REWILD + FREE - 33. HOW TO SWAP PRESSURE FOR PLAY AND CREATE CONTENT AND OFFERS OUT OF DESIRE NOT OBLIGATION

Episode Date: November 12, 2023

TLDL (too long didn't listen): STOP PUTTING YOURSELF IN A BOX WITH CONTENT AND OFFER CREATION BY ACTING OUT OF PRESSURE AND OBLIGATION In this episode, I'm sharing a candid update on the behind the scenes of my business and some of the pressure I've been putting on myself to "oblige" to mainstream marketing norms, to "perfect" my offer suite, and to be "accessible" to as many potential clients as possible…So of course, I'm walking you through my in-real-time process of HOW I’m swapping pressure for play! I share about some of the urgency I've been feeling around the common practice in the coaching industry to offer multiple products or services at varying price points, and to have this 'perfectly proven funnel' set up in my backend. And of course share my unpopular opinions on this, which I believe is actually keeping us in a box, and diluting our voice and points of connection with potential clients. Instead, I argue the importance of experimentation in your marketing and offer creation in order to align your offerings with what feels truly energizing and inspiring, rather than succumbing to societal pressures or obligations. And seeing offer creation less linearly, and more cyclically! This is your massive permission slip to PLAY! Begin to look at offer and content creation like a massive science experiment, start "trying things on for size" without the unnecessary pressure and attachment to outcomes/timelines. Swapping pressure for play is also a way to expand your nervous system's window of tolerance AND an opportunity to heal good girl conditioning and perfectionism! Be sure to listen to the end where I tease my upcoming group program for mother entrepreneurs wanting to get their head out of the way of their heart led business. This group training will be centred on unlearning, relearning, and embodying. The intention is to create a space to unravel and integrate. Think of the experience as an embodied reset to reframe your mind, reconnect to your body, and rebirth the soul of your business Co-create without pressure by joining the waitlist hereJoin the waitlist for the next iteration of my mastermind hereConnect with me and say hi on IG (@nicolepasveer)Want to be a guest on this podcast?  Fill out this form

You're listening to Rewild and Free. This is the go-to podcast for conscious and holistic mother entrepreneurs who are ditching society's to-do list for intentional living, freedom, and abundance, while creating impact and legacy in their home and business. If we haven't met yet, I'm Nicole Pasvir, your like-hearted mom friend and biz bestie wrapped in one. I'm an ex-nurse turned matrescence guide and business coach, leading women just like you into the new paradigm, where thriving in motherhood is your birthright and so is a successful and sustainable online business keep listening if you're ready to unsubscribe from patriarchal motherhood bro marketing and boss babe culture because in this space we use nature as our framework as we move

towards feminine embodied business development cyclical orientation and slow living together let's rewild and remember as we break free from survival and reconnect to what truly matters. Okay friend, steep your tea and take the most loving breath you've given to yourself today and let's go. Hello, welcome to another episode of the Rewild and Free podcast. I have been feeling a lot of, I guess, resistance coming to record for this show and I realized I'm once again putting a ton of pressure on myself. I'm trying to make this thing perfect and I just desperately do not want to let anyone down. just desperately do not want to let anyone down and I realize how silly all of that is because

honestly like the more real and messy I can show up here I know that that just gives you all permission to show up real and messy and that really is something that I really value. I was just thinking today, like the more me I can be allows you to be more you. And by me telling myself that I don't have something worthy or valuable to speak on is potentially doing a huge disservice to you as a listener. Who am I to decide what you need to hear on any given day? so I really need to get out of my head and into my heart which is something I feel like I'm always preaching and yeah this week has really been a just I means here I am. Literally no idea what I want to talk about. Actually, no, that's a lie. I do. I have an idea, but I don't know how in depth

