How to Look and Feel Your Best After the New Year Hype is Gone

Welcome to this episode of The Determined Mom Show. I’m your host, Amanda Tento, and I have the amazing Sarah Thomas here. She is a 44-year-old personal trainer, fitness instructor, nutrition coach, business mentor, wife, and mom of three, and she’s also the founder and CEO of Burn Fat and Feast. 

Thank you so much for having me. I’m happy to be here. I’m really excited to talk about this topic. It’s so timely, and we’re gonna talk today about how to look and feel your best after the new year hype is gone. We all have experienced that. Like January 1st is perpetually a new year’s resolution is Fitness, health, and nutrition. 

This is huge because every year, January 1st is a reset. Everybody wants to reset everything in their life. Health and wellness obviously are a huge component of most people’s new goals. And there’s just this new energy that we feel come January 1st.

What makes me the saddest about this is that the statistics say over 90% of people, especially in our country, will throw in the towel after January, after about four weeks of attempting all these new great things in their life.

 There are a few reasons why people do this. Three top ones that I wanna talk about really quickly today. The first one is that we just simply overcommit. As I said, we wanna do things differently in our life. We’re gonna be organized and our relationships will be better, and we’ll make time for our kids and we’ll, have these health and wellness goals and do all the things better and greater.

We set too many goals. I’m not a huge fan of resolutions in general. And we’ll talk through that a little bit today, but this is the big one. One of the reasons why I’m not a huge fan is because if over 90% of us are thrown in the towel after the end of January why do we do it?

But that’s one of the reasons is that we are, we’re over committing, We’re doing too many things. We’re setting all the things in front of us and it’s not realistic that the. 

The second reason why we are just giving up after January is that we have that all-or-nothing attitude. We start and we are maybe depriving ourselves of foods that we love. We’re under-eating. Maybe you’re attempting to work out six days a week when you weren’t consistent in the beginning. 

Then we see ourselves as failing when we aren’t doing all the things that we set in front of us. And it’s not, it shouldn’t feel like a. Winning and failing. There’s a middle ground. We can, part of setting goals and part of working towards them is the journey.

And the journey is sometimes two steps forward, one step back. Sometimes it’s one step forward, two steps back. But that’s part of it. And we should never feel like, it has to be an all-or-nothing thing. But the third reason that we are throwing in the towel healer here is that we have this mental picture in front.

Of how it’s supposed to go of your new life come January 1st. All the newness in front of you and how it’s gonna feel and how it’s gonna look, and you’re excited. But it doesn’t always happen that way.

And sometimes when you go on that trip, it can feel disappointing or the plain thing leading up to it feels more exciting than the actual trip because we set ourselves up for that by picturing this mental place that, sometimes it’s just unrealistic. 

When we step into February. The honeymoon phase has, is over officially. Maybe I can’t do all those things. Or maybe it’s just not real, I’m not meant to do all of those things and do all of them at one time, and today we’re talking a little bit about how we can reset those intentions.

How can we go from that state of doing all the things and now feeling overwhelmed and feeling sometimes like we failed come February how we can not be one of those 90 plus percent statistics of feeling like we’re throwing in the towel how we do this as, especially as women in our forties and beyond when we’re trying to really focus on our internal health with our hormones and our metabolism health as part of that.

You no longer really look at health and wellness out from the outside of the six-pack apps or, fitting into your size two genes or those are those things. They come, the physical part comes, but. What we should be more focused on. And really what I see women around me now are focused more on that and they understand that internal wellness is the inside wellness. 

Five ways that we can reset our attention.

I love that you said that you started before the new year. That is a fantastic strategy and really you can reset your intentions anytime throughout the year. But I love that strategy because, When you get in some habits before the New Years start, you’re already five, 10 steps ahead of Where you could come January?

The first one is that you need to make something, a habit in your day. And there are many things that we can do, and many goals that we can set, but we have to pull some of the layers apart and focus on one thing. We’re talking about the number one priority, the number one habit. What’s that one thing that you need to focus on right now that will push everything else forward?

What is the one thing that will be the hardest for you to tackle? And that’s all you needed to focus on. For example, if you’re like, Okay, I’m working out, I’m going to the gym regularly, at least I’m going like three or four days a week.

I really need to make some changes in nutrition, then that’s your one thing. That’s the one thing you’re going to change. Everything else stays. And I call this the domino effect because if you truly choose the one thing that is gonna push you forward, that’s the domino, That’s the very first domino that pushes all the others forward.

Maybe that means you’re waking up at 5:00 AM how do you start that, right? If that is the goal, how do you start that? That may start with going to bed earlier. Simply you can get up early in the morning. Whatever that first domino is that pulls everything else in front is what you want to do.

And I will disclaimer here with a little side note if you’re saying that, my goal, my big priority is a meal plan, You don’t make it a priority to plan your meals or go grocery shopping. Then maybe that isn’t your priority right now in your season of life.

You always make time for the very first thing.  It’s as the day goes on or later, it’s maybe I’m not gonna cook dinner, maybe I’m not gonna work out. We always make time for the very first thing in our day. Keep that in.

And these are things that you need to go back to, to decide, is that still my number one priority? Because oftentimes maybe it’s not, maybe, saving money for a special trip is your number one priority, and that’s what you’re gonna work on for this season of your life. That’s a really good thing to mention too, I’m glad you brought that up.

 The second thing here that you want to really focus on when you are resetting these intentions, and this is a food-based one, is prioritizing protein. And this is important for women, especially late thirties and beyond because there are a few things.

Number one, protein helps to repair and build muscle. We lose muscle mass starting in our twenties. That’s a big deal because muscle has a lot to do with arm metabolism. And how fast or how fast we feel it is. Muscle and specifically protein help to burn fat. Muscle and protein help to burn our fat. It also helps to regulate our hormones.

Prioritize protein and if are looking at it, you’re tracking your macronutrients. Really women wanna get around 30 grams of protein at every meal. And most women are undereating protein, and it’s simple. Just add a little bit more to it.

When I make soup, I just add more protein to it. When I eat anything at home that, let’s say it’s, chicken breasts, I just have one and a half. Just adding a little bit to what you’re already eating is the easiest way to do it.

Not overcomplicating it. You just don’t overcomplicate it. And oftentimes you’ll find that if you are snacked throughout the day, there’s a reason that you’re snacking. And typically that’s because you’re undereating. 90% of women are undereating and if you are undereating, you want to snack, you feel that urge to snack throughout the day.

The third thing you want to think about to reset these intentions is strength training. And I touched on that with building muscle on the last one, but strength training is huge. All movement is good movement. I will forever say all movement is good movement.

But if you are focusing on internal wellness. In turn, focusing on the outside physical wellness and really just focus on. Increasing how you’re experiencing your daily life. Strength training and adding muscle will never be a bad thing. As I said, we start losing muscle mass in our twenties.

We continually lose muscle mass once we hit our forties in our fifties and later we start losing it at a higher rate, a higher percentage every single year.

And this is a big deal because Helps to increase our metabolism. Number one, that’s a big one. Number two, it helps to regulate our hormones as we get older. Number three, it decreases our risk for inter-injury. If we have more muscle mass, we are not susceptible to two injuries.

And now as we get older, and we’ve probably seen this, you’ve probably seen this in someone that you love that’s elderly who gets injured easier. It’s a lack of muscle mass that’s protecting our joints.

And if you want to live a long, full life, strength training is non-negotiable. And it is one of those things where, If you do nothing else, like fine strength training in your day and in your week.

Tip number four is one of my favorites because I think, at an earlier age in life, a lot of us just use this and put our blinders on. I know I need to do this, but I’m not, and that’s resting. Resting well, and they’re so many. Ways that we can look at rest.

And I’m gonna talk about all of them because they’re all important. Digestive rest is the term for giving yourself and your internal health a chance to stop digesting.

That’s very important for gut health. It’s doing two things, either digesting or it’s resting. And when we are constantly eating, when we wake up and we start eating and we are eating and all the way until we go to bed, the only time we’re giving ourselves digestive rest is during those nighttime hours when we’re sleeping.

And then we start that cycle again. We really do need to give our bodies a longer chance to de digestive or have digestive rest. And I’m sure some people have heard of intermittent fasting and how to do that correctly, and maybe you’re doing it now or whatever. Implementing some of that in your life.

That is a great thing that you can do for yourself. Giving yourself rest in terms of just sleeping. Allow yourself to sleep. It is the most discounted thing ever. And a lot of us, as I said in our earlier years, use that as a badge of honor. 

If we are trying to juggle just being a mom and doing all the things. Often that’s still a badge of honor. It really isn’t fine. It is really one of those things where we need to stop and make this more of an intention in our day.

Getting at least a minimum of seven hours. We, our bodies really need up to eight, eight to nine hours of sleep. And I’m not getting nine hours of sleep, but I do try to get eight hours in and sometimes that means just saying no to some things.

Sometimes that means saying no to dishes in the sink. And that’s okay because your sleep is way more important than leaving dirty dishes and your sleep sink overnight that nobody’s even gonna know about.

 It is really important and it is actually been researched many times. We’re talking about metabolism and hormones and losing weight as we get older, that if you are sleep deprived if you are not allowing your body to rest, you are gonna hold onto everything.

Your cortisol, your stress hormone’s gonna be high. You’re gonna hold onto all your excess fat because your body’s in that fight or flight mode. Like it’s what are we doing? You’re not allowing us to calm down. You’re not allowing your nervous system to chill. It holds on, It’s in that fight or flight mode.

You’re mind mentally, you’re not focused. You’re foggy. There’s a lot of research now talking about how our body and our minds, like everything, and our body, and our mind, our brain, and our physical body. The effects of the lack of sleep with alcohol.

They’re comparing the two. And what they’re saying is that as you are sleep deprived, even three days in a row of not getting seven hours of sleep, your body starts to function like it’s intoxicated with the brain fog, with the physical limitations that you have when you’re intoxicated.

The fifth thing that you can do to reset your intention is to grant yourself grace. And I’m speaking to all the women out there who feel like they should do everything perfectly all the time because it just doesn’t happen.

Life wasn’t meant for us to walk through it perfectly and have all the answers, have it all figured out, and do everything that needs to be done on the to-do list every day in the life. That’s what it’s about, right? It will always throw you a curve ball. 

I leave margin for the curve balls, whether it’s a thing that happens that diverts my attention or it’s a sick kid that I have to go get from school. Or if it’s an unexpected something with my dog, whatever, whatever it is, I truly leave space in my day now for the what ifs. . And I have found that has helped me navigate better when they come my way, and then some days, they.

We incorporate our favorite foods, it’s not all-or-nothing. And so if you are focusing on trying to grant yourself grace and you’re struggling with it, I would just. Find support, find a community that’s gonna help you through that to be in your corner. Because it is, it’s a process.

I will go back to what I mentioned earlier of whatever is your priority and your number one, do it in the morning. Because you always have time for things in the morning, whatever is most important. And what I do on a daily to do is I set my top three, I call them my big three.

I don’t know at this point, whatever I need to do and whatever you feel like is. Gonna serve you well that day or that point in your life is, and just a side note, it’s not perfect. It’s never gonna be perfect. Even when you leave your margin for those things there, there could be something that comes up where you’re like, you have to erase everything for the entire day or for the entire week, but this will help you feel less stress.

