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Create a new relationship with time using time hacking

Create a new relationship with time using time hacking

by | Jun 10, 2021 | Podcast Episodes

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[0:01] Do you ever wish you could bend time so you had more of it? Or have you ever caught yourself saying, I need more time? Or maybe this isn’t the right time? If so, you’re definitely going to want to put this episode on repeat because we’re diving into a concept that we all need right now. And that is Time Hacking. 

 

[1:10] Here at Amplify Your Awesome we help coaches and course creators, ditch content overwhelmed, tap into an endless supply of social media content, and make more money from the content they’ve already created. 

 

[1:35] Now that we’re heading into summer, and most of us want more time with our kids and families, I thought it would be only fitting to bring on a guest who could help us hack our time. get more done, all without the hustle. 

 

About Vikki Louise:

Vikki is a reformed hustler turned time hacker. She coaches clients to achieve more in less time, with ease. She has a no BS minimalist approach to mindset work, and life. She has lived in four countries in the last two years, today she is recording from France. She also hosts the F*CK Anxiety & Get Sh*t Done podcast

 

 [2:45] Where was Vikki’s before Time Hacking

 

[6:00] Who Vikki loves working with, how they find her, and how she serves them

 

[8:51] Vikki’s definition of Time Hacking

 

[10:16] 3 Steps to Time Hacking

 

[12:17]  Flow  versus hyper productivity

 

[15:02]  Overcoming the objection of time versus reality

 

[17:12] Vikki’s favorite way to create content 

 

[18:52]  Repurposing content is just like a rock concert?

 

[20:45] The discovery Vikki’s husband made about her content and how you can use it to your advantage AND make money from it

 

[22:52]  Generic templates aren’t the answer to content creation: Where Vikki gets content creation inspiration

 

[23:32] What to do instead of using someone else’s templates when it comes to creating your content 

 

[26:39]  Content creation: Vikki’s preferred method 

 

[29:13]  Advice on changing your relationship to time #1

 

[30:04]  The second piece of advice from Vikki on changing your relationship to time 

 

[31:52]  Connect with Vikki

 

[32:51] Time-Hacking this podcast interview 

 

[33:35] Come share your biggest takeaways and ahas from today’s episode with Vikki and Yong inside the Arena of Awesome

 

NEXT WEEK: Overcoming the Post-Goal Blues

 

Read Full Transcript

Yong Pratt 0:01
Do you ever wish you could bend time so you had more of it? Or have you ever caught yourself saying, I need more time? Or maybe this isn't the right time? If so, you're definitely going to want to put this episode on repeat because we're diving into a concept that we all need right now. And that is Time Hacking.

Yong Pratt 0:27
Have you ever felt like there was something missing in your business? Something holding you back from the success you're seeking? If so, you are not alone. For nearly 20 years, that's exactly how I felt as a business owner. It wasn't until I discovered Human Design, that it all became clear. And it turns out that I was the missing piece in my own business. Join me on this journey of discovering the real me and hear stories from other business owners building businesses around all of their awesomeness. I'm Yong Pratt, and it's time my friend to Amplify Your Awesome™!

Yong Pratt 1:10
Hey there Amplifiers and welcome back to the podcast. As always, I'm your host Yong Pratt, Expert Goldmining Guide and Chief Amplifier of Awesome. Here Amplify Your Awesome™ we help coaches and course creators, ditch content overwhelmed, tap into an endless supply of social media content and make more money from the content they've already created.

Yong Pratt 1:35
Now that we're heading into summer, and most of us want more time with our kids and families, I thought it would be only fitting to bring on a guest who could help us hack our time. get more done, all without the hustle. Today's guest is Vikki Louise. Let me tell you a little bit more about the key because I am thrilled she's here with us today. She's a reformed hustler. I love this term. Turned time hacker. She coaches clients to achieve more in less time with ease. She has a no BS minimalistic approach to mindset to work and life. She's lived in four countries in the past two years and today she's recording from France. She's a fellow podcast host and her show is called F*ck Anxiety and Get Sh*t Done. Welcome to the podcast. Vikki!

Vikki Louise 2:30
Thank you so much for having me. I'm so happy to be here.

Yong Pratt 2:33
Before we dive into this juicy topic that is time hacking, can you take us back to before you were a time hacker? What did your life look like? And how did you get on this journey of yours?

Vikki Louise 2:45
Yeah, so I've always been ambitious. And I think a lot of your listeners are like that, too. And it's just always wanted to like have impact and like be out there in the world and be doing things. And a lot of like, even remember the fiction books I would read when I was younger with these like, main female characters. And they were like hustling and working long hours and doing all the things and I was like, Oh, that's what it is. That's what I want. And so I approached my work life really like that. I mean, even when I graduated university, I went straight into three jobs at the same time to save money to go traveling. But it was like no question that I would work seven days a week and evenings to do that. And then I went into corporate and worked in finance and investing. And you know, it's like my first day, you have to sign a document saying that you give up your rights to only work 40 hours a week. And I was working and always studying and always advancing and doing all the things but like, I was moving very fast. And my career wasn't moving as fast. And I really like I literally left finance twice. But the first time I was like, I don't understand it's not happening fast enough. So I really put myself in this super fast race when no one else does myself and this life that I thought I would arrive to one day. And then when I went into entrepreneurship and into coaching, we're actually at a startup before coaching as well. I brought that same energy and it was really like, I will be in the office seven days a week 10pm at night doing events, like hands on everything. And it's just unsustainable. It's not fun. And it's not what makes us move faster. Like literally we live in a world where we can reach 1000s of people off one podcast episode. And we're still living in the mentality of like 100 years ago, where to reach 1000 people you have to do all the things like think about how many social platforms we have now. So for me it was really about letting go of being busy and attaching my relevance or worth or importance to doing things and then when that happened then I ended up like succeeding a lot more I was like, Oh, this is this is what I want to help people with.

Yong Pratt 5:04
So good. And there's so many parts of that story that I can resonate with personally, and I know my listeners can as well. We've been taught to hustle and to do great things, you have to work harder and harder and faster and achieve more. And that I love that you reach this point where we thought, what if I just give this up? And then to see the success you had after getting rid of the hustle. I think if we can all get to that space where we can just let go. And yes, I agree that it's, you know, having goals is really important. But we all need to get there. In our own time, we're not running a race, like you said against anyone else. This is this is our life, we should be able to enjoy this journey and not have to go as fast as we can missing all the goodness that happens in every single moment. I love it. So tell me about who the people are that you love to serve? Why did they come to find you?

Vikki Louise 6:00
Yeah, they are typically they're doing all the things that I can do and everything become literally doing everything and it's not working. And they've reached that point of diminishing returns where like, there's a point where doing more actually starts to not only not move you further up, it starts to cost more. And it costs in terms of feeling tired and having space for creativity and being present and your other relationships and being able to be present in your business instead of 15 tabs open and all of that things. So...I know that?

Yong Pratt 6:35
Yes, for sure.

Vikki Louise 6:37
So my people tend to find me from this place of like, I'm doing all the things and I've reached this plateau and like, how do I get passed this? And I do think it's kind of like, great that they that we do reach this plateau of like you can't burn yourself out. You can't burn yourself out as a way to success. Like, that's not how it works. And I guess for me, I really want to help people without having to go through that really negative place of like, collapsing everything. So really just I also do attracts actually some new new people new to business, because again, I think like me, when we go from like what we're taught in school and what we're taught in corporate cultures into like our own business, we take all of that mentality of like 40 Hour Work Week and being available 24 seven and responding to emails and all of these things. And we bring it in instead of realizing like you've just entered a playground. Like this is the fun part. Although I will say not all of my clients are business owners, because I think time hacking time impacts everyone.

Yong Pratt 7:51
Yeah, for sure, for sure. And I wish I had discovered you years ago because there was a time in my life when I was going so hard and so fast. And I just kept thinking I needed to do more and be more and have more things. And I really reached this point where my health decided to take, you know, a huge, a huge dive. And for for months, I didn't know what was going on. And it was a scary place to be. And so I can totally relate to this, this mentality of you know, the more and more and more go because that's how I was raised to and and I think as entrepreneurs, that's the biggest lesson we learn or just in life in general, is that we have to unlearn the things we learned in school in order to make life work for us, and not try to put ourselves into that mold that everyone says we have to fit into.

Vikki Louise 8:37
Yes, exactly. That's exactly it. Yeah.

Yong Pratt 8:41
So let's talk about this juicy topic I know what my listeners are probably waiting, like, get to the good stuff already. Let's talk about time hacking. What is time hacking? Let's start there.

