She Did It Her Way

Latest Episodes:

Summer Break Jun 29, 2021

Show notes

Hey friends! If you listened to yesterday’s episode then you heard the news! We are going on summer break for the month of July and will resume regular episodes starting in August.

While the podcast may be on summer break, my team and I will still be working behind the scenes, serving our clients and planning for the second half of 2021. That being said, we have and will continue to add new trainings and downloads to our website to support you on your journey of building your online business while working a full-time job.

You can head to www.shediditherway.com and click “Free Trainings.” I hope you have an amazing July and will talk to you in August!

SDH 456: Mid-Year Goal Reset Jun 28, 2021

Show notes

Hey friends! Today on the podcast I want to talk to you about a fun topic that I absolutely love: goal setting. As we are coming up on the half-way mark for 2021 it’s the perfect time to dive into this topic. In this episode, I’m going to talk about the exact process of setting goals and using results planning to guarantee you get those results.

When it comes to goal setting, there is the process (tactical) side and then the emotional side. The tactical side is reviewing results, planning your goals, creating massive action lists, putting your activities on your calendar and executing. The emotional side of goal setting is...our thoughts, the feelings that drive our actions in how we set goals, and how we think about our goals and the results we create.

Tactical (Actionable) Steps

Reflect on the results you have created thus far in 2021. These results will be facts. For example, the amount of money you made, the size of your email list, the number of clients you have or have worked with.
Decide the one main goal you want to achieve by the end of 2021. If you’re already in business, I recommend making it a financial goal.
Then break your one main goal into 6 mini goals, one for each month that will help you achieve your main goal.
Create a massive action list.
Schedule and plan your results on your calendar.
Execute.

Emotional Steps

When you reflect on your goals, do it from a clean and neutral place. Maybe you hit the goals you set out for yourself at the beginning of 2021 - amazing. Maybe you didn’t - that’s okay. You want to avoid judgment, shame, frustration on the results you achieved or didn’t achieve. For example, let’s say you set a financial goal that you didn’t hit, rather than shaming or judging yourself for not hitting your goal (which will cause you to think negative, non-supportive thoughts), we want to remain as neutral as possible during this step. It is important to set your future goals from a clean place and not carry emotions that don’t benefit you.
Decide the one main goal you want to achieve by the end of 2021. If you’ve already launched your business, I recommend making it a financial goal. I recommend setting one that inspires you and stretches you. One that gets you excited about the next 6 months but doesn’t overwhelm you at the same time.
Then break your one main goal into 6 mini goals, one for each month that will help you achieve your main goal. Here you might use a tool that I call “timeline tool.” When you’re starting out building your business, you don’t have as much evidence or track record to plan the future with. When this happens, attempting to plan in detail the next 6 months or 12 months can be overwhelming and leave you feeling uncertain. Anytime you experience that, I recommend bringing the timeline in closer to you. Here, you know what your goal is at the end of 2021 but rather than trying to plan a mini goal for each month, start with the next 30 days and trust that at the end of the 30 days, you’ll know how to plan the next 30 days. For some of you, you’ll know the focus for the next 6 months and some of you won’t. That is okay, nothing has gone wrong. Meet yourself where you are.
Create a massive action list. Let’s say you’ve decided on your mini-goal for the month ahead. Create a massive action list of everything you need to do in order to achieve the goal you set out for yourself.
Schedule and plan your results on your calendar. When you do this, focus on what you’re going to produce, not just do.
Execute. You can do all the other steps in the planning process but if you don’t take action, you will not produce the results you desire nor achieve your goals. If you have activities scheduled on your calendar but not taking action there could be a few different things at play:

Is what is on your calendar specific enough for your brain to easily take action?
Time of day
Need to create a track record of success
Identify supporting thoughts which I’m going to dive into in just a moment

Now that you know the results you’ve created thus far, let’s shift and focus on who you want to be, who is your future self? Take space and time to vision who your future self is (what does her life look like, how does she feel, what is she thinking?). If you’re not used to doing this exercise it may feel a little uncomfortable at first and your brain may resist the idea of you creating any life that you want but I promise you that the more you practice invision and getting to know your future self the more it will come naturally. For this step you want to really tap into the emotions of what she feels on a regular basis. If at any point you do feel heavy resistance, zoom out, get less specific.

The last step is to create a list of thoughts to think on purpose. Decide your top 3 feelings you want to feel on purpose that allows you to take action so that you produce your results. Next, create a list of thoughts to think that generate that feeling.

If you want to feel confident, you could think:

“I know what I’m doing.” “I can handle anything.” “I can do hard things.”

The more supportive thoughts you have listed out the more you can pull from when you need them.

For example, going back to the execution step, maybe you’re not taking action because you’re thinking about how tired you are after working a full day at your corporate job. How can you replace that thought with a supporting thought that inspires you to get motivated? What thoughts do you want to think on purpose when you run into a roadblock as you build your business (whether it be tech not working, no one signing up for your offers)?

A Final Note

Anticipate and expect challenges and problems along the way. Plan ahead of time how you want to think about the problems and challenges. Will you make them mean that you’re not cut out to do what you’re doing OR will you accept them as part of the process and press on? Remember that problems are forever and you’ll learn how to navigate them.

The future only exists in your mind and you can either create your future from your future or from your past. Your brain loves to create from your past because of what it already knows.

Finally, Have fun. If you wait to have fun until you reach a certain milestone you will always be waiting. Don’t wait for a condition to be fulfilled in order to be a certain way. Behave a certain way regardless of the external circumstance and that is how you become your future self.

Until next time, friends, keep doing it your way!

SDH 455: 20 Minute Rule with Amanda Boleyn Jun 21, 2021

Show notes

Hello, hello friends! Today I’m excited to share with you my 20 minute rule. The 20 minute rule is very simple and it goes like this, “20 minutes is better than zero minutes”.

This is a rule that I’ve used for years in my own life and I coach my students to use this rule.