I know I need to pick that one thing to pull that, that will be that domino that pulls everything else forward and helps me. But how do I do it? This is a strategy. If you just need help getting started with something, right? Doing one thing, even if it ends up not being that first domino If you’re doing one thing that will get you in the habit.

And that’s why we need to get in the habit of doing one thing consistently before we add something else to it. And that’s why I say push everything else aside and just focus on one. How you get started with this and this. On so many levels is to habit stack. And if you’ve never done habit stacking before, if you’ve never heard of habit stacking, it’s really simple.

You take a current habit that you’re currently doing something that you and you wanna continue doing and you stack it with something that you want to do. You can also do this with things that you don’t want to, but let’s just focus on the things that you want to implement in your life.

Using something that you do all the time and you’re adding to it. Here’s an example of something that I wanted to do. I wanted to really start doing some affirmations I wasn’t making it a priority in my day, and I wasn’t doing them on a regular basis, so I posted them truly on a post-it note in my bathroom on the wall, and I would say them out loud and say them to myself while I was brushing mine.

 As a habit could be you walk into your house and put your stuff down in your mudroom. Then you put your phone down and you charge your phone and it stays there. Or, a habit is you cook dinner at night, you sit down to eat dinner every night, and that is your cue when you sit down to eat dinner, to put your phone away for the evening, and it’s charging.

 Many ways that you can just take something that you’re doing consistently and add to it. I have had clients that have said that they’ve used they’re really good about doing devotions in the morning or gratitude journals in the morning, but they also wanted to do their workout in the morning.

And so I’m like, You’re in a habit of doing your devotion already. Take your journal. whatever you’re using, take your notebook and put it in your workout space. If it’s a gym, your garage, or whatever. And so you have to be dressed. In order to go and do your gratitude and you’re in your space around your workout equipment. You do that and then you work out. It’s just stacking those habits on the top. 

We offer free five-day training, you can sign up for that on our website, Burn Fat, and fees.com. It’s right there on the main page and if you have trouble, you can certainly reach out to me. On our team. We are Instagram and Facebook and all the places burn fat and feast. Thank you so much, Sarah for being here, sharing your wisdom, and also sharing your program with us.

How to Include a Nature Routine Into Your Work and Family Life

Welcome to this episode of The Determined Mom Show. I am your host, Amanda Tento, and I have the lovely Sandi Schwartz with me, and she is the author of Finding Eco Happiness Fun Nature Activities to help your kids feel happier and calmer. 

And today we are gonna talk about how to include a natural routine in your work and family life. We have not had anyone that’s an expert in basically anything like eco-happiness or nature or anything like that.

How did you get started? 

I’ll have to take you back to high school when I was in high school and I think it was 10th grade and I was part of the Nature Defense Club, and we went and cleaned up the dirty polluted local rivers. And that was a very jolting experience for me, and that changed my life. 

I continued to be involved in the environmental club at school and taught recycling to younger kids. Wrote my college essay on that, cleaned up, and went to college as an environmental studies major. And then went on to get a graduate degree in government with an environmental policy focus. 

I’ve been a long-term, long-time environmentalist and my goal is to save the planet. But then on the parallel trajectory were my struggles with stress and anxiety. And that was really, I can go back to being a young child and having an upset stomach and sweaty palms and nerves, and in math class or birthday parties. 

And it was, it happened in college and then it came to a head actually when I was going through infertility, which I imagine many of your listeners probably have dealt with themselves. I was going through infertility, which is very stressful and anxiety provoking. 

It triggered a lot of anxiety and I went down a path, a journey to figure out, what can I do. I started to delve into the world of positive psychology and its tools that we hear about every day, like mindfulness and gratitude practice, healthy diet, exercise, and then nature. It all came together like my appreciation and love and care for the environment. 

I realized that it could also really serve as a medicine to me and many others. And so that’s why I decided to really, I’m a writer and I wanted to dive in deep into this topic. There’s a lot of amazing new research about how nature can benefit. Our health and happiness. So that is why I coined the term Eco Happiness and wrote the book. 

It did open my eyes to, my passion, and then my passion for writing came later. I wish I had majored in English. But I majored in environmental studies and I do, I remember taking some great English classes in college as well. 

What is a natural routine?

You have to brush your teeth every day. And we just do that. We know we have to do it. We know we’re gonna, I go to the dentist twice a year, it’s just part of what we have to do. And then you’ve also heard that we need to exercise. Why do we need to exercise? We’re getting this input from. Health professionals, exercise, get up, and move around.

Healthy diet, and drink enough water. It can become overwhelming. Mindfulness, it’s really to me, mindfulness, and I’ve done a lot of research and reading about mindfulness because at first, it seems overwhelming and complicated, but it’s just stopping and being in the moment.

 I took something like mindfulness. I have a whole chapter in my diary. I start with the basics of mindfulness, the basic research, and why it’s beneficial, and then I look at it through a natural lens. 

 I wanted to provide all this information on how to be mindful of nature outside, even inside just looking at a plant or even on your, on the tv, or, on your computer.

I love watching those quick videos of a flower blooming. It’s like a fast pace, of something that happens, in 48 hours or something. 

 That is so inspiring. And so even if, this isn’t just about immersing yourself out in the woods for days at a time. It’s by taking, it’s taking a couple of minutes here and there throughout your day and building in that nature routine.

 I once wrote this article, it was cool. I tend to get very, I get, I’m very impatient, I’m working on my patients and I hate wasting time. One of the worst things is sitting at a red traffic light. And I once did this piece all about being mindful and this had nothing to do really with nature, but it gives you the sense of it. 

 At a red light, how can you turn that red light, which is so anxiety provoking and negative, turn it into a positive like it’s a green light to be mindful for that minute that you’re sitting there and instead of letting you know, your blood pressure goes up?

 Now you bring nature in, you look around, look for the trees, the flowers, the clouds. And then the best thing is you do that with yours. So that they’re learning this skill. It’s not something you may do every day, but those days that you’re feeling a little bit more rushed and stressed and you keep hitting those lights instead of getting mad, it’s like we have to tell ourselves no.

 Let’s just try to at least appreciate something. And it gives us more benefits. It’s more beneficial if we’re looking at nature. We are animals at the end of the day like we have an innate need. And to be connected to nature that’s, living inside all day long and not getting outside is not what we were made for. So yeah we now need to take those moments. So that’s one really simple trick.

 The other thing I was gonna say even earlier was food. It’s interesting. I know I have a whole chapter on food and some people might be like what does food have to do with nature? But food, real food, and Whole foods are natural. So something as simple as a mindful eating practice, at breakfast or dinner with the kids. Let’s say you decide to serve grapefruit before dinner. 

 Just taking that one or, you have the grapefruit, you talk, you look at the color, you discuss the color, you take a whiff of it, you smell it, such a very soothing citrus fragrance. And then you take that wand, see a bite and you just savor it. And even if you just do it for a couple of minutes as you begin your meal, that in itself is connecting again, mindfully to nature, and then it might spur conversation. 

 That’s the beauty of nature, and that’s what is so fascinating about the research in the last couple of decades because cultures, and traditions for hundreds, thousands of years have known this, and as we became more industrialized, we moved further and farther away from it. And it’s just getting back to the basics, to ours.

 And doing these simple things. And that’s what mindfulness is like. Mindfulness doesn’t mean you have to go to that 90-minute yoga class. I can’t stand those long yoga classes. I want a 30-minute yoga class. Just enough to like, have a touch of it. Not everybody you know is gonna sit and meditate for that long.

 And they say the experts have found like a little bit sprinkled throughout your day, your. Meditation is the same thing as nature. It’s almost better to have a little bit every day than go on that two-hour hike on a Sunday afternoon. 

 There’s a whole area of research on green exercise specifically, which I found fascinating. So yes, you’re gonna, so here’s an example of running, but power walking. So you can do it inside, on a treadmill, in a windowless environment. Staring at a wall. You are going to get some benefits, you’re gonna get those health benefits.

 But if you have a view of the, of a, of the window, if you buy a window and it’s a beautiful scene, you’re gonna get more benefits. And if you go outside for that walk or run now you’re really getting a lot of benefits and it’s utilizing your time more efficiently too. And it doesn’t mean every single day you have to go outside.

 The research shows, and it was very recent, a big study came out in 2019 that getting 120 minutes per week outdoors is really where you wanna be. So that’s about 20 minutes. And so let’s say, half the week you’re, and that’s what I do a lot. I try to go on my outdoor walks, but I’ve been playing pickleball sometimes inside, and sometimes outside.

It’s all about balance, but know that you will get more health benefits and emotional benefits if you are exercising. For sure. And we wanna bring that into our kids’ decisions as well, Especially because they’re growing up in a time when the schools are locked down, which is a whole nother issue on the topic.

 There are security issues, so they’re, they go outside, but, and it depends where you live, but that’s the whole thing. And then the technology just brings them, it keeps them inside more and more. Because they’re staring at their screens that it’s very, And I say even take them out, let them be on their screens outside. At least they’re breathing in the fresh air. 

We’ve made a lot of effort trying to make it. That was the first thing that we worked on in our house. Like when we bought our house because it’s like a 122-year-old house. We made a lot of effort on making the outside space as nice as possible, as quickly as possible instead of working on the inside. Now we’re on the inside, but there’s still, just that having a space that’s peaceful and quiet and just outside is important. 

 Having family meals outside more, if the kids are reading or doing art or even homework, seeing if they can go out in the back patio. People who live in apartment buildings hope, some of them also have balconies or maybe a community spot where they can get, be in some grass to enjoy.

It’s a matter of utilizing what you have. It could be, maybe you don’t have it at, you don’t have a balcony, you’re in the highrise, but maybe there’s a local library that has some sort of balcony or the local park with the bench and a table.

 It’s just again, bringing it into our routine and that just sometimes means exploring a little bit deeper than we usually do.

I have a checklist too. If people just feel overwhelmed, where do I begin? Where do I start? I have a free checklist on my website on the homepage that you can download. It’s like what? A 30-day calendar of activities. 

 We’ll have a link to that in the show notes, so then that way everyone can access that and also your books, so then that way they can get that. And is there anything else that you would like to share with the audience as far as? Why is this something that they need to start yesterday?

 I keep reading more and more about stress and anxiety and what we can do about it. And to me, I feel this is a toolkit. Hold it up. If the sun’s up being a video, this, there’s, this is a toolkit inside. Again, like one chapter on mindfulness.

 Another one is gratitude. We hear a lot about, before we go to bed at night, picking three things we’re grateful for. So I do that to give you tons of activities, how to do that, to be grateful for nature, and be creative with that. There’s a whole chapter on creativity.

 There are so many ways that we can be creative and keep getting involved with art that has to do with nature. From a nature poetry walk. To make nature mandalas too, again, just sitting on a balcony and drawing or taking nature photos, and, the kids can do that too. Again, I’m not opposed to technology.

 You go on a walk or in the backyard, wherever. Kids can take pictures and then see what they can do on Canva with it, or Power on PowerPoint. My daughter’s 10 and she knows how to use Canva. If Canva’s a graphic design, a free graphic design program, if you’re not familiar with it, she can take these images she’s made like a slideshow to music and they can create little TV programs.

 You can turn it into a news report, right? About nature and what we saw today on our walk. The ideas are endless. Food with gardening and mindful eating animals. And that’s the other thing that I like to tell people is to start with what you already love, what each child already loves.

