Growing a business isn’t sexy
In this episode of ‘Many Hats of Business,’ I speak with Gemma Went about the complexities of running an online business. Ultimately growing a business isn’t sexy. The boring bits is what drives the business growth. It isn’t in the sexy sounding lines of ‘follow this programme and make six figures in six minutes. We delve into the importance of paying yourself properly, building not just a job but a business you love. And the necessity of self-care throughout the entrepreneurial journey. Gemma shares her 11-year experience, focusing on strategies for growth, the significance of understanding your finances. Also the role of energetics and mindset in business success.
The conversation reveals the challenges and rewards of entrepreneurship, emphasizing the value of perseverance, self-investment, and the power of partnerships. Additionally, we address the dangers of stress on physical health and the overall impact of the digital business realm’s illusionary successes. This episode is packed with insights on scaling to multi-six figures while maintaining joy and satisfaction in your business venture.
▶️ Watch the full episode on Youtube: https://youtu.be/zJ5m9FC1wZY
️Listen to the full episode on Podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/many-hats-of-business/episodes/004-Growing-a-business-isnt-sexy–Gemma-Went-e2iibgm
Growing a business isn’t sexy podcast timestamps
00:00 Welcome to Many Hats of Business: The Journey Begins
00:48 Diving Deep with Gemma Went: Building a Business You Love
03:51 The Pitfalls of Not Paying Yourself: A Candid Conversation
10:04 Shifting Business Models for Growth: Gemma’s Strategic Moves
16:59 Gemma’s Personal Insights: Lessons Learned and Future Directions
23:13 Unlocking Success Through Inner Work and Energetics
23:52 The Power of Routine: Daily and Weekly Practices for Growth
25:55 Navigating the Numbers: Financial Management Insights
28:52 The Reality of Online Business: Smoke, Mirrors, and Hard Truths
35:28 Embracing Spirituality and Intuition in Business
39:01 The Importance of Health and Balance in the Pursuit of Success
44:03 Concluding Thoughts: Health, Wealth, and Enjoying the Journey
Book recommendation:
When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress – Gabor Maté – preview it on Kindle here, no need for the app
Connect with Gemma Went – The Lighthouse
Podcast Transcription
About Gemma Went
Hi Gemma, great to have you with us today. Thank you for joining us. Would you start by telling the listeners a bit about yourself, please?
Of course. It’s lovely to be here. So I am Gemma Went, as you’ve probably already seen, I’ve been in this industry This is my eleventh year.
I feel like a dinosaur compared to some of the young whippersnappers that come in and do great work.
My aim is I help soul led online business owners to grow and scale to multi six figures and help them build the foundations that will take them further to, to seven figures and beyond. And the crucial part of that, I think for me is with a business that they love.
Because over these 11 years, I’ve seen people build cages rather than businesses and they come in with this amazing enthusiasm and all these ideas to do something amazing with their business. And then what they build becomes worse than a job and a cage. And I want to change that, help people build all the wealth and create the dreams that they want, but with a business they actually love.
It is a big mission.
I think it’s really good what you were saying about building the business that you love, because that’s something that I’m obviously passionate about as well. And I’d love to talk more around that point that people create a cage, not a business.
I’ve been in business for 12 years as well and it can take a long time to get to that stage where you are more in that business position because of building the team. It does take time and I think sometimes people don’t start it enough if they do want to build something bigger and then perhaps get worn down with it.
Yeah. I think. A lot of people come into this online business world with brilliant experience and knowledge that quite often you see them forget. It’s almost like they enter this world and they forget all this wealth of knowledge and experience that they have. And it’s almost like they’re starting from zero again.
Pay yourself properly
They start from this place of doubt. So as they build, it’s from this place of doubt. And it takes a lot, quite a lot of people a long time to build the confidence to be able to really grow a true business. And so in that process, what I see is they doubt and they don’t value themselves. Often they don’t pay themselves enough.
And so they are working harder and harder and harder and harder. To grow this thing without the real confidence of stepping into that business owner, that leadership, that visionary role that was really going to help to help them to create something amazing. And then they’re not paying themselves enough.
