How to Go From Struggling Single Mom to Mompreneur with Emma Ferrick-Trigger Warning-Abuse

Welcome to this episode of The Determined Mom Show today, I have the lovely Emma Farrick with us, and she is going to talk about how to go from struggling single mom to mom so welcome, Emma. 

And this is your second time on the podcast, which is very exciting. You were on episode one 70 talking about the importance of having a virtual headquarters to grow your remote team. So I’m very excited to have you back. And today we’re gonna talk about a more personal issue, personal slash business. 

So I’m very excited about that. Before we get started. I know you’ve already introduced yourself last time, but this time you can introduce yourself in a little bit of a different way and explain how you became a single mom and kind the story behind that.

So it’s related to my business but in a different sense. So almost three years now I was, I found out. I guess four years, cause my daughter will be four here in a couple of weeks. That I found out I was expecting, but it was not an ideal or planned situation. And I was just about to graduate college, I was on top of that, a young mom and in a not-ideal situation.

When I found out I was expecting and I wanted to do what I thought was best for our daughter. And that was with her biological dad at the time. It wasn’t until after she was born that I realized like there were red flags before she was born, but I just told myself. It’s not what it is, everything that you say to yourself to make it seem not so bad. 

And it wasn’t until after she was born, the physical abuse started there had been emotional, mental, and financial abuse throughout the whole relationship. And finally, when she was about 10 months old, I went to the hospital for a broken nose and just a bunch of bruising. And I knew from others. Personal experiences because my aunt had gone through a similar experience growing up. 

So I knew to go document it. How, and what kind of processes needed to happen? Like calling the police to have witnesses and things like that. So I went to the hospital to get everything documented, and that was life-changing. Point in my life where I was like, I can’t keep this up. 

I had to do something better for my daughter and that’s when I became a single mom. I decided after I left the hospital, went to file a PFA, went to file all the paperwork to charge him with assault, and everything like that. And that set off the chain of events of, putting on going through this struggle as a single mom, realizing I didn’t want to.

Be financially controlled by someone because he was the type of person who, if I send you child support, I expect this and this. I want this time with her. I want this. Or, still trying to use money as a manipulation. Because he constantly would tell me, you’re not good enough. You’re not smart enough. You’ll never start a business.

 Cuz that was something I’ve always wanted to do. And fresh outta college, I was in no position. So I thought about starting a business. It was a single income and I was drowning in bills, drowning in expenses. And I didn’t want to have any ties with him. So I was like, what can I do to provide an extra income for me, for us, and not have to sacrifice time with my daughter? 

And that’s what led to my business. Discovering the online space and how incredible it was. And at first, I was like, oh, maybe I’ll do blogging. And then I was like, no, I’m a terrible writer. So I picked VA work because I already had a background in corporate life and it was the easiest way for me to start my business and. 

Then my business started to grow and with COVID everything that happened, I went full time and I just continued to niche further down and to get to the point where I am today, where I’m operations and system specialist. So have you heard of the last episode? I won’t get into that part, but that’s the series of events that led to it. 

Okay. That’s it. It’s a very brave story. I think that’s the best word to describe it because the things that you’ve gone through obviously have been very difficult. And for you to know at that moment, when you’re in the hospital, like this is never going to happen again. 

Takes a lot of bravery to front, if that makes sense, because a lot of women think, oh, he’s not, this is just a one-time thing. It’s not gonna happen again. And then they go back and it keeps happening repeatedly. 

And then, it’s just harder and harder to leave. Yeah, that was the hospital one. The first time. Okay. So I wanted audience members to know. Sorry. You guys can hear the baby’s coughing.

We love this. exactly got a multitask. But that wasn’t the first time, and I had actually moved out of our house once before after an argument and him basically throwing me and my daughter. 

When she was only a couple of months old, we heard the promise of I’ll change. I’ll change this, that, and the other thing. We went to two therapy sessions. He manipulated the therapist into, basically, he heard the one thing that he wanted to hear that the therapist was like, you have postpartum, you need to get help. And I was like, I’m already seeing a therapist myself. 

This is, there’s more to this conversation than just my postpartum and you’re not carrying his side or what, anything, so as soon as he heard The therapist say, you, you need to get help. You’re postpartum depression. That’s just all he needed. And it was like, I’m not going back. You’re the problem. You need to get help. 

And I was like, I’m already going. I’m not the one who’s throwing us out of the house. I’m not the one who’s making it difficult. And there was another time where he almost left me in Cleveland and took my car like, wow. Left me stranded almost basically. And that was like one of the other times that was like the first physical piece. Gonna like left marks and everything. But once I went to the hospital, I was like, I can keep hiding this. 

Cause everybody, no one had known really up until that point And it was so hard for me to even like the nurses at the ho in the emergency room were just the kindest women. I wish I remembered all of their names because yeah. They were like, you need to report this cuz they see this kind of stuff. So they were like, you need to report this. You need to call your parents.

Cuz at the time I was the only one. 22 and no one in I lived on my own, I just graduated college in this city. My parents were two hours away. And I think that was the hardest phone call. Having to make that phone call to my mom and say, this is what’s been going on. Can you come to pick me up from the hospital, basically that’s because you don’t want anybody to know. You’re experiencing this. 

And I think that’s also a very common thing that happens is that nobody does know, and people are like, surprised wow, that person did this to you. No, I don’t think so. And then it makes it harder to believe and it, yeah, it’s just a very vicious cycle.

Yeah. And he, his, it didn’t help that he liked financially. Control over his family cuz they always needed help with money and he was always the one helping them. But then when it came to everything that happened, they of course took his side even after seeing the proof they were like, you’re just, you’re the one who’s causing the problem I was like, but no, I don’t think so. 

I’m, you cuz of gaslighting and mental abuse, you start to believe that, especially if you’re in this situation, they isolate you. That’s the biggest thing. And I didn’t even realize what was going on until I took a step back objectively months after we had been outta the relationship. I did. I realize that’s what was happening. 

Yeah. Wow. You mentioned some red flags. Do you wanna just mention a couple of those just in case anybody that’s listening is experiencing this right now? Or thinks that they might be so that way they can maybe catch it early before that physical abuse starts because it is an escalation.

Yeah, it’s an escalation. And one of my favorites, there’s a book. I’ll have to send you the name of it, so you can put it in the show notes that it’s all about narcissistic abuse. And AF I read that because of my therapist. It’s about surviving a narcissistic narcissist abuse. 

That’s why the title is something more specific, but I’ll send you the link after because the name is escaping me, but it, when I read that book, I was like, these are all the red flags that I noticed but didn’t have a name for and it wasn’t until after that I could pinpoint it, but it was, two months in, I had found out I was pregnant and then after.

When we got into that discussion, I was like, I’m keeping the baby. This is what I want. I found out he had been lying about his aid. It’s a huge red flag. Number one. That’s a really big one. yeah. So he told me he was 27. Cause at the time I was 22, not that big of an age gap, he’s 30. There’s a huge big age gap. 

So like they build you up and then they like to completely knock you down. And just to see how far they can push you. So he would cause these big blow bites and make it my fault.

And I never realized, looking. He was just blowing these things out of proportion. And then they would get followed up with ex like extremely nice gifts. So those were some of the big red flags.

And when I was pregnant towards the end, he was like, never home. Never I was, could have been due any day. He would be gone, I don’t even know. I don’t know where. And so like those kinds of red flags, just not being treated properly, at all or showing any kind, kind of respect.

And I had so much else going on in my life at the time, not just only being pregnant, and graduating, I had other personal family stuff going on. So I was so just blinded by it. Everything that I couldn’t see. Cuz there, it was the least of my focus at that time. 

You were busy and it was, the busyness was keeping you from actually analyzing your situation and evaluating and feeling probable.

Yeah. And I was like, what am I supposed to do? Eight months pregnant or seven months pregnant. Like I wanna leave, but I can’t like, I just, there was all these. Practical factors and the pressure of society of I just was so under my head, in my head of, I don’t want my child to come from a broken home.

That was what I would tell myself because I just didn’t want to be that stereotype. But then when all the abuse started happening, it finally clicked in my head. I was like, it’s better. And somewhat I forget who said this means she should have a split home than see her mom. Be abused or put down constantly and did not have that like level of self, not realizing his worth like that. Wasn’t what I wanted to model for her.

That’s very true. Very true. So we’ve gone over the red flags, you mentioned financial abuse and for someone that’s giving you extravagant gifts for them to withhold money from you seems contradictory, especially knowing that he’s supporting his family. How did you overcome that or did that get overcome? As, when you left okay, now I’m gone and now I have control of my finances. Yeah.

The financial peace was a, it was like when I left, I realized, I constantly would think I didn’t, and I was not good at budgeting too. Cause I was so young and it was my first time dealing with normal bills and I had some in college. But then on top of that factoring in, child expenses, and daycare, cuz I was working full time. All the extra stuff. I just didn’t think I could afford everything. And he just could keep reiterating, you can’t afford this by yourself.

You’re not gonna be able to afford the rent by yourself. And I just thought, you’re right. I can’t like having to keep everything split. He would have, he had money and would just I was always a point of argument though, for us, yeah. And making me feel bad. Anything and everything, or just making me feel bad for buying groceries or in access.

There are just all these random things that would just make me feel bad about anything. But the finance piece was, he would always say you’re not gonna be able to support yourself or you need me was always the underlying message. Because you’re gonna be stuck. Like you were gonna be stuck at this corporate career.

And then once I finally left, I had to get serious about my finances by writing all of them down. What did I have to pay? What was just like a necessity? How much was I making? I knew how much I was making monthly, but what kind of discrepancy was there, and how was I gonna cover it?

And for a long time, I lived with my aunt. Thank God. So she didn’t charge us rent or anything like that. And she helped me get on my feet. So we didn’t have to live in a shelter. Which would’ve been the other option. But I didn’t realize how many resources and I was so blinded that I just asked for help because I didn’t, it was really like pride and thinking, I don’t want people to know that this is happening.

And I think that’s a very common human condition. Like anything that happens in your life, you’re like, okay. I would rather, no one knows about this, but yeah. If it comes out, then it comes out and you just have to go from where you are.

And it was really like the fears of my home head. So after starting my business, I’ve noticed. This is a lot more. Cause like when you’re an entrepreneur, you have all these fears of what people are gonna think and you have to address a lot of mindset issues. But those mindset issues were also playing a part in a lot of those mindset issues.

The abuse is like making it public. It was the same thing. It was a fear of how other people were gonna respond. I was so worried about what other people were gonna think. And half the time, the response that I thought they were gonna have wasn’t that at all, even close, like they were super supportive. They were understanding all of this stuff, it was just all the fear that had been made up. In my head, trying to. Keep me, I don’t know. It was all the subconscious. 

It’s trying to keep you where he wants you and where he has told you that you belong all that time, and yeah definitely not good for you. One kind of question that I have is if there is anybody listening because obviously, the goal of this episode is to help other women that may be experiencing the same thing right now.

How. Did you go through that process of leaving? Did you just leave all of your stuff? Did you just never go back to the house after you left the hospital, how did you separate finances? I think those are logistical questions that are never really addressed, but I think they do need to be addressed.

So yes. So luckily we weren’t. My situation is different from some people’s. If you’re usually a little bit different once you’re married, luckily we were not legally. We didn’t have anything legal finding us together in no official finances together. Like we kept most of everything. Like we knew our joint bills, but we didn’t have any accounts together, or like I wasn’t.

So he didn’t have access to my money, which was good. That’s a lot harder, I think. And I’ve talked to women who’ve experienced it. Where it’s a different circumstance in that it takes a little bit more. Cause my now mother-in-law is an advocate cause she went through something very similar. So now she’s an advocate and we’ve talked and talked about a lot of her cases.

It requires a couple of weeks more planning sometimes to get some people out, depending on the situation But there are resources like that where women’s advocates are. The women’s shelter is somewhere I called after everything happened. So the logistics of what, when I left was to go to the court.

File protection from abuse order, emergency protection of abuse order, cuz it was the weekend. So in our county, it was something called a night court. If you’re listening and you might have something different in your county or you might be able to go to the police station and file some type of report so once you got that, you.

Since I put our house, our shared house in the protection of abuse, he wasn’t allowed to come there. He was arrested. The night before, when everything happened, there was physical abuse shown, like I was physically injured. In Pennsylvania, they have to arrest on the scene if someone is physically injured and then you can decide if you want to continue pressing charges, which I did, which was a whole year-long process.

But He was, he had to leave so I could stay there and collect and figure everything out. And I stayed there for probably about a year or so because once he got outta jail, he could still find me and the police didn’t do that. Like much, cuz one it was a couple of days after he had gotten outta jail, we were at the house and he was like circling the house, trying to get ahold of me.

I had blocked him on stuff. But he had tried to message me and was trying to find out where I was and I called the police at, I don’t know midnight. And they were like, you have to go to night court. And I was like, okay, thank you. I’m still alive at eight hours when the night court opens. I will go there.

There are Difficulties. And it always depends on the county and what they’ll do. And the police are always their entity. There is a lot of police that help me, but there is a lot of police that don’t wanna get involved cuz it’s family. So I was like, okay, I have to leave.

I can’t stay here. We, I left a bunch of stuff that would’ve caused a bite, like anything that was shared or bought during anything that wasn’t. Clearcut mine or clearcut Charlottes. I took it, and I left. So I took whatever I needed. My mom and dad were like, don’t even think about it. We can buy you new stuff.

Don’t worry about the money. Just like we need to go. Then I went and moved in with my aunt, but I did call the women’s shelter a lot. Cause they have support groups for women who are transitioning through that. And most counties or states have some type of version of this or multiple kinds.

Private, some are government funded, but they have resources and support groups to help you through shelters. So if anyone’s listening and they’re like, how can I help? I always advocate donating to the shelters because there are so many kids and so many moms, who don’t even get the chance to pack, or pack their stuff up and have to leave with nothing.

So that was the logistical aspect. Getting protection from abuse was like being able to stay in the house and collect my stuff. And if he needed to come and get anything that like the police had to be there but it just depends on the situation, but there are those resources, like the women’s shelter or some type of female advocate groups that can and will help you.