One child might be really into sports. So they can focus on that outdoor time. Another might be more into art. 

 Start with what you love, what each child loves, and then go from there and continue to challenge yourself and next thing you’re beyond an ecotourism adventure.

 There’s actually an app where you can take a picture of a flower or a tree and it’ll tell you the exact species of it and so that’s amazing. And that can keep the kids busy for hours. 

 I so appreciate you being here and sharing this message with us. It’s much needed, and I think you are an angel for evangelizing this very needed message and trying to get us all out of our anxious state of life. I truly appreciate you being here.  

I truly believe that, when we’re calmer And happier. It’s a kinder world for all of us, and we all get along and we want our kids to grow up like that. And then it’s being kinder and happier to the planet too.

How to Incorporate a Podcast to Grow Your Business with Gabriela G. Valdez

Welcome to this episode of The Determined Mom Show. I am your host, Amanda Tinto, and I have with me the lovely Gabriela G. Valdez, and we’re gonna talk today about how to incorporate a podcast to grow your business. 

I am a psychologist and podcast manager because in 2020 I saw that I had the opportunity to create my own story like many other people did and live on my terms. I was sick and tired of exchanging my time for money, and also because I had the feeling that my true potential was wasted I knew I could do more and I could impact people other than my coworkers and the people I worked with.

I was also very tired of asking for permission. I live in Austria, but I am Mexican, so I didn’t wanna ask for permission. If I can have my holidays and hope that I would, they would get granted to go see my family. So I took a leap of faith and I employed myself.

Here I am now. I work exclusively with women and I help them launch and grow their podcasts and reach a lot of people all over the world. While they’re spreading their message and making money out of it. 

I’m so grateful for 2020 as we look back on it and it evolves and we’re getting back to a new normal and all of these things, but I’m so grateful for the eye-opening experience that it provided for so many millions of people. Not only, people that didn’t like their job, but maybe even employers that have seen things could be different.

I’m so grateful for that too. Those were difficult years. 2020 and 2021 were difficult for a lot of us, but also full of opportunities. And, I like that I am helping other people to do or follow a similar path, not a similar path, their path, but following the same dreams that I followed, like making your reality or Yes, creating and living what you want to live

How can we use a podcast to grow like any type of business?

Regardless of what you do or what you sell, chances are you can make a podcast and a successful podcast because any podcast deserves as much success as any top show out there. So there is a podcast where they read one word from the dictionary per episode. So if they can find people who are interested in that, any business can find among the almost 500 million podcast listeners, they can find interested bunch.

So there is a beauty in podcasting and there are a lot of things that are beautiful about podcasting, but the main thing I consider important is the community that you build around your podcast because it’s a very intimate channel.  You are talking about all the things you are an expert, you are an expert on, and it’s like proof that you know your craft. But for me, the key is a sense of community and connection.

So there is a study, a survey from Sprout Social that they found out that 57% of the consumers will increase their spending with a brand if they know the people behind the brand, and that is across all niches. That is something you can use for your business. The people who are listening to you, give you access to their life because they listen to you while they drive and they listen to you while they’re preparing the meals for the week or cleaning their house.

If you do it through a podcast, it is way more strong, way stronger than if you do it on social media. It’s a compliment. But a podcast helps you make that very strong connection and that they have the sense that they know you and also, They are more likely to choose you over a competitor.

Just like what we’re talking about today, I would feel bad having known you, having known your expertise and everything you have to share with the world, and then not sharing it with other people. It’s just an interesting transition that we go through as we evolve in our businesses and anyone can do it.

Also, I see a lot of people thinking too much about, Oh, I need to buy a microphone and I need to make sure that I have the best software. That might be of help. You don’t need any of that. You could have it, but you don’t need any of that. 

You can start with what you have, and then just later on you changed the way you started. But you don’t need any of that. What you need is the desire to share your message. And what I always say is, if you believe in your message, then that’s all you need.

I have known of people who just started a podcast. Maybe they didn’t even plan to start a podcast, but one day they thought. And they recorded it. And then from there, they thought, Wait, this could be a podcast. So what you need is just to dare to take that first step and then you’ll be on your way. 

It can even be proof of how much you’ve grown. It can be like the track record of your growth. This is where I started and then, I don’t know, six months from now, this is where I am and I think it is beautiful because you can, you have proof of how much you’ve grown. From the moment you start a podcast.

What are some other ways to use podcasts to grow business?

A podcast can be the perfect way to be seen as an authority, and it can even be the first step towards an omnichannel. One piece of content. When you start a show, you will have to spend some time thinking about your episodes and what are you going to talk about. What do you wanna share? And if you’re gonna have guests who are going to be in your episodes.

You are going to have one big piece of content per episode, and then that will give you plenty of opportunities for repurposing. And then you can take that episode and from a transcript, you make a blog post and you could also upload that episode to YouTube and you can get the highlights of the episode.

And then you make an audiogram or a videogram and you share them as a reel or a story or on TikTok, and you can also make several posts from them and even posts with quotes that people usually save and share. From one episode that you planned and produced, you get so much value and you have so much value to offer to the people who you are talking to wherever they are, and they find you through social media and they come to your podcast or maybe they find you.

Then maybe they find your podcast and then they go to social media and you are there and there’s so much for them to binge listen and to scroll through. And that means you are already closer to you and there is so much value for them that chances are they are going to choose you. To get a service or product. Because of this big piece of content with so many opportunities for repurposing.

I recently had my own experience that blew my mind honestly. With content repurposing. D Scott Smith is going to be recording an episode with him and he is an Amazon publishing expert he’s been encouraging me for a couple of years now since I’ve known him to write books. 

So like finally, after our pre-call went through, I looked at all the episodes that I’ve done on Google Business Profile or Google My Business. And I also looked through some of the webinars that I’ve done, some of the workshops, some of all of these things. And I have enough content now for 10 different Amazon looks like it’s crazy. I just transcribe them and put them into Google Docs, and each one of them is 30, 40 pages long. 

It’s almost getting a new life in a different format because I know, I have a lot of friends that don’t listen to podcasts just because, like audio issues, like they, everybody has some neuro divergence of some sort and.

They may not like audio, they don’t like listening to videos or watching videos or listening to podcasts or anything like that. This is bringing that same content and that same messaging to a whole different audience. But because I had the podcast and that wouldn’t have happened any other way. 

How can we take these two amazing aspects to work together and increase income?

I think there are two different types of approaches. One is if you already have a community, and the second would be if you don’t have a community yet. If you have a community and there are some people interested in what you say on some or all of your platforms, you will use your podcast. 

You are going to continue to give them value there on the part. And at the same time, you are going to take the opportunity to sell them with a lot of love and with meaning to sell them what you offer right there on the pot. And if you are having, say you have a course and then you can.

Make an episode about the topics you are talking about in your course, or you can have a few moments, say 30 seconds at the given point of an episode, like an A, like a PSA. If you don’t have a following, that might be a little more difficult to do in the beginning because, for people to buy something from you, from the podcast, then you need to be reaching people.

So if you are very new and you are just studying, what you are going to do is to focus on the content that you are going to create, and here this might be even more interesting because you have a lot of options, so you are going to select your content pillars and you are going to create content around it, and you are going to build your community.

And having more content and different formats will make it easier for you to get an audience that is interested in what you do in your products and services and even brands. Because when a podcast is new, you have a lot of opportunities to invite a brand and grow your podcast through the brand. You are leveraging that brand’s following, but also you are giving them a space where they can showcase their products and services.

If you have a very nice media kit and you have your story, your brand story on point, and you have your goals well crafted and you can present them to a brand. This will help you reach more people and get more followers and not only followers but interested people. And from there, as you keep growing, you will be able to. Showcase your products and services and people will buy from you.

I have seen it a lot, and you do not need to have 30,000 downloads per episode, per month to make sales from your podcast. What you need is to have a strategy in place and be consistent because if you have 200 downloads per month, even if one person buys from you, that is one sale that you’re making out of 200 downloads.

And also it’s very important to consider that podcasting is a long-term game, but it is a very profitable one. You can see it’s very fruitful when you commit to it and when you are consistent. So it is long-term, but if you commit to it, it will work out. 

Where is the best place for our listeners to get in contact with you? 

I love Facebook groups, so I am very active on Facebook. I just started my business Instagram account, so I’m also on Instagram. And lately, I am very active there because like I said, I just started. I get to be there if I want to see it grow, but so does Instagram or Facebook.

Thank you so much for being here and sharing everything with us, and we will have links to get in contact with Gabriel in the show notes.

Design Mistakes You Might Be Making on Your Website

Welcome to this episode of The Determined Mom Show. I have the amazing Christi Cooper here, and she is the owner of Cooper and Heart Creative. We are gonna talk today about design mistakes that you might be making on your website. This is really important stuff. I’m very excited that you’re here to share with us.

How did you get started in designing websites?

I’m one of those rare people who started a career and kind of stayed in it forever, I didn’t change. I started in design when I was 17 and I’ve been a designer for 23 years now, maybe longer. I started in print design and graphic design. I went to university for it. I have a degree. I worked at a design agency for a long time, so that’s where I started to do more website design in conjunction with branding and stuff like that.

Then I started my own business in 2017 on the side of my job. Just getting going and started and it just really expanded and I started learning a whole bunch in the online marketing space. And it just went from there. I taught myself how to build websites because before I was designing websites but not building them. Now I’m designing and building them. And it just grew from there. So, it’s been fun. 

It’s really rare nowadays and I think that’s pretty normal. Like it’s normal to start with some things and like maybe you just haven’t found your thing yet. I guess I just got off, early on and became fascinated with design. As far as work goes, it’s always been kind of design oriented. But, my other interests have changed over the years, so I think I just had other outlets to find new things.

What are those mistakes that we might be making when we’re making our website?

One of the mistakes that I see is wasting that hero area on the homepage. So when people first land on your website. There’s like a pretty picture or it says, “Welcome to so and so’s name site”. And it doesn’t like, it’s a missed opportunity to like. Talk to people about what you do and hook them.

Put a headline there that just speaks to what you do and who you help. Something about the results that you offer. Just really try to speak to your people and draw them in as soon as possible. We have short attention spans. Split-second decision. They’re not gonna scroll down and reach yours about you section. They’re just, they wanna know as quickly as possible. 

An example, like a straight board example I’ve done recently, is I did a website for financial planners. And, he has a very specific niche and so he says Financial planning for Twitch and YouTube creators. It’s super clear, super specific, and maybe not super catchy or clever, but it is really clear.

What he does and who he helps, right?  Like it’s just super obvious and then he has some follow-up copy, And then a nice call to action button that is just for people who are just ready to jump on the ball like you always wanna put that call to action there too. 

That eliminates people from meandering there. I need a financial planner, and they’re like a teacher or something. That’s not the right person for you. 

He had an advantage cuz he has a very specific niche. So it does depend on your business and stuff, but you do wanna speak to what you do and who you help in that first section and give them a call to action to learn more. 

What other mistakes are we gonna avoid making so that our websites are all fabulous? 

Another mistake that I see a lot is making it difficult for people to contact you or take that next step with you. Make it easy for people to contact you. Like I, I’ve been. Why are you making it so hard? So make sure it’s really clear whether you have a contact form or book a call or make an appointment, whatever your contact method makes it obvious like that’s usually your primary action goal on your site. 