And so it’s not even a wage, like for a lot of people. They’re not even paying themselves as much as they used to get paid when they had a job. Because they wait and the biggest pattern that I see, you may see this as well, is that they wait to see what’s left over in their business and then use that to pay themselves. Rather than setting their owner’s pay and paying themselves that every single month. Which just creates resistance because then you’re like, well, actually I’m putting in all these hours and all this effort and all this energy and I’m not getting enough back.
That’s equivalent to that value. And then they just resist it and resent it. It’s very difficult when you’re in a job that you resent, that’s a challenge, but you can get a new job, but when you’re building a business and you start to resent it. It takes a lot of courage to change the business. And of course, some people are building with the intention that it’s to sell or that’s going to be their pension and sell.
We’ll just take the point to mention now fill up your pension along the way, don’t rely on selling your business at the end. It is a tax efficient way of getting money out of your business. Plus it diminishes the risk.
When you are doing something day in, day out and you start to resent it like that, that’s tough. It’s it’s a really horrible energy to be in.
And it wears you down if you don’t get yourself out of it. And I see this a lot, and it breaks my heart.
My company is called The Lighthouse. And the reason it’s called that is because we want to shine the light on how brilliant minds can create brilliant businesses and create all the wealth and the dreams that they want to create.
And do it in a way that’s aligned, that’s ethical, that’s going to get results. So they come in with all of this enthusiasm and excitement and brilliant ideas. And then this process that they often fall into of not paying themselves enough. Doubting themselves really not working through the mindset, things that come up for every single one of us.
Then you sit in that resentment and it just completely ruins the whole thing. And I hate seeing that light go out in people. That’s one of my biggest things. I can literally see and feel that light going out. So I think getting to them before they get to that point where the resentment is, too much.
Getting them back on track is really important. And that’s an interesting thing, isn’t it, of catching your clients at the right time. Because I imagine when you catch them at that stage rather than after the resentment starts, the transformation from working with you will be far quicker. Yeah, because you’re starting from a better place, aren’t you?
Pay yourself first
Yeah. Interestingly, when you were saying as well about the paying yourself first, I find, if they do pay themselves first and they commit to it. You hit the figures you need to, to do that. Yeah. If you’re paying yourself last, It sometimes is reflected in the turnover, because you don’t then make the effort. And that’s selling from a space of scarcity as well, which is difficult, isn’t it?
Yeah, exactly. It’s the same as the kind of the profit first concept by Michael Michalowicz where he has a whole brilliant process, and then a lot of my clients use this. Where rather than waiting until the end of the month, you see what profit you’ve got left for your business.
You commit to taking 5%, 10%, 15%, 20% out, and you put that into a profit pot first. It’s the same with your owner’s pay and you take that out. And if you look at it from that way around, I do this when I do financial planning with my clients, in fact I’ve just run my 90 day upgrade session with my clients.
We start with salary. So I always say, you know, what is the salary you want to pay yourself each month in the next quarter? And then what you’re operating expenses and what is the profit you want to put away first. Then what tax do you need to pay? We’re just really thinking about your tax margins. And then, okay, what minimum revenue do you need to create to make all of those things happen?
Then now let’s map out what you need to sell to make that happen. And so it’s coming from the other end rather than, Oh, I want to make 10k months. What does that mean? What does that leave you with? And then more often than not. 10k a month actually doesn’t leave you with a lot of pay for the salary for the owner and it means you’re VAT registered.
Which, yeah, it’s a bit more of a, depending who, it’s difficult because I talk to people sometimes about it, that they see the figure of 100K, like. Obviously you were saying 10K a month, so that’s 120, but they have the, I want to hit six figures. But if they’re working with clients that are consumers rather than businesses and aren’t that registered, it can be a negative.
If you want to catapult past the VAT registration to make sure there’s not a tax negative of doing it. From an earning point of view.
What’s the best decision Gemma’s made for her business?
So obviously you’ve been in business for a very, very long time. What do you think is the best thing you’ve done in your business to really move the needle or make a difference in your life?
