not known for that one thing. She had no content, she had no following. She had no presence at all in that space. So basically it's like me walking into, I don't know designing handbags tomorrow and go, I'm gonna do a course on it.

Now I might know about it. I don't, FYI, literally just picked something up my head, but like, you might know about it, but no one knows, you know about it. So she came to me and we had a conversation and I said to her, in an ideal world, I would have you create content about this for some time, like three, six months.

Like that would be amazing to, to basically be sharing the world this is who I am. This is what I do. And, and proving that you are good at what you do. Anyway, the coach was very adamant that she had to launch and within a month and a half, I think it was, cause it had to be by the end of the quarter, she launched and sold it to three people, uh, which is amazing.

Well done. But two of those people were on the coaching program we were on, and one was a friend. And then she didn't launch it again and she pivoted again. And it's like, do you know what? If you just waited a bit of time and created some content, and I know that content creation can feel really, really long and boring and arduous, but honestly, like the first thing someone's going to do is they're going to want to see that you know what you're talking about.

And if there's absolutely no evidence of that anywhere. Then you are not going to give people confidence that you can teach them and help them. And also, one of the things I teach, and one of the things I work with, with not only the membership but also the people I coach, is we look at how you take people from that content through the customer journey to be a customer.

So again, the content isn't just there as a backup for when people find you. The content is designed to drive people through to your world. I have had people listen to the podcast for years and never buy anything from me to only suddenly appear like I didn't know they existed. And then they suddenly appear and go, I'd like to join your membership and I've listened to your podcast for years, and I had no idea.

So as much as sometimes and fairly I've had this conversation with Becci,, who does the show notes and does and does social with me. She's like, you know. We've gotta remember that like when the podcast is hard or when, cuz I, I'm really honest that I get a bit hung up with like the numbers and hate the charts.

Like the charts really get on my nerves because I am very consistent and I've been around a very long time and therefore I don't appear anywhere and it really winds me up. . Anyway, I'm gonna get over that soon. But like, you know, so when I'm feeling like that, I have to remember that the podcast is a great place for people to get to know me, get to hopefully like me, and trust me that I know what I'm talking about.

And who knows, today might be the day that you are listening to this that you go do you know what I'm gonna do that I'm gonna get in contact with you, Teresa and I'm gonna look at how I can work with you because I've listened to this podcast for a long time and now I'm ready to take action. So that's the first thing.

If you want to look at this course, you do need to be creating content, which I am confident you are already creating content. The second thing you need to do, and again, I will argue the talks with anybody that says this is not true, is you need to have an audience. Now, you can't sell something if no one knows it exists.

If no one knows who you are and what you do, you have to have an audience. I think it's Denise. What's it? I don't think it's Denise, the full Thomas. I know Denise Duffield-Thomas says this, but I'm just hopefully remember the percentages correctly. I might get 'em wrong. But she says it's something between like 1 and 3% of her email list that only ever buys.

And that's been the same when her email list was 500 people or when her email list was 500,000 people. It's still that percentage. So. You need the audience. You need people to know you exist. And even when you have a very loyal, amazing, wonderful audience, they might not buy. I know that very well. Like not everyone will buy.

Of course they won't. So you do need to be building that audience, and that's where your content creation comes from. Your content creation is proving to the world, you know what you're talking about. Is showing up consistently going, look, here I am, but also is helping convert those people into your audience.

In an ideal world, those people are going to be on your email list. So those people are going to have, so for instance, in some cases, and I haven't done it for ages actually, I've been a little bit off the ball and I need to, I am getting back into kind of kicking my own backside, but like, One of the things that that I would do on the podcast is I would talk about a given subject, and then during the podcast I would say to you, if you wanna know more about this, I have created this download or this video or this, whatever it is, and then I would send you to somewhere that is a lead magnet and I would send you somewhere where you can opt in to my email list.

And for me, it's funny, I, I did an interview with, oh man, her name just jumped out my head, Sarah. It was Humane Marketing, I'm sure it was Sarah. And we talked about the word lead magnet and she didn't like it and she called it something a bit nicer cuz it just sounds a bit faceless. And it is a little bit the name, but basically I also call it hand raiser.

You're basically saying, Okay, I really like that bit of information you gave me there. I would like to know more. So again, the content leads really lovely onto the audience and the audience is so important. This is why I have a course called Build My List. And it's funny cuz that is the only online course I have and it is an evergreen course.

