Hey partner, how are you?
Hey, all good all good, , how you doing today?
Everything is fantastic. You know, I'm really glad we're getting together to do this today because we keep talking about resilient entrepreneurs and it's all across our branding and our website, webinars and masterclasses but I'm not sure we've really explained to people why this is so important to us.
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing, too. And I'm glad we're having this conversation about it today because I do think it's a really important topic and we recognise that. At the beginning of this year when we did our first masterclass, we called it The Resilient Entrepreneur Masterclass. And we got into the conversation, it was just such a rich conversation meaningful, and we got a lot of feedback from it and we said okay, this is something that people are interested in, you know, it's two years past pandemic starting, going through it all and we're kind of at a stage now where we're trying to bounce back, and some are bouncing back better than others. And what we recognised is that those who have been resilient are the ones that are still standing and maybe even thriving, and like us, building entire businesses through the pandemic and out of a pandemic.
Yeah, there's been so many people who have done well from the pandemic and I think now we're kind of far enough into it, or through it that it's okay to say that. I think in the early days when people were doing well, they just kind of had to keep it quiet, because it was a very gloom and doom time and people were, there were a lot of small businesses crashing, and they still haven't reopened, I mean, restaurants were a big one. And in any country you look at, it happened. So it was a really tough time for entrepreneurs in small business and I think it's awesome that resilience has helped so many of them through. And we thought that was just a great topic, because it was so pertinent to 2022 and I think it's going to be pertinent for a very long time.
I do, I think it's a lifetime thing and we're really starting to recognise that there's some keys to it, right? There's some actual keys to being resilient, that we're seeing after working with entrepreneurs over and over and seeing the ones who are thriving, and what they're doing, how are they doing it, we just started really recognising what those were. So we've gotten to talk about it a lot more between us and I think it's great to share now with others what they are, and how we're putting that into everything we do because we see the difference that it makes. And one thing that we should tell our listeners right now that Vicki and I are super passionate about whether you know it or not, is that entrepreneurs don't quit. You know, we both have our stories, if you listen to our episodes, you know, where we almost quit, where we got to that point of, should I be doing this, should I not? Should go back into the workforce, should I not? Should I get a job? How am I going to get through it? We've both been to deep, dark, difficult places and somehow found the resilience to keep going. And it's become a passion of ours to make sure entrepreneurs keep going because it's a calling, it's a passion. Being an entrepreneur is a thing you just have and I actually think it was good, we we had a good conversation the other day about how you don't actually believe that entrepreneurs can quit being an entrepreneur. If you're an entrepreneur, you are an entrepreneur, you might lose a business, you might quit and pivot and change or build something new but you're still always an entrepreneur at heart, and I can say going back to like childhood that definitely entrepreneurship has been part of my life forever. Being into it full time was a big adjustment for me and if you go back to my story I explain that more in detail, but it is just something there. But we're passionate to make sure entrepreneurs can keep going, can not quit. What are the tools we can help give you to never quit, right?
Yeah that's so key because it can be a tough thing at times to keep at it, to stay focused. So we've delivered these five Keys to Resilience, really, their our core methodology. They're what we base everything that we do, teach and help each other and clients with, and we've formed a community around these five keys, we train and coach people in marketing, but also in these five things. And it's really just about how to, not just stay the course but be successful in what we do. So let's lift the lid off it. Let's talk about what those five things are. The first, is my favorite and it's mindset.
Yeah, I mean, mindset is key. I mean, we just know it's the most important thing, you have to have the right mindset to make it.
Yeah, and it ranges across so much. It ranges across money mindset, motivation, money routines, which is another thing we talk about, but mindset is a big part of really everything we do. So I'll run through the five and then we might talk a little bit about each of them. So there's 1) Mindset, 2) Staying Connected, you know, having community, having your tribe, it's been said in many different ways but it's really about staying connected to people, to the right people. And 3) Keep Learning - having a learning mentality that everything you do you're learning. 4) Vitality, is another one, which is all about mind, body, soul, and then 5) Being of Service - doing for others, not just having the whole world about you, and what it means to you and whether you're getting what you need. But what about looking outwards? And how do you contribute to impact the world in a better way?
