Inspiring Women in Business Podcast - Episode 45 - How you can have a successful business and still be comfortable - Interview with Laura Robinson

podcast Sep 11, 2023

There are so many messages out there about pushing through your comfort zone you can end up thinking if it doesn’t hurt I must be doing it wrong. But what if you need your business to be comfortable and safe because you’re already dealing with life stuff? For example looking after elderly parents, being a career, or dealing with a chronic illness?

In this interview, Laura shares how she’s adapted her own business to suit her, her goals, and her family. And how she’s expanding her comfort zone rather than pushing through it. Laura shares valuable lessons she learned that changed and simplified the way she runs her business.

Key takeaways from this episode

Voxer works like leaving a voicemail message on Whatsapp or Facebook Messenger, but there isn’t a time limit to how long the message can be. The person can listen in real-time while you’re leaving a message in Voxer.
We need someone accountable to keep our work on track and motivated.
We can learn how to have a successful business without burning ourselves out.
Working on something without burning out is a choice you have to own.
Choosing not to burn yourself out gives you space to be more creative and earn more.
It’s better to expand your comfort zone than go out of it.
Your business will have its hard parts, but you don’t have to make it harder for yourself.
Always ask yourself how you can make things easier and simpler.
Dig deep and figure out what is making things hard to be able to work on it more effectively.
There are many ways to do things; You can always pick the strategy that will work for you.

Episode Timeline:

00:04 Intro

01:08 Episode Intro

02:18 How Laura Robinson changed the way she does her business

03:41 How Voxer works

06:59 Who Laura is and what her business looks like now

08:14 How Laura progressed into mentoring

09:49 The benefits of having someone to keep your business on track

11:31 Laura’s thoughts on having comfy businesses

13:53 Laura’s advice on creating a successful business without burning out

18:48 Laura’s focus this year

20:29 Laura’s comfy business newsletter

24:29 Expanding our comfort zones

27:09 Finding ways to make hard things simpler

29:25 Laura’s advice on making hard things more comfortable

31:39 Picking the right strategy that works for you

33:40 How to connect with Laura

34:39 Outro

How to connect with Laura Robinson:

Website: worditude.co.uk/newsletter

Connect and know more about Ruth Gilbey here:

Coaching: https://www.ruthgilbey.com/coaching

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

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ruth_gilbey/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ruthgilbey/

Transcription

Ruth Gilbey 00:04

Hello and welcome to the inspiring Women in Business podcast. My name is Ruth Gilbey and I'm a business and marketing coach. I'm on a mission to inspire women to start and play bigger in business. Now I started this podcast because when I first went all in and left the corporate world to be a freelancer, I was just grateful for any work that came my way. After over 20 years of freelancing and working for other people, I started to realize I'd created a glass ceiling for myself. It was in 2017 when I finally started listening to that voice that had been telling me for a long time, that I wasn't doing what I loved, and I wasn't fulfilling my true potential. It took a critical illness to give me that wake-up call. And I don't want the same thing to happen to you. You can expect practical advice, interviews, inspiring stories, and a lot of aha moments, as we uncover and kick to the curb. All the obstacles you've been putting in your way.

Ruth Gilbey 01:08

Hi, everyone, welcome back to the inspiring Women in Business podcast. I'm joined today by my friend, my business mentor, and copy coach extraordinaire, Laura Robinson. And we're going to be talking today about reframing having a comfortable business, how comfortable how being in your comfort zone really needs to be reframed, you know, and there's nothing there's absolutely nothing wrong with having a comfortable business. And hey, you can have a comfortable business and still be successful. So we're going to be talking about comfortable businesses getting comfortable selling and all that good stuff.

Ruth Gilbey 01:48

Hello, Laura. It's I don't know all the time. But lovely to have you on the show. I interviewed you back in 2021. And we talked about all things to do with websites. I don't know if you remember the episode, right? It was one of my first interviewees we talked about, yeah, talked about how important it was to have a website and how important all the things and all the copywriting that goes with it. What's happened since then, how have you been?