You can buy it now at any point and you can learn how to create an email list. Little plug there for my course. I'll put a link in the show notes or just go to teresaheathwareing.com/buildmylist. But it's so, so very important. Honestly, if you don't have an email list or if your list is not growing very fast or you are struggling to get people on your list, then go check out that course.

Cuz honestly, it's, it's awesome. But yeah. So you need to create content. You need to have the audience. And then the final thing is like, these are like, your baseline is you need to have a transformation. You need to be clear on what the problem is that your customer has and what you can fix. Sometimes people wanna create courses that are content they wanna share and they wanna put out there without necessarily thinking about, well, is this a problem that my customer's got?

And is this something that they're gonna need help with? And they want fixing rather than, like I said, just thinking, oh, I'd love to do a course on this cuz this would be cool. Yeah, it might be cool, but are people actually wanting to buy it? Is that a problem that they're actually struggling with? So, and also the other thing is by having consistent content, by having an audience, you will start to understand what those people want and need from you, what the kind of transformation is that they're looking for.

So again, it's not just a case of, oh well, you know, it's better if you have an audience. You can really understand your customers if you have that audience. And again, I've heard lots of times you don't need an email list. No, you don't have to have one, but your results are gonna be significantly better if you do have one.

So, like I said, for me, the final one is understand that transformation, understanding what their problem is, what you can do, and how you can help them fix their problem. Now, some of the things that I find are really, really helpful and some of the things that have been more successful for me and some of the people I've coached is when the course is a live or has a live element to it.

So wonderful Michelle, who is in my community and is in executive club, she sells a number of different courses around Facebook ads. I will link up to her in the show notes, and she's actually gonna be doing a workshop soon. In fact, this is perfect. I, I didn't even think about this. She's doing a workshop soon about how to get more people on your email list through ads.

So basically using the knowledge that you've got for around lead magnet. And then promoting those lead magnets through ads and how's the best way to do it? So I'll link up to that as well. So do go check that out. But she's doing as a live workshop, I'm sorry. The reason I mentioned to her is because one of the courses that she does, she has this course called Billy Basics Ad Course, which basically takes you through the process of creating an ad with an ads expert holding your hand and it's live, and you literally build the ad and she reviews the ad and you look at the results together.

And that for me, I feel like is where, where the, the online kind of course aspect is changing and moving a bit. Now, I appreciate that if you want a residual income and you don't want that work, you want to effectively build it once and sell it over and over, then that isn't going to be the case. But then you need to be realistic about the amount of people who are gonna do the work or the amount of people who are going to complete it, and the amount of transformations you're going to make. Um, because I think I, I told someone the other day something like 12% of people who actually buy a course online, finish it. It's a really, really small percentage.

And again, you gotta look into why you're doing it. At the end of the day, it's not your responsibility to make someone do a course that they've bought. If they've bought the course and they know it's a complete self-study. Then that's up to them to do. It's not your responsibility. However, in selling the course, one of the things that I have found for myself and other people that have been useful is the element of live, the element of accountability, because basically that's probably one of the many reasons why people work with me.

It's for the accountability. I'm doing a challenge with my executive club at the moment, and every day I'm posting into our private group. Giving them something to do and keeping them accountable because they wouldn't do it if I wasn't keeping accountable. Now it's not the fact that they can't do it. They know what to do.

They're not stupid. They're smart people. These people in executive club, you know, they are working hard on their business, showing up, doing the work, but sometimes we need that accountability. I need that accountability. So that's why from a course point of view, that can be a real sales point and having that kind of personal feedback is brilliant.

But what I would suggest is if that's ultimately not what you wanna do, you might want to do it for the first few to really then understand actually, where are the questions, where are the transformations I'm looking at. What works what doesn't work and then you can help tweak the course.

So build my list. I did live I think four or five times before, it's now evergreen and anybody can buy it. So I am confident that A, it works and B, I've answered all your questions, so there we go. There is my brief overview about having an online course and really the three foundations you have to have in my mind in order to make it as successful.

Now, like I said, have there been people out there who have created a course and sold it without those things? Yeah, I'm sure there are. However, they are nowhere near or they would've been way more successful if they had actually, you know, had those things in...

Today’s episode of the podcast is all about your season of life and knowing how to create a business that you love and not what someone else is trying to tell you to love. I’d love to know what season of life you are in right now and how that impacts your business, and whether any of this episode resonated with you - please feel free to connect with me on my social media and let me know!  

