Head vs Heart in Business. 4 Ways to Find a Balance.

by Janet Beckers | Jun 18, 2018 | Blog, RYT Radio, Success Mindset

Which way do YOU roll when it comes to head vs heart in business?

If you’re undecided, then how do you find a balance that actually works?

This is a topic raised by one of our founding members of The Attract Your Tribe Program in our private Facebook Group.

This is how this question came about

You see, in the first module of the program (The Profit In You) I guide members through exercises to help them get really clear on what they really stand for, and what is so unique about them, they stand out as irresistible to their dream clients.

These exercises are designed to push people out of their comfort zones because it really requires you to draw on the heart as much as the head.

That’s where the real gems are found.

So how do you do it?

In this week’s episode I demonstrate how to find the balance of head vs heart in business, and the correct order to use each for 4 different situations:

1. Leadership
2. Marketing
3. Decision Making
4. Working with clients

I’m sure there are a few people who will disagree with what I say, and some who may actually be offended by some of my examples, but you know what? I’m totally cool with that!

I’m curious to hear your thoughts on head vs heart in business too so leave a comment below.

You can watch the video, listen to the audio, download from the podcast directory, or read the transcript below.
Never miss an episode. Click here for all the ways you can subscribe.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:17 — 41.6MB)

Special Gift For You

Oh and hey…. I have a gift for you today.

It’s part of the module I told you about that inspired this question. You can get it here:

Show Notes

We’ll talk about a POLARIZING topic: The heart and mind in business
You need to tap into your heart to find what truly makes you stand out as a business
How do you balance the mind and the heart?
I’ll share with you a four-component system for combining heart and mind
This all circles back to YOUR TRIBE
You know Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post? We’ll share her story about bringing heart into business and succeeding in it
I’ll tell my personal struggle about making the decision to close Wonderful Web Women
And finally how balancing heart and mind is all about finding out what’s good for you

Links and Resources Mentioned

My Podcast Episode with Kevin Breeding: How to Make Better Decisions: A 5-Step Framework

Arianna Huffington’s Website

The Attract Your Tribe Coaching Program

Read The Transcript Here

Hello and welcome it’s Janet Beckers and great to welcome you here to this episode of Romance Your Tribe Radio. Today, we’re covering a topic that tends to polarize people. People either go, “Ah, absolutely I need to know this” or they roll their eyes. So it’d be really interesting to see which one comes up for you because we talk about the heart. We talk about heart in business and we’re going to talk about the mind in business, and which is the one that’s going to get you the best results. And is it going to be both?

So that’s what we going to have a look at now. Why on earth am I doing this as a topic for a podcast? Well, it all came from one of the Facebook groups that I run for my Attract Your Tribe program. Now in the Attract Your Tribe program it’s fantastic because people are working through the exercises and they’re coming over into the group and they’re sharing not just their responses but they’re also sharing their reaction to doing that particular exercise.

Now one of the exercises I get people to do in the very first module of the program, which is called The Profit In You module, is we’re going to look at what is it about you that is so unique that is really reflective of your journey, your values. What it is that you believe in business? Your unique style, your way of approaching things. What is it about you that is irresistible? What makes you stand out from absolutely everybody else in the market?

So we uncover that now because I’m quite systematic I have a very systematic way of guiding people through that. But, in order to do some of those exercises, even though those systems are there, it requires you to really take a moment of introspection to really tap in the heart to be able to answer those questions. So back over to the discussion in the Facebook group, people were sharing their responses to this question and one of our members shared that she found this, quote, this “very difficult to start”. But once she started it, she just absolutely loved the exercise and she shared her answers to what was so unique about her and they were really really really powerful.

So that was fantastic. She really tapped into something that she now can communicate very well. But one of our other members said “Thank you so much for sharing that because I was really struggling in how to answer this and so I’m really curious after reading your responses is about the whole balance of heart and your mind. How do you use that in business? How do you balance it? And do you have any examples Janet like so I can understand you know how to be able to use this well in my business?”

So it was a really great discussion and I really thought that my broader community could really get some value from us talking about this. So that’s why we are talking about this particular topic.

So, heart and mind. Interestingly, I’ve really I really resisted the “Heart” stuff in my business for quite a few years because I thought that that was a very trivial part of me that that was the daydreaming kind of sometimes Space Cadet-y Jennet. And whereas I really wanted to tap in to the “go get them, “action”, and you know “let’s get this stuff done Janet” because I’m very much a balance of both I’m either really focused or I’m daydreaming. So I thought that daydreaming part was actually not a good thing for me in business but I’ll share with you through this.

I have actually now really really embraced that as an incredible power to bring into business. So for me combining both is really important. So tapping into my natural way of doing things which is really tapping into heart and intuition and at the same time being a very very systematic person, I’m going to teach this module or this is module you share with you today teaching how to use your heart and your mind in business. I’m going to approach it in a very methodical way so I’m going to then share with you from the heart.

So the structure that I’ll be using to teach you is going to have four components. We’re going to have a look at how to use the heart and the mind, how do we balance that when we’re looking at leadership and we’re you attracting a tribe people to you as the tribal leader.

So we can look at leadership. Then the next thing we’re going to look at is marketing and how you communicate what it is that you do. So we’ll have a look at marketing. Then the next thing we’re going to look at is decision-making. Decision-making in your business and combining heart and combining mind. And then we take it one step further and for the clients that you work with making a difference to them.
We will look at how can you be guiding them through balancing heart and mind when it comes to their, whatever they’re doing, whatever their outcomes are that they are working for working towards with you. So that is the structure. So that’s for all of you that are like me that like to have structure around do things.

Now that we’ve got the structure we can relax a little bit because it allows us now to be able to tap into heart. So now let’s do that. So the very first thing is leadership and you as a tribal leader people who attract you. So to understand what this is, first of all let’s look at tribes what is that. And then you as a tribal leader. So I really it like a definition that says Gordon Burden he uses for tribes because it’s so simple. Which is, “this is what we believe around here and this is where we hang out”. So “where we hang out”, that’s up to you. That’s the kind of work that I help you to do to set up your tribal platform: your online presence so that people can find you and they can find others that hang around you. So that’s the logistics part of it. But now let’s look at the message. “This is what we believe around here”.

So if this is what we believe around here you can’t really approach that to start with just from your mind from a very logical perspective because, as that leader, you’ve really got to tap into you know “what is it that I believe? What are my values? What’s unique about me? What’s something about my story and my own journey that has formed what it is that I believe around here?” And you know, “what I stand for?” You need to really tap into that first and you can only do that through Heart. Now of course because I’m a systematic person, I have a systematic way of helping people to do that. But you still have to tap in and listen to your heart, listen to your gut, listen to what feels right for you.

Now once you’ve done that then it becomes a process of being able to articulate that so that you can attract people to you. So it starts off as a process that is heart-based but then it leads over into a very mind-based way because you need to be able to methodically create a way of being able to communicate that but then of course, if you just stay in your mind, and you don’t keep on tapping back into heart you’re gonna lose that attractive and as irresistibility about you and the way that you communicate the way you do things if you’re not bringing that heart back into what you do.

So that’s it as a tribal leader. You will be positioned as the leader of that tribe if you can articulate “this is what we believe around here and this is where we hang out”. So the next part was marketing and how does the heart and the mind work in that? Well I talked about as the tribal leader, that once you clear on what you do you need to articulate it so people can get drawn to you.

For me marketing is all about communication and is articulating “what it is that we believe around here” and “how it is that I can help you” and “come hither come here so you can come and hang out with my tribe so we can communicate and so you can find out the ways I can help you and you can work out if you are part of my tribe”.

So now let’s look at how do you develop that communication. Now there’s a few ways now we can be talking about how do you actually set up all those structures and that itself is a topic on its own and that’s the kind of work that I do helping people sitting up in their Attract Your Tribe programs. You’ve got all of that set up there for you. So you’ve actually can attract the people and then methodically communicate to them. So a lot of that is using your mind but of course there is a beautiful secret source of what comes from your heart whenever you’re communicating.

So what I want to talk about here, when we’re talking about marketing, is your positioning as a person who uses their mind, as a person who uses their heart, or somebody who’s in between. So let’s look at as an example and before I do that I just remembered that there was an example that I wanted to give you when I was talking about the leadership and communicating within your business as well as with actual business.

Now Arianna Huffington, if you have come across her,if she she launched Huffington Post. Now, I can remember a few years ago she sort of went through like a huge burnout and rediscovered, you know sort of discovered, you know the more valuable things in life and how to bring that into business. And therefore she now she started a book called Thrive and she has really built a movement around that and she’s actually really fanatical about sleep. I realize I am too.

Now, when she was launching her book a few years ago, I remember reading one of the numerous interviews that she had done and there was one paragraph – I tried to search to find it for you but there was so much out there on her I couldn’t find that exact paragraph – but, to paraphrase, this was a really interesting part. Even though she ran a really big company, whenever she was really in tune with her heart about what she wanted what was important. The whole company worked better. The whole company seemed to attract opportunities and it wasn’t necessarily because she was communicating with everybody differently. It just brought in a completely different energy. And also it meant that she was able to communicate on a much deeper level with everybody around her.

And so she actually credits a lot of the success of Huffington Post going international rather than just national because she was able to tap into that. So it’s not just you as an individual communicating. It infects the whole culture and the whole energy of your company. So yet look up. Arianna Huffington put a post down to her website. You can just go and check her out. She’s amazingly inspiring to myself. So back now to that communicating. So let’s look at two examples. If you say, ah, let’s just say you are a business coach.

Now, you could be communicating and saying you know what. “Very much from the mind. I helped you get this result. I take you from point A to Point B and we’re very very focused on the outcomes. So that’s what we’re going to be doing. I’ll get you from here to here in the fastest way possible with the best results.” That’s great. They’re really good promise. That’s a good outcome. So that person she will tend to attract people who are very outcome-focused. And this is also the way that traditionally business has been done that it has been the way to go in a very much a male model because it’s valued more of the mindset and the logic and so that is traditionally the way that business would have been marketed. And it’s also a really really fantastic way.

Now, the other side is you get people where you feel as if the way that I work with people is much more heart-focused so you might call yourself a heart-based entrepreneur. Conscious entrepreneur. You’re- you’re seeing all these words that are going out there. Now if you’re focusing on that way what you’re saying to people is “yes I take you from point A to Point B but what is most important here is the journey out. And I’m gonna guide you through that journey and point B might change for you and that is okay now.” Now, be very aware that if you are marketing yourself as soul-based, soul-based, heart-based on that you will attract people to you with the transformational journey. The journey is more important than the outcome.

Now that can be great it could mean that your people are very coachable and they’re very happy to be able to be guided and perhaps create something even bigger than before but you will also attract people that may not want to focus on the outcome because there may be things that are blocking them. So just be very aware that you will have extra challenges the same with the people who are focusing very much on only the outcomes is you will know that a lot of times people won’t get those outcomes until they have been able to tap into their heart and really work out why it’s important to them. They could sabotage. So both ways, you’re still going to probably end up doing the same work with people, but when it comes to marketing be very aware that one type of marketing is going to alienate the other group and that’s a good thing. But be very aware that you know which way do you want to go,which is the kind of group of people you want to work with.

Now there is a third group and this is probably where I fit in really well in that “I am focused on results.” You know, “I got a systematic way to get from here to here and I want you to get to hear better. But at the same time, I use intuition and I use a lot of personal development through every single thing that I do.” And so for me the message that I give is “I’m going to take you from here and we’re going to do it in a way where you can have joy through the work that you create because that’s a really important value for me.” Now sometimes that can be a difficult message to sell because it’s not in either camp.

So you have to be very very clear in how you articulate that so that you are attracting the right people to you. So when it comes, so I just want to talk to you about with your messaging is being very clear on “do I really want to go all one way or all of another or do I want to go in between?” So that will work for you. Now I’ll be really curious to hear which I feel is right for you. Do you feel as if you may have marketed yourself in one direction and didn’t quite work? You could track the wrong people or it didn’t quite sit comfortable with you. You felt as if you weren’t really representing what it is that you can do and have you changed. I’d be really really curious to hear or do you just say that “I call bullshit on both of those”. That’s totally cool as well just leave it comments down below

Now let’s move to the third one which is making decisions in your business. Now this is an interesting part because a lot of times it’s traditionally done where you will be really focusing on logic you’re going to make decisions and weigh up the pros and the cons. Let me see which is the right way to go. And that is really good that you need to make that logic because in business you know your business is creating your income for you. That’s what is providing for your family. That’s what’s making your legacy. So if you’re never going to be using the logic and focusing on the money, you know, your business is not going to last very long.

But here here he lies the rub. A lot of times things can look great on paper and then I work out. So this is where it’s really important for you to tap into Heart. So for me, I resisted tapping into half quite a long time. Because I had- I knew that I had the a lot of that sort of heart-based intuition because I had a lot of insights and experiences that were very difficult to explain otherwise. But I kind of kind of scared me a little bit so I particularly tried to ignore it because I thought that was the airy fairy daydreamer of Janet and I really valued them much more methodical systematic Janet which I thought would be much better for business. And it is only over the last few years that I’ve really come to recognise that that heart-based intuition withholding woman is just as important when it comes to making good business decisions as the logical, go-getter, systematic side. So I’m going to share with you from me how I have now how I now use it and I’ll give one example where to demonstrate that. So for me when I’m making decisions in my business the first thing that I do is just sit back and just allow time. Allow time to be able to just think it through a little bit of a daydream of what would that look like and then really tap into that feeling. Now if I’m tapping into how it feels and I think you know I’ve got to really toss up about does something seem wrong or am I just cited what is this just pushing of my comfort zone.

So really tap into that and trust your body. Trust what your body is telling you. But don’t leave it there, okay? Because the next part is right: now let’s look at the logic. So this is what feels right. “Let me explore now and see if I have a process that’s going to help me to make that decision”. And that’s what I do in my programs. I have processes to help people to be able to work out what the priorities are and what will I be offering. How can, you know, what’s going to be the right decision?

So we tap into both. Now you need to be using your logic so that you can go “alright, I’ve got this way of doing something or this way let’s actually map it out” What would it look like what are the results what’s the pros and the cons so I can see and really make an informed decision here but then come back and tap into heart and really weigh up: does this feel right? Is there something that’s niggling me? If so, I can really go back and work out what that could be.

So really trust your soul when it comes to this. Now this is what I do in business and I’m going to give you a disclaimer in a moment as well when it won’t work. As an example last year I was making a really tough decision about whether I would close my business Wonderful Women because it wasn’t… It was felt like it was limiting me where I wanted to go next. There was a tough decision because I loved it. It was my baby and it was what my brand was and I had a lot of brand equity there. Not a decision to be taken lightly. So I spent that time listening to gut and really my gut was telling me I should close it, it didn’t work. So I knew that I had to go and do the logic.

So I worked with a lovely friend of mine who helped me to mind map only down to Kevin’s interview that I did with you. So here we actually go through this process with you so I will link down below there for you so you can have a look at that and we talk transparently about the process. We worked through but it helped me to actually use the logical side: let’s look at all how does it all look and I knew when I had made the right decision not just because “Yeah that one makes sense. This one’s going to help me”. It’s because once I realized that this was the right decision, the grief was overwhelming because I knew that it was the right one and my baby had to go. But then the excitement moving forward and I was able to then center – go into Heart going “you know what, I know is right. This is powerful. This is going to work.” But so that was an example of using heart then mine but always tapping back into heart. Now I mentioned to you and so Romance Your Tribe. Romance Your Tribe is an example of this. This evolved from me having made that decision.