Laura Robinson 02:18

There was like a long time ago, doesn't it? So it was like 20, say 2021, so I would have just moved back into my house, we moved out. So I have some renovations done to the house. And we moved it back to the weekend before the first lockdown. So that would be 2020, wouldn't it so we were probably still in the middle of finishing off the building work 2021. And then like entering my like, new normal version of life. And as the kind of stress melted away, I realized I still felt stressed and I was still getting a lot of migraine and I couldn't blame it on the building work or COVID or everything else anymore. And after a while, I figured out I think I might actually be allergic to Zoom. Although I'm recording this in Zoom, and it's fine for short bursts, I no longer had those excuses to think Oh, but maybe this is triggering my migraine or maybe this is running me down and making me not feel great. And I was left with like, oh, maybe it's the way I'm working is not actually working out for me. And so I scrapped most of my one-to-one offers, like the things that made me the most of money. And I created a new way of working with people, which mostly relies on Voxer and video feedback and collaborating on Google documents. So that I could provide a three months mentoring package that worked like for me in the way that I needed to be working. So it feels like almost like a completely different business. Although I teach very similar things, I've had to totally change the way that I work.

Ruth Gilbey 03:41

And for those listening, how does Voxer work? Because we assume in our world that everybody knows what Voxer is and what it does, it's I use it as well and I love it. But how does Voxer work? Why is it so valuable?

Laura Robinson 03:54

So it's very similar to leaving a voicemail message on WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger. Like you'll be familiar with doing that. But there's no time limit to how long the message can be. And the most important part is that the person can listen in real-time while you're leaving the message. So if you're trying to chat with someone via WhatsApp message, you send a message and then there's this weird delay where like do they hate me? Did they hear it? Are they still there? Like did I say something's upsetting them? Because it feels like it takes forever to get a reply on it. And with Voxer. You can see if they've read it or heard the message because it will tell you they can give you a little like to say like, "Yes, I heard you. I've liked it. And now I'm thinking what I'm going to reply with" and they can reply real time if they want to. And again, you can hear what they're saying while they're saying it. But if you miss that message because you're in the other room or doing something else, or you know, it wasn't the time that they were due to call you, you can listen back to a recording, and the way I use it most is I quite often have to listen to a message for a second time because I will you know it's like an assessment of the situation. They're like telling me a problem or helping me work through something. So I'll listen to it once to kind of get an overview provide some notes, and start thinking of how I want to reply. And then I get to listen to the message again to make sure that I'm giving the most helpful response that I can. So for me, it's a much slower but more considered way of having a conversation with someone or especially for any kind of coaching or mentoring relationship, than I would get from a Zoom interaction, but it's faster than if we were just emailing each other, or, like using WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger.

Ruth Gilbey 05:25

Yeah, I think it's revolutionized the way people coach and run their offers as well. And I think it's great because you don't have I think a lot of people have Zoom fatigue, their diaries are full of Zoom invites. And it's really, I can't do more than two or three a day two is actually a couple of, you know, one-hour Zoom sessions, and I might horizontal afternoon, it is tiring. And then so I think it is great. And I think you don't have to dress up. You can be in your PJs, and you don't have to solve a problem in 10 minutes. You don't have to sit and stay on the call for another hour, you know, you can go okay, I've got some time I've asked this question, I can go away and think about that. And I can come back at another time and pick that up. It's not, life doesn't always happen that you need a concentrated hour or on a Zoom call to fix something, maybe you need 10 minutes, and there's value in that isn't there.

Laura Robinson 06:20

It's funny to say that before this recording, I speak to my mindset coach, and she's in Australia. So first of all, Voxer works really well. Because quite often one of us is going to be in our pajamas when we're talking because I have issues just going to bed or I've just got up or both. And we had a 90-minute Voxer scheduled chat. And we were about 20 minutes in I was like I've got what I need so and it just doesn't make any sense. And it just feels freer. I know, we could have just ended it. If it was a Zoom call, I guess we could just go yeah, that's it. And you would wrap the call up earlier, but it does feel more free with Zoom to just take what you need, and then say, Okay, well, that was it. Thanks. Don't be the rest of the time and get on with whatever it is you want to do next.

Ruth Gilbey 06:59

Yeah, absolutely. So I made a bit of an error that I didn't say, you know, in the beginning, because obviously, I know who you are, but who you are and who you help. So let's just like get that. Who are you, Laura, who do you help? And what does your business look like now?