Here’s why this works…because when it comes to doing something (let’s say ‘work on your business’) and you find that you only have 20 minutes, your brain defaults to simply thinking, “that’s not enough time to make a difference.” It automatically discounts the impact it could make in just 20 minutes.

But the truth is, absolutely, yes it is. 20 minutes is more than enough to make headway.

We tend to discount the time it takes to do something because we think inherently it may take longer to complete than it actually does. Partly the reason why we think it takes longer to complete something than it actually does is because it is too vague and not specific enough.

Take for example, tax season. For years I would think that if I didn’t have a 4-hour chunk of time there is no way I could get anything worthwhile done as it related to taxes and that was simply not the case. The goal is to break down your overall intention into bite-sized, action steps with a very clear result at the end of the 20 minutes.

Rather than “working on your business,” how can you get more specific?

For example, instead of saying work on…

Business website, you’d say….write first draft for “about me page”

Email sequence for X product, you’d say….write outline for the email sequence or write the drafts of the first 2 emails

Launch sequence, you’d say...write outline for launch sequence or decide dates for launch sequence

Podcast episode, you’d say...write first draft of next week’s episode

Opt-in, you’d say...write outline, or pick Creative Template.

We focus on this inside Her Way to $75K because the majority of the members are building their online business while working their full-time job, so it is even more important to take advantage of those 20 minute opportunities than to dismiss them as simply not useful.

I also recommend that if you are building your online business while working full-time and find it challenging to get into a routine when it comes to working on your business, start with 20 or 25 minutes a day for just 2 days a week.

It is kind of like working out. If you haven’t worked out in months and try to go from zero days or minutes of working out to working out 60 minutes a day 5 days a week, it is going to be hard to maintain that routine for long and you may find yourself giving up and not sticking with it. If you’re not used to working your business in addition to your full-time job, I would not recommend setting a goal to work on your business for 2 hours a day, 4 days a week. That is a lot for your brain to take on.

Instead, start small and build the routine and track record of success for your brain.

Start with 20 minutes a day for 2 days.

Be very clear and specific what you want the outcome to be at the end of those 20 minutes.

By doing this you are building your capacity which will then allow you to increase it in a more sustainable way because you’ll be able to stay consistent and follow through.

If you’re not sure what to work on, where, or how to get started, join us inside Her Way to $75K where I coach you on all things online business.

You could also apply the 20 minute rule to your personal life...whether that is cleaning, taking the garbage out, you name it. Think about all the things you may potentially be procrastinating on because your brain thinks it needs more time than it actually does to make an impact.

Consistent action overtime is what makes the biggest difference.

So next time your brain thinks, “Ahhh that isn’t enough time to get X done…” challenge yourself to see what you CAN get done in that time you have...even if it is 20 minutes, 15, 10, 5 minutes.

The action you take today, even if it is only for 20 minutes, will put you further ahead tomorrow.

I hope you enjoyed today’s episode, until next week, keep doing it your way!

Insights:

“We tend to discount the time it takes to do something because we think inherently it may take longer to complete than it actually does.”
“Consistent action overtime is what makes the biggest difference.”
“Instead, start small and build the routine and track record of success for your brain.”
“The action you take today, even if it is only for 20 minutes, will put you further ahead tomorrow.”

Resources:

Join me inside Her Way to $75K

SDH 454: Getting Real and Raw About Building A Business with Creative Label Jun 14, 2021

Show notes

Welcome back to another episode! This week I’m so excited to be hanging out with Destinee and Aisha from Creative Label. This powerhouse duo started Creative Label when Aisha was getting ready to graduate from law school and Destinee was working in production for Dr. Phil, with HGTV, YouTube, and more. But it just wasn’t filling their cup. They were both also dating professional athletes at the time which caused them to relocate frequently.

They began doing small projects on the side like logo and website design. They decided to pitch their business to a few people who had approached them to do marketing work for them in-house. Despite not having officially launched their business, they decided to take the chance. They pitched them both, and both gave them a resounding ‘YES’.

They hadn’t officially even put together a scope of work, rates, etc., and made decisions as they went along, but the companies both recognized them as people they wanted on their team.

Aisha and Destinee have learned many lessons along the way in their business journey, including difficult lessons (like needing to open a business banking account before depositing a business check), but that is what I love about their journey, that they didn’t let these small things set them back from taking huge steps forward. Building a business is anything but perfect and their story demonstrates exactly how much we can do without having all of the logistical administrative tasks finished before we take that first step.

After almost 5 years in business, their team has grown to include several key team members including assistants, accountants, attorneys, and more. They have learned as they went along and are still learning and pivoting as needed every single day. Their business continues to thrive and are consistently being referred to new potential clients.

Looking back, they remember times in the first few years where they were resistant to hop on calls with new potential clients. While those uncomfortable conversations are so much easier via email, they have learned that they are essential. Sales calls aren’t comfortable to most people - how do you just ‘ask’ people for money? This was something Destinee and Aisha navigated through, along with so many other high-level elements of building a business.

During their second and third years in business, they navigated through things like boundaries. Setting, maintaining, and respecting them. In years three and four they learned how to manage their team in a more effective and efficient way (including firing employees) and also learned the legal ropes of owning a business.

When they first launched their business they recognized that they were very much ‘green’. They went in with no business plan, no financial goals, etc. They just started doing it because it was something they genuinely loved (and bonus, were amazing at!). They were willing to figure it out as they went along in the process. That made it really easy to just continuously go with the flow each step of the way, propelling their business forward.

In hindsight, they realized they needed a business plan but at the same time it gave them the freedom of owning their mindset. They went full force from their passion and just enjoyed the process.

“We had no expectations, so we weren't being let down.”

Since then, Creative Label has grown from a small scale Etsy shop selling Snapchat Geofilters to a full service agency, specializing in branding, marketing, and public relations, helping their clients to execute their vision in the digital space.

They have also learned how to divide and conquer - trusting each other fully along the way. Additionally, they allow one another the autonomy to make executive decisions for the good of the company to ensure their boundaries are maintained while still providing a high-level service. They step away when needed and respect one another by keeping their friend time and business time separate and always maintain a united front for the team.