Now, before I move on to the last part which is working with your clients, I want to give you one disclaimer on this one. Because this is something that I’ve come across a lot over the years of working with different clients especially when I’m working with clients who are very very in tune with Heart. Very in tune with their intuition, very tapped into spirit. You know, people that they trust in you know really implicitly their wisdom in that part of the world. They may sometimes struggle with the more systematic side of it which is why they’re drawn to me because I can help them.

But here is one thing that I do here and that is, “okay there is a decision that we’ve been looking at this thing to do it and it might require me to step up or to do something that’s really out of my comfort zone”. And I will hear them say, “spirit is telling me or my intuition is telling me that this is not the right time or this is not the right decision”. Normally, “It’s not the right time to do it now and so I need to listen to to spirit or need to listen to intuition”. Now my question to you if this is you is I want to be totally honest with yourself and say, “Is this actually intuition telling me this or am I scared?” Because it may very well be fear that is stopping you from moving forward. So sometimes you can have so much trust in that process that you may not recognize that you’re holding yourself back from fear.

So focus that beautiful Heart energy on examining the fear and then see if that is right. Because this is a really common thing that I hear and when I say to them alright let’s investigate to see if this is fear because if so, what you’re experiencing is scare-cited and that’s a sign of great things about to happen.

So this may work this might be something that you find yourself saying or thinking. So I want to second guess yourself on that one and trust yourself to use the logic and then come back to heart.

So the very very last one is when I’m talking about you working with your clients so if you were taking your clients from point A to Point B. Keep in mind that if they are tapping into heart, that they may come up with the same comment that I just had that I gave that you had quite a few clients come up with, then it’s going to be your role to be able to call them on that and say “okay let’s examine this further”. So build up your skills at being able to help people to be able to examine what’s stopping them from moving ahead. It may be that there is something this is this is against their values so therefore it’s really important not to do it but they may not have recognized that that’s what it was. So it might be that yep, you are spot-on, your gut telling you this is wrong, or you know you just get so you’re going to have that role. Okay so and again when it comes to working with your clients is you’re going to have to be able to work with them to be able to tap into using their logic using their mind and to be using their heart to tap into there.

And so, you know, allow yourself to up skill as much as you can on not just systems of logic but also in those skills of being able to help people to tap into their own intuition and for you to trust your gut when you’re working with people as well.

Okay so that’s it. So four different ways that you different parts of your business. We’ve talked about stepping up as a leader of your tribe. We’ve talked about communicating your message so through marketing. We’ve talked about making decisions. And then we’ve also talked about helping your clients to get the best results and all about how to balance and use heart and mind and where, what, at what stages do you use them. And that’s from my experience of what has worked for me and what I’ve observed with other people. Especially now that I’m totally owning that it is okay to be sometimes a little bit airy fairy. Trust it just as much as you trust the logic.

So I’d like to leave you with a few things that’s going to help you to be able to trust yourself to be able to use heart when you’re making decisions and working in your business so that you can then feed whatever’s coming to you from heart. You can feed that over into the mind into the logic and then tap and come back.

Number one this is going to sound really really boring is you just gotta get some sleep. So when you go and check out our Arianna Huffington she just talked about how much sleep made a difference to the success of her business. So I’m really fanatical about this I make sure I get my eight hours sleep and I will sacrifice things in order to get that sleep.

Doesn’t mean I don’t like to go out and party but when I’m on focus with working, sleep is so important. You know if you if you’ve heard my story before having had a long-term autoimmune disease where I couldn’t I had to walk with a walking stick and I was in pain a lot. Now, I’m a runner. And an incredibly active. Sleep was an important part of that. So sleep is really really important and your hydration, of course.

But the other thing that you’ve got to take into account is you cannot tap into heart you can’t hear heart if it’s too noisy around. So you’ve got to get away from the logic zone and you’ve got to give yourself some time to go either to a place or which could be physically or internally where it’s quiet. So that might mean meditating. It might mean taking the dog for a walk but not listening to podcasts. So this might be your time if you listening to it. You know, to actually just give yourself time when your mind wander because then that opens up so you can actually listen to your intuition. So structure that into your time just as much as you structure your to-do list. Because that will allow you to tap in and that’s when the big decisions can get made relatively quickly.

So I hope that that’s helped you. I would really love to hear your thoughts on this topic. I’m hoping there will be something controversial where you’ll just call me and say “no that’s not true” and that is totally cool.

I love a good good conversation there or there might be some “Aha!”s That you’ve had from here or you might want to share some experiences that you have as well so please leave them down below. Pass this on to anybody that you think would really benefit from listening on this topic. And I’m really looking forward to hearing from you. Okay bye.

I hope you enjoyed today’s episode I got a special gift for you that will help you to be able to really tap into your uniqueness and what makes you stand out differently to everybody in business. So it’s a free gift for you the links are down below. And it’s one of the lessons that I teach in my Profit In You module in the Attract Your Tribe program. So you can get that now I’ve got a video that explains to you all about how it works and about the importance of the transformational journey. And then I got a workbook there for you our guide you through how to be able to use that to make some decisions right now. That’s going to help you to be able to stand out is quite unique in your business so the links are down below for that. And go get them, folks.

Bye now.

How to reward yourself in business. 160 Out-Of-The-Box ideas. Literally

by Janet Beckers | Mar 15, 2018 | Blog, RYT Radio, Success Mindset

Do you reward yourself in business? Go on….be honest here. Do you have a simple system to make sure you celebrate the wins, large and small, so you stay motivated to keep creating a business that will make an impact and give you joy?

Introducing The Celebration Box

The Celebration Box is the answer to a problem so many entrepreneurs have. We are great at thinking of the next project, focusing on our never ending to-do list and getting stuff done. We often suck at taking the time to acknowledge and celebrate our achievements along the way and tend to start focusing on the next “thing” without pause. In fact most entrepreneurs I know subconsciously think “You can reward yourself in business when you have achieved EVERYTHING you have set out to do”, and, by default punish themselves for not having achieved the pinnacle of their definition of success yet, even if they are taking massive action each step along the way.

My Simple System To Reward Yourself in Business

In short, the Celebration Box is a small box (often chosen for it’s beauty or significance) which you fill with slips of paper, with different rewards which can be as simple as “go and have a mani-pedi” to “go for a surf/game of golf / walk in your favourite bushland” to “Book a weekend away”. The idea is when you have completed a goal, you dip into the Celebration Box and choose your reward. This works incredibly well with my clients to keep them motivated and reduce overwhelm. Watch the video below to get a sneak peek at my celebration box and what is in it, plus tips on how to use this simple system to reward yourself in business. I have found one problem though. Often people need help coming up with ideas to put in their Celebration Box. So after you watch the video, scroll below for 160 ideas for you to choose from 🙂

You can watch the video, listen to the audio, download from the podcast directory, or read the transcript below. Never miss an episode. Click here for all the ways you can subscribe.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 7:35 — 7.0MB)

How Some of My Friends Suggest You Can Reward Yourself In Business

To help you come up with exciting ideas to put in your own Celebration Box I asked a few of my friends in business “how do you reward yourself in business?” . I’ve shared their answers down below including 10 ideas from each of them you can use for inspiration to include in your own Celebration Box. I absolutely love how different each person is (and how many people include my favourites). It just goes to show that how you choose to reward yourself in business is totally up to you and no matter how crazy or how simple your ideas are, every single idea is perfect if it resonates with you.

Ideas to Include in Your Celebration Box

Janet Beckers, Founder “Romance Your Tribe”

What is Your IDEAL Way to Celebrate?
Anything that combines water (like the ocean, rivers or even a gorgeous pool) and the people I love.

10 ideas for your Celebration Box:

1. Go kayaking with my husband
2. A long walk on the beach with my dog Leonardo di Puplio
3. A morning or evening of creating pouring art acrylics with my daughter
4. Talk music and create a great Spotify playlist with my son
5. A bike ride or bushwalk with a friend
6. Massage with aromatherapy
7. A bottle of champagne with gourmet nibbles on the deck with my family
8. A weekend away in nature with my man
9. A spa day with my sister followed by cocktails
10. Light an aromatherapy candle, put on a favourite playlist, pour a glass of wine, grab my kindle (or my man) and soak in the bath for ages

Milana Leshinsky, Simplicity Circle

What is Your IDEAL Way to Celebrate?
Anything that combines water (like the ocean, rivers or even a gorgeous pool) and the people I love.

10 ideas for your Celebration Box:

1. Play the piano
2. Composing a piece of music
3. Take my dog for a long walk
4. Ballroom dance on my own
5. Dance with friends
6. Buy a gorgeous new ballroom dancing outfit
7. Binge on a favourite TV show like The Bachelor
8. Enjoy quiet time in my beautiful home
9. Go on vacation to Dominican Republic
10. Roast marshmallows with my best friend over a fire at her farmhouse

Michelle Falzon, We Are Content

What is Your IDEAL Way to Celebrate?
TRAVEL! I love traveling and I often reward myself with trips – large or small. Paris or Pitt Street, I gift myself special travel experiences to celebrate projects, milestones and achievements.

10 ideas for your Celebration Box:

1. Book a Pedicure
2. Take a day off and get out into nature
3. Take a walk
4. Retail Therapy – buy that dress or book or gadget you wanted
5. Have a sleep-in
6. Pay it forward – make the time to do something special for someone
7. Buy tickets to a concert
8. Try something fun that you’ve never done before – salsa dancing? flower arranging? drama classes?
9. Watch a sunrise
10. Go for a swim in the ocean

Carrie Wilkerson, Speaker, Author & Consultant

What is Your IDEAL Way to Celebrate?
Sunshine & exploring with my kids.

10 ideas for your Celebration Box:

1. A new book in the sunshine
2. Water & sunshine… pool, lake, beach – whatever
3. A free day with my parents
4. A movie & fun snacks with my family
5. Splurge on a new lotion or perfume
6. A day trip
7. Long bubble bath with a youtube playlist of my favorite artists
8. Creating something with my youngest…
9. 1-1 time with my middle – her choice
10. alone time at the coffee shop, earphones in, fave coffee and writing (NOT on deadline)

Ludwina Dautovic, The Room Xchange

What is Your IDEAL Way to Celebrate?
Relax doing what I love – When I work hard and achieve great things, I give myself my weekends completely off to paint, cook and relax.

10 ideas for your Celebration Box:

1. A day of horseriding
2. Weekend away
3. Holiday,
4. Going to Albury to see my little people (Niece and nephews)
5. Go for a long ride on my bike
6. Lay in the sun
7. Go out for dinner (Korean BBQ!)
8. Get a massage
9. Get a pedicure, nails done, and facial
10. A good session at the hairdressers (cover my greys, trim my ends, and that damn good head rub that comes at the wash basin!)

Valerie Khoo, Abstract Artist specialising in creating art for business owners

What is Your IDEAL Way to Celebrate?
Spending time with my family, including my furry family.

10 ideas for your Celebration Box:

1. Champagne and shopping at my favourite boutique
2. Indulge in a foot massage (there is nothing like it!)
3. Spending big on new art materials
4. Go out on a boat for the day
5. A Netflix marathon with a great show!
6. Treating my pets with surprises
7. Dinner with wonderful friends
8. Booking into an experience I’ve always wanted to do
9. Treating my team to an outing
10. Sampling a new restaurant

Michelle McGlade, Biz savvy healer for healers

What is Your IDEAL Way to Celebrate?
Spa day!

10 ideas for your Celebration Box:

1. Grab a special bottle of wine and chat with my hubby and kitties by the fireplace
2. Write myself a love letter to document the moment
3. Take the afternoon off and spend time in nature by myself
4. Take the entire day to dive in to a mindless piece of fiction
5. Call a friend and share the great news
6. Immediate dance party in the office with music blaring
7. Gather a group of loved ones together and treat them to dinner
8. Take myself shopping for a new purse, shoes or anything my heart desires in that moment
9. Write a thank you note to each person who has contributed to my recent success
10. I’ll leave this one blank… decide in the moment how I’d love to celebrate

Lisa McDonald, Coach

What is Your IDEAL Way to Celebrate?
A reflexology session – I love having a foot massage and its therapeutic nature. It means I get to relax, restore and rejuvenate my body and mind all at the same time.

10 ideas for your Celebration Box:

1. Reflexology
2. Massage
3. Walk in nature
4. Playing with my son
5. A meal or cuppa with some time out
6. A glass of champagne
7. Time out with family or friends
8. Pedicure
9. Facial
10. Gift of something I want or that I see for myself

Kevin Breeding, Coach, Author & Speaker

What is Your IDEAL Way to Celebrate?
Time with The Smokin’ Hot (aka, my wife, Susie)

10 ideas for your Celebration Box:

1. Massage time
2. A full day of creative outlet (for me, piano)
3. A tech-free day or weekend
4. Weekend away with The Smokin’ Hot (see above)
5. A full weekend of nothing – no tasks
6. Bucket list concert – Tony Bennett, Jane Monheit, or other legend
7. A day of mindless car shows (pick your topic, pick your show that allows you to disconnect. For me, vintage car restoration.)
8. A day with one or all of my four, beautiful girls
9. A Tech reward – new gadget
10. A simple Cava or Prosecco, the Smokin’ Hot, stars, and an evening on the porch. (I’m a simple guy)

Robyn Jackson, Mindsteps Inc. a boutique professional development firm serving k12 educators

What is Your IDEAL Way to Celebrate?
My ideal way to celebrate is to travel. I love to book short weekend trips with my husband alone or with our family to celebrate meeting a business milestone.

10 ideas for your Celebration Box:

1. Book a weekend trip somewhere special (New Orleans and Jamaica are my favs)
2. Take yourself on an afternoon date
3. Read a book purely for pleasure
4. Cook something special for myself
5. Two Words: French Pastry preferably at some chic patisserie patio with great spots for people watching
6. Treat the entire team to a fancy lunch somewhere special
7. Make a batch of ice-cream
8. Take the afternoon off and spend it doing Nothing
9. Buy myself something special but seemingly frivolous
10. Pay myself an actual cash bonus

Clancy Beckers, Student

What is Your IDEAL Way to Celebrate?
Find new music to enjoy.

10 ideas for your Celebration Box:

1. Air bnb trip with my girlfriend
2. Sleep in
3. Have a party
4. Go out for dinner
5. Trip to Vinnies
6. Scream as loud as I can
7. Read a magazine (like New Scientist)
8. Book a concert ticket
9. Take time to draw
10. Tell everybody I did something great

Kathy Goughenour, Expert VA Training

What is Your IDEAL Way to Celebrate?
One full spa day where I completely relax away from the office and in a beautiful environment. I have a body scrub, massage, mani-pedi, facial, healthy lunch and glass of wine.

