Episode 136 transcript:

Hello. Thank you for letting me back in your ear again this week. It's an honor. I want to preface this episode with, if you hear landscaping stuff going on in the background, I don't usually record podcasts when the guys are here, but it's summertime and we're just going to roll with it.

So I hope you can tune that out. Okay. So what I wanted to talk a little bit about this week is it kind of happened organically in my life because I, as I've shared with you, I am in busy season.

This is summertime for me as a mother of three young children. And it's kind of busy season, right? Uh, the kids are home a lot.

We're having a lot of fun. There's a lot of things I want to do outside of business. And still, I want to be moving the ball forward in other areas of my life, including business, right?

I want to do all the things. I would have fun with the kids. I want to rest when needed. I want to have one-on-one time with my husband.

I want to have private time with just me. I have time with my clients. I want to have time to continue to build my business.

And so I don't know how I feel about the word, creating balance for all the things. So I'm not going to sit here and tell you to work on creating balance.

It's not something that I usually talk about. Um, instead, I'm going to talk about how to continue to move the ball forward on something that you want to do.

Even during a busy season of life for you, your summer might not be that busy or, uh, it might be busy for different reasons than mine, but when you find yourself in that busy season, and there's this other thing that you really still want to be working on, what I want to share with you is that you still get to do it in a way that suits your life.

And for me, one of the things that's almost always on that list is building my business, continuing to build my business, right?

I've built it up. I have a foundation. I have a platform on underneath. That's holding up my business, but I'm still building.

I'm still creating new, fun things, new ways to work with people, new ways to help people new episodes for the podcast, new ways to connect.

There are still things that I'm building, right? So what I will ask of you, here's a big ask. And I had to get honest with myself about this too.

When I looked at my summer and thought, okay, what are the things I want to do this summer? What are the things I want to move forward?

What are the experiences I want to have 

One of the things that I had to get very real with myself when I looked at one of my personal slash business goals and in building the business out is where am I leaking minutes, honestly, and be honest with yourself.

How many minutes are you spending going down the Instagram holes, mindless scrolling. You don't have to tell me. You don't have to tell anybody, but just be honest with yourself and this isn't to say That there isn't a time or periods of the day or an amount of time, that it's actually really fun and helpful to scroll aimlessly.

That that can be really fun and supportive. There's also time that we need stillness. And I think that many of us aren't getting quite enough of that.

And then there's going to be times an allocation of minutes that we're moving toward a business goal, for example. So my ask of you is that you reallocate your minutes.

What if you looked at that main goal that you want to complete? And in my example, I looked at one of the things I want to work on this summer.

And if it felt like I was in too busy of a season to fit it in, if I got real with myself and reallocated, some of those minutes, I could actually make some progress.

And I can almost guarantee that you could too, if you reallocated some of your minutes. And I know you're probably not going to love me for saying that right now.

And in the beginning, you might not like me very much when you're turning off Instagram and reallocating your minutes to something else, whether it's business related or not, But at the end of the period of time that you're looking at.

So in my example of, by the end of summer, after I've reallocated minutes, I will be very happy with me.

And I would hope that you're happier with me by the end of whatever amount of time you're giving yourself to work on moving the ball forward on one of your priority goals.

So I was looking at, when I was thinking about this episode, I was looking at what I, and by the way, I've just created like a really exciting new thing.

And rather than just coming on the podcast and telling you about it, I was looking at how I wanted to share it.

And it started with, and really the creation of this new offer started with me looking at my summer and being honest with myself over the summer and looking at my business and thinking, okay, how do I want to manage my business this summer?

There's different pieces of the business, right? So there's the front end of the business, which is like Instagram marketing, Facebook, that kind of thing.

There's behind the scenes stuff. Like there's the building, there's things I'm doing that are building for future programs, future services, future offerings, um, courses that are coming in the fall to the online business school.

And there's also current client support, right? So I have a book of clients that I'm still supporting through the summer.

So there's always different places, right? And when I thought about how can I help? This is a question I asked myself a few weeks ago was like, how can I help people this summer with things and information and support that some of them need like for the, for the people that match up with this, that they would need, not everybody, but the people who match up with this offer, how can I help them in such a way that suits my summer, my realistic life, where I'm at right now.

And this is an exercise that you can try on for yourself is helping people with the thing that you want to teach in what they, what they could use and what will be really helpful for them and their transformation, but teaching it in such a way that suits your life.

So when I looked at my stuff and got very real, I was looking at my initial signature courses. And if you've been hanging out with me for some time, you'll remember that like back in 2019, I started teaching business, online business courses for birth professionals.

So I started with course creation for doulas, and I taught doulas how to make digital courses. And then I taught audience expansion, teaching birth professionals and doulas and childbirth educators, but all under the umbrella of birth pros, how to build and grow an audience online, organically, meaning without using paid ads, Google ads, Instagram ads, but no ads, just organic audience expansion.

And then I took birth professionals through how to sell online, how to sell your course, how to sell an offer, how to market and promote.

