[00:00:00.000] - Speaker 1

Welcome to the Grit Reapers, the podcast for aspiring online entrepreneurs that cuts through all the crap in the online business world and dishes out the raw and real truth about what it really takes to have a successful online business. No sugar coating, no get-rich-quick schemes, just honest advice with a healthy dose of humor and hope.

[00:00:23.630] - Speaker 2

We're your hosts, Gail and Candice, two online entrepreneurs who've been there done that and live to tell the tale. So if you're looking for straight talk, practical tips, and the occasional reality check to get your online business moving, you're in the right place. Let's get down to business.

[00:00:46.300] - Speaker 1

So welcome back, everybody, all our great reapers. Gail, welcome back from your trip.

[00:00:53.910] - Speaker 2

Thank you very much. Very glad to be home.

[00:00:57.000] - Speaker 1

Good, good. I'm so happy to see you again. Yeah, so guys, the thing we wanted to talk about today is actually a spin off from an experience Gail just recently had in Australia from her launch. So we were chatting about it and we just thought, you know what? It's actually such a great thing just to speak about with our listeners. Let's just start. Let's just get into Gail. Tell everybody this revelation that you had.

[00:01:27.090] - Speaker 2

Okay, sure. So I think it's been a combination of two things. I went over to Australia with the purposes of a bit of a holiday, but also of doing a launch with Meg, my business partner over there. Now, She's in Australia, as I said, so the time zone is not great for our US market. We had a lot of backwards and forwards, and just to give you some context, our last launch we did, I did from South Africa, Meg did from Australia. It meant that she ended up doing her lives at 11: 00 PM, her time. It was just too much to be up. Sometimes she was getting to bed at one o'clock in the morning after uploading the replays, et cetera. We knew that it wasn't going to be what we could do because her kids were on holiday. We weren't actually going to be at Meg's house for the launch. So talk about a launch just off the scale because we weren't at home, we didn't have a studio, we had three kids to look after all while we were going through this launch week. And so we decided to take a launch that we see spoken about and one of the most common launches, a five-day challenge.

[00:02:57.320] - Speaker 2

And we decided to prerecord it, but not only prerecord it, prerecord it in two different parts, so her part and my part, drip it into the Facebook group, and then offer a live Q&A once a day based on the modules that we had dripped. We took a well-known, well-followed challenge-type launch, and we adapted it to our circumstances. And you know what? It actually ended up being such an easy launch because we had done the pre-recordings, we had got everything ready before we left. And then it was literally just a matter of everything was scheduled to drop at certain times. So all we had to do is go in and just make it live. And then we just showed up for the live Q&A. Most of the time, the live Q&A was just on the veranda of the holiday house that we were on with the kids running around in the background. We told everybody what was going to happen, and nobody minded. It was just really easy. It was a very different launch. In our previous launch, we had a lot of engagement because it was live and I was talking to people then, teaching people then.

[00:04:22.540] - Speaker 2

You were getting the interaction. This was different. We were getting the interaction in the group. We were getting interaction via emails. People said, Wow, guys, this has been amazing. For those that could show up to the Q&A, and actually it was quite amazing because normally with the five-day challenge, you will see the engagement decline, whereas in this one, we saw the engagement increase. We had more people on our last live Q&A than we had on the first one. It was amazing to see the difference. That got me thinking about it was easy, it worked. We couldn't have launched it any other way, really in that situation. Then we're getting to the stage in some of these big programs where people have now launched and they say, I'm beginning to see things like, I followed the method you told us to a T and nobody signed up. Or I gave this webinar and I used the template, and this was actually me in my first launch as well. I used the template that we were given and told to, This This is the only way to run a webinar. You have to follow this template. I felt so uncomfortable doing it that way.