10 ideas for your Celebration Box:

1. New pair of pajamas,
2. Nice(er) bottle of wine,
3. Steak dinner,
4. New outfit
5. Girlfriend weekend away
6. Book I’ve been wanting to read and the time to read it
7. Massage
8. Pedicure
9. Facial
10. Lunch with girlfriends

Kate Vanden Bos, BEing StrongHER

What is Your IDEAL Way to Celebrate?
I absolutely LOVE to celebrate with a day (or two!) at a spa. Saunas, massages, good food, napping outside in the sun with a good book while sipping herbal tea, quiet, peaceful surroundings and a sense of total escape…healthy and PURE bliss for me!

10 ideas for your Celebration Box:

1. Booking a day (or two!) at my favourite spa with treatments
2. Pulling one of the ideas out of my Travel Jar and going on an adventure. Or just getting in the car and driving… experiencing the freedom for a few hours
3. Buying a book from the Amazon wishlist I create for celebration purposes – and then enjoying the time to read it! (Probably with a bottle of red!)
4. Blocking out some guilt-free time, turning my phone off, and disappearing on a nature hike where I can breathe and reconnect to myself and the natural world around me
5. Run a salt bath… with lots and lots of candles… and my fave bottle of red!
6. Live music! Treat myself to a concert ticket
7. Spend an afternoon wandering around cute little shops… (you know the ones you always say you ‘must’ stop in sometime as you drive by?!) And treat myself to a special gift
8. Buy myself a huge, beautiful bouquet of flowers!
9. Relax with a luxury pedicure
10. Book an overnight stay at a boutique hotel for a mini-break away

Suzi Dafnis, CEO, HerBusiness

What is Your IDEAL Way to Celebrate?
A glass of French champagne with friends.

10 ideas for your Celebration Box:

1. Buy a new book
2. Go for a run
3. Try a new restaurant
4. Book a facial
5. Walk on the beach
6. Buy a new handbag 😉
7. Massage
8. Hang out with friends
9. Bag of potato chips and dark chocolate (not at the same time)
10. Listen to a course or podcast the I’ve been wanting to

Kate Perkins, Specialist Lymphoedema Occupational Therapist with a major focus on Breast Cancer Rehab

What is Your IDEAL Way to Celebrate?
To go for a surf for a couple of hours, unapologetically, not feeling guilty that I’m surfing rather than working!

10 ideas for your Celebration Box:

1. Buy a bottle of Verve, make a luxurious cheese platter, and share them with 2 of my closest girlfriends
2. Go skateboarding with my son at the skate park
3. Have a night out to dinner with my husband
4. Take myself out to lunch, enjoy a glass of wine overlooking the beach
5. Go surfing with my surfing mums group
6. Organise a camping weekend for the family, which inevitably involves surfing and a campfire.
7. Get my hair done with my favourite hairdresser, have a glass of wine, and read trashy magazines
8. Buy something new for my wardrobe
9. Go surfing
10. Go surfing

The Last Word

A huge shout-out to my wonderful friends who shared their ideas for you.

Now over to you.

I’d love to hear your favourite way to reward yourself in business and a wishlist of what you will put in your own Celebration Box.

Share your ideas in the comments section below and let’s see if we can come up with another 160 ideas J

Cheers
Janet

P.S. Rewarding yourself in business is one very important way to reprogram your mind for success. If you’d like more ideas, grab my free gift for you over here: 15 Simple Mindset Hacks to reprogram your subconscious for happiness and success

Read The Transcript Here

Hey welcome, Janet Beckers here. Today we're going to have a look at a very simple solution to something that entrepreneurs very rarely do and that is celebrate. Now, does this sound like you? Did you get so focused on where you going and you can see the vision, you've got the ideas, the goals, you're really excited about what you can be creating can get a bit impatient for it and you'll be taking action, taking steps along the way, really focused on getting things done. Does that sound like you? If so that's what makes entrepreneurs so exciting. That's what makes business owners so exciting because so many people get ideas don't they? How many of them actually take action and make them happen. That's sort of the definition of an entrepreneur. Someone who gets stuff done to achieve something, to achieve a goal, achieve of vision.

Now, if that sound like you that's something to celebrate. But are you celebrating? How many times do you find yourself that you will get so focused on finishing an activity, that as soon as it's done and it may be something freely really important, like launching a new project. Like getting your first client. It might be getting your web site done. It might be shooting some videos that you are going to be using in your marketing. Something that requires you to really be focused and achieve that outcome. How many times do you actually stop and celebrate? Or do, you like most people, this is what I used to do, is then go "Done that!" Tick, on to the next thing.

Now if you're building your business if you've got this vision you may be thinking, when I get to the end I'm going to celebrate big time. I can tell you now that's a long way away because that will keep on moving. That goalpost keeps on moving and an exciting part about building a business is not just what you achieve at the end. It's those little steps, it's those things that you achieve along the way. Those personal developments that you get from actually taking action and stepping out of your comfort zone. It's those things that sort of celebrate that you are a person who takes action and get stuff done. So celebrate NOW.

Okay! I hope I convinced you on the importance of celebrating. Now the next question that comes up is "All right, well how am I going to celebrate?" Some things, you know, I think well that was just a big project, a to do tick. Does that require what sort of celebration? Making those decisions we can tend to go "Well it wasn't that important to start with." So this is what we do. Enter the Celebration Box.

Now my celebration box happens to be from when I was in holidays on Vieques Island in Puerto Rico. And I love it so it's got a beautiful and colourful. And it also has great memories for me. For you it's any kind of box that you want to have. Inside the box we have a whole stack of these different papers. Now I'll grab some of these out. Every single one has something that you can be doing to celebrate, that rewards you for having taken action.

So here's a few examples: Listen to some live music with drinks or dinner. Means I got to find somewhere where there's a band playing and go. Book a weekend away that's a good one. Another one might be... A candle lit dinner at the beach. Absolutely no cost at all involved in those but something really special. Cocktails with my daughter. Go to the movies. You see there's lots of different things. There'll be manicures, pedicures, massages. There will also be... go for bushwalk, go for bushwalk on my own, go kayaking. They don't all have to be things that are huge events. They don't have to all be things that are going to cost you a lot of money. They can all be things that are doable in a short timeframe and also that are special to you and they don't have to cost money. It's things that are you giving yourself permission to celebrate and taking the time to truly acknowledge what you have done.

So this is how you use the celebration box. Once you've got your box, once you've filled it with lots of different activities is you first of all, set an intention. So if you are working on a project going towards something that you want to get done and it's going to take you a bit of work to get there. It might be setting up your first... Setting up something that's going to be helping you to build your list so you might have created an e-book, some kind of magnet. It might be a new program that you're launching. It might be getting your first customer.

It might be, you know, so many different things, creating a series of videos you can use for your marketing. Things that, you know, if I can do this. This is going to be evidence that I've taken action and I've got a result. When you're doing that you say, set the intention that when I have done THIS, I'm going take a dip into the celebration box. Then as soon as it's done, you just open up your box, dip in, and pick out one of those activities. One of those rewards that you've got for yourself. I like this one that says "You deserve a massage."

Now this is the next rule that goes with it, is as soon as you pick something out, you need to action it. Now that doesn't mean I'm going to go for a massage right now, but what it does mean is that I have to bring up and book the massage. Otherwise I'll start going "Well I'll get on to the next thing. I'll have the massage then." Very important that you stop to acknowledge how much you are achieving and to celebrate those little ones along the way and to remember that this is an adventure that the progress, the actual journey is just as important as the final destination.

So I'd love to hear from you. Have you got a celebration box? What are you putting yours? And if you have a photo of it, I would absolutely LOVE to see that. So share with me down below and then go, go get em folks! Go out there and celebrate your brilliance and what you are achieving. Bye.

How To Find Your Why in Business

by Janet Beckers | Mar 12, 2018 | Blog, RYT Radio, Success Mindset

This episode is all about How To Create Trust in Business

In this week’s episode I interview Heather Yelland from The Elevation Company. Heather is one of my favorite friends and influencers in the world because of the very genuine change she makes to the people who are her clients and colleagues in business. Her legacy is felt world-wide, and as you’ll hear in this interview, close to home with my own son.

In this interview we talk a lot about legacy and trust. Heather is well qualified to talk on this topic as she has previously been voted Most Trusted Business Person in Australia.

Listen to the interview to learn about building trust, how to create a business that feeds your passions when there seems to be no money in your ideas, the correct order to approach planning your business model, a unique program to change the lives of teenagers and insights into how changing the way you price your services impacts on the type of clients you attract.

I’ve also created a step-by-step article for you below so you can take action on one of the topics we discussed in the interview.

You can watch the video, listen to the audio, download from the podcast directory, or read the transcript below.
Never miss an episode. Click here for all the ways you can subscribe.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 33:35 — 30.8MB)

5 Steps To Create Trust in Business

When you create trust in your business it means your tribe are more loyal to you and your brand. This means more leads and more return clients for your business and practice. Plus a beautiful environment to conduct business….. there is nothing like “feeling the love” to motivate you to keep building your business.

Heather Shared 5 steps to create trust in your business and create a business that leaves a true legacy.

1. Get really clear about what it is that lights your fire.

What is your big WHY? What is it that motivates you to do what you do? Knowing the things that you are the most passionate about and gives you this huge sense of fulfillment will be your first step.

Heather recommends two things:

Listening to Simon Sinek’s TED Talk on WHY

This video is an excellent insight on why finding your WHY is important for creating a successful business that creates trust in your business. Through case studies. This video demonstrates why focusing on your WHY in your marketing is far more important than focusing on the WHAT and HOW of what you do.

Ask “why” to create meaning

When you meet a child, maybe around 3 years old, they would always ask “why”. Even if you’ve already answered them, they will ask “why” to your “why”. The reason they do this is that they’re still trying to create meaning of the world around them.

As for yourself, book a time with yourself to exhaust why your business matters to you. Keep asking yourself why until you’ve narrowed it down to your big WHY.

Knowing your why is also important when it comes to solving problems. Usually the first thing we try to ask when we’re troubled is “how”. We tend to ignore that the question amplifies the energy we already have. Remind yourself of your “why” in these situations. Ask “how” from a place of clarity and willingness to learn instead of one of desperation. Ask “how” with direction.

How can you make it possible to do what you’re passionate about and live comfortably?

Some people would say, “There’s no money in that” to which Heather answers, “What if they don’t need to be?” But Heather has proved that it is indeed possible. There are a few questions you would have to ask to support this. The following steps help you create trust in business as well as help you determine ways to link your WHY to BUSINESS success when at first it may not seem possible.

2. After WHY focus on What

What do you have to achieve or do so that you can make things possible? If your WHY is a cause, think of what you can do to contribute to that cause and still possibly earn an income that allows you to live comfortably. What would you have to be so you can continue to serve your why?

Think about WHAT you are already great at and build on that to link with your WHY.

3. After WHAT focus on Who

Ask yourself who you want to serve in pursuit of serving your why. Then, know who you can learn from. Who is currently doing what you want to do or something similar? You can partner with these people to develop partnership, initiate collaborations, or even join their organization so you can learn how to do what you have to do to serve your WHY.

4. Be Clear on WHEN

Are you in for the long haul or are you looking to fast-track results? Determining WHEN you are ready and able to implement will make a big impact on the next step of HOW this will happen.

5. HOW is the last step

Once you’ve got the why, the what the who and the when sorted out, there’s a far greater sense of momentum and flow, and you feel much stronger about your certainty in what it is that you’re doing. So then putting together the bones of HOW you will make something happen, as Heather states

“ I think the big trouble for us in the western world is as soon as there’s a dilemma, we go straight to how. We say Here’s my problem. How can I fix it?” From politicians to law to whatever. And in my experience, all the how question does is amplify the energy. So if you’re asking that question from an energy of expansion and possibility and innovation, great! You’ll get more expansion, possibility and innovation. Most of us ask the how questions from a place of pain or deprivation uncertainty.”

“Your vibe attracts your tribe.”

Once you get clear about the 5 steps above, it’s like a funnel. The HOW steps kind of fall out the bottom with a real clarity and sense of certainty. If something that you choose to do in terms of HOW doesn’t work, you don’t get dissuaded, you don’t get shaken off, because you’ve got that absolutely clarity of WHY you’re doing it, WHAT you’re wanting to do, WHO it is that can help you or WHO it is you’re trying to serve.

All of us can pull ourselves out of bed even on horrible days when we’ve got that level of clarity and we’ve got that emotional engagement or emotional investment.

It is that clarity that creates trust in business.

Once you have this air of certainty, it helps you build an authority in the industry you want to be in. In turn, people will be more likely to trust you and be loyal to your brand. Listen to the podcast to learn more about Heather’s journey of finding her personal why, how you can apply this to your own brand, and how she successfully turned her why into something with such a big impact.

Action Points

Set aside 30 minutes and a journal and write as many pages as you can about WHY you want to do what you want to do.
If your WHY won’t make you money, listen to Heather’s story of how she found a way for her business to fund her why
Structure your WHY into the way you tell your story about what you offer.
Take an honest look at your pricing – are you attracting “cheap” clients?
Congratulate yourself on taking action. Dip into the Celebration Box.
Share below your ah-ha’sfrom this lesson and also any tips other viewers may find useful.
Go and check out Heather’s website for more great ideas

If you loved this episode, I’ll be grateful if you can leave a review over on itunes so other people can discover this podcast too

Resources mentioned in this episode

theelevationcompany.com

The Ted talk video Heather recommends you watch:
Simon Sinek – Start with why – how great leaders inspire action

Extra Bonus: Free ebook – 15 Simple Mindset Hacks to reprogram your subconscious for happiness and success

Read The Transcript Here

Janet Beckers: Hello, and welcome everybody! Janet Beckers here with Romance Your Tribe Radio, and I’m so excited to introduce you to my beautiful guest this morning, Heather Yelland!

Heather Yelland: Hi Janet! Lovely to be here and lovely to join you and your tribe!

Janet Beckers: Yeah, well one of the reasons why I truly wanted to introduce you to Heather is simply because she’s one of my favorite, favorite people. Heather and I have gone back years and years and years ago through a girlfriend of ours, [01:05 Jenny or Gerry?] Martin, who was one of the first people I interviewed years ago when I was starting off my business. And Heather was a really integral part of that team and we got to know each other really well through there. Now, our relationship and our friendship has gone on for years so much so that Heather is actually one of the strongest mentors for my son, Clancy.

Heather Yelland Yes. I’m a little in love with him, too, Janet, I might say.

Janet Beckers: We can tell, we can tell! She’s just made such beautiful influence so we’re going to talk about how that came about, and also Heather is also one of these people that everybody feels, you know, very, very special to her. She has that ability, and that ability to really engender trust within a tribe, so much so that you’ve even won a Trust Awards, wasn’t it?

Heather Yelland: Yeah. 2015 I was voted the most trusted business leader in the country, which sounds a bit nobby – but, I mean I think if it was an award that I wanted to win, Janet, that was it because I really think that we’ve reached a time where in business we need to go back to the basics and one of the fundamentals in any relationship is trust.

Janet Beckers: Absolutely, and the interesting thing is was I found out later on I was nominated for that and I had already gone and voted as many times as I could for Heather.

[Both laugh]

Heather Yelland: Bam! That’s very sweet.