I think there are two things. That really shifted things for us. The first one is moving from a one to many to what I call a many to many model. So obviously one to many is taught a lot and that’s the founder, the leader, the coach, the mentor, whoever working with lots of different clients in a group capacity. Masterminds, trainings, programs, whatever which is great, right?
Until it gets so big that it’s exhausting and it’s not scalable. It’s certainly not passive. No, it’s not passive. There are very few things that are passive. But if you then bring in people to work alongside you, other coaches, mentors, strategists, whoever to serve your clients and position your business as that way, so no longer selling me.
Many to many not One to Many
So in a one to many model, I’m selling me and my expertise and everything that I do. In a many to many model. I’m selling me and my success coaches and my associates that also work with my clients. Now, these are people that are brilliant at what they do. In some cases better at what they do than I am, where we work as a team to serve the clients together.
And I think shifting to that, and I’ve had that model now. Probably for about four or five years and I started slow and just kind of played with it. I’m now in a really good place where I think some people can get this wrong. There are some people that try to do this where they continue selling as if it’s one too many.
So they’re selling me, the leader, the founder, the great person. And then people join and find that they’re working with other people, which hasn’t been what they’re sold and that creates some unrest. With us, I moved from a personal brand, so it wasn’t about me, we moved to the Lighthouse and then I sell the team. On every page, you see who you’re working with and why.
And that made a massive difference to our results and, they really increased.
And it made a massive difference to me and the amount that I need to work because it, it wasn’t feasible for me to work as much as I wanted to. Also, to grow the business and scale the business in the way that I wanted.
And so by having this team, it really makes all the difference. And so that shifted everything. It’s worth at this point as well, pointing out to people, isn’t it? Because you know, we were talking about people basically growing a job. If you want to sell a business, you can’t be selling a job.
The fact that you’re branded as not you now is very beneficial in this because if you were selling Gemma Went business limited, nobody wants to buy it really because they’re not you. And also when you do come to sell, you’ve really got to show yourself as being redundant or able to be redundant in your business.
Absolutely. Yeah, exactly that. And you’ve got to make a conscious decision with that. And that was the decision. I think we’ll come to this. Discussion as well, because you and I were talking about it earlier. That was a conscious decision when I shifted from Gemma Went brand to to the Lighthouse, because I realized I wanted to build something. To build a legacy and exit and sell later.
And I couldn’t do that with the brand Gemma Went. And I couldn’t do that with the way that it was set up. So all of these moves were very much in alignment with that. And then the second, going back to the original question, the second thing I think I did that made all the difference was bringing in partnerships with other people.
Partnerships are the way forward
And so that is where I become a partner with someone else and we have a revenue share. Or a profit share depending on what the deal is. Where I get a percentage of that, but I am doing the business mentoring or the marketing and they are doing a lot of the delivering. And that has been great actually, because I think part of the reason that I’ve loved that is when I work with clients. Particularly when I work one to one, I feel like I’m part of the business. It’s almost like I’m a non exec board director and that’s how I feel and I’m very invested in their business. And that’s why I don’t do lots of one to ones because I can’t be that for lots of people.
Yeah, you can’t be that mentally invested with everything. No, it’s just impossible. So, I have a few one to ones that I do that with and they tend to stay with me for a long time. For that reason really. We’re in it for the long haul. We’re like, let’s look five years ahead and where we want to get the business.
When I do that with partnerships, I really am invested, like I’m literally invested. And so it gives me, it gives me variety. Which I need as part of my human design, as part of having ADHD, I need these things that get me excited and give me the variety.
So both of those things I think really shifted things for me in the business and just opened things up. And I actually think both of those things make me a better mentor. Just through the things that I learn as part of that and then kind of share with other people.
Work to your strengths
And it’s very good as well, isn’t it, that you’re working towards your strengths and how you’d like to work. It’s like you say, you noticed that when you’re in one to one work, you become very invested. Potentially over invested for the investment level, as I imagine it was. You know, way back when, and now you said, okay, well, that’s how I like to work.
How about I look to explore that further so that it becomes something that I can do. It’s different from what a lot of people are offering and then it’s financially and mentally rewarding for you in that way. Yeah, it’s great. I love it. It’s fun. And, you know, that’s probably something I’ll keep on doing for years.