Laura Robinson 07:13

So I'm still a copywriter. I'm more at work as a marketing mentor for people who sell offers online that are usually based on their expertise in some way. So they've got a course a membership group program, one-to-one services or coaching packages, something like that. And I help them create offers that work for them. So they figure out how to package up that expertise and deliver it to the people that need it in a format that works for both their clients and for them and price that in a way that feels good. And then be confident about going out into the online space and selling that and marketing what they do. And I mostly deliver that through a three-month mentoring program. And then I have about 11 courses now I think. Every time I come up with something, I think, oh, it'd be useful if my like, if my mentors knew how to do this, I turned it into a course and then other people know how to do it as well. So there are courses on sales pages courses on like, how to feel really good about being persuasive online. So they're all themed around, either creating your offer or communicating it in an effective, powerful way to the people that you want to know about it.

Ruth Gilbey 08:14

Yeah. And so you didn't always mentor that you were a copywriter, to begin with. So then it's like naturally progressed into mentorship as well that you were starting to help people with their offers and sort of business decisions as well it sounds like.

Laura Robinson 08:28

It started when I was a copywriter. I mean, right at the beginning I was freelancing for like two pounds an hour or, you know, whatever it is that you scrape through and you're freelancing. And then I just had too many jobs like gigs where I just didn't enjoy the work because it was boring. And so I wanted to have my own copywriting business where I got to control who the clients were and who I worked with. And I did that for a few years and I kind of just built up a bigger audience than I could possibly serve with one-to-one copywriting but if you're doing one-to-one work, you don't really need that many people on your email list or you don't really need a social media presence or not, you know, a huge one, you know, not you don't need to be building up a huge audience. But I got a bit carried away with the whole online marketing thing and I really enjoyed it. And I started doing some podcast interviews and I did some guest training inside other people's memberships and so that built up a demand for like would I do more teaching Were there ways that people could work with me other than hiring me to do one to one work so I actually started a membership first my training was in the air and I think that ran for about three or four years and I closed it. I think when we had to move out of our house into my parent's house to do the building work and it was just that everything all at once like having to manage the build and the membership and not living at home and just like I can't do this so I closed the membership then and then probably took me another year or so to figure out a different format but to do fairly similar work but in a more like one to one environment. Membership was.

Ruth Gilbey 09:49

Yeah, well for me. I think a lot of people probably feel like this. You're working from home, you've got your own business. You come up with these ideas and you're like, is it any good if I got to bounce with so I feel like when I work with you, I've got someone you know, who's an amazing copywriter and marketer, but equally I've just got that, like an additional person in my business who I've got someone to bounce the ideas around with. Because otherwise I'm just sat with these ideas thinking, is it any good? Am I going to take it any further? So I think we need that, don't we? We need those people to sense and check what we're doing and go not. That's good. That's not good. But keep us on track, keep us accountable, keep us motivated with what we're doing. It's so important.

Laura Robinson 10:34

When someone you can trust that he's going, to be honest, but not in a brutal way. So one of my other mentoring clients described it as a truth blurt. She's like when I leave a boxing method, and it's just like, No, you can't do that, or that's a terrible idea, or what have you done here? Because I just don't hold it back. I'm gonna probably could, if I tried really hard, I could hold it back. But I'm really confident just being honest. And saying like, no, like, everything you did up to that point was great. But this bit does not work and trying to find that balance of being brutally honest about what isn't isn't working, or whether something is a good idea. But also leaving enough space for them, like still being motivated and coming back and building on the idea. Like, I don't want to destroy anyone's confidence or, you know, totally put them off having an idea that fundamentally is good, but we just need to tweak. So I feel like that's a soft skill. You know, it's hard to put that on a sales page to explain that. That's what you do. But that's what I really try and work on being honest. But also in a way that doesn't totally diminish someone's excitement or enthusiasm for the thing that we're working on.

Ruth Gilbey 11:31

Yeah, absolutely. And well know you've got the right balance for me. So we met up in person, was it in June now? Yeah, it was in June, we met up in person for the first time at an atomic con in Newcastle. And I remember we were sitting outside chatting, and we were talking about comfy businesses. And really, you know that there are so many stories about burnout in business. And this is what I then did. And we were saying how it would be nice to have. Well, you were saying it would be nice to have some stories, but this is how I ran my business without ever burning out. Well, tell me your thoughts on that.