Janet Beckers: So what we’re going to talk about today is a few things. One is… I really want to dive a little deeper into how does Heather have that beautiful trust within a tribe where people have never ever met her, so core to doing that. And then also I’ve seen the evolution of Heather’s business and its growth and the impact that it’s making. So we’re going to dive into her branding and the growth of her business and how you can take — follow the process that Heather has used to be able to build this beautiful, strong brand. That’s what we’re going to dive into. Now, before we do that, first of all, over to Heather now, we are going to attempt to try to give you the maximum value in about 20, 25 minutes max. So to start with, to cut to the chase, Heather can you please share with us who do you serve, and how do you do that?

Heather Yelland: Sure. In really simple terms, the people that we serve are those invested in their own growth. We do that through, largely through 4 streams; the company has 4 streams to it. [04:02 ????] Elevate children, which is all about serving children and the people who support them, so families, teachers, communities. Secondly, elevate people, which is personal growth programs for anyone who’s interested in their own growth and development in leadership. Third, elevate business, and that’s all of our business consulting, particularly focused on the development of culture and values-based leadership. And then our fourth area is elevate humanity, and that’s a whole range of different things that we offer and get involved in to support other people from a sort of a charitable perspective. Not just here in Australia, we do work in India, Africa, Indonesia, Myanmar and New Zealand.

Janet Beckers: Wow! That’s huge impact, and I love how you’re so clear on the 4 different levels that you do, because your company is the Elevate Company. That was…

Heather Yelland: The Elevation Company, yeah. So the Elevation Company is the sort of the arching — the overarching name of the company, but those 4 streams of service sit underneath.

Janet Beckers: Yeah, that’s fantastic. So we’re going to dive into that clarity, you know, of what you’ve done there. Now, before we do that, let’s just talk a little bit about your first one, which was… which is where I’ve had a lot of contact with Heather over the last few years. So we’re just going to indulge us both here because we have a mutual person we love, and it’s actually through one of those streams that Heather does. So could you give us in a nutshell about your Green Super Camps.

Heather Yelland: Yeah. So Green Super Camp is basically the result of — I was actually [05:42 simply | ????] having a conversation with Roger Hamilton one time in Bali, and he said to me “You’re one of the most passionate people I know, but when you talk about your business the way that it’s structured right now, I don’t feel the passion,” and I said, well you know, past the cocktails, cause nor do I. And so it became fairly clear that something needed to change, and he said “Well, what are you passionate about?” And I said I’m passionate about kids. Unfortunately, I was never able to have them, but, you know, the universe works in strange ways – I now have 8. All of it just [06:14 stepped | ????] into me, but means I get to mother on a daily basis. So I think that as a result of that conversation with Roger, what I really started thinking about, Janet, was how do you create opportunities for the stuff that you love to inform the way that you make a difference in the world every day? And lots of people had said to me, you know, “We know you love kids. Don’t do that. There’s no money in that,” etc, and I thought ‘what if there didn’t need to be?’

Janet Beckers: Right.

Heather Yelland: What about if I actually grew my business in a way that it was so successful that I could do whatever the hell I want to support children and play with children and spend time with children and learn from children, without needing it to return me a financial return. Now, I think when you set out with that, what I call the heart investment rather than a financial investment, the universe has a way to conspire to give you what you want. I’m really clear about who the hell I am and what I stand for, and I think that’s been the crucial aspect of the success of my business and the growth of the team that I now get to work with everyday. Because I sort of — well, I love kids. I do love kids and I want to spend with them and I’m like the biggest kid of all the kids, so what opportunities are there for me to do that and not have to make the money, and I thought, well, our business consulting is the growing area of the business. What happens if we look at ways that we can make money out of that and then take the cream of the milk as it were and support the children’s program. So we did some research, discovered Super Camp in America, which is an American-based program but runs all over the world and has been running for — I think they’re entering their 39th year or something, and I made contact with them and said, you know, why not come to Australia, pretty much. And what I didn’t know at the time, which was great, was that they’d been trying to come here for about 18 years and had had 12 different partners in that time but it had never worked.

Janet Beckers: Right.

Heather Yelland: And it was great that I didn’t know what because I might have been a little more nervous. But once we ran our first very successful program – the co-founder from America came out for that program, and told me that “I figure it was just because you were waiting for me, or I was waiting to find you guys or something,” and it’s grown exponentially from there. So we’ve run, in fact, we just ran in October this year, program number… 13 here in Australia.

Janet Beckers: Fantastic.

Heather Yelland: And we’ve run 3 years of it in Bali, as well, in Indonesia. We’ve now taught the Indonesia people to run it for themselves, which is terrific. It’s an incredible program and provides really great personal leadership, academic acceleration and environmental awareness for kids from, well, all over Australia mostly, but we always get about 10 to 15 kids from New Zealand. This time we had kids from Myanmar, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Canada… I think that’s all I can think of off the top of my head.

Janet Beckers: Yeah, for me it’s a real peek into the kind of work that you do with your corporates, because my son Clancy went, you know, he had a [09:49 | ???? heart] scholarship actually, which was really nice, he got to apply, you know… why should your child go, and I basically said “Look, this kid is fantastic! He’s really funny. He’s really, you know — all of these things that are wonderful about him, but I just can’t work out if he knows what lights his passion up. This kid’s capable of anything, but he just doesn’t know what he’s passionate about and so this kid is driving me crazy. If you can help me work out the passion, you’ve done your job.” And I tell you what – the difference in this boy once he’d been able to go through such a wonderful process and really [10:30 | ????] into what lights him up. I was just, like, you know, that was all he needed. And so yeah, so we’ve seen that amazing process and, of course now, Heather keeps on inviting him back and he’s now training. You know, it’s a big part of his life, so we get to see, all the time, the process and we get to practice a lot of the techniques because he brings them home and we have to use them.

Heather Yelland: Practice on the family and all.

Janet Beckers: Yeah, so anybody that wants to know about that, we will put the links here for you to be able to know about Green Super Camp because, you know, you’ve got to send your kids there; it makes such a huge difference.

Heather Yelland: But I think, Janet, there is gold in there. For the people who are listening, you know, they’d be thinking “Okay, so where are the parallel – what does that mean for me? How can I learn from that?” And I think though, there’s a few things that stand out to me. One is get really clear about what it is that lights your fire. Get clear about what it is that makes you want to get out of bed everyday and make a hell of a difference and leave a legacy. And that, for me, was about working with children. Number two is… if that doesn’t enable the opportunity for you to make the money that you want to make to build your business and have the kind of lifestyle that you want, find other ways. Like, don’t box yourself in, so from my perspective it was about — okay, I knew I was probably gonna blow somewhere between 15 and 20 grand on that first program, so I thought I’ve got to find a way to put together 15 or 20 grand. So then I thought “Well, okay, what am I good at?” I’m a speaker; I’m really good at speaking, okay. With whom can I partner in order to spread the word about the Green Super Camp Australia program, but also to ask for support to make it possible for young people to come along if they weren’t able to pay their own way. So it’s like who can help? Why are you doing it? I guess this is the process I run myself through. Why am I doing, and I don’t ask or answer any other questions until I’ve got pages and pages and pages of answers to that, and I literally will book time, date myself, and I do it during business hours not during personal hours, I actually book appointments with myself and I sit down and I just write. Why does this matter, why is this important, why does it speak to me, why does it call to me, why will I commit to this above anything else even if it all goes wrong or the shit hits the fan and I don’t know which way to go forward, why why why – get really clear about that.

Janet Beckers: That’s great. Yep.

Heather Yelland: Then get clear about, okay, what’s the what? What is it I want to achieve? What is it I need to do? What is it I need to be? Get clear then – I write and I write and I write until I’ve got that – the “what” clear, then I ask the who. Who’s done it before me that I can learn from? Who’s currently doing it that I might partner with? With whom could I develop a partnership or a collaboration or even who could I join for a little while, and in fact, Paul Dunn, who is the founder of Buy One, Give One, or B1G1 as we know it — Paul and I had a conversation, that was about 3 and a half years ago in fact, and he was part of the incredible influence that helped me to redefine the name of the company and the way that I do business. And I remember in the conversation with Paul, he said “Yoiu know, Heather, I know 2 or 3 people that have done a similar thing that I think you should talk to,” and that’s exactly what I did, and I rang those people and I said “Paul suggested I should speak with you. I’d really love to buy you a coffee or shout you lunch and take an hour of your time, and this is what I’m working on and this is what I’d love to hear from you, and I guarantee that if you’re prepared to do that, I will give you the results of my research.” And absolutely followed through and honored that commitment.

Janet Beckers: Right.

Heather Yelland: Then I think once you’ve got the why, the what and the who sorted out, there’s a far greater sense of momentum and flow, and you feel much stronger about your certainty in what it is that you’re doing. So then putting together the bones of it — I think the big trouble for us in the western world is as soon as there’s a dilemma, we go straight to how.

Janet Beckers: Right.

Heather Yelland: “Here’s my problem. How can I fix it?” From politicians to law to whatever. Here’s the problem how do I fix it? And in my experience, all the how question does is amplify the energy. So if you’re asking that question from an energy of expansion and possibility and innovation, great! You’ll get more expansion, possibility and innovation. Most of us ask the how questions from a place of plain or deprivation or uncertainty.

Janet Beckers: I love it Heather! That is a huge clarifying point for, I know, a lot of people who are listening here because that is that classic thing. You should do the how because you solve a problem.

Heather Yelland: Correct. Don’t even ask how until you’re clear about the why, the what, the who and the when.

Janet Beckers: Yeah.

Heather Yelland: And once you get clear about that, you know, it’s like a funnel. The how steps kind of fall out the bottom with a real clarity and sense of certainty, but then if something that you choose to do in terms of how doesn’t work, you don’t get dissuaded, you don’t get shaken off, because you’ve got that absolutely clarity of why you’re doing it, what you’re wanting to do, who it is that can help you or who it is you’re trying to serve. All of us can pull ourselves out of bed even on horrible days when we’ve got that level of clarity and we’ve got that emotional engagement or emotional invested – investment.

Janet Beckers: So yeah… A few things that you said there that I’d like to just dive into for people to be able to apply, now one of the things you talked about was, with the why… because that’s the beginning, and I love how you were saying about your why was working with children. But, then you did a reality check and thought actually that’s going to be a really difficult way to make the money. So when it comes to people who you work with, because I know that this is the core part that you do, not just with the kids but also with your corporate clients, is getting into that why. Because I find when I talk with people, they can tend to fall into a few categories. They will go “Oh my god, I’m so shallow. I don’t have a big, overarching, life-changing why.” But then if they go “Well, I just basically want to make a shit-load of money,” that also is not a strong enough why for when things get tough. So I know that this is stuff that you do with people all the time, is there any advice that you can give on that part there?

Heather Yelland: Yes, absolutely. Two things: one, go and watch Simon Sinek’s TED Talk on why — S-I-N-E-K, Simon Sinek. Simon and I have different interpretations of exactly what the why is all about, but his TED Talk is a really great first cut of what why is important. The second thing is most us have either had a 3 year old, currently have a 3 year old or know somebody else’s 3 year old, and one of the things that’s lovely about 3 year olds is that their little brains are undergoing such changes and there’s so many wonderful things happening in the firing and wiring of their, neuroscience if you like, that they ask why a lot. And even though spending too much time with them starts to feel frustrating because it feels like they’re asking why just to annoy us, they ask why to create meaning.

Janet Beckers: Right. Yeah.

Heather Yelland: So just do the same thing. Sit down with a pen and say — write “Why does this business matter to me?” Well, because I love to serve people. Okay, service. Why is service important? “I love to make a contribution.” Great. Contribution. Why does contribution matter? What is that important? “I guess it gives me a sense of fulfillment.” Great. .Why is fulfillment important? “It helps me to, sort of, connect with who I really am and the reason I was born.” Okay, connection. Why is connection [19:35 | ????]? And so on it goes. And one of the things that we love to do with people is help them to understand what we call their big why, and to us your big why is the essential energy that must be in all things for you to be content. And in my case, Janet, you know, I do love to hang out with kids and I do particularly love to be around them. And I think perhaps part of the reason for that is because I wasn’t able to have my own.

Janet Beckers: Yeah.

Heather Yelland: But then I started to think what is it? Why do I love to be with kids? It’s the sense of connection. It’s that pure presence. It’s the honesty of the way that they engage with you. And so, then I started unpacking that a little bit more and saying, well, it’s actually that the why behind connecting with kids for me is not about the kids, it’s about the connection.

Janet Beckers: Right.

Heather Yelland: Absolutely! But — my big why is connection. So whether I’m working with Macquarie Bank, Blackmores, you know – some of the bigger clients that we have or whether I’m sitting having one to one conversations with young people at Super Camp, as I did with your beautiful son, the juice in that, the what feeds my soul, and that is the connection.

Janet Beckers: Right.

Heather Yelland: So when you get really clear about that, like, you get to a point where you’re able to say there it is, that is my why. We sometimes refer to it as the things that calls to your soul.

Janet Beckers: And you know what I really love about this, Heather, is you’re not having to articulate something, like… I’m going to bring water to developing countries where they can’t have clean water, you know. You don’t have to articulate something huge that you go “I should think that.” Really deep down it’s not the thing that’s getting me out of bed. Whereas what you’re taking about is that real energy, that integral, which [21:34 | ????] that connected-ness, you’ve totally tapped into that. That’s brilliant. I’ve actually done quite a bit of work on this myself, working out what is absolutely core to everything I do and what comes really naturally, and it’s love. Like, love is actually in our mission statement. Or, you know, everything — the first thing I do when somebody comes into our company is “how are you going to demonstrate love?” How are you going to bring into every interaction? But then you have to define, well, what does love mean to you? You know, love does not have — love, for different people, is different, but for me the love is about connected-ness and making people truly believe in themselves. That’s a real buzz. So I really like that that there can be your why. You can take the pressure off yourself.

Heather Yelland: And, you know, in the sense that I’m speaking with the queen of Vibe —

Janet Beckers: Of Vibe? Hahaha

Heather Yelland: Well, the queen of — I should, sorry, say that the queen of Tribe, your vibe attracts your tribe.

Janet Beckers: Yep. Spot on.

Heather Yelland: So if you show up with a vibe of uncertainty and, you know, lack of clarity and all those sorts of things, then those are the people that your vibe attracts. So if you’re — and we talk to the kids at Super Camp about this, your vibe attracts your tribe. If you turn up to camp going “Your camp sucks and I didn’t even want to come and my parents made me,” you’re going to find a whole bunch of kids who’d also feel like it sucks and didn’t want to be there. And that’s then going to be the way that you construct your reality. If that’s what you want, knock yourself out.

Janet Beckers: Yeah.

Heather Yelland: But if that’s not what you want and if you look at the kids who are engaging with the activity and drawing a huge amount from it and you want some of that, shift your vibe. That’s a personal accountability thing. And it’s the same for us in business. Why is it that some people are, you know, why is Heather so lucky? Yeah, I am. But I am because I create it.

Janet Beckers: Yep.