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

• how important it is, from a mindset, business and happiness perspective that you understand where you are in life and what you want from it
• why you need to unlearn everything you have learned so far about how to build your business
• what a coach should be doing for you and what they absolutely should not be doing
• how your season of life can impact your pricing and what you charge
• the questions you can ask yourself to discover what is important to you

 

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE

Everyone has different lives, situations and priorities – there is no one size fits all to running a business!

 

USEFUL LINKS

  Ways you can work with Teresa as a coach Teresa Heath-Wareing Instagram Teresa Heath-Wareing LinkedIn Teresa Heath-Wareing Facebook Teresa Heath-Wareing Twitter  

Transcript

Hello and a very warm welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. I hope you are having a good start to your week if you are listening to this on a Monday. Otherwise, I just hope you're having a good day regardless. I did an episode recently that got a really good response about can you really have it all? Which I'm super glad it resonated with people because it wasn't a very clear episode. In the case of, it was a hard question to answer because it really depends on you and what you want and what you deem as all having it all. And it got me thinking about an episode I did a while back, and funny enough, one of my teams said to me, That they listened to it when it came out originally, and they were like, it was such a good episode that it was what brought me into your world and it was about seasons of life. And I thought, I'm gonna do that again. But also, I've just been asked to speak, not just been asked. I'm speaking at an event in Edinburgh this week, not the week of this episode, coming out the week of recording it, and I have done a presentation all around marketing mindset and why it's so important in marketing to work on your mindset, which obviously is totally my bag, and I love the mindset stuff. And while putting together this presentation and also thinking about that episode of Seasons of Life and, and knowing how to create something that you love and not what someone else is trying to tell you to love. I thought this all sounds really good and I'm gonna put together an episode. So that's what I think I'm gonna focus on today. We're gonna look at how important it is from a mindset, business, happiness perspective that you understand where you are in life and what you want from it, and not to necessarily listen to the experts out there who tell you that there is only one way to have it and you should have, you know, you should do it this way and do it that way, which quite honestly drives me to distraction. So in this presentation I talk about why mindset's important, and I talk about the fact of for me, someone asked me what mindset was the other week or mindset work or mindset practices, and I described it as being aware and conscious and slowing down and really paying attention to things that you're thinking and doing and various things like that. But for me, it can actually change the, change the money you earn, it can stop you earning money and it's so very important. So when I was putting together this presentation about, you know, what should you do in order to have a good mindset, one of the things I put as number one was to basically unlearn everything you've been taught today. Because as I have said many, many times before, there are many experts out there who tell you, That you should or shouldn't do something. Someone contacted me the other day actually and said they wanted to work with me. They were looking at working with a coach, but other coaches told them they had to have a group program cuz that's the way it worked. That was where the money's at. That's what's so good. And it's like she said, you know, will you force me down that route? And I said, "I won't force you down any route. Do you want a group program?" "No." "Then no, don't have one." It really, really drives me insane where I hear other experts and other coaches saying they're coaches and they basically tell you exactly what you should do or tell you that the only way of doing it successfully is the way that they happen to do it. That's not a coach. Coach doesn't teach you what they did. A coach helps you understand what you want, gets you clear on what you want, and helps you create a plan for you to do that. So, like I said, number one on this presentation was basically I did the three A's and A was abandoned. So unlearn what you've been told and the reason I told people that they need to do this is because there's a lot of experts I had there with bs, like absolutely either lying straight through their teeth or telling you a truth that they want you to hear. So one of the examples I gave was the fact of someone wanted a webinar and they said that someone with an email list of something like 130 people sold a course online and got 30,000 dollars in their first go. Well, that's all they said. They didn't say whether they had a Facebook group. They didn't say whether they had a podcast or whether they had got like, you know, actually this course was really expensive and they only sold three. Like they didn't say any of those things. They just said small list got $30,000. So of course what happens, someone looks at that and thinks, great, I've got a small list, I can earn that. Tries to do the same. It doesn't work for them. And then where does that leave them? That leaves you and them thinking, well, it's me, isn't it? There's something wrong with me. I can't do it. The same with other experts out there. And funny enough, the example I gave on the podcast that I did a while back was that someone had posted into a group basically saying that, you know, Their line was, "You are not busy. You just don't have the wisdom to know what to do first." which I took huge umbrage to