Laura Robinson 12:06

I can be more honest, in that I was getting no Joe wicks. No. And I love Joe Wicks. And this has absolutely nothing against Joe Wicks at all. But with listening with like fascination to his story. And then at some point, he said, and then I was working 16 hours a day, and I really burnt out. But you've got to do what you've got to do. And I was like insight in an auditorium. So I couldn't scream out loud. But inside screaming No, Joe, no. Why did it have to go there? Well, we talked about burnout. And I appreciate the honesty and saying, you know, it would be worse if someone stalled out and when Yeah, and I was working four hours a day. And I managed to achieve all this. And it was really easy when actually they had burned themselves to a crisp. But I also find it difficult to hear these stories about success that's built off the back of burnout, because I have I was extremely burnt out. When I left my corporate job, there was a lot going on in my personal life. And I tried to make it work by having a job at the same time and failed miserably. And I was so broken, that I was signed off sick, I couldn't speak I couldn't talk out loud at all. So I just handed the doctor a note. And here's Oh, you're unfit for work. So I know what it's like to be absolutely broken. And I am not going back there for anything like it doesn't matter what was on offer. Like if you work really hard in your business, you can have this thing, I am not sailing close to that ever again. Because it was so awful. I don't want to go back there. But also, I've got two kids. I mean, they're 18 and 16. Now, so they're young adults, the 16-year-old is autistic and has additional needs. So it needs me in a way that your average 16-year-old doesn't pick them up, it's not an option for me to burn out, they're not going to be okay if I have to just recover in a quiet room for three months. And it took me a year to get over the last time. So I know how long it takes to come back from it as well. So I'm really committed to not burning out and I find it kind of demotivating when you hear stories of people that have achieved great things, but they had to burn out to get there because I'm just not prepared to put myself through that.

Ruth Gilbey 13:53

Yeah, I mean, it's such a valuable lesson to learn from burning out and creating a template of I'm not going to burn out again. But I understand what you're saying that it would be just really nice to learn how we can have these successful businesses without going through that burnout part. So yeah, I guess what advice have you got for people to not end up burning out and creating a successful business?

Laura Robinson 14:17

I think just knowing it and owning it from the beginning really helps. It's taken me a long time to realize that the reason I don't push myself as hard as I see other people pushing themselves is that I'm not prepared to feel that way again. And once I realized, oh, that I'm choosing this, this is what I'm choosing and that's fine. Chose for that I'm not criticizing them for doing it like that they chose that whether it was an unconscious or real choice is you know, only they will know but at some level, they chose that that's how they want to work and they were prepared to go through that and I'm choosing there's no way I'm going to do that. But that does mean I also can't necessarily have the same things that they have because you know, if something took 1000 hours of work to get there, I'm not going to be able to do that in any sprint that's gonna take me more than a year because I'm not prepared to push myself so hard that I might burn out. So I think having just that knowledge and awareness of this is what is important to me. And this is what I'm choosing, and I'd rather have enough money to get by and feel good, than push myself to a certain point, but maybe enjoy, like a higher income the other side of it. Again, I'm also not saying that you absolutely have to burn out to reach a higher income. I know, it's possible to get there. But it's about me knowing what is the most important thing to me. And then I've actually kind of had fun with that like playing around, okay, well, knowing that I'm only prepared to work this many hours or knowing that I've, I need to take really good care of myself, how can I earn the most money possible while keeping those things in place. And that was kind of how I came up with the mentoring and quitting Zoom. And, you know, it was a fairly radical thing, I had to give up quite a chunk of money on retainer clients when I decided to quit Zoom. But in the end, it's enabled me to earn more money because I am working in a way that feels better to me, and I need less time off. And it's allowed more creative space to come up with other things that make money as well. So I think knowing that that's a choice. And it's really important to me, and figuring out ways of working but still making money but feeling good to me has been really important. I think also, I just like my pattern of burnout is I don't get away with little ones. You know, sometimes you see people and they say you know, I did this and then I burnt out and I needed three days off. And that they just seem to have this pattern where they can have a little burnout, and then they can recover. I just don't have that. What I would just keep going and going and going until I was completely broken. And again, I just think that self-awareness of burnout means different things to different people. And so if you see someone say they burn out, and then a week later they're back at it. I'm not saying that they're wrong. I'm just saying their version of being burnout was different from yours. So knowing like, how far can you take yourself? How much do you need to recover? What can you do that earns money that doesn't take you to that point, but also like have fun with it and play around with it and kind of have creative ideas to figure out how can I make the money that I want or the most money possible, or whatever your money goals are, but in a way that honors the fact that I am not going to push myself past this particular threshold.