I'm going to go. I don't know really what's going to come out of my mouth, but I do want to share, I guess, a bit of an update. And I'll start with sharing that I've been feeling a lot of urgency. I think that's the right word to use. Yeah, just this urgent type pressure to start bringing in more consistent income from this business and basically up until now there hasn't been a lot of consistency I've really been playing around with my offerings I've been playing around with like group coaching with like my mastermind and my previous offers that have been a group container versus one-on-one coaching versus like one-off workshops um yeah just really playing around with what actually is fun for me and what feels like a good exchange of my time versus what I'm being compensated um and all of these things you really

don't know until you try um and it's it's kind of funny because I keep asking myself like Nicole what would feel fun right now like what do you actually want to do especially because a big part of my message is basically like taking action based on desire and not obligation so part of that is being able to discern what your desires even are and that's something I've been struggling with so when I've been asking myself that question of Nicole what would actually be fun right now I'm kind of just like like blank like I don't know I don't know what would be fun right now um and so yeah it's just kind of a humble reminder if you don't know what feels good until you start trying things on for size it's literally like clothes right like

you don't know what fits good you don't know what makes you feel like you until you start trying trying the damn clothes on so all of this to say that like if you are in this season of struggling to even know what your desires are and struggling to even know what would bring you joy and what would feel fun and easeful in your business, that's an invitation to just start playing. It can be that simple. Like that's all you need to do is start trying things out and trying those things without any pressure of a certain outcome and I guess that's kind of where I've been at lately as I've been in this place of wanting to perfect and wanting to find almost like that one thing in my business that I can just make repeatable and have just going all the time and I think for a while I thought that was going to be my mastermind I've been running facilitating a six month long mastermind called recalibrate and I absolutely love it we meet weekly and after each call every week I am so lit up and energized

by the group of women that I'm holding inside and I know I want to continue facilitating something like that but part of the problem was I was really attached to this date of thinking okay well if there's six if it's a six month long container I only want women to be able to join two times a year. So in my mind, I had the winter and summer solstice really, really like written in stone in this like mental calendar that I have in my head. And so you can imagine the pressure that I've been feeling as we near into the middle of November and get closer and closer to December. And I don't have like a launch plan I don't have really any clarity on what I want the next iteration of this mastermind to look like and it's funny because obviously the past five months of running the first cohort have already

taught me so many things right it's really been an experience of getting to learn what I love and what I don't love. So obviously that is all data to put towards, kind of, if you think of this as like a science experiment, it's all data that I can put towards this science experiment and knowing what I want to do next and what I don't want to do next but the timeline of thinking that I need to launch another cohort by December 21st was putting so much unnecessary pressure on me that it started to not be fun anymore and I was completely feeling blocked I guess but not even blocked in the sense of like something being in my way of like meeting resistance but more in the sense of being so constricted and contained that my creativity couldn't even like pour out of that containment if it wanted to and that was really limiting and

I've only realized this now that I've detached from that date so um yeah long story short I've detached from that date I know I want to run recalibrate or a version of it again I know I want that to be something that is basically a constant in my offer suite I just don't know when the next cohort will actually launch and I'm totally okay with that because I know from experience now and just learning how creation moves through me that the clarity will come exactly when it's supposed to and it's not something I can force and when it's here it's gonna come through me like verbal diarrhea um and yeah so I'm just patiently eagerly excitedly waiting for that because I know it will come when it's supposed to and anyways with all of that while I was attached to the timeline of a December 21st

start date I was I was telling myself that I needed kind of a smaller offering of some sort to potentially lead women into this mastermind and not even lead into but just something to give potential clients a taste of what it's like to work with me in like a group setting and so again I attached myself to to this strategy thinking this is exactly what I needed to do and again it put a bunch of unnecessary pressure and urgency on on creating something and trying to like fill this box that I told myself I needed to check off and again since I've detached from the timeline of December 21st that's also created some freedom and flexibility with this kind of like interim offering and that has felt really really good too and since I've since I've kind of come to this place and met peace with with the timelines I can I can very

confidently say that there's been a huge shift in my creativity and my um I would say, like, inner peace and, like, calmness and just, like, energetically things don't feel so stagnant and constricted anymore. And that is such a beautiful place to be in. It's, again, something to kind of add to the resume of, okay, I know what it feels like when I'm living in this flow state versus in this fitting myself in a box state. And I guess the reason I'm sharing all of this is because I think it can be so easy as mother entrepreneurs to feel like we need to have certain offers, feel like we need to maybe have, say, like a one-on-one offering at like a certain price point and then maybe like a group offering at a certain price point and maybe even like a freebie something