Want to hear more from Destinee & Aisha? Check out The Label Podcast. You can also connect with them individually (Aisha + Destinee). You can also text POD to 310-982-2662 to get high-level tips right from these incredible ladies! Lastly, you can head over to their website to learn how you can work with them.

Until next time, keep doing it your way!

Insights:

“Despite not having officially launched their business, they decided to take the chance.”
“We had no expectations, so we weren't being let down.”
“They just started doing it because it was something they genuinely loved (and bonus, were amazing at!).”
“They have also learned how to divide and conquer - trusting each other fully along the way.”

Resources:

Find Creative Label on Instagram
Visit their website
Reach out to Aisha
Connect with Des
Listen to The Label Podcast
To get free high-value tips and more (no spam here!), text POD to 310-982-2662
Traction by Gino Wickman
The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks
Slack
ClickUp

SDH 453: Millionaire Within Her with Kristi Frank Jun 07, 2021

Show notes

Hello friends! I’m so excited to share this week’s podcast guest with you, Kristi Frank. After graduating college with an engineering degree, Kristi did what all good engineers do and went straight to LA to become an actress. Along the way she began to really crave money and in true entrepreneurial spirit she opened what has become a very famous restaurant. At the same time she also had her hands on a few real estate properties and around that time a show you might remember called The Apprentice made its TV debut which Kristi pioneered as a season one contestant.

This led her down the path of eventually appearing on Oprah, and ultimately leading her to her dream life working with fellow female entrepreneurs. Long story short, Kristi was asked to participate in what has become her dream project hosting a docu series, Millionaire Within Her,about women and money.

Kristi’s journey is very colorful in that it is anything but linear and she truly followed what felt good to her and what she truly enjoyed doing, rather than following what was expected of her. She wants to teach her son that whatever he puts his energy and time into should also be something fun, that he is passionate about and an adventure.

Another thing Kristi leans into is knowing that our feelings are there for a reason. They are always trying to tell us something and in Kristi’s journey those two things are fear and fun. If it is something that makes her ‘spidey-senses’ tingle, it's something she should definitely be diving into. She has realized over the years that you should be waking up every day with passion and excitement doing something you absolutely love.

‘That is where your gifts truly shine. That's where you can really explore yourself, because you're just in your bliss.’

One gift Kristi’s acting journey has given her is learning that rejection is the norm. She was turned down many times and this essentially gave her a thicker skin to keep pushing forward, gently reminding herself, ‘you will be fine’.

Kristi knows exactly what it means to fill her own cup and demonstrate that making a commitment to yourself can bring so much self-awareness.

Kristi has also found herself dealing with imposter syndrome (sound familiar?) on occasion. She has learned that there are so many incredible people out there but to stop comparing herself and continue connecting with our own valuable gifts.

She often finds herself reminding herself;

‘It's not going to be perfect. It's going to be messy, but it’s me. It's going to be who I am.’

But over everything, Kristi prioritizes her authenticity and is simply focused on just showing up.

Through her entrepreneurial circle, Kristi met a man who asked if she would host a series about women and money. The catch was that he was having trouble finding the women. Kristi knew exactly where to start.

I said, ‘Jeff, it's not about women and money. It's it's whole conversation about women stepping into who they are, and their worth, and their passion and their purpose.’

Kristi is the host of an incredible docu series, the Millionaire Within Her. In this series you will meet 45 incredible women who teach and inspire you through their unique stories and journeys. They range from best selling authors to high-powered business women. You’ll meet relationship experts, health experts, and more. But it doesn’t matter who it was - simply listening to each of these powerful stories truly changed Kristi, for the better.

It was truly humbling and an honor to be able to participate in this series with Kristi, alongside so many inspiring women. I’m so excited to binge watch every single episode myself and ‘meet’ these other incredible women.

The Millionaire Within Her docu series is totally free to watch but it’s only available to watch for a short time and I highly recommend taking the time to check out each unique story.

One final thought from Kristi...

‘We are all on a journey. Nobody starts at the top, we all started somewhere.’

Until next time, keep doing it your way.

Insights:

“Another thing Kristi leans into is knowing that our feelings are there for a reason.”
“You will be fine.”
“She has learned that there are so many incredible people out there but to stop comparing herself and continue connecting with our own valuable gifts.”
“[It's] not about women and money. It's it's whole conversation about women stepping into who they are, and their worth, and their passion and their purpose.”

Resources:

Check out Millionaire Within Her
Connect with Kristi Frank on Instagram

SDH 452: How to Get the Most Out of Your Coaching and Courses You Invest In with Amanda Boleyn May 31, 2021

Show notes

Hello friends, welcome back! This week I’m so excited to talk to you about how to get the most out of the coaching programs and courses that you invest in. For this episode, I’m not referring to those which you host, but rather those that you have decided to invest in for yourself. The programs that you raised your hands and turned over your money to invest in order to grow your business and your life.

Over the past six years I have invested thousands of dollars to grow my business and myself. I have learned so much about myself and why I made certain investment decisions along the way and I hope this podcast episode will serve as a bit of a roadmap to help you assess which program or course is a good fit for you. I also want this to serve as a tool for a healthy mindset to approach that program, course, or investment that you have made and help you discover how to set up a routine and structure for the programs and courses you enroll in so that it doesn’t become a product that collects digital dust.

If you have listened to (any) previous episodes you already know how much I love my routines. Laying the foundation and having the proper systems in place is what allows us to be successful.

In this episode I’m diving into how to get the most out of your coaching programs and courses that you have or are considering investing in and for the sake of this episode, I’d like to call them ‘investments’.

Over the past six years I have enrolled in over $60,000 worth of coaching and trainings and when I began to write the outline for this episode I really considered my approach, my mindset, the results, why I did or did not achieve results, and the answers all fell into three specific buckets.

