Business & Life Congruence with Jessica Osborn

Jessica Osbon (EDITED)

Thu, Jul 11, 2024 2:20PM • 37:19

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

business, marketing, clients, strategy, sell, life, emma, podcast, offering, booked, literally, travel, congruence, work, retreat, jessica, connect, great, build, thinking

SPEAKERS

Emma Lovell

Emma Lovell 00:01

Do you want to live a life of freedom and adventure? Are you wanting more than the daily grind? Me too. Welcome to the Emma Lovell show, a place where we talk about living a life you love now, I'm your host, Emma Lovell, and my number one value is freedom. I've spent the last 14 years running a business and traveling the world. And now I take my husband and toddler along for the adventure to it's possible and I know you can create a life doing what you truly love as well. This podcast will inspire, motivate and encourage you to go after your dreams to create a life you love until you get now don't wait for a time and or someday in the future. I'll be sharing episodes weekly about how I harmonize business travel and self care. I'll also bring on incredible guests to share their journeys, wins the challenges and how they're creating a life they love. Let's jump in and get dreaming. This is a space for you to manifest a life you love. I would like to acknowledge and recognize Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the first peoples of this place now known as Australia. I am grateful for the continuing care of the land waterways and skies where I work live. Listen, learn and play. From here on you can bear country and from wherever you are listening, I pay my respects to the elders past and present. Welcome to today's episode where I am speaking with Jessica Osborn founder of Business jam. And host of she's the business podcast, which just celebrated its 200th episode, which is incredible. Jessica has more than 25 years experience in service based marketing and business strategy. And she coaches other women to develop simple and flexible high ticket business models. So they can have multiple six figure years in less than 20 hours a week without big advertising budgets or time consuming cold sales. And enjoy more time for family and life. I'm all about that. Of course. She's incredibly passionate about changing our perspective on work and success. And after packing up the family for an eight month camping road trip around Australia, she's proven it's possible to prioritize family life and be highly successful in business at the same time. It just takes simplifying your strategy and focusing on the right things. And a fun fact, Jess grew up in Auckland. I can't wait for you to hear this conversation and learn more about this wonderful businesswoman. Please welcome just cut Osborne. Welcome to the podcast. Just cut Osborne. Thank you so

02:39

much, Emma, I'm really excited to be here today.

Emma Lovell 02:42

I loved being on your podcast and our chat and I listened back in the day. But today's about you. So tell us in your words, who are you? Oh, who

02:52

am I? Well, I am Jessica, I was born. That's my formal name. My mom calls me Jessica and most people call me Jess. So we can we can start there. I am a coach, I help women in business, mainly coaches. Now I really find that, you know, it's so useful to have somebody who's walked in the steps maybe before you and you can really help them and understand their business. But my My background is in marketing strategies. So I help them to create a marketing strategy that helps them attract the right clients so that they're not out there marketing to the wrong people trying to sell something to someone who actually doesn't want it. You know, it's making those pieces really connect so that the business is working and flowing and beautiful. But I have a huge passion. The whole reason why I'm doing this and not still in my corporate job, which was great career, I was there for 20 years, got all the way up to the top. And the reason why I left was like life is more important than a job. And I found that I got to that point where people were really expecting you to put the job before everything else in your life. And that to me became totally incongruent with how I wanted to live, you know, becoming a mother having at the time that I started this business, I literally gave birth to my baby daughter, my second child, and I was like, I'm not going back to the job because I don't want her you know, I'd already had one son and I'd spent three years of his life feeling really torn into places and thinking like, this isn't what I want. So a big part for me, the long, long and the short of that story is it's so much more to me about just his strategy to attract clients and make sales it's actually about is this creating the business and the life more importantly, that you really want because you can sell anything, you can market anything. There's so many different ways to package up service offerings to create something that you sell in your business. It's like is this congruent for you in terms of is this gonna help you create the life that you really want? And if it's not, then it's not the right choice for you like Let's actually build a strategy that gives you the freedom, the amount of work time that you want the flexibility you want. I know that you love traveling, so the why we had such a great chat all about. But that was one of my things, you know, I'm like, what, what am I want when I'm starting the business, and I remember that very first few months, I was like, Well, I want to be able to travel whenever I want to, without feeling I'm not attached, I don't have, you know, it's like, I can take my work with me if I want to. Or maybe I can also take breaks from it. And it's not going to ruin the business. You know, that was my design. And I wanted to be able to be around for my kids and be at home and do the pickups and the drop offs and take them to sports, which I'm now doing literally every single day, take those do so much sport, but I actually think you know how wonderful that I'm able to do that. So yeah, that to me is actually like the bigger part of why I do what I do. And it's like when you get that strategy connected, like aligned and actually functioning properly, then it is giving you that outcome if you've built it so that it has that goal in mind in the first place.