because I have a very busy life, as do lots of people who have other considerations in their life other than just their business. And this person in particular didn't seem to have any other responsibilities. They were young. I dunno if they're in their relationship, but they don't have children or anything like that. And it's like you can't throw a sweeping statement out there like that. You can't just go, this is fact because it's not, not for anyone. And. Yes, it was fact for that one person. But if you are trying to lead people, if you've got a voice out there and you are being an expert, then that is really flipping dangerous. The other thing it doesn't do is it doesn't take into account your business like, so again, when people throw these things out there, it doesn't take into account what you do for a business. It like some things will work really well in one industry and not in another, and it doesn't take into account your season of life. So one thing that's really important and my next step in this presentation was It's about a line. How do you get really clear on who you are and what you want? Because until you do that, it's really hard to then make a plan. So when we talk about seasons of life, we talk about who you are in the person of it, not just the business. And there are lots of people and, and I could argue that males find this easier than than females, but you know, I dunno that I wanna be so stereotypical, but as a female often, and I can only speak as myself as a female, we have, you know, obviously I am a wife to my husband. I am a mom, I am a stepmom. I have dogs. Jezz man, the dogs are so hard work sometimes, you know, I run a home like I have my dad who. I have to see and occasionally do stuff with, because me and my sisters help him out. My brother's special needs, like there are many, many things going in in my life. My daughter, however, is now 13, going on 23, and she does not take the care that a five year old takes when I first started my business. So one of the things that I love to do is travel and the season of life that I am in. It is much easier for me to travel with work than ever has been because my daughter is shared with her dad, my ex-husband. I can be away without any responsibilities. If my season of life was, I had got younger children, you know, 3, 5, 10, then it might not be that. You know that that's a good thing for me to do. It might not be that actually that is in line with that. The other thing comes when it comes down to pricing and charging and all of that jazz, because lots of people are so focused on grow your business, grow your business, grow your business, charge more, get bigger income. But again, the season of life in which you are are in dictates how much time and effort you wanna put into that. Because if you've got two young children at home, and actually what you want right now is to be able to do the school run and not work every hour that God sends, then your priority is not going to be earning loads of money. Now great. Yeah. We always want it however, it's the fact of actually, in order to do that, you would have to compromise another area of your life and you might not want to compromise that area of your life. And that is absolutely fine. That is no one's decision to tell you that you must do this. You must. There's nothing you must do. Whatever you decide you must do. Okay? That's it. And sometimes what we decide we still don't wanna do, quite honestly, but no other expert out there should sweepingly tell you, "This is what you should do." So for me, actually, you know, you might not wanna earn loads of money cuz you might not wanna work all the hours God's sent. The next thing you might wanna think about is that you might want to work with certain people who just don't have the budgets. To pay maybe what someone's telling you to charge. And actually you might like working with those people. You might really enjoy working with those people. Another classic one, I honestly, I could tell you these stories all day long, but another classic one I had, and I've told you it before on the podcast, was someone was advised by some experts that they would never make any money doing a one-to-one program. This person was a freelancer and they did social media for people and they said, you're not gonna make any money doing that. Like the only way to make money is to do a one to many thing. You need a membership or a course. This is definitely the route you should be going down. This is how you're gonna make money. And they came to me and they were struggling cuz Oh funny that it's not as easy to necessarily just make loads of money straight off the bat just cuz you produce a course if only. So they came to me and this, the, the experts that they were talking to spoke to them personally. So you would think that they had had a conversation with them, but no, this is what they told them. And. She came to me and I said, "Do you like working from home on your own and talking to a screen? What do you love about your business?" And oh, I love, she used to bike into town and have her meetings and have chats with people and meeting people and going networking and all of that jazz. And I said, and how would you feel if you worked just at home on your own with your computer, creating content? That sort of thing. She's like, "I'd hat it." And I'm like, "So why are you doing it then?" And it, I know it might sound really obvious, but the problem is we put these people on a flipping pedestal and it's about time they started to get knocked off, quite honestly. And I know that when I talk about this sort of stuff, I might be seen in the same vein as them. I hope if you're listening to the podcast, you know I'm not the same. Granted, if you went back and listened to some of the early ones, I might be saying some of the absolute rubbish that I now don't promote. But we learn and I change and, and I started the podcast a long time ago. But we, we put our trust in this person that we assume they know more