The 3 Buckets

How to cultivate a healthy and inspiring mindset towards courses and programs
How to decide which program or course is actually the best fit at that time
How to get the most out of any coaching program

Additionally, I want to acknowledge that you may be listening to this podcast and have yet to make a financial investment in yourself and in your future and that alone can be scary, exciting, and overwhelming, all at the same time and I hope that this podcast episode can serve as inspiration and guidance for you in that capacity.

You could be listening to this podcast and have enrolled in a previous course or program, gotten mediocre results or results that you didn’t expect or hope for. Maybe that was in part because you had the best of intentions but life got busy and so you never fully followed through. I have certainly been there. Maybe the next time you considered making a similar investment you questioned yourself because the voice in the back of your head reminded you that last time you paid money for a program you didn’t actually finish it. So why would this time be different? The self-doubt sets in and you’re already failing to take action because you've created that negative thought loop. Or maybe you decided to enroll in a course or program, and you look for evidence of what happened in the past, finding holes are gaps, and then you create the same mediocre results versus the results that you want to achieve.

What I have learned is that if we can create a routine and structure around these programs and courses we are more likely to keep ourselves accountable to it.

Mindset:

Own your results

Pay attention to the thoughts that you have when considering the course or program you want to enroll in and make sure you are approaching it thinking that this is going to be THE ONE.

Avoid assuming that the course or coaching program is going to fix your problems or challenges. For example, it can be easy to enroll in an email marketing course and think that you’ll soon wake up with an email list of 1,000 subscribers. The course and coach provides the vehicle and assistance towards achieving your goals but they can’t create the result for you.

Expect challenges along with highs and lows; not to attract them but to not be thrown off when they happen, because they will. Stay committed to the result and your why for signing up for the course or program in the first place.

Learn one, implement one.

I highly recommend sticking to one course or coaching program at a time unless they are complimentary of one another. If you enroll in an email marketing course, I would make email marketing your focus for the next 30-60-90 days, depending upon your schedule.

Avoid enrolling in a new course every single month without fully implementing the course work from the previous investment you made. It can get overwhelming and this can leave you with opening a loop but never actually finishing or closing that loop leaving you feeling depleted and overwhelmed. I think this is what happens a lot when you’re starting out trying to do all the things and start so many things that actually leads to burnout because you’re starting something but not finishing it.

Where this may be different is if you’re in two programs that are not competing with each other. Example: Grow You vs a Facebook Ads program. Sometimes we think we’re producing a lot or being productive because we’re in a lot of programs but what matters is not just the consumption of content but the implementation of it.

In Her Way to $75K members use the membership to the fullest extent taking advantage of the courses, coaching and community. For some, they’re enrolled in Her Way to $75K to help keep them accountable with what they’re working on and to get access to coaching and community, but they’re not actively going through all the content. Think of it like someone with a gym membership but also works with a nutritional coach in conjunction on their fitness journey.

Don’t just show up to show up. Show up to learn. Lean into group coaching calls, listen to the replay if you couldn’t make it live, if you can make it live, think of a question you want to have, avoid being passive if possible, submit questions.

How to decide which course or program is the best fit:

First, I think this varies based on which stage of business you’re in.

When you’re first starting out, if you’re overwhelmed and not sure which direction you want to go, the key is to just start and create SOME sort of track record. For example, even if you don't know exactly who you want to help or how, creating content is a great way to produce work and practice being consistent and diligent and in turn build up an audience. If you commit to creating content for 6 months consistently and showing up, you’ll be further along in building an audience than if you never started. So while it might not be the exact place (or maybe it is) that you want to end up, the whole point is to get started.

What do you need to do in this moment to take you to the next level? Always be asking yourself this as you continue on your growth plan. In some seasons it may be to simply learn to be consistent and just start. For others, it may be focusing on your email marketing for a quarter, and others may decide you want to start a podcast and so you focus on that for 3 months, or maybe it is Facebook ads.

A few quick notes on getting the most out of a program or course:

Decide how long you want to make that course or program a focus. Some coaching programs might be a predetermined length of time; 6, 8, 9 weeks, etc. If that is the case, make that your sole focus for that period of time.
Always have a goal or an outcome that you’re working towards in mind. What would success look like at the end of the program? Always own your results.
If you’ve enrolled in a course that is one where you can go at your own pace…give yourself a 30/60/90 day window to focus only on that one thing. In Her Way to $75K we help our members create focus and accountability on their one monthly thing and area of focus.

Laying Your Foundation For Success:

Put any coaching calls with Zoom links on your calendar right away
Carve out specific time blocks on your calendar for when you’re going to focus on that program's content. Maybe it is every Monday from 6-8 PM or every Tuesday from 5-7 AM, whenever it is put it on your calendar. As you start the program you’ll begin to figure out exactly what you’re going to do and what you can produce during those time blocks.
Create a folder inside your email inbox. In our onboarding emails anytime a student signs up or enrolls in Podcast Your Way or Her Way to $75K we make this part of their onboarding checklist. This way any emails that come through from the program can be neatly organized and easy to be found from weekly recaps, username/password, you name it.
Create a bookmark on your browser making it easy to locate course/program content.
Don’t rely on the program to motivate, inspire or produce your results - those are all up to YOU!

A Final Note:

Make sure you create constraints to not get distracted by other offers that are out there. Trust me, it can be really easy to think you NEED something that someone is marketing to you because they’re marketing is just that GOOD and while it may be beneficial and THAT good. The question is,

“Does this aid in my focus or create split focus?”

I think sometimes we think we need something because we are subconsciously thinking “What if I don’t get it now? What will happen” and there becomes this scarcity thinking that surrounds our decision. There will always be offers, there will always be opportunities, you just need to decide which one you are going to focus on in this moment.

Lastly, be careful of what you make the investment mean. If you expect it to solve everything for you, you could find yourself disappointed. Instead, focus on finding ONE thing. Sometimes it was the smallest shifts that actually made the biggest change later on that I didn't see right away.

Recap:

Own your results from the beginning, no matter what program you decide to invest in.
Make sure that you decide which program is the best fit for you based on where you're at in your journey and asking ‘what do I need in this moment in order to get to that next stage?’.
Ensure that you set up systems and structures in place so that you can set yourself up for success when it comes to that coaching course or program.