If you have to leave with nothing and then the finance piece is. I had been saving for a while, putting some money away to have a nest egg. Cause I knew it was coming, but I didn’t know how, what, like how it was gonna happen. I just knew I was trying to save this money so that I could leave after she turned one.

Like I was like, okay, if I make it to one, she had a year with us both, but I can’t keep doing this so you can store some money away. Not gonna get you in, like in trouble or put you in a dangerous circumstance. Like you can hide money or give money to somebody to hold onto for you. Or start a name, bank account in your name, or something. That’s usually a good way to do it. So if you’re, if you have signed a prep or worried about finances.

Yeah, that makes sense. And it makes sense if you’re married, I think the holding of the money by another individual, like a, I guess a friend or a family member or someone that you trust would probably be a good idea because I don’t know. I guess you get online bank statements now. I don’t know. I guess it depends on everybody’s situation and how involved they are. Everything is, like you said, every day. 

Not holding onto the material piece and that money, you need the money, but there’s a lot of groups and people out there who can help you because I know of a group locally to us that I just talked to. They. Started to go fund for someone and were able to like, or they had donors and they were able to raise six or $7,000 for this woman and her child who were homeless and the air, like just to help them get their life back on track. 

So there are resources out there for any of the situations. So don’t hold onto it. They don’t let the material aspect of it. Hold you back. Some people will help you. It’s just getting in touch with them. There are so many that wanna help. 

This is amazing advice and amazing that you’re sharing your experience with us and I truly appreciate it. So how did you use this experience? Build your business. That’s really where it started, right? 

A lot. And I always say my business is what helped my healing. Like I did go to therapy. I was going to therapy before the relationship ended. That was the crazy part. Not even my therapist knew. Cause because I didn’t wanna bring that kind of stuff up, even though we were in therapy. So she didn’t know about the abuse.

After I had left, which was like a whole can of worms, I started the business. When I was like that, I ran out of options. I can’t keep staying in my company. I liked my corporate job. It was safe, and it felt good, but I was like, I need something more. And I had, no, I felt no control over my money. In corporate.

And so I had found all these books, all these podcasts, and it led me on my journey of self-healing and self-love and self-acceptance. Cuz I met so many other women. Who helped me on my journey. Like my first VA client was a life coach and she ended up helping me with a lot of my business. Helping me with that self-love and self-acceptance piece, because I had felt so crappy about where I was at.

So the journey of my business got me in contact with so many women and so many other people that were gonna help me on my journey. And I didn’t realize it yet. And I’ve met so many women. Who’s gone through an experience like I have because I’m so vocal about it because that was also part of the healing? 

If I’m making it through this, I’m helping other people get through this because I listened to so many stories like this on podcasts or books. And I could, I was like, okay if they can do it, I can do it. Like we just, it’s just one step at a time. But I would, I met so many life coaches or healers of different sorts. There were so many healing tools that I didn’t even know about until I met them at a networking event or some type of other business event or through a friend like rapid transformation therapy.

I’ve done that, and that helps wonders with just some subconscious fears. That was still holding onto me. Like I thought I had, out, I was over everything with him. I was out of it. Like I had met my now fiance and, I felt good, but it was really like the fear of him and his, my ex and my abuser, his repercussions were holding me back.

The thought of it was holding me back at the beginning of my business of success. So I was so afraid to get big and so afraid to like, actually do what I wanted because of what happens if he finds out and what happens, this, that, and the other. So that was like a huge part of the journey, but Yeah, rapid transformation therapy.

I worked with a coach. She’s not a coach. She does inner healing, but it’s very spiritual, very niche, not like mainstream or talked about, but she has her way of doing it through religion and I am religious. And so it was crazy how much one of those sessions helped because of me. Pregnant at the time.

And I was so stuck on all these subconscious things. Not only with my ex, but, yeah. Just another living thing that I was stuck on and pregnancy alone is one of those, one of those life things. So it was crazy how after we went through one of these sessions, my morning sickness, Totally cut down because I was holding so much tension in me that it was causing extra morning sickness.

It’s just, there’s all these things that these people don’t know about until they know, but that my business became a way for me to meet all these women and help other women who also experience this. And they were like, I had to start my business because. A similar situation or, and then it grew and now we’re working together because I’m helping them streamline and take back.

Their life is almost in a sense there are again because the business overran it and they’re like, they love their business, but it was taking up almost every hour of their day and they wanna be home with their kids. So what kind of tools can we put in place to help them do that? So that’s where the message stems from. Because of connecting with so many women who were in similar positions as me.

That is amazing. And I think for me, that is one of my favorite parts of being an online business owner. And I’m not even gonna say business owner because I connected with business owners. I had a brick-and-mortar like 15 years ago and I connected with people, but it’s not the same.

Like you make such deep connections online. Are impossible to make in person. And I don’t know how to explain it. You spend more time with people online. I think that sounds weird and backward, but especially since the pandemic, I’ve. Met some of the people that I’ve made friendships with online and it feels like I’ve never I’ve just known them forever. Like in person, it’s just so interesting.

I wouldn’t agree cuz I talk to my clients or potential people on my mastermind people, I talk to them a lot more like even my fiance. My one client, who’s you talk to her more than you talk to me. And we live in the same house and we’re always slacking on Facebook messaging and tagging each other and stuff.

You do get to know them because you’re talking to them every day. On a very deep level. Where I think you don’t talk like this. I know I never talk like this to people in my corporate job, when. An online business owner. I think the mental piece is so much more talked about.

As well. Yeah. And I think that’s the other part, one of the parts that are so restrictive about being working for someone else and having that. The expectation of, you can talk about this. You can’t talk about that. That is a very freeing part of it. 

Not only the time you can control, but also what you do with your time. But you can also control who you’re around, your environment. You have so much more control of so many things being an entrepreneur. And I think that’s huge. 

And I think that’s a double-edged sword in a sense. I was thinking about this the other day. Cause I’m. I finally deleted slack off my phone and I’m like, cuz you can work anywhere. But it’s the boundary of not working all the time. And like whenever you have a free moment. Yeah, and I was like, I had let slack overrun so much, and like my email overrun so much because of it. It’s like setting up those boundaries as well, in a sense too. 

And I’m sure that you’ve created a wonderful system for that. So I do not doubt checking and keeping up with it and, I’m sure you have some sort of system in place for that. 

It’s getting perfected because things look different now with having two kids, instead of one before my maternity leave, it was different. And I was definitely on the verge of burnout just from saying yes to too many projects and not bringing on enough help right away.

But now it’s at every stage of your life. And this is, I do this with business owners too. Your life changes. So your processes are gonna change with your, when with your business, as it grows, you’re gonna have different needs. Then when you start up and then when versus when you reach 200,000 or 500,000 things like that.

That’s so true. Thank you so much for sharing your story and being brave enough to talk about it. That’s a huge deal in itself. And going through it is a whole nother aspect. That’s not even, measurable. 

Thank you so much for being here. Is there anything else that you wanna share with the audience that is listening? About, if they’re going through this what would you have wanted to hear at that moment?

I feel like I’ve heard so many things that did help and I’m trying to pinpoint the one that just resonated the most, but it’s hard to believe that you’re going through this, that you are strong enough to get through, and that there is light at the end of the tunnel. 

If you take it one day at a time, do not let the anxiety affect the next year. Just taking it one day at a time. And do not let what you can’t control bother you because it gets better with time. honestly. That’s a great message. 

That’s awesome. Thank you so much, Emma, for being here. If people wanna get in touch with you, what is the best way to do that? 

If you follow me at El underscore operations, and if you’re going through this and need someone to talk to, my DMS is always open in a safe space and I can help you find any resources that you need.

That is wonderful. Thank you for that resource. You’re a huge resource then. So thanks. 

I try as I’ve connected with so many different kinds of programs and people which has been great yeah. To get that kind of network building. And we will put the link to the book that you’re talking about in the show notes as well.

If you’re going through it, I recommend cuz it’ll be an eye-opener that you’re not the, it was so weird to see the parallels that you’re not the only one going through it. Cause you feel like you are. 

Thank you for sharing everything with us and thank you so much for being here. 

Connect with Emma Ferrick

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Join My Favorite Networking Group for Mom Business Owners

Welcome to episode 215 of The Determined Mom Show. I am your host, Amanda Tento, and I am so excited to be sharing with you all about Mob Nation. What is the Mob Nation? It is my favorite business networking group, and it is literally All about moms and business owners. So M O B stands for mom-owned businesses.

So all of the business owners in this networking group are moms and a lot of them focus on moms, being a mom in their business. But a lot of them are just, like real estate agents and contractors and anything that you can imagine, they are here and it is such a huge and diverse group.

I love it. And they’ve been featured in many news organizations throughout the country. But to be honest, the thing that I love the most is you really get to know these women like family. I’ve been involved in the MOB in some way for probably about two and a half years. And Aria, who is the founder, the original founder.

It was on the podcast in, I think early 2020, and a lot of the guests that have been on our podcast are actually women that I’ve met in the mob. So such a great networking opportunity. I have resources out of the wazoo from being involved in the mob and knowing this person does that, and just getting to know these women over the last few years has been amazing.

So I wanna take a minute to read their mission statement so you understand what is going on with the mob. The MOB Nation is an anti-racist organization.

We are a safe, inclusive space that welcomes anyone that identifies as a mother and owns any size or type of business. We protect our members of the LGBTQ IA plus community. No hate, bigotry, or racism is ever tolerated in our community. This is such a great group of women.

There are many things that you can do in MOB One. Things that you can do right now are you can create a free directory listing and I’ve included the link to that in the show notes. So you can just go and grab your free listing and at least be listed on their website. And this will give you some SEO juice as well.

So that’s another bonus there. So they have a very popular website so you can get some SEO juice there. They have a free Facebook group that has a lot of resources in there where you can find others. Mobs or MOB own businesses to solicit. So if you’re looking for something in particular, you’re looking for a copywriter, you can jump in that group and say, Hey, does anybody know a mom’s own business or MOB, as they call it, that does Copywrite and.

People will chime in and say, Oh, this person. And then you can go and find them. They also have a LinkedIn group, a Discord server, and so many different things. They have a subreddit. And there is also a podcast. They have a lunch information kind of thing, like where you can listen to different speakers at lunch.

I started as a director of the mob in Olympia, Washington in 2020 and the very day. That it was March 17th, 2020. I’ll never forget it. The very day that I was supposed to host my first networking event, it got canceled because of Covid. So that is how it goes. And the company, the organization has transformed and gone with the. Networking, like the virtual networking event.

So now you don’t ever have to worry about missing an event and you don’t have to worry about going in person. They do occasionally hold in-person networking events, and those are primarily in the Pacific Northwest. However, I think they’re up to about three times per week for virtual networking events.

It is. Worth it to join the mob even if you are just for right now, to get started, create your free directory listing and join the free Facebook group. See if it’s for you. If you like, kinda like the vibe and enjoy the people and those kinds of things because. It is a business changer if you are a mom-owned business.

So I hope that you join us in the mob and I just wanted to share it with you because I know a lot of the audience is moms, who own businesses and moms, business owners like you, I wanted to make sure that you have the access to that resource. I would love to see you as a mom. Talk to you soon and have a great week.

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How to Leave Your Job and Start Your Own Business From Abroad with Naa Ardua Flohic

Welcome to this episode of The Determined Mom Show. I have the lovely Nawa flow with me, and she is the owner of paper flow designs. And today we are gonna talk about how to leave your job and start your own business from abroad.

I’m very excited that you’re here and that you’re gonna share all of your knowledge about this because you are literally an expert in doing this. So I’m excited about that, but tell us about you and how you got started, and what you’re doing. 

All right. A little bit about me. Where did I start? I am an ex-pat, which means that I am an American and I live somewhere else. I live in Europe. I am a mom of two, and I am also a digital illustrator and a blogger. So I’ve been living here in France for about 16 years now. I haven’t had my business for all of that time. 

It’s only been official that I’ve done all the paperwork for my business since January, if you can believe that, but I’ve been working on it. So I’ve liked side hustling for the past three years. 

And then this year, in January, I knew that was a date I was gonna launch. And, do all of the things to be. So I have been an official logger illustrator since January and doing it from the south of France. 

First of all, let me just say no, I’m just kidding. Obviously, it’s a dream place to live and obviously to work. So I think that you have a huge advantage in that you have beautiful weather almost all year round, right? That’s true. 

And you just have a great place to work. So I think that’s a huge benefit and that’s what you can get from picking somewhere in the world that you wanna move to and starting your own business. 

Yeah. So let’s talk about how that process went for you. Like how did you, what were you doing before you started your business, and then how did you know you wanted to start a business and then how did you start that side hustle process, work through that? And then finally build up to that okay. I am not working for anyone else.

 All right. I was never one of those people who just knew that they wanted to be an entrepreneur. I know some people feel like they’re born entrepreneurs. I was always that person who was scared. Just to be honest, I thought I was always gonna work with someone else.

It’s just safe. I don’t want to take the risk of working for someone else. And It wasn’t just like an overnight thing either. I was talking to my cousin one day. This was like six, no, four, four or five years ago now.

 And she knew that I was artistic and I have always grown up drawing and painting, the thing is like you have kids and then you forget about all the things that you used to love to do.

And I put that aside and I hadn’t done anything for years. So she was just asking me, what are you doing with your art? And why don’t you do anything anymore? And I’m. Oh, when you have kids, you just don’t have time. You’re tired. After work. At that time, I was working in an office as a secretary law.

In a bilingual law firm here. And I just would come home, pick up the kids after school, make dinner, do baths, and read stories. And I’m like, I don’t wanna do anything, but just watch mindless television and have everyone leave me alone. Put my phone on silent and that’s it.

But my cousins do something with your passion. Like she’s you’ve only got one life to live and she’s an entrepreneur. And then she’s also a mom. So she knows all of the hardships and everything. And she’s looking, you are probably gonna regret this. Years down the line you never did anything. 

She’s just starting from somewhere. Do one small thing. So after like endless nagging with her. I finally decided to start making some drawings, but I had to rewind, I had to learn digital drawing because up until now, up until then I knew how to do traditional classic drawing paper and pencil painting, but I wanted to get into digital drawing cuz I saw that’s what was like, new and trending what was coming up.

So I had to start learning and I know like a lot of people you are thinking like, when I wanna start something, I don’t know. It’s kinda like the chicken and the egg, like which one comes first, cuz you’re like, I wanna do this. I wanna start a business.

