Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Natalie Ellis: Is Your Business Trapping You? How to Build One That Runs Without You | Entrepreneurship | E404

Starting point is 00:00:00 Today's episode is sponsored in part by Shopify Quo, Indeed, AT&T business, pro-lon, cash shop, and Northwest registered agent. Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you grow your business. Start your $1 per month trial at Shopify.com slash profiting. Quo is an AI-powered phone system that brings your calls, texts, and contacts together in one place. Try Quo for free, plus get 20% off your first six months when you go to Quo.com slash profiting. Indeed helps you attract interview and hire all in one place. Get a $75-sponsored job credit to boost your job's visibility at Indeed.com slash podcast. AT&T Business delivers reliable business grade connectivity that gives your team a competitive advantage. Switch to AT&T Business at business.com. Prolon helps you reset your body and reverse your age with a five-day plant-based program that mimics

Starting point is 00:00:56 fasting while still nourishing you. Go to prolonlif.com. slash profiting for 15% off sitewide, plus a $40 bonus gift when you subscribe. If you've been curious about Bitcoin but haven't made the jump yet, Cash App makes it easy. For a limited time, new customers can get $10 added to their balance. Just use code Cash App 10 when you sign up. Northwest Registered Agent gives you the tools and guidance you need to build a complete business identity. Visit Northwest Registeredagent.com slash Yap free and start using free resources to build something amazing. As always, you can find all of our incredible deals in the show notes or at

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Starting point is 00:02:20 If your business can do that when you're out of office, it's incredible. Natalie Ellis is the CEO of Boss Babe, best-selling author and one of the most influential voices in online business. In this episode, Natalie shares how she rebuilt her business from the ground up, created systems that generate revenue without constant hustle, and learned to prioritize alignment over endless growth. I always knew I wanted my business to be a vehicle to help me live the life I wanted to live. I have always valued freedom. Use this word harmony instead of balance. What's the difference? I say harmony instead of balance because balance assumes there is a perfect balance. Harmony is, I'm very intentional about what my life and business requires

Starting point is 00:03:03 for me in each season, and I'm willing to be really flexible about how I get there. If you have really big goals in your business, you are going to have to sacrifice on the personal side to hit those goals. You've got this activity called a to-be list that you talk about in your book. How does somebody do that? I like to think about how I want to be, right? So often we run off a to-do list, and if you're not careful, your entire calendar can reflect your to-do list. And one thing I did is like... Natalie, welcome to Young Improfiting Podcast. I'm excited.

Starting point is 00:03:36 Thanks for having me. I'm so excited that you're here. I've been following your page, boss babes, for like the last 10 years. It's been such an inspiration for me, and it's just so cool to have the woman behind that massive page here today. So thank you for joining us.

Starting point is 00:03:51 Thank you. So I know that you have a new book, and one of the first stories that you bring up in the book is you one month after having your baby, basically having a breakdown on your bathroom floor. And suddenly, this business that you thought was going to bring you so much success and freedom felt like a prison. So take us back to that day. What were you feeling? And was it really a breakdown or a breakthrough? Yeah, that's a great question. It was definitely a breakdown. And I don't think the breakthrough came for a long, long time after that. So when I had my first daughter, I had a really

Starting point is 00:04:26 traumatic birth with her and my body was stuck in fight or flight for a long time and I went through postpartum depression and anxiety which takes a lot of time to come out of and I would say I had a dark night of a soul that lasted nine months at least and so I say that to say you know sometimes we think when you have a breakdown you know the breakthroughs inevitable it's on the other side and sometimes when you're really in those moments month after month you still do not see the light and I hope that hearing that gives someone a bit of hope that it is coming. But for me, I had been running my business for a pretty long time and outwardly, you know, had created all this success.

Starting point is 00:05:05 I had the revenue numbers, the follow account, all of that quote unquote success externally. And yet, when I took my maternity leave with my daughter, the business wasn't doing so well, right? It wasn't doing what we were used to doing. launches weren't doing as well. I realized I hadn't really created a business that was working very well without me. And it required so much of me. Before having my baby, I was fine with that because my entire life was work. Afterwards, I wasn't. Firstly, my baby needed me, but secondly, I needed myself. I was not okay and I needed time to be able to heal. And it felt like if I took that time away, my whole business would crumble. And it was just a real moment of reckoning for me.

Starting point is 00:05:51 me of is this exactly what you want? Is this what you built a business for? You became an entrepreneur because you wanted freedom, yet you have none. Yeah. So what were some of the first steps that you took to sort of like audit and make a change? I had to get really honest with myself and I had to not rush the process. That was therapy, journaling, sitting with myself, conversations with husband, conversations with friends, really starting to speak out what wasn't working for me. Because I wasn't in a place where I knew what I wanted. There were times when I thought I wouldn't be able to go back to work. The anxiety was just too intense. I couldn't get out of bed some days. And so first I should have to get really, really honest with myself. And what I noticed was there were

Starting point is 00:06:32 a lot of things and places and relationships in my life where I'd been betraying myself. When I was saying a lot of yes, when I meant no, where I wasn't standing up for myself, where I wasn't advocating for myself where I wasn't really driving towards what I wanted and I was doing a lot of things to keep other people happy or, you know, to keep up what I thought I should be doing. I will admit as well, I had a big audience on social media and for a long time I felt like I couldn't be myself in front of them because they expected a certain thing from me. And that was the first thing, was really spending that time myself and not rushing that. And what came after that was some pretty tough conversations.

Starting point is 00:07:09 Because as you start to set boundaries, people who benefit for, you. from you having none have a lot of trouble with that. And I think that's what holds us back from having those conversations because we know that it might risk losing relationships that we have and it might risk things looking a little different to what they do. So time with myself and hard conversations with others and then giving myself the space to think about, okay, if not this, then what? What is it that you want? And get really clear on that vision. And listen, I had to move before I was really clear on that vision. And I think that's important.

Starting point is 00:07:43 I think action does create clarity, but I did have to give myself enough time to feel better enough to do that. I know that a lot of our listeners out there are people pleasers, right? They really want to uphold expectations from others, from their co-founders, from their employees, their investors,

Starting point is 00:08:03 even their following, if they're a creator like you were just mentioning. So I'd love to double tap on that. Like, talk to us about the expectations that you felt from your community. Like, from my perspective, Boss Babe, you really started this era of like female CEO, power woman, power, like boss babe was like an era.