As always, if you enjoyed this episode, I'd love for you to tag us on Instagram(@shediditherway)and share what you loved most or what you’re implementing into your own life!

If you are someone who is starting early stages of building your business while working full time and you need help (maybe it's getting clear, maybe you need structure or even accountability) I invite you to check out Her Way to $75k. Her Way to $75k is our monthly membership program with over 50 trainings already inside, includes weekly coaching calls and a private Facebook Community, and every quarter you’ll get new templates for Instagram and Pinterest. I would love to work with you! To learn more just head to our website to learn more!

Until next time, keep doing it your way!

Insights:

“If we can create a routine and structure around these programs and courses we are more likely to keep ourselves accountable to it.”
“Don’t just show up to show up. Show up to learn. Lean into group coaching calls, listen to the replay if you couldn’t make it live, if you can make it live, think of a question you want to have, avoid being passive if possible, submit questions.”
“It can be really easy to think you NEED something that someone is marketing to you because they’re marketing is just that GOOD and while it may be beneficial and THAT good.”
“Sometimes it was the smallest shifts that actually made the biggest change later on that I didn't see right away.”

Resources:

Join Her Way to $75K
Find out about Podcast Your Way
Connect with me on Instagram

SDH 451: Leaving a $300,000 Corporate Salary to Pursue Her Own Business with Ashley Kirkwood May 24, 2021

Show notes

Hello my beautiful friends! This week I’m so excited to welcome Ashley Kirkwood to the show. Ashley is a successful attorney who owns an innovative subscription based law firm, Mobile General Counsel, and her firm has negotiated and landed several multi six-figure licensing deals and corporate contracts.

After being consistently asked how her company landed such deals, she launched the Speak Your Way To Cash brand, with the book launching at the end of this year! Speak Your Way To Cash is one of the most unique and successful speaker training programs on the planet. Inside, Ashley teaches speakers how to start at the top of their speaking market with a five or six-figure corporate speaking offer.

Ashley is extremely passionate about her business and truly loves her life’s work and what it has afforded her. She loves impacting listeners both internally with her employees and team members as well as externally.

The Short Story…

Ashley has always thrived on certainty. She liked knowing that if she did A, B, and C, she would get D. She likes progression and felt that corporate was the way to go. However, she wanted to figure out how to make more money in the corporate world. Once she learned the art of salary negotiation it became easy for her to make more money as a corporate professional.

Around the age of 25-26, Ashley’s salary was already at $200K and with her savvy skills she negotiated a $100K raise, bringing her salary to $300K per year. She began working for someone who had been recruiting her for years, but after starting to work together, it just didn’t align; ‘It was like straight out of Horrible Bosses’. It was just not the best dynamic.

Knowing that it wasn’t a good fit, Ashley began to hype herself up, knowing what her worth was and trying to get her brain to realize that no matter what they were already paying her, she was worth more. They were just paying her to keep her there.

While working in the corporate world Ashley began putting herself up for awards and national publications and also had her own YouTube show. On her production level quality YouTube show, Passion, Purpose & Paychecks, she interviewed entrepreneurs who had left their jobs to do something they were passionate about - but they also dove into their financial journey and how much they were making.

Ashley put a lot into her YouTube channel working with producers from the Steve Harvey Show and NBC Universal as well as having a professional videographer, cue cards, call times, and a full hair and makeup team.

“One of my goals was to be Oprah. I want to have my own talk show.”

Despite already working in corporate, Ashley knew there was something else she wanted to do, but just couldn’t determine how to monetize it or what it actually looked like. Realizing that she was becoming stagnant, she decided to make a change, put her money where her mouth is and go all in.

However, people still saw her as a lawyer and didn’t know they could actually do business with her because she wasn’t selling anything, just connecting to and meeting people.

The Tipping Point

Feeling tired of being unheard and disrespected at work Ashley began to really look outside her corporate bubble to see where she could go, how she could build and grow a business, and do what she was passionate about. She had seen so many of her mentors, peers and people whom she admired take the disrespect because they were trapped by the money. When she had become consistently unheard and brushed off when bringing up concerns Ashley decided she did not want that life, or the life of those at the top either.

Ashley had written a book in college called The Law School Hustle, all about her journey becoming an attorney. At some point in her time in college she nearly gave up but pushed her way through and wound up graduating at the top of her class from Northwestern Law School. She took her speaking experience as a trial lawyer, her experience from writing her book, and started speaking while building her own law firm.

It took roughly six months for her law firm to start generating any revenue, but in the last six months of her first year in business her gamble had paid off and she had generated over $100,000 in revenue. The following year her business grew 400%, and again the year after that. She continued on with her momentum building her law firm and landing speaking contracts. Ashley took what she knew she was good at and her transferable skills to create something she truly was passionate about.

Ashley and her team are hosting their 6th Speak Your Way To Cash (virtual) event this year and offers a high-level six-month coaching program called The Academy, where she builds out five and six figure offers with her clients. They continue to evolve the business by listening to exactly what their clients want and need and never resting on their laurels.

One thing Ashley does admit to wishing she would have done sooner was offer people a way to work with her after speaking engagements. At the time she would offer paid speaking engagements where she would give people the tools they needed but in many cases they still felt stuck on where to start after that. Looking back, Ashley wishes she would have offered some kind of coaching to those people because they were walking away with all of this high-level information and super excited about their journey, but felt stuck and needed that push and validation to get started.

The PAID Method (Ashley’s Proprietary Coaching Method)

P = Press
It's great to have a brand, all corporate clients will Google you and they're not going to just look at what you send them. They're going to go to Google and Google something. So it's great if you have a press strategy and a way to showcase what other people are saying about how great you are.

A = Assemble
Then you want to assemble your offer. It should be a package - the ultimate package. Don't just sell someone on one speech. They may need two or three speeches to get their end result, or they may need a couple of consulting sessions to get their end result. Assemble that offer together and have it ready to go for your clients. They know that you can't just do one thing, you can do a lot of different things and continue to serve them for a long time.