that is likely collecting dust in our potential clients inbox more on that later I have become quite passionate on the idea of what a lead magnet should be and that very common downloadable pdf is not is not necessarily my suggestion there um but I think you get what I mean like we in the coaching industry especially it's become very common to have like two three four things in your offer suite all at kind of different price points and we can feel ourselves kind of again putting ourselves in this box to make sure we have each of these things and trying to make sure our offers are accessible to a bunch of different people meaning like different price points and different time investments and different time investments and, like, all these things. But at the end of the day, it's still kind of putting

yourself in a box. And so, like, the message here is really to play around with things, like, ditch the box, just play around with things based on, like, what feels energizing and inspiring in the moment and maybe even, like, filling the gap of what you're seeing in your community. So for example, like some of the conversations I've been having lately with women in my community is they know that they are running this like heart-led and soulful business. They know that they're trying to build this business

out of desire and not obligation. And they've been doing all the things to really connect to themselves connect to their body they've been on this beautiful spiritual awakening and like self-discovery journey they've been doing all the things and they just feel like they're in this season of slowing down and integrating and really kind of coming back to center and coming back to what their own truth is before they start making moves that are more visible in their business. And so in terms of like the season of creation, this is very like fall and winter vibes. There's a lot of below the ground work happening and there's not necessarily a ton of

outer visible stuff that's happening um and with that like these women are are kind of feeling like well they're just they're in this state of like hyper awareness where they're noticing all of their limiting beliefs coming to the surface they're noticing where um their nervous system's getting dysregulated they're noticing where um old money traumas are coming back up to the surface they're noticing like all these things and the self awareness piece is both a blessing and a curse right like it's super uncomfortable to have the self-awareness to feel all the things um but thankfully like that that means that you get to work through it and you get to likely become like a better version of yourself by working through it

um and something that I've actually been working through in in all that is seeing those things as they come up less as a hurdle that needs to be overcome but more as something that I get to work through and alchemize so it actually becomes a part of me um I have like this interesting visual in my mind and I don't even know if I'd be able to explain it um but almost like if you see this like little stick man figure walking over hurdles and then like as he's walking forward those hurdles are still behind him and he can see all the hurdles he's been over versus same stick man but each time he kind of walks through that hurdle that hurdle becomes part of him and he just becomes like this stronger more embodied more powerful more in tune and um i don't even know what other word to put there but just

like a better version of himself or herself and so yeah i've kind of been looking at these moments of resistance less of something to overcome and get over and more so something to actually integrate into into my life and take whatever excuse me take whatever lesson is coming from that no idea if that made any sense um, I just have like random stickman figures playing around in my mind and that's how the visuals work. Oh man. I'm totally going off topic here, as I knew I would. I think these solo episodes, it's just bound to happen unless I actually have a very strict agenda that I'm trying to follow. In this episode, I did not. So I think what I'm trying to say in all of that is it can be so easy to just say that you want to detach from timelines and that you just want to follow what actually brings you joy and you actually want to lead by desire, not obligation.

But the hard part in all of that is if you don't actually know what it is that brings you that joy and so this is just a massive massive permission slip to detach from that pressure that pressure that's likely coming from good girl conditioning and um former versions of yourself that felt like she needed to be perfect in order to be accepted into the group and in order to be loved um really really seeing those parts of ourselves because that's the thing is they are a part of ourselves they're not they are a part of ourself they're not gone so i think the first step in all that is is meeting meeting them where they're at and really leaning into that like cherishing mother energy within us and showing ourselves like a massive dose of

self-compassion and self-trust and I mean really this is inner child stuff um at its core I think this is like inner child stuff so really meeting and connecting with your inner child more frequently could actually be the tangible practice here but really it's noticing opportunity to really, yeah, just, like, not suppress, not, like, not see it as frustration, like, oh, there she is again, like, but actually almost have gratitude for, like, that part of yourself because that part of yourself has kept you safe this long. That part of yourself has kept you safe this long that part of yourself has kept you included in your communities and in your friend groups and more primarily speaking it's allowed you to be accepted into the tribe and way back in the day in like caveman era if if you didn't show