[00:05:36.920] - Speaker 2

People are saying, It really didn't work for me. I feel like people are told that there's only one way to run a specific launch style, and it can often make you feel very uncomfortable. When you're uncomfortable, you don't deliver your material well, you don't deliver your pitch well. People can see you uncomfortable, and I think it puts people off. I wanted to chat about this, and I thought it would be a great podcast episode. But just to say that it's your business, and you need to do what you feel comfortable doing. That was just the start of the conversation of this podcast, and then Cans and I were talking it through. Cans, I know you've I also got some thoughts on this. So, yeah, over to you.

[00:06:34.480] - Speaker 1

I was thinking to myself, I think with any new thing that you do in your life, if you're learning, you've got a new hobby or you're learning something for the first time, you almost apply the theory in its absoluteness. If the book says this, that's how it is. I actually think that's quite a normal thing. It's humans. It's like you adopt it and you adopt it in its purest Form. And then it's only through doing that that you then start to feel like, You know what? I think I could actually do that a little bit better or a little bit differently, or that doesn't feel great. And you gain confidence to start tweaking it. So you first adopt it in its pure form, you wear it a bit, you find what's hurting, what does feel good and then start adjusting. So I think all of... Well, I certainly relate to what you're saying, where it's like first webinar, first master class, first challenge, you take whoever you're learning from or the resources you have and you try and implement in like, this is the way. Then you have an experience where, oh my God, that felt hideous.

[00:08:06.970] - Speaker 1

I hated every minute of it. It's so not me, or I would never say that, or I'm going to Jack. Well, hopefully what we want to think is That I think a lot of people don't actually. They then just try to do it again, again in its purest form. I think what you're saying really is you took a system or a method, and so you didn't do it the way a typical five-day challenge is supposed to be. So what?

[00:08:40.100] - Speaker 2

Yeah.

[00:08:40.950] - Speaker 1

Actually, that's a lot better. Fantastic. Absolutely.

[00:08:47.340] - Speaker 2

I think, Cans, just on what you're saying there is that the first time I did that webinar where I followed that template and it just felt so weird, I then avoided ever doing it again. So what I would love to tell people is that just because you know you've been told it should be done this way and it doesn't feel good to you, don't not do it. Tweak it and take it to a place where it feels more authentic or it does feel like you. Take the overall system, as we say, and then tweak it and edit it to be something that you feel comfortable with. So don't It's like, throw out the baby with the bathwater. I think that's the right thing. And say, I'm never going to do that again. Like, do. But just tweak it so that it feels right for you.

[00:09:40.740] - Speaker 1

A hundred %. I think also there's some reality to this anxiety people feel, which is like, I've just noticed there's like, and this is maybe actually just an entirely different podcast. But recently, I am just feeling so like, caught between the business owner who's trying to run an ethical business and advertise and promote themselves without doing the stuff that feels inauthentic. I think sometimes when we're looking at people that have made it in the online world and then their programs or templates or blah, blah, blah are promising systems, this is the exact email sequence I have used, and I'm a six-figure business owner, you internalize, well, that must be the way. Then you get it and you have this anxiety about deviating in any way because we think, Well, this is what worked, so it's going to work for me. I feel that deeply because it's the most bizarre phenomenon that we somehow forget that it's my business and that's not how I am. I would never say that, or that's not my tone. We forget that. It's like, We really want to be successful. We really want to make this work. Then forget that we have agency.

[00:11:16.580] - Speaker 1

We are allowed to say, You know what? Thirteen emails in a span of five days feels excessive. I would fucking hate that. I'm not going to do that. I'm only going to do five. No, we think, Then it's 13, so I am going to send. Then every time an email goes out, you are like, Oh, my God, I hope people don't.

[00:11:35.300] - Speaker 2

Yeah, absolutely.