I = Invite
Have a strategy for inviting people to work with you. Know your sales plan, how you plan to sell your service, and what you want to make money on.

D = Deliver
Deliver amazing service and a really good product that is memorable and impactful. Have a way to deliver that information that you've thought out and formulate in a way you’re confident in.

Ashley now lives a modest lifestyle, but the one thing she and her family love to splurge on is travel (especially to Thailand!). Having a business that has afforded her the ability to mold her lifestyle so it fits how she and her family want to live has been something that makes her never look back. It motivates her to keep moving forward and helps her business continue to thrive.

Want to hear more about Ashley’s upcoming book launch or connect with her one-on-one? Check out her website or email her directly (she still loves to handle her own emails!).

Until next time, friends, keep doing it your way!

Insights:

“She began working for someone who had been recruiting her for years, but after starting to work together, it just didn’t align; ‘It was like straight out of Horrible Bosses’.”
“Cultivate that confidence.”
“One thing Ashley does admit to wishing she would have done sooner was offer people a way to work with her after speaking engagements.”
“Your price is always talking. I didn't like what my prices were saying to my clients, when my prices were lower. I wanted them to know they're getting the best of the best. We are world class. We have trained all over the world. I have spoken in other countries, like they needed to know that and not from just what I said, but from the price they were paying me to do business with them.”

Resources:

Check out Speak Your Way To Cash
Join the Speak Your Way To Cash Facebook group
Grab Your Copy of The Law School Hustle by Ashley Nicole Kirkwood
Contact Ashley via Email

SDH 450: By Doing This ONE Thing, It Changed Everything in My Business with Amanda Boleyn May 17, 2021

Show notes

Hello friends and welcome back to another episode of the She Did It Her Way Podcast. It has been so long since I have done a solocast and I’m excited for it to be just me and my mic today sharing the ONE thing I did in my business (and personal life) that changed everything and I cannot wait to dive into it with you!

For years I have spent time always being in a rushed state. Being in this rushed state controlled how I ran my business and my life. It wasn’t until I shifted who I was being and how I showed up that ultimately shifted the results I could create in my business. That is, I went from being this person who was always in a state of rushing, to slowing down. Now, just because I started to slow down and I stopped rushing, it didn't mean that my results and outcomes started to slow down as well. Actually, it did the opposite; because when we take massive action, we get massive results.

However, if the place in which we are taking action from, is rushing, then it's going to change the type of results we get. I know that when starting a business, there can be the sense of ‘I need to hurry up, I need to get over there’, and it creates a rushing energy because we so badly want to quit our job.

In the beginning stage of building your business there are a lot of emotions, the feeling of imposter syndrome, fear, self-doubt, highs, and lows. You question whether or not you have what it takes and want to rush to get somewhere different. Whereas consistent, steady, massive, and intentional action can actually allow us to get to a good place and do it in a way that feels good.

In today's episode, I want to talk about why we rush into action, what happens when we rush into action, and also some of our fears around slowing down. What happens when you shift from taking action from a place of being rushed to a place of confidence and steadiness is that it will positively impact your results. It allows you to show up differently and be more constructive and intentional with how you are spending your time.

Why Do We Rush Into Action?

Typically, I have found that when I think about why I was rushing is because I thought I would get somewhere faster. Maybe if I rushed, I would achieve something faster. It could be from a sense of time scarcity, or feeling like I don’t have enough time, so I have to hurry up and produce and take action. If we don't think that we have enough time, we're rushing around the desire to be anywhere other than where we are right now. This is really common in the beginning stages of building your business we think that if we take action faster and we hurry up and rush, that we are going to be able to leave our corporate job sooner. So it's this desire to be anywhere except where we are at that point. Alternatively, sometimes we want to avoid being uncomfortable and we think that ‘over there’ is better, so we try to action our way ‘over there’.
You might also find that you have a belief that rushing equals hustle, which equals the result you want, and that slowing down is equated to believing that you will not achieve the outcome you want in a timely manner.

These are all different reasons why we rush into action and all of them stemming from the thoughts we think.

What Actually Happens When We Rush Into Action?

When we operate from a place of rushing, we can potentially go down a path that we don't actually even want to be on, not realizing that it is not the right path until we get to the end. At that point, we’ve invested so much time and energy into rushing down path A that you don’t even realize you should have taken path B.

This ultimately puts us into a state of overwhelm and puts us into self-sabotaging thought loops (‘I did this wrong’, ‘I should have known better’, etc.).

We also need to learn to evaluate what is working and what isn’t working along the way and if you are rushing through, you won’t give yourself space to stop and do this because we think that we just need to keep taking action. Mistakes are often made when we go down a path of rushing and what happens is that we’re moving down the path so quickly that we don’t stop to acknowledge those mistakes and learn from them, or worse yet, correct them before moving on.

Food For Thought

Here are some thoughts you can borrow to get your brain out of the habit of rushing and retrain it to start slowing down:

I have plenty of time. I am not in a rush.
Everything is happening at the exact time it is supposed to happen.
I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be.
I am making progress. I am trusting the process.
I learn so much more when I slow down.
It's okay to grow slow.

These are thoughts that I personally use and want to share with you to help teach you to slow down and operate from a place of taking consistent and steady action. I encourage you to see where those areas are in your business and in your life that can benefit from slowing down and just take inventory of them. Take note of what your beliefs are around slowing down as well.

I have two quotes I want to leave you with this week (both came up as author unknown or anonymous) but I really like them and want to share them with you:

“I've learned to stop rushing things that need time to grow.”

Remember, your business needs time and space to grow.

The second one is:

“Once she stopped rushing through life, she was amazed how much more life she had time for.”

Yes, it can be a really crazy period in your life of building your business, but it's also such an amazing and fun time of building your business. Approach it from a place of curiosity and what am I going to learn? How much impact can I serve? What transformation can I offer to my clients? This will really allow us to operate from a place of consistent, steady action.

I’d love for you to come hang out with me on Instagram and I hope you have an amazing rest of your week.