I wanna make money. But I don’t have the skills. So where do I start? And I don’t have the time. So I just started learning. I picked instead of watching mindless TV, and every night, I started learning how to draw. I would set my timer to 25 minutes a night on those little Palmora timers and just start learning how to draw. And within a couple of months, I started building slowly skill by skill.

And then I started posting my work on Instagram. I don’t know why I got the urge to do that. Or the nerves to do that. I was like, oh, you know what? I think my cousin was like if you’re doing something, I wanna see it. Prove that you’re actually doing this thing.

But nobody said anything like that. People are not as mean as you think that they might be on the internet. And I got an order. I got some guy who wrote me in my DMS and he’s Hey, can you make a drawing for me? I have a company where I make t-shirts for kids who are multicultural, like kids’ company. And he wanted me to make a drawing of Michelle Obama.

And I’m like, what? I’m like, is this a prank? Is this someone who knows me? But no, he was a real guy who wanted to pay me real money for a real drawing. And at that point I said, yes, even though I didn’t know how I was gonna invoice him, I didn’t have my company set up at that point.

I was just making drawings. And he suggested Etsy. So I was like, oh yeah, sure. Went on Google. I’m like, how do you open up a shop on Etsy? How do you do this? So it’s like the things that we’re afraid of because we don’t know all of these steps ahead of time.

Yes, we can. We can learn it. It’s like in this digital age you have so much information like Google is your friend. And that’s how I started my unofficial official business. On Etsy actually. 

That’s awesome. That’s a great story. And I think it really speaks to letting it be creative or universal. I don’t know. What would you call that universal law take over, right? If you have something that you like to do, just start dabbling in it, and if it’s meant to be it’s going to happen just don’t be afraid to put yourself out there.

I think that’s probably the biggest lesson that I heard from that story, right? so awesome. So after that, obviously you were side-hustling for a while and just doing that on the side.

What made you last year decide that 2022 was gonna be the year that you were gonna pull the trigger and, do all the paperwork and all the official things, which I also have questions about that being an ex-pat and, filing for a business in another country, all of those questions, but we’ll get to that later. But what made you decide that 2022 was gonna be the year that you were gonna do this?

I had actually set myself a three-year goal, like back in, what was that now? 2019. I set myself a three-year-old goal and I’m like, okay, I want to leave my job at this time. And actually, I had started a couple of years before that I started in 2016, just like drawing and doing my drawings online thinking, okay, one day, one day.

And I kept saying one day, one day, and I’m like, you know what? You need to pick a date. You need to pick a date. I finally did in 2016. I said you know what? After 2019, sorry, I’m mixing up everything for three years, you are going to be your job. this is it.

 You need a kick in the butt because otherwise you’re gonna keep sitting here and saying one day, one day, and it’s never gonna. Never gonna happen. And another thing that happened, I think so many people can relate to was COVID came. And I realized that, as we all did, time is short. 

We all knew that before, but we got a big wake-up call with COVID. Why are we sitting here doing these jobs that we don’t wanna do? Even if we don’t mind. I didn’t mind my job. I didn’t hate my job. I just knew that wasn’t my passion. I knew that it wasn’t like my life’s stream wasn’t to be like a secretary in a law firm. It’s fine if that is your lifestream, but it just wasn’t mine. 

So two of those things, I set a date and COVID just made me really stick to that date and not think, okay, that hate’s gonna come and I’m gonna push it back.No, I was gonna leave. And I made sure that every night I was doing the work after my job. To make this reality that on January 1st, 2022, I’m gonna be out of there. 

That’s awesome. And I was gonna ask you how COVID played into that. 2019, nobody has any idea that anything is gonna happen. So we’re all making these wonderful plans for 2020 and beyond, and then COVID happens. So I wondered how that would work, but I think it actually accentuated your desire to make this happen.

That’s awesome. So back to my question: what in the world, like, how do you go about filing a business in another country? Does your citizenship status play into it at all?

For okay. In my case in France, your citizenship status doesn’t play into it. Cause I’m not yet a citizen. I’m a legal resident. I have, like the equivalent of what you in America if you’re in America would be called a green card.

So it’s like a card says I am a resident of this country. I’m allowed to be here. I’m allowed to live and work in this country. I can have that status and open a business. So all of this information. Once again, here I was back, Googling things. How do you open a business in France as a resident?

Not a citizen, because I had all of these questions and things that came up that I had no idea would even be questions. Like the fact that you’re an American citizen. You have to do things financially wise, where you have to like, report all of the earnings and revenue that you make, including your salary to the IRS.

I was like, okay, how in the world am I gonna do that? This sounds so complicated. And I was ready to start retreating back.

 No, there’s a mountain of paperwork. I don’t wanna do this, but it was possible. I took one thing at a time. 

Started Googling things, started asking people, and started going on forums on Facebook groups.

There were blogging groups that I was a part of. And I’m like asking people, Hey, is anyone else outside of the US here? Is there anyone else in France? Like how did you go about setting up your business, which? Which way did you do it? Do you have an accountant? Do you need an accountant? 

Like all of these questions, you can just ask people and people will come flooding you with information.

Not EV, not all of it is right, but it’s up to you to like, it’s just, it gets, you started at least. And kinda get you over the fear and the hump of this seems too big. I can’t do this.

If you see other people that have done it successfully, then you’re like, okay, I can do this. That’s awesome. Yeah, that was my biggest question, because I’m imagining that feeling of overwhelmed, like just thinking about doing it, like for myself like if I were to move to another country, how would I go about doing that?

 And I knew that was gonna be one of the questions like, oh my goodness. I have to know how she did that and how she went about that. So what advice do you have for someone? Who is? And there are a lot of people that listen to this show that are in other countries. Like we have listeners all around the world.

So they may be in this position where they’re not in their native country and they are in that space where they want to start a business. What is that advice that you have for them, where, Just go ahead and do it and do these three things or four things or 20 things?

Pretty simple for them and say three things first, very simple. Get yourself a little planner, schedule, calendar, whatever wall calendar, post-it notes, make it simple, write some dates on there and say, you’re going to do step one.

I’m going to do a Google search on how to start a business in X country, whatever country I’m in, first, cuz I realize The first thing is like committing to a deadline for me. That’s what works if I have a deadline and I see that deadline, I know I have to do that thing.

So open yourself, your little planner, or whatever, right in there. This week on this date, I’m going to start the research. So start the research, and give yourself a date. Step blind. 

Step two: almost every country in the world. I dare to say it has some kind of better business bureau or some kind of entity where if you wanna start a business, usually if you’re gonna get licensed in that country, they have some kind of entity or bureau or office, something where like that, where you can go and ask. And, get answers. They’ll probably have a website that answers some of your questions. 

So step two, check with the local authorities, check the better business, your small business bureau of your country, or your city, your state for whatever country that you live in or you wanna move to, they will usually have lots of information for people that wanna start a business in that country. Or that want to come to start a business in that country if you are living outside of that country. 

And step three, don’t be afraid to ask other people too, go online. We are living in this digital age where we can connect with someone else. If I, today, I wanna say I wanna move to I don’t know, Angola, and I can go on online and say you.

Look or Facebook groups and say, okay, a small business group in Angola, join the Facebook group, join the Twitter group or the slack group or whatever, and start asking people questions because those people have experience and they can tell you and probably save you a lot of time and a lot of headaches because they’ll say oh, you know what?

You actually don’t have to fill out those 55 forms. You just need to start with, A meeting at the office with this, this person will tell them that I sent you and you’re like, oh wow, you saved me like five hours in the paperwork that I didn’t know that I didn’t have to fill out. Those three things. 

I love it. And the wonders of Google translate and Facebook translate and all those wonderful tools that are built into our computers now and our phones and everything make it so much easier to be able to communicate with people that are maybe not in our native tongue.

That’s awesome. Awesome. I am so excited that you are here and that you’ve shared all of this with us. Where can people find your Etsy store? What is it called? And then where is the best place for people to find you online?

My Etsy shop is called paper flow design, so that is P A P E R like paper, like sheet paper, F O designs with an S on the end. My website also has the same name, paper flow designs.com. And that’s probably the best place to reach me is by email. I’m so old school. 

Hey, I am the same way. People will send me Facebook messages, Instagram messages, and I’m like two months later.

I’m like I’m really sorry that I didn’t see this, but if you would’ve emailed me, I would’ve answered you right away.

Guilty is charged. That is so me, I went into my Instagram the other day and the thing is somebody tagged me on a story and I’m like, oh no, I missed it. It was three days ago.I didn’t know.

And I couldn’t even see it. And I’m like, oh, I wish I could, So I try to remember to go and like touch base on all of the social media regularly, but I am guilty. I don’t always do that. So the best place to reach me is email. So you can find me nad That’s N a D paper flow designs.com. The best place to reach me is by email.

Thank you so much for being here and sharing everything that you know about starting a business in another country, which is a lot, so thank you. You’re welcome.

Connect with Naa Ardua Flohic

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These are a Few of My Favorite Things-Second Edition

Welcome to episode 213 of The Determined Mom Show. I am your host, Amanda Tento, and today I wanna share with you some of my favorite things. So this episode is titled, These are a few of my favorite things. Our most popular episode ever downloaded was episode number 81, and I was entitled. Raindrops on Roses and Whiskers on kittens.

These are a few of my favorite things. So this is gonna be a follow-up to that episode that aired in December of 2020, so pretty much almost two years ago now. And I wanted to update you on some of my newest, favorite things. 

There may be a little bit of overlap in there, but most of these things are newer to me and they’ve totally changed my business, so I wanna be sure to share them with you and hopefully give you some insights into why they are some of my favorite tools.

My first favorite new tool is a scheduling software called trafft, and that is T R A F F T. And I was introduced to this by Dana, L’Oreal Morales of the. Organized Academy and also the Organized Holistically podcast. She is a good friend of mine and she was like, Oh my gosh. I finally found a scheduling software that I like.

I too had been using Acuity for probably about four years, and it was the only software I kept trying other software, Dub Sodo. I even tried my CRM software. Suite Dash. I tried. A whole handful of other scheduling tools and none of them could do absolutely everything that Acuity could do.

I love it, but it was also a little bit annoying, and also I had to pay for it every single month. So I was not digging that. So I found this through Dana on App Suma, which is gonna be one of our other favorite things that we talk about, but, I found it on AppSumo, and I absolutely love it. It looks so much better than Acuity.

You can have as many employees as you want. There’s no limit. You can set a new calendar for every employee. There’s no, it’s just absolutely fabulous. The booking pages look so professional. You can put a nice one on. Huge photo in there. You can set your availability, you can set different locations. It is absolutely top-notch as far as scheduling tools go, so I’m gonna put the link to that in the show notes.

If you’ve been looking for a new scheduling tool, TRA is where it is at for sure. Do not miss out on it because it will change things for you and allow you to expand your business if that’s what you’re looking to do, and also just allow you to seamlessly. , book appointments with people, schedule different types of appointments, and things like that, so I love it.

As I mentioned before, AppSumo is going to be our second favorite thing on our list. Sumo is absolutely my favorite thing in the world and I’ve spent way too much money there over the last five years. However, it’s totally been worth it. So it is a place where you can go and buy lifetime subscriptions to new and emerging software.

They generally don’t put two established pieces of software on there because it’s how people get buy-in to their software. They use you as a beta user. You can make suggestions, changes, and anything like that. And you get it at a discount as you get it for a lifetime discount. I think I paid $49 for the draft, which is the tool that I talked about just a minute ago, and.

That tool has saved me probably hundreds of dollars, if not close to thousands so far because I no longer have to pay like 20 dollars a month for acuity. So even just two months of TRA that I’ve paid $49 for has already paid for itself in a sense. So Appsumo is my favorite place.

They have a sale Black Friday sale coming up, and if you are looking for any type of software, definitely look there first. Any type of WordPress plugin, any type of tool. Anything that you can think of, definitely look at AppSumo first. 

And it is definitely a great place to purchase those tools. The other thing that I love about AppSumo is that you get a 60-day money-back guarantee. So basically, If you try out an app or a tool or a plugin, whatever it is, and you don’t like it, they’ll immediately refund you, whatever you spent right there on the spot as soon as you return it.

And that is within 60 days. So it’s definitely an amazing place to buy things. My third favorite thing is a networking group called Mob Nation and which stands for Mom Own Business.

So MOB stands for Mom’s own business, and it is a networking group all for mom, business owner. So if you’re a mom and you own a business, this is an amazing networking group for you. It is a national network.

They have virtual meetings, I think about three times per week right now. It is worth its weight in gold as far as referrals go, as far as support, and as far as resources. They have so many different classes you can take in there. They have a huge Facebook group that is. Basically full of other mom-owned businesses and mom business owners.

So I’ve known some of these women now for probably about three years since I met Aria, who was the original founder of the Mob. I can’t even tell you how many amazing interactions I’ve had with them, either online, or in person, they’ve just been such an amazing group of people.

So if you’re looking for a networking group that is going to change your business, help you with your mindset, help you to network and just help you to be amongst your peers, this is a great group to join.

The next tool that I wanna talk about is a web host. So if you are on WordPress and you host your website and you’re looking for a new host, you’re not super excited about who you have it hosted with, or you are looking to get onto a WordPress site and build it somewhere, the most reliable host that I’ve had.

An experience to date, and I didn’t look, but I know that we have at least 30 websites hosted on our virtual private server with Dream Host. Okay? Dream Host has made our web hosting so much easier. I can’t tell you I’ve even lost my website while on the. Support with Bluehost. Like I was on the phone with them and they deleted my website one time and I’m like, Oh my God, what did you just do?

Please tell me that you can get that back. They did get it back, but that was like the last straw for me. After dealing with their customer service and things like that over the years, I was just like, Oh my gosh, we have to switch everything over to somewhere else. So I tried Dream Host and I absolutely love it.

There’s nothing that has ever gone wrong that they couldn’t help me with, and most of it was my fault, so that’s great too. I’d rather it be my fault, just being me doing something that I shouldn’t have done than have it be the professional on the other end of the line. Deleting my website.