than us. Now. Yes, if you like me, I've worked in marketing for years and years and years and years. I know marketing. I'm really good at marketing. However, that doesn't mean if something in your gut says, I don't wanna do that, or I don't think, like, I am gonna love doing that, that you should take my word over yours. You shouldn't. You should always listen to yourself, have faith in yourself that if someone says, you know, it must be done a certain way, that actually you can at least, at the very least, question it and question it if it actually impedes on other parts of your life and the seasons of life. So, like I said, It purely depends on where you are and what is important to you, and it changes all the time. And whoever you work with, whoever you give your money to, should be paying attention to this and asking those questions. So like I said, it's really, really important to think about, you know, that you align in, it aligns with your season of life. So some of the questions that you could ask yourself is what is important to me? So is having time with your family important to you? It might be having downtime and you might actually only wanna work a couple of days a week because you really enjoy a particular hobby. Is it that you wanna be financially stable or do you want to be seriously wealthy? Fyi, there is no right or wrong here. There is no good or bad. It is just up to you, your decision and just cuz I might want one thing and you might want another, does not make me right you wrong, or vice versa. You might want more time with your partner. You might wanna make a difference. You might wanna actually create something that changes the world in some way. You might wanna travel, you might wanna alone time. You might want to develop personally or give back or some spiritual practice, whatever they might be. So first question, what is important to you? Second question, what am I good at? Because that's really important. So again, forcing you down a route of doing something because loads of people have been successful, loads of people have been successful dancing on TikTok. I'm not doing it like I am not good at that. I am good at like busting a move in my house when no one is paying attention. Like literally that's it. I am not doing. And I know there have been some crazy successful people who have done that. That is not for me. So what are you good at? Are you good at speaking or writing or motivating people or making the really complicated, simple? Are you good at networking? Are you good at selling? Are you good at being on camera? Then the next question to ask yourself is, what do I like doing? So again, sometimes they don't always add up. Sometimes they absolutely do. But what is it that I like? Because again, If I like it, if I love it, then I'm more likely to do it. So when it comes to any kind of marketing or your business in general, like often people who succeed in business, they are so passionate about the thing that they do, and. You kind of sometimes have to be completely passionate because man, it's hard work. I dunno what else is gonna keep you going, but what is it that you like or love doing? Because if it's a pleasure, the podcast, I love doing the podcast, then it's not a chore. Yes, I might think, oh man, I've gotta make some times do an episode or sometimes I can't think of what to say. Who'd have thought? However, I don't dislike the actual exercise of talking to myself, you know, and creating an episode. So I love it. So actually that's something that I'm good at doing, I hope, and that I love doing. So that's a really good way to look at at what I can do. And then lastly, the other thing to ask you is what do I want? And this is probably the most important thing. What do you actually want from a business? What do you want from your life? What do you want? And like I said, this changes like it will change based on your season of life. But only you can answer that with the help of a coach granted, but a coach that pays attention and listen, not just teaches you how to do the thing that they did. So what do you want? Do you wanna take the summer off? Do you wanna travel the world? Do you wanna retire your partner? Do you wanna be famous in your industry? Do you wanna work part-time? Do you wanna build an empire? What is it that you want? And FYI that does not have to include an online business. I am so tired of people making out like the only way to be successful and the only good business out there is to have an online business. That is not the case. There are many successful people I know. Hugely successful people I know. Who do not have an online business at all and would never want one, and it would never work for them. So I think now I'm like, I'm trying to start a revolution. Like we need to really start paying attention to us on what we want, and working with people who will pay attention to that too. Who will not just go, "Hey, look, I was good at this so you can do it too." Or, and I have to say, and I apologize if you're a man listening to this, but if you're a man listening to this, I know you know you are my kind of human, there's a lot of males out there basically going, this is how you do it. Get on and do it from an arrogant male standpoint. And it's like, no. That doesn't work. Hustle doesn't necessarily work for most people. Like some people it will. Doing a morning routine that gets up at 4:00 AM and if you don't do it, you're lazy. Yeah. Try saying that to someone who's had like two kids waking them up halfway through the night. I had a great example given to me early, which is brilliant. Well like it's not brilliant and I'm not really laughing and smiling, but I am a little bit Marie Kondo if you've heard of her, she was the one who did like the special foldy socks things and Got you really organized apparently, and said she can't do it while she's got kids. Because obviously when she did it, she didn't have the kids, all the kids weren't older. Like so, and there's that saying of like,...