Vikki Louise 8:51
Yeah, so I always like to start with like the definition of hacking itself, which is really like a way of achieving something in non-standardized methods. And Time Hacking is actually all about removing, removing time from the success equation. And one of the things we mean you spoke about before we recorded was how like time like is no longer it's kind of no longer a bottleneck, right. And I think about how much time it used to take to get in front of 10 people. And now you can do it in a millisecond. Like most people listening can do this in a millisecond. So our issue is no longer like time of transporting messages or time of transporting ourselves or all of these things. Like they don't take time whereas it used to it used to take two and a half months to transfer a letter from like the UK to the US. And here look at us communicating in real time with video. So there is as an example, what we then have to get over is actually our fear of being judged by other people. And I call this the first step of time hacking, which is really managing our mindset. And really specifically, our thoughts about ourselves, like having your own back what you think about you, if you think you're not good enough, it doesn't matter that you can go live on Facebook and reach 100 people, you are not going to do it, for example.

Vikki Louise 10:16
And so the three steps to time hacking are managing your mindset and really building your story around you and your belief about you. The second one is making quick decisions and actually implementing them. Because when we are in indecision, we are not doing anything, right. So we can be like, I don't know, who my target audience is, and your brain loves that kind of thing. Like, it's just, it's gonna come to me with time, it's not going to come to a time, it's going to come to you with making a decision, I started out as a relationship coach, true story. And then I made that decision. I knew it wasn't right, and then pivoted, right, like, it's really being willing to go out there and do it messy, which takes us to the third step of time hacking, which is really failing forward, that you will fail, you will get rejected, like, but learning from that is the value. And when you focus on those three things you are able to do, why pull the needle movers in your business or in your work or in your life or in your relationships or in dating, however, it shows up the uncomfortable stuff where you have to have your own back and make those decisions. And then you end up achieving a lot more in literally a fraction of the time, because we can busy ourselves all day long with like just social media platforms that we want to post on or consume on. So but those things, the things that are gonna move us forward.

Yong Pratt 11:43
Yeah, and those needle movers are so important that I think we lose sight of them throughout the day, because there are all these distractions. There are the 15, tabs open. There are all the devices trying to get our attention all day long. So focusing on those things. I think if we all were to let go of all the extraneous things and just be in the moment, get into that state of flow, and be able to just to create, wow, can you imagine how much more productive how much happier how much more joyful, life and business could be?

Vikki Louise 12:17
Right. And I love that you mentioned flow, because that's it right? Like four hours a flow is worth like, is working whole week, like studies have shown it's like 500%, more productivity, something ridiculous. And we can't get into flow. One of the flow creators is focus. And so the moment we have 15, tabs open the moment we have our phone nearby, the moment we get out to the fridge, whatever it might be, we are literally blocking flow, which is like hyper productivity. And it's about minimizing those distractions, because our brain loves that satisfaction of crossing offer to do and responding to an email or message is cheap, upfront victory, right? It's like, Yes, it did that thing instead of like this uncomfortable thing that's gonna take me four hours.

Yong Pratt 13:11
For sure. And I cannot tell you the number of days when I reached the end of the day thinking, gosh, I was busy all day and I look back and there was nothing that was accomplished because I never let myself be in distractible. I never let myself get into that flow state. I just, my mind kept telling me why I'm busy. I'm doing all these things. But they were not the needle movers. And when I started shifting what that looked like, and working less, which is super counterintuitive, and making things easier for myself and really simple. Yeah, it's those little things that that seemed too good to be true, almost because we're taught that things are not going to be easy. Not that everything in business and life is easy. But there should be this sense of joy and lightness. And, and I know for myself now, I've I've been in business long enough to know that when things start feeling challenging when they feel hard. I either know that I'm working on the wrong thing in the moment, or the path that I'm going down is not the right one for me. And I'm trying to be like somebody else because I like what they're doing and want to have that. So how when you're working with clients, and you're going through this time packing activities, all the all the things that you do I know you have a lot, you have a whole membership based on this. There's a lot of modules, a lot of content they can go through when they're going through your content, and they see that there's a lot because this is this is something that my brain does too. And I think we all do. You got you log into a membership site. And all of a sudden there's so many options are so many things kind of like every day. And you have to choose these things. How do you help them I'm going to use this word which I know it's not a great word, but these the sense of overwhelm we sometimes feel when there's a lot to do, and we feel like there's a little bit of time to do it. How do we overcome the objection of time versus reality?

Vikki Louise 15:02
Yeah, it's such a great question because I really like one of my big things in everything I create is like everything you need, and nothing more. Like it's easy to continue to create. And really how I teach my people, my hackers how to use the portal is literally like, you can come in and get everything you need from one of the five minute videos that you can binge it if you want over a weekend. But like, typically, it's broken down into like answering a specific question. You're going to go in and get what you need and go out or like, like, literally some of the people are like I've not, I've not used the portal yet, I'm just showing up for the live coaching, or just showing up in the Facebook community. And some people I'm not using the live coaching, but it really is a pick a mix. And because it's like a lifetime access program, there's no urgency to like, I must do it all now. So that immediately releases the overwhelm and the pressure and allows for, like self learning through that practice. Now, at the same time, part of what I do teach people is how to manage things like overwhelm, because obviously a lot of people come to me doing all of the things and we want to unhinge overwhelm, before we make decisions, we don't to be making decisions from a place of Oh, wow. So like if someone literally was experiencing overwhelm, they can also go into the portal, or go to the Facebook community and ask for coaching direct from, you know, direct from me and get the coaching that they want on the overwhelm they're experiencing so that we can reduce that first.

Yong Pratt 16:27
Oh, that's so good. And yeah, that's just seems like it to be a recurring theme in my life, too. I know that I can feel it coming on. So yeah, I have to kind of step away from things to say, Okay, this is not the time to do this. Because whatever I create, with this mindset from this place from this energy is not going to be great. And I'm probably going to do it over again. So might as well just step away and do something else. Go outside play at the dog play the kids just go for a walk do something else. So let's let's shift a little bit and talk about content creation, because I know as a membership creator, a course creator. First of all, what is your favorite way that you like to create content?

Vikki Louise 17:09
As in like, what's my favorite platform like video voice?

Yong Pratt 17:11
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Vikki Louise 17:12
This. I literally love talking to people I like it's my favorite thing to do to be in conversation with humans. And I'm happy for it to be on video. I'm happy for it to be on podcast. And like, sometimes people bring me in and they'll do like a q&a for their community or a q&a for their employees, or whatever it is. Like I love just like being asked questions and answering it. Now in saying that one of the things that I've been working to and I love I love creating my podcasts, of course. But one of the things that I've been working with, for the love is writing, like, I really do enjoy writing, and I came at it with so many stories from school of like, you were good at maths, not English, and you not a good writer. And so I am having fun playing with that as well. But I think like you say like I'm really at a point in my business now where my team literally today like we're just you know repurposing a lot of the content. I now have over 100 podcast episodes, even if that's 10 minutes each. That's like, a lot of content. I have, you know, hundreds of emails and social posts and all of this stuff. Like, I do think that comes a point. And you can probably tell me more about this. And this even ties in with time hacking and time optimization of like, do we need to say something new all the time? Or can we like I love reading a book a second time, same book, and the third time and beyond? Because we take something different from it depending on where our head is at that time. And I think so often with content, and you'll tell me more we do sit in the psych more is more culture. It's like yes isn't always true.

Yong Pratt 18:52
Yeah. And I recently just did an episode all about the Myth of Myth and how that leads to overwhelm and, and confusion. And usually, the idea of stopping everything you're doing and I'm sure you can hear my chickens right now. They're actually going a little crazy right now. So for all of you listening, you get to hear what the chickens sound like if you don't have the, the opportunity to have them near you. So I'm going to let them do their thing for a moment. But yeah, the idea of the Myth of More and what I do with clients a lot now is we talk about do you really need more? Or can you be like the rock star that gives a concert in 50 cities across the US and the playlist is the same? It doesn't matter that the people who are coming to listen have all the CDs have watched all the YouTube videos. Yourknow download podcast episodes, whatever they're doing, they're still paying money to come and see this person live right just a different medium a different way to connect. And so when it comes to content, yes, I I really love helping my clients to dig into this content goldmine where they can take these podcast episodes and you know, there's there's five of these that are kind of on the same feed. They weren't recorded next to each other, they were, you know, they were months or years apart. But what if I put them together in an exciting new way and offer that up as a freebie or, you know, a low cost offer, you know, $7, $17, just to give people the opportunity in a way that makes sense for them, to connect more with you. And that's what I, what I love to do. So when you're talking about repurposing content, I get so excited about. Wow, we probably do this. And you can do this. And I love to help people monetize the content they already have. Because if we can get off the cycle of creating more and more and more and more, and focus on what we already have, like, there's so much goodness, just in that bit.