Make it obvious. In your navigation, usually you want that furthest right link in your navigation to be that action that you want people to take on your site. Also, when you’re talking about what you offer, put that link button right there too. Don’t make people scroll back to the top of your website to find your contact information or scroll to the bottom.

So they’re not having to scroll also you could lose their attention if something else catches their eye, like on the way back up. Who knows where they might go? They might go to someone else’s website or, who knows what it is.

It’s super important you wanna catch people in the moment when they wanna learn more. I wanna take that into step. That’s another mistake that I see. It’s just not making that clear and easy. Let’s see here. Related to that is a website that’s not structured around whatever primary action that you want people to take. 

If you’re like a consultant, you want people to probably contact you, book a call or submit an application, whatever your process is, and you really wanna structure your site pages and content around leading people to that call to action. Versus just using your website as a dumping ground for all of the information about everything you do. 

You really wanna inspire people to take action. Or you want them to book an appointment. You wanna make sure that you wanna make sure it’s really clear in the navigation, but you also wanna make sure that the information that you’re giving them is focused on leading them to book that appointment.

That’s a very good point because I think a lot of times we’ll put multiple calls to action or multiple like you could call me or you could book a call or you could email me or you could, like Facebook message me or you could fill out our contact form or you could chat with us.

It depends on how you have it structured. If you don’t want to avoid it, like, book a call with me and then join my email list and then sign up for this workshop and then do this. Like really different types of call to action that they’re doing something different for each one versus a contact you one, you probably do want a couple of different ways for people to contact you.

On mine, I emphasize booking a call with me through my appointment scheduler, but I also put my email address for those people who are like, I just wanna email you, or they have another inquiry or something like that. And I think if you’re like a local business, you want your phone number on there.

You want to list your phone numbers. People can call you. And you probably wanna give them another way to contact you. Email contact forms, something like that. I’m a person who doesn’t like to call local businesses. I like to send them a message. So I think it can be beneficial to have a couple of different ways. 

You could feel like I was trying to read something, so I closed the popup, but then I’m like there’s something on there that caught my attention, but I already closed it. So more on the visual side is making sure your website just looks professional and put together because there are people who judge a website by how it looks before they get to read what’s on it.

And you really wanna establish trust and credibility, so you just wanna make sure that your site is. It doesn’t have to be fancy, but you want it to be simple and clean and clear and look like a legitimate business versus something you let you’re nine-year-old put together.

I’ve seen some pretty dated-looking sites like that also the thing you wanna avoid is looking dated. I feel like that presentation that you put out there with your website and your branding and everything reflects how much you care about your people and who you’re serving. If you put some intention into making sure you have a professional presentation, it does convey that you are like, you’re serious and you’re not just I put a side up 10 years ago and it’s still fine. 

So you wanna avoid a bunch of different fonts, a bunch of different colors, a bunch of different background images. If you’re not a designer, just keep it simple and clean and somewhat updated looking so it doesn’t, you know, turn people off right away.

Do you have any other tips when you’re rebuilding websites more than when you’re building them?

So another big thing is a copy, like your text on your site is not doing big blocks and big paragraphs of copy, because back to the short attention span, nobody reads it. We just skim the page looking for the information that we’re looking for and we take in. Headlines and callouts and things like that, we don’t sit down and read three paragraphs of your story or stuff like that.

If you wanna break it up and edit down your copy first, only talk about what you need to talk about and then break it up into different lines. I rarely do traditional paragraphs on sites anymore, occasionally three sentences are a paragraph, but usually, I’m almost always breaking one or two sentences, and then there’s a return. It just helps people skim it and then they’ll stop and read if something catches their attention. But then they rarely read the whole thing. 

But it does allow, you’re right it’s a visual cue. It just gives you enough information that you can pick out a couple of words. Or, I do need to read this sentence and I wanna read all of them now.

You really wanna design your pages to be for those people who are just skimming so that they can take in enough information when they’re skimming the page versus reading everything word for word. Some people do read. Like dedicated read pages, but most people don’t. 

So you want both, it’s like you want both there for the people who do want more information, but, you really wanna aim it at people who are just skimming and scanning for information. As they go through your site. 

I think there can be some generational differences there. As far as older generations were more accustomed to reading full newspaper articles and magazine articles nowadays we don’t do that. Whereas younger generations are like that, social media inundated them. 

They read a line and that’s it. But I also think it’s personality based too. So people who are a little more analytical and detail-oriented will tend to read more versus people who are just like moving on to the next thing on their list. You want some sort of idea. And that’s why we do write more copies, than maybe what everybody reads, just because some do want more information and do read it. 

How important is visual aesthetic versus copy on a website in this day and age? 

I think they’re pretty equal in my opinion. They work very much together. You can have a great copy, but if your site design isn’t up to date and it’s just like blocks of copy, nobody’s gonna read it. No one’s gonna take it in. You have a pretty site, with pretty pictures, but your messaging is all off, and that’s also not gonna work.

I think they’re pretty, I feel like they’re 50-50. Okay. As far as. You know the impact that they have. So you want them to be both Pretty good, to have an effective site.

Do you have a particular industry or niche? 

I work primarily with a lot of entrepreneurs and bus and businesses small teams, such as coaches, consultants, and service providers, both online service providers, and local service providers. Those are typically my main clients. I’m capable of designing for anyone, but that’s who I primarily serve.

At the design agency, my old job, we’d serve large companies and corporations and that’s just it was a little less inspiring to work for a tire technology company that’s looking at their bottom line versus A consultant who just really cares about their people and wants to have a bigger impact.

When are we going to build our website?

I feel like I shouldn’t need to say this but always check your mobile view. Like sometimes people forget, and the mobile view of a website just is, it’s a poor experience and you just can’t ignore that nowadays. Menus and words are cut off and images are in the wrong place. There’s a lot that can go wrong there.

Where can people get in contact with you?

If you wanna follow me, I’m over on Instagram at Cooper and Hart. And then my website is cooper and har.com. If you are looking for a website and you need some help with it, definitely reach out to Christie. She can help you with that, and she will help you to get started and get everything. You need to do it, and have a beautiful website, beautiful and effective too.

How to start a new profitable business in 2023

Welcome to episode 235 of The Determined Mom Show. I am your host, Amanda Tento. And I want to share it with you today. Something very near and dear to my heart and something that I started working on, many years ago when I first started my business has helped tremendously. And that is how appearances will help you to grow your business. 

When I say appearances, I don’t mean necessarily video appearances or in-person speaking or anything like that. Something that you can do from the comfort of your own home to enhance your brand. Enhance your business. And share your knowledge, those types of things, our podcast, and guest episodes. 

Blog post-episode blog, post guesting. You can also be writing articles for people. In your area of expertise. Just there are so many different things that you can do. I’ve been on YouTube shows. I’ve been on LinkedIn shows. I’ve been on many different things.

You can be a guest. Articles or chapters in books even. There are so many ways you can network and grow your business. And just really get your business out there. 

Places that I highly recommend going to:

Listen Notes

It is one of my favorites and it is a directory of podcasts. So you can go on to listen to notes and you can search for specific search terms. That is relevant to your area of expertise. If I just started typing Google business profile. I’m going to find a list of podcast episodes. 

Or podcasts that have Google business in the listing in the episode, the show notes, in the name of the episode. So it’s a really handy place. You can just get started on it. Finding different podcasts to be a guest on. I know it can be overwhelming, especially if you’ve never done it before, but just speak through it. Your experience, just talk about how, what, go ahead and email them. 

I always like to check their website first because they most likely have a form. That allows you to apply to be a guest. And I don’t have time to respond. To any inquiries that come through in my email. 

So I’ve missed out on dozens of guests because I just don’t have time. And I now have it in mine. Auto reply, a little blurb about if you’re looking to be a podcast guest, go ahead and fill out this form because I don’t have time to reply to all of those. 

Visit their website first. Look for a form. Fill that out. If you can’t find one, email them and then go from there. There are also lots of different podcast groups on Facebook, so you can join different podcasts, guests, and groups, and you could post about wanting to be a guest. Anything, your area of expertise. 

And people will let you know if you would be a good fit for their show. Highly recommend starting with podcasts. You can also go to business networking meetings. There are usually a lot of people that have podcasts or YouTube shows or LinkedIn shows. Go ahead and just start Googling. What are other people talking about that could benefit? 

From your knowledge.  I want to also mention that this is not specific to the industry. In a lot of ways. So for example, One of the best podcasts that I’ve ever done. And the most profitable for me was a wedding industry podcast.

So it sounds silly because I have nothing to do with the wedding industry, but a lot of my ideal clients are in that wedding industry. So if I’m providing value to people that are in the wedding industry that is listening to that podcast, then it’s going to resonate with them. 

Going to give them actionable things to do on that podcast episode and allow them to experience my expertise and understand what can happen from working with me. 

So that’s a really good example of why you need to think out of the box. Think about your ideal clients, but think about. Who’s listening to that podcast episode? You don’t want to waste your time. On a podcast episode that is not necessarily in line with your ideal audience, because it’s just going to fall on deaf ears. So be sure that you’re picking them wisely. 

You can also email bloggers. You can email companies. And they’ll most likely take you up on it because everyone is hungry for content. They’re thirsty for knowledgeable people, just make sure that it’s original content and that you’re not repurposing things because you don’t want to use the same article for many different websites or even two different websites. 

Because that will create some issues. Just be sure that you are putting yourself out there. I figured out some ways that in 2023, You can focus on sharing the value, the knowledge, and the experience that you have in a way that’s going to benefit both you and the people that are listening and the people that own that particular platform. 

Perimenopause or Not? How to Know

Welcome to this episode of The Determined Mom Show. I have the wonderful Kathy Fritz here, and she is a board-certified master hormone coach. 

It’s very exciting to have you, and this is a very interesting and perplexing, puzzling, and confusing topic that we’re gonna talk about today, and that is perimenopause or not, and how you can know if that is really what is going on with your body.

How did you get started in hormone coaching? 

My background is in education, I was a high school English teacher that I would be forever. Then I had my kids, and I know you can relate to this. Suddenly you wanna change your schedule a little so you can do homework. I know you did something similar in your own business. 

I switched to virtual teaching before it was the cool, trendy thing to do. That was great for about seven years. And then in the midst of all of that, I was having my hormonal imbalances. I was in my late thirties and nobody was talking about the possibility that my hormones were already shifting in per menopause. 

Because believe it or not, perimenopause can start as early as 35. We think of it as this thing that happens when we are older and then we get to 38, 42. But that doesn’t have to be a bad thing, so we’ll get to that in a little bit. 

So my doctor, trained in the medicine that she went to school for, said to me, “Okay, you can have the pill that’ll help, that’ll clear up all this stuff “. And it just didn’t sit well.

So I did my research and I found out why it didn’t sit well, because the pill turns off communication between your brain and your ovaries. I think there needs to be more communication here, not less. Long story short, my research discovered lots of different ways that I could support my hormones, and support my body as it headed toward midlife.

And something about educators, and you may know this, when we find out something and we see a need for teaching it, we’re all over that. So I started my business more from that place of an educator and just wanted to teach as many women as possible about their bodies. I got certified as a health coach and that was great and I thought I was rocking it.