And I love that, like that feels, that feels fun. It feels really fulfilling and, you know, it, it kind of fits with my ethos and my mission of really lighting the way and supporting other people in bringing their business dreams to life and creating their own ripple effects. And, you know, part of our mission at the lighthouse is to create other leaders and lighthouses that create ripples effects. We’re all kind of connected and so it really, it really ties in with what we’re trying to do with that.
Yeah, I love that. It’s funny, actually, because when I do my work with businesses, that’s I’ve got a company called Beacon Business Consultants Limited, which owns Many Hats, Many Hats is a subsidiary.
And, I’ve got a lighthouse as my logo because it’s that same thing. I love that.
What do you wish someone had told you earlier in your journey?
Such a good question. So many things. I think, trust yourself more. It’s so easy to fall into listening to other voices in this space. It’s a noisy space. And those voices aren’t right for you. I mean, if you think about when I entered this industry, right, I’d already had a business.
I had an actual digital and social media agency in London, and we had an office in Soho and so I’d built that for quite some time and it was, and it was great and it was really successful. Also, I was on the board of directors at two, Big multi seven figure agencies in London.
I’d worked for a big innovation consultancy and I’d worked with global brands and corporate and had so much experience. I’d won awards, you know, really good experience. Yet, I entered this industry and I started doubting myself when I was hearing these voices of other people. That didn’t have nearly as much experience as I did. And it was a really interesting phenomenon.
Yeah, I’d like to point out right now to the listeners that if you know, Gemma suffers from imposter syndrome, you know it’s totally normal that you get it, right?
Is it and it’s so freaking normal We all have. It’s crazy, isn’t it?
So imagine like now, when you’re listening to yourself saying about your experience, you’re like, how did you suffer so much at the start? Because you know, it’s crazy, isn’t it? You probably had more experience that the people telling you like, things that made you doubt your experience. Yeah, I did.
And I do remember investing a few times And, you know, I have, I have a real stance on investments. There’s lots of talk around investments in the online space and pulling coaches down and people not delivering. And that is true, it happens. And again, that’s our mission at the Lighthouse to train people to deliver a higher quality and we have certifications and things that we do with that.
But I did find with a few of my early investments, I invested and I knew more than they did. And that was a real kind of wake up call for me, and that was on me, that was my responsibility, I absolutely take that. But I really recognized that I needed to understand and appreciate my own experience and my own value and what I bring.
And just be really careful about who I invest in and make sure they are genuinely people that are ahead of me and, and know the things that I need to know next. And that was a real kind of wake up call.
I think as well in the early days, and this is before I realized I had ADHD, I get massive dopamine hit from new ideas. And doing new creative things. When you’re running your own business, there’s no one telling you off, there’s no one telling you to stop and focus. It’s literally just you leading yourself. Which is why I really focus on helping people become leaders, because leading ourselves is number one. And when we can do that, we can do pretty much anything.
But I wasn’t. And I was just like, weekly, monthly, Oh my god, I had this idea and I’m going to go do this. And the amount of time we waste on new ideas, without following through on a previous idea until it’s done. Successful and profitable and running itself. Or it doesn’t work and we ditch it and then we move on, but we’ve given it enough time to test it.
I think I wasted years. of just flitting.
I had this conversation yesterday with one of my team members and I was saying that I think particularly because I’ve had these conversations with my husband as well because he’s a financial advisor and I said a lot of the people I’m around and I work with, they started their business for the freedom.
And he said, he didn’t really hear that so much from my clients. And I said, well, in my space, I hear it a lot. I think what I kind of came to realize is, I think a lot of the people I’m around are women that have been in corporate particularly. So they come into this space thinking they’re going to have the freedom of having your own business.
But then, like you say, you’ve got to lead yourself and manage yourself. And you haven’t got any deadlines and no one’s giving you any deadlines cause you’ve got to set them. Then all of a sudden you’re not getting the freedom, because you’re trying to do all the things. You’re investing in everything.
So you’re not earning the money. You want it to, which you could be. If you just took a step back and took your time a little bit. Because we all want it now, and you know, then add in diagnosed or undiagnosed ADHD to the mix. And it’s just like, Wow. You know, we really are setting ourselves up to fail because of not understanding ourselves in the case of like, I’m pretty sure I’m borderline, there’s no point in me going through any diagnosis, but let’s face it.