Emma Lovell 06:09

Let's through what you were saying about the marketing, like there's so many people who are like, either we were talking offline about podcasting, where they like, Oh, I've got to have a podcast, or I've got to do this, or I've got to do that. Or they're like, I hate I don't know, hate being up on social every day. And then, but I got to do it. It's like, there are there's many, many, many tools within your marketing. I mean, you know, literally, like just messaging people just talking to me, my biggest marketing is networking, going to networking events, and be like, Why are you always going to events? It's like, that's my marketing the face to face is the marketing. Yeah, I mean, and that's obviously that's, that could be then going well, you can't scale because it's a lot on you. And it's like, well, now I have a bunch of people in a room working on my behalf. Also, I'm having fun. So

06:56

yeah, what I love that not when somebody says that means that you can't, I'm always like, well, that to me straightaway, I start thinking of all the ways that you can. I went through like any of that definite stuff like well, you have to do that. Well, no, you don't. And I've got examples of clients who have, you know, launched a business over your head, like four people on their Facebook page, literally, they've been booked out within two months, you know, more than made that what they'd invested in coaching with me, like within the first two months, and you know, they're away now, like they actually didn't need to be doing all of this activities booked

Emma Lovell 07:34

out, right? Because booked out and I had this with a client, you know, that whole like, booked out sold out, blah, blah, blah. And we both Yeah, we've talked about retreats. And it's like, we're talking about booked out for some people. And I come back to Aikido, it's like four people are making money. Like, for my retreat, it was like four people means I'm breakeven, like four. I don't want to break even I want to make money. But, you know, if I had four new clients a month, like, amazing, but I don't know why people did like, I don't have 100,000 followers, people with 100,000 followers still struggle to get the four. I can tell you because I know. Yeah, like, exactly. Yeah, what's sold. But and then also it's not, I wouldn't moving away from that sold out, I think book doubts great. Like you're working out what your capacity is what you want to do, what that looks like, which could be four or eight or three, depending on how old your offering is. But then, you know, for a retreat. So if you want to have a sold out retreat, it's 12. But to be profitable, it's four or Yes, and like a different. What's your go back to what you said before? What's your intention? And I don't necessarily want packed out full things, I mean, fold in and I've decided that I don't want we can get there, like sold out, but how many can you actually hold? And

08:57

that's it. And that's knowing what that is you and you know, this particular client of mine, she had a young son at home, her idea of her business was very minimal hours, you know, would have been under 20 hours a week. And so she had only a few clients that she needed in order to be you know, booked out, do the inverted commas. So you know what that means to one person is different to what it means to another and booked out doesn't have to mean that you're out flat out, like totally stretch, it just means no I have I am at where I need to be in my business. And ideally, for me, that's like, it's not just that your time is at capacity, but that you're actually meeting those revenue goals in the time that you're investing and if the math is not adding up as in, you're working all the hours that you want to work but you're still below your target goal for revenue which means that you're not making the profit that you need, then something's got to change. This strategy isn't working for you because you know you're working there at the time but you know, At the point that you need to be bringing in the income. So that's to me, like this is really where all the gold happens in terms of the strategy is like, are we selling the right thing to the right people that aligns for you and your business? And you know, you, as you mentioned, it's like, well, you can have these different targets and goals. And you might have, you know, for the retreats, it's like, well, once you get over that four people, you're making money. That's fantastic. That's exactly where you need to be. And, you know, it's just that you don't need to be doing all of the things. You know, you said before, while going to events is your way of doing marketing, and someone's like, well, that means it's not scalable. I'm like, What an absolute load of rubbish, because you can be going to events, that's a form of building networking and marketing. Scalability is in terms of your offering. So your ability to scale has got nothing to do with the marketing method you're doing. Yeah, it's all to do with the offering that you have and how