So if you’re looking for super, super fast hosting, Dream Host is the place to go. We have a virtual private server and I think we pay $130 per year, maybe. Something like that. and that really, I mean we have, like I said, like 30 websites hosted there. We’re probably at about 50% of storage capacity.

So I have to keep an eye on that because we do have a lot of content there. And as we build those websites out a little bit more, it’s gonna get even fuller. So I do, I am keeping my eye on that. But as far as performance goes, as far as uptime goes, It is absolutely amazing. So I highly suggest Dream Host.

If you are looking for a new website host. SocialBee is my next favorite thing, and it is a social media posting platform that allows you to post everywhere. And when I say everywhere, I literally mean everywhere. I’m gonna open it right now and tell you all of the different places you can post to. I have. Referred so many people to SocialBee because it’s just something that’s unheard of.

First of all, it’s not a very popular platform. It’s not, they don’t do a lot of advertising like Hootsuite or any of the other ones, but this is literally an amazing platform. So I’m gonna read you the list of places that they post to, which almost nowhere else posts to all of these places. Okay, so we have a Facebook profile.

Facebook pages. Facebook groups. Instagram profile. Instagram business pages. Twitter profile, LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn Company pages. Pinterest profile, Google My Business Profile, and TikTok profile. So there’s almost no other social platform that lets you post to all of those places. And the other thing that I love about it is Instagram, for example, you can create hashtag collections. 

Make the first comment on social B. Just, it’s just literal, a little toggle switch, please post in the first comment and you can also just literally click and select your hashtag collection.

So if you have certain hashtags that you use often, you can literally create different hashtag collections with up to 30 hashtags you can.

So it makes it so much easier. I also use this for, TDM marketing posting to all of our Google Business profiles for our clients. It is so much easier than any other tool that I’ve used. And it’s just, it’s just amazing. And the support is also really robust with this. I’ve reached out to them multiple times when something happens or I have a question about something and they get back to you right away.

Avi is the owner of the company and he will email you right back. It’s cool to get that kind of. VIP treatment from a huge company like social B. So if you’re looking for a new social scheduling platform, social B is definitely where to go.

My next favorite thing is called Envato Elements. So everybody loves stock photos. They go to all of the different free stock photo sites, but eventually, you end up seeing some of the same stock photos that you’ve used in other people’s work. I got a little bit tired of that, even Canva.

Some of the stock photos in there that are under the premium level are not exactly what you would want to have because so many other people have used them. It’s kinda like some of the templates in there, they get a little redundant. So stock photos are the same way. If everybody’s going to, I don’t know, I can’t remember any of the stock photo sites cuz it’s been so long since I’ve used them.

It’s been probably at least three years, cuz I’m going on my third year of subscription with Envato Elements and whatever they are. Pixels. I think that’s one of them. 

 If you’re looking for somewhere to get, Fresh stock photos. You can filter by color, you can filter by background or no background, or whatever. This is an amazing tool. They also, not only do they have stock photos, but they also have plugins. They have videos, they have music. They have pretty much anything that you can imagine needing.

I will read you the different categories now. They have stock video templates, music sound effects, graphic templates, graphics, presentation templates, photos, and font. Addons web templates, CMS templates, WordPress, and 3d. So those are all the different categories that you can search for items in. And it’s literally like just millions of things that you can find on there.

And it says it starts at 16-50 per month, which I think is a steal if you’re looking for original, really high quality. Stock photos, videos, and things like that. So I hope that you enjoy that one, and I hope that you check it out.

The last favorite thing that I’m going to share today is going to be the Podcaster’s Kit for 2022. This is something that I just stumbled upon, but I am so excited to get started in it and dive in. If you are a podcaster or you’ve been on a podcast, this is something. That will definitely help you.

 There are 39 different courses or books or guides or whatever it might be to help you to grow your podcast. There’s fan engagement guides, time management for productivity, getting rid of noise from your face and your space.

Use your podcasting skills to land voiceover jobs. Ultimate Planner and Tracker, Canvas templates, Air table business organizer. I could go on and on. I’m just naming the bottom few here as I scroll back up. But there’s so many podcasts. Tools in here, and they’re all from really well known people, and it is a steal, I think.

I think it was like $49 or something like that one time. And you get access to all of these different courses and resources. So if you are a podcaster, a podcaster or you’re thinking about starting your podcast, this will be a great place for you to get a lot of resources and figure out how to grow your podcast.

I hope you enjoyed this second edition of My Favorite Things episode, and if you have any questions about any of these tools, please feel free to reach out.

You can always email me at amanda@tdm-marketing.com or amanda@thedeterminedmom.com. I am an open book as far as sharing information and resources, so I hope that you do. 

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How to Build a Business With the Power to Change the World with Mina Raver

Welcome to this episode of The Determined Mom Show. And I am here with the fabulous Meina raver. She is the host of the podcast, forging fortune, and she is also the founder of the 2000 days project. Welcome, Amina. I’m very excited to have you here.

I’m really excited to talk about what we’re gonna talk about today, which is how to build a business with the power to change the world. But. First, we have to know about you, and like, how do you know how to do this? 

Sure. So like you said, I’m Nina. I have been doing two things my entire life, and since single digits, running businesses and knocking on doors activism, I moved my family out of the projects with my first business mowing lawns. I sold origami to my classmates until I saved up enough for a lawnmower. 

And then I went door to door asking two things, let me know your lawn and vote. Totally on my own. That’s it. It’s an interesting story. But that took me through. I put myself through college as an entrepreneur, after dropping out of high school, I went back to university and put myself through college and organized the entire time.

So while I was in college, I was also a scholarship recipient for the democracy for America campaign and went and met Bernie Sanders and Barbara Boxer and all of these people for the first time and was recognized for my activism. Later on. Of course, I got out of it and had my babies. I tried corporate.

It was not for me. So I started another business. And what else did I do? I ran for office with my first children. So I gave my first speech for the state office while nursing my newborn and my first speech for Congress holding her in my arms. My children were actually greeters at the door for most of my events when I was running for Congress, but that experience showed me something very important.

I learned a lot about how candidates are chosen behind closed doors. And I figured out why 20-something years of activism had shown so little. I had so little to show for it and really it’s because there’s a big difference between movements.

And movements that don’t and while his history tends to chalk that up to violence, what it actually is are alternatives. Whether or not there are popular alternatives available alongside demands for change.

And if anything has. If anything, the events of the last couple of days have taught us nothing. The things that actually may make sense like the average Joe are not necessarily popular, which makes zero sense to me. But yeah, we’re recording this right after Biden approved the student loan forgiveness program.

Very interesting. I know, I love 10,000 more. That’s like a semester. Hello? I know. That’s what I was thinking at a community college. No doubt not even. That’s only like maybe a month of room and board at an actual university. It doesn’t make any sense that people are angry about it, but yeah. It’s interesting. 

No, it makes no sense to me. And as somebody, I, as I said, I worked through college. It took me eight years to graduate. I took out loans.I did all of the things and I was able to pay my loans back before interest starts accruing on them. Student loan debt is wrong. It shouldn’t exist. It didn’t for previous generations, it’s morally corrupt. There it is.

That’s all there is to be said. And the fact that they’re charging such high interest on. Those types of loans as well. That’s a whole nother section of it, but yeah, it, the whole thing is just a, it’s a crazy game that is meant to make rich people richer and poor people poorer. 

And more vulnerable. Let’s not forget the Senator who outright said, I’ve been seeing this for decades, but now they’re televising. These student loan debts and these predatory loans are forcing working and poor people into military service. 

Yeah. And that’s okay. No, it’s not. Okay. And it’s funny because this is a whole nother topic we’re on now, but I guess it’s technically not. Cuz we’re talking about businesses with the power to change the world and this should be one of them. But people were commenting on some of my Facebook posts like, oh, I joined the military to solve that problem. Did you have to do that? 

That was your only choice. That was literally your only choice. Yeah, not everybody is cut out for the military and that completely our military really needs rain in any way. I agree. It’s crazy. So let’s talk about it. This is awesome, by the way, I’m so energized because I love talking to people like you. So let’s talk about how in the heck you build a business with the power to change the world from the beginning. Like how do you, first of all, go into knowing what type of business you wanna create with that thought in mind?

Sure. So let me first walk you through the six steps of building a systemic alternative. That begins with even believing that this is possible, right? One of the things I say all the time is that possibility is a limiting belief. Usually, when somebody’s telling you something’s impossible, it’s because they’re afraid of what you’re doing and they want you to stop.

But every inorganic system that we have around us to choreograph our lives, every single inorganic system began with an idea. And another thing I like to say all the time is that the laws of physics are absolute, but the laws of our peers and their ancestors require consent. 

So if you want to build a business with the power to change the world, the power to become a systemic alternative, it starts with an idea and now ideas are fun and exciting. But if you want to gather momentum around you. You need to look around you, find your allies, find your communities and hone your idea into a solid vision that others can gather around. 

And when you’re ready to start bringing that vision into the world, and this is the difference between a movement that works in a movement that doesn’t, you create systems that produce the outcome product of your vision consistently. That’s all we’re dealing with. 

They look like big strong structures, but what they really are is a series of ideas that have matured into visions, gotten other people to rally around them, and then organized into systems to produce the same results predictably. Unfortunately, some of those results are making sure that middle-class youth cannot afford to go to college.

So we get those strapping young youth into the military. That’s a system that has been created around that to produce that result predictably. And now that our leaders, if you will, are looking at what they were expecting were going to be their enlistment rates and comparing that to what their enlistment rates actually are.

They’re panicking because their systems are falling apart. And the other systems that have been attached to them. Are not insulating it the way that they’re supposed to, because the next step in this process is to insulate your system by integrating it with allied systems to create a greater structure. And the structures are what we’re up against.

Now, those structures will protect your system. Just as we’re looking at with the student loans, the system of higher ed doesn’t really have to spend a whole lot of time, energy, or money protecting their revenue stream because, Ingrained in the other systems and beneficiaries of other systems that if this system is changed, they will be affected negatively.

And so you have a lot of people who are coming up worried that their benefits are going to be affected by ensuring access to education on another side, their two sets of separate systems, but they’re part of the same structure. And that’s why things feel so big when we were occupying wall street from 2008 to 2010, I was an organizer for that or earlier, even when I was organizing for LGBTQ rights.

And back then, it was really just LG. All the way back then. That was the constant worry. I would meet women who were afraid. If we were okay with openly being gay or lesbian, that they wouldn’t be able to find a partner. So it was a completely different structure cuz they had grown up believing and there’s, I’m fine with this.

I don’t care. But they had grown up believing that they had to find a spouse that could take care of them so they could stay home with their kids and do all of that. I’m staying at home. Mom, I get the fear, but seeing those systems as opposed to each other is the benefit of having a structure and also the problem that we’re coming up against.

So step number five in this process, once you’ve insulated your system with integrator structure, you go through two periods of growth. And if you’ve structuralized well, the first period won’t affect you too badly. But during the first period of growth, your notoriety will grow more quickly than your revenue.

So the demands on your business will be greater than the revenue that you’re bringing in. But if you’re part of a greater structure, you’ll be okay. If not, you go back to that system. You reorganize your systems. You look around you. Nature provides such a robust resource for ways to organize energy and exchange.

That you just head back there, rebuild your system, integrate into the structure again, and try again. But once you have gotten to the point where you can grow past, and grow your notoriety faster than your revenue catches up, you’re in that final stage of density. You’re gaining density in notoriety and dollars, and you have proven beyond the shadow of a doubt.

You have a popularity. You have revenue, you have sustainability. You’ve proven that you are strong enough to become a systemic alternative. And why this is amazing is that so many ideas are subject to disingenuous debate. So many great ideas about how we should structure society, and how we should advance social technologies and civil technologies die on the debate floor.

And often in the hands of the disingenuous. But once those things are tested and proven, we have the market as a resource for that debate that doesn’t work anymore. Then things start coming out into the open and we start making real decisions. 

Do we want to force young people into military service for the most imperialist, profitable military complex in human history? or do we just wanna educate everyone? Now we can have a real conversation. 

Yeah. And I think the answer to that is very scary. I know, my God. It’s so scary. yeah. It can be, yeah, it can be scary. It’s genuinely frightening. And I think in my mind, and this is what I struggle with all the time, and my husband and I have conversations like this every day.

The scariest part is how you start changing the masses’ minds about those types of things. That is literally the hardest part in my mind. Like how in the world, can you convince people that A is better than B because A is good for everyone and B might not be good for you?

That’s, you prove it. You prove it. And so most people find their place and they stick to their place and they’re looking for safety. So as a society, social actualization follows the same series of providing needs. That self-actualization demands. And ultimately as a society on the social hierarchy of needs, is a little model that I have in my office here on the social hierarchy of needs.

We are afraid of other people coming into our space on the hierarchy because it might interfere with our access to our basic needs. So when it comes to changing people’s minds don’t try to waste your time or energy changing people’s minds.

That distraction. It is a fight. It’s fight energy. Fight. Energy is high manifestation energy, which means two things. When you direct it toward fighting, you’re only gonna get more fights.

There’s always gonna be somebody who wants your attention, who wants to use those talking points to prove their power, cuz it’s the only access to power they have. And a sense of power in your life is a basic human. But it also means that if you redirect it toward building instead, that is what you will manifest.

You will manifest your vision. People don’t have to be convinced that your idea is the right thing. But when you put your system against the failing institutions and they see their friends coming over to your system and they see their community coming into your system, they see that they need to move to be safe.

It never even has to be a conversation. That’s awesome. I love that answer. Oh my goodness. I love it. I’ve got goosebumps. I love it. I love it. I feel like you need to curate a list of books for my children to read. I think that sounds really weird. 

It’s just out of the blue, but my girls are so passionate about things and things like that. And I think if they had these kinds of ideas I feel like they would go take them and run with them. 

Yeah, absolutely. It’s really just curiosity. What I’m rolling with here is a really weird mix of. Physics, neuroscience, sociology, anthropology, like all of the things I’m just insatiably curious about. And since I dropped out of school early, I was able to follow that curiosity exclusively as a teen. 

And so a lot of what I am doing and sharpening and honing now, I actually learned in public libraries as a homeless dropout at 15, 16, and 17 years old. Yeah. Because I couldn’t go to school.

because my brother and sisters needed care.

