Why I’m never busy

Why I’m never busy

“How are you?”
“I’m so busy”

This is the most common line I hear in conversation especially with business people and mums. It’s definitely a thing I used to say a lot and now I try not to say it at all.

If I feel like I am about to say “I’m busy” I take a moment to reconsider and to take responsibility. Instead I say: “I’m fully engaged with my life” or “I have a lot on” or something like that.

If you like to say you’re busy please go ahead. I don’t judge you. I just know that when I was saying “I’m busy” it was a number of things. It was a badge of martyrdom. It was an abdication of my responsibility. It was a cop out and it was an excuse.

It felt good to say I was busy. It was me, as a mother, putting myself last. I was making excuses for why I couldn’t put my self care and wellbeing first in my life

It felt good to say I was busy. It was me, as a mother, putting myself last. I was making excuses for why I couldn’t put my self care and wellbeing first in my life and the problem with that is: no-one else in the world is going to put me first. They might be playing the same mothering game as me and failing to put themselves first, but they certainly aren’t going to put me first. I needed to do that.

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST

For me, the ability to change my relationship with busy-ness took a number of years and some tough challenges

My health declined and I simply couldn’t be busy. Plus, being busy was making me sick. I was anemic with HMB and I needed to learn a new way of being. Stress and overwork were making my condition worse and after a bout in hospital I finally committed to a new direction.

I had to learn to see the mindsets and beliefs that were keeping me stuck. I had to remind myself again and again that I am the boss and I get to make the rules. I had to release a lot of my employee mindset hangovers and step into a new paradigm aside from capitalism’s demands to do, do, do for more, more, more. I had to decide what I personally want from my life and business and redefine my goals. 

I worked with Bear Herbert on her course called Freely. It helped me to claim and define what I really need and how much I need to charge to achieve that. It aligned with my values and I changed my hourly rate easily. 

I had to ask a lot of questions. Do I really want a 6 or 7 figure business? What do I want my days to look like? What are my priorities? What are my interests and who decides how much I should do? Should I let my imagination decide what other people think I should do or should I honour my body, intuition and health indicators. It’s really helped me sit deeper into being and to release the incessant desire for more, to do more, to have more. To simply be is one of the most challenging things for me and when I can tap into it there is such peace. 

I had to get good at saying no and taking the time to discern where my energy was best spent.

I realised that I couldn’t blame my partner, his family, my family or society. I learned that even if they do think those things about me, I needed to leave those opinions and judgements with them to save my life. I had to get good at saying no and taking the time to discern where my energy was best spent. In reality that looks like a lot of mistakes, a lot of over-doing it migraines and a lot of days in bed. It has taken dozens of reiterations of my calendar and it’s something I’m still working on every week and every day. 

Ultimately I see that I need to continue to take responsibility. It’s my responsibility to take care of my wellbeing. I and only I am responsible for the hours I work and how I work. It’s entirely up to me to structure my days and commitments so that I can have the life I want. 

It’s super satisfying and it’s also very uncomfortable but when I think about being an employee I’m just not sure how I would go. I feel like I’ve learned a lot of lessons and I’m in a completely different field to a lot of people, particularly people who don’t have a business.  The level of uncertainty in business sits closely with the truth of the uncertainty of life itself and being an employee helps us forget that. It lulls us into a false sense of security with weekly payment but the truth of the uncertainty if life remains. That is a pretty scary truth for most of us. 

I’ve had to learn to emotionally regulate myself when I’m in stressful situations instead of disassociating. I’m still learning that one. I am still learning how much time I need in nature and how much I need quiet. From my perspective it’s all a big experiment and I’m still playing the game. I’ve had to grow the **** up and stop being a baby child who expects the parents/teachers/doctors/government/whoever to fix it all for me and take absolute responsibility for my life. 

We all have a choice. We all chose to be where we currently are whether we realise or not. I choose how I relate to my life circumstances and I find that very satisfying. I practice being satisfied. Satisfied with what I have. I take time to notice all that I have. I feel very lucky and grateful. And I’m never busy. 