Emma Lovell 10:56

it's all about you and you like, but again, it's like, it's what I enjoy. And you know, yeah, and it's like, yeah, cool, I can only meet two people. I think that's a misconception with some of these things, too. It's like you put a post up and hundreds of people gonna see it. No, it's a one to 3% Yeah, like, you can have to post three times a day, and it's still gonna be only a few percentage. So you think you've got you've got 2000 people seeing or you've got, I've got 270 people my email, it says that 40% of them opening it, but are they living really opening it and closing it? You know, are they are they clicking it? That's an even smaller percentage. But when I go to networking, you know, if we think like, there's 100 people that you go talk to 100 people, no, you don't even have to talk to 10 people, if you can make a handful of connects like five genuine conversations, and I'd say two to three, like people that you go, I'm gonna have a coffee with you, or I'm gonna have a call with you, or I'm going to connect with you, those two to three, I can tell you from my own experience, their $20,000 clients, some of them, so you get two to 320 $1,000. I'm looking at one on my wall. If you know, for me now, with my retreats, if somebody runs a retreat, that's they're making $50,000. You know, like, I mean, maybe I'm not, but they could we could if I do the whole thing, or then like, you know, some it's that's a different story to try to sell. I don't know, your $100. Course.

12:17

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And that's the exact difference in you know, really, again, bring it back to that alignment of your strategy, or the activities that you're doing the right fit for the thing that you're you're offering, because yours super high ticket, and you know, you only need a handful of clients to be reaching 100k. Like, it's great. Whereas somebody selling $100 thing, well, you do need 1000s, you do need the high volume, but I find so many people think they've got to do all this high volume stuff, when their offerings are one to one and you know, should be fairly high ticket, maybe they're not 20 grand, but even if they're in the 1000s, per client $4,000, you don't need to be doing this high volume, rah rah rah, marketing stuff that a lot of you what you see online, and you see some of these, you know, what we call the leaders or the gurus doing that, it's like that they've got a different business model. And they've got something totally different happening there. And then trying to apply that into their own. It's like, it's kind of like taking a puzzle piece out of a different puzzle and trying to put it into your puzzle and going like, Why isn't this working the same? That's like, Yeah, cuz it's coming from someone else's puzzle, it's not yours.

Emma Lovell 13:30

And coming back to congruence as well, right? You got that? You know, we had we taught YouTube marketing strategies, but we, you know, we do have to take that back step ago, what is the offer? And sometimes I think they're confusing. The offer with the marketing or the marketing doesn't align with the offer, you know, and so it's sort of that backstep but then there's the back step again, which is like, what do you want to do? Like I did a one year membership, and I ran it for a while and it was like, I didn't I'm not that person. I'm your wham bam, thank you ma'am. So I run retreats, I'm at our power kind of gal, get on stage but dazzle them and get off and it's like, it was so liberating. Not that I can't do long term I love working with long term clients but in the right model, yeah, and in with the right touchpoints but showing up every week or every month and and holding a group of people because of the over delivery because the high touch that I like to do wasn't working for me and and ultimately took my business in a different direction but was so liberating to be like, and we'd look to people doing masterminds and I'm saying no, yeah, yeah, but it was like should do a mastermind thing Absolutely. And stage of business and stage of life to going at what I tried that get cool and it made money. But yeah, that sustainable for the energy and putting behind it. And then it was like, oh, yeah, I gotta keep marketing this for like, an

14:59

hour. I think that there's like two things and what you've just said that I'd love to unpack, I guess a little bit for your audience as well. Because the whole thing about marketing being labeled as the stuff that you see like the tactics, so that is to me like the iceberg analogy. That's what you're seeing above the surface. That is your technical stuff. But no real marketing is actually it is your offer. That is the strategy part of it. It is like your market niche, what you're doing, like the actual pieces of who am I? What is it that I'm offering and who to that is your marketing, what you do, then to bring the people in that's like, the icing on top of the cake is that you can't just have the icing without the cake, then there's no cake there. So most people are going straight into the tactics and going right. I've just got to market my business or market myself, and then I'll get clients like, yeah, you've forgotten to bake the cake first, like stop going.