[00:11:36.700] - Speaker 1

I feel that deeply because I did that. You literally felt traumatized every time I got a Your email has to be broadcast. It's so funny because I was even sharing with you that even up until recently, I fell into this exact same trap where I was like, okay, when I first I was on Instagram a lot. Reels had just come out. I was learning how to make them. I was really enjoying it. This was before I actually knew a thing about funnels, and it actually just felt free. It felt like I wasn't second I guess. I was actually having fun on Instagram. My first group coaching program was teaching people all about Instagram. I found that I'm just avoiding the platform I'm on my personal profile a lot, and my feed is hilarious. I love being on my personal profile because the algorithm clearly shows me shit that I watch, which is funny videos of lip syncs and all just light-hearted shit. And then I switch over into my business profile and my anxiety goes fucking through the roof, and I really don't enjoy it. And I caught myself thinking the other day, I love making this podcast.

[00:12:59.780] - Speaker 1

Give Give me an Instagram live. I will show up. I can talk. I hate writing carousels. I am more like, Let me just talk about what I know. It feels free and it flows. And then I was like, Why am I on Instagram again? Okay, so maybe I just shouldn't have an Insta. Maybe I should just choose to focus on my podcast and maybe YouTube. Then I was like, No, I can't do that. I have to have an Instagram profile. Why? Why do you have to? Why? Because everybody else has why. So I fell into that exact same, it's my business. If I want to make content in a way that doesn't feel draining and cumbersome and a chore It's like this dreaded thing, why would I not choose platforms that make me feel that way as opposed to platforms that I dread? Just because that's where I've got in my head that I have to have an Instagram. What I'm trying to say is it's okay to say, Fuck it to the rules. But there are fucking rules. It's your business. You got to find the stuff that works for you, for your personality style, for the stuff that elevates you that you feel enlivened with as opposed to drain and traumatized by.

[00:14:22.900] - Speaker 2

Absolutely. Because when you're enjoying it, you do it. When it's something that is just like, as you said, that feels heavy and just take so much brain power, so much work, you're never going to do it. So yes, you might say, okay, I'm going to have an Instagram account and I'm going to post three times a week, seven times a week or whatever. But then you don't do it because it's just too hard. So definitely, what you are saying is that you make the rules in your business. I think sometimes we forget that. And it's so weird. As you're saying, it's so weird. Why do we forget that? If it was an offline business, you would be making the rules. So why different for this business? I also think that what I've seen recently and what I've heard a lot of the the OGE creators who have been successful, who've been really successful, is that online business is changing. We went through the phase during COVID where everybody went online. That's where they were making their There's six-figure launches, their seven-figure launches. I've spoken recently to so many people who were just like... It used to be so easy.

[00:15:40.810] - Speaker 2

In Australia now, we just met up with a whole lot of Kajabi the OGs, and they were all reminiscing, Oh, remember 2022? It was so easy, and 2021, and 2020. And so online business is evolving. Maybe some of the programs that we bought into, well, I don't say maybe, but they haven't really evolved along with it. That's the other thing. Don't be scared if something was working and it's not working now. Don't be scared to do what you need to do to test and just find out what is working now.

[00:16:23.530] - Speaker 1

Correct. Totally. There is something really interesting about the pursuit of the answer. In one of our episodes, we actually spoke about this phenomenon of guru hopping. Because I think people are lost and close to broken broke sometimes, they're desperate, they're frustrated, they're scared, they're anxious. So we are convinced someone out there has the answer. And I mean, this is confirmed sometimes when people are promoting their businesses, telling you, I have the answer. I have the formula or the steps.

[00:17:03.510] - Speaker 2

So our fears are then confirmed, sometimes with good marketing or whatever.

[00:17:12.290] - Speaker 1

I don't know if it's good, I'm going to say with with effective marketing. Actually, it's like there isn't one way. There isn't one person. It's like these are concepts. I like to think like there are certain concepts you need to know about as an online business owner. There is a concept of a funnel, which we're going to be talking about in one of our upcoming episodes. What the fuck is a funnel? It's not like a thing. It's like a concept. There is this concept of scarcity and urgency. There is a concept of discounting. If you understand concepts rather than formulaic step-by-step method methods. It's like you suddenly feel much freer to apply the concepts in ways that feel authentic and ethical. And I think what we must say is that they work because really you need a profitable business. Like your passion alone just can't pay the bills, unfortunately. We need money. We need money to be in business. So we want whatever you're doing to be working. So if it's not working, maybe it's time just to start thinking, maybe it's because I'm trying to apply this in a, this is the way, these are the number of emails, these are the steps.