up a certain way you very likely would have been kicked out of the tribe and that would have cost you your life so again thanking that version of yourself because she has literally kept you safe um and this I mean I could go on and on and on about just the impact all of this has on our nervous system and thinking about like the response and fitting in and really all it comes down to is our body's sense of safety so part of all of this is is increasing that threshold and showing our nervous systems the difference between an actual threat versus visibility and putting yourself out there and potentially putting out like bus work or having someone disagree with you on the internet like those things those things feel like real threats to

our nervous system but the only way to start overcoming them is to really do it and to resource ourselves and show our nervous system safety through it so that's part of the process as you're playing and as you're experimenting is it's kind of like if you are taking your your kid to I don't even know like a some sort of like extracurricular activity maybe it's like their first soccer practice and maybe they're really nervous and they don't know what to expect and they don't know if they're going to be any good they're worried that some of the other kids are going to have way more experience than them all these things and it's it's kind of treating ourselves how we would treat our kid as we're bringing them to the first day of

soccer practice because for many of us we're doing things for the first time and even if it's not the first time it's still it's still scary because we are growing these online audiences. We are making ourselves visible. We are taking risks. We are doing all the things. piece is so so huge and also rooting into safety resourcing into safety and reminding our nervous systems that things are okay and that this isn't actually a threat it's not a bear coming to attack us we aren't going to die um yeah so that's my two cents on that that's kind of what i've been moving through is just noticing where i've been attaching to outcomes and that pressure that comes from attaching to the outcome and the timeline. And then in comes the perfectionist trying to keep me pretty perfect and pleasing.

And again, that's just like the protector side of me trying to keep me safe. But in doing that, she's also keeping me small. So recognizing all of that and really just working my way through it but not working my way through it in the sense of overcoming it like obstacles to put past me but working through it in the sense of alchemizing and really allowing it to become a part of me and embodying the experience um i feel like those were a lot of big fluffy

words but i hope that makes sense I hope a piece of that lands. And as always, take what resonates and leave the rest. I'm laughing because this was not at all what I thought I was going to share. So what I actually wanted to zoom in on was how common it is. And maybe this is subconscious for you. Maybe it's conscious um but how often we are putting ourselves into a box with our offer creation and I think this shows up in really sneaky ways it also perpetuates some of our old conditioning and old programming with good girl conditioning and really trying to fit in and perfect and people please and

really just try to appease all of the women in our audience and this shows up in terms of trying to make our offers super accessible so we're not leaving anyone out this also looks like trying to be really intentional with leading our potential client on this journey and I feel like I like the idea of having a journey I'm not I'm not bashing that but I think in the traditional like marketing world in in in that narrative it's it's just this very linear path that your ideal client should be led through and that's often through the use of funnels and again I'm not bashing funnels but I do think they pose a huge disservice when we're talking about desire and obligation and I think if we are constantly trying to fit our offers and our content and our marketing into this very linear funnel, we are doing a huge disservice for our clients. And also we are squashing our own self-expression and keeping ourselves small.

We are diluting our voice, we are literally creating a disconnect to points of connection that our potential clients can feel connected and related to by us. Because I think what happens, especially in content creation and our marketing, is we end up sounding like robots because we are literally copying and pasting what's potentially worked before and trying to move people through that same thing and like I said like I'm not bashing funnels I'm not bashing automations there's definitely a time and a place I think it's just really, really important to bring our awareness to desire and obligation and where that funnel or that automation might actually be feeling like an obligation for you. Like you must lead your client through X, Y, and Z before you even offer A, B, and C. I did that backwards, but you know what I mean. I think something that I keep

coming back to is, especially anytime that I'm feeling like I'm all over the place, or I feel like I'm pivoting too much, or I feel like I'm changing my mind and letting people down, whatever the story is, it's coming back to the truth that like I am always evolving so of course my business is always evolving and I think I think it's really important that we tap into that that that evolution piece and um allow our offers and our content to grow and evolve with us and I think that that actually helps to show more of our ourselves like it makes us seem less robotic um and I yeah I think this is kind of like a missing piece in in the traditional marketing world and like I said like obviously there's a time and a place for funnels and funnels can be beautiful and they can be a huge