Emma Lovell 15:55

One p one, one P That's, yeah,

15:58

exactly. It's like, Come on, guys. And that's, I think, a real big misconception. I've battled with this, like, literally my whole career, because people always get you in the market and girls, you put logos on things I'm like, yeah, no, actually, but it isn't like, Guys stop thinking about marketing as the, you know, the stuff that we see people doing in the social media, like yes, that is marketing. But that is not what makes marketing work. That's not the cause of success. That is just an activity. And you can look at it anyone who you'd see as successful, they've probably changed what they do over time, they might have been on Facebook for years and years and years, suddenly switched into Tik Tok. Like they're equally successful. It's not that that's making them successful. That's just the method they're choosing right now. Like, they might have done a blog, now they're doing a podcast, whatever, you can literally stop or start any of those activities. It is the core strategy, their marketing strategy of like, what is their offering, is their offering the right thing, and they're in the right place for it like all of those pieces connect. And that to me is like, so when I've got my kind of five part framework for marketing strategy, the actual activity part is just one of those, but that comes away. It's like number four. You gotta get through the first three. And most of my clients are getting success even before they've got there. Because it's like, you don't need these complicated funnels and things that you can have them not saying they're not, you know, you can do all of that stuff. But they're not the thing that makes it work. Like if it's not working now, suddenly going, I must need a funnel, I must need to do a podcast, it's like, well, it's not going to just suddenly work because you have that. Go back, do the piece, bake your cake. So I like that cake analogy. But the other one was, you know, you mentioned about the offer. It's like how's it congruent for you and I love that you mentioned about it changes over time. And I'm actually really not looking externally as to what are other people doing, I should be doing it, which is, you know, I'm gonna say, I've done that too. Like, I'll put my hand up and say we've all have

Emma Lovell 17:54

been, right, we can do.

18:01

But it's like, over time, I have like, analyzed and gone back and gone, right? What are the things that actually really make this work. And I came up with my own sort of framework that I teach Inside Business Jam, which has kind of three parts what I call a winning offer. And that is that it's what your client wants one part of it. So yeah, actually not what you think they need, or you see that they need, by the way, it's like what they actually want, is really important. It's got to be something that you're good at. So like it's leveraging you and not just like, oh, I can see a lot of people making money over there doing that thing, then I should just go and do it like

Emma Lovell 18:39

air. Hello, ain't

18:41

doing this to make money. Sorry, guys. You know, I know that business is there to make money. Sorry. And I don't want to make it be like, No, you shouldn't be out there making money. Absolutely. But your biggest source of that are the way you're gonna get the most leverage. And value is where you actually have real expertise, like you've got passion. As you know, Emma has been talking about what she loves, and she knows it, you know, and you you're in there right now doing those things. That's why it's working, because it's so congruent.

Emma Lovell 19:11

They feel it and they will pay for that.

19:14

Yeah, exactly. And like the third part of that is we've got to lay it in your time and freedom and money goals. Because if it's not hitting all three of those, it's either ridiculously hard to sell. Like, if it's not what they want you you're not going to sell it no matter if it's what you're great at. And no matter if it meets your time and energy goals. If it's not what you're good at, it's also hard to sell what they want. And it's not your thing like you're just doing it because you think it's a moneymaker. It's hard to sell again because you're not going to be the one that's chosen. And then if it's not meeting your time and energy goals, then you're just never gonna get anywhere with your business. So it's got to meet all three and so I put this together and a framework where I'm like I'm these are the three aspects to building a winning offer, we have to meet all three of them. It's that bit in the middle of the Venn diagram. Once we're there, then we start to layer in the stuff that helps you sell it. Then we go into the deeper detail and the pricing, how you're offering it, the messaging and how you're gonna get it out there. But all of that happens after we've got to the center of the Venn diagram.