So I had this collection of classes that many of you heard me talk about in previous episodes that became the underlying curriculum inside of the online business school eventually.

But when I started to think about future plans for the online business school, which many of you have heard me say, I'm bringing new courses, new curriculum in the fall.

So what are we doing with course creation, audience expansion and selling courses. Those were my three courses. So what I've decided to do, I'm like choosing right now, cause it makes me really happy to share it.

I've decided to bundle them up and sell them outside of the membership. So this is an online business bundle and you get my three signature courses.

Now there's a little bit more detail to this. I've run the numbers and the amount of curriculum teaching time. When I added up there's 10 total modules, three in the first course, three in the second course and four in the third course.

So there's 10 video modules and then loads of other downloads and tutorials and samples and templates. But when I ran the total number of minutes that I'm teaching what it came out to, let me get you the exact number 907 minutes of content.

It's 15 hours of content. And the way that I have it set up in the portal, once you purchase the bundle is you get a certain amount of content every week for 10 weeks.

And if you do the math, what that comes out to is about an hour and a half a week of content.

And if you do the math, what that comes down to is 13 minutes a day of teaching modules. If you give me 13 minutes, a day of reallocated minutes for the next 10 weeks, which is about the length on average, I'd say of summer, I guess some most places are more like 12 weeks, but let's just go with, you know, 10, 13 minutes a day for the next 10 weeks.

On average you, if this is part of, one of your main goals is building your online business and you do that and you make that change and you reallocate 13 minutes a day on average, by the end of 10 weeks, you will be thanking me for the progress that you made.

And you can pull those minutes from Netflix or from aimless scrolling on Facebook. And again, you might not be super happy with me at first, when you have to log out, I guess you don't have to, but if you make the decision to log out of Instagram, 13 minutes sooner than you may have, normally it's not going to be an easy thing, but after 10 weeks, the change will be profound and you'll be that much closer to moving the ball forward.

We start with these small steps. So if you set a goal to like build your online business, build my business online, be more present online during the summer.

That's hard to move towards because it's not a very specific thing. It's, it's rather vague, right? But if you make a more clear decision on how you're going to break this into smaller pieces and then each day, or on average per week per month, whatever you move forward with these minutes, these reallocated minutes, you do get closer to that goal.

And the domino effect of reaching those little goals in the long-term is profound because I doubt that you're going to want to put those 13 minutes a day back into Instagram when this 10 weeks is up.

Once you realize the impact of just 13 minutes a day, and I should also say that this doesn't mean that I'm not that I'm suggesting you don't ever scroll Instagram.

I said earlier, you know, there's going to be time where I'm not saying fill all of your minutes with, with studying, how to build a business, fill your minutes with stillness.

Sometimes Netflix, sometimes Instagram, but not all of them. How can you be intentional in building your business in 13 minutes per day?

So this is what self study summer looks like on the front end of my business. In the beginning of the episode, I was sharing with you what's happening on the back end behind the scenes.

I am self-studying there's things that I'm building in my business that I too am. Self-studying I purchased courses. I'm rewatching old versions of courses in my minutes that I'm reallocating.

It's usually when the kids are asleep. If you know me by now, and you know that I'm an early riser early in the morning, I could sit there and scroll Instagram.

I could. And sometimes I do. However, I know that I have goals of things that I'm building in the backend of my business.

So I'm self studying because most people are not teaching live classes at 5:00 AM. I'm also not suggesting you get up at 5:00 AM to build in time, to do this, follow your normal life.

If you are a night owl and you tend to stay up late after your kids go to bed, do it then, or wherever you are, aimlessly filling in minutes that you'd like to reallocate a piece of that.

For me, that happens to be early in the morning because the house is quiet and I, no matter what I do, I can't sleep past like six anyway.

So I use those minutes with intention. This is my self study summer. And then I look to the front end of my business and thought, well, how can I create something like this?

For people like me who are hanging out in my audience, people who also want to build their business. And perhaps I have solution for them that suits my life.

People that are watching classes in between life happening, people that are working a full-time eight to five job during the summer and or people that are learning on their lunch breaks.

People who are working hospital shifts and are off two, three days a week and they sleep. And then when they're not catching up on sleep, they have a certain amount of time allocated to catching up on Netflix.

And then they have a certain amount of time allocated to working on their business, their dreams, or the people who are more like where I'm at in the season of life, where we have kids home and summer is busy and we still get to build our dreams.

It still gets to happen. It doesn't have to be all or nothing. This is one of the most important things that I actually just had a conversation with somebody today on zoom about this.

It doesn't have to be all or nothing. We get to build in little pieces. I approach my exercises like this today.

I did about 20 minutes of outside walking this morning. That's it? That's it. Some days I do a full Peloton cycling class.

Some days I'm down there stacking strength classes. And I ended up doing like an hour of a workout. Most days are not like that.

It's not all or nothing. It's not an hour or nothing at all. Some days I get in a 10 minute workout and that's it.

And that's fine. And I shared to Instagram a couple of days ago, a screenshot that I accidentally hit my 500 workouts on Peloton app.