My stepdad needed care full-time. Wow. So I would say let ’em loose. Yeah. And when they have questions, give ’em things, that’s going to inspire more questions. They’re the brain power. Especially young girls, right? That’s an untapped resource for social expansion.

Exactly. And I want them to be the leaders that I know that they can be, yeah. Yeah. It’s just gonna be amazing. So that’s exciting. Yeah. I’m so excited about that. yeah. Very cool. So you went through all of the steps, the six steps. Did you go through number six? 

Got it. So what do we do when our vision seems overwhelming in the face of the current structures that are in place? Like I’m thinking of one in particular. So for example and this is like the example that you gave with the student loans and the. University structure like that bank university structure it’s already in place.

It’s already benefiting so many people that it’s not really benefiting the people that should be benefiting from it. And that I feel is the same way with the healthcare industry. This is a huge one. The food industry and the healthcare industry and the pharmaceutical industry are all.

Giant structures and they seem overwhelming. And if someone is actually trying to make a difference and kind of undermine those structures, like I love what Mark Cuban did. First of all, that is a great example. I think of someone that saw something that could be different and had the resources and the fortitude to go ahead and pull through with that website.

I think that’s a great example of that, but. He’s a millionaire. I’m not gonna lie. Yeah, probably a billionaire, no, probably a millionaire. I don’t know his status, but he’s very well-connected. And he’s also an investor himself and he has so many resources. So what happens when you’re an average person? You and I, and yeah, you me, cuz you’re not average cuz you have all of these things already in your head. 

Let’s say it’s me and like I have an idea, like I wanna go up against big pharma or something like mark Cuban did, like how in the world you overcome that fear and that self-doubt and like all of those things, like that’s probably the, no, I get that biggest challenge for me.

And it is for everybody because so many of these things are ingrained in our hearts and minds at a time that we are just too new and dependent to challenge them, which is why I say so often that possible is a limiting belief. And it’s a fail-safe switch that has been ingrained in you from the time you were born.

So number one is to. Surround yourself with people who are doing the impossible every day. That’s why I started the 2000 days project because I talked to people who are trying to change the world. I’ve talked to people from all over the world. There’s representation from nine countries inside the project right now.

And we’re so new, but we’re all having such a hard time finding each other. Powers of misinformation. And what’s the word I’m looking for here? Exploitation is so constant. There are so many organizations and groups that are funded by big dollars that are calling in all of the impact entrepreneurs and all of the women entrepreneurs and everybody else.

And putting us in places where those limiting beliefs are just being reinforced. Which is really tough. So I would say number one, find a community like the 2000 days project, or start a community like the 2000 days product project, where you can challenge those beliefs every single day. And number two is remembering that the people who started this process started with cave paintings.

There’s nothing special. I tell people all the time if you wanna feel good about it. Go to a legislative meeting, go to a state legislative meeting, meet your state legislators. They are so mediocre and so void of gifts. Yeah. Ideas, really? Anything of value to the majority that you will leave there realizing that you are capable of anything.

That’s why I want everyone to embody three, like these are my three core attributes, things that when I look at my own story, the things that brought me through every step of the way and their courage, curiosity, and audacity, the courage to challenge, what is the curiosity to imagine what could be in the audacity to demand better right now?, And if the answer is. Dare someone else to say it, don’t be the one to tell you. No, ever. 

Yeah. That’s awesome. I love it. I love it. I love it. You’re all lit up. You’re glowing up. I am. And this stuff honestly, like if I could record every podcast about topics like this, then I would, it’s hard to find people that wanna talk about things like this I find. 

Sure. Yeah. That’s awesome. Tell us more about the 2000 days project. And like how people get involved in it. What is involved? Is it intensive? Is it like all of these things? 

Sure. I’ll tell you that the 2000 days project actually started with burnout. I went through about six months of trying to put my pieces back together after hitting the wall of Saturn return-level burnout. If you’ve got any astrology people in your audience they’ll know how difficult that first Saturn return can be. 

And so I really just floated for six months trying to figure out how I mix these pieces instead of just doing these partial attempts. At making a difference. How can I just go to the whole hog legendary end every day, with being able to tell my babies that mommy did her best today?

And it was the 2000 days project. And that is a self-paced incubator for leaders, liberators, and impact entrepreneurs from around the world. And the reason it’s self-paced is that the process, this is based on a process that I usually go through with people one on one, where we’ll go from audacious idea to income in 10 to 12 weeks, that process doable when it’s just us. 

And I only take two clients at a time because we’re working together 15, 20, sometimes 30 hours a week. And a lot of that process is transformative. So I can’t even do it with people who haven’t been through therapy and don’t know what it feels like to transform because doing it for the first time is so terrifying.

It can stop you in your tracks. So the 2000 days project is self-paced so that you can go through that process of transformation, identifying and transforming your own limiting beliefs, you are own inner. Guard rails, the things that might stop you when you wake up one day and look around and realize that, oh my gosh, it’s happening.

We go through the first stages of going from idea to vision. At your own pace. And then you come in on Wednesdays and Thursdays where I can facilitate for you. And you’re wrapped up into the, in the group and the community where everyone else is going through that process. Most of the founding members of this project have either inspired or been through this process.

So there’s a lot of great wisdom there and people who can help you through the pro this process, but we go through each of the stages all the way up to four and. When it becomes a close-knit mastermind, and it’s, there’s one fee because I wanted to be able to create a space where I don’t have to constantly upsell.

I don’t have to take every little thing that comes to my head and turn it into a new whatever. So the fee is the fee. And if you come in, I am very grateful to you for giving me the space and the exchange to be able to continue this project.  But I’m going through it as well. That’s it. 

What an inspiration you are to all of us. And I think it’s amazing that you’ve created this space for people to change the world. That’s literally what you’re doing, so I think it’s amazing. 

Thank you. It feels really good. Good sleep is a lot better. I’m sure. I’m sure. I love it. And I think we all need to find that thing that makes us passionate or that passion that we have and be able to marry it with those changes that we wanna see in the world. I pray that we’re all blessed enough to find those two things and be able to put them together. 

Yes, absolutely blessed and daring. And please just remember that before capital, I’m not talking about capitalism, but capital we exchanged based on barter. The concept of capital as a contract is to be able to exchange something that we can continue exchanging based on potential instead of presence.

There’s potential in whatever it is that you are envisioning and that potential is worth that exchange of dollars that you need to be able to support your life. It can turn anything into a business. 

So where is the best place for everyone to find you online?

Sure. I’m actually probably the most doable person in the world. You can just Google me in a paper. good. And you’ll be able to find just about everything I’ve ever done, but please do come. Talk with me on LinkedIn. Hang out with me on Twitch. 

I stream ancient role playing games on the super Nintendo on Twitch. If you wanna just hang out or I’m always available on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram. You can see my kids on TikTok. 

I’m gonna connect with you in all of those places and I hope that everyone else does too. And I will also have a link to your website in the show notes as well awesome.

Thank you so much, Mina, for being here and sharing with us this amazing process that you’ve created and just all of your knowledge and wisdom. 

Thanks for this wonderful opportunity. My cheeks are hot. My husband’s gonna be like, who was talking to you today? You’re a great host. I had a lot of fun. I forgot that I was recording. I love talking about this. It’s like a natural conversation, so I love it. Thank you.

Connect with Mina Raver

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How to Test the Speed of Your Website

Welcome to episode 211 of The Determined Mom Show. I am your host, Amanda Tento, and I am very excited to be here to talk to you today about how to test the speed of your website. This is a very important metric as far as ranking on Google goes. 

The reason that you wanna make sure that you have a quick website is that Google is going to consider whether or not to rank your website. So if your website takes like six, or seven seconds to load, Google’s gonna say no. Thank you.

Actually, in preparation for this podcast, I tested my podcast website and typically it’s something that I do probably every quarter at least, and it looks like I’ve done some updates lately, and it is at 3.4 seconds considered a grade C.

So on a scale of A through F, I got a C for 3.4 seconds. So your website needs to be super duper fast. It needs to load quickly, the images need to be optimized. All of those things, and this is how you can go about doing it.

Step one in checking the speed of your website is to go to a website called gtmetrix.com, and this link will be in the show notes. It’s GTMETRIX.com. All you have to do is put in the URL of your website and then click test. Sometimes if there are a lot of people testing, it may take a while for it to load.

If there is not a lot of people testing, like I’m doing on the weekend, so there are not a lot of people using the website right now. It’s not in the queue or anything, it just got done right away. 

And very interestingly it gives you a lot of information, so maybe too much information for you, but really what you wanna see is your overall load.

You wanna make sure that your grade is an A and you always want it to be at least an a. B is okay, but really you want it to be an A because you want your website to be as quick as possible. So it’s gonna tell you some different things about what your website performance is doing. So first content, full paint means basically.

The first time that something is displayed that people can see, and then there’s a speed index, the largest Contentful paint. That’s the time that it takes the entire website to load. We have time to interact, which is how long it takes for someone to be able to use your website and the total blocking time.

And this is how much time is blocked by scripts during your page learning process. So if you have a lot of scripts on your website, it is going to be slowed down.

A second way to test your website is to go to pagespeed.web.dev and enter your website there. This is actually Google’s page speed insight. So this is built by Google and it will actually tell you your mobile speed as well as your desktop speed. So this is also gonna be a really important test for you.

To make sure that your website is optimized for mobile. If your website is slower on mobile than any other, and you get most of your traffic from mobile, that is gonna be a huge issue. So all you have to do is go ahead and enter your URL into the little bar that comes up and then click analyze. And then there are two tabs at the top after it loads, and it’s gonna have a mobile tab and a desktop tab.

So it’s gonna give you a score for both of your websites or both versions of your website because there are different versions, and it’s going to let you know what your performance is. So there are three different scores that you can get. Zero to 49 means that you really have a lot that you need to improve.

Then the desktop has the same score metrics. So it also gives you a lot of different scores to look at, a lot of different things to look at. Same thing with the speed indexes there. There’s also the first content, full paint, and the total blocking time. So all of that is there. All of those numbers we wanna see in green and not in red or orange.

I guess it’s yellow in color, so not red or yellow. We wanna see them all in. Now, if your website is not properly optimized, it’s gonna give you a list of things that you can do to optimize them. You could go through them one by one and figure them out. We also offer a service where we can actually optimize your website quickly and easily.

And it is probably a few days’ turnarounds, but we’ll go in and as long as you give us access to the back end of your website and your server, then we can go ahead and optimize a ton of different things and make it a lot quicker. So I’m actually gonna have my team optimize my podcast website because I see the performance has gone way down since I optimized it the last time.

And that’s something that can happen, your website is not always going to stay optimized if you add content to it, if you add pictures, and things like that. But certain plugins and certain strategies that you can use will keep it optimized over time. The whole point of this podcast was to help you learn how to test your website.

If you want, you can also just shoot us an email with the URL of your website if you don’t have time to do this, and we can send you a speed test report and you can just email amanda tdm-marketing.com and we will get that to you. I hope you have a wonderful week, and we’ll talk to you soon.

How to Clarify Your Brand Voice to Delegate Without Fear with Jackie Sunga

Welcome to this episode of The Determined Mom Show. I’m your host, Amanda Tento. And I have with me the lovely Jackie Sunga and who is a certified master marketer and conversion copywriter. Today. We’re gonna talk about how to clarify your brand voice to delegate without fear. So welcome, Jackie. 

I’m very excited to hear what you have to say. Delegating and clarifying your brand voice. But first I wanna know about you and how you got started and how in the world did you end up with conversion, copywriting, and Azure? Area of expertise. 

Before starting my online business, I was a music teacher and I actually got my start in online business with social media, since a music colleague president of a nonprofit was following me on Instagram.

And she was like, you’re pretty good at Instagram, can you manage hours? And that was like five, six years ago. And I was really hungry at the time too. Gaining skills in digital marketing and my older sister, an entrepreneur and copywriter before me, was like, did you know that email marketing is so much more effective than social media marketing?

And that really motivated me to study copywriting on my own for a few years before I really. Went full-time working for me. And then fast forward to 2020, my husband graduated from medical school and I said, you know what? This is the year. I’m not gonna go back to teaching. I’m going to work full-time from home.

This is gonna be way less stressful. Since my husband was a first-year resident and so all that same time I was also exploring a path to. Be a therapist part-time in grad school. So I was doing two things at once. I was exploring online businesses providing services, as well as connecting with therapists to learn more about the profession online.

And then it just so happens that one of my dreams was that someone found talking about launching a course in email marketing, she had found it and she was like, it was a therapist who found it and she was like, you look like the person who could help me. Can you help me with Emails for my course?

And at that time I had already done things like I had created a lead funnel. I created a lead magnet for myself. I grew my own email list and I was like, yep, I’ve taken a copywriting course before. And I’m also a grad student in your niche. And she really loved that. There was that alignment between me, what I was already studying part-time, and the experience that I was already.

That I had already educated myself on. And that first project of the course launch, I wrote everything. I wrote the sales emails, the sales page, the social media options, the landing pages, literally everything. And I really surprised myself. She had a return on investment of seven times over. I was like, yes, like this is so great.

I love working with this person and love helping the expert really basically bridge the gap between their expertise and their audience with their, customer-first messaging.

It was really fulfilling to me and it was confirmation for me to pause grad school and really pursue online business, full-time with copywriting. 

That’s awesome. That’s a great success story too, right? Outta the gate, I love it.

It was serendipitous, honestly, with my wanting to explore clinical, mental health counseling as a graduate degree, and then finding the right person to write for.

Yeah, that’s awesome. I love when those things come together, like two passions, I think we’re all multi-passionate in some way. And when you can combine your skills and your passion and make them come together, I think that’s awesome. Have you worked with a lot of mental health counselors since then?

A lot of mental health counselors are. They’ve built up their private practice already, and then they’ve built up a social media presence and then they wanna launch or grow their educational platform. So I’ve got a lot of pages and emails that I’ve written for a lot of therapists.

But I don’t have a niche. I’m not super niche down to only working with them. I really love having a variety of different clients that I like to work with. They just have to be impact-driven and mission-driven. Not necessarily just about the money. But really driven by something deeper.

I love it. Awesome. So let’s talk about it then. How do you clarify your brand voice and then be able to delegate, without fear, like it’s hard to give anything up in your business to someone else, right? Let alone, your brand voice, like what the heck that’s like the biggest part of it that’s you, right?