Emma Lovell 20:23

And when you were doing that, was that a picture of like, America's Got Talent where they like, right? Red buzzer Yeah, golden. The Golden Buzzer when all those things line up, it's the Golden Buzzer. And it's like, you know, thinking back as well instead marketing 101 in University and did start out my days in March. But on the promotion skill, and I love that I love the promotion P I was all there. That's why I went PR Lena when I'm literally it was a promo girl. Love it. So that's where I shine. I'm like, do all the other stuff, I need some help with strategy sometimes. Because it's not that I do find that, that part harder. And I do find the more quantitative stuff I can do the qualitative, so being called to be numbers, qualitative being words, I can do the word spirit and anecdotes, I find the numbers like we talked off air about looking at analytics, and I was like, blank face. Occasionally, like, I'm like, Oh, wow, people are listening anyway. But the price as a strategy, and pricing is part of those four P's. And it's just, you know, was really nice recently, to see that my pricing is working, because it can be daunting when you start to decide where you're going to be. And we talked about having that low ticket high ticket, and I did have someone like, told me early on just like, you know, someone who's buying a $99 things, not going to buy a $5,000 thing, which is not necessarily true. There are people who go through the whole next, but, you know, she's like, I'm gonna buy the $5,000 thing and buy the $5,000 thing, and it sort of stuck. But I sort of, you know, had to go and experiment for myself. And really nice. Recently, a colleague went to a retreat place, and she's like, I'll go there. And I'll let you know how it is something about running a retreat there. And, and then she came back and she said, it was great. Like there are these things, I could see how you could run it. But it's not right for you. It's not right for your audience, because it wasn't Lux like it wasn't that luxury. I don't think it will be right for what you do. And I was like, how nice that she recognized that she sees that what my offering is, is targeted towards a more high end, that I'm not getting people now I don't get people telling me they can't, that it's too expensive. Yeah, because people telling me they can't afford it. Or that they'll do it next year or that like the house renovation came up? It's not the objection is not your too expensive. I haven't heard that for quite some time. I heard it from my mother in law. I like cool. You're coming on my retreat, or not. But But what it like, you know, it was so interesting to me, I was like the pricing is working. And two people are quite fearful not and I don't think just sometimes people go the other way, they jack up their prices, because they're like, Oh, I'm worth it. Worth it. But they're not in alignment. They don't charge that right. Hey, lovely, I truly believe it's your time to shine. To build your business, you need to know the right steps to take at the right time. And I know it can feel so overwhelming trying to figure out what to do next, when there's so many things to do. That's why off I offer the Hour of Power. It's one hour where we get clear actions that you can take, start building your business today. You can use this session to get advice would be content, build strategies work through mindset books, we could simply talk about what you want to do next, what you want to attract into your life, and how you could actually bring more travel and enjoyment into your life. It's whatever you need, this is your time. And I'm here to back you every step of the way. So let's hit you up to massive success. Check it out the Hour of Power, you can find it on my website, Emma lovell.au, forward slash work with me. Check out the show notes. And if you're interested at all, please do contact me. You can also get me at Mr. Emma lovell.au. Now back to the episode.

24:13

Yeah, and sometimes it's like, actually, they might have changed their pricing or have their pricing but they're not speaking to the right people that are in alignment with it. And so what you're finding your pricing working, that to me means you're in alignment with your audience who you're speaking to in your ideal client. And what you're offering is is working they've connected those two pieces, if your price was suddenly lower, you wouldn't have people buying it because they would perceive the quality to be not what they're after, and low, right? Whereas even if you then doubled it or something, maybe again, it might be like well, we're not quite in congruence there either with who it is you're speaking to. So you're at that great place where you've you're targeting the right people and the pricing is right. And yeah, there's the interesting thing. because so many people say to me, ah, you know, I can't raise my prices. And, you know, a lot of what I help people do is go, Hey, let's look at what you're offering, most women I've ever worked with are way under pricing, what they could be and not really noticed seeing their own value. And this is not about, hey, just work out the price. It's actually no, no, we actually need to adjust and tweak these different parts of your strategy. So that we're thinking about, well, who is the person I really want to work with? It's not just how can I sell something to somebody? Because when you ask, well, how much will someone pay for it? The answer is always as little as possible. You know, but it's like with that, who you're talking to that, you know, and if you're talking out there, like, I just want to sell this, then you're not necessarily aiming your messaging, and you're not speaking to the person who has more of a quality aspect. And so it's actually so much, you know, the price is one tiny part of it. But it's so much more about you getting everything into alignment, so that your business, your messaging, everything you are attracting, you're speaking to the people who this is actually totally normal when the right price for and you know, like you said, you know, you're there when you're not having strange conversations when they're getting on the on a call and going, Yep, cool. I'm ready to sign up opening