Vikki Louise 20:45
Right. And it's so funny, because twice I've done it when I recorded a podcast published there, and then said to my husband, like I've literally used the same title. Because I've been so in that space of like, there was one I did you know, it was before it was even before time hackers existed when I was still coaching one on one call, create more time. And then there was creating more time 2.0. And I was like, Oh my god, it's two weeks apart. But like, what, because I've been focusing that two weeks, I'm thinking about the creation of more time. And it happens. So exactly what you're saying I'm sure I'm sure I'm not the only one that has that, like content, repeat or how you would call it. Very funny.

Yong Pratt 21:30
Yeah. And last week, I did an episode all about my three step framework to to really dive in and monetize your content. And it was about this. About if you were to put all your content in one place and look at it, you probably be surprised at how many themes are are woven through your content four, or five or six, probably themes that you didn't realize you created them, because maybe even if they were two weeks apart, maybe they're two months apart, or two years apart. I know I've gone backwards, you know, we're on episode, you know, over 300 now, so I mean, when I go back, I'm thinking, Oh, I did a very similar episode. But there's something in your brain that you know, wants to be shared, and you know that it's going to resonate with people. So you just keep creating from these same buckets? And what if you took these buckets, and then group them together and offered something new and exciting. So yes, one of my favorite topics. So let's talk about content creation and time. I, this podcast has listeners all over the board but in entrepreneurship. A lot of course creators, a lot of coaches, a lot of consultants, people who work one on one or group progress with people. So they're having to create content. But what I hear sometimes, too, is it's so hard to come up with these ideas. So first of all, I want to know, where do you get the inspiration to create your podcast episodes to share?

Vikki Louise 22:52
Yeah, so firstly, like I say, I think it's like a you, I would say to anyone that's like, it's so hard to come up ideas. Like are you giving yourself space and play to be creative? Or you shoving your creativity hour, like in between answering emails and phone calls, like, this is what I speak about, like really the value of like giving yourself space, create such higher quality content that differentiates you from the market, which is why like producing 100 pieces of content isn't like literally just, you know. I see these things like download, like 30 templates, or content or whatever it is, they can totally do that, it's probably going to be a waste of time.

Yong Pratt 23:30
Yeah.

Vikki Louise 23:32
And in that time, if you were to create three pieces of like you really connecting with your experience, your expertise, your people, like it would just blow up blow things out of the water. And so in saying that I get a lot of my content from my own experience, and having coached hundreds of clients and now having a community and, and it can be the simplest thing. Like someone messaged me, like messaged my Team a while ago and said, I would love to join, but I don't want to get into more debt. And I sat with and I thought so interesting. Like because we're all therefore she's basically saying I'm gonna get into time debt. And so like sometimes like someone could just say one thing. And if your brain is clean and empty, it doesn't have to take time to create content. It's the last thing it creates. In fact, I would challenge anyone, like what if spaciousness creates content. And another thing that you touched on, which I think is true is like, it doesn't all have to be brand new content. I feel like I'm in a particularly creative time right now I'm slowing myself down. But really like for me, I can just speak about failure and rejection. I can just speak about, you know, outdated time practices. I can just speak about, you know, managing our minds and our thoughts about us. And I can just speak about decision making. And I can do those four topics in like 100 different ways each because, and I hope. My husband's training to be a pilot and he's studying right now. And I heard him yesterday, you're like, Oh, got it on this exam, these failed ones. And it's, you know, it's in lots of times studying it, but it just clicked in one moment, what makes those moments happen, right. And that's what time hacking is. And that's what I think we create for our people as well, like, saying something to someone, once. It's like, very nice, we get it, we get the theory. But when you keep saying the different ways, at some point, they're gonna have the moment that he had, which is like, Oh, my God, I get it now.

Yong Pratt 25:31
Absolutely. Just like being in school and having and struggling with a subject I struggled with, in with math in school, and I got to college and kind of had the struggle. And I had this teacher, this one teacher, and all of a sudden, all those years of struggle kind of melted away. So I think we all have these moments. But you said something really important. And I think that is the word space, in spaciousness. What if we just gave ourselves space, and the freedom to just think about stuff? Or just let our minds wander? And let our let ourselves be curious about stuff and not have to be restricted on? Okay, it's Monday, I have to create my content for the week, I have to schedule it out. Yeah, what if? What if we could be inspired by more because we know we've tapped into so little of our brain? What if we just allow that space to happen? So let's, I'm curious to know, because everyone that I interview has a different way they like to create content. So are you a batcher? Are you a someone who likes to do spur of the moment? What is your philosophy or your the way that you are most productive with your content?

Vikki Louise 26:39
I do, I am, I do tend to be a batcher, especially because I tend to do like serious. And I do like to be a few weeks ahead on my business at all points. So like, again, that creates lots of spaciousness. And like, you know, alleviates that like I have to I need to do this thing today. And so I tend to be a batcher. And I also for me, I really prioritize my like hours off, like my hours not working. But again, I do think it's one of those things where I really encourage everyone to like play with what works for them. And I would even say, like, what used to work for me was like strictly in the calendar. And that's what I'm going to do it. And it can evolve with you. It's kind of like, and this is a funny example. But like our relationship with food, like you can like one food five years ago and not like it anymore. We're constantly evolving and changing. And when we are living today, based off of like, not only like global practices, 100 years old, but personal practices that are like five years old, like this is what I mean giving ourselves time to play. So for me, it's definitely batching. But in saying that, recently, my podcasts I have not been matching. So I'm willing to like, play with that side of things as well.

Yong Pratt 28:02
I love that, because I think a lot of us get so hung up on, we have to do things a certain way because it didn't work before. But if we try different things, I'm always trying different things. You know, there was a time in my life when I had social media batched out for a year. And that was okay. I mean, it felt good. And it said, Good. It felt good to say out loud, and like sort of I wore that as a badge of honor. But at the end of the day, it didn't really matter. And right now, you know, I may be a week ahead my podcast, you know, I used to be months ahead. So yeah, giving yourself that space to try different things. Because there is no one-size-fits-all. I have tried a lot of programs trying to go be that square peg in that round hole. And it's never worked for me, it probably hasn't worked for any of my listeners either. When you try to do it exactly like somebody else has laid out because that is their lived experience. That is not our lived experience. Oh my goodness, so much good stuff. Yes, this idea of time. So if you were to give somebody a piece of advice on the idea of how they view time and how they can create more of it without having to do more, what would you tell them?

Vikki Louise 29:13
So the one thing that is like something simple to like leave people with I guess to start with is like, think about this a bit maybe it's a bit too much for some people but think about time is there was like a person like, What's your relationship like with time? Because a lot of people come to me with like a shitty relationship with time. I tell is never enough. It's like you know, it's like thinking like if you if you were to replace time with like Sarah, and you're like, literally get all your thoughts about time. There's not enough because like she's always doing it. I'm always spending it wrong, like the days are flying by like, whatever it is like how are you showing up for that relationship with time? If it's complaining, you know, and shoveling lots of things on it at once. You just want to step back and think like what is the only thing that you need? To change is just your relationship with time.

Vikki Louise 30:04
And the second thing that I want to give people because it's also another way that I speak about time hacking is, and maybe you'll notice it like as a society, we widely accepted time excuse, there's never enough time, we need more time, it's not the right time. Like, it's really you'll hear it everywhere. I hear it everywhere. And so we're giving time responsibility for any of the things so we don't want and then what we subconsciously do is give time responsibility for any of the things that we do, which is why we slow ourselves down so much when, on the one hand, it's like times, the reason that I don't have the job that I want, or the client that I want, because I've not been in business long enough. They were also saying, like, all time, like it was just the right time and timing got me this client, which is like stealing confidence away from ourselves. And so I just really challeng everyone to also think like, if it wasn't time, if you couldn't use the word time, which is what we do in time hackers, what is underneath it? So if I created this higher, not by being somewhere at the right time, by what? By listening. by being creative. By presenting their problem better than they understood it themselves. By, you know, trusting them by trusting myself, but what was it? That's how you create a repeatable blueprint, which is really time hacking.