Until next time, keep doing it your way!

Insights:

“When we operate from a place of rushing, we can potentially go down a path that we don't actually even want to be on, not realizing that it is not the right path until we get to the end.“
“Typically, I have found that when I think about why I was rushing is because I thought I would get somewhere faster. Maybe if I rushed, I would achieve something faster. It could be from a sense of time scarcity, or feeling like I don’t have enough time, so I have to hurry up and produce and take action.“
“I've learned to stop rushing things that need time to grow.“
“Once she stopped rushing through life, she was amazed how much more life she had time for.”

SDH 449: Making Your Money Work For You Using Facebook Ads with Jenny Singh May 10, 2021

Show notes

Hello my beautiful listeners! Today I’m sitting down with Jenny Singh, someone who I have ‘known’ in passing for several years and am so inspired by and pumped to introduce you to! Jenny is a Facebook and Instagram Ads genius and helps entrepreneurs create the right ads to get their target audience buying from them instead of anyone else.

Jenny’s business is multi-pronged and offers her clients a ‘done for you services’ side of the business as well as running full funnel, Facebook and Instagram ads, and in addition, offering courses and other digital products. Over the past 18 months, Jenny and her team have spent time launching courses, masterminds and new digital products to really have something for everyone. They identified gaps and knew their services could fill them and really became hyper focused on serving entrepreneurs helping them get started using ads.

Starting her journey by going to college for advertising, Jenny literally saw herself making Gatorade commercials one day, eventually making her way into a big agency. That was her plan. She graduated college on a Friday and started working at her first agency job that following Monday. From the time she graduated college through the first few years in corporate, she continued to shift or pivot to something a bit different. After a few years she began to wonder why she felt this pull to transition every 18 months she needed to change up her path. She started to reflect on how she could really do things her own way and what route she should take.

Jenny is the type of person who responds well to what she refers to as the ‘parachute’ method (which she doesn’t necessarily to everyone). As stressful as it sounds, she literally shows up and takes action with no afterthought to the possibility of failure, thriving under pressure. She woke up one day and told her fiance that it was finally her time, put in her two-weeks notice and made her leap. She knew that to make massive change she needed to simply rip off the bandaid and go all in.

For 3-6 months prior to making her leap, however, Jenny had started working with her own clients (smart, right?). This helped her brain to know that she could do this and felt safer when making this transition. Her side hustling helped her to grow as a person and she was able to learn to serve her own clients even better. During this time, Jenny also learned that she enjoyed working on making sales, while doing it in her own way, and still learning how to grow.

The day after Jenny made her leap, she wrote herself a letter. She dated it and has kept it with her ever since as a reminder of why she started. She still takes it out maybe once a year and lets it fuel her to keep moving forward on her dreams while keeping her grounded as well.

“As an entrepreneur I feel like the farther you get away from day one, you kind of have days that are just not like you're in your zone. And in alignment, you can kind of get away from like, here's why we're doing the thing. Keep coming back to it.”

This year, Jenny has been in business for right around 5 years. But right around year 3 she experienced a phase where you’ve been in it for long enough that you’re learning what is working and what isn’t and could pivot her business accordingly.

Now, Jenny works with a team of amazing people who are all very process oriented (a weaker spot for Jenny). She knows she is not going to go all-in on the processes so she has brought in team members who can fill that void. She also learned who her niche was, who she enjoyed working with the most and “wading through buckets of humans within a larger realm”.

“The closer you get to yourself and getting really good at your craft, typically, the smaller your niche gets in general.”

Jenny is now in the mindspace where she (and her team) are hyper-focused on traction, or in her words, they’re “locked and loaded”. They know who they can help and they know they’re good at it. They believe so deeply that the transformations they can provide are immeasurable. She has learned how to reset people's mindsets so they aren’t intimidated by running Facebook or Instagram ads but has taught them how to approach them confidently and successfully and looks at every opportunity as an opportunity to help someone.

“There's a high that comes with seeing someone get results.”

Jenny attributes much of her success to slow growth. Her business evolved over time to really grow into the six-figure business it is today.

Jenny also thrives on and highly values her freedom, from so many viewpoints. Freedom of time, freedom of money, freedom of location, etc. The way Jenny has built her business has afforded her to live all of these freedoms, maintaining her passion for what she does.

Three actionable things Jenny recommends to new entrepreneurs are:

Get to know yourself and be okay with that person

Pay attention to how you perform at your best

Crack open a business book or a book from an ‘expert’ and start reading!

If you want to learn more about Jenny and her amazing business check out her website, visit her at Have Them At Hello, or hang out with her on Instagram!

Until next time friends, keep doing it your way!

Insights:

After a few years she began to wonder why she felt this pull to transition every 18 months she needed to change up her path.“
“As stressful as it sounds, she literally shows up and takes action with no afterthought to the possibility of failure, thriving under pressure.”
“There's a high that comes with seeing someone get results.”

Resources:

Visit Jenny’s Website
Have Them At Hello
Connect with Jenny on Instagram @jennysingh
Profit First by Mike Michalowicz
Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz
The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss & Tahl Raz

SDH 448: How to Get Started on YouTube with Trena Little May 03, 2021

Show notes

Hello my beautiful friends! I am so excited because today I am sitting down with Trina Little, a YouTube Strategist with a master's degree in business who helps online owners business owners develop a YouTube strategy that allows them to scale their business by driving more leads using the right videos. Being a busy business owner herself, she understands the importance of making videos simply and effortlessly, but effective and lasting at the same time. Her YouTube videos are her sales team and they do the heavy lifting for free working 24 hours a day and seven days a week.

Trena has a background in business and she began to see exactly how powerful the YouTube platform was while watching videos. She also saw all of the limiting beliefs a lot of people had surrounding YouTube and decided to make her mark by helping business owners learn to use the platform in a very simple way, by making it easy to understand and helping them to create the right videos to get their content to show up in Google searches and last longer.