Heather Yelland: And I create it with the vibe, and the vibe that then attracts my tribe is that sense of certainty. And it’s interesting because, Janet, you know, in many ways there was a fairly significant cost to me in setting Super Camp up, and I still probably tip in somewhere between 10 and 15 grand per program, although the at-camp cost is now cost-mutual because of the numbers that we have at the program, but I don’t care because it’s interesting that even though what I did was set out to run a program that allowed me to just help young people understand and believe in and love who they are, and I didn’t care whether I made money out of it or not, it’s become a huge marketing strategy for us. And in fact we were commissioned to run a program for YPO, Young Presidents Organization or World Presidents Organization, which is sort of the creme de la creme, if you like, of business people around the world. We did that, a parent-child program we ran for them, and it was the highest rating program that YPO across the world has ever run, and the sponsor of that program was admitted into the hall of fame at the international YPO, and off the back of that, I then got to be in contact with about 25 extraordinary business people, 3 of whom are now coaching clients of ours.

Janet Beckers: Fantastic.

Heather Yelland: And one of them is a business consulting client so, in fact, one of our biggest pieces of work going on in our company at the moment is a piece of work that came to us from that program. So you just never know – it’s about being… if I break it down: one, know who the hell you are and why you do what you do.

Janet Beckers: [25:31 | ????]

Heather Yelland: Two, structure that into the way that you tell your story about what you offer. I could stand here, Janet, and say to you, you know, “I and our team work with corporate Australia and businesses across the country who do this,” who cares? Nobody’s listening anymore. Here’s the reason we do what we do: because we fundamentally believe that all anyone wants is to love and be loved and to be known – loved and got, for who they truly are be that in life or in business. So what we do is we grow people and we help them to connect to and express more of the truth of who they are.

Janet Beckers: Brilliant.

Heather Yelland: We do that whether it’s at Super Camp, whether it’s in our personal growth programs for adults, whether it’s in our business consulting. I turn up literally to the big 4 banks when I’m having conversations with them and I talk about – I’m going to teach you how to love your people. If you’re not up for that, tell me now, I won’t waste your time and you don’t get to waste mine.

Janet Beckers: Excellent.

Heather Yelland: Interesting that the big 4 said “there’s the door,” not as frankly as that. And Macquarie said “Well God knows we could do with a dose of that.”

Janet Beckers: That’s fantastic, and that’s the other side, as well as you being — you’ve got your why. I love how you said you weave that into your story because the next part about that then is that, it means that — [27:01 | ????], you’re getting it off the fence; you’re getting the splinter out of your bum from sitting on the fence, and being able to say “Well, this is what we believe,” now that’s our tribe. That’s our vibe. That’s who we want to work with. So, you could very clearly, you know, your people who don’t want to be a part of that could very clearly go “Nah, this is not where we belong.” [27:21 | ????]. The ones who can relate, like the corporate with the Macquarie, or like the people who work with you one on one, is they not only go “Yeah that sounds good,” they go “Awwe! That’s fantastic!”

Heather Yelland: “Thank God!”

Janet Beckers: Fantastic! So I absolutely love that. So… wrapping up, so we’ve got that super, super clear on your why. We’re getting… weaving that into your story, which I just absolutely love. Then we’ve got this other, like, that adding in there of, you know, get the splinter off your bum – get off the fence because that’s where you’re going to get clients who you love working with.

Heather Yelland: And that level of clarity will allow you to say no to tire kickers because tire kickers refer other tire kickers.

Janet Beckers: Yes. Good point. Absolutely. That’s brilliant, that’s brilliant.

Heather Yelland: And there’s probably one other thing I would say, Janet, and that is understand the difference between growth and change and how you relate to both. Yeah, because I think a lot of is, especially if you’re looking to either you’re starting out your business or you’re looking to expand your business, a lot of us will say things like “Oh yeah, I’d really love to grow – I’d really like to grow, and I very much like –” and as soon as I go “Okay, well that’s going to require you to change,” they go “choke” and stop breathing. Most of us want growth, very few of us engage with an enjoyed change. If you don’t engage with an enjoyed change, that’s okay, but know that upfront and don’t let it become a constraint to you. Build in the supports and the structures and the systems that will help you to overcome yourself, really, when the fear of the change strikes. And the other thing that I would encourage people to think about is, especially if you’re a small business or maybe a solopreneur, and you’re thinking to yourself ‘it’s all very well to say outsource the stuff that takes you out of the flow, but I don’t have the money to outsource,’ you don’t need it. You don’t need it. The very first person that I brought into my team 8 years ago was a mum that was looking for an opportunity to re-hone her skills because she’d been out of the workforce for 12 years, she worked with me for 12 months for nothing.

Janet Beckers: Wow.

Heather Yelland: … and still believes she got the better end of the deal.

Janet Beckers: Right. That’s… fantastic–

Heather Yelland: Think differently about where the supports are available. Kids that are doing study at university need the opportunity to practice their skills. If you provide the context or the opportunity – the possibility for them to do that, they’ll often provide the assistance free of charge or at cost only, you know, be innovative about the way that you think about where the opportunities and the possibilities are. But, when you back yourself, you know what you stand for and you put out a vibe of that, those people and opportunities are often coming to you instead of saying “Well, look, I don’t really like to work with fill-in-this-name-here, but at the moment that’s paying the bills.” Because while you’re doing that, the insert-name-people are saying “Well this is great because I’m getting heaps of good outcome for not much money. I’m going to refer my mates who want a cheap deal,” and suddenly you’ve got an entire client-load of cheap deals. I remember when we moved our fees, our day rate fees, from 4000 dollars, which is what they were at the time, 4000 dollars [ 30:59 | down or damn or and?] I thought that was pretty steep, and I went “You know what, stuff it. What would happen if I just changed it to 10?” It wasn’t as simple as “when I woke up I’m going to make it 10,” it was “Who would I need to be? What would I need to believe? And why would I need to think I have a right?” And once I had the answers to those questions, I went back to my existing clients and I said “3 months from now if we’re still working together, I need you to know my fee is going up to this.” I lost 2 clients, but I gained about 8 of what I would call higher caliber clients who then refer me to other high caliber clients.

Janet Beckers: Excellent. Excellent. You’ve just given an amazing wealth of wisdom here, Heather.

Heather Yelland: You’re welcome.

Janet Beckers: Truly have! So, as a wrap up because I’m looking at our time, making sure that we’re–

Heather Yelland: Sharp?

Janet Beckers: Well on that, we’re totally sharp. In that wrap up, I think that the key things that I really want people to have a look at is really those – tapping into your why, and then you know, we’ve got some fantastic strategies there to be able to do that. Now, getting around to the who because you did a really nice loop then when you talked about the who you get to help, and it’s really because you’re super clear on your why. And so that was a really nice example to show how to be able to use that, including the way that you used that when you were first growing your business to be able to see ‘how I get to do what I love and to fund it.’ So putting those points going across is, really, and seeing how you can get super clear then on what it is that you do and who you want to work with, so I absolutely love that. So what I would really ask everybody that’s listening here – hopefully you’ve been taking lots of notes. Haha! And, you know, on the website here we’re going to have all the transcripts and the summary notes and all the links so you can go back there as well, but what I do ask you to do is… For Heather and I to be here, like, you can tell that both of us, we genuinely care about you getting results. It’s what drives both of us. And so for us to spend this time here is a gift, for us, you know, it’s a gift to us as well as gift to you. What would be incredibly, you know, a gift – real gift to us is if you get in contact with Heather. So whether it’s going to be, well put your contact [33:42 | ????] down below, anywhere that you connect with Heather whether it’s dropping her an email, whether it’s stalking her on Facebook, but let her know one thing, at least one thing, a big a-ha from today. Something that you have done because nothing will give both of us greater pleasure, and I especially know Heather, to know that there’s — we’ve made a change. So to do that, what’s the best way — where people can go to find out more about what you do, Heather, and to, you know, if they’re interested in working with you, how do they find out?

Heather Yelland: The best way is just to make contact with us and we’ll find out what we’re up to and get a sense of who we are. There’s videos and information, that sort of thing, on the website, which is theelevationcompany.com, but also to just shoot us an email – [email protected] is our best option — *clears throat* pardon me, or you can shoot me an individual one at [email protected]

Janet Beckers: Excellent.

Heather Yelland: And of course, I am very fortunate to work with an extraordinary team of people so, you know, you might be interested to hear their views and what it’s like to be a part of the company as well, particularly if you’re wanting to look at, you know, adding staff to your team. Anyone in our team would be more than happy to answer your questions or give you some insights on what it’s like to be a part of the Elevation Company’s family, as we like to call it.

Janet Beckers: Fantastic. Thank you so much for your time, Heather! I could just spend days, literally, and we will. We will–

Heather Yelland: I think we found it quite well to keep it to 20 minutes or 25 or whatever.

Janet Beckers: Well it is a difficult thing to do.

Heather Yelland: For us. Hahaha!

Janet Beckers: Yeah! Okay. Bye, everybody! And can’t wait to see what action you take from today. Bye!

Heather Yelland: Thanks Janet!

10 Ways to Stop Giving Away Your Time for Free

by Janet Beckers | Mar 5, 2018 | Blog, RYT Radio, Success Mindset

Today’s episode is about how to stop giving away your time for free

If you are like most of the clients I work with, you help people. You get immense pleasure from helping people get results which is why most of my clients are coaches, service providers or consultants.

But there is a flip side to this helpfulness that gets such great results for your clients.

Boundaries

It can be extremely difficult, especially for the first few years, to create boundaries around your accessibility and to stop giving your time away for free.

I know this because it is something I struggled with for years and it wasn’t until my friend Sharon said “Stop giving away your expertise for coffee and cocktails, you are a consultant” that I realised what I was doing.

So, to help you stop giving away your time for free, I’ve got 10 ways for you to reclaim your value below.

Plus today’s podcast episode goes into more details, with a few stories thrown in.

You can watch the video, listen to the audio, download from the podcast directory, or read the transcript below.
Never miss an episode. Click here for all the ways you can subscribe.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 18:57 — 26.0MB)

10 Ways To Stop Giving Away Your Time For Free

1. Do an honest Audit: what are you giving away for free

When you do a totally honest audit the results may surprise you. Think of this as “Free Creep”. You may originally only think about the obvious “pick your brain for coffee”. But then, the less obvious things may happen. For example, doing extra work outside of a brief for a client without them even knowing how much more work that involves. They don’t even realise they are exploiting you because you never set the boundaries. Or you may be giving free coaching via email when an exchange of question and answer starts to get a bit long.

2. Ask Yourself: what are personally getting out of giving away your time?

This can be a tough one because it takes personal insight and brutal personal honesty. Here are a few examples: You get to feel needed, you get the reward of martyrdom (the dark side of being helpful), you get to avoid asking for the sale. Told you this one was tough J

3. Stop being so available

If your advice and expertise is core to the programs and services you provide, then making that expertise too available reduces its value. If people know they can always get you on the phone, always get personal replies to emails asking for advice etc then why on Earth would they pay you for your time?

4. Use an online booking system

Set yourself up with a professional system to book people in for sales calls and paid consultations that takes you and your time out of the loop. Using an online scheduling platform makes it so much more efficient for both you and your client (or potential client). Plus, the one I recommend has a free level so you can look and act like a pro, even with a small budget.

5. Be Clear on Your Boundaries

Take it from a mother of teenagers, if you are not clear on your boundaries they will be exploited…even by the nicest people. They usually aren’t setting out to be disrespectful, it’s because they think you are okay with giving your time for free. And here’s another insight from the trenches of motherhood…..people are happier when they are super clear on what your boundaries are. That’s because most people actually DON’T want to exploit you and want to be clear on what is for sale and what is not.

6. Ditch the free consult

If you are using “Free Consult” as part of your marketing and sales strategy, I urge you to reconsider this. That’s because it says 2 messages:

Your time has low value
You aren’t honest, because we all know free consults are really sales calls in disguise.

Instead be open. Let them know they can book in for a phone meeting to see what help they need and how you can help them. You can promise them they’ll get great insights on the call, even if you both decide you don’t have a way to help them at the moment. That way they know you respect their time too.

7. Only get your profitable avatar on the phone

If you are converting new clients by phone, then make sure you only make your time available to the people who are likely to be your customers. You do this by ensuring your marketing is consistently targeted to your most profitable avatar (the person who you can help and who is most motivated to pay) and you are very clear what the purpose of the telephone call is (see point 6 above).

8. Use pre-qualifying questions

In some cases you may want to ask a few qualifying questions before people can confirm a time to book for a telephone call with you. An example is if people are interested in one of your higher priced programs or they are asking for a proposal discussion for a service you provide.

If they DON’T fit the criteria to be accepted into the program, or be a company you likely would write a proposal for, then you can contact them and cancel the meeting (in a kind and respectful way of course). After all, you don’t want to waste their time either. I do this for people who apply to find out more about my Rising Stars Coaching Program.

9. Always think how your paying clients will feel (or future ones).

This was a game changer for me. Once I started thinking about how a high paying client would feel if she knew I was giving away my time for free, when she has paid good money for access to me and my brain, then I became so much clearer on my boundaries.

And if you don’t have any high paying clients yet (however you define them), create an imaginary one for yourself and think about how your imaginary friend will feel.

You might find this post on 2 reasons high ticket clients change their minds over here.

10. Have freebies so you can always help, without exchanging time

Saying no is always hard if you are a person who loves to help. And let’s face it, most people who are coaches, service providers and consultants, come from a place of loving to help.

So it is easier to say no if you can offer them a consolation prize or gift at the same time. That’s why creating great free content via blog posts, podcasts, videos and list –building down-loadables is such a strategic thing to do (as well as essential to creating your leadership platform).

The Last Word

My challenge to you is to take the first steps today and start with Step 1 from the list above and do an honest audit of what you are giving away for free. Listen / watch / read the podcast episode on this page because I go into more details (and a few stories) to help you reclaim your time and value.

If you have friends who you know would benefit from this post please share with them, or even better use one of the share buttons on this page.

I’d love to hear from you, after all, I get a lot of personal value from helping (see point 2 above) and hearing your feedback means a lot to me.

Cheers

Janet Beckers

Read The Transcript Here

Hello and welcome! Janet Beckers here and today we have very special episode of Romance Your Tribe Radio because we are talking about a topic dear to my heart and that is giving away your time for free. And I’m gonna be sharing with you today, ten different ways that you can stop giving away your time for free without having to offend people while you’re doing that. So we’re gonna cover those ten steps and the ones that I share with my clients all the time in fact that’s one of the very first things we do when we start working together. And it’s one of the things that I had to learn the hard way and I don’t want you to make the mistakes that I did of really devaluing what I had to offer people and gave away too much for free. So what does it look like? You know I didn’t even realize that I was giving away my expertise for free. You might be in a situation if you find that you are spending time where you’re giving people advice, you’re letting them pick your brain and you are swapping your expertise for coffee or cocktails. If that is happening to you, stop it right now. It was a real eye opener for me when one of my girlfriends said “you know what, you just gave two hours worth of consulting for a couple of cocktails. Really why did you do that.” I didn’t think that I had a consulting business. I’ve got a coaching business crockery and it’s an art gallery.

I just want to use my voice because I’ve learned so much from building an online business. That’s when she said “Yes, you are giving away your expertise. You’re a consultant. Either you make the decision that you’re going to be a consultant and start charging for it, or stop giving away everything for cocktails”. There you go. So if that’s happening to you, recognize that this is gonna hold you back in your business for a long time. You need to stop it now.