Ruth Gilbey 17:02

It's interesting because you've got a reason to not burn out, you've got this guiding thing that's like, you've put these boundaries in place that it's a nonnegotiable now to burn out. And I've got one as well. Not I cannot burn out because mine is you know, I burnt out and I didn't realize I had breast cancer. I was so rundown. I didn't even notice that there was an issue. I thought, oh, that's how you feel when you're running a business and you've got two kids, you know, so mine is I can't get like that because I don't want to get cancer again. But it's I think it's that thing of like, find the reason without having to go through it find the goal to not burn out to not get ill you know, so you don't have to learn that horrible way of learning about have been boundaries looking out after yourself knowing what's important to you without having to go through the painful burnout part. Does that make sense? Like don't have if we can right bypass the reason why we got these really healthy boundaries now that would be great, wouldn't it?

Laura Robinson 18:03

I don't think you can. I mean, that sounds awful. I don't think you can, how many times do you hit touch a hot stove? Like you? Do you do it? I've done it more than once. It'd be a really long time before I do it again because that's now you know, my mind knows don't do that. But then you forget after a while and I think until you've done it the first time you don't really appreciate how horrible it is and then so like very well are saying don't go there, people. Yeah, but again like I said some people will just it won't be as bad because you know the body will break quicker or in a less spectacular way or you know, their version of burnout just doesn't take them as long to recover from. So everyone just finds their own limit, but quite often you find it the hard way. And it's not like don't beat yourself up over it because we will touch the hot stove every now and then.

Ruth Gilbey 18:48

Absolutely. I meant to ask you this before we hit record too. This could be a very short answer. Do you do with kinda like word of the year kind of thing? Or like not New Year's resolutions? But do you have a kind of like, this year? This is my focus. Do you have that kind of thing?

Laura Robinson 19:05

Depends. So year after year it changes I did have one year, you're not for swearing. Are you on the podcast? So you just have to imagine that the word is A-word, it was A word and it works really well. Because if I was stuck that year, I was like, well just get let's go. And it may be like you're maybe let go of things like you know, Oh, this feels like it's painful. And then let it go. Or like Shall I go for it? Yeah, let's go for it. So I have used it occasionally. But only in a kind of that was more of a fun way. I work with a mentoring coach, a mindset coach and she does a process that takes you through beyond where did the year so it gives you like you create a compass and it's got guiding words that are going to support you throughout the year in your chosen like the thing that you're most excited to do, and I usually do that but I don't think I even did that this year. This year I am so set on growing my newsletter that it's like nothing else is in like, everything is geared up towards this. Like every day I'm thinking, how do these activities stack up towards that one goal? So I don't I haven't felt like I've needed it as much. And I just literally have written like a coffee business newsletter, 10,000 subscribers everywhere, because that's the thing that I'm aiming for. But sometimes, yeah, I have used that if I don't have a very particularly, you know, quantifiable goal, then sometimes the word is more supportive.

Ruth Gilbey 20:29

But tell everyone about the comfy business newsletter, how did it come about? And yeah, what are you doing? And why are you focusing on it this year?