Starting point is 00:08:24 And now your whole premise is like freedom and, you know, work life balance. And so that's very different from the brand that you built. So talk to us about the expectations you felt from your audience and then also from your team. I think a lot of ambitious women are people pleasers, which is really funny because we can look like the boss. We can have those direct conversations with our team. But I think when it really comes down to it, we do want to make other people happy. We do want to say yes and stretch ourselves. We don't

Starting point is 00:08:54 want to let people down and disappoint people. And I think that can serve us really well and get us to a certain place. And I think it can be a very difficult situation to put yourself in because you will end up creating a reality where people expect certain things of you because you've given them that in the past. So I definitely felt that. I mean, with Boss Babe, but yeah, it's interesting because we had this persona. Whenever I was writing quotes for Boss Babe, I was embodying a persona and still do. Very unapologetic, very direct, very sassy, tongue in cheek, saying the thing that we all want to say, but maybe aren't saying that was our magic. And I still think that is a big part of the brand. Yeah, when I was going through a lot of what I was going through, I mean, one, at the time,

Starting point is 00:09:39 I had a co-founder, you know, so I couldn't just show up and see everything I wanted to say. There was, we needed to agree what that messaging was going to be. And I felt like I had to be put together. I felt like that's what my audience were expecting. From me, I didn't want to show up in the mess. I was used to showing up having my shit together. So that was really nerve-wracking for me to do. And it was, there's a lot of eyeballs looking. There's a lot of people seeing what I'm putting out. And so I felt like in my head, if I really show up in the mess and in the chaos and admit I have no idea what I'm doing and motherhood has rocked my entire world and I've realized, you know, I've been building this external version of success and I feel like I'm in a cage. I just worried what that would look like. And going through, at one point, I actually quit my position as CEO of Boss Babe and I asked my co-founder to buy me out. And I walked away for quite a long time. It didn't. end up working out that way. I'd been the face of the business for a very long time. There was really no buy out there. So I ended up buying out my co-founder and rebuilding the whole business from

Starting point is 00:10:43 scratch. And that was a really big turning point for me to start to think about how I did want to portray myself on the outside, what I did want to share, how I did want to bring people behind the scenes and show things that a little bit different, the dark side of success. The stuff I think we're not talking about as much. Yeah, fam, as my business keeps growing, I feel like I'm always hiring. I recently added two new video editors and a producer to my team. And I can tell you from experience the right hire can give you leverage. The wrong hire gives you a second job.

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Starting point is 00:12:18 I felt like I had accidentally walked into a finance bro TED Talk. Charts everywhere, acronyms flying around. One guy saying decentralized, like it was a personality trait. I nodded along and understood absolutely nothing. And then I just didn't touch it. I didn't invest in Bitcoin for years. here's what I've learned in business. Sometimes things are not actually complicated. They're just explained in the most complicated way possible. If you've been curious about Bitcoin but haven't made the jump yet, Cash app makes it easy. You can set up automatic purchases with zero fees or buy larger amounts also with zero fees. Start small or go bigger. It's designed to be simple either way. For a limited time, new customers can get $10 added to their balance. Just use code Cash App 10 when you

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Starting point is 00:15:11 prolonlife.com slash profiting. Having a co-founder is just like very difficult, right? I have a business partner and I almost had another partner and we had a really big falling out in the last year and it was extremely difficult. It is really like a marriage, even if it's same sex, right? Like it is really like a marriage and it felt like a breakup. And it was just so difficult for me. But I knew that things had to change because I felt like I was being controlled.

Starting point is 00:15:44 I felt like even though I was the founder, like this person had so much decision-making power that suddenly it felt like I didn't build this business for freedom. It felt like I had a boss because I had a co-vind, even though he wasn't my boss, it felt like I had a boss. Talk to us about your experience with your co-founder and, you know, you don't have to get too personal or anything just so that we can understand like what resentment you started to feel and why you felt like there was no chance for repair and why you decided to just buy her out. Yeah, it's tough. Having a co-founder is tough. I think in a lot of ways, it serves your business really well and can be incredible and you have to be value aligned. I have a

Starting point is 00:16:26 partner now in Boss Bay, who's more of a silent partner. And I absolutely love it. It's incredible. We're both very, very aligned and our roles are very defined and what we bring to the business is very clear that I didn't have in the beginning. We were both incredibly young when we got into partnership. And I don't think either of us expected the business to grow in the way that it did. And our partnership agreement didn't really change based on how things had grown. So I think that's the first thing, you know, we built something really incredible together. And for the time that we were together, I think it was an incredibly successful partnership until it wasn't. Yeah. And going through that was like going through a divorce. It was very, very challenging. We had a lot of assets together.

Starting point is 00:17:08 We had certain agreements together and we were also very close. And so unwinding that relationship was like a divorce. And it just was very difficult. I think having those conversations is very difficult. And I think I see it happen in many ways. You go down a pathway it feels like there is no repair. Other times you can go down a pathway eventually you do. For us, it was just a very difficult breaker. I know that now you co-founded Glossi with Lori Harder, who's actually in my podcast network, very good friend. And you both started this while you were already entrepreneurs before, you know, older or more experienced. And you actually set some real clear boundaries from the beginning. Can you tell us about that? Yeah. So with Glossie, Lori is the majority.

Starting point is 00:17:53 shareholder. I have a smaller stake and so I'm a co-founder but she's really the CEO. She's the majority shareholder and that really reflects our contribution to the business and decision making. When she brought me on as a co-founder, she was very clear what she wanted and I was very clear what I wanted and she asked me this question in the beginning which I thought was really powerful. She said, what would make you want to walk away from this? What would make things not work? And we had a very, very candid conversation and brought in experiences from the past and I think that's really important. And what I will say, which I don't think has talked about enough, is not every partnership should be 50-50. It's very challenging to find a relationship where you are both contributing equally.

Starting point is 00:18:32 So true. And if you are 50-50 and you feel like you are doing way more of the work and you're not compensated for that, if compensation is very fair across, say, two people, I don't think you're going to love that. I think it can create a lot of resent. Yes. You know, I work with my husband and it's very different for us because everything is marital property, right? And if I'm pulling more weight at home and he's pulling more weight in the business, that's great because our lives are entwined. It's very, very different as life partners and business partners. But if you just have a co-founder and that's not the case, I think that breeds a lot of resentment.

Starting point is 00:19:08 And shareholder agreements are very tricky to redo once you're already signed and sealed. Most people won't want to backtrack on that. Most people won't want to give up equity if things change. So I think you have to be very, very cautious when you get into business. I heard Michael Bostick say on a podcast, you'd never do 50-50. It would have to be at least 51% in either direction. I think that's really important. There should be a decision maker.

Starting point is 00:19:31 There should be someone who, you know, if you both can't agree, that person takes the lead on it. And for us, in my partnership with Lori, that's her. In Boss Babe, that's me. I think that's really important. I love that advice. I think that is really, really sound advice. So freedom is something that's really important to you. And how do you define freedom today?

Starting point is 00:19:54 Freedom for me changes in every single season. I will say that. So right now I have a four-year-old and an eight-month-old. So I'm in the thick of it with my baby. I'm with her all day. I'm breastfeeding every two and a half hours. We're in the thick of it. So right now, freedom is having freedom in my calendar.

Starting point is 00:20:09 I don't want a ton of calls on my calendar. I want to be able to work during that time, work when she's playing, and have that space and flexibility. Yet a year from now, freedom's already going to look very, very different. it's going to look like a specific calendar, you know, a rhythmic routine in my calendar, creative freedom, it's going to look and feel very different. I think ultimately the highest form of wealth is freedom of time in good health. And that is you have the choice how you spend your time and you feel healthy enough to do that.

Starting point is 00:20:42 I think that is ultimately the biggest form of it, but in every single season it's going to look differently. You know, for you, let's say a free calendar might not look like freedom. It might be, you know, I'm working set amount of hours this many days per week, but I'm creatively inspired. I have financial freedom, whatever that box is. I just think it changes and we have to tune in with ourselves and be intentional about what that season is and what season we're in. I think every three months in your business, you should reassess that. What does freedom look like? What does alignment look like? What is joy and excitement and creativity look like in this season? Some seasons, you just hunker down and get shit done.