Today’s episode of the podcast is all about how to know when to grow your business to more than one team member, and what kind of roles you might want to consider having. I’d love to know where you are at in your business right now - whether it’s just you, you have a VA or a whole team of people - please feel free to connect with me on my social media!

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

● The common mistake people make when taking on a VA ● How to know when to scale your team beyond a VA ● The kind of tasks you could outsource to a team of people

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE

If you do something more than twice in your business, you should not be the person doing it, because it's a process and a task.

USEFUL LINKS

Join the membership and access the Dream Business Growth Path Jen Lehner’s, Front Row CEO course Becci McEvoy, Social Media Marketer Phil Brett King, My Podcast Assistant Ben Bellamy, Web Designer Teresa Heath-Wareing Instagram Teresa Heath-Wareing LinkedIn Teresa Heath-Wareing Facebook Teresa Heath-Wareing Twitter

Transcript

Hello and a super warm welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. I hope you are doing well. Firstly, I just wanna say thank you for some of the lovely messages that I have had on DMs and on social media about the change in episodes and how you're enjoying the shorter kind of bite size type episodes with just me.

So I really, really appreciate you reaching out, and now would be a really cheeky time to ask for a review. As I've told you before, The podcast because it's so consistent, it doesn't really do anything crazy amazing at any point. As in like, so when someone launches a new podcast, the, it can throw it high up in the charts cuz it had no episodes and now it has episodes, or it had no listeners and now it has listeners.

But when you are consistently churning out content and consistently showing up, it takes a lot of effort to actually get you ranking anywhere. Having reviews really, really helps. Also, if you know of someone who is in business that you think this might help, I'd really appreciate you sharing it. So just a little plea before we get started.

Okay. So let's talk about this week's episode and what we're gonna be focusing on. I've decided to focus on when you have a team member, how do you know when to grow to more than one team, team member? And how do you know who you need and what roles you need and that sort of thing? So let's just talk about sort of getting a first team member, the VA.

So normally a VA is the person that people get straight off the bat. They're the first team member they get. And one of the mistakes I find when people look for a VA is, and I remember someone once saying to me, I want them to be able to do all the website stuff. I want 'em to be able to create social media posts, do the scheduling, write some blogs, duh, duh, duh.

And it's like, gosh, this person's superhuman man. Like, seriously, how much stuff do you think they're gonna be able to do from a skill point of view? Because let's face it, we are not all brilliant to everything and neither will a VA. Now the idea of a VA is that they can do lots of different things, but you will find even with some VAs and others, some naturally are better at some things and like doing some things and some like doing something else.

I have one of my amazing students she bought on a VA and her VA's phenomenal in the sense of she creates social media posts for her and they're really beautiful and she schedules them and she writes the content and that's brilliant. However, she just fell on her feet because she found a VA who just happened to like and be good at it.

So that's not always the case. So if you haven't got a VA and you're thinking, well, what would I use them for? And I think this is. This is a common mistake that people, that people make is they think like, I've got nothing to give them. I dunno what I'll give them, but you are doing so much in your business every single day.

And there is a rule of thumb that I was once told that if you do something more than twice in your business, the same task or the same process more than twice, you should not be the person doing it because it's a process and a task, and you don't have to do that. And the idea is that you are putting more value on your time in the sense of you're doing things that only you can do and things that make you money.

So when you think to yourself, or you might be thinking to yourself, I can't afford to bring someone in. Well, how much do you charge out per hour? Or how do you make money? And therefore, should you be doing something that you could be paying someone less to do that thing? And it's not that you're giving someone the rubbish jobs.

People like these jobs. Some people thrive in these jobs. Some people want to do the things that you don't wanna do, that's what they're good at. So you're not sat there giving them all the rubbish, and you don't need to feel bad about that. You're just giving them something that they like to do. So let me start off by talking about some of the things that Johanne, who's my VA does for me now.

She's a full-time assistant for me, has been for a couple of years now, and is amazing and does lots and lots of things in my business. Now. When I bought her on full-time, the reason I bought her on full-time is cause I wanted the accessibility. I wanted someone there when I messaged them or when I emailed them, because if you're not paying someone full-time money, you can't expect that they are not sat there waiting for your email.

And now some VA some team members will be brilliant and very responsive and lots of my team members are and they're phenomenal. However, I knew I wanted to be able to say. You are working full-time for me, so I know I can email you within your hours and you will respond. I also knew that initially she would not be doing full-time hours and some weeks she still doesn't do full-time hours, and I'm okay with that.