Yong Pratt 31:20
Ah, so good. Yes. Take back your confidence. Take ownership of that, and don't give time so much responsibility in your life. I love that. Just that idea alone of not not giving that power away to this idea of time, which is very, which is very esoteric, right. It's not really what we think it is. It's just kind of there. So I love that. So Vicki, I want to make sure that people can connect with you and find out more about how you serve and your membership, where is the best place for them to connect with you?

Vikki Louise 31:52
Yeah, you can go to my website, www.VikkiLousise.com. It's V-I-K-K-I-L-O-U-I-S-E. You can connect with me on Instagram, which is @VickiLouise___ And you can I definitely recommend listening to the podcast, it's F*ck Anxiety and get an image that will come up soon. It's the only one with that name.

Yong Pratt 32:16
Amazing. Yes. And I'll make sure I put all those links in today's show notes as well. All you have to do is head over to my website, www.YongPratt.com. You can just do a search of Vikki's name or anxiety. I'll tag it with all those good things that you can find her because time hacking, especially moving into summer is something we all need to think about. We all need to take back control of time, however we do it. And we need to do it in a way that works for us. So Vikki, I want to thank you so much for your generosity today, and sharing all these great tools and hacks with us. I so appreciate you for being here.

Vikki Louise 32:51
Thank you. I'm so happy to be here. And I do think it would be fun to share with the listeners just before we go that this was an example of time hacking. I got an email from you yesterday saying, You're opening up to emails, I replied. We made the email today. Like it all happened within 24 hours. And that's just a powerful example of like, things don't take time. Once I like open my calendar, I could have been like, when's the right time? Maybe next week, maybe the week after? You know, there's always a filler versus I could do it tomorrow.

Yong Pratt 33:20
Absolutely just being open to the possibilities of it. And yes, and just embracing the opportunities that are in front of us, and making space for that in our lives. So thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it. Cheers, everyone.

Yong Pratt 33:35
Oh my goodness. Do you now think of time differently after this episode? I know my mind is racing. And I have notes on my desk from during the interview, about time and how much we're actually giving away our power to this idea of time, which which is really a fictional concept. It's something just a construct that we all have learned throughout our growing up on how to relate to it and how we have too much or not enough. What if we like Vikki said, give ourselves some space? And we just allow things to happen and the world no longer slaves to time. Okay, my friend, I'd love for you to come and share your biggest takeaways, your biggest ahas. You can do that on today's show notes over on my website, www.Yong Pratt.com and you can just search up Vikki's name or you can head over to my Facebook community, the Arena of Awesome, it is still free and we are accepting new members. It's the place where I love to share loads of things. I go live at least once a week and I love being in there to engage with you to encourage you and to help you to unearth the gold in your content. I will catch you on the next episode. Cheers.

Yong Pratt 34:59
Thanks for tuning in to the Amplify Your Awesome™ podcast. Let's continue this conversation inside my Facebook community, the Arena of Awesome while it's still free and open to new members. Come share your biggest takeaways and ahas. Plus, every week inside the Arena, you'll get access to me and I may even share content I don't share anywhere else. Until next time, my friend, go out there today and Amplify Your Awesome™!

 

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Content Gold Mining Versus “Gary Vee” Style Content Repurposing

Content Gold Mining Versus “Gary Vee” Style Content Repurposing

by | May 20, 2021 | Podcast Episodes

Listen to the episode (21:51)
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[0:01] I fell for it. Hook, line, and sinker. I was once drawn into the world where MORE became my motto. I wore it like a badge of honor. I was always striving to be more, do more and create more. I stopped listening to the many signs my body was telling me to slow down on my quest for more. Ignoring those signals, landed me in the hospital for test after test, and ultimately being sent home, hooked to a heart monitor for days. The allure of more is a strong force, and few make it out unscathed. In today’s episode, I’m going to share how I’ve made it to the other side of more, and how I can help you do the same…but only if you’re ready to embrace a world where less is the new norm? 

[1:44] Here at Amplify Your Awesome, we help course creators and coaches ditch content overwhelm, tap into endless supplies of social media content, and make money from the content they’ve already created. 

[2:22] Today we’re diving into Content Gold Mining versus “Gary Vee” style content repurposing. It’s a question I’ve been getting a lot of lately, so I wanted to, well, set the record straight. 

[2:37] If you haven’t already listened to the last episode number 333. The Myth of More, I highly recommend you press pause and take a listen to that tale before continuing with this episode at http://www.yongpratt.com/333 

[2:56] That time when Yong stood firmly in the belief that repurposing content was THE marketing strategy everyone needed to use…

[3:21] How Yong used 3 content repurposing automation tools to replace her full-time Virtual Assistant 

[3:42] When I talk about content repurposing, or the traditional “Gary Vee” style content repurposing the way it’s talked about these days, here’s what I mean. 

“Traditional, “Gary Vee” Style Content Repurposing the act of taking a large piece of content and extracting smaller chunks which you can then share.” 

– Yong Pratt

[4:18] Reason #1 for “Gary Vee” Style Content Repurposing 

Number one: it looks like you’re everywhere. And number two: one can more easily establish their expertise by having more of these smaller pieces of content. 

[5:02] The reason why traditional “Gary Vee” style content repurposing is costing you money. 

[5:33]  What you need in place to get hundreds of pieces of content

[6:12] Opportunity #1 Yong experienced by promoting and advocating for the use of 3 content repurposing tools 

[6:33] Opportunity #2 Yong experienced by promoting and advocating for the use of 3 content repurposing tools 

[7:10] That time when things started to crumble before Yong’s eyes 

[7:31] Some reasons why traditional “Gary Vee” style content repurposing didn’t work for my clients 

[8:15] The Two Myths Yong uses to describe traditional “Gary Vee” style content repurposing 

[8:41] The weight of Yong’s 1000s upon 1000s of pieces of content and its opportunity cost 

[9:42] The lesson Yong learned from training Freebie seekers and the money it cost 

[10:21] That time when Yong has months and months of social media posts pre-scheduled turned into social media dormancy 

[10:59] What Yong discovered during that social media dormancy  

[11:50]  The tool Yong used to FINALLY be able to see all her beautiful content 

[12:45] What Yong recommends you do today with all YOUR awesome content 

[13:26] The patterns that emerged and the questions Yong began to ponder regarding her discovery 

[14:28] “Instead of focusing on transforming one piece of content into hundreds using the “Gary Vee” method of content repurposing, Content Gold Mining offers you many ways to monetize all your beautiful content.” – Yong Pratt 

[15:05] “Right now, at this moment, you have endless gifts you could offer to the world and get paid for doing so.” – Yong Pratt 

[15:24] Questions to ponder and experiment with starting today…

[15:32] What have you stopped creating content today? For a week? Or even a month? 

[15:38] What if you reinvested some of that creation time into unearthing the gold from your own content goldmine? 

[15:47] What if you could turn your massive amounts of content into endless streams of income? 

[15:55]  What if you could tap into that Gold Mine every time you wanted or needed to:

  • Take a family vacation 
  • Hire a virtual assistant to help you put systems in place so that you could sell all the content that you want unearth. 
  • Hire someone to clean your house, do yard work, prep your meals and so much more so that you could free up time to spend with those you love? 
  • What about retire your parents or spouse? 
  • And this is just the tip of the iceberg of what you could experience by mining for the gold in your content. 

[16:25] A testimonial Yong got after a Content Gold Mining Session with 1:1 Client, Susan”

“Wow, just wow. Yong certainly knows her stuff and the potency of content, namely your content. She quickly and effortlessly walks you through the value of your current content. She offers amazing options on delivering your hard work and talent found in your content and monetizing them as you offer your prospects irresistible offers. It’s an emotional moment, when you realize your content can be massaged into other platforms to help others you must work with Yong.”

[17:42] “Monetizing content is where traditional style or “Gary Vee” style content repurposing really misses the mark. Its real focus has been on visibility and exposure, neither of which is a guarantee for sales.” – Yong Pratt 

[18:42] Wouldn’t your time be better spent monetizing the content you already have? 

[18:48] What if it didn’t have to be either-or? 

[18:52] If you could create endless content for social media, and endless streams of income from the content you already have, without the overwhelm? Would you want to know how to do it? 

[19:06]  You, my friend absolutely deserve to have both! And the time to make it happen is now. The doors to Your Content Gold Mine, my six-month mentorship will be opening up soon, and I’d love to be your guide on this amazing adventure. 