But you know, having that potential with undiagnosed ADHD, having everyone trying to sell you stuff and you’re in that space and the FOMO is real. You know, and then trying to lead yourself and want everything now, it’s like. Wow, you have people coming into business. And they’ve been highly successful in their corporate roles, and it’s just a different kettle of fish, isn’t it?
When you haven’t got somebody to answer to all the time, and that’s why, an accountability coach is a brilliant thing straight away, isn’t it? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think that’s where a lot of people really fall down in this online space. And it’s certainly the lesson that I learned, and I’m still not brilliant at it now, 11 years on.
I’m quite happy being imperfect, but it’s a daily management. It is a daily management.
Have you got any tips for like anything you do particularly daily, any routines that really help you in your business or to keep that needle moving forward?
Yeah, I think for me, the routines are more inner work. So, in the lighthouse, we really focus on two things, the strategy, which we’re really strong at, and that’s kind of my heritage. And also Kerry, who’s my success coach, she’s got very similar background to me, ex agency, worked with big brands and so on.
And we’re really big on the, on the strategy, and the creative strategy as well as part of that. But we also really focus on energetics. Which is your, your energy, your nervous system and your mindset. Cause you have to have two things to create a successful business because if you don’t have one, the other just won’t work.
And that’s one of my big learnings as well through this journey. And I think my most important routine is daily inner work. So the energetics, I have something that I call, and it’s in my diary, I call the sacred four. And it’s just, and this really works again with my ADHD head. Four things of five minutes, five minutes of journaling, five minutes of movement, five minutes of meditation, or just stillness. And five minutes learning to get your brain thinking about something else.
Each of them have a different role to play and I quite often find that I want to do more than five minutes, and sometimes I will do, particularly if I’m learning something.
So when I was doing this up until recently, I just started reading a book, so I’m reading a little bit of the book every day. I was just going into Stephen Bartlett’s CEO podcast, and I’d be like, I’ll just listen to that for five minutes. And then quite often I get stuck into it and I’ll carry on, carry on listening.
But those, what they tend to do is take me out of my day to day. Out of whatever I’m doing in my head and then give me those essential things, that really made the difference to my mental health, to my mindset, to my energetics that day. I mean, the movement was the biggest surprise for me. I didn’t realize quite how sedentary I’d become sitting behind my desk.
Yeah, I’ve got dogs. I do a dog walk, but I can still sit for hours because the hyper focus can keep me here for like three hours. Writing something or doing something and so I’ve got a little rebounder little mini trampoline thing. So I’ll either go and jump on that for five minutes, which is amazing, or I’ll whack on some music, dance around like a loon in my lounge.
And that just lifts me up. So each of those things have something really important to do that make a massive difference. And I have it in my calendar every day, because otherwise I will forget to do it.
Those things made a huge difference. The other routine that I have, and it’s not daily, it’s weekly, that was really important to me is checking in on the numbers. So going in and looking exactly where you are, your numbers, looking at your projections, looking at your cash flow, I can easily ignore the numbers because I have, a finance manager.
And it’s one of my earliest hires. I have a brilliant accountant and I have a finance manager. I don’t have to do anything when it comes to the numbers. She pays the invoices, she tracks everything, does the bookkeeping, does absolutely everything. So I didn’t have to do anything and I set that up because I don’t like numbers.
And again, it might be an ADHD thing, but I used to be very sort of uneasy with them. So I gave them to someone else. But what I recognized is when you’re growing and scaling a business, you have to be so close to the numbers to know where you’re headed, to know if there’s going to be a pitfall, to plan for the future.
And with me, someone who wants to exit eventually and sell the business eventually, I’ve got to be so on top of my numbers. And so having this diary day, it’s on a Monday afternoon to look at the financials, and just go over that has been really important as well.