Um, Because you've gotta build up to giving them stuff, okay? You can't just suddenly start them one day and then they're doing like loads of hours the next, because they've gotta get used to it. They've gotta know what they're doing. You've gotta hand things over. So I wanted to run through really quickly some of the things that I give Johanne to do.

So she does things like, she posts all the video replays. So when we do any training in the club, when I do a coaching call, when I do a mindset call, she will then post that backup in the club so people can go and watch the replay. She creates things like the Zoom events. She creates things like ad events.

So once I work out, when I'm doing things in the month for the club, I will literally give her the dates and she goes and does all the admin around that. She preps my emails. And you know what I worked out today? Oh man, I'm so bad. I've not sent an email for a couple of weeks. That is so unlike me. I dunno what's going on.

So I've literally just written at the top of my piece of paper where I've written notes for this podcast episode. Emails in big capital. Letters and I'm like drawing lines around the word as I speak because a bit later on I've got co-working with my exec club and that's what I will be doing in my co-working is writing some flipping emails.

But she will, I will write them and she will then schedule them and get 'em ready to go. She does things like, she used to do the interview process for the podcast, so when I had interviews she would do the replying and that sort of thing. She would put, she puts the podcast live, so she dissolve that admin side behind that.

She uploads the podcast to the website and to captivate she posts in the group for me. So for instance, if we've got, like this afternoon, I'm doing a mindset session in the group. So she schedules the post to remind everybody. There's a mindset session. She does things like downloads, invoices for me that I then have to upload to my invoice thing.

And she schedules loads of stuff for me. So there are loads and loads of things she does and more than what I've just given you on that list. But like I said, it wasn't like she started day one and I gave it her all on day two. So there are millions of things you could hand over. You've just got to give yourself a chance to think about it.

And then also, Know that you are going to have to spend some time doing it, but honestly the time spent will come back tenfold cuz I know that's often the excuse. Well, I would hand it over, but I could do it just as quick. Yeah you can. And sometimes you can do it better. Like no one will do your business better than you do a hundred percent.

However, you can only do so much and having all these things to hand over has freed me up. Immensely. So when do you know that you need someone else and when should you start to look at taking someone else on other than just your VA? Now obviously you've got the options to up the hours to your VA, so they could be doing more hours for you a month.

And again, like I said, they don't have to be full-time. Johanne was, she wasn't my first team member, so I was ready at that point in order to pay a full-time. So in my experience, you normally have a situation where the VA either moves up in their skillset and in their hourly pricing and whether they increase that hourly pricing for you or not.

But I know this has happened to one of my Exec Club members recently where her VA has more moved more to an OBM role, and therefore whether that person decided to increase the monthly payment or the hourly payment, I should say, is kind of by the buy. The key thing is they might not wanna be doing the things that they are doing.

So if they are moving up and going to know what I can serve you better, doing the more strategic stuff. Doing the more planning things, then one, they might not wanna do some of the more admin tasks, and two, you might not wanna pay them at that rate to do those admin tasks because it doesn't necessarily take someone of that level to do some of those admin tasks.

So like I said, you've either got. That they've moved up and they're increased in their prices and therefore actually there are things that you could take off them in order to give someone on a more admin level and they come in at a more strategic level, or they really like the level that they're at and they don't wanna do the strategic stuff and they don't wanna move up.

And actually, this was a conversation I had with Johanne when I. When the lovely Becci used to work with me, went to Australia and is having a lovely time cuz we are still very dear friends. When she went to Australia and I wanted to replace her. I had a conversation with Johanne, I said, do you wanna step up and do this kind of work now?

And she said no. And I was more than happy with that and she was more than happy with that. So it meant that she wanted to stay where she was, but I needed some additional help in a more strategic point of view. And therefore I bought in Angel, who is my online business manager. So now I have my, I have Angel's online business manager and Johanne as my VA. Angel is not full-time far from it.

She's X amount of hours a week and Johan is full-time. But often what happens is, and also one of my prerequisites for bringing an Angel was that she had to be able to manage Johanne. Now, it's not that I don't speak to her or deal with her, I do all the time. However, what will often happen is me and Angel will have a call where I will physically talk with her cuz that's the way that I communicate the best.

And then Angel will make a plan and then pass the bits that she needs to and can over to Johanne cuz she has the capacity. But then Angel can take the time and explain to Johanne what we need. And she's the one who makes sure it's being done correctly. So like I said, that's often what comes next, but. There might be other areas that you wanna bring people in and they might be very specialist areas.