[19:22] What’s included inside Yong’s 6-Month Mentorship

[19:46]  So my friend…

  • If creating less content appeals to you…
  • If monetizing the content you already have appeals to you…
  • If having documented systems and processes to mine for the gold in your content appeals to you…
  • If scaling or staffing your business appeals to you….
  • If seeing all the possibilities in your awesome content appeals to you, then Your Content Gold Mine might be for you. 

[20:19] Let’s talk about you and your awesome content. It’s Yong’s gift for being a listener of the podcast. All you have to do is click on the image 👇

Book a Call with Yong

[21:15] Get more goodness, tips, and insider secrets for Yong inside her Facebook community, the Arena of Awesome, while it’s still free and open to new members. Come share your biggest takeaways and ahas. Plus, every week inside the Arena, you’ll get access to me and I may even share content I don’t share anywhere else. Until next time, my friend, go out there today and Amplify Your Awesome!

Book a Call With Yong Today!

Read Full Transcript

0:01
I fell for it. Hook, line, and sinker. I was once drawn into the world where MORE became my motto. I wore it like a badge of honor. I was always striving to be more, do more and create more. I stopped listening to the many signs my body was telling me to slow down on my quest for more. Ignoring those signals, landed me in the hospital for test after test, and ultimately being sent home, hooked to a heart monitor for days. The allure of more is a strong force, and few make it out unscathed. In today's episode, I'm going to share how I've made it to the other side of more, and how I can help you do the same. But only if you're ready to embrace a world where less is the new norm?

0:58
Have you ever felt like there was something missing in your business? Something holding you back from the success you're seeking? If so, you are not alone? For nearly 20 years, that's exactly how I felt as a business owner. It wasn't until I discovered Human Design, that it all became clear. And it turns out that I was the missing piece in my own business. Join me on this journey of discovering the real me and hear stories from other business owners building businesses around all of their awesomeness. I'm Yong Pratt, and it's time my friend to Amplify Your Awesome™!

1:44
Hey there, Amplifiers! You're listening to episode number 334 of the Amplify Your Awesome™ podcast. As always, I'm your host Yong Pratt, Expert Goldmining Guide, and the Chief Amplifier of Awesome. Here at Amplify Your Awesome™, we help course creators and coaches ditch content overwhelm, tap into endless supplies of social media content, and make money from the content they've already created. And that my friend is the very reason why today's episode came to be.

2:22
Today we're diving into Content Gold Mining versus "Gary Vee" style content repurposing. It's a question I've been getting a lot of lately, so I wanted to well set the record straight.

2:37
If you haven't already listened to the last episode number 333. The Myth of More, I highly recommend you press pause and take a listen to that tale before continuing with this episode. I promise. I'll be right here when you get back.

2:56
For today's lesson to make sense. I want to take you back a few years or so. At the time, I stood firmly in the belief that repurposing content was THE marketing strategy everyone needed to use. I just couldn't understand why not everybody knew about it and not everybody applied this strategy in their own businesses.

3:21
At the time of content repurposing was saving me so much time and money. I was even able to replace a full-time virtual assistant with a couple of tools that automated the processes for me. And one of them that actually magically spit out hundreds of pieces of content that I could share across social media.

3:42
When I talk about content repurposing, or the traditional "Gary Vee" style content repurposing the way it's talked about these days, here's what I mean. It's the act of taking a large piece of content, otherwise known as long form content, like this podcast episode, a blog post a video, and extracting smaller chunks, also known as micro content, which you can then share. The idea of this style of content repurposing is to sprinkle these smaller pieces everywhere so that,

4:18
Number one: it looks like you're everywhere. And number two: one can more easily establish their expertise by having more of these smaller pieces of content.

4:31
The idea of content repurposing has been used and talked about by many, yet was popularized by Gary Vaynerchuk or Gary Vee, as he's known to many. He even named the method after himself - the "Gary Vee" method. In his methodology, he advocates turning every long form piece of content into hundreds of pieces of media and sharing it well, basically everywhere. I will admit the idea of turning one piece into hundreds is brilliant!

5:02
Extract lots of nuggets and share them so that you can spend less time creating long form content check. Share these nuggets liberally across social media in a strategic manner that leads your tribe to take the next steps and ultimately buy something from you. Uhh, NO! This is where I see traditional or "Gary Vee" style content repurposing, falling apart for most, myself included.

5:33
In this day and age creating hundreds of pieces of content, using the right tools is the easy part. But there's one caveat. Before you can repurpose your content to share, you'll have to spend your time or pay someone else to set up those tools for you or do it all manually. And this is what I did for years. I set up three content repurposing tools for other business owners, so that they could put the "Gary Vee" method to work for them. Talking about and promoting these tools led to two really amazing opportunities.

6:12
The first is I was invited by the founder of these three tools to represent their brand at podcast movement in 2019. For four days, I talked to current and potential users of the software about its awesomeness. It was an absolute honor to represent this brand at such a large event.

6:33
After podcast movement, I pitched the company owner on an idea that I had. And I found myself as soon after co hosting monthly training sessions for users of the tool for over a year. Being the interviewer of the series, teaching others how I personally use the tools, and connecting with others was so much fun!

6:56
I was riding high on my ability to set up these tools, share them far and wide, and was affectionately called the "Repurposing Queen" or the "Repurposing Ninja" by my students and my one on one clients.

7:10
It wasn't long after though that I started to see things crumble, the clients for whom I'd set up repurposing tools came back to me frustrated and overwhelmed, not with me. But because they didn't actually know what to do with all the content I made it possible for them to obtain.

7:31
Most of these clients didn't have a big marketing team like Gary Vee does. Most were solopreneurs or had teams of one, maybe two part timers. They didn't have systems or processes in place to deal with or distribute so much content. They didn't have a plan to use that content to gain new clients or sell products with their content. They basically created mounds of content, just to create it and I had enabled them to do so. After all, creating all that content sure sounded good...until it wasn't.

8:15
That's why I refer to this type of traditional "Gary Vee" style content repurposing as the Myth of More. I also refer to this as the A.B.C. content philosophy. It's the myth that says we must Always Be Creating. It turns out that more was not the answer for any of these business owners that I had helped.

8:41
Around the same time, I was getting overwhelmed and frustrated myself. Like my clients, repurposing, my own content was the easy part. It was automated. I was the proud owner of 1000s upon 1000s of pieces of content, after all. Distributing all the content with any sort of strategy became a full time gig on top of everything else I had to do in my business. I was quite literally drowning in my own content. It was weighing on me, beckoning me to let it see the light of day once again. I was as Michael Gerber talks about in his book, The E-Myth, working IN my business and not ON it. I was so busy planning and distributing all my content that I never took time to document or systematize my processes, so that I could ultimately hand them off to someone else.

9:42
And the real bummer was that despite the massive amounts of content I shared across just about every platform, I was not seeing more sales. It was actually the opposite. Because I had so much money content available. People didn't feel the need to hire me, when all they had to do was turn to all of my free content, and it was so copious. I was so good at creating content that I have literally trained my audience to expect everything for Free.

10:19
Talk about a sucker punch!

10:21
I had spent years chasing more and helped my clients do the same. And now more was coming back to bite me in the butt. I spent the next year or so extracting myself from social media. I was still producing podcasts and connecting with my list while my presence on social media became pretty much non-existent. To this day, I still don't post a lot on social media, which is odd, since I was once called the "Repurpose queen." And for a year or so, I had content scheduled out for months at a time.

10:59
During my year of social media dormancy, I discovered something that was literally right in front of me that I completely overlooked in my quest for more. As I began to wade through and dig through my mounds of content, I did something that I never did before I began compiling it all in one central location. Because I didn't have the systems in place, my content was scattered across the internet, leaving me vulnerable to losing all or parts of my content. If I ever got locked out of any of these platforms, which I didn't own. Though most of my content was already tucked away safely in Dropbox, there was a ton that wasn't there yet, that I had to put there.

11:50
Plus, I wanted to see all my content and be reminded of the awesomeness that I had spent years creating. For me, that place was a Google spreadsheet. I segmented my content into different categories. One of the pages have links to all my podcast episodes. Another for all the links to my guest appearances, many of which I've actually forgotten about. Yet another was for classes or workshops that I had taught. Plus I had a few others that held the content of my many online courses and miscellaneous pieces that didn't quite fit into any one of those categories specifically.

12:30
As a visual learner, this spreadsheet was exactly what I needed to see the massive amounts of content I had created. It was super eye-opening!

12:45
As an aside, if you haven't already created a central place to house all the content you've created, I highly encourage you to do so. It's one of the first things I do with my one on one clients. And they're always in awe at the sheer volume that they've created, which they've largely forgotten.