And then I got certified as a master health coach and the difference I learned was between teaching and coaching, those are two different approaches. And I can get more into that in a minute. And then the last kind of piece of my puzzle was I got board certified over the summer and that.

I know I get women to get the results they want. I thought I had dealt with all of my imposter syndrome issues, but getting board certified showed me that I still had a little bit lingering there, and now being board certified, it’s gone. Like I know I’m good at my job. I know I get women to get the results they want.

I was so surprised because I didn’t think I had any more imposter syndrome. And then it was only after I got that board certification. 

I think people do try to tell us about it. Once you’re a mom, you’ll understand, you’re not gonna change that much. And you don’t change at your core, but your priorities change.

There’s an additional layer of responsibility because we have all those options. You have to explore what’s gonna work. I didn’t. Expect to become a virtual teacher. That certainly was not why I got my master’s in teaching. 

But that’s what worked, that’s what worked for me and my family. And then, when that stopped working, my interest was pulling me elsewhere, starting a business. You had told my 23-year-old self that I would never leave the classroom and start my own business.

What are some of the signs of perimenopause? How can we say it is perimenopause?

I think a lot of women try to like, use their age as the thing that would make them decide. And as I said earlier, that’s not at all an indicator. 

The first thing I want you, and your listeners to know is that symptoms predate period changes. Our hormones start shifting before our period starts shifting. It’s just like when we’re going through puberty. 

I have a 13-year-old, she hasn’t gotten her period yet, and believe me, she’s riding that hormonal roller coaster every month just without a bleed, So in the same way in perimenopause, we’re starting to ride a new hormonal roller coaster. 

And so we’re gonna have symptoms and our periods are not necessarily going to reflect those hormonal changes. So the symptoms vary widely, woman to woman, and month to month. The common symptoms we hear about are hot flashes and insomnia. 

Weight gain is starting to be talked about more. Like you’re like, wait a second. Like I thought I had a deodorant that worked well for me.

And all of a sudden you’re like, I smell all the time. So that can be a hormonal symptom.

And one of those good ways is switching up your natural geo. Another kind of less common thing is hair loss here, and then hair growth, in places you don’t want it. All of a sudden you’re like that’s a coarse hair on my neck. That’s hormonal hair. You’re having gobs of hair coming out just when you run your fingers through your hair. 

For those of your listeners who have gone through a pregnancy, there’s a very common shedding that happens after the pregnancy. You know that hormones can make you lose your hair. Brittle nails are another Strange hormonal symptom.

Hot mouth, like burning mouth. Burning tongue. And here’s the thing. Not everybody has super symptomatic perimenopause. Those women you are lucky and you are not. You don’t need my services. But a lot of women are maybe not super. 

Every month there are perimenopausal symptoms, but some months seem worse than others. Or, every month seems wow, like this is not fun. Those are the women that I end up working with. In my work, I always find that certain. Things are cyclical. Like I had a lot of women struggling with hair loss earlier in the spring. 

I have a lot of PMDD clients right now, so PMDD is like PMs to this degree that is super life interruptive. Like your moodiness is out of control. It’s really difficult. And so right now I just seem to have more of those clients. 

It changed again there. It seems seasonal, almost like where people are drawn to work with me. So that’s an overuse of perimenopause or not? If you are noticing month to month that you’re having these experiences and if you are unhappy, if you do not like the symptoms, if you believe that your body’s trying to tell you something, follow that intuition.

Do you do a lot of tracking?

I again follow my client’s lead. For some clients, tracking makes a lot of sense. Like my PMDD clients, they tend to track because they really wanna understand when my tough symptoms start. And then what tools am I gonna employ before and during that really difficult time?

So in that situation, yes, they’re gonna track, other clients might track for a little bit, maybe they’re trying to see if they have a food sensitivity or maybe they’re curious. How much is my period? Changing month to month. Is it consistently at 26 days now instead of 28?

So when they want data, then they will track it. I leave that up to them. We certainly can have a conversation about it. But it’s always from a place of curiosity and on my part, what is it you wanna learn about your body, and is tracking the best way to do it? 

Those two stories do not always level out. They’re not always telling the same story. So doctors are interested in the testing story. What does your urine say? What does your blood say? I’m interested in your symptom story.

If you want to do hormone testing, Go right ahead and it can certainly give you more information about what’s going on in your body. I wouldn’t say to do it, but it’s not part of what I do. And it’s pretty much never covered by insurance because it’s preventative.

But the symptomatic story. It’s the thing that matters to me and my clients usually because it doesn’t matter what their blood or their urine is saying they’re having this experience and that’s what they need help with.

Now I don’t want this to come across like I’m, being mean about doctors. I love partnering with doctors. Because they had great medical training. They know way more. Certain aspects of a woman’s body than I do. I like to partner with them because they want their patients to get relief too.

I don’t, I have never read anything about this, but if I were just to use my like, educated guess since perimenopause can start at 35 the hormonal, the sex hormonal shift that exists during perimenopause is slowly but surely, your progesterone is decreasing throughout perimenopause, and your estrogen is doing this kind of up and down months to month until it also starts to decrease.

So then at the end of perimenopause, once you’ve hit menopause, your progesterone and your estrogen are pretty. So that can, that process can start as early as 35. So I’m guessing that they assigned an advanced maternal age to anything over 35, recognizing that this sex hormone change can start as early as 35.

A lot of thyroid issues get triggered by pregnancy, and that all has to do with this brain recalibration. Perimenopause is another brain recalibration time. What’s interesting to me about this is that perimenopause is a window of opportunity.

During this window of opportunity, we get to make choices about how we fuel our bodies, move our bodies, and treat our bodies that are gonna impact our longevity, that is gonna impact the quality of our golden years. So that’s another reason, like this is where the educator me comes out. 

This information is essential to get to women in their late thirties, or early forties because your window of opportunity is from your Paris during perimenopause. Once you hit menopause, which is 12 months, be between your most recent bleed.

When it’s been 12 months since you’ve had a bleed, then you, that is your menopause day. After that, your post. A lot of times people will call, use the word menopausal to refer to that, but just technically menopause is one day.

And in the work you’re doing, the marketing and Google Business and all of that stuff, there’s a narrative there that, as a woman, I am finding myself pushing up against. And your podcast and your client work are helping me change that narrative. And so I’m trying to do the same with this, all this midlife stuff.

I think it’s important to celebrate when we have these kinds of big moments in our lives as women menopause to me is a time where I get to, I’ll get to shed. One identity and embrace another one.

Menopause is a time of wisdom. It’s a time of being able to guide others and embracing yours. Success. And I, and that doesn’t have to be financial. I feel like too often the words success and financial are married to each other.

But success can look like a lot of different things. Maybe it’s that all your kids are out of your house. Maybe it’s that you didn’t choose to have kids, and now because you’re in menopause, you can do all the traveling you wanted to do without worrying about when are I getting your period, how much do I have to bring, product wise and, medication wise so I don’t, be crampy or whatever. I think there’s a lot to celebrate there.

Where can everyone get more information about working with you about what you do and how you can help us figure out if it is perimenopause or not?

Head over to my website, Kathy fritz coaching.com and write on that. Page, I have four surprising ways to produce your hot flashes, insomnia, and waistline. So that is an awesome free resource that I have and you can certainly poke around on that website. I’m also going to be launching a membership shortly. 

I recommend that anyone listening who is curious about getting that free download will be in. And that way when that membership rolls out, you can hop right in. If you are struggling though I recommend you just set up a call with me. We’ll meet, we’ll talk, I’ll hear all about what’s going on and we’ll go from there.

How to start a new profitable business in 2023

Welcome to episode 233 of The Determined Mom Show. I am your host, Amanda Tento, and I am very excited to talk to you today about how to start a new profitable business in 2023. The last three years have been incredibly difficult for everyone. So 2020, 2021, and 2022. 

Expectations are stressful in everything in our lives. There’s nothing. That’s easy. There’s nothing simple. And I want to help you try and get back to easy, simple. Something that you enjoy and that is highly profitable. Social media management has taken off. 

Incredibly in the last three years, that’s an easy thing for people to do, but it’s something that is not necessarily sustainable from a couple of different points. The first point that it’s not sustainable is the algorithms are constantly changing and constantly making it hard for social media managers to keep up with the changes. 

And to keep figuring out what is going to work for their clients and the clients then get disappointed in the results. And they cancel services. So that’s not great. A business model where you’re just constantly in a hamster wheel trying to keep up, trying to figure out what’s going to happen next, trying to pray that nothing is going to happen and that everything’s going to stay the same, which we all know that it is not. 

Another point that it’s hard to keep up from. It’s a lot of labor-intensive work. You post many posts per week, you have multiple clients. There’s just a lot involved. In social media, posting graphic creation. There’s just so much that goes into all of that. And you end up spending hours and hours. And are you getting paid for all of those hours? 

Are you making sure that you’re profitable? Are you making sure that you’re getting the results for your clients? That’s another difficult part of it. With all of that said there are other business models. That is similar, but they offer more profitability. 

They offer more flexibility and they offer better results. And I am going to speak to you about our current course, which is called how to start your own profitable Google Business Agency. 

This is going to help you to dive into every single step you don’t even really need to dive into because it’s all laid out for you from start to finish, why you should be offering these services. 

There is a very large deficit in the market for these services. We are currently maxed out with our clients at TDM marketing. And we’re no longer accepting new clients until at least probably mid-February.

And so it’s been like that since. Mid-December, which is great. However, we want to make sure that we’re able to serve all of the clients that need our services because guess what? It’s extremely effective. Extremely profitable and it’s affordable for them.

Which makes it a no-brainer right? So if they know that they’re going to be getting, I don’t know, an extra. Two to 20 clients a month based on the service, they’re going to pull the trigger. They’re going to sign up and they’re going to stay signed on if they can continue to get those results or as we see even better results month after month.

How can we prove to them that this is happening, that this is possible? We have a bank of reports that we’re going to share with you in this course they’re available for you. To white label any way that you like so that we can demonstrate these results and that services do work. And you’re just going to be able to start the course.

And a highly sought-after Business model. That’s going to allow you to have flexibility in your life. It’s going to allow you to have a lot more of your time back, and it’s also going to allow you to if you want to outsource. So then you have even more of your time back and you’re just managing your agency at that point.

So this course is going to walk you through so many different aspects that you need to know. One aspect that it isn’t going to cover is his legal aspect because people all over the world are looking to start the service, the laws and business licensing and all of those things are different in every state, city, country, everything we are not covering in this course.

So that’s something that you’re going to need to know you’re going to need to lay out for yourself, you’re gonna need to do that research, but the rest of it is all taken care of. From how to charge. How to market. How to find new businesses to offer this too. There is prospecting software.

There is everything that you can imagine. There are resources for you. So you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. We have created this agency. I have, I should say, created this agency from scratch from the very beginning, from literally just going in and manually posting to Google Business Profiles four years ago, five years ago.

And just finding every software that we could use to make it easier to make it better, to make it everything. Like we just have been refining all of these services for many years now. And we’ve come to a point where we feel like we can offer this as a course for other people because I know there are people out there struggling.

They’re tired of what they’re doing. They’re burnt out. They want to spend more time with their kids. And this is the answer to that issue. If you’re interested in learning more about the course, you can go to the td-m marketing.com forward slash course. And you’ll be able to sign up for our waitlist and you’ll be able to get more information about the course.