Yeah, I do, too. I do too. And they're also interrelated and interconnected and you kind of need to have all of them to really not just be resilient, but to be successful. I think it's really key. If you look at any person that really inspires you. I mean we always talk about Richard Branson, and massive entrepreneurs like him and the resilience people like him have had, he's got all these things, right. He's done all these things, he's figured all this stuff out. And that's what we get excited about when you see okay, we spend a lot of time conversing about this sort of thing and breaking it down and understanding it and coming up with these just five things, now makes it so nice and clear. And then it's almost like checkboxes, that's what I love. It's like you can start to look at it like checkboxes okay, I'm working on my mindset now and this is what I need to check off to get the mindset right. I'm working on connections. What am I involved in? Who am I surrounding myself with? What communities am I in? You know, am I surrounding myself with family members who don't understand entrepreneurship, think I'm crazy, question every risk that I'm taking, you know, keeps suggesting that maybe I should you know, have a secure job to make sure my insurance is covered every month and etc etc. We're gonna have a whole other conversation on that too for sure! You know, it's so key. It's so so key to have the right people surrounding you. And then learning, learning is my favorite thing. I love the personality quizzes, and one of them I did a while ago was on what is your style of being as a business person? And for me it was research came up really, really high on that and I was Yeah, that's so me because I love researching. I love learning, you know give me a topic and I want to go research and find out more, I'm the Google Queen, I can find anybody or anything on Google, like I'm really good at that.
If I need to hunt someone down I go to Laura!
Everybody does. I just need a first name. That's all I need, I can find them. I love it. But I love learning, I love researching, I love listening to podcast, reading which I don't do enough of because mostly time commitments. But anytime I have an opportunity to learn something I am. I follow great newsletters so I'm getting good stuff in my inbox, all these things are super important to me. But Vitality is an interesting one and I think that would surprise most people that that's on this list, don't you think?
Yeah, for sure. And look, there's so much to be said about that. It's the mind, body, soul connection, soul might sound a bit frou-frou to some people, right, spirit, emotions, it's all the same, right, it's your emotional health, that's what I call soul. And they're so connected. I mean, there's science behind that if you're feeling bad emotionally, your body shows it, it comes out in disease. And it happens the other way too, obviously if you hurt yourself, you break your arm, that's a very physical thing but your emotions affected? Of course! It's so interconnected and I don't think we put enough emphasis on that. I'm not going to profess to be a health scientist, but just from my life, I mean, I just see it, it's clear and I think that might be something that we need to do another podcast on.
I think several episodes on this because there's so many aspects of vitality that are important to talk about, like sleep health and routines and joy. What is sparking joy in your life?
Knowing what it is and always seeking it, making time to go and get joy.
Yeah, absolutely. And it affects everything. You think maybe a CEO doesn't have time for that right? You think in your brain that they're not making time for joy. Oh, yeah, like me, exactly, we're all CEOs. If you're an entrepreneur, you are CEO of your business. This is a mindset thing that we're going to talk about again, as well because it's super important. You are the CEO of your entire life, whether you just have a small business, even a side hustle you are CEO of that side hustle. You have to step into that and believe that and then show up as that person, that's really key. And that person has to be vital. They have to be, can't be full of stress and down and angry and frustrated and not getting exercise, not moving your body, not having the routines, not taking care of yourself, not nourishing yourself with food, and enough water and all these things make for a vital person, and being a vital person makes you a really successful positive, strong CEO. Whether it's just you and you're running your life and business on your own as a solo entrepreneur, or whether you're leading others, you know, when you have staff and you have people working with you it's even more important, or in our case, a partnership. I've got to show up, I've got to show up as my best self, not just for me, but for us and for 241. It's just really important. Thank you. I'm not always perfect. Don't get me wrong, I got a lot of work to do in this area, too but I'm aware of it at least.
Me too and I think that is the beauty of having a partnership, because you might wake up one morning and say, I'm just gonna roll over and stay in bed. But you know there's work to be done, there's a handover. We should share with people what our ridiculous work hours are. I find it quite fascinating. Here we are at 10:30 at night in Brisbane, and
9:23 am in Bermuda?
This podcast is always recorded in Bermuda and Brisbane simultaneously, either late night or early in the morning for one of us.
That;s how we work, client coaching, the whole thing.