Starting point is 00:21:21 Some seasons, you step back to actually take a look at what you've built. You reassess, get creative, inject a bit of creativity into it. And I think if you don't do that, you won't stand the test of time in business. If you want to be in it for the long run, you have to be reassessing continuously how you're approaching it. Yeah. And for you right now, like you said, you're in the thick of it with your kids. So you've got to like kind of like step back and make sure that you've got systems and processes that you, you know, and rhythms. like you were saying. So talk to us about the different rhythms that you've put in place in your

Starting point is 00:21:51 business and how you think about that. Yeah, there's two of the most important ones we have, which is a revenue rhythm and a content rhythm. And I think this is most important for any kind of personal brand or business like ours, because ultimately the content rhythm is the thing that keeps your brand growing in the long term and helps you generate revenue in the short term. And your revenue rhythm is the thing that brings in cash consistently whether or not you are showing up and working. So both of the things that. these are incredibly important and ideally you have a set way that you know things work in your business so revenue wise you know okay i send x amount of emails per week i do x amount of call to

Starting point is 00:22:29 actions on social a week and i spend x amount of on ads if that's your model i know i do this on a rhythmic basis week in week out if we do x we generate y we should have that formula and if we don't that's where we need to spend our time because that is your business that is how your business runs And so you set that up. And if you desire to delegate yourself out of that, you probably can't delegate yourself completely out of that. But if you want to delegate yourself out a good chunk of that, you playbook it, you set a system for it and you bring someone in who's qualified enough or willing to be trained up on executing that. Same thing with content. You reverse engineer. What is my goal? Where am I going? What kind of brand am I building? So then what's required of me from a content perspective? How many times are we posting on each individual channel and what kind of formats is this? Cool. What is required? from me in this process. Well, I might show up and record this many face to cameras, this many podcasts, and give my insight on this, the team runs with the rest. But you know, if you do that content cadence at the end of the month, you should have grown by a certain amount. That is what, from the beginning with Boss Babe, how I grew the account the way I did. I had

Starting point is 00:23:37 this content cadence and I extended this into all the different areas of our content. And that's what I do with revenue now. And just to kind of conceptualize this, so my last maternity leave, I took off 12 weeks completely off the grid, not in Slack, not on calls, nothing. And my team generated $2.2 million, zero ad spend. My podcast was on pause. I mean, I was tapped out, but they ran the rhythm. They ran the playbooks. We knew exactly what to do. We knew which lovers to pull. That's really powerful. If your business can do that when you're out of office, It's incredible. And that is where you can tap into scale. And I will also say just on this, I think there is a myth that a freedom-based business is not a scalable business. I completely

Starting point is 00:24:22 disagree. I think a freedom-based business is one that is a vehicle toward the life you want to live. Yeah. I typically think a freedom-based business is one where you don't have venture investment. You don't have bosses. You're really in charge of it. But if you desire to live this big, abundant life, what an amazing vehicle. I want to double tap on the content strategy because you built an Instagram page that has over three million followers. And Instagram really was like your big platform. Do you think that people should post everywhere or should we just focus on one big platform like you did? I think you should master one platform at a time. I think it's very challenging to master multiple platforms at the same time. I think it's important to be on multiple platforms. But if you have not

Starting point is 00:25:04 cracked one, don't go looking to do more. You know, I get one of the most common questions I get from clients is, should I have a personal account and a business account? Because they see that I have that. You will notice, I don't ever try and grow my personal account. That is not a goal of mine. My goal is my business account. That's where I'm focused. My personal account, if I have extra time, if I have something to say, if I feel creative, I'll post on it. But the priority is the business. The reason I'm creating content is to have a business. So I really recommend pick one platform and pick a number. Okay, I want to hit 100,000 followers. That means I'm I've probably cracked the code to a content cadence, a repeatable playbook.

Starting point is 00:25:45 So get to that milestone and then bring someone into the business who can keep that going when you then go turn your attention to another platform. And I think that's how you can end up building a media brand. For the longest time after growing my account, I wanted to have a podcast, but I knew I wouldn't do it unless I could take my attention off of the Instagram account and it would still continue to perform. And I think if I'd done that too early, I wouldn't have had the success that I've had on that. What's up, young improfitors?

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Starting point is 00:28:11 The algorithm is always changing. What Works is always changing. And I know this from, like, I'm a really big LinkedIn influencer. That's my big platform. And, like, when I first started, I was the one posting every day. Like, it was me for two years. And I understood the algorithm inside and out. But then, like, a team took it over and I would, like, kind of, like, direct them.

Starting point is 00:28:33 And then there's a point where, like, you feel like, are they innovating enough? Because it's not me anymore looking at it and understanding the platform. So how do you really? make sure that you're keeping up with the trends on Instagram, how do you, like, even though you're the CEO of this big company, how do you make sure that you understand what's actually working and not working? I think when you run a creative business, you have to throw the typical org chart out the window. So a typical org chart might say, you know, a COO reports to a CEO and maybe a CEO has a direct reports, but the CEO was really running the company. I disagree with that in a business like

Starting point is 00:29:09 mine. I always, always prioritized content. And so my content team worked directly with me. And that is just as important to me as running all of the elements of the business. I do not desire to take my eye off content. I do not desire to have content put out there that I wouldn't want to put my brand or my name on. That doesn't feel like the right move in a business like mine. I'm not creating a business that I can exit one day. I am building a business that's an extension of my personal brand and my beliefs and a community that I feel connected to. And so if I take my eye off content, I don't know that it would still have the potency that it does. So, you know, I'm not approving every single post that goes out. I very much trust my team. But every month we are

Starting point is 00:29:54 talking about what's trending, what we do want to adapt, what we don't, how we might want to pivot content formats, how we might want to shake up design, how I might want to jump in and do some things. And I think it's really important. What I'll also say, is for the longest time when I was building this business, I was posting on Instagram and I was doing the posting myself. And so many people would say, they had this quote, that is below your hourly rate. You should hire a social media manager.

Starting point is 00:30:21 And that is fucking terrible advice. Yeah. Because the hourly rate I would charge to run someone's social media is incomprehensible. I would charge a fortune to manage someone's social media because I'm really good at it. Yeah. And so I would say to them, I'm not going to hire someone to come in at $30, $40 an hour to run social media when to me I know it's a $2,000 an hour job.

Starting point is 00:30:45 That's the way I execute on it. I would rather hire out operations. I would rather hire out this or this that is not my zone of genius and stay doing the thing that I'm really good at. And I think when you listen to that kind of generic advice and you take your eye off the ball, that's when the business starts to tank. That's when the brand doesn't become what it is today. And I've never taken my eye off the ball. A lot of people don't know, but there's a whole part of Boss Bay that you never see. We have a licensing division and we are in every single Walmart across the country. We have our name on planners and we partner

Starting point is 00:31:17 and do licensing deals. And I only am able to do that because I have been so committed to the brand and I've always kept my eye on the content and I've always been so specific about what we put out there. So I agree. I really don't think there is a one-size-fits-all approach when you're running a business like this. I think you have to understand what only you can do and scale everything else. It's really fascinating because you're a creator-led entrepreneur. And like you said, we've got to design our businesses differently. I'm also a creator-led entrepreneurs. So to your point, content is just as important as ops and all the other aspects of your business.

