I'm Back… 2 Years Later Than Planned

Two years later than planned — but right on time.

In this first episode I'm pulling back the curtain on where I've been, what's changed, and why now finally feels like the right moment to bring this podcast to life.

This is not a polished relaunch. It's an honest conversation about the seasons that don't make it onto social media. The ones that sit quietly in the background while you're trying to keep showing up, stay consistent, and hold everything together.

For me, that season looked like burnout, mental health challenges, and the last three and a half years navigating my father's illness — a rare and progressive cancer he was given six months to live with. He survived three and a half years. And through all of it, I kept trying to build a business alongside everything else life was asking of me.

I also share why this podcast is different to anything I've done before, what you can expect from future episodes, and an introduction to the Client Attraction Method — my signature framework for building visibility, connection, and growth without burning out in the process.

If you've ever felt alone in a hard season, like you should be doing more but simply can't, this one is for you.

In this episode:

• Why the podcast is two years late and why that's actually okay
• The seasons of business and life we don't talk about enough
• My father's diagnosis and what the last few years have really looked like
• Burnout, mental health, and building a business through it all
• What The Part-Time CEO is about and where we're headed
• An introduction to the Client Attraction Method

Free resource mentioned in this episode: Download the Client Attraction Method — a simple visual framework for visibility, connection and growth. https://www.socialrenegades.co/the-client-attraction-method