13:06
I discovered that by allocating the time I once spent on social media, to curating or digging into all of my content proved to be a very worthy endeavor. The more links I added to this document, the more I noticed patterns start to emerge.

13:26
The more I looked at this spreadsheet, a crazy idea began to emerge in the form of many what if questions, which is one of my default settings, I asked myself:

13:37
What if there was a way I can bundle these categories or buckets of content together?

13:45
What if I could monetize these buckets?

13:50
What if I could bundle and monetize this content in lots of different ways and at different price points?

13:58
What if I can offer more value to others with these bundles?

14:04
What if I could show others how to monetize their own content?

14:10
And that's how the idea of Content Gold Mining was born, even though that's not what I called it until fairly recently. I refered to it simply as content repurposing, even though I knew it to be a very different strategy and approach than what I learned and done it previously.

14:28
Instead of focusing on transforming one piece of content into hundreds, this new way of repurposing focuses on the many ways to MONETIZE all that beautiful content. Just like much of the gold mined in my great home state of Nevada is buried underground, so too, is much of the content you create. It's there for you. To support you and your business. It's there. Ready. Waiting for you to unearth it and offer it up as the gift that it is.

15:05
And I know as a course creator or coach, you have so much goodness, right now, waiting in the content you've already created. You currently have endless gifts you could offer to the world and get paid for doing so.

15:24
Let's play the what if game together, shall we and ponder a scenario that you could take action on today?

15:32
What have you stopped creating content today? For a week? Or even a month?

15:38
What if you reinvested some of that creation time into unearthing the gold from your own content goldmine?

15:47
What if you could turn your massive amounts of content into endless streams of income?

15:55
What if you could tap into that Gold Mine every time you wanted or needed to:

16:00
Take a family vacation. Hire a virtual assistant to help you put systems in place so that you could sell all the content that you want unearth. Hire someone to clean your house, do yard work, prep your meals and so much more so that you could free up time to spend with those you love? What about retire your parents or spouse?

16:25
And this is just the tip of the iceberg of what you could experience by mining for the gold in your content. Here's what one of my clients had to say, when we went through one of my content gold mining processes together. She says, "Wow, just wow. Yong certainly knows her stuff and the potency of content, namely your content. She quickly and effortlessly walks you through the value of your current content. She offers amazing options on delivering your hard work and talent found in your content and monetizing them as you offer your prospects irresistible offers. It's an emotional moment, when you realize your content can be massaged into other platforms to help others you must work with Yong."

17:18
When I got this message back, I was in awe at how profound this experience was. And this is what I've found since this client. That client after client when we go through the process that I take them through to really unearth their Content Gold Mines, they're always in awe. They begin to see the possibilities in their own content, and they get really excited.

17:42
This is where traditional style or "Gary Vee" style content repurposing really misses the mark. It's not focused on monetizing your awesome content. It can play a part in your marketing, if you have a plan and a strategy in place that works for you. I still use and teach this method today, though, it's only a small portion of a bigger whole. And I'm not nearly as fanatical about it, as I once was.

18:16
The real focus of the "Gary Vee" or traditional content repurposing has been on visibility and exposure, neither of which is a guaranteed for sales. And since sales are the lifeblood of every business, spending time on creating more content, just to create it, without a plan, without a strategy just doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

18:42
Wouldn't your time be better spent monetizing the content you already have?

18:48
Well, what if it didn't have to be either-or?

18:52
If you could create endless content for social media, and endless streams of income from the content you already have, without the overwhelm? Would you want to know how to do it?

19:06
You my friend absolutely deserve to have both! And the time to make it happen is now. The doors to Your Content Gold Mine™, my six-month mentorship will be opening up soon, and I'd love to be your guide on this amazing adventure.

19:22
During our time together, you'll learn and implement the four foundational pillars to mine the gold from your content. You'll get weekly Q&A calls with me, so that you can unearth Your Content Gold Mine™ in a way that not only feels good to you, but also supports your life and your business in the process. Plus so much more.

19:46
So my friend...If creating less content appeals to you. If monetizing the content you already have appeals to you. If having documented systems and processes to mine for the gold in your content appeals to you. If scaling or staffing your business appeals to you. If seeing all the possibilities in your awesome content appeals to you, then Your Content Gold Mine™ might be for you.

20:19
Let's talk about you and your awesome content. I don't often open up my calendar freely, however, since you're still listening to this episode, I want to gift you a call with me. All you have to do is go to today's show notes at www.YongPratt.com/334 and click on the "Book a Call" with me button you'll see there. If you're ready to ditch content, overwhelm, tap into an endless supply of social media content and make money from the content you've already created. Let's talk about you and your content goldmine. Book a call with me at www.YongPratt.com/334. Cheers my friend to unearthing Your Content Gold Mine™! I cannot wait to talk with you.

21:15
Thanks for tuning in, do the Amplify Your Awesome™ podcast. Let's continue this conversation inside my Facebook community the Arena of Awesome while it's still free and open to new members. Come share your biggest takeaways and ahas. Plus, every week inside the Arena, you'll get access to me and I may even share content I don't share anywhere else. Until next time, my friend, go out there today and Amplify Your Awesome™!

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From Nurse to Digital Ninja

From Nurse to Digital Ninja

by | Feb 11, 2021 | Podcast Episodes

Listen to the episode (25:28)
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0:00
25:28
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[0:00] If you’ve ever considered shifting careers our guest today can speak into that with personal experience as she’s shifted in a very big way with Alex Pemberton

 

[2:01] How Alex pivoted from registered nurse to web designer and digital ninja. 

 

[5:41]How Alex’s career choices seem dissimilar things from the outside end up being exactly the same on the inside. 

 

[6:40] Family support and how Alex’s sister became her first paying client

 

[8:56]  Do businesses really need a website today?

 

[11:58] The biggest mistake with websites and how it could be affecting your site now

 

[17:14] Alex’s favorite way to create content

 

[19:27] Using video as a Human Design Projector 

 

[22:34] Where to connect with Alex online

 

Website: http://www.Alex-Pemberton.com 

 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/APHQstudio 

 

Check out Alex’s Class: https://alex-pemberton.com/tame-the-blocks/

 

Grab Alex’s 30-point inspection website checkup guide: http://www.Alex-Pemberton.com/amplify 

 

[24:37] Next week you’re gonna hear from Yong as she celebrates the one year anniversary of Amplify Your Awesome and her birthday week. Plus, Yong has a special gift for you to celebrate these milestones together!

 

Read Full Transcript

0:00
Hey there, Amplifiers! Welcome back to another episode of the Amplify Your Awesome™ Podcast. I am excited you are tuning in today because if you're someone that's ever considered shifting careers and you just weren't sure how to make that happen and worth the timing was right, our guest today can speak into that with personal experience. She's shifted in her career in a very big way. And you know how I love to bring you other entrepreneurs, and share their stories with you to inspire you on your journey, because entrepreneurship is definitely not a one-size-fits-all job for sure.

0:36
Have you ever felt like there was something missing in your business, something holding you back from the success that you're seeking? If so, you are not alone? For nearly 20 years, that's exactly how I felt as a business owner. It wasn't until I discovered Human Design, that it all became clear. And it turns out that I was the missing piece in my own business. joining me on this journey of discovering the real me and hear stories from other business owners, building businesses around all of their awesomeness. I'm Yong Pratt, and it's time my friend to Amplify Your Awesome™.

1:20
Our guest today is Alex Pemberton. And if you're ready to ditch the tech overwhelm, and focus on growing your business, you need Alex in your corner. She's a registered nurse turned web designer and digital ninja. And she creates and maintains beautiful and easy to use websites to help small business owners attract their dream clients. Yes, yes, yes. Give me more of that. Alex, I am so glad you said yes interview. We had an amazing chat before we even started this interview, and I'm ready to dive into some really meaty topics today. Welcome.

1:59
Thank you. Thank you for having me on.

2:01
So Alex, I want to know about this shift. Because I know when I share my story of being a dancer, choreographer, and now helping people with their content and repurposing and automation, they look at me like I had gone crazy. They think how could you possibly have been a dancer before? And now you're doing all this tech stuff? It doesn't even makes sense. But then when I explain to them, well, really, you know, choreographing a dance is very much like creating a new piece of content or putting together an automation to help people, you know, get to see your content more often. It's the same thing. So I'm sure going from nurse to web designer has caused some people to stop in their tracks. So let's talk about this shift and what caused the shift to happen for you.