I didn't even know I got on a bike to do. Like, I don't even know. I want to say it was like a 10 minute RMB ride.

It was nothing too crazy. I got on the bike and I started getting a million high-fives and I was like, okay, what's going on?

Why is everybody high-fiving me? Did I hit a milestone? So I opened my app and realized I had hit my 500th ride.

And that's how we move the ball. Get the ball rolling. Move the ball forward is these little steps, 10 minutes on the bike here.

Five minutes warming up there, 30 minute exercise here. It's all the little things consistently. And when I consist and when I say consistently, it doesn't mean every day because there are days that I don't touch the gym.

I don't go to the gym. I don't hit the bike at all, or don't walk. That's fine. I'm not in it for the day to day consistency.

I'm in it for the long run. That's consistency as I'm in it for the long run. So a little bit more about this online business bundle that I want to share with you.

Uh, I will link to it in the show notes. You can check it out. If you've heard me talk about my courses over anytime over the last three years, because really some of those courses are from two.

Well, the first one is from 2019, something like 150. I don't even know. I'd have to check 150 plus Burke professionals have bought course creation for doulas.

So it's by far the most popular course audience expansion selling courses are profound. Now they're all bundled together. And the price point and the payment plan, meet people where they're at.

This is an opportunity. It's not a closeout in that. I'll never talk about the courses again, and they're gone and it's over.

It's not that vibe, but the content there's new content coming to the membership. There's new courses coming to the membership.

And this is an opportunity to support people at a different price point outside the membership that are self studiers that want to self study this summer, and don't want to necessarily do it alone because here's the thing.

Anybody who's purchasing this right now, they're all gonna, you're all going to be at the same place with the material.

There's an energy of going through a course on pace with a group of people at the same time. And it's potent the other really cool thing that I have not opened up to the public yet.

But if you are investing in the online business bundle, which by the way is a tax deduction for you. The other thing that I haven't mentioned publicly, and I don't know if I'll have a chance to, is that there's a limited number of the IP boxer hour spots available as an add on to your bundle.

They're super ridiculously reasonably priced. So what that looks like you won't see it on the sales page, but if you add the bundle to your cart and go to checkout, whether you do the payment plan or pay in full you'd, have the option to add on a VIP boxer hour.

And what that is is one hour that we coordinate after you purchase, we'll coordinate your hour and we meet in Voxer.

It's a free app for you. I pay for the premium version as a business owner, but you can use it for free.

And we walkie talkie and it's like a text slash walkie-talkie messenger app. It's my favorite app outside of Instagram. I love love Foxer.

And Voxer is where the magic happens with my clients. So you get with me for an hour and boxer to strategize, to plan, to talk about the course materials, mentorship, private mentorship for one hour.

Now these are first come first serve because I cannot take, I can only take so many of them. So there are a limited number of these available because like minutes, hours, real life stuff, you know?

Um, and right now they're only available to people as an add-on to folks who buy the bundle. And depending on that, how that goes, I may be able to open up more, but you can only purchase one.

So you can't have this system and buy a bunch of them and then schedule a bunch of individual hours. It's not how that works.

Good idea though. Um, but there one on a one-on-one first come first serve you and me and Voxer. So I've been like dying to tell you about this offer.

By the time this episode comes out, I think the news of the offer has already come out, but it's been like brewing for a few weeks and the closer and closer and closer we got to the day.

We're almost there as of today. I think it's going to be ready by tomorrow. The closer we got, I was like bursting.

Cause I wanted to tell you about it so bad and the energy, this excitement, energy that builds when you get to this point of like, I cannot wait to get this.

I'm so impatient. I can't wait to get this into people's inboxes and start helping them. That feeling another business lesson for you as a business owner, that's the feeling you want when you're bringing something to your audience, when you're behind something so strongly and your energy is so aligned with it.

And you're like, I cannot wait to tell them, I can't wait to get this into them and give them the link and show them how I can help them.

That feeling is like, that's the thing. That's the feeling. That's the energy and the potency of getting behind an offer.

So if you have any questions, feel free to message me in any of the places you can send me an email.

You can message me on Instagram. I don't usually check Facebook message because the way they set up messenger to me is a little confusing, but reach out to me.

I'm happy to answer your questions. I'm even more happy and excited for you to get your hands on the bundle and get started.

And then FYI, if you, one thing that I know is going to come up, if you have previously purchased one of these courses, send me an email, please@nicoleatnicolejoy.com and make sure to include the email address that you purchased with so that I can get you a coupon code for a credit toward your purchase of the bundle.

The other thing to know about the bundle is once you purchase the bundle, you can rewatch as long as you like, as often as you like replays forever, you have access to the full course forever.

So you don't have to watch it this summer, but this is a good opportunity to jump into it because it's at this ridiculously low bundled pricing.

Okay? If any other questions come up, reach out to me and I'd be happy to answer and support you through making any decision that feels correct for you.

I hope this has been helpful and that you have a beautiful week friends. I will see you on the interwebs.