So what are the very first things that I found that I was doing when I did end up taking that advice and realizing actually I have really enjoyed doing this, so, let’s build a business around it. So when I started my consulting business and it’s had numerous forms since then. When I first started it, I had little office because I decided to move out of my home office, I need to take myself a bit more seriously and it was just me. So I was the person answering the phone and I really enjoyed it because I’d answer the phone, I’d really get to know all these potential customers and new customers, we talk for ages on the phone. You know, I made some really really good friendships through that way. But I’ll tell you what it didn’t convert very easily to sales, of course sometimes it did. But really our family was quite often having conversations with the same people that there was only money changing hands here.

Now, this is gonna be one of the things that we’re going to look at, how do you snap out of that and what can you do instead. Now if you’re doing this, this is, you know, you could be giving away free consults that might be one of the things that you doing all the time, you might be saying to people “Well you know, I’m spending some time with them. This is a free consult it’s going to lead to a smile“. I can tell you now that if you are using the model of giving away free consultations with the intention of it leading to a sound if you do not have any kind of system around that, it is not going to end up in your business. It’s all it is a free consult. It is giving your time away for free. OK, so I can convinced you that this is something for you worth looking at, OK. So now let’s dive into 10 different ways that you can stop giving your time away for free. So I’m gonna get my list here so I make sure I don’t miss anything.

Number one is you would have taken orders before you can even decide “I cannot give you my time away for free.” You need to be very clear on what you are giving away for free. Are you giving away consultations? Are you meeting people for coffee to say “oh yes sure let’s get together. You know, I can give you some advice so we can to get to meeting always.” You’re meeting people for coffee if you’re doing it, you’ve got to stop this. If you’re sending people lots of really really good resources, things that people perhaps cannot pay for but you know it’s gonna help them say you give it to them. If people are you picking up the phone and talking to people and then taking that time to answer a lot of their questions, take an audit first say exactly what it is where you’re giving away your time and your expertise for free. It might take you a few days to do this because you think you’ve got your list and then you’ll have an aha. When got to do something and you realize “Oops! I’m doing it again”. So take your orders, that’s step number one.

Now, step number two, you’ll be honest with yourself. What are you getting out of it personally? What is your reward? Just be totally honest here. I know for me every single time that I give free advice and consultation with people, I could see what help they needed and I was able to help them. The big buzz that I got from that is, number one I felt really valued. I was able to help people so it was kind of feeding my name to be valued. And I also felt significant. I was showing them more just showing them. I was being perceived by them as a person of significance because I had a way of helping. So that’s me being totally totally transparent. I probably wouldn’t have acknowledged it back then but be totally honest with you. So what do you get out of it? If you find helping people incredibly satisfying, awesome. You’re perfect to be in a Coaching Consulting Service sort of business. But if you’re just going to keep on giving it away for free, you don’t know a business. OK. So that’s number two, be totally honest with yourself when you look at that audit, what are you getting out of it because you need to let that go. We need to replace that. So let’s have a look at that.

Now the first thing is once you decide that you are going to stop giving away your time for free, you don’t need to stop being so available. This was a hard step for me to put in place someone tell you what when I did it absolutely freaked me out. So, if you are a person who’s answering the phone and somebody is wanting to get some advice from you or you’re thinking I can really help them you can say “look I don’t have time at the moment to be able to give you the help that you need. Would you like to schedule a time and then we can have a talk about the best ways that I can help you. You’re not saying we get on the phone and also the problem you’re talking about the best ways I can help you.” So you can let them know that actually your time has value and they are not, you can’t give them all the help. Now quickly get them over onto a scheduled call so they have boundaries around what you are doing. Move them over to that special meeting as quickly as you can. Even better, if you can get away with not answering phones get somebody else to answer. If you, if they then have to say “I’m sorry, Janet Becker is busy at the moment. Can I schedule a meeting for you?” They’re gonna value your time a lot more. So either way it works, make sure it is valued.

I’ve got a special link for you. This is the next one. Don’t do that scheduling yourself. Don’t say to them “OK! Let’s make a time.” So this is step number four. Don’t make a Don’t Say Say let’s make the time. Are you free on Friday or whatever it is. You can say to them “Now my calendar gets pretty full and I’m sure yours does too. So I’m gonna give you a special link that may e-mail it to you or you might even be on and just say what the you are at least and this will give you access to my calendar so you can find a time that suits you.” That way you are not positioning yourself as the person who is the administrator. You are the person whose time they come in to come in and they’re gonna value. And also, it’s crazy for you to be spending all of your time trying to workout calendar stuff, that is crazy, not when there are automated systems and a lot of those are for free. So I’ve got a link down for you below to the system that I use. I’ve got a link there to a post that I’ve got where I talk about all the different ways that it works and you can see behind the scenes on how I use it. So if you can have a look at the program that we use online that will really help you absolutely save you so much time and make it look like a total pro.

Number five, when you do get the phone with people, be absolutely clear on what the call is about. Now there’s many people for coffee ok because you got time traveling they coming back becomes something that could be a 15 minute meeting for two hours. So when you are there you say “This is the amount of time that we’ve got so you let them know Oh, we’ve got 30 minutes, what we’re going to be talking about is this. So it could be to find out what your big problems are and I’m going to help you to work out if I can help you. And the why is it I’ve got to help you.” So it’s very very different to saying “Tell me what the problems are and yea, yea, sure I can help there, I can give you this advice.” Completely different way. So you are letting them know that there are boundaries on what you can talk about and boundaries around how much time you’ve got.

Now, number six. Ditch the free consult. Don’t tell people that “Let’s hop on the phone and I’ll give you a free consultation.” If you pitch it off as free, you’re pitching so the low rent and people are not going to respect your time. And at the same time have you ever believed that when somebody said “I’ll give you a free consultation and you didn’t have the back of you mind cyclical North-South cycle. And I think and so me and I think in a pinch me. I really don’t know if I want to take that free consultation.” Have you ever been in that situation? C’mon. You know that’s happening in the back of your mind. So just tell people “We’ll get on the phone and I will say if I have a way to help you”, let them know that this is not free consultation. This is you, working out which of your products, services, programs whatever it is, is going to be the best solution for them. So you’re letting them know that. Just be totally clear up front people, people are actually really really respectful of your honesty.

Now, this is the next one. If you’re gonna get on the phone with people and this is people who are at the moment have approached you because they’re wanting to pick your brain, get some free free help. If you’re gonna get on the phone with them, the reason you’re going to get on the phone is because you get to see if they can become a client of yours. That’s got to be the best way that you can help them. You’re not gonna be able to solve all the problems in 30 minutes, if they’ve got big problems that need your help. They’re gonna take longer, OK. So you only want to get people that you’re on the phone with, likely gonna be your ideal customers that you can help them and that they’re gonna be able to pay to be able to get helped. So make sure you only get your most profitable Avatar on the phone but profitable Avatar that’s the person who really needs you and also is motivated enough to pay you for that. Now to make sure you get your most profitable Avatar on the phone is really a whole process to do with your messaging, to make sure that your messaging, all of your marketing is only targeted at those people. Now that’s a bigger process. And if you’re finding that you’re often getting people on the phone who just are not your clients you need to look at your marketing messaging because that’s where the problem is if you need help with that, that’s my specialty. I love doing that, I’m making it so you get aligned we have special exercise that we do. I’ve never seen it elsewhere from the exercise I’ve developed in our programs to really help you with your profitable Avatar. We have a profitable Avatar corporate exercise so you get super clear on not just who needs here but who’s motivated. And we match all of your marketing leads to that point. You really should very very have few people are ever going to turn up on those calls that are not profitable Avatar. So really really look at that.

Number eight, if you have a big ticket or a few this might be 500 dollars. It might be a few thousand, 10000, 20, 30, 40, hundred whatever it is. If you have a big ticket item for your business, you might be thinking “Well, I know that there are certain people that are not going to be able to afford this program.” So you don’t want to waste your time on a special call that is going to waste their time as much as yours because they can’t afford it or then they’re not the right people for it. So what I suggest you do in your heart tech once when you get it you want to talk about if they’re going to be rough the program is have some qualifying questions. So not only you’re not giving your time away for free now, you’re only gonna get on the phone with people who are very very likely to be able to say yes to working with you. I do this for people when they are expressing an interest in joining my rising stars coaching program. They’ve already got all the information on the program. They just need to talk to me to see what the investment is and if it’s right for them and if they want it is because not everybody gets accepted. So before people can even book that call, I have a series of qualifying questions. Now the last part is the program that I will link down to below that I use for scheduling all of our calls and that you can get. Also, allows you to decide if you can ask questions before they can even book. So that’s really really super cool.

Now, here comes the last two points because we’ve talked about here just the strategies and what we’re going to do. But the other thing that’s going to happen is you don’t sabotage here if you don’t get the mindset part right. And so I have two ways here to help you.

This is step number nine, think about if you have a high paying. So somebody who pays for your time, pays for your attention or your special service and you don’t have them. Now how would they feel if they find out that you spent half an hour or an hour or more giving free advice free service to somebody, you know, how are they gonna feel. I mean that is pretty angry. If I was paying somebody for that and then I found out they’re giving what I was paying or paying for they are giving it away for free. Now you might go “Well I haven’t got any like that yet.” I want you to think about your future clients. So really really visualize this wonderful person who you have, who is paying you for what you’re worth and you’re giving them their attention, you’re their your focus. How is that future client gonna feel if they find out that you’re giving your time away for free. So if you are not gonna be doing it for yourself, do it for them. Because the thing is if you do have a paying client, they gonna find it and you put that you’re giving information away for free, they’re gonna feel incredibly devalued. And the last point in that is you are going to have people that you know that you can help but really they’re not in a position to pay you. And I’m not talking here about the few cases that you might do pro bono. I’m talking here about people in general, they just might not be at a point where they’re motivated enough yet to even take action and do something that’s not their top priority but they still want some help or they just don’t have the finances or for some other reason they’re not ready to be able to make the most of what you’ve got. But you know you can help them. That’s when you free resources come in. That’s why I create this podcast because I know not every person can work with me but when I’m working with my clients classically we go through this, you know, I give them scripts on how to use or show them, you know, here’s exactly the questions that I ask when I’m pre-qualifying you use the eyes but I know that not everybody can afford to work with me or at this stage where they’re ready to. So this is my way, when somebody comes to me saying you know that they might have this problem I can say look I’ve got a great podcast and a blog post for you that’s really going to help you. So giving away something that’s gonna give for free means that you’re not really saying no. You can say “I have got some resources for you. I only have a limited time that I can actually spend on the phone with people or in person helping them.” So that’s your last step there as well think about the people who are paying you and then have something to give to the people that you know can’t afford yet or aren’t ready for whatever it is that you’re offering.

So I hope that helps you, this ten steps there that’s gonna help you to stop giving away your time for free and start valuing yourself and letting you put boundaries around your availability around your time and around your intellectual property, so that your potential clients are going to see the true value that you offer and be very very willing to be able to invest in your help and the people who were never going to invest with you anyway can go and use your free resources and not tap into your energy and your intellectual property. I really do hope that that helps you. If you come over to the blog post, if you’re listening to this on iTunes for example, if you come here on the blog post and just leave your comments or any questions that you’ve got down below. Is this something that you have had a challenge with? I would love to hear from you. And do you still have a challenge with it, and do you have any I have a little things that you can help other people who will be out viewing that page. Yeah they can help them as well. So share your expertise and your experience as well would be wonderful. And you’ll also see on this page I’ve got a link there for you from behind the scenes on the software that I use to do my online bookings and manage my calendar. There’s a free little of it and the rest of it’s really reasonably priced so you can see behind the scenes how I use it and you don’t check it out. And it’s very very simple for you to get started. OK. Bye.

Finally Launch Your Online Course With These 5 Simple Mindset Hacks

by Janet Beckers | Feb 28, 2018 | Blog, Success Mindset

Let’s be honest here. Are you procrastinating?

Have you said you’re going to create and launch your online course for what seems like forever yet you keep finding reasons NOT to?

You know you can change people’s lives, really help them, if you just get your act together and launch your online course, yet you keep coming up with busy work, or excuses, or changing deadlines.

If so, know you are not alone.

So let’s do something about it. Let’s get your head straight for success and the fastest way is to trick your brain with simple mindset hacks.

To get you started, in this article I’ll share with you 5 simple mindset hacks you can start using today.

I’ve also got a great free ebook with 15 of these little babies ready for you to print out and stick on your office wall, mirror or forehead.

But first, let’s talk about WHY should finally launch your online course

If you are like most of the people I work with you are brilliant at what you do.

You get results for your clients and you know if you have an opportunity to bring someone on as a client you can help them, possibly even change their lives.

The trouble is, you can only help a limited number of people if you are working 1 on 1.

And if you are charging an hourly rate then the results you can get for the people you work with is even more limited as they often stop working with you before they get the full benefit of your expertise (stick with me baby, if you’re doing this we need to change this for so many reasons…but that’s for another day).

It doesn’t matter what your area of expertise is, you are not alone. Like my clients you could be a business coach, life coach, speech therapist, make custom furniture, be an agency providing online services or PR or websites. You could help people fall pregnant, get divorced, navigate the cancer journey, train horses….you get the picture. Like them, you can launch your online course.

If you can take what you do with your clients one-on-one and create a series of resources, step-by-step they can use, then have freed yourself up to help more people, and freed yourself from the hourly rate trap. And hey, it doesn’t need to be a full-blown online course like the one’s I’ve created for my Romance Your Tribe Masterclass clients.

It can be simple. A simple library of resources you would normally give to your clients anyway, yet you’ve compiled it into an online resource area your clients receive as a bonus program when they enrol in your new coaching or service packages. (Don’t have your offerings bundled into packages yet? Then you need my Romance Your Tribe Masterclass).

Convinced yet? OK let’s get your mindset sorted with 5 simple mindset hacks.

Replace I Can’t with How Can I?

Mindset Hack: Replace I Can't with How Can I? You are stating a problem and deciding upfront that your problem has no solution. Let’s think of an example when you might say I can’t. For example,

“I can’t shoot videos for my business”.
“I can’t speak in front of people”.
“I can’t launch my online course”

Now, how about if you replace the words “I Can’t” with “how can I”?

Imagine the difference that that would make. Let’s see how it looks:

“How can I shoot videos for my business? “
“How can I get confident to speak in front of people?”
“How can I launch my online course?”

Now we’ve changed your mind from focusing on the problem to focusing on the solution. You CAN find a way to finally launch your online course.

There’s always going to be some sort of problem. There’s always going to be something that blocks you but I can tell you what, there is always a solution that you can find, either a way of learning or a way of finding somebody else to do it or completely different way of actually getting something happening

Replace If with When

Mindset Hack: Replace If with When This is a simple but powerful one-word substitute to use when talking to potential new customers and, well, also your hardest customer to convert … your own self-talk.

When you are talking to a potential new clients do you find yourself saying
“If you register …”
How much more powerful is “WHEN you register …”

Closer to home, replace the phrase
“If I get the sale / fill my workshop / am successful”
“If I launch my online course”
which is full of doubt, and replace with the confident WHEN.

Use this one word in conversation to replace the word “if” and notice the difference.

Replace I’ll Try with I Will

“I’m going to TRY and launch my online course.”
“I’m going to TRY and shoot videos for my business.”