“I pay my respects and acknowledge the people of the Yuin Nation, traditional custodians of the land on which I live and work. I also pay respect to all Elders — past, present and future.”

Read more from the blog.

Interview with Amy Madden – RAS and emotional regulation

Interview with Amy Madden – RAS and emotional regulation

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How to use your energy for change when change is challenging

How to use your energy for change when change is challenging

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How to make REAL change to the oppressive system – interview with Louise O Reilly

How to make REAL change to the oppressive system – interview with Louise O Reilly

Whhoooooaaaaaa this chat is really only for the brave hearted.

Business woman: You are already part of the solution!

We took the red pill…

I’ve never had so many goosebumps during an interview as I did during this chat with Louise O’Reilly – a Warrwa-Noongar Aboriginal woman who focuses on cultural inclusion, diversity and anti-racism work for entrepreneurs.

We covered a lot of things in the spirit of: how can you deliver inclusive marketing in your business?

This video interview comes from my heart to yours with all my love and compassion. 

WATCH THE VIDEO

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST

More from Louise

Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/LouiseOReilly.TheShieldAndTheConch 

TikTok – https://www.tiktok.com/@louise_oreilly 

Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/louise.oreilly.shieldandconch/ 

Website – www.LouiseOReilly.com.au 

About Louise

The oppressive status quo is something Louise refuses to swallow. This mumma-bear won’t stop until she’s changed the world for her babies. With her unique self-expression, heart-centred rebelliousness, and clarity of her vision of the inclusive world we could be enjoying. It’s no wonder Louise is an inclusion & diversity coach, mentor and course creator for heart-centered & socially-conscious entrepreneurs.

Louise is a Warrwa-Noongar Aboriginal woman who focuses on cultural inclusion, diversity and anti-racism work for entrepreneurs. Offering the Inclusion Creators Collective membership. It’s filled with courses, live trainings, group coaching and more. Louise also offers limited 1:1 coaching services and her dream is the co-creation of a more inclusive world through social innovation. Where everyone feels free and safe to be themselves. Her drive is her children.

Her cheer-squad is her husband and her inspiration is her inner-calling. Louise’s coaching is gentle, inclusive, and compassionate. LouiseOReilly.com.au is where you’ll find her blogs, free trainings, videos, podcasts, and services. Outside of business, Louise was freelance writing for Amnesty International Australia, radio hosting on Noongar Radio, and a Miss NAIDOC Perth finalist.

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How to use your energy for change when change is challenging

How to use your energy for change when change is challenging

I know how challenging it is to grow your business.

The thing is: you can make it easier or harder for yourself. 

What are you willing to do?

What do you want?

What do you like?

The magic trick is to give these things your energy instead of the opposite.

You can do this!

WATCH THE VIDEO

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST

“I pay my respects and acknowledge the people of the Yuin Nation, traditional custodians of the land on which I live and work. I also pay respect to all Elders — past, present and future.”

Read more from the blog.

Interview with Amy Madden – RAS and emotional regulation

Interview with Amy Madden – RAS and emotional regulation

I had this great chat with Amy Madden firstly because she helped me understand the RAS and how it sometimes shows us only negative experiences and how that can confirm unwanted beliefs and how to make it work for you to achieve your goals.  We also chatted about...

How to use your energy for change when change is challenging

How to use your energy for change when change is challenging

I know how challenging it is to grow your business. The thing is: you can make it easier or harder for yourself. What are you willing to do? What do you want? What do you like? The magic trick is to give these things your energy instead of the opposite. You can do...

Impermanence and Tough Days in Business

Impermanence and Tough Days in Business

Today started with a lot of hard feelings.

Actually, this dread and worry has been slowly creeping in for a few weeks. 

Today just feels like the peak of it triggered by a few things. 

My course did not make enough sales to go live today as planned. 