And the reason I say this is because. Often these people who do specialist things are better than you at it because that's what they do for a job. And even though they might cost more per hour than a VA, the fact is they're probably gonna do it faster and they're probably gonna do it better because this is what they do all the time.

So the other people in my world, who I now have is I have Becci, a different Becci, Becci McEvoy, who does my social media. She also does the show notes to the podcast. So she's listening to this so she will tag herself in into the show notes. So she does all my socials and she does the show notes. Now the reason she does the show notes is cuz she's good at writing and because so much of my socials come from my podcast, so she helps create all the socials with me and she schedules them, but she doesn't, and I'm sure she wouldn't mind me telling this, but she doesn't necessarily personally schedule all my posts cuz she doesn't need to do that, that doesn't need her skill level to do that.

So she will have someone in her team to help schedule all the various bits. Becci's skill and Becci you know, zone of genius is coming up with content ideas, creating the content, writing the content, and helping me plan out what we're gonna talk about. Her. You know, I'm sure she's perfectly capable and has the zone of genius to schedule stuff, but she doesn't have to.

And from my point of view, and I think this is probably a good thing to say to you guys that are freelancers that worry, well, should I give my work to someone else? My point of view and has always been the point of view, I don't care who does it. Like, I really don't, as long as I have that point of contact and they are responsible, that's all I care about.

So Becci is responsible for the social side and the, the show notes. I, I know she does the show notes, but if something was to go wrong, then I go back to Becci and I have that discussion with her. Whether she did it or not is, is not really a concern of mine. It's just the case of she's my point of contact.

So if you're a freelancer and you're like, well, I could really do with someone to do that scheduling, or I could do with someone to write those blogs, or I could do with someone to do something else, but I don't wanna, cause I feel bad cause I'm charging for the service, you are still responsible for that service.

You are still reporting to your client. If your team member does something that is not great, you are still responsible and you've gotta fix it. But don't think that you have to do everything so, So, like I said, one another area which I outsourced was obviously show notes cause I hate writing and the socials because Becci is way better at me in terms of being creative and coming up with ideas.

The other thing that I outsource is Phil who edits this podcast and even though Phil will be listening to this, is he edits this. I will get Becci to tag Phil in. Again, Phil edits the podcast cuz he's way better than me and way quicker than me. And I don't need to do it. No one has sat there going, Teresa, I really wanna see your skills and how good you are editing.

It doesn't have to be me. And even though the podcast is one of the most expensive things I do from a content point of view, it's worth it in my eyes. And actually, it's not that extortionate. Do you know what if I was to actually do all my own podcast stuff. I probably wouldn't produce a podcast a week.

I can tell you that for nothing. And then the other area I've got, and I've had other areas, but this is where I am today, is website. So I have Ben who does my website stuff and does my landing page stuff and does elements of active campaigns. So when we want to take a payment, he will connect the website to Active Campaign.

Now, I didn't always have these people obviously. When I started the podcast I edited it. I don't think I ever did the show notes to be fair. And I used to pay an obscene amount of money cause I used to get like a full on copywriting agency to write the show notes. I dunno what I was thinking. And I really didn't need someone who writes copy for a living and website copy and sales page copy to write show notes because basically it's.

I, I'm saying this, I'm where Becci's listening to this and she's like, it's not just something, there is skill in it Becci and I appreciate you greatly, but I used to pay a huge amount of money for copywriters. I feel like I dug myself into a whole now and Becci's going to write something horrible in the show notes, which I don't look at because I trust her implicitly.

So yeah. So. That's the kind of people that you might be looking at next. So like I said, with your, with your VA that'll go one of two ways potentially. Either they love what they're doing, but you need someone in a more strategic level, or they love the strategic level and therefore it doesn't make sense for you to pay them at that level or for them to do the more basic work.

And therefore you might wanna give the admin work to someone else and bring someone in under them, and then it's those specialist areas. So is it that if you are producing something and you hate it, but you know it's working really well, what points can you give out? And like I said, anything that has a process, anything that has a process that you are basically doing the same thing over and over does not need to be you.

And you, I've talked about my podcast process before and I've explained, you know, how many people touch the process and that all I have to do is this bit. And that is music to my ears. And like I said, in terms of growing, that's the way you are going to grow. You know, you can't do everything unless you are just going to increase your hourly rate that you charge people and you don't have any admin.

Then I. I really struggled to see how people can grow without getting some additional help, without getting some support. So if you are new to this...