2:52
Okay, so, as a nurse, I get to help people. And that's really why I got into it in the first place. I'm also very creative. I always have been. I've been sewing my clothes and making jewelry for as long as I can remember. And so this last job I had as a nurse was really, really tiring in in a mental way. There, there was a lot of stuff going on that was on the wrong side of ethical maybe. And so when we got ordered, I'm a military spouse. So when we got orders overseas, I said, Yes. This is the universe giving me a break. I can quit this job and do something different. And at first, I thought maybe I can just do some blogging, monetize it, talk about decluttering. That's my thing. And so I joined some groups, bloggers, and it quickly became obvious that many people felt completely overwhelmed with the tech side of blogging and their websites. And I thought this was funny because the tech part that's easy. I even even in nursing, I was always the one explaining to people how to use the system is unlike me, how do you not get it like this is? This is easy. You click here. You click there and submit them. Easy peasy, right? And when I explained it to them, people like Oh, that makes sense. I'm thinking well, it didn't before. Because I can explain all day, I'm happy to explain. And so I would help people in the groups. And eventually people were, you know, tagging me and saying, Hey, can I can I pay you to do this? Can I pay you to teach me to do this? Can you do this on my website? And I'm like, Okay, you know what, this is probably another sign from the universe. And forget blogging about the cluttering. Here's your new job, web design, and troubleshooting. And it really follows the same path as as in nursing, right. A patient comes in, you do the assessment, you figure out the diagnosis, you create a plan for for treating it. Execute, and then figure out if it's working right? You re-evaluate. Did it work? If it didn't? Okay, next thing we're going to try is this. And it's the same way with web design. You're looking at the existing website, or if there isn't one, that's the problem in itself, right? And you figure out what's wrong, what's working and what's not. To figure out a plan to fix it, then you fix it. And then you look, at the end, you reevaluate, right? You do get some diagnostics, like your analytics, Google Analytics, or what have you. And you're looking what worked, what didn't, what do we need to fix now? Okay, easy peasy. But it's really the same process.

5:41
I love it. And I just the idea that you listened to the universe, and that when the universe spoke up and said, Okay, we're gonna move you to a new location so you get to figure out what you're going to do. And you literally thought you were going to do one thing. But then by participating in these groups, people started asking you questions, and they started sending you invitations, which as a fellow Projector, that's a really big deal in our world for people to give us invitations to recognize us for our skill sets. And Projectors, I think, we also have an interesting way to look at the world. Like we look through the lens at the world differently than all of the other types of human design. So I think that really, as a tech person, as a fellow lover of tech, it's interesting how these very unsimilar things from the outside end up being exactly the same on the inside. So let me ask you this when you switch your careers, was your family supportive of that switch?

6:40
Yes, my husband is incredibly supportive of whatever I do, I could probably say, I'm gonna raze this house down and back. But in some ways, like he thinks I walk on water, and I couldn't do anything wrong. So if I think this is a good idea, he's like, go for it. And I love that about him. I mean, we've been together for 15 years, and it's been a great 15 years.

7:05
Amazing. And what's the rest of your family as supportive? Your parents or siblings?

7:10
My sister was very Yes. She actually was one of my first clients. She helped me kind of get into the maintenance portion. She says, Well, you know, I paid my accountant so much every month and to do my stepsister. She says, I will pay somebody to do maintenance for my website. And I said, you would like you paid me. I'll send you, I'll send you an invoice. So go ahead and invoice. So she was one of my first paying clients who actually got me into the continuity. And so that was, that was really great.

7:46
I love that your sister was one of your first clients. What a cool story that used to tell because I know sometimes when it comes to making big shifts and big pivots in business, family can sometimes, without trying to be mean, they can sometimes not be super supportive. So I love that your family was was gung ho and your your husband, you're saying he's, you know, he thinks you walk on water. I think that's so sweet. And the fact that you've been married for 15 years, and he's so supportive of you, I just think that is exactly what we all need, right? We need those that support system that validates and confirms the ideas we have in our heads to let us step into a new space confidently. I love this. So let's talk about websites. Because I've heard a lot of different sides of the story. Some people say in this day and age, you know, you don't need a website. Some people say all you need a website, not these other things. So as a web designer, as someone who helps people attract their dream clients, with a website, what is your take on a website in this day and age in 2020.

8:56
So you can say that I'm biased, but of course, I think you need a website. It is your single piece of real estate on the internet that you own, there is completely under your own control. Right social media accounts. They don't truly belong to us. They belong to the social media company. Facebook can decide at any moment that they will shut down your account. And good luck appealing that same thing with Instagram and wherever else you may be. But your website is your website. Now, do I think that just having your website is enough? No, of course not. You need to have an email list. You need to be on social media talking to people you need to be talking to people in person. But your website works while you sleep. When people look you up, they expect to see your website. They expect to they expect you to at least have something there. Right? So think about it. You are looking for an electrician or a dentist in your area because you just moved there. You go online and you say, best electrician in I don't know, Cheyenne, Wyoming, one of the places we live. So you're looking to see who's there, right? So if you come across all these Yelp things, and they know websites, do you trust them? Or are you going to go with the tool that maybe they do have a website that may not be that great, but it's better than nothing? Right? So yeah, in my opinion, you need a website, everybody needs a website, if you have a business, you need one, because it's there. When you're not awake, when you're not on your computer, when you're on vacation, and it speaks for you. It's your best salesperson.

10:45
I couldn't agree more. I know, It baffles me when I, when I live in a small town. So I'll just preface it by saying that. So I think people in a small town, they have a different perception of what a website does, right? They don't necessarily understand that. Even though they have an offline business, having that online portion is really an important piece of their success. Because if people aren't able to find you online, find out your hours. I know, I get frustrated. So businesses that don't have websites, I usually don't do business with them. Because I was so frustrated trying to find them and Google them for 30 minutes trying to find all these different things, and nothing comes up. You have to for me personally, that's kind of how I, I do my shopping and choose who we go to for certain services. But yeah, I totally get that. Having our own address. Having our own home on the internet, as big as it is, is a really important piece. And yes, we all those kind of things, too. So let me ask you this a follow up question. What is the biggest mistake that you see from business owners looking to update their websites, or maybe even starting their very first website? But what's the biggest mistake You see?

11:58
Okay, without going on a complete rant, the biggest mistake that I see people making is getting talked into a page builder. But let me start at the beginning. Okay. Back in the day, WordPress was wonderful. But you have to know how to code to create pages. So page builders came along as a workaround to that. And they allow people who didn't know how to code to create pages, right? The the post editor was really simple. It was very, you know, word based. So if you could do it in Word, you could do it on your website. But that wasn't, it didn't really give you anything to do your pages with only posts. And page builders are excellent workaround for that. However, we are now in the 21st century, and we have moved on. WordPress has moved on way past where it used to be. And we now have the block editor, which is excellent. And it allows you to create pages without any page builders. Now page builders, although they were great work around, they added to the weight of your website, right? They they slowed it down. So they came at a price. Back then it made sense to pay the price because nobody was really expecting a website to load in two seconds, right? People were so many people were you know, like on dial up. So they were gonna wait 15 minutes anyway.

13:27
So

13:29
I remember those days.

13:33
But, but now people are on their cell phones. And if it if it hasn't loaded in two or three seconds, they're gone. There's somewhere else. So it doesn't make sense to use a page builder. If If you want your website to load fast, because there is now a native solution that is so much faster. And second, if you're completely new to WordPress, it has a steep enough learning curve, that you do not need an extra piece of software to learn. They're not easy to learn, even though they they're sold, as you know, what you see is what you get kind of a drag and drop. There's a lot more to it. So please say no to page builders.

14:15
So I have a little confession then because when I started having to build my own websites kind of out of necessity, I knew nothing about them. And I do I knew nothing about code. So yes, the page builder for sure was the way for me to be able to quickly put a site together that didn't look like a three year old made it right. It kind of had some nice features to it, for sure. And, you know, I think we had this discussion last time we chatted as well, about the updates to the WordPress platform and how I still use the old version because I kind of liked that version. And you were trying to, you know, suggest that I might try the new version. But it's one of those things that trade off right there. At the end of the day, what is the opportunity cost for me to learn it or to hire somebody you know, because I will have to admit that I'm kind of a micromanager. I like to have my fingers and all the things and know how everything works. And I like to fiddle around. So sometimes it's hard for me to pass tech off to someone like yourself because I kind of like to go in there and, and, you know, do a little diagnosis on my own and say, Oh, I wonder what would happen if I just did this. I like to just play around. So it's interesting that you say that this page builder now in this day and age, though, I didn't realize that it actually slowed the load speed down. So I have I'll have to go reassess. Now, I'm using a theme. So I don't know if themes. Are those page builders? Are those considered page builders? Are those separate?