Money hasn’t just fallen in my lap since I started my abundance manifesting two days ago. 

The bank balance hasn’t changed since the last time I looked. 

I’ve just become aware that I don’t have enough income generating days allocated in my calendar. 

I’ve got that horrible feeling of dread in my guts and I can’t seem to shake it.

I’ve heard all of this before…

Inner dialogue like: 

My audience is too small

My ads aren’t reaching the right cool audience 

My offers just aren’t selling

Why aren’t people dying to work with me? I’m pretty sure I’m awesome…

When is the magical money going to land in my bank account and fix all of my problems???

For a change, this time I didn’t apply for 3 jobs.

I’m about to do some gratitude practice to shift my awareness and energetic focus because I’m aware that staying too long in a loop of:

> Worry > Struggling to find solutions > Getting more weighed down > Worry > Struggling to find solutions > Getting more weighed down Worry > Struggling to find solutions > Getting more weighed down >

is not the best way to leave my bed this morning. 

Gratitude practice though….urghhh

What? Why?

Is that just another load of baloney and another have-to??

I’m about to do some gratitude practice to shift my awareness and energetic focus because I’m aware that staying too long in a loop of:

> Worry > Struggling to find solutions > Getting more weighed down > Worry > Struggling to find solutions > Getting more weighed down Worry > Struggling to find solutions > Getting more weighed down >

is not the best way to leave my bed this morning. 

Gratitude practice though….urghhh

What? Why?

I’ve been trying to make peace with gratitude practice this week by actually doing some. 

What I notice is I can trigger good feelings inside myself by thinking of my favorite things and noticing the beauty in the present moment.

 

The blue sky 

The birds chirping outside my window

The grevillea I get to see from my bed

 

They remind me about my other love: wild nature. 

I want to go. I want a day off to be in the wilderness.

But when working MORE to make MORE money seems to my brain to be what’s needed, taking a day off seems crazy. 

What I DO know from experience is that swimming in the big sea charges up my battery.

I also know that these feelings and these periods in business just come and go. 

Maybe a day off won’t change it.

Maybe grinding harder won’t change it. 

But it will definitely CHANGE even if I just show up at the desk and do what’s on the calendar for today.

Maybe I’ll do it from that cafe across the road from the beach so I can squeeze in a little dip in the big blue.

What I end up doing for now is getting back to my gratitude practice, going for a walk with a friend, having a big cry, and then just showing up at the desk and doing what’s in my calendar.

“Grow your email list” – yeah nah

“Grow your email list” – yeah nah

There is a lot of noise in the online business space about growing your list. 

I’m not into it. 

I prefer Dani Gardner’s approach. 

She was the first one to blow my mind with the “NO LEAD MAGNET” idea. 

Dani was building her list using only a newsletter sign up page on her website. 

More recently she has shifted to no list building other than courses!
I love that. 

However, this is a pretty radical approach  and some of us will still want to grow our email list in other ways.

The way I see it there are 2 options: 

  1. Paid Offers
  2. Free Offers

Paid offers

Small price courses (or any price courses) are a great option for building your list.

I love the Elizabeth Goddard approach of having a $9 course. You can have a few of these to build your list. 

The thing with having a small ticket course is: people who pay for a solution are way more invested in the solution than people who sign up for freebies. 

You can play around with pricing, especially if the thing you’re selling used to be free or could just as easily be free. 

One day I just decided that I wasn’t going to run webinars anymore because they were such good value. I decided to simply sell the exact same amount of giving for $49. 

I sold several courses like this and have been gradually creeping my prices up over time. 

I also have a $9 course and will create another one in the future. 

You can sell something for $1, $4, $9, $12, $29, $44, $50, $55, $75 or $99 or whatever you want. 

Just play around with your offer to find a pricing sweet spot.

LISTEN ON THE PODCAST

Free offers

George Kao does recommend a “Free to Attend – Pay for the Recording” webinar strategy which I haven’t tried yet. 