What I love is that a lot of times people just don't even know, they just don't even realise, and once in a while when they do, when they've connected to the fact that Vicki's in Australia and Laura is in Bermuda, they're like, what time is it? It's become so normal for us to work these hours and I remember in the beginning, in the beginning of this when you first moved to Australia we were very concerned about it. And we were, Okay, we're not working this time and we're gonna cut off this and it sort of evolved into, How late do you want to work tonight? And how good are you feeling? And we're more conscious of how we're feeling and if we're up for it, and conscious of like, okay, well if we have an early morning meeting then we're not going to work late tonight, we're going to make sure we give ourselves enough time. And that speaks to vitality, too because we're more conscious of making sure we're getting enough sleep and we're getting enough care and we're getting enough time with partners, with children with whatever as well, and we're better at weekends. We used to do a lot over the weekends and squeeze a lot in because we felt like we had to but now we kind of ignore each other on the weekend. But of course, there's a WhatsApp, what can you do when WhatsApp is that easy to send.
When we have a brainwave or idea it has to be shared!
Exactly but there's no expectations for actually having to do something, we're just really conscious of giving each other the space we need. And when we need to go to our yoga class or Pilates or whatever it is, we make sure that we work that into our schedule too. And automation has helped us tremendously to figure out our crazy schedule.
Thank you Calendly!
A godsend. If you're not already using Calendly in your business, here's the plug. We're not paid by Calendly for this plug, use it, check it out. There's other ones too but we particularly love Calendly. It has changed our life. It has made it so much easier. We no longer go back and forth with somebody, how about this time? How about this time? How about this and then trying to figure out time zones. And you know, because we work with people in the UK and the US and Canada and Australia, Bermuda - trying to figure out everybody's timezone will really hurt your head and you can make mistakes easily too. When somebody thinks it's 2am when it's 2pm and anyway, so we're using Calendly now, everybody sees it in their own time zone, figure out a time that works for them and it's brilliant.
I love technology
Definitely makes life so much easier. And then the last one on our list being of service. This is something we talked about the very beginning of our business as one of our major values
Very beginning, even before we started this. This was in our first attempt at business, not that we ever got it off the ground thank you very much Covide, but yeah because we are a pivot business, we started off doing something else and now we're doing this. And yeah, that was one of the first meetings we had Laura. We were talking about what are your values? We wrote them out on the big chart on the wall, it was so important to us. How we want to impact and contribute through our business.
Yeah and I feel like as we've matured as a business over these past few years we've gotten even better at that, and it fuels my soul, it just makes me feel really good. Every workshop or webinar we do we contribute back, we give back on it. So if you've ever come to one of our workshops, just by the sake of being there you've given back too. And that's just really super important to us. And we know that that is part of resilience and also part of success because the most successful people have always been ones that are of service to others, it's not service to self. Service to self I think it's like a drain that you just circle and go down. When you're service to others, you're constantly giving out and it always comes back in so many great ways and it's just a greater way of being. I sleep well at night knowing that we're giving to society, we're making an impact with what we do, with who we help, and just how we give back through to everything we do.
Yeah. And I think it finishes it off, it rounds it out, you know, it feels whole. In Chinese culture they say that you always leave something on your plate or you always leave a little bit of tea in the cup because it, I don't know if this is related but somehow it came to mind, so the culture is that if you do that then the host knows that you're finished. Otherwise, you're you just keep eating and if it's an empty plate, like our culture, right it's always on your plate. Why am I even talking about this? Anyway, I think the connection was that you're leaving something that you're not using up everything, it kind of comes back to mindset as well. It's the scarcity or abundance, there's always going to be more. And so Ah, yes, I knew we'd get there in the end. We'll keep talking and you'll get there in the end. So you're always giving more than you're giving back to the community that serves you or in our case we often give to developing nations, we've been giving to Ukraine, we've been giving to women in Tanzania to have business training because it's all entrepreneurial related and we believe in helping women because they're the real movers and shakers in communities. So yeah, it just all kind of plays in, it's a mindset thing you've got to give to kind of complete the deal. And how it is for me anyway.
And it feels like when you can give that you've reached a certain level of success, whether you're giving $5 or $500 or a million dollars, that I think the number itself doesn't really matter. It's almost that you accept your success, and you call in your success by giving something away. And that belief is held in lots of different cultures, religions, it's you're successful when you can give something away and I think that helps with the success mindset. And it like you said, rounds it all out. Because when you have the mindset, when you have the connections, when you learn, when you're vital, and when you're giving of service, it just rounds yourself out as a whole person that is contributing, that is successful, that is optimistic, and at the end of the day just resilient. And you're helping others be resilient. I think that's it when you are so resilient that you can help others be resilient, that is it. Like that's the pinnacle. That's the mountaintop you're trying to reach.