One thing Trena also recognizes is the rat race that is social media and while on other platforms content has a shorter shelf-life YouTube videos can last much, much longer. Being able to help business owners realize that if they put the time into creating a quality video it will absolutely live a much longer life than other social media platform content. While an Instagram caption takes only seconds or minutes to write, YouTube media takes significantly longer. The difference is that the YouTube video’s shelf-life is significantly longer. Here is what Trena found:

Shelf-Life of Social Media Posts:

Instagram grid post: 48-hours
Facebook post: 6-hours
YouTube video: 20+ DAYS

In fact, Trena has a video on YouTube that she posted in 2018 and still drives traffic to her email list now, 3 years later.

Before Trena took the YouTube world by storm, she worked for the federal government (one of the largest employers in her town). While she did that she was still on the ‘hunt’ to find a way to create her own future the way she wanted it. The problem was that the path she was on was the ‘safe’ route. It came with a 401k, a retirement plan, and medical benefits. It was what she should be doing, according to everyone around her. Except it wasn’t what she wanted to do. Eventually her job began sucking her soul and she became more and more detached from her day-to-day role.

After her daughter was born she decided to teach her daughter how to forge her own path and live life doing something she loved. She no longer wanted her job to affect her mental health and using her daughter as one point of inspiration, she decided it was time to create something of her own.

Trena had watched webinars about creating courses and convinced her husband that she could do it too. She was determined to replace her income and two weeks before Christmas, Trena gave her two-weeks notice and left her job on New Year’s Eve.

While being a stay at home mom is an amazing responsibility Trena knew it wasn’t her calling. She needed something else to call her own and it to be something she actually enjoyed doing. Trena had dabbled in some client work and taken a few courses but wasn’t ready to put all of her eggs in one basket. She launched a course and had only 3 sales, one of which was a friend who wanted to support her.

Backing up to when Trena was still pregnant, she had spent a lot of time watching YouTube videos researching items and other products she would need for her newborn. In 2016, not many businesses used YouTube yet and Trena realized she was really investing her time into what these people on the platform had to say and really bought into it. There was something here and saw how YouTube could be used as a marketing tool.

With Trena’s first launch not doing as well as she had hoped, she feared she had made the wrong choice in leaving her 9-5. Her saving grace was that one of the clients she had been working with remembered her and she became known as the ‘YouTube video girl’. People began to reach out to her to help them with their own videos and through several of life's twists and turns here we are. No matter what, Trena just kept going. She eliminated what didn’t work and tweaked what did. She put on her blinders to keep herself from focusing on those around her and what they were doing so she could focus on what she needed to do.

During that time the hustle mentality was in full swing. Trena’s challenge was that she was competing with those around her who didn’t have to balance launching an empire and raising two kids. She knew the hustle mentality wasn’t going to work for her so she needed to find something that did. Finally in 2019 she felt like things just started to click and she became even more pumped for 2020 (we all know how that turned out).

2020 totally changed how Trena operated as a business owner and she learned how to transform her business to operate in the way she needed it to so she could balance her passion for what she did with her family’s needs. She learned what she needed to focus on each day to accomplish tasks and reach goals and how to really dedicate her time in a new and efficient way. Thus, 2020 was a banner year for Trena and her team and she was able to hire her first full-time employee.

One of the biggest lessons Trena has learned along the way is that mistakes are inevitable. She says:

“I think one of the biggest lessons is [that] you're going to make mistakes all the time. But you have to be able to recover from them. If I would have let myself sulk over hundreds of mistakes that I've made, or hundreds of failed pages that went up or didn't redirect, I literally would have been out of business years ago. So I think the biggest lesson is mistakes are always going to happen. Just learn from it and figure out how you can correct it moving forward.“

Trena is also highly focused on showing up in the most authentic way possible, even ditching the use of Instagram filters (big props here!). She wants others to see her show up as herself so that her clients (and everyone else) learns they too can show up as themselves, whether it’s on YouTube or otherwise.

Another message Trena shares is that whether we like it or not, video is here to stay so start showing up there.

“The only way people are going to buy from you or work with you is if they like you. And the only way they can figure out is if they like you is if they see you on video.”

Trena also wants to share a few key steps someone can take to get started using YouTube:

Use ‘greenlight’ videos
Prepare a video game-plan
Create a video thumbnail and title

Unsurprisingly, Trena draws her inspiration from YouTube. She enjoys seeing what others are doing, seeing their successes and journeys and gaining inspiration from their stories and seeing where they started and where they are now.

Finally, Trena also dished with us her YouTube vs her Instagram strategy when it comes to posting content:

“One thing that I have been doing on Instagram is taking our YouTube video on the day it goes live. We have a carousel post and then the next day we do a reel from that video. We just chop it up and use the reel then the next day we do an IGTV. Then the following day we do a quote. We have about five pieces or five posts on Instagram and every Tuesday I've been trying to post like a selfie photo or taking a more personal picture and sharing more of a story. So it's not all informative but it's a way for people to connect with me. That's the only way I've really been using Instagram right now because I'd rather put the time that I have, again, like onions, add the layers that you can right now we just have the time to repurpose the YouTube video and create one special Instagram post a week.”

To connect with or learn more about Trena check out her YouTube channel or reach out to her on Instagram.

Until next time, keep doing it your way!

Insights:

“Trena’s YouTube videos are her sales team and they do the heavy lifting for free working 24 hours a day and seven days a week.”
“One thing Trena also recognizes is the rat race that is social media and while on other platforms content has a shorter shelf-life YouTube videos can last much, much longer.“
“Trena knew the hustle mentality wasn’t going to work for her so she needed to find something that did.”
“Trena wants others to see her show up as herself so that her clients (and everyone else) learns they too can show up as themselves, whether it’s on YouTube or otherwise.”

Resources:

Check Out Trena’s YouTube Channel
Visit Trena’s Website
Connect with Trena on Instagram @trena_little
Built To Sell by John Warrillow

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The Short Story…

The Tipping Point

The PAID Method (Ashley’s Proprietary Coaching Method)

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Why Do We Rush Into Action?

What Actually Happens When We Rush Into Action?

Food For Thought

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