Laura Robinson 20:37

So my newsletter, I love to write, but I had always run my emails, like the traditional email marketing way. So things we often think about our list is this is a group of people that pay attention to you, and you can sell things to them, and you write to them because you're giving them value or sharing your expertise. But ultimately, the goal is to sell to them. And at the start of the year, I started like my dream had been to write free living, like I wanted to just write blog posts or write mostly blog posts that people loved so much, and I hadn't figured out how you would make money. And that was my dream when I left my job. And then I quickly realized, like, that's not like, we will start off, we can't do that. So I figured out how to write that in a way that made money. And that was copywriting for other people. But I really wanted to write in a way that was just fun and entertaining for people to read. And then I know I have these courses. And I know how to make money online, so it seems like a good time to kind of shift and make the newsletter more just a fun creative outlet for me every week to be able to write something that I really enjoyed writing. And that only goal was for people to email me back and say, I love that email, I love the way you write or That was really helpful. So I've shifted towards that this year. And it makes sense to write about having a coffee business because it's something I really care about. And I have so many people who have bought my courses or work with me or who are on my email list that are experiencing like life stuff like they've, you know, they live with a chronic illness, they're experiencing grief, they've recently been divorced and moved house that they've got stuff going on that takes up so much of their time and energy and headspace and they still need to work, they still need a business, they still need to make money. But that business needs to be squishy and comfortable and fit in around this other stuff that they've got going on. And the business needs to help build them up and make them feel good not erode them and wear them down. And you know, the business is supporting them as they navigate this lifestyle. And I find the online marketing space can sometimes feel a bit critical of people who are in that position. Like I left the gym, I took my kids out of school and they were I home educate them. And I genuinely it is my proudest business achievement that I had a business that enabled me to do that like I keep earning money and serve my clients and do what I was good at. And I have my kids that were 10 and 12 at the time out of school. But at the same time, I felt not good enough. I didn't have a big enough email list. I didn't make enough money. I'd been in business for so long. And there were people who started at the same time as me. And they made 10 times as much money as I did, but, and some of that comes from me. But some of that came from the messaging outside of me that I was seeing on social media and in emails that get sent to you saying, but here's how you scale, here's how you reach this income level and this relentlessness to just keep making more and more and more money and people telling me you can make loads more money if you had an agency and like I don't want a copywriting agency like that would be a misery to me and wouldn't work with my life at all. Or someone like I bought a coaching package and someone who made like he used real shame-based selling to get to me like you should literally like you if you cared about yourself or you cared about your family, you'd invest in this. And then the whole time I was being coached by them, they wanted me to do corporate writing, like have corporate clients, which again was not going to work for me at all. So I've kind of gotten a bit rant here. But basically, I feel like there's a group of people like me who need this comfy squishy business that's going to fit in with their life. But the outside online marketing space can make you feel a bit inadequate and not good enough and like you're failing when actually you're flipping Rockstar for doing what you're doing like making it work and still having a business anyway and not just giving up and saying I forget it like I'm not even going to try and so the newsletter is a space where I can celebrate that and try and give some you know alternative perspective to traditional business growth advice we might be given share some of my experiences, just kind of encourage and celebrate those people at least once a week. I try and do it more than once a week but at least once a week be in their inbox with something that's going to be entertaining to read but also helps them to feel really good about the choices that they've made about their business and their life.

Ruth Gilbey 24:29

I got very excited there. And there are more people at this. Who doesn't have life stuff going on? Who don't you know, there are more people out there than we think that have well not I do think that a lot of us have these things going on. We are like the sandwich generation we've got elderly you know parents that you know we are the generation where we've got children we're looking after and you know, parents that need us with these illnesses. There's all sorts going on in the world and things that we're dealing With our own illnesses, whatever. So who doesn't have life stuff, who doesn't? And also, I think I wanted to talk to you about this something that I really can't get my head around I used to when I first qualified as a coach, It's something just did not feel right about some of the messaging that was out there that coaches were using, like, you know, just push through it, get out of your comfort zone. And I was like, kind of, you know, on social media, sort of like typing out these quotes on Canva. Just go, no, it just doesn't feel right. So then I would be not sharing stuff. I think the person I did use to share quotes from with someone like Brene Brown, and I think she's really gone the distance with her messaging. It's like, no one's gone. Well, what she's saying doesn't make sense. It kind of speaks to a lot of different people. But what I'm trying to say here is I think the term comfort zone got such bad press from people, we've got to push through it, we've got to get out of it. When actually, what's wrong with feeling comfortable? It's nice to feel comfortable, isn't it? We've been through so much discomfort, why do we want to feel uncomfortable? Why don't we expand our comfort zones, so it makes room for more stuff rather than push through and get out of it?