Let me start off with a story of mine because I know that, I completely relate. I deeply relate to the fear of delegating and one of the reasons why this is so important to me is because when I first started. That client had sent me a ton of referrals.

And so, it became the need for me to hire an assistant, to help me with a few things so that I wasn’t necessarily doing everything on my own. And one, the incident was where that assistant had. I Wrote something via email to a client and that client was, unfortunately, it was very off-brand and that client had gotten really triggered by what was said.

And I felt so embarrassed that was said in that way. And I. Knew, that, that was really the turning point for me. I was like, okay I can’t, we can’t come back from this. And this is ultimately my responsibility to train people. Whoever it is, whether it’s a client-facing system, whether it’s a social media manager or someone in operations and they’re not client-facing.

It was so important for me to be able to say and create onboarding materials that just had unmistakable clarity. Just no, no room to be able to say, With subjectivity of oh yeah, like that’s not how, that’s not how we’re gonna say things in this way, or but in a way that’s very organized and that’s clear to whoever is being onboarded.

And so it was really a lesson in my own leadership to be able to realize what are the gaps in my team onboarding processes. And then if everything. In my brain, right about how I write and my preferences don’t really serve my business really well. 

And so I then had to like it, because that was such a humbling experience for me and I never wanted any client to feel that way, whether that was. Something that I had accidentally said or something that a team member had said, like I’m ultimately responsible and I have to be the one to take greater responsibility for anyone, whether what, with whatever communication is going out. 

And so that became the impetus for me to really hone in and create a guide essentially to make onboarding processes for my team, to be very clear again, whether they’re client-facing or they’re in marketing. Because then, you can, you don’t necessarily have to start with delegating all of your words. 

But it is very helpful when you’re not the only one responding to all of the emails or if you’re not the one writing literally every single one like blog or social media caption, or if you’re like, even if someone is just repurposing something for you, it’s okay to have. Specific preferences. 

In fact, it’s a really good thing to have a very specific way that you want to do things because when you’re decided upon this is how I want this to be, and you’ve decided upon that, then that makes it very clear for someone to understand the direction, as opposed to being like on this day, I feel like this.

And on this day I feel like this. Being actually being specific and what you want is actually a really good thing. And for me, when I really had to start first with clarifying, like what even is the brand about, and who do we want? Serve. And what is the transformation? What is the transformation that we go through?

And I could go on about this, but one of the first things, if you are, if you’re not yet at the point where you are thinking about delegating. We first have to start with almost a soul-searching process of what is our message, first of all, and then how we say that message with a specific voice.

You can play it fast, or you can play it slow. You can add instruments to it. You can sing it as a soprano. You can sing it as a bass. And so on, when you think about that and how. How your brand message is, what you say happy birthday and how your brand voice is, how you say it. You can say it with so much like there’s so much color to play with and tonal qualities.

And so when it comes to. Figuring out first, what is your overall brand messaging. And then what is the brand voice? We can dial into that in terms of specifics like how you are different and that’s where there’s so much opportunity to be. To really show off your personality and your opinions and your experience, especially when it comes to your industry and your niche, and maybe there are hot topics in your industry.

And you’re like, yeah, this specific hot topic does not actually serve my client as well as everybody says that it should. But here’s my take on this and here’s my experience. To back it up why this is the way that I do things or this is why I have formulated my opinion on this topic in this way?

So that’s why it really has to begin or you have, we really have to think about it as like a soul-searching process because if you are consuming all of these, content pieces, and if you notice that something doesn’t. Align with your values. It’s deeply important to have that strong foundation to know even what your business values.

What are your core values and what is the lens that you see your business through and your customers through? And that really shapes everything. That’s a really high-level overview, but as you can see, I can talk forever. 

No, that’s great. And that’s a great example. I think as business owners, we focus. When we are thinking of hiring, at least I know, I think of the procedure. I think of brand colors. I think of fonts. I think of just things like, okay, this is how you do things, but not necessarily what you say. Like it’s never, ever really crossed my mind to create some sort of SOP in our voice.

It literally never happened in my mind. but it’s so important. Yeah. And honestly, I don’t know if it would’ve been this important to me, if it hadn’t gotten to a point where I was like, literally so humbled by an experience as a client and that it happens to a lot of us. And you never want that sort of thing to happen to you, but that’s again until.

 Experience of just no, someone said something that was very, off-brand. And, it’s we often think that it’s okay, it should be easy for someone to pick up, but the truth is you are the only one who has your experiences and it’s all really living in your mind until you get what’s out of your mind and you put it on paper for someone else to perceive and see things from their own perspective.

And then you realize okay, We can actually get very specific and we can actually get very even measurable. And non-emotional about what the words are and how we say them with again, a specific tone or a specific, excuse me, written style and punctuation and emojis and the context of which you, when you use certain emojis, anyways, again, I could go on and on, but that really comes. 

When, if you are thinking about delegating. That there’s always that shift of when or how can I, instead of living inside the bottle, how can I get myself out of my own bottle and read things, read the bottle from outside the bottle. From the perspective of the person that I’m hiring. Hopefully, nobody ever has to go through the experience that I remember. 

And that’s why we’re making this episode. So that way people can learn from Jackie’s mistakes, my mistakes, and everybody’s mistakes because it happens, and you are bringing this to light. It’s not something that I’ve ever even thought of, but it’s so important and so hopefully we’re preventing some of those awkward moments and humbling moments from happening for everybody that’s listening as well. 

Yeah, for sure. And client experience is so important to me and like I’ve had it’s not even just paying clients, but it can even be when you take that time to really document the specifics about your message and your voice it’s we realize.

There has to be that consistency in communication within the internal team and then the outside marketing and then like with customers too. So like hitting all of those departments of the business. And when you can see where there might be a gap in inconsistency and even ask your team members, like where might there be, where might there be this inconsistency.

It creates the opportunity for you to just tighten things up and really just make stronger decisions about the brand as well. Because one of my clients, for example, like she really, we were going through a brand voice exercise and she said that she wanted her voice to come off as calm and compassionate, but she was noticing that her audience on social media was saying that she was coming.

Kind of combative and aggressive and that’s like that sort of very harsh difference. Between what you think that you’re saying and how people are actually perceiving it. That’s important feedback to get, whether that’s, again, from your audience on social media, who’ve never bought anything. Who’s never bought anything from you before?

Or, paying clients in my company. And then even your internal team, because it’s always really hard to hear, stories of 7, 8, 9 figure companies who like the marketing sounds great. And then like internally employees are like dead tired or exhausted or whatever, so anyway, so so much, room or like space to explore how that can affect you wherever whatever stage in business you’re at. 

Yeah. So do you have any type of resource that we can use to get started? There are so many when I think about writing. Communication with clients in my business alone. There are so many things. There are emails. 

There are even obviously email sequences and chat communications. And there’s just, it’s overwhelming to me to think about having to like, Put that into my brand voice. For someone else to digest and understand how do you do that?

Yeah. Good question. So of them, I do have a free resource, which I can talk about later on, but for anyone who wants to just think about what is a good structure to even. Think about when you are building, basically the SOP for your words, a good structure to start to think about is okay.

First of all, think about your overall high level at a 30,000-foot view, the brand. Mission. What’s the vision, what’s the, what are the core values? And when you start with that, that can really help you even with the job descriptions that you write. And if it’s if you wanna avoid hiring the wrong person, that’s one of the first things that they need to know to be like, yeah, I don’t actually have the same values.

Those are all of the values that I align with too. And then that’s an easier way to attract the perfect person. And when I kid you not like when I created this for myself, like that was also like a strong reason why, like I now have an assistant that is I ne I tell her all the time, I’m like, I never want you to leave me cause you’re. So great. 

And so anyway, so at a high level, right? So your mission statement, your vision. Your core values. And then what a lot of people, especially emerging online business owners, who I highly recommend, you spend a lot of time on and it’s okay if it takes you like a year to work on this, to really ask yourself what is our brand unique value proposition?

Like, how are we so different from other competitors that, even though we have similar services, they cannot do what we do? What are the things that only we can do? Our competitors. Cannot say that they can only deliver this service or transformation in this way.

So then that’s super, super important. Then you can follow it up with things like an elevator pitch or what would you say to your Uber driver? If they ask you as an online business owner, what do you do? So take a funnel strategist, for example, they’re like, oh, I build funnels. An Uber driver is probably not gonna be able to understand what that is.

And then you go through this like a long conversation. This is the customer journey and you’re gonna lose ’em on that. A really succinct, way. Describing the transformation that you provide is really easy for people to understand, and then your brand stories. So for example, again, like I was saying at the beginning of this interview, a customer wins, how do I get started, how do you do things differently?

There are so many other stories that I explain when I work with clients, but those are easy-to-remember stories about you, how you got started, a client won, and how. Develop something that you developed and then any like bios, for example, if you’re doing podcast marketing, if you’re on all of the social media platforms, how does your bio look a little different on each of those bios?

And then this is where we can get into your ideal client and really get clear on okay. Based on the re-market research that I’ve done. Here’s how. For this offer that I have, let’s say, you have a self stud self-study course, and then you have a high-ticket group program, right? 

How is the ideal client different based on what they said that their struggles were their desired transformations, any failed attempts that they like, the things that they’ve already tried before that were not working for them?

And then, the same thing. Your own product suite has evolved and whatever other offers that you have in your offer suite. And then after you have all of these really clear, high-level brand messaging guidelines in place, then that’s where you can even get specific with things like tone.

And here are the things that I say on a regular basis that only I say or here are the ways that we. Here are the ways that we greet our customers and we like to sign off on our emails. Here are phrases to avoid, never say these things and then, that’s where you can go super deep in terms of like style and even comparing your written style to somebody else’s, that’s actually something that I had done with a social media manager. 

I tried to hire when I paid, I created this test project. I paid her for the test project. And, I basically asked her to write a social media caption for me. And I just noticed there’s a lot of things that were off and here I was really objective about, basically like an English teacher.

I’m just objective. Here’s what I noticed. And here’s how I would write this differently. And here’s why. And it can get really emotional, but we didn’t, we don’t have to be emotional about that. We can get really objective when we know what to talk about again, what to say, your tones, your punctuation, and how long and short your sentences are. And that’s pretty much it. That’s a long list.

That sounds a little complicated, but I like how you broke it down because when you just make that long list, it’s. Okay, where do I start? But I like how you broke it down. Okay, you gotta figure out your brand overall messaging, your company values, your, that kind of stuff. And then work down, I like that. 

There are lots of, and there’s no, there’s no one like right or wrong way to start. I think what matters the most is figuring out what, based on the things that I mentioned. What are the things that you’ve already got, right? If you’ve already written your bios on social media, right? No problem. 

Put it all in one place. If you’ve already started. Think about your core values in like a business program that you’ve been through, and put that in one place. And then, then you can go in and start to let’s say analyze your own content and be like, my audience really loved this piece and it felt like me when I wrote it, I’m just gonna put this all in one place, as far as the level of detail that you wanna customize it to. 

That’s gonna be your own to create when you hire specific roles in your business. Every business obviously is very different in terms of the roles that we hire. So that’s where you can create it based on what you know, that person is going to need to do their job really well, as opposed to being.

Okay. I wrote all these blogs, go read them and then figure out what I wanna say next, figure it out. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, exactly. But just taking that step of just can I have, even if it’s messy, mine is really messy right now. My brain’s messaging kind and voice guide are super messy.

So to like the release, first of all, like the idea that it even has to be a certain length or it has to have everything in. The fact that like you are, even if you are even wanting to be like, I am gonna create this SOP for my business. And if it is, if it’s functional, that’s the point of having it.

Like it’s meant to be consumed by someone else. That’s not you and you are supposed to also use it for yourself on a regular basis and come back to it to remind you. If I’m having a bad day and I don’t necessarily want my content to reflect that I’m having a bad day. Like uncontrolled things happen all the time.

And if you think about big brands like Disney, for example, that comes with a certain feeling. If the CEO of Disney has a bad day or someone dies in their family, that’s super morbid. But that doesn’t mean the content is going to change. So it’s that, it’s supposed to serve as a way for you.

It’s a roadmap. It’s a roadmap to keep you. Consistent and intentional with what you want to say and how you want your customers to ultimately feel no matter how you may be feeling on a certain day. Cuz yeah, it’s always rough. When you want to say something a certain way and someone intends it or like perceives it in a very different way but it’s okay. 

Again, like we’ve all made we’ve we’re all. We’re all going through this experience of discovering and testing. How did that land, what feedback am I getting from someone? It’s all an experiment. 

Yeah. I like that. You gave us permission to just let it be messy, but at least start working on it. That’s the main thing: admit that you have a problem. That’s the first step. And we’ve already admitted that. I know for sure I do. And then, just go from there and start working on it and start developing all of those things that we’ve talked about. So I love it.

Self-compassion is honestly one of them. The biggest value lately is that it’s so easy for us to be our own critics. And our own oh, I have to do this better than this person, but at the same time, it’s you can be as. Self-compassion towards yourself and where you’re at and being motivated to continue growing.

And that’s having worked with a lot of therapists in the past couple of years, and going through a couple of semesters about myself is just like a deep business gets to be deeply healing in that way. And that I, if you resonate with being. Recovering perfectionists like me. That’s a sort of message.

It’s so deeply important to see it as both. And if you can, you don’t have to criticize yourself. You don’t have to like to use language. Like I suck or whatever. I don’t have that yet. I must like, not be good enough, but you can be self-compassionate. And see yourself exactly as you are while still wanting to grow and meet again, meet yourself where you are.

So I hope that is super, super comforting for all of your listeners because it can be easy, right? To fall into guilt, whether you are a mom or not, I’m not doing enough, but truthfully self-compassion is one of the best gifts that I can give myself as a business owner. And that other business owners I think can give to themselves too.

I agree. And I think that’s why we all have created our own businesses because we didn’t like working for someone else. At least. I know I didn’t. Yeah. You have that this is what I would do. If I owned this company, this is what I would do.

 I would change this. I would change that, but we have that opportunity as business owners to make everything exactly how we want it. Hello, that’s why we’re here. And using that self-compassion to guide us, I think is a great way to put that. 