Find out everything you need to know, and it will be an amazing transformation. If you go through the course, you finish it and you just go ahead and start your agency. And start getting clients and start managing and helping them. We are offering coaching services alongside this starting in February.

So if you are looking for additional help with it. We can offer that as well, but just the course itself is going to be enough for you to get started, start getting clients and start serving them. I hope you have an amazing day in 2023. And we look forward to connecting with you. You can always email me@amandaattdm-marketing.com. Visit our website, which is the-marketing.com. Thank you for listening.

How Clearing Clutter Can Help Create Space and Allow For Abundance

Welcome to this episode of The Determined Mom Show. I am your host Amanda Tento, and I have with me the amazing Louise Hopkins. She is a professional organizing coach, and today she’s going to tell us how clearing clutter can help create space and allow for abundance. 

How did you become a professional organizing coach?

It’s a cool story. I like it, but I’m not a naturally organized person, so I think that firstly people are What? How do you do this then? But that’s where I’ve learned the skill, how to become organized, and how to help others learn the tools and the strategies right to do it.

I’ve been an entrepreneur for a while. I had my cafe in New Zealand where I’m originally from, and I’ve always been restless. And I was in the corporate world in Alberta and Canada and I was like, There’s something, I need something else. So I was looking and I found someone advertising a home organization business. 

I’m intrigued. I’m like I’m gonna find out. Something is pulling me here. So I didn’t buy that business. I decided I wanted to do it myself, explore it, and use my processes and things. The more I worked with clients. Because there’s so much more to it. 

It’s not just the tips and tricks. It’s not just the things we see, to make everything look perfect. It’s what’s lying behind it and the effects clutter has on us. So that’s what I’m super passionate about.

Helping people understand why we’re attached to stuff, and where it’s coming from, is what I’m excited about, as seeing people. Just, it’s like this whole thing, this whole weight comes off them right. When they realize and they can release themselves from their clutter. 

I decided I still go into people’s homes, but coaching is helping them learn and teach those skills to themselves. So it’s a lifetime skill because it’s something we need all our life. 

It’s interesting because the more you see that stuff, the more it’s harder to let go. Sometimes am I supposed to keep it? And that’s where it’s really interesting, that kind of psychological part behind it. Just listening to people and their stories, how they treat staff as security sometimes, because it could be past things that have happened in their life.

Your mom might be scared that if I give this up, we’re gonna forget everything. We’re gonna forget all our amazing memories. So, it’s quite typical, right? With moms and their kids sometimes, because we are so attached to everything they do. 

That’s why I love passing that information and helping other clients understand it and helping them release because you’re probably gonna ask this question anyway, but I’ll just kind of quickly say that if we have clutter around us, it’s hard to focus, right? It’s hard to concentrate on things and bring in that abundance for us. That’s why I love talking about that and helping us release from that. 

How can we clear that? Do you have things that you can help us to release and say to let this go?

I have a ton of things, but what I like to talk about is that I think that’s so true, it’s the energy that comes with it. Because if we paint a little quick picture, if you’re in your home office and if you’re working on your business, and if you have paperwork everywhere, you have your books everywhere, you.

The home office has become a dumping ground, and you’ve got things you need to take to donate your things. You need to take back what you bought, that you want to return. Your whole brain is now just surrounded by all these to do things right, And you’re now going in the back of your mind. “ that you need to do that”.

Now you can’t focus, and then that energy becomes heavy. You become feeling guilty. You become feeling sad and frustrated because why can’t I do this? What I like to help and what I teach about or just quickly talk about the top six reasons and the reason why I’m quickly touching on this to help us. 

To release clutter, we need to do a little bit of work. What I wanna focus on is it doesn’t keep coming back for you. What I talk about are the top six reasons we collect clutter so it’s actually, the reason is the acronym. So retail therapy emotions assign time to sentimentality to overwhelm and no, can’t say it.

When we can discover, and I know I just went over that real quickly, but if say, retail therapy is one of the triggers for us, if we’re having a tough day, we’re not happy in our career, we’re not happy in our life. We use retail therapy as a way to make us happy. So a cool strategy for that one.

What I talk about is using the if you shop online, put something in the online cart, walk away for 24 to 48 hours, and then come back and see if you still want it, if you need it. I think this helps a lot of people because we’re quite emotional at the time and maybe we’re like, I just want that new sweater because it’ll make me feel really good.

And it’s a bargain. And another really good way to think about this is if it’s on sale, you feel like you have to buy it. But what I want us to think about is that if you don’t need it, you’ll always find it when you need that item, if that makes sense. 

You’ll always be able to find something on sale, right? So don’t feel that adrenaline. I have to get it. Because if you don’t need it, you don’t have space for it, then it just becomes clutter. 

The other one is if you want to, I can go through more of them quickly. Would you think that? So E is for emotions. That’s a really big one for a lot of us, we can feel, and we can hold onto guilty things. So say you are a mom who has brought gifts for your kids or something like that, or she’s held onto a lot of your stuff. 

So you’re now gonna feel guilty and you’re gonna feel frustrated because you’re like, I don’t need this stuff. When we feel these emotions, we have to work through them. So a really neat thing we can do is use a post-it note strategy. So with a post-it note, if you have an area in your home, or if you have say, five or six objects that you’re struggling to let go of.

What you can do is write down the first feeling you’ve got. Write down how you’re feeling and then put it on that item. And you’ll notice there’s a pattern here. You’re gonna walk away again for 24 hours or 48 hours, and come back. And is that emotion still strong? And if it’s a negative emotion, then you need to protect it because it’s too.

It’s low energy that you want to remove and then it helps release all the things that are negative energy in them. Assigned time is where we need to make it a priority for decluttering and put it in our calendar and schedule it, which I know people find hard because it’s not fun.

It happens to all of us. That’s the thing we’ve gotta know. It’s like we’re not alone in this. And that’s why I hear it from so many women too. That’s what happens because it’s like you can’t make a decision, so you automatically shut down and you’re like, I don’t wanna deal with this, or I don’t have time. And another, I think we see a lot of.

And social media, we see it around, pull everything out, and do it all at once. So what happens is it gets shoved back in, right? And I think breaking it down into tiny tasks like a quick example for that is on Saturday night, this is how signing my Saturday nights are.

I spent 15 minutes going through my closet. and I just made the decisions. I was like, Okay, and I got half a garbage bag full of clothes, so I feel better because it took me 15 minutes using the guidelines that I can. We can talk about it a bit later if you want to. They’re also good strategies too. 

And then the last one is no, can’t say it. When people are very kind, this could be like your mom too. They give you stuff. and you can’t say no. And so you’re like, Oh my gosh, I don’t have room for that. And then it comes back to you again. So when that happens, it’s hard. But a really good way is to communicate and just say, you know what? Thank you so much.

That’s actually, that’s a really good one that you brought up because I have a really good strategy for that. And it happens to all of us as moms because it’s tough. 

And I do it too because like you said, I still have my son’s outfit from when he came home from the hospital. What I talk about for that one are guidelines. And so when we can do guidelines, talking about that situation, in particular, let’s limit things. So let’s put a guideline in. I’m only allowed one bin per child for sentimental reasons. And that way it helps you stop and think.

It’s okay, what is an amazing memory that I want and how do I do it for myself? My son’s outfit coming home from the hospital. And now he’s taller than me. And his little shoes, the shore that fell apart, that his grandma made for him. Just a little piece of it. So for me, that’s how I decided to keep things. 

And then little bits on the way, but they only fit in this one bin, and that’s all I can take and keep. Now how big is the bin? That’s a good question. Something that fits on the shelf and does it one per child and that. It’s stored nicely. It has them, you can make it look good. 

You can put their name on it, you can put pictures, something like that. The kid And another way to do that too is to revisit it every year. Because they have different memories right as they grow. And you might chuck it in a holding bin.

Then you go through their actual sentimental bin. And then go, Okay, this can go, Now I need to make room for this because this is something really important to me. So I think guidelines, what guidelines help us do is take away those brain fuzzies.

So when I say brain fuzzies we’re making so many decisions. And if, and what happens we tend to go run around in circles. But this was great. I love this memory. It’s so cool. It’s so cute. But if you say, Okay, but it doesn’t fit in the. Okay, now I need to make a tough decision.

Having those help, right? They help take away that when we get stuck and we’re like, I don’t know what to do. And it’s, and take away that, what if I need it someday? I paid good money for it, That kind of thing.

When we start having those conversations, we wanna try and shut it down a little bit and then just say, Okay, this doesn’t fit into my guidelines. It’s an interesting way to.

And that’s why I say to people, 15 minutes, usually, they will do longer, but when you say 15 minutes, you’re getting past another block. I don’t have an hour to do this, but if I just do 15 minutes, then I can, and usually you’ll carry on. If not, that’s great too.

And I think that’s an eye opener for people because like you said, it’s the endorphins and it’s also, it’s like you feel. It’s like I just did it. And that’s a good feeling. And that’s the interesting thing too, as I think a lot of us think if I just do this, it’s going to stay this way. 

And that’s the reason why I help us change our mindset too because clutter is here for life. We’re always going to have stuff, we’re always gonna have things coming in. And this is where we can create that flow in our home.

And it allows for that abundance because we are continually moving things through our house. We’re continually rotating that clutter and keeping stuff that is relevant to us and stuff that we love. And that’s where. We are feeling this flow. 

And then that helps the abundance come into our lives and in our business and money and everything. Because if we’re stuck and we’re in unhappy relationships, and if we don’t do something about that, then we just feel tight and wiped down. 

And it doesn’t have the same meaning. And that’s where people get concerned because they get upset. After all, they think you should have the same feelings about it as they do.

But it’s different feelings and emotions for everybody and memories and things. And that’s when it’s, it’s hard for a child to say to the appearance it doesn’t mean anything to me. This was your life and I’m sorry that it’s like that, I don’t know if you’ve heard of the Swedish Death Cleaning Method.

It’s really, it’s a great book and I’ve talked about it before too, and it’s, anyway, kind of digressing. But with that one, it’s preparing if anybody has parents that are in that kind of stage, it’s helping them realize that they need to release their stuff. And just briefly on that, it is some of us, it is past traumas in our life. So it’s what’s happened. It can be, and this is why it’s interesting to dive into it in their life, and maybe it is what they have been modeled in their life. It also could be just who they are. 

They could naturally be empathic. It could naturally be someone who’s Okay, I’m done and dusted with that. That’s good. I’m moving on. It’s our personalities and when we don’t acknowledge it or can’t get control of it, and when we start feeling like it.

Everything needs to be kept because that’s who I am. It’s their security. That’s when it’s really hard. So that’s why doing a little bit of diving into your background, who you are naturally. And another thing I talk about is organizing and decluttering to your strengths, which is like your processing modalities.

So when we do that, it’s based on if you’re a visual person, if you’re kinesthetic, if you’re. Auditory to think about that. There are quite a few of them. So if we can choose the ones that stand out the most for you, then we can help figure out the best way to declutter, and the best way to organize based on that.

It becomes natural. And this is something I like to be intuitive with our organizing. But what happens is when you clear the clutter, And you’re able to focus and you’re able to feel that energy, then you have time to be intuitive because you’re like, This is what works for me.