Laura Robinson 26:14

Exactly. And also, most of us are outside of our comfort zone in some capacity anyway, like, if I look at my past week or past, not, there are definitely things that I've had to do that are outside of my comfort zone. Sometimes they're gonna be work-related things, but quite often, they're things that are in my home life, I think that that's okay. But the rest of the time, I want to be comfortable. If you look at elite performing athletes, they do not live outside their comfort zone, they have everything set up so that they can be as comfortable as possible performers like why do you that's why they have a good rider list, when they're going to have their room is made up exactly how they want it to be when they write everything is done so that they are as comfortable as possible so that they can do the thing that they need to do. That's a bit of a stretch for them. But not everything is a stretch all the time. And that's in my business. That's how I try and keep it and it's sometimes the stretch will be in my business. Sometimes the stretch is going to be in my home life. There's always some type of stretch there. But everything else needs to be really comfortable for me to be able to do that.

Ruth Gilbey 27:09

Yeah. And I think that also goes back to what you were saying we were talking about earlier, where when we think about running a business or running a business setting up a business. Yeah, there are really hard parts to it. I'm not sugarcoating that. But I think that also what I've learned about myself is that I can make it harder for myself. Like all the time and you and this is why it's so great to have you on Voxer. And you are available to me because it's made me realize you've always said to me, you've got a lot of content already, Ruth. Look at what you've already got. As I might be like, Laura, I want to do this challenge in September. This is one that we've been talking about recently. But you've got this thing already, Ruth that you could create and I'm, Oh, yeah. And I love that. And I think if we can do more of that you do more of like, look at what we've already got. How can we make this simpler? How can we make this easier? We've already got so much great stuff, don't you think?

Laura Robinson 28:07

Nobody ever makes a movie montage about that. So it's like, we don't think about it. Like the movie montages are like, here's our pushing really hard and sprinting for this goal. And it looks excruciating and difficult. And then you've got the elation when you've achieved it. And it was all worthwhile because you work so hard. Nobody ever makes a montage of someone going well, if we just did this and move this here, it'd be a lot easier and that we've done it right. That would be boring. I think we are kind of conditioned to believe that like elation and celebration at the end, you only get that if you've earned it by working really hard to get to that point. And it's not something that we're generally encouraged to do to just try and make the thing as easy as possible. That's actually the email I'm working on right now. Because it's like when I write a newsletter, it's not I don't sit down and write in half an hour, it goes on for days, sometimes weeks are like adding ideas. And then what I'm working on right now is about the idea of like, if you've got something that's really hard, this is what you should do. Ask yourself, what would make this easier? Like how can I push through it? Or what's the goal? What's my big why? Or how can I tap into my values? Just ask yourself How could this be easier for me and then there you go, you'll probably see a way forward. But it's not a very fun exciting thing to do and there probably isn't a backing music track that goes with that and the nice exciting montage to make it look cool, just very laid back.

Ruth Gilbey 29:25

But I would say the fun and exciting part of it is that you get it out there into the world faster leaving you more time and energy to show up and you know sell marketing and do something else or not. Just go and have some fun. I've got two last questions for you Laura. The first one is what's your advice to people who are finding it hard doing their own marketing showing up and being visible and selling? What's your advice to them to make it more comfortable?

Laura Robinson 29:55

So first of all, be really honest about what's hard about this. It's so some you know so sometimes you might feel like it's visible. It's, for example, I don't really like talking on stage, I've done it a couple of times, and I'm not likely to do it again. So it'd be very easy for me to go, oh, but you're so small. You're saying so small and hiding away and like believe all of that rubbish that I've got a visibility problem. I don't have a visibility problem. I'm happy. I'll go on anyone's podcast, I'll answer any question. I teach in other people's groups. It's about the vehicle. It's about the method. It's not about a mindset thing for me. But I only knew that because I spoke on stage and I was like, you know, it's okay. I didn't really enjoy it. I don't want to do that again. So I think being able to know, just be really honest with yourself about what is difficult about it, like, is it the stories you tell yourself about people who don't really want this thing? Or is it that you're pushing yourself to do something that doesn't feel right, like, be on life on Facebook every day, because somebody else has told you to do that, or charge $1,000 for a thing, because that's a fashionable price tag that everybody puts on something or it's just getting into the detail really well, what is hard about this? Because it is hard. But yes, lots of things are hard. But if we dig in, it will be more obvious. Well, actually, this bit is quite easy. And I quite enjoyed this bit. But this bit here, that's the bit that's really difficult, and then transform that you can figure out why is that so hard? And what can I do to make that easier? Can I do this a different way? Can I do this in a way that works for me, but yeah, I'd like to get right into the detail of things. And it's like almost untangling a knot. Like if you've got, you know, like a big matted knot in here and you pull out a bit like It looks like a mess. It looks unsolvable. But actually this bit, okay, and I don't mind this bit, so much. And so like sifting and sorting out the bits that are actually all right, and then finding or this is the real nugget, that's the problem that I need to figure out.