100% every day. I like to remind myself to forgive myself for the mistakes that I may make that day because I will make them. 

I love it. I love it. I love it. So tell us about the free guide that you have to help us figure this out.

Yeah. So in this brand VO, this free brand voice resource I, the landing page. Clarify your brand voice in 90 minutes, and it’s a totally free resource that you can find at Jackie sunga. co/brand-voice. And when you download it for free, you get a Google doc where you, I basically walk you through how to analyze your own content.

And then once you do that, using free, totally free tools on the internet where you can analyze your own writing style, then what you can do? Basically, go through the star. I like to call it the star framework to brand voice so that you can, again, start to document what are the things that I say, what are my sayings.

Regular tones, my everyday ones that I use, what are the ways that I articulate myself with specific punctuation, emojis, et cetera. And then the rhythm of your writing style. Do you like to keep things short and punchy or do you like to have long flowy sentences?

And so again, there’s so much beauty and opportunity to get even stronger and clearer in what you, do and how you want to say something in a way that’s different. That’s the most important thing. I think that I want everyone to take away that you are so different from everybody else. And there’s something about you and your experience that nobody else has to offer.

And if you can lean into that, Find out what that is, what are those things about you that are different than anyone else? That’s such a beautiful opportunity to show off those creative gifts and experiences again, that nobody else has. So the reason why it’s so passionate, I’m so passionate about it is because I think for the longest time, I didn’t believe that I had that.

I was, I remember being in a place where I didn’t. I didn’t give myself permission to lean in and own that about myself. I’ve definitely been on a lifelong healing journey, but I think for me, from an identity perspective, I had to see myself, I had to see that about myself, that I could own what I wanted to say and that like what I had to offer based on my experiences, it mattered just as much as everybody else’s did.

When you really start if you need to start there and then go through your own stuff. And then document yeah, these are the things that are the things that make up my brand voice based on the star framework. And like there you’ll be able to see, and you’ll be able to make more decisions of just actually I, this is an old version of me. 

And I don’t want to tell that story in that way anymore. Or maybe you’re like, yeah, I’ve really grown from this experience. And here’s the new story that I wanna tell. So there’s so much beauty, there’s a big and beautiful opportunity for people to explore again, who you are and who you were in the past, who you are now and the way that you want it to be reflected in the future, as it relates to how your customers see you too, and your own growth. 

Awesome. I love it. Thank you, Jackie so much for being here for sharing your expertise and your experiences with us. Definitely huge for us to learn from, everything that you’ve been through and help us to get better at what we do as well. So we appreciate it. 

Thank you so much for having me. I really loved our conversation and I hope that your listeners feel super empowered to own their own voices. And hopefully it also yeah. Gives you the permission to let go of that fear. If you are wanting to hire someone inside your business.

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You Can’t Wait Another Day To Set Up Google Analytics 4-Here’s Why

Welcome to episode 209 of The Determined Mom Show. I am your host, Amanda Tento, and today’s episode will be short and sweet for those who love short episodes.

And today we’re gonna talk about why you can’t wait another day to set up Google Analytics for, very important. And first, you’re probably gonna wonder why you even need Google Analytics, So let’s dive into it. Google Analytics is a technical little tag installed on your website that tracks all of your traffic.

So it tracks who visits your website, when they visit your website, how they got there, and what they’re doing when they’re there. There are so many different things that you can track. You can track when they click a link, you can track when they download. 

You can track a million different things and literally, a million. So don’t let that overwhelm you, but you need to be tracking who’s visiting your website, where they’re coming from, why they’re there, how long they’re there, and what they’re doing while they’re there.

 Because If you don’t know these things, how are you going to know what is working? Important, and it’s probably one of the most underutilized tools, again, along with Google My Business or Google business profile, but it’s very underused, and even huge companies underused Google Analytics.

They don’t look at their data, they don’t understand their data. They don’t spend that time. That could really be saving them time and money. To understand what’s actually working. So if you get nothing out of this episode, know that you at least have to set it up. Okay? That’s my goal is for you to understand why it’s important for you to set it up.

You may not need this data now. You may need it in a year when your business changes. You may need it in two years. You may need it in three years to see. What was going on three years ago? For anything like that, you just have to understand that this data is important, especially for the longevity of your business and knowing what trajectory, where you’re going, and the.

What you can do to change what you’re currently doing and make it work better. So that’s why having analytics installed on your website is important. But why is Google Analytics four important and why can’t you just keep whatever you have now, universal analytics going and just keep that? 

The reason is that on July 1st, 2023, Google is going to pull Universal Analytics, which is the old version, and it’s just not going to work anymore, and they’re only going to keep your data for six months. 

That means they’re only keeping your data from January to July. So if you don’t have that Google Analytics four set up and tracking, you’re not going to have any data from 2022. Okay, You should have done this in January of 2022. However you didn’t, so that’s fine. Do it now before the end of the year so you don’t lose any more information if you don’t have it set up in track after six months, you’re gonna lose that six months of data, so it’s really important that you know what’s going on, how to track it, all of those things.

And the good news is that we are here to help. If you do need help with setting it up, we do have a way that you can have us set it up for you, and we have a link to that in the show notes.

The most important thing that I want you to take away from this episode is you should be tracking. You should have Google Analytics four installed. You can still keep it. UA four, your Google Universal Analytics installed, but you must set up GA four and make sure that it’s tracking that is a must.

I also wanna touch on very lightly what you can actually use this data for. You can use it to see where people are coming from on social media. If you’re posting on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, all these places. And you’re putting a lot of effort into it and only one of them is working, or two of them are really working to drive traffic. You can stop posting to others because there’s no point.

Social media, Facebook, or any of those are working and it will save you a lot of time and a lot of energy, and it also will allow you to really focus on that one or two profiles that are working. Another thing that you can use it for is to find out where your people are coming from. Then social media. So maybe you did a podcast talk and people are finding your website via that podcast. Maybe you know, you had a webinar that you did. There are just so many different ways that people can find you, and find your website and you wanna know what those are.

The other thing that you wanna know is, How they’re getting there. Obviously, where they are. Are they all in the United States? Are they all around the world? If they’re all around the world, is your website compliant with gdpr? There are a lot of things you can use this data to consider to make sure that you are giving the best experience to those people that are actually visiting.

You can find out how old they are. You can find out what device they’re using. You can find out how long they stayed. You can find out what pages they visited while they were there. So many awesome things. Are on Google Analytics. The moral of this episode and I’m gonna say it again, sorry, you have to set up your GA four now.

Google Analytics four needs to be set up before the end of the year or else you’re going to lose data. If you need help with that, just reach out to us at the link in the show notes. If you don’t, good job. I love it. And just let us know if you have any questions whatsoever. We are always here to help.

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How to Rewire Your Brain to Change Your Business and Personal Life with Alison Leitheiser

Welcome to this episode of The Determined Mom Show. I have with me, the lovely Alison Leitheiser. And we’re gonna talk today about how to rewire your brain to change your business and personal life. 

So welcome Allison. I’m so excited for you to be here too because I was just telling you before my brain needs to be rewired. I am super excited about this. But before we get into it, let’s go ahead and learn more about you.

I am a mom of three. I have two businesses and I also have another additional job of homeschooling the kids as well. I have a few things, a few irons in the fire, Amanda, and as a mom, entrepreneurs can resonate with, I had a chaotic morning and things weren’t quite going according to schedule or plan. 

And I, before I got on with you, I was like, oh my gosh, I have to calm down. I have to go to the center. And I did a few of these neuro exercises that help my brain know that it’s safe and I can think more clearly and be more present.

And so what I love to do is empower women, especially moms. we’re the ones who change the world. And what’s so important with moms is that our nervous system affects our business. It affects our friends, and our community, but it also really impacts our children.

 And we are the trellis that their little nervous systems, our climbing on their patterning off of them. And so it’s very important that we regulate ourselves and know how to balance ourselves so that we can give that gift to our most precious ones. 

That’s awesome. I know that I, I totally feel you on that. Like the crazy morning, the all of the things like, it’s just, I don’t know if there is such a thing as morning where everything goes, at least I’ve never had it. So if there is, go ahead and let us know. 

If you’re listening and you have had the perfect morning, just please let us know that exists. So that way we know, but I’m glad that you have these techniques and I know you’re gonna share some of these techniques or some techniques with us today that will allow us to work towards that rewiring process. But how did you learn?

I don’t know, I guess it’s a field or field of study. There were a lot of different doors into the body and the mind, and this is one of my favorites so yeah, I didn’t, I, as a. Younger person. I actually became very ill. When I was 16, I got a virus in my spinal cord and it ate away at my nervous system and my organs and I actually was paralyzed from the neck down.

I was fully quadriplegic. I could not change the TV channel. I could not brush my own teeth, things like that. so I was very impacted. Not very functional for a long time with this. And so I began to seek answers. So the medical community did its best. They didn’t have an answer for me and I didn’t match anything that they had going on.

So for Ms. For example, if you need five checkboxes to get that diagnosis, I would have four of them, so I, they didn’t really have, I wasn’t presenting as a textbook case. So they basically were like I don’t know. sh shark shoulders, and here’s some pain medication. So from which, which always makes you feel great, if all of the doctors are like, I don’t know what to do with you.

So my family and, thankfully, we’re not satisfied with that being the answer, just okay. I guess we’ll just wait here, while I’m paralyzed. So we began seeking other alternative healthcare options and we stumbled upon lots of techniques, but there was one, in particular, one, type of therapy in particular that helped me walk again. 

And that’s called integrative manual therapy and they combined so many different types of alternative therapies into one. It’s like a bouquet of incredible work. And so with that, they were able to work on the really damaged aspects of my nervous system.

Like my circulation. And help me repair it. So I did make a recovery with them, but I still had some lingering symptoms like migraines and just exhaustion and really just, like instability in my health.

So if I did too much, then I would maybe feel bad for a little while or if I overextended myself and I didn’t sleep enough or I didn’t eat the right food, I just felt fragile. Do you know what I’m saying? So the neuro training, the brain training is what helped sync.

 My primitive brain and my body began to perceive my environment as not threatening and safe so the nervous system has a huge cascading effect on our hormones, our immune system, and our digestive system in so many different aspects of our lives.

And so if that is if you’re getting the signals. From your brain that you should be in survival mode, then that’s gonna cause you a lot of heartaches, a lot of things are gonna go wrong because there’s this cascade that happens with inflammation and stress and all these things. What we can do now, we know that we can give our brain more information to be like, Hey, let’s take another look. Is that a tiger in my kitchen? Or is it? 

My son is making ground-growling noises. Is that actually, is this traffic jam a life-threatening situation, or do I actually have the ability to breathe while I’m going to work or this incredibly stressful project or meeting, is this life or death, or can we choose something different? So this is the D. Ways we can give our brain more information, can help us choose something different. 

That’s amazing. And I was maybe a little tiny bit aware that this existed, but not like to the extent that you have experienced and that you’ve shared, and I, I just am not, I wasn’t aware that you can actually just change so much about your body just by focusing on your brain. I think that’s awesome. 

So I love marrying the two because some people only talk about the brain. Some people only talk about the organs or, and I think you can’t really go wrong going including both and having more of a whole brain, whole-body approach.

Awesome. So what are some of these techniques that we can actually use? Like maybe on a daily basis when we’re overwhelmed? Like with the kids? Like that’s my biggest thing is like, when oh my God, they’re all fighting. I’m trying to make dinner. 

I’m like, I don’t know if it’s ever, anybody else’s listening has experienced this, but like probably one’s exactly everything is happening at once. And you’re just like, oh my God, I don’t even know what to do. I just shut down. 

That’s a common experience. I think everyone has, and everyone can relate to that. And I think that. There are specific drills that work really well for my brain to help me calm the F down. And those drills probably aren’t gonna be the same for you because your nervous system is different than mine. Your brain is unique. 

And so what I like to do is spend some time, like figuring out what is really powerful, like quick, like you can reset your nervous system in 10 seconds. And, that’s why it’s so awesome for moms and for entrepreneurs cuz we’re not working with a lot of margins.

We need something that is effective and effective in a very quick application. So the rescue drills are definitely there. What I like to encourage people to do is do them proactively, don’t wait until your nervous system is fried to start using them. We can incorporate them into our day and they’re quick.

One thing that I like to teach people is it’s not a super finesse drill, but it’s a pretty common one that works for a lot of people. And that is a breathing technique. The breathing, our rate of breathing is actually a back door to our primitive brain to affect our brain. Because if our brain is thinking, we’re definitely running from a tiger right now, our breath.

And the way that we’re breathing, the way we’re using our lungs is gonna be different than if we’re feeling calm. If we’re sipping tea by the fire, the breathing, changing our breathing can then be a backdrop to our brain and be like, Hey, you aren’t running from the entire efficacy. See how deeply I’m breathing, see how much oxygen I’m taking in.

See how much fuel you’re getting. So then the brain can be like, oh yeah. Okay. Okay. You’re right. and it can make a change. So just doing some really intentional breathing, there are so many awesome breathwork types of suggestions out there, I think is becoming more and more common that people are choosing to utilize this, to change their physiology.

And one of my favorites to use is called alternate nostril breathing. And that balances your brain because it’s stimulating both sides of the brain. You’re breathing through your right nostril and then your left nostril. So I can guide us through that if you want. So for our bodies, we can actually measure if something’s working for us.

So if you take a little check, we’re gonna just like it. Look from side to side, see how your neck feels, and raise your arm up. See how your shoulder feels and then those markers are just gonna help us to know how much our body changes. Cause if our nervous system really likes something, it’ll actually be like, Hey, go ahead and make more movement.

Like I’m feeling safe. We can extend, we can really move our bodies in a different way. And then the other measurement is intrinsically like inside. Taking a measurement of where you’re at. So on a scale of one to 10, like how anxious do you feel? 

And then we. Remeasure those ways that we can touch our bodies. So the alternate and O ulcer breathing is you start by plugging your right nostril and you breathe in with your left. And then at the top of the breath, you’re gonna switch. 

You’re gonna plug the left nostril, blow out the right nostril. Then you blow your inhale through that same side, inhale on the right switch at the top of the breath and exhale to the left and you keep going like that. Inhale through the left switch to the top of the breath, exhale to the right, inhale through the right switch to the top of the breath, and exhale to the left.