like source of containment and safety and security for your business especially when we think about things being passive and I don't know like in the context of having a email automation sequence and having your your client go through this like email journey with you and then being led to a on-demand offer like obviously that makes sense if and this is a big if if that offer you're leading them to is still your desire if it's still actually what's on your heart and what you want to be selling and facilitating especially for like live live offerings if this is if we're talking something that's on demand that's a little bit different but I do still think there's a lot of value in continuing to sell and offer things

that are still very much alive on your heart and so the intention of that funnel or that automation is really to be the masculine hold for our feminine flow and I think seeing it that way is just a very different intention than trying to create this funnel just because you've been told you should have this automated funnel but I think what happens and I tried to kind of point this out in my example of where I was feeling like I needed to create this offer to be a funnel or kind of like this in-between converter, like to help my ideal client move from, to basically jump off the fence. Like I thought I needed to create some lower cost offering so that that woman would be able to decide, yay or nay, I want to be in Nicole's upcoming mastermind. And I think if I am creating from that type of mindset and that type of energetic frequency,

that is going to be felt by that woman and that's that's not the vibe I'm going for um that's that screaming scarcity that screaming urgency it's also me making some very large assumptions about how much money she's willing to invest and I mean we always need to remind ourselves to get out of our clients' wallets. We have no idea what they're willing to spend and invest. And it's also making this assumption that she needs something in order to make the decision. It's not even giving her the ability to just jump into my mastermind in this example without moving through something first um and I think that's that's kind of painting this picture that our our potential clients are lacking something and

they need more education and obviously sometimes that is true but I think that's for them to decide and for them to, I don't know, I think that's just part of where a conversation needs to be and where it can be super, super wise to be connected with your audience so you know where they're at. As opposed to forcing them through something that they might not actually need. Because in this example, I'm just going to keep playing around with what I was almost doing. If I had in my head that my potential client needed to go through this mini offering, this mini training that would then funnel them into and invite them to my mastermind, what if that mini training was actually not what they needed and ended up being a deterrent when what they wanted to do from the beginning was jump straight into the mastermind I am I keep also coming back to the fact that the first time I launched this mastermind

I kind of came out of nowhere in terms of like my offering I was literally pivoting away from birth work I think literally like a month before I was doing a birth education workshop and so this came out of nowhere like my my audience was not necessarily expecting me to pivot in this direction yet I still was able to market and create content that obviously gave them whatever they needed to know to jump right in because I had I had success people signed up so um totally going off track but I'm just trying to explain that this journey that we've been fed to believe that we need to bring our clients through is maybe not something that we need to hold on to so tightly and it's also just again this very linear path and I don't think that's the future for feminine embodied entrepreneurs I think we really need to hone in on the wisdom of our body and the cyclical being that we are

and with that really with really leaning into the wisdom that comes with cyclical creation and I I keep kind of speaking and teasing about this idea of cyclical creation and I made a comment about excuse me I made a comment about like fall winter winter vibes um and I absolutely need to do a podcast episode on explaining what I mean by these cycles of creation but like long story short like anytime we're creating something it it follows this beautiful cycle and once you see it you can't unsee it but it starts with like a seed we can literally relate this and mirror this back to gardening and so it starts with a seed that gets planted in the soil and so we can think of that as spring and um spring

involves obviously tons of watering and tons of nurturing to this soil and also being really protective with who we're sharing this new planted seed this new idea with and there's still not a lot of visible like outside work happening so in terms of like social media there might just be some teasers about what's happening but there's no actual launch yet and then summer is really when you have that full launch and you have the thing that that seed that was planted in spring is now blooming and you have the offer it's birthed and it's running and whatever that looks like and then fall is this season of letting go and composting and starting to let go of things that no longer serve. So in terms of social media and offer creation, this looks like fine tuning. And this looks like getting rid of the things that like we didn't

like, the things that didn't work, the things that we don't want to do again. And this really speaks to why it's so important to play around. Because if you don't play, play come fall you don't even know what you're trying to get rid of like you need to have something to fine-tune so you need to go through spring and summer in order to have fall in order to start fine-tuning and letting go and refining and all the things and then come winter that's that's really when things are slow things are happening behind or sorry under the soil, things are dead on the upper surface, right? There's really nothing visible to be seen. It's this period of hibernation, it's this period of reflection, it's this period of setting intentions for the next season.