Ruth Gilbey 31:39

I love that. And I also think that we forget that there are so many different ways to run a business so many different ways to be visible, so many different ways to sell so many different ways to do your marketing that if you try and push yourself in a certain direction that just you're gonna just hitting that resistance then like you said, like the vehicle when you didn't want to talk on stage, but you're happy to be on podcast. So dig, you know, get curious. And because I think people end up getting really feeling really stuck really berating themselves over this, I have people coming to cause like shoulders just like down like, I should do this or like, why? If it's really uncomfortable, let's just look at other ways you could do this thing and get the same result. There are so many different ways to have. That's the beautiful thing about online marketing and businesses. There are so many different strategies, you can just pick, can't you?

Laura Robinson 32:31

You just got to pick one and then do it. That's it's so hard to follow through with that when then there's something else and there's something else. And I was doing myself looking at how I want to set this newsletter up. And there were so many different providers. And I could do this when that and I started doing the table and I was looking at all the different options. And I was like they were all good enough. But as long as they've done that they do these things, it's good enough, just choose one and stick with it and go for it. Because I made that mistake. That's my like, self-sabotage is changing tech stacks. My Courses will house like let's move again because this tech platform looks fine. And so I do it more so with tech than with marketing methods. But I could definitely fall into that trap there. I have a friend who's very committed to getting me on LinkedIn and says all the time, you can make a lot more money if you're on LinkedIn and like maybe, but I think I'll probably be more miserable because I just don't want to do it. So why would I make myself do something that I actively don't want to do? When I'm doing okay, doing the things that I enjoy. Like, it's nice that it's there as an option. Good luck to the people that want to do that. But I don't and I'm not gonna go there. But it's taken quite a while to get that kind of discipline to know, I don't have to do all the things. And if I don't want to do it, just don't do it. Just focus on the things you do. Enjoy.

Ruth Gilbey 33:40

Absolutely. Thank you so much, Laura, my last question for you is how do people find out more about you? How do they get into your world and find out more about you?

Laura Robinson 33:49

Come over to my website worditude.co.uk and think it forward slash newsletter should get you on to the newsletter. And that's the best way to stay in touch. I don't really do social media very much. Now. I took a break from it. And it was the most liberating feeling I don't imagine I'll be going back anytime soon. Although again, I told you about it. I'm like, Wow, this thing I put in the newsletter would work really well as a social media post. But for now, I'm concentrating on just writing at least one really good newsletter every week. So sign up for that. And if you enjoy it, then stick around and if you don't, that's fine.

Ruth Gilbey 34:21

Amazing. Well, they'll definitely be a link in the show notes. So go and check out Laura's newsletter. It's one of the ones that I read every single week. Amazing. Thanks so much, Laura.

Laura Robinson 34:31

You're welcome. Thank you.

Ruth Gilbey 34:39

Thanks for listening to the inspiring Women in Business podcast. I hope you found this episode helpful. If you did, I would love it if you would leave me a review. Also, I would love to connect with you on Instagram. That's where I hang out most of the time. I'm at @Ruth_Gilbey. I'll put a link in the show notes for you as well to come and connect with me. Tell me about your business and also tell me what you'd like to hear next on the podcast. And lastly, go and check out the business building hub on my website. There you can find more amazing free resources to help you take the next step in your business. And you can also find out other ways that you can work with me. I'll see you soon