Emma Lovell 26:18

with how much as well, like, how much of it? I don't think you'll make like I do, or what do I get what I get? And you're like, Yeah, so do what you get, like, you know, in that offer, but you just kind of like okay, well, I haven't, yeah, haven't done much I don't want to get by the time they're getting on the phone. It's great on an email, either. It's a minor question or logistical question. And so, you know, like, how do we make this work kind of thing, or I've got this one thing I need to work out, oh, I'm buying. But, you know, you're like, oh, my gosh, this thing works. It takes time. And I've heard you saying and I think it's something I always reiterate. And it just, it takes time. And also, as I'm finding even with a background in it, and I'm sure you do you find as well just, we're so close to our own thing, like, you know, and we've done the ground, we've done the legwork of testing it ourselves. And sometimes it does take coming somebody and other person coming in. And it took me a long time because I did it was like I can write, I can do copywriting. I don't need a copywriter. I do brand strategy. And a brand strategist like you know, it was like, Oh, but I can't see myself. And I can't I just I don't see like I can strategize for myself all the work that it takes is always going to be this element of I'm too close to the subject. Yeah, it gets a bird's eye view. Yeah. And we

27:43

often just take for granted a lot of things that you do because you have expertise and you've got experience, you don't tend to value it as somebody else does. So when they don't have that expertise, it's not easy for them. You know, they're really like, Well, yeah, I'm absolutely willing to, you know, for them, it is value that they're gaining from you, versus you aren't necessarily valuing yourself, because you're like, well, it's so easy. And I've done this forever, you know, seeing it with that external view. Right? So it is it is partly that, you know, and I think once you can do it, it's easy to do it again for yourself. But often we are in I don't know what you want to call it. Like we're inside our own heads, we're in a vacuum, we're looking at our own stuff that from our own perspective, and we're forgetting that this is always about looking at it from the external perspective. And that is a it's not something that you're born with. This is a skill that you can build and learn. And I got really good at it over the years of having that externalized and instantly looking at something and being able to look at it as if I know nothing, and I've never seen it before. But that's a skill I've built over many, many many years of doing this. That's why it becomes really easy to review something I love doing like reviews for my clients and who are my accelerator group, one of the things they can do is ask me for review my work and I jump on and do a quick loom videos, I'll just look at their opt in page and be like, right, you know, these are the things I'm seeing, here's what we need to change. But I'm able to do that so quickly because of practice, really like it is something anyone can learn to do. And it's once you know what you look for, then do it reminds me when I worked at 19 or 20 working in Austria in ski resort. So I was cleaning a chalet for a job. And at first I was like oh my goodness, the lady would come in and she'd look at the light bulb and say there's dust on the light bulb you know, that needs to be cleaned. And I'd be like, Oh, I've never even looked there before. Like to me this room looks clean. Right? But once I knew what the standard was and what to look at, then I can do it. I can be like okay, there are no watermarks on the mirror. That means the best one is a thumbs up. Whereas I would have looked at it before and thought it looks clean. But I was looking from my perspective and not from hers and that's the same thing. Hang with marketing, like this is a skill then you can learn where you're able to look at something and see it from the other person's eyes. And to. And it's just practice. Once you can learn how to do it, you can start to get better and better at it.

Emma Lovell 30:13

I love it. Now let's switch to life for a moment. You did do something really cool that is on my bucket list. And that is, and I love that you opened with talking about you know that why behind your business or going to, you know, having time for the kids and I think they are such a like wake up call. But you traveled poor in a caravan with your kids. Yeah,