And then of course, like the cycle continues into spring and obviously this cycle it doesn't necessarily match the literal seasons this could literally occur in a matter of weeks maybe even days depending on how creation moves through you but I hope you kind of get the idea there when I'm speaking language of the seasons in terms of creation I completely lost track of what I was trying to say by digressing and explaining that to you. My point was really just to start bringing our awareness to what boxes we might be putting ourselves in in terms of offer creation and how that might be limiting us to our full potential. It might literally be diluting us and preventing us from creating something that wants to move through us just because we think we have to do

something a certain way or in a certain order. The too long, didn't listen version, if you've somehow skipped to this point of the episode, is to stop acting and creating out of pressure and obligation and instead kind of see your business and your offer creation and your marketing as this beautiful playground and science experiment to just play around and test different things and coming back to desire the only way to actually figure out what you desire is to try things out before I let you move on to the next podcast in your podcast queue I just want to circle back to what I was sharing about the group program that's been pouring out of me and some of the the containment that I was feeling when I was trying to make it fit into this box of well first of all the timeline of it being launched before December but then also seeing it as this

funnel into my mastermind since I've detached from all of that I have experienced so much more flow for lack of a better word and this thing has gotten so much bigger so much deeper so much more potent and now it has nothing to do with funneling you or anyone into anything it's really this standalone creation that I think every mother entrepreneur needs to experience it's really becoming what I see as the foundations to a embodied business an embodied lifestyle and that's the thing is I really don't see business separate from life and separate from mothering and separate from relationships and separate to money like I've stopped compartmentalizing all those things in my life because I realized that when I'm being given an opportunity to work through something in any of those areas of my life it's almost always a mirror and a reflection to something else in another area of

my life um it's all so interconnected and the the less I try to compartmentalize it and the more I allow it to just be this like one um interwoven tapestry um things just feel a lot more peaceful. And so, yeah, the thing I'm creating, I want to tell you a little bit about it and I want you on my wait list. Without giving away too much because I'm still in this spring season of planting the seeds and nurturing them and watering them and needing to be very protective with my energy and who I share the details with, I do just want to say that I am likely going to be creating a group program for January. And this is really going to be for the woman who feels like her head is getting in the way of her heart-led business

and who is looking to actually start integrating and implementing all of the things she's been learning and absorbing so far and I really think of this cycle of unlearning relearning and embodying and I think many of us aren't actually completing that cycle we're all unlearning we're all kind of shedding the layers of good girl conditioning and all the other disasters for lack of a better word coming from the patriarchal society that we've grown up in so that unlearning piece is already happening we've already been doing it if you're listening to this I'm going to guess you've already been on this really massive unlearning journey and then the next thing in the cycle the way I see it is

relearning and so that's relearning the other way and in most cases that's really relearning our body and nature's wisdom and specifically like the female body and reclaiming womanhood and the power that comes with that and all of those things that's kind of how I see the relearning piece and in my own experience like I've already experienced this it started with pregnancy and birth and then it turned into like just how I was understanding motherhood same thing it started with unlearning all the things I knew and then relearning and then the third part of the cycle and I think this is the gap this is the part that many of us are missing or skipping or not necessarily feeling equipped to move through likely from some ongoing like nervous systems regulation or dysregulation I should say and just not really being in the right kind of containers

where you feel safe enough to allow yourself to unravel and come back together again and so yeah the third part of this cycle is the embodiment piece so unlearn relearn and then embody is really the way I see all of these things and so my intention with my next offering is going to be a focus on that embodiment piece and really how to integrate all of the things and kind of back to my stick man analogy, if you understood it, instead of seeing each hurdle as something to overcome, really beginning to alchemize it

and let it move through you. So if this at all sounds interesting, I'm gonna put a link for a wait list in my show notes. It really helps me to see who's interested so that i can co-create this thing with you so please see this waitlist not as an obligation um i'm not going to hunt you down and like make you sign up and like hold you accountable oh you saw you showed interest so you have to sign up i'm not playing that game it's more just okay this is actually social proof that this is something that feels needed right now in the season of your life so it helps me to hear from you and like I always say I

have no idea who's ever listening to this so if you're listening if things are resonating please reach out on Instagram I want to hear from you I'll leave any links you need in the show notes and I'll see you in the next episode