[00:18:41.920] - Speaker 1

I have to offer 20% off because he offers 20 %. No, you don't. Take the concept and apply it in a way that works for you. Absolutely. Yeah, I'm still on the fence. I haven't done anything impulsive. I have not deleted my Instagram account.

[00:19:00.400] - Speaker 2

But I am seriously considering just switching to what feels good and really checking myself that I don't go to the...

[00:19:12.820] - Speaker 1

No, actually, you can do whatever bloody works for you in your business. One other thing that we were speaking about just before we pressed record is that just like we're saying, there's no one way to do something. There's no one person that's going to give you all the answers. In the same breath, we would really encourage you guys, if you're listening, watching, whatever, to also check yourself that you're not thinking your way of doing things is set in stone. People often say, No, I can't do that. I can't do that. I can't get on video. Or I can't do this. They are very committed connected to the way they do things, which is the same thing. It's like it's your way and nothing's going to budge. We really want to say that what we've learned through many bruises is this is a muddy playing field. You got to get in the mud and you've got to test, test, test. You've got to experiment. You've got to be open-minded. You've got to try things. Then only once you've really given it a go to say, That felt good, that didn't feel good, or, You know what?

[00:20:35.760] - Speaker 1

It's a bit uncomfortable, but maybe I'll keep trying. You can't be so like, This is the way. No, you can, but it's going to And Candice, just on that as well, I think that as you go through the online journey, things that seemed impossible at the beginning of the online journey.

[00:20:58.390] - Speaker 2

Candice has been talking to me I'd give out a podcast already back in January when we were on safari together. I was just like, I can't. I'd love to, but I can't. I just can't. At that stage, I had no capacity. And the better you get of things, the more capacity you get, the more systems you put in place in your business, the more streamlined things are, the more it frees up your time, the more capacity you have. So never cross ideas all and just say, I'm never going to try that, because you will find that as you go through, you do have more capacity. There may be some ideas that you've crossed off that end up being a breakthrough for your business or a a booster, you get to the next income level or whatever. So your business is going to evolve, you're going to evolve, you're going to get better at things. Definitely don't cross things off and say I'm never doing it. Never say never, but also do things that you're comfortable with and that you enjoy.

[00:22:08.920] - Speaker 1

Oh, that's a nice... That is a nice little tale. Okay, so two things we're going to end off with. Number one is, it's like a newish podcast, so we're so happy if you are here listening. Thank you all for watching. And truly, Gail and I, we want to make content for our listeners. So if there is anything you are curious or wanting to learn more about, we connected to some incredible people. We'll host guests. We'll really listen to what it is that... Where are you getting stuck up? Where are you finding challenge? So please let us know. You can email us, team@thegritreepers. Com. You can get hold of Gail and I on socials, on all the infos on our website. But we are inviting your participation in this podcast because without listeners, there is no podcast. So it's. The other thing is we feel like it's through the learning and the doing that you slam up against some of these very hard reality checks. Like, Oh, so you're telling me I don't have to listen to what you know? Yes, that's what we're telling you. It's like a bit of a reality check, you're in charge of your business.

[00:23:33.320] - Speaker 1

That we've actually also put together what we think are like the top 10 reality checks all online business owners should know. We have a resource. It's like a cute little thing you can read, you can even download your own if you want, and a link will pop up right now or you'll find it in the show notes or the description and you can go ahead and grab it if you'd like. We are definitely on the cards. I think very soon, we're going to be talking all about funnels. Are they necessary? Do they work? We hope you tune in. But thank you so much for listening, and we'll see you guys soon.

[00:24:13.450] - Speaker 2

See you next week. Bye, everybody.