Absolutely. Geez, you so eloquent. We talk about a league of exceptional entrepreneurs, it's a membership that we have and I think this is really where the true value of that membership lies. I think our members really appreciate the connection that they get with each other. That there's always something to be learning together. We're always reminding each other of vitality and what's cool is that you build what you need in business, you often build what you need. And we've built an amazing community and I genuinely feel like I value the community as a member as much as any other member values it.
Me to me, I say that all the time. I leave Focus Hour more inspired than when I started. I get something out of it, it doesn't feel selfish it just feels, it just feels so good. I don't I don't have the word for it maybe I'm not as eloquent as you say. It's like a whole feeling.
I think that feeling that you're trying to describe is the feeling you get from being of service, of contributing because we created this as a way to bring people together, to support a community and the essence of that is to give back. I mean, sure members pay to be in it. Just because people pay you for something doesn't mean you're not providing you're giving back, you know, and this a conversation we'll have in probably another episode, where especially people who are in service - providers like coaches or health care workers, or counselors, they say, you know, I want to be able to just give this service for free, I just want to help people, you still need to charge for it. So anyhow, that's another topic, but our members pay for the service, but at the same time we're giving to the community. And I think that sense of giving is what gives you that warm and fuzzy feeling you're trying to describe.
Yeah, 100%. And, you know, it was really was born out of a pandemic out and it really started at a time when we were really still in isolation a lot of the time, there were shutdowns, there were curfews, there was no household mixing and everyone got really comfortable with being online so we went for it, you know, let's get online, let's talk once a week, let's help each other through this. And that's where it all was born from. And you know, those people that started those early days with us are still with us and we love them so much because we've seen their success, their growth, and we feel such a part of it for each other, and we can celebrate each other and get so excited when someone is building something. How many of our members have gone from a side hustle to a full time entrepreneurship, it's amazing, it's so inspiring, because we know that leap, we know that leap. We know how hard that leap is to take. We get it. And it's just to have support and somebody to say, Yeah, I've been through that. And this is what I did. And that's it. That's all it is, you know, simple, simple stuff, simple conversations, but it can be so game changing, because one, you're not alone and as an entrepreneur, we say it's such a lonely journey most of the time, because people don't get it, family doesn't get it, friends don't get it, if they've got a nice cushy job, that they're getting paid well, and they're getting all their expenses, taxes and everything paid for them. Why would they?
If they ask you about your health insurance, they don't get it!
Yeah, they're not gonna get it. Guess what it's really hard to do on your own. I think it's really hard to do entrepreneurship on your own. If you don't have somebody in your corner, if you don't have somebody who understands it, has been in front of your mentor, you know, look, for a mentor, you need a mentor, I really strongly, strongly believe in this, the importance of having mentorship, because it's so many things to figure out. It's one thing to figure out what service you're going to do, or the product you're going to sell. That's one small part of entrepreneurship. That's like probably 25%. The other 75% is figuring out your accounting, your marketing, your technology, your distribution, your all the other pieces of running a business, it's probably not your expertise. Those are the things that are going to be challenging but you got to learn it. When you have mentorship, when you have a community, when you have people to talk to, it just gets you so much further, so much faster, because you can just get these things figured out with asking a question, we've got a WhatsApp group, you can get on the WhatsApp group and say, Hey, guys, anybody figured out how to do that payment gateway thing for an ecommerce website yet? Oh, of course, a couple of our members have or we have and let's give you the advice. Easy, easy to get further ahead. Simple. Simple, but not simple.
Well, I'm glad we got to explain what resilience means to us. And we hope it's helped some of our listeners to understand where we're coming from. There's gonna be plenty more episodes that touch on each of those five key areas and so tune in.
And send us your questions please. If you're stuck on something we'd love to hear from you. Send us your questions, connect with us, and we'd love to help out and who knows, we might have you on as a guest one day at? Well have a good night.
Thanks mate! Have a good day. Thanks for joining us on Resilient Entrepreneurs. We're Laura and Vicki from Two Four One. We love supporting entrepreneurs, especially with mindset marketing and motivation, which is why we've built an incredible community of business founders who meet weekly in The Level-Up League. If you'd like to know more about it look us up at www.twofouronebranding.com
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