You may be saying this with conviction but you know what? You’ve already given yourself permission to fail.

You’ve built into your phrasing the expectation of failure.

I WILL

As an example, let’s see how different your energy is when you replace TRY with WILL:

“I WILL launch my online course.”

Immediately you start thinking of deadlines, who can help you, what will be in the program. This also forces you to be honest with yourself.

Are you willing to put in the work to launch your online course? Do you have time?

It may in fact make you decide NO.

But at least you’re being honest and not wasting your time with something you were never really mentally committed to.

Replace Not Enough with Just Enough

Mindset Hack: Replace Not Enough with Just Enough Can you relate to this? You’ve launched a seminar / webinar / online course and you’re really disappointed in the numbers? You find yourself saying

“There’s NOT ENOUGH people…it’s going to fail”.

Can you feel the panic set in?

Or you have a deadline looming and you say

“There’s NOT ENOUGH Time”.

Can you feel the panic?

Well here’s a simple one-word substitution, a One Word Hack that totally changes the way you look at the situation and removes the panic instantly.

“There is JUST ENOUGH Time.”

Yes…..there is just enough time for you to launch your online course!

In the following example, changing the words moves the focus from quantity to quality. It makes you focus on the people present and very often can result in greater sales and better outcomes for those present.

“There are JUST ENOUGH people at my seminar / webinar.”

Try it.

Replace Who Am I To with Who Am I Not To?

Mindset Hack: Replace Who Am I To with Who Am I Not To? So you’ve got a message to share, you’ve backed yourself and planned your programs, started your website, and envisaged the next level and then … the little voice in your mind starts whispering those words that you are sure others are also thinking when they see what you have planned.

The cruel whisper of
“Who am I to …”.

Here’s a simple one word substitution for this phrase that will totally reshape the way you think.
“Who am I NOT to …”.

Come on… it’s time you stepped up and here is the one word hack that works for me.

So I ask you now….Who are you NOT to launch your online course?

How to Make Better Decisions: A 5-Step Framework

by Janet Beckers | Feb 26, 2018 | RYT Radio, Success Mindset

This week’s podcast episode is all about how to make better decisions.

If you’ve ever got stuck, unable to move forward, because a decision in your business or life just seems too hard to make, then you’re going to love this episode.

If you find yourself procrastinating over choices you know are important but you feel torn between so many options or even feel paralysed by the fear of making the wrong choice when there seems to be more than one option that is right, then know you are not alone.

It’s times like this you need a decision framework, and if the decision is important enough, you need to know that framework is thorough enough so you won’t second guess yourself and slip back into indecision.

To help you, this week I interview my close friend and mentor, Kevin Breeding who developed a deceptively simple, but very powerful framework on how to make better decisions.

It’s not just theory though. We delve into 3 case studies so you can see how to apply the framework yourself to your own business decisions.

3 case studies we explore:

Kevin’s story of hitting rock-bottom. Of being completely broke after a bankruptcy and divorce to turning his life around and putting his own business back on track. He used the framework to choose the right path and to stick with it.
My own business. A few months ago I was stuck. I knew I wanted to make a bigger impact but my current business model just didn’t feel like it could take me to the next stage. I had big decisions to make. Stay as Wonderful Web Women? Go back to the future and relaunch a membership site just for women (how I started out)? Close everything and start something new? Brand as Janet Beckers or as my Signature System or Company? Plus more.I worked personally with Kevin who took me through his 5 step framework and I was able to assess every option and choose the path that gave me the freedom to make the impact I really wanted. I share more in the interview.
A client who overnight became a viral video success (120 million views in just 2 weeks) and who was in real danger of his business imploding because he simply did not have the capacity to cope with the number of enquiries and had a short window of opportunity to really capitalise on the attention. We explore how to make massive decisions under stress.

Plus a special bonus….. Kevin is an absolutely delightful person to listen to. You’ll really enjoy his take on life.

I’d love to hear your ah-ha’s and any questions or comments you have. Just leave them below and we’ll come back and join in the conversation.

You can watch the video, listen to the audio, download from the podcast directory, or read the transcript below.
Never miss an episode. Click here for all the ways you can subscribe.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:20 — 26.0MB)

Click To View Show Notes with Timestamps

[00:01:50] Kevin Breeding works alongside entrepreneurs and leaders who see their business as a vehicle to do something great in this world. “It’s not just about the money.”

[00:02:30] “That’s what I do. The roadblock-busting business.”

[00:03:28] Kevin was rebuilding his life after experiencing bankruptcy and a divorce all within six months, affecting him intellectually and creatively.

[00:04:08] “Our brains are wired for survival not for creative thinking.” We tend to worry too much over what could go wrong. Kevin built the Five Step Process so that we can take emotions out of challenging circumstances and approach them as logically as possible.

[00:05:20] The Five Step Process: Imagine, illustrate, indicate, integrate, and implement.

[00:05:40] “Imagine is all about brainstorming and we all know how to do that.

[00:05:50] “Second one is probably where it would be most useful for our group listening today is on illustrate.”

[00:06:02] “Integrate is where you look at the impact of that choice all the way through your personal life, your business, your team, your systems all of that”

[00:06:10] “Implement phase which is how do you physically bring it to real life.”

[00:06:24] “This process is deceptively simple and incredibly powerful.

[00:07:51] “As entrepreneurs, there are so many ways to be right… There is this sense of overwhelm because we have this fear.”

[00:09:30] Kevin didn’t realize that he was creating a five step process. He was just journaling at the time and came up with a process that worked.

[00:09:46] “It’s not just the five step framework which I’m a huge fan of.” Kevin talks about how having a set framework or system plugged in saves you from progressive cognitive atrophy – a fancy way of saying psyching ourselves out.

[00:11:02] One of Kevin’s closest friends, Dr. Rick Rigsby, is in a situation where he could benefit from the Five Step Process. After working with Goalcast, a media company who creates inspirational videos, he now has a viral video viewed by over 120 million people since October 5th. This turned into interview invitations on major media outlets and book deals for Rick.

[00:11:41] “And the truth is that that kind of exposure can both show how vulnerable you are and can completely leave you paralyzed.”

[00:12:34] Kevin warns, “Be careful what you wish for because you just might get it.” You can easily get overwhelmed if you don’t have the right frameworks in place.

[00:14:25] You need to see past frustrations and remind yourself that you have to keep work consistently to get where you want to be.

[00:15:22] Aha! Day – Janet figured out where to go with her business on her Illustrate Day with Kevin. While Imagine day is about throwing out every single idea out there, Illustrate is about three to five of your best ideas and fleshing them out.

[00:16:40] Take these ideas one by one as if they’re the only option that’s going to work. Spend 10 to 20 minutes to let it blossom into a full-fledged idea.

[00:17:09] Sometimes, you will realize that some of the other ideas are not as good as you thought.

[00:17:59] “You want these five ideas to compete with one another” so that you will have strong contenders for your final choice, which you will make on day 3. There is no pressure to decide on the best idea right away, meaning you can focus on growing your ideas creatively and strategically first.

[00:19:22] Janet shares her personal experience with the Five Step Process. Janet was at the crossroads, choosing between making Wonderful Web Women all about women again, branding everything as Janet Beckers, or making Romance Your Tribe her main focus. It was a difficult choice, but the Illustrate step helped Janet come to a decision.

[00:20:54] “In the midst of confusion where emotions can taint the logic in the decision making process you want to go back to that which you know has served you well before.” – Kevin Breeding

[00:21:19] Kevin talks about how the Five Step Process stops entrepreneurs, even the adventurous ones, from defaulting to what is safe.

[00:22:35] Following Kevin’s advice, Janet started the Romance Your Tribe podcast because it allowed her to do something she loved to do.

[00:24:11] “A friendship that turned into a client is now turning into media opportunities for me and and a lot of exposure.” After Rick’s video blew up, Rick mentioned Kevin in one of his Facebook Lives and opened doors for Kevin.

Even though this exposure would be overwhelming for most, he had a framework to go back to.

[00:25:08] “The question is how do I go into a more public sort of taking a role and being that thought leader or do I stay in the coaching model where I’m sort of the visionary and sort of the wizard behind the drapes that’s helping them craft the way a story gets told.”

And Kevin is not being rushed into making this decision.

[00:26:40] In the end, it’s all about what would best make an impact to your tribe.

[00:27:05] Final Word: “The tribal leader is about clarity and being able to say ‘This is what we believe around here’.”

[00:27:42] The best way to reach Kevin is through his website at https://kevinbreeding.com/ where you can download his eBook called “Mastering Mindset”. There, he starts the conversation around the Five Step Process with 15 interviews with top entrepreneurs in across multiple industries.

Key Points

Emotions can taint the logic in your decision-making process.
It’s good to have a framework in place to protect yourself from getting overwhelmed.
Flesh out your ideas one by one so you’re choosing from multiple strong ideas.

Action Points

If you currently have an important decision to make, and know you need to focus on how to make better decisions, then set aside 5 x 30 minute sessions over the next week or 2 to implement the process.
Enjoy the imagine step – I found it fun to be creative without the expectation of a decision at this stage
Make your 5 or so options really compete against each other.
Congratulate yourself on taking action. Dip into the Celebration Box.
Share below your ah-ha’sfrom this lesson and also any tips other viewers may find useful.
Go and check out Kevin’s free ebook – it’s excellent.
If you loved this episode, I’ll be grateful if you can leave a review over on itunes so other people can discover this podcast too

Links and Resources Mentioned

Get to know Kevin Breeding

The best way to reach Kevin is through his website at https://kevinbreeding.com/ where you can download his eBook called “Mastering Mindset”. There, he starts the conversation around the Five Step Process with 15 interviews with top entrepreneurs in across multiple industries.

Leave a rating and comment over on iTunes

The viral video we referred to in the interview:

In Facebook (where it went viral)
On Youtube

Extra Bonus:
Free eBook – 15 Simple Mindset Hacks to reprogram your subconscious for happiness and success

Read The Transcript Here

Janet Beckers: Hello and welcome everybody. Janet Beckers here with Romance Your Tribe radio. And I’m so excited to introduce you to my wonderful guest today Kevin Breeding is one of my favourite favourite people in the world. Kevin and I have spent quite a bit of time over the last year masterminding in business and the thing that I absolutely love about Kevin is this is a man who has an incredibly strategic mind man who makes big impacts in a whole lot of businesses and all big businesses and yet he has the most humble most non-judgemental and absolute true interest and curiosity for every single person no matter where they are in their business. So I’m really excited to bring you know the way that Kevin thinks and also it’s really great strategies that he uses and that he has used with me to help me with my rebranding in my business so Hello, Kevin.

Kevin Breeding: Hey, Janet. I am so glad to be here. Thank you for the invitation. An honour. I’ve been looking forward to this for for days now so I’m glad it’s finally here.

Janet Beckers: That’s fantastic. So I think the biggest challenges that I have with the Romance Your Tribe radio podcast. I try to keep things as tight as we can so people can get maximum value in the shortest time that we can give. Now I know you and I can talk for hours and hours and hours because we have. So to cut straight to the chase. Can you share with us who it is that you serve and how you do that.

Kevin Breeding: Sure. I am all about coming alongside entrepreneurs and leaders who are looking to scale their business quickly. They realize that they’re going to have to do some internal work to do that. And third that they see their business as a vehicle to do something greater in the world. It’s not just about the money. And how I do that is very simply it’s through a series of interactions and a coaching model then that ranges from one on one through group models all the way down to kind of self guided courses that have taken the hundreds if not thousands of entrepreneurs now through just to help unlock some of the roadblocks and the things that all of us do. So I mean the roadblock busting business that’s what I do the Roadblock busting business.

Janet Beckers: I love it. I love it. Yeah. So Kevin and I were talking about there’s so many- I mean Kevin has this amazing tool kit that he has developed from using experience to help different people through those roadblocks. And one of the ones that I’ve had personal experience with is the five step process so we could talk a bit about the five step process and show some examples about how you’ve been using them recently because there’s some pretty exciting stories happening in Kevin’s business at the moment so let’s just start with the five step process. Can you explain what actually led to the five step process and what is the need for the process that we’re going to cover today.

Kevin Breeding: Sure.

Janet Beckers: The interesting thing about five step and why I think it’s an important tool is I realized early on in kind of rebuilding my life I’d gone through a bankruptcy and a divorce – all of it in a six month period. And it just absolutely was catastrophic. It not only took away you know financial gain and relationships and things like that but I didn’t realize at the time the damage that it did to me both intellectually and creatively as I would start to do new ventures. I didn’t know at the time that I was locked up inside and I didn’t have that freedom. But you know it’s funny Tony Robbins always says that we have to remember that our brains are wired for survival not for creative thinking. And so we’re constantly thinking of what’s going to go wrong. And so something like five step framework allows you a model that in the midst of chaos both good chaos and bad chaos if we all say wait a minute everybody take a breath. I know that there’s a thought process that I could put myself through. It allows us to take emotion out of what could be a challenging circumstance and you just work your way right to a model to say okay what about this. Is it this or that. Is it A or B. Is it one or two. And then it helps me kind of know OK I have I have a trusted proven way to identify roadblocks even when you don’t see them there in the first place and then two, how do you move and move them quickly or are all of a sudden it gives you confidence as well as a structure that says hey this is no big deal. Let me apply that framework. And as you mentioned I’ve seen this happen and we can get into that example here all of it about exactly how the framework works. You know I don’t know if it’s if it’s helpful but there’s five pieces to it. And I’ll tell you I started out in a five day model but I realize entrepreneurs and leaders like you and me, we don’t always work in the structured time and so we do it in five steps. They are quite simply: imagine, illustrate, indicate, integrate, and implement and just the kind of two second versions of each one of these.

Kevin Breeding: I love this, you know, iteration. All this start with letter I

Janet Beckers: They are, always is. Imagine – imagine is all about brainstorming and we all know how to do that. We have different models and methods I use mind mapping and I remember you and I had a faint mind mapping session with the second second one is probably where it would be most useful for our group listening today is on illustrate. We’ll come back to that where you’re literally developing each idea more indicates where you actually make your choice. Integrate is where you look at the impact of that choice all the way through your personal life, your business, your team, your systems all of that and then the Implement phase which is how do you physically bring it to real life. And I love this quote and I want to brag on you all that because you have given me the branding name has resonated for people who go through five step you said to me, this process is deceptively simple and incredibly powerful. And as soon as I use that that quote from you, people go oh wow. This really does feel too simple to do all the things that you say it does. And every person that goes through it just simply says Wow I didn’t think it would do what it does. You just nailed it. And so you’ve actually given me the by-line of the process.

Kevin Breeding: Thank God, I’ll take clients from that. And then when you know when you first introduce me to the process look and work through I thought I got that. I got that. Like, the variants there and it wasn’t til we were working through us that I thought oh actually this is really. I’ve skimmed. A lot of things that we actually dived into deeper. Before we go a little further into the process. Can we just backtrack a little tiny bit because I’m just thinking when you talk about how during times of chaos or indecision that this takes the emotion out it gives you a chance to be able to step back and have a logical process. And I know, I thought we can talk about a few example scenarios there because one that I see oh, look so much. And you know I would be very surprised if anybody listening today could not not be here inside his head. As entrepreneurs, there are so many ways to be right. And we’re always bombarded with you know you should be doing podcast, no you should be doing video. No, you should be doing workshops, you should be doing just eBooks. There’s all these different ways to be right. And I think there’s always it’s without fail. There is this sense of overwhelm because we have this fear of you know like my fear of missing out if I focus on this I’m losing so much. So I know that this is one particular scenario that a lot of people will have numerous times throughout their business when trying to make that decision because everybody is framing it the way they should be doing things. I thought it might be interesting to look at some different examples of when this process when you use this process either with yourself or with some of your your clients that you work with.