There’s also the “Free Information Session” option which I have used and works for me. This hasn’t created massive list growth for me but I’m not worried about numbers if I’m getting sales and bundling a heap of free 30 minute chats into one 30 minute call. 

There are many other things you can share for free. eBooks, Guides, Video training, first chapter of your book, workshops, challenges, 7 day email sequences, 21 day email sequences – the sky’s the limit. 

I don’t use any of them at the moment. 

I am not 100% against freebies but I haven’t found it to be a strategy that grew an audience of customers. 

But you should definitely try for yourself. 

The thing is: 

Whether you have a newsletter list sign up, a freebie or a small course, they all need promotion to grow your email list.

So whatever you choose, you still need to pop it in the calendar or launch cycle. You need to make time to talk about the offer so people can take you up on it 🙂 

How to promote the list growth offer 

Some of my methods include low cost ads, sharing with referral partners, posts in Facebook groups and posts on my own social media. 

All the usual ways of connecting with my people. 

What are the places you connect with people and discuss the ways they can hang out with you? What are your promotion channels? 

You need to make time to promote your list or it will not grow, whether the list builder is free or paid. 

She needs your good, loving time and energy to grow.

“I pay my respects and acknowledge the Djirringanj people of the Yuin Nation,  custodians of the land on which I live and work. I also pay respect to all Elders — for their spiritual nurturance of the land and people.”

Instagram for Business

Instagram for Business

Hello, today I’m going to be talking about Instagram for business. 

I don’t know about you but I enjoy Instagram as a social media platform more than any other. It just feels more fun and easy to show up there and I particularly enjoy getting ideas for my sewing projects and art-life as a user.

Using Instagram for your business is going to be a bit different to using Instagram for fun and whether you enjoy Instagram or not I think it is a really valuable tool especially if your audience is potentially hanging out there.

In this blog I’m going to cover:

  1. The 2 kinds of Instagram business account
  2. Types of post
  3. Tools I use to create content
  4. An easy Instagram content strategy based on content types

I know there is a lot of advice about using Instagram for your business that already exists on the internet and I do not want to add to the noise of endless recommendations, have-to’s and “shoulds” to add to your list.

2 Kinds of Instagram account

The way I see Instagram for business is that there are basically two kinds of accounts.

One kind of account is someone who starts creating content and finds that people love their content, they find it entertaining. They earn themselves a large following and at some point they realise “Hey I have an opportunity here. I could monetize this account and this could be a business”.

I see a second kind of account where people are service based businesses or product based and they already have a business. They want to use Instagram for marketing so the Instagram account is not the whole business. The Instagram account is for relationship building and communication.

I see myself in this second category and most of my clients are in this second category as well.

The reason I mentioned these two different types of Instagram accounts is that I think a lot of the advice given in the online marketing business world about Instagram is actually better suited to the first kind of Instagram account and not to service based businesses.

Some of the advice I see being delivered about Instagram is that you have to post everyday, you have to create Reels, you have to point and dance and be entertaining to succeed on Instagram.
This is not my experience and so I’m going to share my advice on Instagram.

LISTEN ON THE PODCAST

Types of post

Firstly let’s talk about the different kinds of posts you can do on Instagram. Instagram used to be a photo sharing app but that has changed a lot recently as Instagram themselves try to compete with Tik Tok and other social media platforms.  

That means there are a lot of different post types available. 

There are:

  1. Feed posts
    1. Single image
    2. Carousel
    3. Video
  2. IGTV
  3. Stories
  4. Reels
  5. Live 

Your feed is the main place you see posts as a user; when you click on that little house icon in the bottom corner. The feed contains lots of different post types but the main ones that are featured in your grid on your profile are of this three types:

A single image may or may not have a caption,  

A carousel post that may or may not have a caption or 

A video that may or may not have a caption. 