Starting point is 00:31:56 How do you think about long form versus short-form content? Because for a long time, you prioritized on short form, then you went into your podcast and you started with long-form. What do you think is the benefits of each channel or the purpose of each channel? Yeah, so we've actually always done long form too from the beginning. So we've always wrote a newsletter. I've always wrote a newsletter at least once a week to my list. So I've always had short form on social media and then I've always had long form in terms of email,

Starting point is 00:32:23 which is then expanded into podcast, YouTube, things like that. I think both are incredibly important and I think you should do both from the beginning. I think short term is really great for getting attention, getting eye, goals, gaining followers, but long form is where you build trust. You can build a bit of trust in short form and you can get an audience that enjoy your content and want to opt in to buy from you to get more from you, but ultimately long form is whether they're building a relationship with you where they really get to know you as a person, they really get to understand your values, whether you align with theirs, and you get to deliver value in a way you just cannot short form.

Starting point is 00:33:03 So what I do regret is in the beginning when I was building my social media, the first couple of years, I was not driving to my email list as much as I should have. And I think you really want to be mindful that as your social following grows, you should be growing that email list. The email list is where the money is for a business owner. It really, really is. And so our email list doesn't have millions of millions of subscribers. It has a lot, but it still is the channel for us that makes the most money of all the channels. because we have our real buyers there, we have trust there. I think you can't do one without doing the other.

Starting point is 00:33:38 Can you talk to us about some of the reasons why you feel like you were able to grow your Instagram to three million followers and some of like the principles that you kept over time that you think really helped you grow? The first part I was doing stuff for the people weren't willing to do and that's the honest answer, right? I posted four times a day, seven days a week when I was hung over, when I was jet lagged, when I didn't want to, when I had nothing to say, I posted four times a day. And I think that's the unsexy advice because people want to hack. Yeah. And if there's no hack, it was, I did that four times a day for many, many, many, many years.

Starting point is 00:34:08 I did it when I thought people, I knew might laugh at me. I did it when I felt like my content was uninspired. I did it, right? I kept with it because I could see the bigger goal. That was the most important thing. And I was willing to listen to the data. So with content, every piece of content you put out there is going to be a signal. whether it is resonating or whether it's not. And you have to take the personal out of it. You cannot

Starting point is 00:34:36 take those numbers personal. You have to take them as data. And so for me, I would study, study, study every single post. And, you know, I'm talking eight years ago I would do this. I'd put a post out there and every second I'm refreshing, refreshing, refreshing to see what that early signal is. Granted, the algorithms changed back then it was chronological. So I could tell within the first 60 seconds if something is going to do well or not. Now you've got a longer tail. Now you want to be checking every few hours and it will start to tell you. Sometimes a post won't take off for four days. You still have to check in with it. You still have to be looking at the data. And so I would start to look at this one did really well. This one didn't. Was it my language? Was it the way that I positioned it?

Starting point is 00:35:17 Was it the font size? Was it the color? Was it the word that I said? What was it? And I would continually analyze and iterate and post again. And I still to this day do that. you know, when I'm doing a launch, it's nice to have all your content planned out, but at the end of the day, I have a goal that I want to hit with my launch. And if I put content out there that's not resonating, I archive and I try again. And if it doesn't resonate, I archive and I try again. And I do it until things work. And that's again, most people aren't willing to do that. So if you're willing to be really consistent, if you're willing to look at the data and you're willing to learn how to put together great content, you will win because most people will give up before

Starting point is 00:35:56 then. So that's the top and bottom of it. That's how I did it. There's many other things that we can talk about in terms of to go viral with an audience that actually are going to become a community and eventually buy from you. It's very different to just generally going viral and getting the views. One of those things in the test I would always say to my team is we should put out content that says the thing other people want to say that they aren't willing to say themselves or they haven't found the words for because that is the most shareable and savable content you can possibly create and it tells my ideal clients, I understand them, tells my community, I get you. There are more people like you inside of our community. And so that's a big difference in the way

Starting point is 00:36:36 that we've created content. I've always done it with the intention of creating community. So it's meant having that as a stress test. We've always stuck to very recognizable branding. We didn't pivot too much when it came to branding. It was very much the same, the same, the same. We were not copying what everyone else was doing. They were copying us. And so when the copying got too much, I'd pivot my design. And then we'd do that design for a long time. When the copying got too much, I'd do another. And guess what? I was growing way faster than the people who were copying me. So funny because a lot of people get really put off in content. They get upset when people copy. And I always say, they are always behind if they're copying you. So keep doing what you're doing and forging ahead because you'll be the one that grows. And you'll probably benefit from their copying because people will realize that you were the one that started it and they'll want to follow the original account. So we did a lot of things like that. we always had very specific brand guidelines. We always had a very clear point of view and tone voice. But I think it ultimately comes down to how much quality content can you put out at a really high quantity. So you're just saying that even if you have a big community, it doesn't mean they're going to

Starting point is 00:37:40 actually buy from you. You've got to have funnels in place, strategies in place. You've got to have a really clear offer. And I know that you've got like really specific guidance about having like one main offer, one main funnel, getting that right, and then maybe having additional offers after that. Can you break that down for us? Yeah, I really encourage people to have one offer till they hit their first million, if a million is your goal. I think people pivot way too soon. They test something and they maybe get a bit of a spike and then it starts to decrease and they think that means the product's shelf life is over. If you're willing to go the distance, that's where you'll really figure out how to sell consistently. You're able to sell more predictably and you're able to really

Starting point is 00:38:23 understand marketing. If you're constantly just selling new thing, new thing, new thing, you're benefiting from the newness, the shiny object and it's not really teaching you how to position yourself, how to change the wrapper of different parts of your product and your offer. And so for us, you know, I made my first million dollars with one $29 product, one offer, one funnel, one form of marketing and I just went all in on that and I continue to pivot and iterate on the on the product itself to really get it working and as the audience got called that I would change the messaging that served me really really really well because it taught me how to market that's really important whenever you're building any kind of funnel or anything so for those listening I would think about

Starting point is 00:39:07 what is if you've built a community or you're building a community who is that one person you want to solve. We live in a time now where the most specific you can be, the more effective your product's going to be. So who is that one person you're solving? And are a problem for? And are you solving a problem that they're really willing to pay for? A lot of people will tell you've got a good idea. But unless they're giving you the credit card, don't trust that, right? So are you solving a problem that people are willing to pay for? What is your total addressable market? Is it big enough that you can really go wide with this thing. And so I would first think about that, really think about your positioning, really think about what makes you different and go all in with valuable content on that

Starting point is 00:39:48 thing. Really demonstrate to people, you know exactly what you're talking about. You are the leader in this space. You are the person that they should be listening to. And if you can build a funnel off the back of that, I think you'll have a lot of success. That's been a whole strategy for social media. And so that's the off of the positioning part. When it comes to the funnel, I love to the funnel. I love ManyChat on social media. You know, we have generated, we've actually just surpass $40 million. We've spent a couple, yeah, and we've spent a couple million dollars on ads. It's really all been organic. And we love ManyChat. We love setting up funnels on social media. The real goal is you want to have one conversion event, a place where you deliver value and expertise to your client,

Starting point is 00:40:29 and then you make them an offer. So it could be a checkout page. It could be a webinar, could be a challenge, could be your website, whatever it is. You're driving people toward that. If you can be getting people off of social media into a conversion event, predictably, that's how you're going to be able to scale your revenue. And I break this whole funnel down in the book and go into the specifics on that, but it doesn't have to be more complicated than that. If you're selling low ticket, great, let's get as many people off of social and onto your checkout page as possible. If you're selling something a bit more expensive, let's get as many people off social media and onto your webinar as possible. And once you start to do that and you know your numbers in the funnel,