That’s a really good lesson for people, isn’t it? Because I know it’s one of the things I talk about a lot. I was a finance manager before I went into business and it’s one of the things that’s helped me no end in business. And I do talk about it a lot because I have that understanding and a lot of people, especially if they’re coming from a corporate role, for example, and they haven’t had any input in figures in that way, they haven’t got the understanding, it makes it really difficult.
I think it’s one of those things you need to learn quite early on. And I think some people think, Oh, I’ve got an accountant, so I don’t need to, which isn’t the case. And once you get the information from the accountant, it’s usually so late until. Well after year end or like they’re approaching their SATR in January, for example, and it’s dangerous, really.
Yeah, it really is. And I think, you know, we don’t have enough training and teaching around money. And I think money is such an emotive topic. I think particularly for women and how we’ve been brought up in the messages we’ve heard around money and our worth. That when women create businesses, we typically become very afraid of it or we have some other emotion around money.
And I think. Getting to know the numbers and getting comfortable with them and not avoiding them really helps you to overcome a lot of that. And bypass some potential pitfalls along the way that will come up, won’t they? Because that’s what happens in business. Exactly, exactly. No, that’s that’s really valuable information.
I’m just really glad we got onto the finance thing as well. That’s Brilliant.
There’s a lot of smoke and mirrors
I know you’ve said about for people that are about to take their leap in business. You’ve talked in the questionnaire about knowing that there’s a lot of smoke and mirrors and I think it’s worth touching on with people because people don’t always realize.
Yeah. Yeah. I think, you know, in the online space, not just in the online space, I’ve worked in lots of different industries in my time. There are always smoke and mirrors. There are always unethical people. And there are always those things going on in every single industry. I think it’s quite rife in the online business world.
Because it’s unregulated, it’s new it can create super fast growth. Like I don’t think I’ve ever seen an industry where you can create huge financial gains as quickly as you can in the online space and profit though. Our profit margins are ridiculous. I remember when I first took on my accountant who works with all sorts of businesses and he’s brilliant.
He’s been with me for years now. And he just said, I can’t believe your profit margins, like they’re just amazing. And they are right. So with all that said, it’s very easy for people to come into this space to set up a business and then claim whatever they want. And we see a lot of that. We see a lot of people using money marketing.
Offers should be validated
Oh, I just had a download and then I made £10, 000 in a day and here’s how you can do it too. Which is scary when you think about it, people paying for that. It’s like well hang on a minute, it’s not, they haven’t repeated it, it’s not validated. There’s no process to it, like they haven’t done it with 20 other clients that you can check in on. You’re just going to buy something that someone said they did it yesterday and they probably actually didn’t.
And that we see a lot of that idea. They only did it yesterday. So exactly. And it’s like, yes, it’s not validated. Like most of the things people sell in this space aren’t validated. And then add to that when people, when it is real and people are selling something and, it is something is validated and it works.
They won’t show the whole story, and so they’re not talking about actually what it takes like took me some sleepless night and a lot of trial and error and it didn’t work straight away. And I had to tweak it a little bit. But that’s normal, that’s normal for any business, but they don’t say that. So people will expect that they can just jump in, do exactly what they said and get the same result.
It’s never going to happen. There are too many nuances. Also, they don’t show the whole picture of, well, if they’re saying, you know, this created £10, 000 in a day. All right, what did it cost? And what now, exactly, right? And so we see so much smoke and mirrors for people to just sell things. Then people fall prey to that because, oh my God, it sounds so amazing.
It sounds too good to be true, I’m just going to buy it. Rather than it sounds too good to be true, let’s not buy it, because it sounds too good to be true, right? And so I think that because it’s a bit like Instagram a few years ago, because now we’re quite accepting that the Insta life is probably, well, almost definitely.
They’re quite fake, in the sense that they’re showing the one picture, not the 50 it took to get there. Or they’re obviously in some fancy place, and it’s like, you’re actually stood in front of a nice looking hedge in England that you’ve come across.
In Instagram, you go, okay, yeah, I get that they’re showing their best life. And it’s starting to come across to like this online space that we’re in, where people go, oh, okay, yeah, of course you’re putting out the best life. And some people have started, haven’t they, to be a bit transparent.