30:37

that? Yeah. Yes. So the year most of 2023. So we left at this at the end of 22. We took the kids out of school for half a year. And we traveled it, we ended up being there eight months. Because all holidays that we managed to take on each end. We traveled to Australia and we went around almost the whole of the outside, we cut off a bit of the Queensland coast. Yeah, what an amazing experience. I was very nervous because having not done it before. Like, how is this going to work with the business am I going to be able to keep it going, and I kind of in the back in my mind thought just as long as it doesn't die completely, I will be happy. But I invested in a good internet like the Starlink satellite, Elon Musk, thank you very much for all your craziness, but just worked an absolute treat. And interestingly, I've cut my business down so much and sort of decided I'm going to not do my group coaching program again. You know, cutting this down that down, I stopped my Facebook group, there were so many parts that I just thought, you know, they're nice to haves, but I'm doing all this activity and they're not essential. So I made lots of decisions and really streamlined it before we left. And interestingly, my business actually grew even though I worked so much less like I was I had I mean we're out remote beaches. We're camping on the Ningaloo Reef, we're, you know, really it was a it was a giant holiday, which was amazing. And I worked every now and then I had a client session maybe once a week. You know, I do do my podcast. So few of those things going on, but it was just so minimal. And then I didn't think the business had grown because I just thought how could it I'm not working as much as usual. Got home and did my taxes at the end of the year and was like, oh my god, it actually 55% more profit. Like, I I registered 55% higher profit, and I had the previous year. And it actually grown in revenue, like over 7%, which I was like that itself, I worked so much later. So really, it was a massive win for me. And that I think was it was huge. Just the lesson and the learning in that you know, and even though I'd say I already learned the lesson that it's not about hard work. It's about getting the right strategy in being streamlined. I was like, No, I'm still learning that lesson clearly. Because I just told you that reminded, yeah, you do? Absolutely. Because

Emma Lovell 33:04

it's the antithesis to what we're told. And it's still, you know, that is like, you still had a belief, even though you were saying to yourself, and I still have this belief, even though I literally take a lot of pleasure. It's like, I've got to switch off because I'm away. I was like, it's challenging, but also, I didn't want to and and then I created a run for my own back, you know, and then it's like, in the day, so I did want to I did just as we do with the weekend, you know, but then, you know, I still have these, like, sort of RKM go on traveling next month, that's going to be, you know, a less profitable month, you know, not necessarily because it depends, but I have one month and we still can you do need those reminders regularly. And now I want to ask you the most important question, which is, what does living a life you love look like? Now?

33:52

I love that question. For me, it looks like I guess, looking at my life right now, and actually really appreciating what it is that I've created. And even though I think you know, we all would have aspirations, I don't know what level you might reach, but you don't have any more aspirations of anything. But you know, it's like, oh, yeah, I have aspirations and things that I want to do in the future. But it's like living a life that I love right now means that I have that choice, that flexibility, the freedom to work as much as I want to, you know, for me, it's like I spend so much time with the kids. We're on school holidays right now. And you know, we were away for the long weekend. I spent the day with him yesterday went rollerskating doing things like that. And I was like yeah, I would like to work on the business because I enjoy doing my business. I really enjoy it. But I'm also like, the reason that I'm doing this is so I can have these days. So for me it's like actually going you know what you are doing right now you're living it in the moment. Enjoy it and enjoy it fully without any guilt. So yeah, I think that would be how I'd answer that.

Emma Lovell 35:01

I love it. And I could talk to you all day, and that I can listen to you all day as we all can because you have a fabulous podcast and you get all of this wonderful guidance and have lovely conversations. So where can we find that? Where can we find you? How can we stay connected? Awesome. Yeah,

35:17

go come and listen on. She's business podcast is on all your podcasting apps. So you'll find me on Apple, Spotify. And the rest and Emma's episode, which is beautiful when talking about retreats is number 197. So yeah, my good version number. Yeah, we're going to be well, very close to that 200 episodes. So it's going to be a real big celebration to reach that one. And there are so many beautiful guests just like Emma you know, I love having that mixture of a little bit of me talking, but also so many guests, and all bringing something really different and unique to the podcast. So you just get to hang out with fun women entrepreneurs, just like us and listen to about business life and books and, and go away with loads of insights. So

Emma Lovell 36:12

congrats. 200 is an incredible achievement. And I just love what you're doing for people. Yeah, it's so important the business and life congruence at some. Yeah, amazing work, sharing all those skills. So thank you for your time today. Thank you. Thanks so much, Emma. It's

36:31

been an absolute pleasure.

Emma Lovell 36:34

Thank you for listening. Lovely one. I hope this has inspired you to dream big and start creating a life you love today. If you love what you're hearing, don't forget to follow and rate on Spotify and rate review and subscribe on iTunes. It helps other awesome people to find this podcast and get motivated and inspired as well. Want to stay connected? Come and join the live a life you love group on Facebook, or connect with me on Instagram. Emma lovell.au, the same as my website. But all the details are in the show notes. Lovely. I'll see you next episode for more inspiration, motivation and freedom seeking Now go out there and live a life you love