Not what I should be doing. What we see all over social media, right? It’s like you should be folding clothes. No, you don’t have to. If it doesn’t work for you, I don’t feel close, because I’m terrible at it and I’m impatient. So I hang all my clothes because it’s just easier for me. Most of them.

Sweatpants and things like that. But following what they say they should be doing on social media, just can be damaging to us because we can’t do it. So we get frustrated and go through all those feelings again. 

Where can people find out more about working with you? 

I have my website, the space reclaimers.ca. Also on Instagram as the space Reclaimers. And on my website I should say, there’s a quiz that you can do too, which is cool because it helps you discover your clinic here. Probably the best place is a website and Facebook as. Space Reclaimers.

Where is the best place to hang out on social media anywhere?

I am on Instagram and I am on Facebook. I do have just one on Facebook, but I have a podcast as well inspiring com. Podcast. It’s a few more than I thought. 

We have lots of ways to connect with you, lots of ways that we can figure out how we can work with you. I appreciate you being here and sharing your wisdom with us and sharing all of these amazing tips on clutter, creating space, abundance, all of these things, they all go hand in hand. I love that you brought your expertise. Awesome.

5 Hidden Secrets in Google Business Profiles That Will Change Your Business

Welcome to episode 230 of The Determined Mom Show. I am your host, Amanda Tento, and I am here to share with you today. Five hidden secrets in Google business profiles that will change your business. I like to call these Google Businesses Hidden secrets A gift from Google.

Because what happens is Google is the largest search engine online and they’re giving you space to tell them. What you should be ranking for, who should be finding you and what problems you solve for those people.

Number 1

Number one is going to be locations. You can put in 20 different locations that you would like to target for your Google business listing. Google is just guessing where you should be showing up based on your address. You can target your most valuable clients where they live, and where they hang out. That kind of thing by completing this. I always recommend that you do it by zip code. So that way you can be super specific about what areas you would like to be in. If you were to put Tacoma, Washington, for example, 

That’s going to give a huge area. For Google to pull from. But it is all up to Tacoma, your ideal client, most likely not. You’re going to have certain zip codes where your ideal client lives in certain zip codes where they don’t live. So why waste that targeting on someone that isn’t necessarily your ideal client? So number one location.

Number 2

Number two is your description. You have 750 characters. That you can use to describe your business. Things that you want to include in that description are what you do. Who you help, and how you serve them. And where you serve them. Very important things to include. And you want to make sure that you’re using great keywords that people are searching for in this description because this is going to take you.

Past your competitors. It’s going to help Google to understand who you should be ranking for and what search terms people are using to find you or people would use to find you. So do not neglect this description. There are so many businesses out there that just don’t fill it out at all. And that is a huge mess because you’re missing out on one of the biggest permanent Gifts from Google.

Number 3

Number three is updated. If you are not posting regular updates. You are missing out on being able to give Google a daily. If you want to update about your business. About who you’re serving. What you’re doing. News and your business, what products you have going on, what services you have going on. For any events that you have coming up, there’s just so much opportunity in updates that it’s just crazy if you’re not using them. 

This is where we get our clients the most traction in these updates because we’re using keywords. We’re trying to use as many characters as possible. Where applicable, there are 1500 characters that you can use for each update. It’s not a huge amount, but it’s not a Twitter post, it’s way more than a Twitter post. And it allows you to give enough information. 

About a particular topic or service or product that Google is going to get more information from and display it to the right people. Huge gift from Google. So updates. If you’re not using them, we recommend a minimum of three per week, which is what we do for our clients in TDM marketing. Google. 

Suggest that you do a minimum of one per week. And if you don’t do them, You’re going to get an email and Google’s going to say it’s been a while since you’ve updated your profile. Would you like to post now? I do it. So whenever they send you a prompt, that means that it’s been more than a week, do it. 

Number 4

Number four is services. Do you have the ability to put your services into Google? You can put your pricing, you can put. Photos, you can put all kinds of information in there. And it allows you to also tie them to the categories that your business is listed under.

This is huge because it is going to allow you to pinpoint whether or not you’re the right person. For whoever is looking right. I was searching for it. Services the other day for electricians that install. Particularly video doorbells, for example. 

And if you were to have that. On your listing, if you’re an electrician, then I would probably call you before I call anyone else because I want to know if an electrician has experienced doing that.

It’s something that they do and if it’s already on there and I don’t have to call you, talk to you about it. Figure it out, then you’re going to get my call before anyone else. So just an example from my real-life circumstances, but it’s a great example because it shows you how you can stand out. You may not think of offering that service. Whatever it is in your business. Is unique for individuals. But if you’re offering it on your listing and someone else’s not, you’re more likely to get that call.

Number 5

The last one and not least is the product. So you can also add products to your listing. Even though I’m a service-based business. I have a lot of my services listed as products. And the reason for this is because then I can add a range of pricing.

I can add photos, I can do a lot more with the product listings. Then I can whip up the service base listings and I just find it, very graphic, very visual, very easy for people to understand those services, especially if you have flat rates. 

If you have set rates, even if you have a range. You don’t even have to list the cost of your product. You can just set a link right to that product. This is good for any business that sells anything online. So if you have any type of product that you have online, you can set these products to your listing. And if you like, have a hundred products. 

How am I going to get those all in there? I recommend you to sit down every Monday and do 10 a week. That way eventually in about 10 weeks, you’re going to have all of your products in there. You’re going to link directly to the purchase page of the product. 

Make it super easy for people to buy from you. Very effective. All of these five hidden secrets are on Google Business Profiles. Or Google, my business is going to change your business. If you use them. I see typical results for our clients in about six to nine weeks where they start getting into that top three, they start getting a lot more phone calls, those kinds of things. 

It’s not an overnight thing, but it’s way more effective than social media. And it’s going to get you where you want to be. As far as revenue. A lot quicker than posting on Facebook, and Instagram. Twitter, all of the things. So I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you have any questions, please email me@amandaatthedeterminedmom or mandated-marketing.com. And you can also visit our website, which is the-marketing.com. 

How to Publish Your Own Book, Course, and Webinar on Amazon in 12 Weeks or Less

Welcome to this episode of The Determined Mom Show, and I have my good friend Scott Smith here with me, and today we’re gonna talk about how to publish your book course and webinar on Amazon in 12 weeks or less.

Hey Amanda, it’s so great to be here with you on your show, The Determined Mom Show. I am a subscriber and a fan, so I love listening to your episodes and it’s great. What an honor and a privilege to be here with you. 

That’s awesome. I am very honored that you’re here. I’ve been following your work for several years now since we met at Clubhouse like. Reminded me earlier, and it’s just amazing the connections that I’ve made through knowing you and it’s just an honor to have you here.

First I wanna talk about you. I know you, your title officially is Motivational Listener, and so I might expound on that a bit. But then also tell us how you happened to Amazon publishing.

The title, Motivational Listener, there’s some brain science that goes behind this, but the bottom line is if you wanna say, what is the goal of being a motivational listener? It is that when we have a conversation, So Amanda, if you and I are speaking and I’m the motivational listener, my goal and outcome is that you leave that conversation feeling better. 

Before we started talking and the term motivational listener, I stole from my wife. And because I’m a good husband, I will always give her credit because one day somebody asked her, I said, Christine, what do you do? And she thought about it and she said, I think very accurately I’m a motivational listener. I said, Christine, I love that and I will always give you credit, but I am stealing that. And that was back in 2016.

It’s a good interrupt pattern, right? We hear lots of motivational speakers, so motivational listeners are a good pattern. Interrupt. And again, the brain science that goes behind that. And that’ll be for a different show. 

That’ll be the next episode. Awesome. So tell us about Amazon publishing and how, how did you get started in that.

It’s really interesting. So like many people, I wanted to write a book and actually, the first book that I wrote is titled Motivational Listener, Be Interesting by Being Interested, A Practical Guide to Being Successful In Business Networking Events.

That’s quite a title, but anyway. It all originated from a talk that I gave at the Social Media Summit in Dublin, Ireland back in 2016 when I first claimed the title of motivational listener, and I’m speaking of this social media event, and there is some deep knowledge there.

On Snapchat for business and Facebook ads and Google and all these different platforms and YouTube. My topic was a little bit broader. It was the psychology and physiology of relationships. And essentially what I did is I looked at the academic research that showed that the relationships that we create digitally can be just as strong as those that we create face to face.

Of course, for the last two and a half years we’ve had a global laboratory that has proven that to be true. Because you and I met, as you said, in the Clubhouse. Then we got together for some different events and the networking event that you have each week. And I’ve been able to attend that.

And also you’ve been a part of the virtual global tea break that we run each month as a co-host. And so we’ve proven that the relationships that we create online can be just as strong. I had this concept, I gave this talk and I turned it into an e-Course to teach people how to connect at business events. And I thought the same thing as you had a guest, Rachel Patterson recently, and she talked about her book.

 It was a short, little 60-page book. And the reason she put it together is that they were having an event and they needed to have this book to give out.

I format, reformatted, and published it on Amazon. Self-published on Amazon. There was no guide. I, this is back in 2018 when it was released. I had to learn everything from scratch. There was no guide. It was painful, but I did it. And like Rachel’s book, I look back on it and I go, But as they say, if you are not embarrassed by your first release, you waited too long.

I love that. That’s so true. Anything that you do, Like even, I’m thinking back to my first podcast episode and I wish I could hide those. I was reading from my Google document and not sure what to say and so nervous that anyone would be hearing what I was gonna say and just all of those things. It’s the same thing, I’m sure with the book.

So then I, so I had the book and I. Another book after that and then, Cause now it’s easier. You get that first one done, then it becomes easier in May of 2021. I was accepted as an Amazon influencer. What that means is that I’m able to broadcast live to the audience on Amazon.

Of course, it’s the world’s largest book retailer. And I happen to know a lot of authors. So Amazon Live is for those people that are unfamiliar with it. You can go to amazon.com/live and watch broadcasts and it’s like the home shopping club and people are saying, Oh look, I got this mug and I got these clothes and I got these items.

It’s a way to, promote and it’s this life as they call ’em, shoppable videos very big in. But relatively new here in us. So I got accepted as an Amazon influencer and I thought I couldn’t, I can talk about products, but I know a lot of people who have written books, so I started doing author interviews.

As I continue to do this, I’m meeting more people who are saying, I would like to write a book too. I have broken the ice, so let me put together a program to help people. To be able to take the content that they’ve already written for the most part. So like yourself, you’re a podcaster.

You write newsletters, and you’ve already generated content. Let’s take that expertise and put it into the world’s largest reseller of books, Retailer of books. And it’s a perfect platform because, I’ll say back in the old days, blogs and then podcasts, which I’m a fan of. Both of those were great ways to showcase your expertise.

And then we were doing eBooks and downloadables on our websites, right? These are lead magnets that we can, we could share out. Then the explosion of short-form videos, especially TikTok. Instagram live videos or reels Facebook, YouTube, short videos. They become a way to communicate with people.

However, people go to TikTok and Instagram to be entertained. So we may find some customers there, some clients and people that we can help, but they’re there to be entertained. So it’s hope in a way. YouTube is great. People go to YouTube to find out how to do things, but generally, it’s a DIY place.

How do I format this? How do I do that, right? The only reason people are on Amazon is to buy something. And although Google is the world’s largest search engine and it owns YouTube, which is also the number two search engine. Amazon is the number one place people go to find things that they can buy to solve problems that they have.