Showing the bad times. Yeah, absolutely. I think, I think it’s important, but the thing is that doesn’t always sell and that’s why the smoke and mirrors work. You know, in it, in everything that we do. We are, yes, we’ll talk about helping people to get to a monetary goal, but we talk about what we need to do on the way there.
Focus on the boring stuff to get the sexy stuff
And the reality is how long it will take and the importance of focusing on the boring stuff, the foundational things that you have to repeat and repeat and repeat and repeat. To actually get the actual goal that you wanted in the first place, which isn’t sexy and it isn’t exciting, you know, predominantly business that creates a lot of success is freaking boring.
It’s just systems and repeating and like, and it’s not all the, all the stuff that we get excited about. But my God, the achievement. And the wealth that that gives, that’s sexy and exciting. So I’ll, I’ll always go for boring repeat if it gets me those things, because that’s the end result, right? But not a lot of people share that because people don’t buy.
boring, repeat foundational things. They buy the, I want 10 K in a day. Yeah. It’s so, it is just so true. And it isn’t sexy, is it? And like you say, but it’s so important. I think as well, with or without ADHD, people get bored of it.
Yeah. But it is that consistency with boring that gets the results. Yeah, exactly. And you, and you just got to stick with it. You’ve just got to stick with it. And you know, when I say this with a lot of passion because this is my own journey, you know, I just wanted the exciting things. And like I said at the start, I think I wasted years doing that.
I could have absolutely have got to a different goal had I just knuckled down and stuck with one thing. And then tweaked and repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, and built systems around it and scaled it. I could have probably sold it by now, right? And then in the end, you, it is part of your journey that now you can help people with the exact problem that had you not had that experience as part of your journey.
It would have made it much more difficult for you to understand that the problems people have, the imposter syndrome, they’re just generally getting distracted by shiny objects and things.
Where does spirituality come in?
One of the things I wanted to ask you actually earlier when when you started, we talked about the spirituality side, I was going to ask you.
How long have you been into the spiritual side? Is it something that you were quite involved in before your business or is it something that’s grown with you and your business? Yeah, I’ve always had it, but I didn’t know what it was. And so I have always been an intuitive, but I just thought those were my own thoughts.
I’ve always manifested. And I always used to call it lucky. No, I’m lucky, I got that thing that I really wanted. That’s happened throughout my life from childhood until I got to this online business world and then started reading about those things. And I had that real, Oh, moment of, okay, this is actually a thing.
And this is something I’m really interested in. So I’ve always been, I’ve always had it. And actually everybody has it. Some people are more aware of it than others. Some people use it more than others. I don’t think it’s particularly a gift that I alone have, or anyone else has. We all have these abilities.
We just choose whether to use them or not, right? And so for me, I just became more aware of it. And aware of how, when you really understand these elements. You can really harness them to support yourself and to support others. And so I’m, yeah, I love it. I love this side of things and it really helps to ground me.
It helps me to tune into my own inner wisdom and take guidance that’s, that’s for my own good rather than rushing ahead with things that probably aren’t in alignment with me.
So it’s been a really important journey for me to understand this more. Yeah.
I feel like the spirituality side of things is kind of like a coming of age thing that happens at various points in our life because you know, it just lands with people at different times, doesn’t it?
And it’s something that I’m going down the journey of. And so those who don’t know me, I’m round about the least patient person in the world known. It’s been funny. So I learned how to do Reiki last February and it was just amazing for me. I wanted to learn something about it. And I thought, well, I’m going to. I had a treatment and I knew there was a course coming up and I thought, I really want to know more about this. I’m just going to do the course because there isn’t a better way to learn. And it’s been brilliant for me. And it has helped me a lot with becoming more patient particularly and things like that.
When you start to, understand more about how you work as a person. It does help, help with a lot of things at the end of the day. So yeah, it’s something I’m learning more about, but there’s just so much, isn’t there? And I felt terrible yesterday and I just was thinking, oh, it’s stress because I decided to launch a podcast on my birthday and go to a networking event one and a half hours away.
I was the presenter there and I was like, oh my God. And then I think it maybe was to do with all other stuff going on. Like it was the eclipse. The energies were. But that’s just like a whole can of worms that like reading into that, it’s higher than my understanding currently, you know, it’s something I want to learn more about.