Starting point is 00:41:05 it's very predictable. I will say to my team, I want you to generate 10,000 leads per week, and I know exactly how much revenue that creates for us. And that's how you start to get that profitable, predictable, a repeatable business that we're all looking for that doesn't require you to be showing up doing absolutely everything. I can't wait to break this down with you further. We just launched a new series, a new format on Wednesdays called How We Profit Wednesdays. And I know you're doing this book tour, but I'd love for you to come back and really, break down all the different revenue streams you have, how you make money, because I feel like we could spend a whole hour and a half just on that topic. That's so good. Yeah, I love that. But first,

Starting point is 00:41:46 let's go back to building freedom in your business. Talk to us about what your business was like when you had your first daughter versus what your business is like now. Yeah, back then I was really responsible for the revenue. I felt like a dancing monkey. If I wasn't showing up, the business was making money. And again, that was fine when I had no other. responsibilities and I could give everything I had to my business. At a certain point, that just stopped working for me. I was responsible for every dollar that was coming into the business, whether it was showing up doing content, partnerships, webinars, challenges, emails, all of that direct response marketing I was doing. That was exhausting because it felt like I could never take

Starting point is 00:42:30 my eye off the ball. It felt like I could never delegate out a launch because I was so responsible for. it and when you have a big team and you have all this payroll to cover, it's very stressful. And so that was what it looked like then. And what I changed is I started to really playbook a lot of the processes and remove myself from it. And so I would start to playbook, okay, if we want to do a mini launch, this exactly how it works. We do this many emails, this many social posts, this is how we structure an email that really converts for us. This is how we structure a social post that really converts for us. I playbook that. I put it somewhere in my company SOPs. And so if I ask my team to execute a mini launch when I'm off on vacation,

Starting point is 00:43:10 they pull that out, they change the copy, they execute it, it's out there, it's done. We know it drives results. Same thing with a bigger launch. Same thing with evergreen revenue. It's all systematized and playbooked. And it doesn't mean that I fully remove myself from it. Maybe I record a few videos that drives traffic to the page. Maybe I do create a conversion event, but I don't have to be involved in all of that if I don't want to be. We have tons of ways that we drive revenue in the business. Some require me. Some don't. If I decide I want to step back for six months, my team know exactly what to run with that won't require me. And then when I come back, I can get back involved and we can do something that requires me. And so I love that for a

Starting point is 00:43:51 personal brand because I think it gives you a lot of creative freedom. It means that your business is generating revenue, whether or not you're working, which is essential. Yeah. And it still means you can be very creative. You still can lean into what's feeling exciting and you can step back when something feels like, you know what, I've done that more than enough times, let my team run with it. Before you even sit down and figure out like what you need to systemize, you do need to sort of like reset and figure out what do you even want to do in your business and even who you want to be. So help us understand the pre-work before you actually create all these SOPs. I think that's a really big one. I think as entrepreneurs, we don't necessarily do that. I think we get into business and we have a very clear idea of why we're doing it and what we want. And it's very easy to get lost in that. There's a lot of noise in the space. So for me, I got into business because I wanted financial freedom. And I was so busy doing everything. I didn't even realize when I'd unlocked financial freedom. I was still so busy executing. I felt like because the business required so much of me, there was no freedom.

Starting point is 00:45:02 I think it's really, really important that we are continuously very intentional about what we're building and why, specifically when you're not running a venture back business. Yeah. If you're not building something to exit, then why does it matter what it looks like on the outside? Your business should feel really good to you. You should know exactly where you're going and what feels good to you in each season. So I think it comes back to what I was talking about in the beginning. Get really clear on why you're building a business in the first place. You know, I had this one client who is a dietitian and she started doing one-to-one consults with people. She had one-to-one clients. She was fully booked up doing that. People were on a wait list. And she had this advice. Okay, the next step is you have to create a group program.

Starting point is 00:45:40 It means you can serve more people. So she created a group program. And they were like, okay, the next step is you bring in other dietitians that can deliver your method for you and you're delegated out of it. So she did that. Her revenue continued to climb, yet her profit margin continued to decrease. And she came to me asking for advice on scaling. And my first question, which is often my first question to everyone is, why? What do you want? Like, tell me, this word scale, what does it mean to you? What do you actually want out of your business? And she started explaining, well, my profit margin is so squeezed. I feel like I really need to increase my revenue so I can take more home. I feel like I'm busier than ever. I'm working so much on

Starting point is 00:46:19 marketing, which is not my wheelhouse. I was a dietitian. I really liked my business better back then, and I probably made more money. And diving into that was really interesting because I started to uncover, well, why are you running the business the way you're running it? And all she could come up with was, I feel like I should. That's the thing you do. That's the done way, right? And so many of us run our businesses like that. We look at what everyone else is doing and we assume there is one way to do things. So we follow this random path. And for her, I'd said, well, what if you could stop doing marketing as a full-time job? You could stop managing team as a full-time job. You could go back to working one to one with clients, you could take home more money and be happier. And she was like,

Starting point is 00:47:03 that would be the dream. So we scaled her entire business down and she made more money. She was working less and she actually enjoyed what she was doing. And she went back to having that wait list. She wasn't having to market herself. And so that's what I would say. That really is understanding what you're building and why you're building it and who you're building it for. It feels like such a trap that entrepreneurs get in where they feel like building bigger is better when sometimes, like, I know content creators who literally just make money from creating content and sponsorships who are so wealthy and make so much profit and have such a lean team. And then you've got the entrepreneurs who keep building and building all these different offers.

Starting point is 00:47:43 And then before you know it, it kind of gets out of control where there's certain parts of the business that are really costing a lot more money and not bringing in enough revenue. And you do need to look at your revenue streams all the time and really think about, like, what is actually making me money? And what just is making my company look bigger? Yeah, I call it the leaving money on the table fallacy. There will always be someone who says to you, you're leaving money on the table.

Starting point is 00:48:10 You should go do X, Y, Z. You're leaving money on the table. Maybe it's you're a creator and you're making all your money through sponsorships. You're leaving so much money on the table. Do you know how much money you could make if you had a course? And what's interesting is maybe they are. Maybe they're really happy to leave that money sitting on the table. Because guess what?

Starting point is 00:48:27 Their freedom does not have a price. tag on it. And we have to start getting really good at knowing when we should leave money on the table and be at peace with that. I think there's such a narrative online that we should be squeezing as much juice out of the lemon as physically possible. And with that, you're squeezing as much life force out of yourself as you can. And I just don't think that's what will lead to longevity and business, happiness, joy, fulfillment. I really don't. I think if you can cultivate a sense of contentment with yourself, where you are, what you're doing, and how you're doing it, that's how you'll build something you really love.

Starting point is 00:49:05 Something that you mentioned quite a few times was that you're building a lifestyle business and that, you know, a VC-backed company, they're really focused on growth as opposed to profitability, right? They're just focused on growing, growing, growing, anything to do to grow, whereas the lifestyle business is based on, like, what do you actually want to fund your dream life? Help us understand when you decided that, boss babe was going to be a lifestyle business. I wanted that from the beginning. And I think that was times where my co-founder and I at the time disagreed on that of why we

Starting point is 00:49:36 want to take it. There's no right or wrong way to do any of this, right? But for me, I always knew I wanted my business to be a vehicle to help me live the life. I wanted to live. I have always valued freedom, always. I do not like being told what to do. I'm a Capricorn and make a terrible employee. I do not like to be told what to do.