15:43
Now a theme is not a page builder, but there are themes that rely on a page builder or are built for page builders? And then there are those that are just made to work with the native interface?

15:57
No, I love it. So if you're listening, and you're thinking, what the heck are you guys talking about? I have no idea about WordPress. I have no idea about themes or page builders, it is okay. We're just having a conversation about you having a place to put your business online. So whether you use WordPress or another platform, there's lots to choose from out there. Just know that we're really talking about in this day and age, we want your page to load quickly. And we want it to look nice. And if you have questions for sure. Alex will share where you can connect with her at the end of the episode. So if you have follow up questions, because, of course me talking about this right now, I have follow up questions. But I didn't want to take up more time to talk about, you know, WordPress and the platform and page builders, because I think for some people, that might be something they've never encountered. And that's okay. We're just reach out to Alex at the end and say, okay, talk me through this, Alex, because I need some help. So let's shift gears a little bit Alex and talk about content. Because at the end of the day, a website in general, whether it's on WordPress, or a different platform, is really content. So when it comes to you creating content for your website, or for your social media, what is your favorite way to create?

17:14
So for a while, I did a lot of writing, not so much on my website. But I've been answering questions on Facebook groups, or in Facebook groups. But recently, I got into video. I did this ignite video challenge where we did a video every day now for like a little over three weeks. And the idea is that you go from really, like camera shy to really comfortable on camera. And that's how I want to go. Moving forward. I want to make videos for people, because I figure one you get to actually connect with me. And two, it makes it easier to to address questions as they come up. Because sometimes writing it down is like okay, well this this Do I have to have to worry about editing and how it looks versus getting on video where I just turned it on? And hey, how's it going? I'm Alex, let me answer your question by now.

18:14
Yeah, I love it. And I love video itself. But it took me a long time to say out loud, proudly that I love video. Because for me as a Projector with a defined throat center, speaking out loud and connecting with people, whether it's an audio or video is the easiest way for me to do that as well, even though I've written books, and yeah, I used to write a lot all the time. In this day and age, though, it's so much easier just to turn my phone on push record, just start talking. And whether that's a live video or in my notes app, or you know, on otter, my favorite transcription platform. Yeah, being able to just be in the energy of other people will be in the energy of the internet. And when it comes to reusing that content, video is the best content to repurpose, because it can be created into so many other things. And we have the most availability when it comes to video to audio to text to all these things. So I love that you said video because I'm always trying to talk to people about doing video and you know, there's always a lot of pushback. So what was it about video that drew you in now and why have you committed to doing video?

19:27
So with video, I think. So I'm a Projector as well. And with video, I figure you get to feel my energy. And you get to decide if I'm the person for you as a Projector. I don't get to tell you come work with me. Right? I can say, here's who I am. Here's what I have to offer. But the invitation has to come from the other person who says I love what you have to offer. Can you please do this for me and then and I am very right brained. So I have a lot of information that I don't even know is necessarily, and I don't always know how to pull it out, but other people can get it out of me. A lot of times, if you ask me a question, I'll give you an answer and then thinking, I knew that I didn't do that. So, so that's why I figured with video, I will attract the right people, and repel the ones who kind of look at me and go, Wait, she is crazy. Okay, fine. If you think I'm crazy, then don't even contact me, right? It'll save us both a lot of frustration. But if you think I am the person for you, then please let me know. And I will be happy to help you.

20:43
I love that. And I love that you use the word crazy, because I think we're all variations of crazy, we just have different kinds of crazy in our lives, right. And I know when I first came in, especially to the online business, I didn't want to rock the boat. I didn't want to offend anybody. I tried to speak to everybody. And that led to speaking to nobody, because I didn't know who I was speaking to. So being able to stand up and say, You know what, I'm kind of weird when it comes to this, and I am crazy about this. But if you want to hang and you'd like to be crazy to then come on over. So in and this podcast is really a testament to that is about helping business owners really stand in, in the spotlight of their own business, confidently, not saying okay, well, this is kind of weird. I'm going to hide this over here or this. I don't know if I want to share this. I'm going to show that over there. Because I lived that segmented, boxed up life, and tried to run a business like that. And it was so hard. Because nobody really knew who I was. Therefore, nobody really had an emotional connection to me. So yes. So if you're out there thinking, I don't know how I want to share this, I'm gonna challenge you all to go share that thing or go do the thing. Be crazy, in your own way. Be weird and embrace that, because that is how people find you. That is how you stand out from somebody who could literally be doing a video at the same time on the internet, attracting different people, right? There are people for all of us, there's enough to go around for sure there is no shortage of people who need all the things you have to offer. Now, Alex, I do want to make sure that if people have questions about their website about WordPress about not using a page builder, how do they go about finding you on the interwebs?

22:28
So obviously, I'm going to say on my website,

22:31
Absolutely!

22:34
www.Alex-Pemberton.com. I am also on Facebook as APHQ Studio. I'm pretty sure. And I also have a little freebie for the listeners that. So I have this website checkup Guide, which is basically a guide that takes you through a very quick 30-point inspection, kind of like if you would do your car, right of your website both the front end and the back end. So you can see where your website needs a little bit of TLC? And you can get that.

23:08
I love this. So where do we get this I don't want to stop.

23:12
Sorry, you can get it at www.Alex-Pemberton.com/amplify

23:18
Whoo, I love that you use the word amplify. And I will make sure I put all those links in the show notes for today's episode. Because I know there are people listening who are saying, Okay. I'm ready. I need someone to to look at my website, or I want to do this checkup with Alex do this 30-point checklist and make sure I'm doing the right things. Because when it comes to the world of tech, there are so many things that can go wrong. If you don't know what you're doing, right. I've been there. I've had to hire people, because I thought I knew what I was doing when it came to tech with my website. And then I literally broke things and I had to hire developers. And that gets really costly on the back end. So just do yourself a favor, save yourself some time headaches and money. Call Alex make sure you connect with her on Facebook or her website. Grab this checklist because I think once you've diagnosed yourself, you can then be armed with the information you need to say Alex, Okay, I'm ready to amplify my awesome with an even better website. So good. So Alex, I want to thank you so much for being here today. I enjoyed this conversation immensely. And I know that we'll have many more conversations to come

24:31
Thank you, Yong. This has really been fun. I was scared to come on here but I had a lot of fun.

24:37
Stay tuned because next week you're gonna hear from me. It happens to be my birthday week and we're celebrating the one year anniversary of Amplify Your Awesome™. And I have a special gift for you so that we can celebrate these milestones together. I'll see you then.

24:57
Thanks for tuning in to the Amplify Your Awesome™. podcast. Be sure to hit that subscribe button so you don't miss any tips, tricks or secrets on building a business based around your awesome. Hey, and while you're there, leave us a rating and review. Let us know what you think of the show. And until next time, my friends, go out there today and Amplify Your Awesome™!

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Empowering women through coding

Empowering women through coding

by | Feb 4, 2021 | Content Marketing, Podcast Episodes

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[0:00] Meet Julia Taylor, a self-taught coder that’s turned that skill into a global Empire she calls a Geek Pack by empowering women through coding

 

[1:21] From former military wife and lover of location independence to teach over 1400 women to say yes to any WordPress requests, most of whom have never touched a line of code in their lives

 

[3:13] WordPress: Love at first sight for Julia

 

[5:15] How being a full-time RVer turned into teaching WordPress

 

[9:14] Breaking into a very male-dominated career and why community is an essential element of Geek Pack 

 

“Learning a new language is not the easiest thing. So you want people around you that can help you and empower you.”

 

[13:27] Imposter Syndrome, claiming your title, and getting uncomfortable 

 

[17:05] Content creation, strategy, social posting schedules

 

[19:51] Planning for consistency 

 

[22:37] Julia’s tip for helping you embrace your awesome and letting is shine through in your business

 

[26:23] Connect with Julia at http://www.GeekPack.co and sign up for her free five-day coding challenge. 

 

[27:15] Age is irrelevant when it comes to coding

 

[28:02] Share your biggest takeaways from today’s episode with Julia over at http://www.YongPratt.com/319. Next week,  And be sure to share this episode with your friends. Next week, you’ll meet Alex Pemberton, who traded in her nursing scrubs to become a WordPress developer and a designer. 

 

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