Yeah, I think, I do believe it comes to you when you, when you’re ready for it, when you need it. Certainly my own learning has been like that over the last few years. And it’s obviously very developmental, isn’t it? You know, you don’t suddenly have a whole understanding of everything spiritual, like, because it’s fast.
Yeah, it is fast, yeah. One of the things that, because obviously I’m very much about learning as you are, one of the things I like to leave people with on here is your book recommendation of, doesn’t have to be, you know, the book that, you know, altered your life, but if, if there is, then great, but a book recommendation that you think everyone in business should really read.
Listen to your body
Oh my gosh, I’m answering this looking at my vast library. I love books. We could do a podcast entirely on Gemma’s book recommendations. We really could. I mean, I’m looking at it. It’s ridiculous. It’s huge. I’ve got shelves full of books. So picking one is really difficult, but I’m going to, I think it’s the one I picked up yesterday, which really spoke to me.
I wanted to read again Gabor Mete, The Body Says No, The Cost of Hidden Stress. We do a lot of work in the business in our nervous system. One of my people on my team is a nervous system coach. She’s trauma trained and she weekly does nervous system recalibration sessions for my clients because I really recognize how unregulated a lot of clients are in this space.
And I think not listening to your body and not paying attention to the stress that you’re under when you’re running a business and how it can greatly affect your health. Is one of the biggest dangers in the online space and so understand and certainly for me that’s been the case. So I’ve had a real health journey where I had gut health issues.
I had something called SIBO. Which is very much caused by stress, which I, I think was through having ADHD and everything that’s connected with that. But also running a business and not really understanding my own stress levels and my nervous system. And that going through. At that point you realized you’d got ADHD as well?
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And then being diagnosed with PTSD last year. Which was mostly due to going through quite a horrible divorce, but also other things as well. It made me really think about the effect of stress on our bodies and how, how we talk all the time about looking after our energy. And looking after our mindset and focusing on the strategy of the business, but everybody’s ignoring their bodies.
And the massive signs that our bodies are showing us when we’re under this stress. So when we’re running a business, we have to think about the body, the soul and the mind. And then what we’re actually doing, the action we’re taking. And so this book, I think is brilliant for really helping you understand the dangers of hidden stress and then what to do about it. Because I think it’s really important that we balance all of those things.
That’s brilliant. And it’s interesting because this is the fourth episode and of the first three two of them had strokes. And I just it’s a figure that blows my mind and I think it’s something that we need. Strokes used to be something that you associated with particularly men of a certain age. One of them was 32, you know, and you’re just like, oh my God.
Enjoy the journey.
I think part of it’s in that rush to success, isn’t it, that everyone wants to do that, but you’ve got to enjoy the journey. Because if you don’t take the time to look after yourself and enjoy the journey. You’re not going to make it and it’s such a, a waste of precious time.
And this, this is why I really focus on building, especially if you’re not earning enough said along the way as well, like the rest of that is huge. And I think, you know, I think this is why I focus on building a business. You love, because when you build a business that you love, you enjoy the journey on the way to whatever the goal is.
If we’re just focused on the goal, whatever that goal is. And we’re just bulldozing through until we get to that goal without enjoying that journey. Well, what’s the point? There’s no point in that. Well, it’s that thing, isn’t it, of like, the goal in life. You know, we’re all racing to this point in time.
Wherever this is, whatever the goal is. Essentially, it’s a game where we’re all going to lose because we’re all going to die. You know, you’ve got to enjoy it along the way, and having your own business. Now, I’ve done it for a long time, as you have. It can be so rewarding. But God, it’s tough along the way.
And you’ve got to take, like, that rough with the smooth, and realise, you know, this too shall pass. And what can I do to help it pass, and improve my situation? But it really is important that you are taking the money along the way. It really is. It is. Health and wealth, those are the most important things. I love it.
Well, thank you so much for joining us today. I’ve loved it. And I’m sure the listeners will love it. And I’ll share all your links are below in this so that they can find you. So amazing. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you.
Book recommendation:
When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress – Gabor Maté – preview it on Kindle here, no need for the app
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