So you guys can keep going, but this is called yoga land, this is called naughty sho and there are all these little energetic channels that it’s purifying in our body. And because we’re breathing on the right and left side, it’s activating both sides of our brain. So when we get anxious, when we get Hyper Focused.

Usually, there’s just one part of our brain that’s activated. And so this can help balance our brain out. So you, if you continue to do the breathing, you wanna shoot for seven to eight cycles. So one cycle would be to inhale to the left, switch up the top of the breath, exhale to the right inhale of the right switch at the top of the breath, and exhale through the left.

So that’s like full. Breathing in and out through both nostrils would be one cycle. And then after you’ve done that, you can take a little look, see and see what you’re experiencing in your neck, in your shoulder, in your internal measurement.

I definitely noticed a difference, like in my shoulder like it’s so much easier. I feel more. Mobility, I guess I should say mobility is the biggest change and definitely calmer. I only did like maybe, two cycles, but I think if I did all seven of those cycles, seven to eight cycles, I think it would be a huge difference. So I’m excited to try that. Yay. I’m sure I’ll get the opportunity later today. Cause I’m a mom. 

So I like to do that. When I’m driving. When I’m just if I’m still, and I’m not using a hand, that’s a great one to do and you don’t have to be in a deep meditative state. You can just do the breathing and that’s gonna change your brain.

I love that one because one of our brain’s requirements for optimal function is oxygen. So when you are giving. A base survival nutrient to thrive. You’re gonna get more bang for your buck for the rest of your day. 

That’s awesome. So maybe we should do that every morning, like after we brush our teeth or yeah. Incorporate it into our daily routine and then we can also use it as you said, the rescue. 

And the thing about our brain has two modes. There’s a more survival mode. And then there’s resting and digesting and healing that area. And so you could do this before meals also, and that’ll help you actually be able to digest your food and absorb what you’re giving it.

Now you can also do this before bed to help you. Just lower the stress level and tell your body, Hey, it’s actually okay to rest and it’s okay to sleep deeply and be refreshed in the morning. 

That’s awesome. So now the question for you is, do you like to teach your kids this? Do they practice these things to kind allow themselves to learn about their nervous system and learn how to manage it? 

Yeah. I actually was teaching the kids. We had this little homeschool group last year and I was teaching them anatomy and I was teaching them some neuro drills there as well. And one of the girls broke her arm and had to go get an MRI because there were some complications and she was scared. 

And she was feeling panicked and she had the presence of mind at that moment to re-remember oh, there’s that thing that Alice taught me. Yeah. I’m gonna try it. And so she did, and she was able to not only continue with the MRI but finish. And she was feeling calm, feeling safe, feeling, feeling fine.

So that’s awesome. So I love teaching kids. Kids that’s for sure. Yeah. I love it. I wish I would’ve known this last week. No, I think that was this week when I took my 12-year-old for her COVID booster, she had a little panic attack, not a panic attack, like officially, but she was freaking out so that would’ve helped.

I’m glad that I have it now going forward for all of these challenging moments. And I know that you’re coming out with a book, which I am thinking may have more of these or what’s in your book. 

My book is I’m, it’s a book of a lot of different people’s stories and I have a chapter in there. So I go more in-depth into my story and what helped me and what the experience was like. And that is coming out October 1st. 

Okay. That’s awesome. That’s yeah, just like next week. So that’s perfect. Awesome. So what else can you share with us? That we can use in our business, and in our personal life to really help us too, centering would be the best word or I don’t know if centering is the best word. Just chill. 

I think there’s a lot of hustle that goes on with what we’re trying to do here. and I think that there’s not often. Enough self-care that we take. And sometimes that self-care is like a glass of wine and Netflix, which no, no problem with that, but it’s more like a checkout versus a check-in.

And when we continue going on in our lives and we’re pushing ourselves to the max and we’re checking out a lot, that’s what’s gonna lead to burnout. And where you wake up one morning. You’re like, I don’t wanna do this anymore. I don’t wanna do my business. I don’t wanna be a parent. I wanna burn everything down.

So the benefits of this are so incredible and they’re quick. And when you figure out what is helpful for you there is. Like an untapped level of ability for you to rise to the next place, whether that’s in business relationship parenting.

I think what is very misunderstood is that if we hustle harder, we’re gonna get what we need. And when we’re, when we are our brand and we’re stressed, we’re burnt out. We’re fatigued, we’re chaotic. We’re inconsistent. 

That reflects in our brand. And so when we train our nervous system to be centered, sustainable, reliable, safe, and fully present that also comes across in your brand.

And if you just think about yourself, who would you rather do business with? It’s you who wants someone who’s gonna show up for you and we’ve all had the experience. Meeting with someone who’s really chaotic and that’s a hard path. 

Like we don’t want that. We don’t need more of that. We have enough on our own. So I think when we think about the aspects of how we can train our nervous system and the benefits of that in our business. Incredible. It’s really incredible. What happens to your sales? What happens to how you feel in your body? How do you feel about your business?

I agree, and I think that would be a huge shift for a lot of people and it doesn’t sound hard. There are some things that we like like we talk about on the show. They involve a little bit of work. They involve a lot of work, like years of doing this thing or that thing, or the other thing, but this sounds like something that can be immediately applied and you can see immediate results, which is so different from so many of the other things that we’ve talked about through the years.

The program that I have for women is eight months long. So it is work, but it is immediately applicable. And basically, it’s like giving you allowing you to reevaluate and regenerate your body. From an organ level, and from a brain l And when we do that, we have a way to increase capacity and money’s an F.

Everything has the energy to it. And money has its own energy. And some it doesn’t jive with the energy that we have. So when we can upgrade our energy, then we can have the capacity to hold space and receive more money. Yeah. Wow. So it definitely correlates. 

That’s awesome. And so where can everyone find out more about working with you and your program?

I have a website. It is inner-restoration.com and there are workshops on there. There’s a link to my program. You can reach out and connect with me, and then there’s also a link to join my free community. Which is a Facebook group where I go live there and I teach new techniques, new ways to approach our health and our vibrant,cy, and our success every week.

Awesome. Yeah. That’s great. I love it. Okay, awesome. Is joining the Facebook group and Going to check out all of the things cuz I need to rewire my brain. So yeah. Again, don’t we all? Yeah, exactly. Thank you so much for being here, Allison, and sharing this amazing information with us.

It’s new to me and I hope it’s new to a lot of people and I hope that it’s gonna help a lot of people because I think it sounds amazing. And just that little exercise that we did, during the recording, I think it’s definitely. Extremely evident that it’s very powerful. 

Thanks so much for having me, Amanda. I loved speaking with you. And I wanted to say, go team to all the moms you’re fighting for. You guys are doing awesome. 

Connect with Alison Leitheiser

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Email Marketing-The Final and Most Enduring Step in Your Proven Marketing System

Welcome to episode 207 of The Determined Mom Show. I am your host, Amanda Tento. And today we are going to talk about the final step in your proven marketing system, which is email marketing. This is the final and also the most enduring step in your proven marketing system because it’s going to be automated.

It’s going consistently. Contact your clients for you on a regular basis, and just make sure that they know that you are there, what you can help them with and why they should work with you really. So many different factors that you can put into an email marketing sequence, but let’s talk about why it is important and why we put it at the end.

Email marketing is the final component and it basically allows you to communicate and update your regular customers, and send your new potential customers back to your website. And it also drives overall conversions long term. Okay. This completes a circle.

So I want you to imagine a circle and if you have already downloaded the six marketing must guarantee to get you more customers. You’re gonna see this circle on every single page. And what this circle does is it starts with your website at the top, goes over to SEO, then down to Google business profile. 

Getting more positive reviews on Google ads, and then ending with your email marketing system. But that email marketing system leads directly back to your website, which is what you always want to happen.

One thing that I’ve noticed over the years in marketing is that social media has taken a place in people’s. Mental marketing, I guess you could say your mental marketing space, like it, it seems so important and so heavy and so focused that we forget that we can use it. Google, is the most powerful marketing tool online.

They have lots of different tools for us to use, to grab those clients that are actually searching for our products or services without actually having to focus a lot of time on social media without actually having to put that effort into.

Posting every day and engaging and all of those things just takes a lot of time. And if you set up a proven marketing system, which this is, you will be able to do a lot less of that engagement, unless it’s something that you enjoy. I think that I think it, I think the reason that I’ve taken this stance and that I’ve investigated this and that I’ve been implementing it for my own business is that.

I don’t really love posting on social media unless it’s for personal reasons. I don’t love monitoring comments. I don’t love replying. I don’t love any of that stuff. I don’t, I just don’t like it. And so I’m like, there’s gotta be another way. And there is another way. It’s just using Google to promote your business and getting those customers to your network and your sphere of influence in your ecosystem.

If you. So our goal with email marketing is always to send people back to our website. So you can do this by. A million different ways. You can collect customers in a million different ways. You can do lead magnets. You can do blog posts that have a link to a lead magnet. Answering questions is gonna be the most important thing that you do on your website.

Google recently had an update and it wants to make sure that you are answering the questions that people are searching for. It’s called the helpful content update. This is probably one of the most important updates, because if you’ve been optimizing your website for SEO in a spammy keyword stuffing non-genuine way.

Then you’re going to be in trouble because this update is gonna probably tank your rankings. But for most of us who are genuine in our businesses, and we’re not trying to just put stuff out there that is, canned content, like think of AI writers and. And those kinds of things you want to actually answer the questions that your customers are looking for.

Google is going to reward you by sending people your way. Okay. That’s how you need to think of it. So once they get to your website, you want them to opt into something. So you can then remarket to them via email or Google ads if you wanna run Google ads. But make sure that what your goal is, will attract them.

Knowing what your services are, knowing what problems you solve for them. That is the content that you need to have on your website. That is what you need to give to Google, to attract people to your website. Then once they’re there again, you’re gonna. Capture their email in some way, shape, or form, whether you’re giving them something they’re signing up for your newsletter.

That’s the most important. So you can think of the email marketing system as the oil that keeps your whole proven marketing system running. Because if you don’t have that email, then it basically just stops when. They get served at Google ads or when they visit your website, they’re just never going to come back.

And we don’t want that. This is the oil that kind of keeps all of these gears flowing and keeps them aware of what you’re doing that keeps them aware of your services, your products, your business, keeps them in the know. So we don’t like clients to rely on social media platforms to communicate with their clients.

The reason for this is that I’ve seen so many people, I’ve seen people with like millions of TikTok followers, just get shut out of their account and they can never get in again. Can you imagine you have such a huge influence on people, millions of people, and you have no way of knowing who it was, how to contact them, or anything?

Instagram does it, Facebook does it. I’ve seen just so many people just get shut out. It can even happen with Facebook groups. There’s a new feature where if someone requests to become a Facebook or, a moderator to your group, and then I guess you don’t see that notification or something they can take over Facebook can grant them that access.

It’s crazy. So you really need to be sending people away from social media, gathering people away from social media. And giving them that interaction that they want from you outside of that, and email marketing is definitely the way to do that. It is also another way, the best way to avoid relying on those third parties for access to your audience.

If you are active on LinkedIn and you get locked out of your LinkedIn account, no one hears from you for two weeks, and then they forget about you, right? If you’re active on Instagram and you get locked out of your Instagram, all this engagement is happening with the things you just posted. You can’t do anything about it.

You have no way to get back on Facebook. In the same way, you lose access to that audience. What you need to be doing is capturing that audience, nurturing them, and educating them. And willing them. You wanna make sure that they understand how you can help them, what you can do for them, and give them more information on how you can improve their life.

Whether you do service-based business, brick-and-mortar product-based business, or whatever it is you need to let them know how to do it. So just like the website in your proven marketing system, your email marketing system is both the beginning and the end of the proven marketing system. It basically allows you to add new users from all of the marketing methods above.

So from your website, from, SEO, from organic traffic from. Google my business or Google business profile from Google ads, all of those people that you’re collecting are adding them to your email marketing system. And then you’re going to make sales just from sending emails to them, letting them know what you’re working on, letting them know what you’re doing.

That’s why this is so important. My personal and I’ll share with you the email marketing system of choice is Aweber. And the reason for that is that they are the only one in the industry that doesn’t actually outsource the spam filtering part of the email. So they’re very. They have very high open rates and high deliverability.

And so that is why I’ve chosen to use AWeber. If you go back, oh my goodness. I had Jenna on the podcast ages ago and if I can figure out what episode she was on, then I will share that with you. Going back to episode 66, how to launch your strategy and follow email backs, best practices with Jenna Bagley from AWeber.

That is gonna be your best episode to listen to. If you wanna learn more about Aweber. There should be a link in there. I can also include a link in the show notes here. So then that way you can check out Aweber’s free plan. They do have a very robust free plan. But I definitely use the paid plan because I love sending the blog broadcasts and so many other things that they have available.

So that is my favorite email marketing system. There are many others, there’s MailChimp, there’s Mailerlite, there’s Constant Contact. There’s. Let’s see, trying to think of all of them. There’s just a lot. So if you Google the email marketing system, you’re going to be able to find a million different options.

And you just choose whatever one works for you. Mailerlite is very. Easy user friendly, one to use. They have a free version. I wouldn’t recommend MailChimp because it’s gotten very expensive. It went from being free to be super expensive. Wouldn’t necessarily recommend that, but AWeber is definitely another of my favorites.

So if you are interested in figuring out where you are losing. Customers go ahead and download the six marketing must guarantees to get you more customers. That is the, basically the worksheet, the workbook that we have designed that all of this content is based on all of these episodes are all about.

And it really gives you a really detailed overview of what each step in the marketing system is, why you need to be taking these steps. And also it gives you a marketing holes checklist. So it allows you to see if there are holes in your marketing strategy, where they are and how you can fix them.

It also includes 30 quarterly checkup tasks for marketing. And includes things that you need to be doing every single quarter. So as soon as that happens, we’re gonna hit October here in a couple of weeks, unfortunately. But we’re gonna hit October soon. So this is something that you can use to go ahead and work through all of your marketing, make sure that everything is up to date.

Very important. I hope you have a wonderful week. And I thank you so much for listening and go ahead and check out the previous episodes, talking about our proven marketing system and they are starting at episode 195. And go through this one, talk to you soon.

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