Janet Beckers: Yeah, thank you for that. One. I have to go back to what it did for me personally because I do want to I wouldn’t believe it unless I’d gone through it and did this. This came out of what was a point where I wasn’t sure that I had the ability to kind of get back into the entrepreneurial game. I was like we all do from time to time I ready to say fine I’m just going to get a job and you know you’ll be somebody else’s problem. And I realized that that’s not who I am and not what I’m about but I didn’t know how to begin the method and the process. Now whenever I experienced it first time I was just journaling. I didn’t know it was the five steps. I start a five step framework because I was creating it at the time. And so one, it comes personally for me. But probably the most powerful illustration that I’ve seen of something like this working and I want to make sure that to say to everybody that’s listening. It’s not just the five step framework which I’m a huge fan of obviously but it’s that we have to, as entrepreneurs, do the hard work and do the prep and have systems and frameworks because what happens is if we don’t have some sort of model either massive success or something catastrophic happens and all of a sudden we get devastated and we don’t know what to do. What happens is our brain kind of goes into survival mode we’re into fight or flight. And it’s actually one of the things that I talk about as we start to experience what’s called progressive cognitive atrophy. And it’s where every time we try to fix something we think our way through it and we can’t. We’re frustrated. We back off from it and it becomes that much harder to fix it the next time.

Kevin Breeding: Yes.

Janet Beckers: Now that’s a fancy – progressive cognitive atrophy is a fancy way to say We psych ourselves out.

Kevin Breeding: Yeah. It’s another way of saying what was it, sorry?

Janet Beckers: We psych ourselves out.

Kevin Breeding: It’s like we tell ourselves that the wall is that much bigger. And in actuality it’s not any bigger it’s just that we’ve made it harder because we think we’ve exhausted a process so frameworks like this work. And I can give you an exact example that I am living in right this very second. I have one of my very dear friends and a client Dr. Rick Rigsby who has had a is a viral video that since October the 5th has been viewed more than 120 million times.

Janet Beckers: Wow.

Kevin Breeding: And so he’s gone from you know a stage platform speaker and an author to now being pursued by ANE network, by NBC. Being invited on Good Morning America. Book publishers coming out from left to right and as entrepreneurs we’re going to look at that saying wow. Yeah you know we want that. That’s exactly what we were chasing in our business. And the truth is that that kind of exposure can both show how vulnerable you are and can completely leave you paralyzed. Rick called me and he began to explain what was going on. At one, I couldn’t believe it. Two, I went and watched the video and I was like that’s classic Rick. I’ve known him for a long time but he was instantly overwhelmed with what to do next because there were so much so much coming at him.

Janet Beckers: Yeah it was it wasn’t planned it was it wasn’t as if this was an orchestrated viral video.

Kevin Breeding: No we did not build the video. This was produced by a media company called Goal cast who is in the business of creating inspirational motivational videos. Their- their Facebook page has 600 million views a month. And we are now the largest viewed video on their platform. And so it’s it’s one of those. Be careful what you wish for because you just might get it because it’s although we would think it would make our business skyrocket it can also make your business implode if you don’t have models and frameworks that can kind of guide you in the midst of chaos. Because chaos can be, chaos can be bad.

Janet Beckers: Yes. Yes. And so, well let’s have a look at- what was the name of the video. So if people haven’t watched it then we’ll have a look but there’s a good chance they’ve have seen it.

Kevin Breeding: I’d say with 120 million viewers, they probably have. The easiest way is if you’re going to Facebook and just search Rick Rigsby, R-I-G-S-B-Y, you’ll find it. It’ll play, it’ll be the first thing that pops up. It’s all- it’s all over the place and still growing every day. So you know it’s it’s been a it’s been a really powerful picture for me one because you know I love my friend and I’m excited for him I’m excited for our business together. But at the same time it was a great reminder for why I coach the way that I do is that you want to dream big but you always come back and do the mechanics you do the work. It’s like going to the gym you know for ever you know in your love you know you’re not going to get out and swim the distances that you swim without being in you know you got to be in the water doing the reps every day. Otherwise you just won’t have the stamina and something goes wrong and also you’re in real trouble. And so it’s just it’s a great reminder for us to be excellent business people as well as you know entrepreneurs full of vision that just go you know fly by the seat of our pants.

Janet Beckers: Yeah. And you know that’s one of the frustrations with people who like us that help entrepreneurs is there’s, there’s so much, you know, rubbish has been put out about “you have the idea that the money will come”. That’s as soon as you start going well you know there’s some boring bits, you know, there’s some boring bits. So you actually got to work hard, keep consistent. You know that’s a hard one to sell. But I reckon, let’s have a look at your process. Let’s talking about diving into one of the five step process. Let’s start I mean we might reflect on what’s been happening you and Rick because this is FRESH right. This is only in the last few weeks much more in the mix right now as we’re recording this. So let’s reflect on that and then we can also reflect on that process because it was that process that actually helped me get clarity on changing my brand from one of over to Romance Your Tribe.

Kevin Breeding: Yup.

Janet Beckers: Let’s look at those two examples because they are very quite different. And as a way of diving in have this five-step process.

Kevin Breeding: Yeah it’s perfect of the timing of this because the kind of the Aha! day for you as I remember going through five steps together was day two, it was the illustrate day. And it it’s interesting that as we are talking about this, Rick and I did illustrate day this morning. I’m sorry. I didn’t think about the timing of all this. It’s fructuous. The whole thing. You know, the day one is all about brainstorming and you’re trying to just put every idea you can possibly pick up on or just throw it up on the wall and say OK what what’s possible here. But day two is where you’re looking at each idea and you’re trying to boil it down to three to five that you think have the highest potential to solve whatever your challenge was. And so you know in Rick’s case we’re looking at you know are we looking at live events. Are we looking at a TV show and if it is a TV show is it a documentary style you know news magazine telling stories. Or is it a talk show. And so you know it’s all of this sort of sort of analysis of ideas. And as I think back to when ever you and I went through illustrate day just the way it works for everybody that’s listening is illustrate as you take your three to five sort of what we call our finalist ideas. And we take them one at a time. Put it in the middle of the table and we say OK. All of a sudden this is now we pretend this is our only option that we have left and we’re going to take the other four and set them aside and for a moment we’re going to assume that they will not work. We have to make this idea the one that we are talking about at the moment work and we take 10, 15, 20 minutes and sort of develop it out and let it let it sort of blossom into a full fledged idea with with great things. Now I will tell you. Sometimes, looking at the three to five that one of them will instantly sort of wither away as we think about it and let it sort of expose a bit. We’ll realize that it’s not as good of an idea as we thought. There’s something about it that doesn’t really work but the beauty of what an illustrate day does in five step is one of these. You do your first one and you set it aside and you take number two and you’ll do the exact same process again you’ll think through as though it’s the only one of the five that you’re, it’s going to be your magic bullet it’s your your Barney Fife silver bullet in the Andy Griffith American parlance there. So you’re trying to figure out how. Which is the best idea. And for what reason. And the beauty of it is as I remember the day that I went through this is the note that I tell people in the process that is you want these five ideas to compete with one another so that you have the potential of having multiple great winning ideas that are competing for your final choice which happens on session 3. And I remember you said to me that whenever you do that want to give you freedom that you didn’t have to make a decision that day and that minute so you just think creatively and strategically. But then it also gave you the confidence that you’re making a great decision because you’re giving it the ability to breathe and show itself to be the best idea. And it sounds so simple but I’ve seen it hundreds of times now be incredibly powerful to let people kind of be open up and say I can make this decision with confidence because now I know I fought my way through it strategically and systemically.

Janet Beckers: Yeah. Absolutely because I can remember that process because it made me realize that I do. I have tended to fast track some parts of it because like a lot of entrepreneurs it’s like this you just get this stuff done like this. So I’m thinking and going down all these paths and so sometimes you’ll go with this seems like the right option. And then you go down that whole path. Some of you actually use the process I did with you. And then I’ve used that thing happen with the next step. So for me I was trying to make the decision of do I go back to the future you know do I make Wonderful Web Women very much all about women again. And because I had generalized out I mean I go back to that do I reap, I totally brand everything as Janet Beckers, is it Janet Beckers dot com. Everything Janet Beckers? Or do I let the Romance Your Tribe system become the hero. And so the three of those would all work, all of them would work really well. And so I was I reckon I was in a state of flux for about a year. I tried to make this decision and every time it went straight back to what was the fancy term that you had given about my.

Kevin Breeding: You went back to progressive cognitive atrophy.

Janet Beckers: Yes. I was sitting in absolutely. And I can actually remember when we went through this process and then I came back to you when I realized that one that I had always defaulted back to which was going back to Wonderful Web Women was the one that was not going to work. And actually I had a grieving process.

Kevin Breeding: I remember you said to me it’s like choosing one of your children.

Janet Beckers: It was! Exactly.

Kevin Breeding: And so that’s that’s the thing that I love about a framework model. And here again it doesn’t have to be this one. I’m saying this about any framework model that you can plug in your business and plug into how you are building up your tribe is that it. In the midst of confusion where emotions can taint the logic in the decision making process you want to go back to that which you know has served you well before. And so you know again I’m a I’m a visionary guy and I like to go do things and kind of wander off and explore. I’m an explorer archetype by my wiring but I know that.

Janet Beckers: I’ve seen it.

Kevin Breeding: A lot of it but I’ve figured out that that explorers sometimes can go with our gut but in our gut sometimes is jaded by what we’re comfortable with or by what we know vs. what we don’t. You know in some ways we end up sort of defaulting and sometimes maybe even settling. And so a framework like this gives you the freedom to say you know what I’ve thought it through well. I have good reason to make this decision and it doesn’t take long. It does in fact you’ve done it now enough to wear it it’s just become second nature. You can test when it’s really kind of work through. How do I look at this objectively. To be able to say this is the best and the most right and the most on brand decision I can make.

Janet Beckers: Yeah. Yeah. And I think an important part for us entrepreneurs is say if you’ve got three to five you know is giving each one an even chance to win. And quite often we’ll go down one and we’ll go. Well now you know that’s some work. And so you’ll tend to not pay attention so giving yourself that freedom and permission to take the time and really focus on each one equally. I like the idea that they were competition. Yeah. And I use that since then once I made the decision that it was Romance Your Tribe with my social media being Janet Beckers and then I looked. Okay. Now when it comes down to what am I going to be doing for my content what’s going to be the best for that brand and rest the best for my Tribe. And you’ll see the results. It was the podcast. Because one of the things that I recognized through that process that I wasn’t doing that I absolutely love was interviewing people and talking to people like you can. So it’s a great process to be able to work through so I think as a way of kind of wrapping up let’s do a little bit of a loop because we’ve seen what the result was when I worked through the process. We’ve looked at the change in the brand and then we’ve also looked at making the decision on the content marketing plan. So you, I know that you’re right in the middle now. All of this one one client, and you know you have numerous clients. So yeah I’m curious about you’ve gone through now the imagining stage but you’ve got the next stage to go through so. Yes. So what’s going to happen next in the life of Kevin.

Kevin Breeding: Well you know the right answer this very moment is I’m not completely sure. But the beauty is I have complete confidence in the process because what’s happening is what was a friendship that turned into a client is now turning into media opportunities for me and and a lot of exposure. I mean Rick, just the other night, on one of his Facebook lives talked about his personal coach and his business coach and how had he not had that relationship in place he’d been curled up in the corner and has called me very very quickly in moments when he was up against going on and doing a live moment where he was like you know I’m not sure what to say. And it was just a good picture that you know we all go through those challenges and thoughts. And so just by him mentioning me in one of his Facebook lives I had this influx of people come over and start to look at my page and it goes back to when you have exposure that we all desire and want in our business. You have to have a method and a process to be able to think your way through it. So so what’s happening for me is the good news is the business is growing. The question is is how do I go into a more public sort of taking a role and being that thought leader or do I stay in the coaching model where I’m sort of the visionary and sort of the wizard behind the drapes that’s helping them craft the way a story gets told. And that’s right where I’m at. I’m in the middle of of Step Three of the five which is where I’m trying to indicate which one that’s going to be. And the only thing I can tell you is as soon as I know, you’re going to be the first to know, because I’m just I’m at a spot where I don’t have to make a decision today which I’m happy about but I’m also really weighing what fits me as a brand what I enjoy doing that can be most impactful to my tribe and even my eventual tribe. And then also what can do the most good because I go back to you know the people that I serve. They want to grow quickly. They want to. They know that they have to do internal work to do that done and they want to do something bigger than just make money.

Janet Beckers: Yeah.

Kevin Breeding: That’s me. Not everybody’s true about this but I am my own consumer. And so the reason why it works for me is because I am making a decision now to figure out where the greatest impact is in helping leaders move to that level or do I step in that role myself while also helping leaders do that. So that’s that’s where I’m at and I’m interested in what the outcome is going to be because I don’t know.

Janet Beckers: Yeah. And you know by the time that we go through live with this, we may know the results. And so I think that’s a beautiful note for us to end on. I love how you brought this back to your tribe and tell what your core values are which is how your tribe knows if they belong hanging around with you as the leader. And that’s actually you’re just such a beautiful demonstration of what a tribal leader looks like and that tribal leader is around clarity and being able to say this is what we believe around here. And you’ve just done it so beautifully and clearly there at the end. And so I’m very excited to see what happens next. And I know whatever’s it’s gonna be, Kevin is going to do it with absolute brilliance. And and and a sense of fun. Thank you so much for your time Kevin. I’m really excited to introduce you to my Tribe. So people should be able to connect with you more and get more information on the sort of frameworks that you do. What’s the best place for people to contact you.

Kevin Breeding: I’m an easy date on this one. The easiest one is to go to my website. Kevin Breeding dot com. And right right there on the front page there is an e-book called Mastering Mindset in it and it starts the conversation around the five step process.

Janet Beckers: Mhm.

Kevin Breeding: It’s also the notes of about 15 interviews that I did with some of the top entrepreneurs in across multiple industries and so it’d be a super handy tool for everybody to come over and grab and I’d love love for them too.

Janet Beckers: Absolutely. Well thank you so much Kevin. And thank you everybody that’s been here listening. Thank you so much for your time. And one of the things that I do encourage you to do is you know Kevin’s been incredibly generous with his time and his transparency today. And one of the most rewarding things for us is to hear back from you. What do you get out of that. So I really do encourage you to hunt this man down. So I will not go to any of your mailing list or you find him on Facebook. It’s just going connect and telling him you know at least one aha that you got from today is one of the greatest gifts you can get.

Kevin Breeding: That’s awesome. Thank you for that. That’s awesome.

Janet Beckers: Bye everybody.

« Older Entries