Videos in your grid need to be 60 seconds or less

IGTV is for longer videos; from 1 minute up to 60 minutes. You can preview a snippet of an IGTV video in your feed so it will appear on your grid, and they show up on your profile in the tab with the little play icon, under your highlights. 

One of the great features of igtv is that you can include a clickable URL in your caption. This is not available in normal feed posts.

Stories posts that last 24 hours and then expire. You can add them to your archive and then use them as Highlights. They are portrait dimensions rather than square or landscape and they are highly recommended by me.

Reels are a recent feature that Instagram copied from Tik Tok. They are short videos that can include photos, music, captions, links and more. They are currently very popular however personally I do not create many Reels as I find, while I do get more reach, it is not to the right audience. This may or may not happen to you so I recommend experimenting to see what happens.

Finally, live videos are available on Instagram. I recommend doing these occasionally as they are a great way to connect with your audience and appear later in your igtv feed. The fun thing about going live on Instagram is that you can have other people join you and do fun Q&A days or chats or interviews. 

One thing I especially love to do is share my Instagram posts to Facebook. Personally I do not love posting on Facebook on my page (and that is partly because I don’t find I get very good reach or engagement over there) but I do want to maintain my presence on Facebook so I always share my Instagram posts over to Facebook, that way people can see I am active in my business.

Tools I use to create content

There are a few tools I use when creating content for my Instagram and I thought I would share a couple of those with you. 

But before I go into those I need to be clear with you: you can start simple and just use your mobile phone camera and the Instagram app itself. You don’t actually NEED any other tools at all. I just like to use these and thought I would share. If you are at the very start, just use what you have got (and maybe Canva haha). 

#1 Canva

 I love to use canva for lots of things and I find I use Canva a lot for my Instagram.  I’ll use it to create posts in my feed,  I use it to create Carousels,  feed videos, IGTV  videos  and more.  There is a great free version of Canva that I recommend before you even think about paying for Canva and you can do heaps with a free version. One thing I particularly love about Canva is that it has the templates for Stories and IGTV so I don’t have to worry about giving the size of those posts right.

Here’s a link to Canva

#2 Creator Studio

Creator Studio is a Facebook tool that lets you create posts for Instagram from your desktop or laptop. It Is also a great way to view your results from posting where you can see how many likes and how many comments on different posts. 

Here’s a link to Creator Studio

#3 Headliner App

Headliner.app is another great tool I love to use to create “wave grams” of my podcast episodes or audio recordings. This  is a great way to make videos if you don’t want to get dressed today.  You can use an audio recording and turn it into a video

Here’s a link to HeadlinerApp

An easy strategy based on content types

People always want me to tell them what they should post on Instagram and while I resist I noticed that I have this method that I use which might work for you too. 

The reason this works for me is: I have plenty of time with clients and so many ideas for content that I don’t have any trouble coming up with content ideas. What I sometimes lack is clarity when I get to the moment in my calendar where I know I have to create a post. I have a little brain fart about what it should be. To overcome this I keep a big list of my content ideas and then when I get to Instagram I just pay attention to what type of content am I going to create today and make a post as quickly as I can.

I create content based on content type so for example:

On Monday I create a 60 second video for my feed. On Tuesday I create a Carousel post. On Wednesday I create an IGTV. On Thursday I create a Headliner post and on Friday I create a Reel. For Saturday I might have scheduled a single image post that is text on a white background and has a caption (a bit like a Blog). I always try to post an offer at least once a week. I will create a post for that depending on how I feel. You could do a Live, it could be a little video in the feed, it just depends.  

I also try  to do Story posts every day or as often as possible because I know a lot of people jump on Instagram and start in Stories and hardly get out of Stories into their feed.  So I think it’s important to always have posts in your stories because they only last 24hrs. 

So, I wonder how you find this information: do you have more questions? Please leave a comment or email me and let me know so I can make another blog for you 🙂 

“I pay my respects and acknowledge the people of the Yuin Nation, traditional custodians of the land on which I live and work. I also pay respect to all Elders — past, present and future.”