Starting point is 00:49:56 I do not want to be at the beck and call of any country. clients, of any team members, of I want to do what I want to do when I want to do it. And that for me has meant I run the business like this. I will say I did, I remember there was like the whole girl boss boom in what, 2019, where there was so many female own companies that were getting these big valuations. They were raising. They were exiting. It was like this cool girls club online. And I remember thinking, I want to be part of that, all because I wanted to feel included or like I fitted in somewhere, right? It was. coming from a place within me. And I definitely let that sidetrack me and my goals in the business,

Starting point is 00:50:35 whereas realizing that the business actually can just be a vehicle to help me live the life I want to live, which is, you know, I get to spend as much time with my kids as I want. I get to travel the world. I get to meet incredible interesting people. I get to work with clients that I absolutely love. All of that to me is so much more fulfilling than someone slapping a big old valuation of my company that really means jack shit. How do you think about harmony within your business? You use this word harmony instead of balance. What's the difference?

Starting point is 00:51:05 I think work life balance is a complete fallacy. I really do. I think there is a misconception that a freedom-based business is an easy one where there's a ton of work-life balance. I don't think there is. I think if you want to build something outstanding, you've got to be willing to put the time in.

Starting point is 00:51:20 For me, I built what I've built because I put the hours in. And I didn't have any balance. I was all in. And so harmony for me looked like 80% of my time was on my business and there was 20% of the time left for my relationships, my marriage, my health, all of those things. And that really worked for me at the time in that season. And the season that I'm in now, it's different. I spend a lot of time with my kids.

Starting point is 00:51:43 I am still, you know, lit up about what I'm doing in business, but my time is spent in very different places. I'm focusing on my health. I'm eight months postpartum. That part's really important. So harmony looks like that to me. And so I say harmony instead of balance because balance assumes there is a perfect balance. Harmony is, I'm very intentional about what my life and business requires for me in each season and I'm willing to be really flexible about how I get there. If you have really big goals in your business, you are going to have to sacrifice on the personal size to hit those goals. If you really desire something personally, you might have to sacrifice what growth looks like in your business in that season. I do think you can have it all. I do not think you can

Starting point is 00:52:23 do it all all the time. I think that's really true. And so you have to be intentional. about what you're choosing. Yeah, to that point, alignment is really important. You've got this activity called a to be list that you talk about in your book. How does somebody do that? I like to think about how I want to be, right? So often we run off a to-do list. And if you're not careful, your entire calendar can reflect your to-do list. And the to-do list is never going to end because people are always going to come at you with, can you do this? Can we partner on this? There's always a lot of requests. There's a lot of to-do's coming at you. You're always going to be busy. I do not want my calendar to reflect other people's priorities and my busyness and what's going

Starting point is 00:53:03 on at work. I want my calendar to reflect who I want to be in my life in this world. And that for me means I'm a very present mom. I'm a great wife. I'm a good friend. I am a great CEO. I'm an inspired creator, all these different facets. I want my calendar to reflect that. And so I like to make a to be list in every different season to really unlock what matters to me and what I want to embody and how I want to spend my time. And then I'll make sure my calendar reflects that. Give me the tactical. How do you make sure your calendar reflects that? Are you literally blocking focus time for like content, focus time for mom time? Yeah. So you decide on your priorities. So right now I've said it a few times. Motherhood is my priority. And so there's time

Starting point is 00:53:48 blocked mornings, feeding times, you know, early afternoon all the way to dinner. That is for my family. and that is blocked. You just physically cannot get on my calendar in that time. So that's the first thing is put your priorities in your calendar. If working out is really important to you, put that in first. Because if you don't, and if you don't protect that time, it will get taken over by everything else that is going on. And so put that in your calendar first. You cannot have five priorities. Otherwise, they're not priorities. You get to have one or two. And that goes in your calendar first. And then everything else can fit alongside that. You know, for me right now, being super honest, I'm in a book launch, and so my priorities, my kids are my book. That means I am not going on date nights with my husband, right? I've had to let that go because there is not that much time my calendar left over.

Starting point is 00:54:36 I'm just being really honest about that. Yep. And it's just for a season. It's just for a season, yeah. And then we'll pivot accordingly once the book launches over. We're going to go away on a nice long vacations together, spend a ton of family time together, reassess what we want. That works really well for me. But if you don't put it in your calendar, and protect what's important to you, you will feel like you are stretched in every area and doing a shitty job in every area.

Starting point is 00:55:00 I want to end this conversation on general entrepreneurship because you are an entrepreneur like through and through. You actually left your home when we're 13 years old. Yeah. And so you've been independent. You valued freedom for a really long time. And when I was studying you, it didn't seem like you've ever really had a real job.

Starting point is 00:55:21 It seems like you've been an entrepreneur from the start. Yeah. I've never held down a job long term. I don't think I'd be very good at it. So talk to us about how you're, you growing up really impacted the way you think about entrepreneurship and the risks you were willing to take as a young entrepreneur. So I grew up in a very chaotic household. And my mom was in a very abusive relationship.

Starting point is 00:55:46 And the story I told myself at a very young age was she stayed in this relationship because she couldn't have to leave. Ultimately, I left home at 13 because I could not stand to be in that environment anymore. It was a very, very toxic environment. It was very hard environment for a child to be in. And I moved out, I moved in with my grandparents, and I was in this brand new school. And I was really not feeling great in myself. I was feeling like, you know, brand new kid. I felt like people like me don't amount to much. You know, there's people coming in and out of that, of, we did this career, day, those people coming in and out, and there was like teachers, doctors, physiotherapists, all of these professional jobs, and I could not see myself in any of them. And I just had this

Starting point is 00:56:29 story, people like me don't achieve things like that. I didn't grow up seeing people do things like that. And then there was one woman walked in. It was the very end of the career's day. I like heard her high heels and she put on the desk the most beautiful handbag. It was a mulberry bayswater and brown. She put it on the desk. And she opened up her talk saying she was, sitting on her stairs, crying into a glass of wine, going through a messy divorce. And I immediately started listening because I started to see parts of what my mum had gone through in that. And she talked about she was going through a really challenging divorce and her way out was she started a business. And she explained she was an entrepreneur. It was the first time I'd ever heard that word.

Starting point is 00:57:10 And immediately my little brain thought, oh, financial freedom, entrepreneurship. That's what I need to do. I need to become an entrepreneur. And that was it for me. Like I clung onto that word. And and I decided that I was going to start a business, and that would be my way to never having to be in the kind of situation that my mom was in, never having to put my kids in a situation that I was put in. And so I was lucky to have that experience to meet someone so young that put that into words for me. And I just, I feel like I didn't take a lot of risks to build something because I never really had much to lose.