That is so true. I love it. It is interesting to me that there are all of these different places that we can search for, but they’re very specific for very specific things. It’s really about the intent. You’re spot on. Like anything that you need to search, you go to Amazon for anything you need to buy.

You go to Amazon first. It’s so ingrained in our phones, I don’t know, is it in our phone or any, in our electronic devices. That it’s just a natural habit. And I love that you’re putting that together. Solving the problem, like whatever your specific area of expertise is, you’re solving that problem for the person that’s searching for it.

I think that’s a really important thing to point out. And you had mentioned earlier that coaches content creators of any kind that already have all that content out there. This is the perfect place for them.

Absolutely. So a great example is my wife. So she’s launched her business Aging Better Network, and she talks about the aspects of aging. She was also a caregiver and like many families, we have lost family members, lost loved ones, so she wrote a LinkedIn newsletter. Called and it was titled The Care Grievers Kit. 

And so in this LinkedIn newsletter, she shares taking physical things that you can put together in a kit.

So when you have those waves of grief where you miss that person in your life, you can go to this kit and pull things out. There might be some. Items that help you remember a moment with them. Maybe they gave you a birthday card or for my mother. 

We enjoyed watching the movie The Sting when I was young, and so recently I was missing being around my mother, so I turned on the movie, right? And it was very comforting. She brings the newsletter to me. I’m like, This is great. And if you just added a couple of things and we listed those out and she wrote those. And within two weeks, that newsletter was a book on.

That kind of content is so helpful because there isn’t, there’s stuff out there, but I think especially if you have a niche that’s very unusual or very specific, that is just, can be explosive as far as growth goes.

Absolutely. And one of the authors that I often point to is a lady named Barbara Carnes. So she, I’m in Oregon. She lives just over the border in Vancouver, Washington. And Barbara is a registered nurse, back in the eighties, seven, late seventies, and eighties, she was working at the end of life in hospice. 

It’s 15 pages and sells for like $7 and 99 cents on Amazon. So she published that in 1980. And it changed the hospice industry, and she’s written several books. Most of them are under 30 pages. She’s written some longer books as well. But this is what she started with, that 15-page book that she released in 1985 since then has sold over 35 million copies and it’s 15 pages, so it’s 80,000 copies a month. Books, booklets, whatever you wanna call them, are going out. 

It solves one problem. It addresses it, it tells people what they need to know. And when people are going through an end-of-life, the situation with a family member, they don’t want a 200-page book not, it’ll have time, everything, and stories, right? It just, gives me what I need right now. And so she put that together and she did that. I encourage people. Don’t try to solve everything.

Don’t try to put all of your knowledge into that one book. Think of your book as a series of books. Later on, you can compile them into a longer book. If that’s gonna be helpful, then it may be. But the important thing is that you take your ideal audience, you. Take a common problem they have presented and offer a solution that way you can have an impact. Because think of all the business books. 

You’re probably like me, I have a shelf full of business books that I haven’t read or haven’t read completely. And the other thing is I haven’t implemented anything out of most of those books, but give people one problem. So Your expertise in the Google business profile, formerly Google My Business, Google Places that there, you can put together a 300-page book on how to manage this, but maybe it’s just a 20-page book that tells people how to claim theirs. 

Just to get started, right? Then the next one is how to do posts, how to do, how to respond. Then another book about how to manage, how get, and manage your reviews. Now, later on, you can compile them all, but each one of those steps along the way gives them a specific item that they can implement right away, and that’s what’s important. That’s how you change lives. 

I love the idea of you not only putting out this consumable content that answers questions but also using that to attract people to what you do. If you’re a coach, you’re using it to get clients. If you’re an agency like us, we would be using that same book to get clients as well. So tell us a little bit about that aspect of it and how it works.

Absolutely. So one of the benefits. Of course, we’re self-publishing, so you have control. In the old days, if you were going to use traditional publishing, you would have to find an agent, because publishers only speak to agents. They don’t speak to the authors. It’ll take you about a year to find an agent. That agent will probably take a year to find a publisher who is interested in your book.

Then you’re looking at a two-year process too. So four years from the time that you go, I have an idea that will help people till the time that it gets in their hands. So you can get your ideas to market quickly. And I’ll give an example later about how I’m doing this currently with a joint book.

But the problem with selling books on Amazon is that they don’t tell you who bought your book or she. That person’s email with you. So you’ve got the book there getting helped. So the key in the self-published book especially is putting hyperlinks into the book that go directly to gated content. So content that is specific to your book, but requires them to share their email. 

So what I recommend is, as you go. Here are these concepts. We’ve got this problem. Here’s the solution, but let’s help you apply this directly in your life or to your business, whatever type of coach you are. I have exclusive free content for the people who buy this book. Click on the link, take some to your website, capture their email, and then take them through. 

My recommendation is to do three videos. We want to connect your face and your voice with the solution to their problem. And again, there’s brain science that goes behind this, right? So we want them to see your face, hear your voice, get, and connect that up with the solution to the problem.

So in the first video, you tell them what it is they’re gonna do and why they want to do this. In the second one, you give them the layout. What it is they need to do. So it might be taking an inventory or filling a worksheet out or some other item that they need to do. And the third one, you provide an interpretation of that, and here’s what you do.

Now, of course, this is solving one problem and it’s providing one solution, and coaches and consultants have many more items that they can solve than they can. In the videos, you’re always reminding them, Now I’m just solving this one problem for you. There are many more things. There are a lot of things that combine into this, and if you’re interested in learning more, here’s how you can do business with me.

And so you can enroll them into different email sequences. Courses, whether they’re free, mid-value, high-value, or whatever it is you have to offer. But now you’ve captured their email and so you’re using Amazon as part of your lead magnet, the top part of your funnel. 

That’s awesome. And it’s ingenious. Like I love the idea of. I never really feel connected with an author unless I’m also listening to the audiobook. If I’ve purchased the book, I read it and then I listen to the audiobook. That’s the only way that I feel connected to them. But I love the idea of doing the audio end video because that is gonna really like, just bring it full circle.

That’s amazing. And you recommend 20 to 40 pages? Nothing. The huge pull of existing content. I will say, Scott and I had our recall a couple of weeks ago and he inspired me during that call. He’s Look, you have all this content lying around. You have all these episodes already recorded.

You have everything that you probably need to write a book, so just go look and see what you have. And I ended up pulling, I think probably 30. Either piece of webinar or podcast episodes or some sort of audio content that I already have. I rip the transcripts using the descript. They’re already written, pop them in Google Drive in documents, and I have at least 10 books already.

That took me probably maybe four hours. I’m thinking of just going through the same grade. And I’m like, Oh my God, I have all this content. And I didn’t even think about it. And I just, I obviously wanna say thank you for bringing that ease into my mind because I didn’t even think it would be that easy.

Not only that but just giving us this method that you’ve created to make it easy, step by step. I’m also following along with your 12-week email series, and that is helping me to stay focused every week, every Friday now, because I signed up on the day that we had our pre-call. Every Friday I get the email and I just follow along and I think it’s amazing.

Thank you, and I’m, I am grateful that you’re taking that knowledge that’s been inside your head or stuck on podcasts. You’re extracting that out of your brain and sharing that with the world because they need this information. They need what Amanda Tento has to offer, and people learn in different ways, so providing it to them in a different way is the right thing to do. 

I know I have some friends that like don’t listen to podcasts at all, so they would benefit from some of the content on the podcast, but they’re just not podcast people. I feel like shifting this into a different medium is gonna be helpful as well.

The course that you’re going through is a free course that I offer on the website, and I call it the pip method. Publish, Instruct, and Promote. And so it’s taking that information, you have published it, Instruct, that’s creating that exclusive course where you capture their email and then promote and do that as a webinar.

Of course, my recommendation is to go live on Amazon with me. So I have a paid mastermind, and so people who go through that with me, we do a webinar on Amazon, which is permanently housed on the Amazon servers. So you can always point to people, Oh, you can go learn more about what I have to offer and give them that link.

Again, it’s a shoppable video. Now, shoppable video means. As they’re watching the video, your book is in the carousel. It’s right below that video to buy the book. All they have to do is click on it, it opens a new tab, and then they can hit add the cart. And this is opposed to using a nonshoppable video.

Let’s say you put that same content out on YouTube, you say go watch my video. They watch it and then they go, now go to the show notes and scroll down and find the link and click that and then go to this other platform where you can access the book, but you can direct people directly to there.

So when I do these Amazon live videos, not only is it live to the audience on Amazon and permanently available, you can always point people. I provide a full MP4 copy of that interview, of that webinar so that the author can then post the full thing, they can edit it up, put it on their book page, their author page, their website, social media, anything that they wanna do to promote it. So it’s really fun and I love doing this.

And it’s very evergreen. Once you have written your book, once you have started that promotion, once you’ve done your webinar with Scott, then you know you have all of this stuff already done and said, and all you have to do is just refer people. I love that.

I think making things as simple as possible for us as business owners and a lot of our listeners are moms, so combining all of the stuff we have going on, makes it so much easier. So I love it.

How can people get into your paid mastermind? How can they sign up for the 12-week email series course?

The best thing to do is to go to my website, d Scott smith.com and there you can sign up for the free course. and also you can request access to the paid Mastermind course. Of course, I recommend that people start with the free course and get started and see if it’s really interesting to them. I’m a huge fan of masterminds. I am a part of a paid mastermind for over three and a half years now. Iron sharpens.

I always tell people, Look, I pay for this Mastermind and I could lease a very nice car for what I pay for that. But masterminds are hugely important. If you want to be successful in your business, don’t do it alone. Get into a Mastermind. Have people hold you accountable. 

And in one of the episodes I have on my podcast, which is Publish your book, we talk about goals. Dr. Gal Matthews from d the Dominican University outta California gives five steps that you need to do to be successful and have goals is the first one. The second one is to write down your goals. 

The third is to develop a plan to meet your goals. Fourth is to tell somebody about your goals. It helps you formulate it when you have to communicate it. But the fifth is to have someone hold you accountable, and that’s what happens in a mastermind. 

I am a huge fan of masterminds as well, and I had ambitions, and someday I may still run a mastermind.

I have run them before, but I haven’t done it. Or so but I love them and I love participating as well. So I think that this is an invaluable resource for you. If you are out there, you’re listening and you’re ready to either write your book or maybe you’ve even already written the book. I’m sure there is a lot of content in that mastermind that can help to move that book along a little bit further.

I wanna throw one more reason out there for writing your book. And it’s about adding to your body of work, to your legacy. And, I think back to my parents, grandparents, great grandparents, if they had written books, I would treasure those. And I know you have a growing family. Congratulations. I just think, imagine when you publish your book that your children are gonna go, Oh, this is mom’s book and someday this is great Grandma Amanda’s book, right? So create that legacy today. 

Take that information that you have and publish it. It’s your point of view. It’s the synthesis of what you have pulled together, you’ve created. It is different from anything else in the universe. Nobody else does what Amanda does. So when you publish it, you capture it and you add to your body at work, you add to your legacy.  

I love that. But if that doesn’t reason enough for anybody that’s listening to write your book, then I don’t know what is. Thank you so much for being here. We truly appreciate you. We appreciate your expertise and I hope that anyone listening is gonna be signing up for your email course because you have to. I’ve already done it so I can tell you that it’s really good.