Starting point is 00:57:45 And I think that was a bit of a superpower. You know, I think it is harder when you start a business later in life and you have a lot to lose, I haven't been in that situation. I had nothing. I came from nothing, so I didn't have anything to lose. So when you did go to college, and I believe you even went to business school. Yeah, I did. And you got it to business school. You got a really great offer to work at a company, and you ended up turning it down. So talk to us about how you funded your life in that period and really just started to make it and gain some sustainability as an entrepreneur. I did really well academically and in business school and I focused on entrepreneurship. Again,

Starting point is 00:58:25 I knew from a young age this is the thing I'm going to do. So I really focused on that to a point actually my entrepreneurship lecturer give me a job. She said, can you help me build my company? Because you're clearly very hungry and ambitious. So I was, I threw myself into it. And what was really interesting is even to get into business school, I never came from a fancy school, right? And I did not get the grades. I sat back a lot in school and didn't really apply. apply myself because again, I just thought people like me don't achieve big things. I was very traumatized from what I'd been through. I didn't find it easy to focus. So to get into the school I got into, I actually got into on a scholarship program. I still had to pay through student debt, but we were

Starting point is 00:59:03 able to get in on lower grades, the way that they made sure they had diversity in the school. And what's really interesting is as I was graduating, I won the Directors Award of Outstanding Success. And that is granted to very few students. at, you know, very few, at less than a handful and hundreds of thousands of students. And it really showed how you can enter something in a completely different situation

Starting point is 00:59:26 to how you leave it. And I just really applied myself and went all in. So because of that, I got a lot of attention from different firms that were recruiting. And I got a great offer from Accentia,

Starting point is 00:59:36 a management consulting firm, and they were going to put me on a fast track and, you know, all these things that sounded really fancy. But I always knew entrepreneurship as my path. That's the thing I want to do. So I said to them,

Starting point is 00:59:46 can you give me one year to just try, the world. What I really meant was I need to get a business off the ground, so I have a reason to decline this. Yeah. And so in that time, I decided to start a supplement company. And it took a lot longer than I thought it would to get off the ground. So after that one year that they'd give me, I remember they called me and asked, okay, you're ready to start in two weeks. Does this date work for you? And I had made not a single dollar in my business. And that's when I had to really make the decision to go all in and bet on myself. So I turned the job down and I went all in on this business.

Starting point is 01:00:16 And I never really looked back. That was it for me of going all in on myself and not being willing to fail on something. So your first business was a supplement business. And then you went into the content information product. What were some of the learnings that you learned from having a product? And what made you want to pivot into content and building information products and which business do you like more? Yeah. being in a product-based business, I learned it's very hard to control cash flow. So we had built,

Starting point is 01:00:51 and this was way before Boss Babe, this was early Instagram. We built a cult following for this supplement company for the brand. I had no marketing budget. I could see Instagram was going to take off, so I went all in on that platform. And so we started shipping to over 60 countries very, very quickly. We were stocked in over 200 stores. It sounds great on the outside. It was a cash flow nightmare. I had no money. So funding that was very challenging. I was factoring my invoices to try and bring cash in. And one thing I did is like a last-ditch effort to try and bring some money in so I could afford the stock that we'd actually sold was I sold a recipe book. And so I collaborated with a recipe creator who makes amazing recipes with our product.

Starting point is 01:01:31 She was taking great pictures. I put it into a recipe book and I sold it to my email list for $5. I was blindsided when I started making sales of this when I didn't have to actually fulfill a product. It was mind-blowing to me. It's so much less expense. You don't need any upfront costs. Yeah. And so that was my first entry into the information space and starting to realize I really like this. And so, but it's really interesting because that company back then was called Oh, My Glow. And 10 years later, I co-founded a Glowcy with Lori's really come full circle, being willing to try the product-based space.

Starting point is 01:02:03 And it's no easier than it was back then. But that was it. And I started getting asked a lot. So even before Boss Baby, I was getting asked a lot, how are you growing on Instagram? And so before Boss Baby, I had my own Instagram call. and I want to say I was probably 23 and I was making more than $20,000 a month selling this course, which at the time, I mean, this was mind-blowing to me and I was not spending anything to fulfill this. You were one of the first pioneers of all of this course online creator course.

Starting point is 01:02:34 Yeah, so it blew my mind and it really started growing from there. That's amazing. So you ended up pivoting into informational products. what kind of advice do you have for people in terms of like where to start in their business? Like should they start with service-based info products or go to the product for like really, really go deep in terms of like what the drawbacks are of a product-based business? I think it's very founded dependent. I think you've got to decide what you're building, right? A product-based business, it is great to build an audience for your personal brand and you can

Starting point is 01:03:11 definitely help it get started. it is not going to be the reason that your product scales and eventually exits. And so that is one type of business to build. Another type of business to build is an information-based product, which is typically off the back of your personal brand and it will grow with you. It's very skill with you. It's not something that you will exit. I think you have to just know what you want. I think every single business model is a great business model. If it plays to your strengths, if it helps you get what you want, if it becomes a vehicle to the life you want to live, I don't think there is one set way for everyone. I think they are completely.

Starting point is 01:03:42 different skill sets, they're completely different marketing plans. If you are a founder that doesn't really want to be a personal brand, if you don't really want to package up your knowledge and sell it and you really love the appeal of building a brand, you want to put your name behind something, you want to raise some money, you want to see yourself in stores. I think that's great. I just don't think there is one size fits all. And just because you're good at one doesn't mean that you're good at another. With Glossie, it's a completely different business to what I'm used to running. It's so, so different. and it's a completely different skill set. And I think it's very, very hard to be good at all of the different types of business models.

Starting point is 01:04:17 So I end my show with two questions that I ask all of my guests. The first one is what is one actionable thing our young improfitors can do today to become more profitable tomorrow? Look at the most profitable area of your business and really assess how much time you're spending there. So one thing that I did when I was rebuilding Boss Babe from the ground up, and this is easier with AI. Claudia wasn't what it is today when I was doing this. I pulled up a spreadsheet and I put a pie chart of all of my revenue, a pie chart of where the profit comes from the business and a pie chart of where my time is. And I started to look at whether they correlated. They did not. And so what I decided to do was get rid of all the small

Starting point is 01:04:54 things that were taking up a lot of energy, get rid of all the areas that were actually costing a ton of money. They were not driving much profit. They were not driving the brand forward and really started adjusting based on revenue, profit and energy. So take a good look at that and refine, you'd be very, very surprised how possible it is to double your bottom line without changing the top line. That's something I do probably at least twice a year. It's so important. I think the revenue numbers are a big drawing because everyone's posting revenue on social media. Revenue means fuck all if you're making no money. I do want to talk about AI, actually. I know that you've even had courses, I think, about AI and lots of training. And you were talking about

Starting point is 01:05:36 AI before mainstream entrepreneurs were talking about AI, especially as the CEO and founder, how are you using AI in your business? I use it every single element in my business. I first started with training different brains inside the business that my team can tap into for certain answers that they might come to me for. I use it to pretty much take on and manage every repeatable process that's inside of the business. I use it for really big data collection and synthesis that we previously would have done manually. I use it for projects that would have previously taken a lot of manpower to be fully automated and come to me at the end. I use it to now design all my landing pages to help design all of our PDFs, like things that I would typically have spent

Starting point is 01:06:25 weeks doing and paying thousands to a designer for I'm using it for. I use it for data dashboards. I use it for building client hubs. I mean, I could go on all day. When you say brain, what do you mean exactly? What are you doing to create that brain? A business brain that's trained on every single element of your business, your entire Google Drive, your Slack Archive, all of your meeting transcripts. So you might come to me, you might be my team member, you might come to me and say,

Starting point is 01:06:53 I remember we said we were going to launch this thing in Q3 of this year. What was it? You go ask the brain, and the brain will tell you what it is. You might want to know, what is the main. what is the most profitable thing we do in the business? You ask the brain, it knows it's every single part of your business fully trained up. And you can do it for your whole business. You can do it for different areas of your business. It is the one place that has all the answers for everything you've historically done. There's probably not a single area in my business that

Starting point is 01:07:18 AI does not touch now. I mean, legal, HR, finances, every single element of my business. It is so powerful. And I think you said something that I want to just make sure that our listeners are aware of. Entrepreneurs who are like on the cutting edge of AI, we have all of our email, all of our drive, all of our meeting transcripts, all of our Slack messages, they're all going into AI. And this gives our AI, like, it's just such a differentiator because before you had to always provide context and it would take very long to work with AI, but now your AI can have all the context. So when you're working on problems, it can remember things you don't remember. and it can like synthesize data and like go back through emails and conversations.

Starting point is 01:08:04 And it's not perfect yet, but it is a real game changer. So if you're not doing that yet, you're probably behind other entrepreneurs right now. I think it's essential. I really, really do. I think it should touch every area of your business. I do think we're in an interesting space, though, because it's like in a time where you can do everything, what do you choose to do? And I think that discernment's incredibly important. Execution really used to be the differentiator.

Starting point is 01:08:27 who's the one willing and able to execute. AI does your execution now. So your judgment is incredibly important. Yeah, what do you do? Exactly. What do you actually work on? Is it moving the needle for you? Is this something you're doing just because it's fun?

Starting point is 01:08:41 Or is this actually driving your business forward? Is it making you money? Is it getting better client results? Is it saving you time? If not, it's probably not for you. So that judgment piece is really important. What are the apps that you're using aside from Cloud? You mentioning like designing PDFs and decks?

Starting point is 01:08:56 What are you using? I use Claude, Claude code, Claude Design, Replit. I would say that's my main stack. Perplexity computer. Still use Chat Chupit for images and design of things like that. We actually are doing an event next week. And I had this idea of creating a lot of 90s-style stickers. We did all of that in Chat-U-T-T.

Starting point is 01:09:16 I really love that image generator. So that's my main stack for business. How has AI changed the way you think about hiring and building a team? I think my team are all individually. probably now five times more effective than they were. So I have slowed hiring because my team can generally take on a lot more with AI. And then with hiring, depending on the role, but it's mostly the case across the board. I think you have to be willing and able to learn AI. I want you to come in showing me what you've done. I think you have to be able to do more and execute more. You know,

Starting point is 01:09:48 in the past, in the company, we had a lot of cross-functional working where I would do something. I'd pass it to someone else. They would do something, pass it to something else. It was like a relay race to get something completed. Now there's really no relay. You can do it start to finish yourself. And so that's adjusted how we work as well. Mel Robbins recently was pushing women towards AI. And she listed out a stat that went viral. It was controversial where she basically mentioned like, you know, women are behind the curve and we need to start using AI. And there's actually a lot of pushback about it. And that was one of my first experiences really seeing like people are not not everybody is for AI. A lot of people are really against it. Environmental problems aside,

Starting point is 01:10:32 of course, there's like a lot of environmental issues that come along with AI. But people are just also just opposed to like learning AI. They don't want to learn one more thing. They don't want to feel like they're being pushed on to something else. What do you say to the women that refuse to learn AI? I'm not here to change your mind. I'm really not. I'm not here to change anyone's mind. And I think you'll regret it five years from now if you don't. I think it's, listen, it's easy to shit on someone, right? Mel Robbins can say anything and people are going to try and cancel her. That's the truth.

Starting point is 01:11:02 Reese Witherspoon recently also shared the same sentiment and she got a lot of backlash for it. I'm not here to change your mind and convince you of anything. If you're really committed to your stance that you're not going to use AI, cool. I hope that works out for you. I worry that it won't. Yeah, that's how I feel about it too. Yeah. Okay, last question.

Starting point is 01:11:19 What would you say your secret to profiting in life is? and this can go beyond finance. I'm really content. I'm very, very content. I don't believe that any material thing is going to make me happier than I'm already happier than I already am right now.

Starting point is 01:11:35 I don't think being in any kind of fancy room or having a certain relationship is going to make me any more successful or happy or fill in the blank. I am content. Does it mean I'm not driven? Does not mean I'm ambitious, but I don't need those things

Starting point is 01:11:47 to feel good about myself. And I think that's my superpower because I don't try to make everyone like me. I'm very willing to say no when I mean no. Yeah. I do not hook my happiness on being able to have the car, the house, the fill in the blank. I'm just very content. And I think that serves me really, really, really well.

Starting point is 01:12:11 I love that. Well, Natalie, this was such an awesome conversation. I can't wait to have you back on. Thank you so much for joining us on Young and Profiting Podcast. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Yapam, as entrepreneurs, founders, and creators, so many of us start our businesses because we want freedom. We want more control over our time, our income, our creativity, and our lives. But as Natalie

Starting point is 01:12:32 reminded us today, it is very possible to build a business that looks successful from the outside and still feels like a prison on the inside. Like Natalie said, your business should be a vehicle for the life that you actually want to live. And that means we have to stop measuring success only by revenue, followers, team size, or how impressive everything looks online from the outside. Because if your business cannot run without you, if your calendar is full of things you do not actually want to do, and if your growth is costing your health, your relationships, or your joy, then it might be time to do a reset. Natalie gave us some great ways to do that. First, getting honest about what freedom actually looks like in this season of your life.

Starting point is 01:13:11 Freedom is not always a wide open calendar. Sometimes it's creative freedom. Sometimes it's financial freedom. Sometimes it's being able to pick up your kids or protect your health or take a real maternity leave without your business falling apart. The point is you have to define it for yourself before the world defines success for you. Next, build rhythms your business can repeat. Natalie talked about revenue rhythms and content rhythms, and I thought that was so, so powerful. If you know exactly what consistently can bring in leads, sales, trust, and community, then you can turn those actions into repeatable systems. You can playbook them.

Starting point is 01:13:47 You can train your team on them. And eventually your business becomes less dependent on you doing everything yourself. And with AI, this has become easier than ever. She also reminded us to keep things simple. One core offer, one strong funnel, one platform to master before you try every other platform. So many entrepreneurs are adding more and more to their plate before they make anything predictable. But consistency, clarity, and knowing you're not, is what creates real profit.

Starting point is 01:14:14 And finally, take a serious look at what is actually making money, what is draining your energy, and what is only there because you think it makes your business look bigger or cooler. Sometimes leaving money on the table is not a mistake. Sometimes it's the decision that gives you your life back. So, Yap, fam, take a moment this week and audit your business. Look at your revenue, your profit, your time, your energy. Ask yourself what needs to be systematized and what needs to be simplified. and what no longer fits the life or the business you're trying to build.

Starting point is 01:14:45 Thanks for listening to this episode of Young and Profiting Podcast. If you listen, learned and profited from this awesome conversation with Natalie, then share it with another entrepreneur who needs to hear that freedom is not something you get after you build the business. It's something you design into the business. And if you enjoyed this show, please leave us a five-star review on Apple, Spotify, Castbox, or wherever you listen to this podcast. If you prefer to watch your podcast as videos, you can find us on Yon,

Starting point is 01:15:10 YouTube. We're trying to get to 100K subscribers, so please go to our YouTube Young and Profiting and subscribe, watch our videos, drop us a comment. And you can also find us on Spotify video. And I'm on Instagram daily at Yap with Hala and LinkedIn. You can search for my name, Hala Taha. And make sure to check out Natalie's new book, the Freedom-based Business Method. If you want to go deeper on building a business that supports your life instead of swallowing it. Of course, I have to shout up my amazing Yap production team. Thank you for all the work that you guys do behind the scenes. You guys are awesome. This is your host, Halitaha, aka the podcast princess, signing off.

Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Natalie Ellis: Is Your Business Trapping You? How to Build One That Runs Without You | Entrepreneurship | E404

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