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 1:33

Hello. Hello and welcome to the first episode of the Part-Time CEO podcast. If you don't know my work and you've stumbled across this podcast, or you do know my work, you've never seen me face to face or listened to any of my past podcasts or anything like that, my name is Lou. I am a marketing strategist, a business mentor, and lots of other things. I wear lots of different hats. And this is part of, I guess, what you'll discover along the way when you tune in to these episodes. So what I can tell you is that I did not be, uh I really was not expecting to be recording this episode two years later than I planned. Uh, but here we are, right? So a lot has happened in life, a lot has happened in business, a lot has happened in the in-between. Um, and naturally, again, that's what we will uh uncover along the way we're relevant. Um, but a lot wiser, um, lots of different thoughts and mentalities, still an incredible network, uh, which I can't wait to bring some of my uh incredible friends and business colleagues and mentors on to share some of their business words of wisdom and life words of wisdom with you too. So reverse back to two years ago where I decided I would launch or relaunch my podcast. So I originally had a podcast, gosh, it must be like four or five years ago now. Um, monetize or strategize to monetize. Uh, this is in my business era of strategy. Do X, Y, and Uget Z, right? Post every day, do this, do that, right? I was totally on board with all the generic uh marketing and business ideas. Um, and I won't lie, they worked. That's why I promoted them and that's why I preached them. Um, not everything I agreed with. I am not a get up at 4 a.m. type of girl. I don't do cold ice baths, I don't go swimming in cold water. There are some things that I put limits on uh because I like sleeping. Actually, I actually like sleep, uh, and I like other things which help um my life, my business, and everything else um move forward. So, but there are some things I really preached, which I don't so much anymore, and there are other things that I didn't, and I might. That's the joy of being a human, right? You learn, you grow, you get to change your opinions and so forth. So now when I decided to relaunch this a couple of years ago, I wanted it to be different. Um, I have changed significantly in the last couple of years. So maybe in hindsight, probably a great thing that it didn't. Actually, it is a great thing that it didn't get relaunched because I just simply didn't have the time um or energy or mental capacity to be able to do it. Um, I was deep in client work, my business was full, and life was really, really busy uh in a way that I don't think I appreciated at the time. Um I had just been joyriding all over New Zealand. So um, you know, for two years I went house fitting and travelled around New Zealand and eastern parts of Australia trying to decide where I wanted to live post-COVID, post-returning back to New Zealand. Um, you know, and life was great. I reflect back on that and actually, even at the time, I questioned why in the world would I stop living my life like that. Um, but I did because I wanted to be more grounded, I wanted uh to have more friends and family around me and not just um fleeting moments with people as I traveled from place to place. But because my world for two years just revolved around traveling, catching up with people and work, I thought I had all this time and and capacity to be able to relaunch my podcast, um, which just really wasn't the case. Um, we will talk a lot about this over the last uh couple of years. You know, there's been some incredible highs. Uh, and there's also been moments where I realized that just the way I was building my business really wasn't sustainable. Um, I have a burnout stick that hurts me across the head. Um, I don't shy away from the fact that I experience bouts of um burnout. I'd like to say that I don't anymore, but I'm only human. Sometimes we fall back into our old patterns. And um, you know, and that can trigger some pretty challenging mental health uh challenges for me, which means I really need to, you know, look after my health. And launching podcasts really wasn't high on the agenda at that point in time. So I was doing more, I was pushing harder, I was trying to keep up. Um, and at the same time, life outside of business was asking a lot from me too. And this is the part I don't think we really talk about enough. Um, we talk a lot about growth, strategy, visibility, uh, the hustle, uh, how much people make, you know, all these uh business conversations. Uh, but very rarely, at least I haven't uh be privy or had access to this, very rarely uh do I hear about the seasons that coexist with growing a business or with, you know, working in your job or you know, your career, um, you know, whatever it is that you choose to do. Um you know, I don't we don't really talk so much about the moments where things shift, where they slow down or they feel heavier than they would expect, or than we kind of expected them to feel. Um and I really wanted this podcast to talk about business, but also life, because I have found through my journey over the last couple of years it really challenging at times because social media gives us access to people working, achieving goals. Um we can feel like failures when we're going through different seasons of our lives because we feel like we should be doing more, but we can't because our priorities are in different places. And I don't always necessarily feel like we talk about those priorities. Um, and we don't talk about how challenging it is. Um, and I definitely felt really alone. I felt like at times I'm the only one going through it. Um, I now have a beautiful hindsight looking back on it and have learned lots of lessons and had some very strong conversations with the way in which I have um spoken to myself over those times. But yeah, I guess that's really why I wanted to be able to relaunch this in a more human way where we can definitely talk about different growth or business growth ways, uh strategies, but also um, you know, very real conversations as we try to do that or don't do that because there is also a season in life where you can't necessarily focus on growing, you're focusing on surviving, um, which we will talk about too. So um for me, I guess uh if you you may or may not know, but the last two years or the last four years, specifically the last two, were very much centered around my father and his health. Uh three and a half years ago, um, whenever that was, uh he was diagnosed with a very uh rare and progressive cancer, and he was given a prognosis of six months to live. Uh, he survived three and a half years, so he battled on. Uh, now that wasn't all, you know, fairies, unicorns, rainbows. Uh, there were definitely a lot of challenges that came with that. There were a lot of appointments. Um, whilst there was a period of time after surgery and radiation, he was cancer free. We always knew it would be coming back, and you live with that on your shoulder when you go to an appointment. Like, is this today, is it the day that it has returned? Um, and you know, along that journey, he had other health challenges too. You know, there were lots of appointments. Um, he had a stroke, he had um some brain trauma multiple times. He was in and out of hospital. Uh, and then the last nine months when the cancer came back, you know, we knew that would be it. There was no more um options for him. And I chose to make that a priority while trying to juggle a business, juggle a life, do all the things that I do, look after myself, um, and ultimately uh business coexisted or sat on the side of everything. Um, and I want to talk more about that. I want to talk about some of the other things that other people experience, and this is what this podcast really is about. Um being vulnerable in business, in life, relationships, family, friends, anything wherever we go, uh, because it's all part of who makes us and it all is a part of our journey um growing the businesses that we do. So that's predominantly where I've been. What's been going on? I'm back now because now it feels like the right time. It no longer feels overwhelming. I've got so much to say. Um, you know, podcasts now are in a really different world where before we they were all audio, we're now connecting via video, which was really exciting. Uh, and of course, AI came along in the last couple of years, uh, which is going to create some really cool conversations as well. Uh, because that's something that, you know, is is pretty new. And I know that some people are really scared of it, some people hate it, uh, some people love it. I believe that there is a happy medium between it helping us, but also being human. Uh, and this to me is a really awesome way to be having really powerful conversations whilst continuing to humify um, you know, the way in which we're living our lives and be able to connect more with you uh and hear your stories and ultimately hopefully be able to shed some wisdom, some advice, some light and um yeah, some connection and help you realize that through the tough times you're not alone and celebrate through the hard times as well. So uh along the way, not only are we going to be having really vulnerable conversations, um, but you know, we are gonna be talking business strategy too. Uh, and this is what I guess some of the conversations will be centered around, which is what I call the client attraction method, which is my signature method on how I have built my business over the last 10 years. Uh, it's essentially a way of thinking about visibility, connection, and growth that doesn't rely on doing more or constantly showing up at full capacity. Um, having been through everything I have been through, um I'm I think we're constantly in search of balance and how can we grow without sacrificing our health, our relationships, um, you know, other things that are important to us. And this is a lot around what um I have grown my business on and really made some big changes in it over the last couple of years. Uh, it's a lot around, you know, the people I invite on will have that same philosophy. Uh, and if you're listening to this and you're in that season of I'm doing so much and I'm working all the time, and the needle gets moved forward only to move back from expenses or whatever it may be, but there has got to be a different way to be able to uh create a business that aligns with my life while my life is also aligning with my business. You know, we will talk about that in future episodes. But for now, this podcast, as I've said, is going to be a space for real conversations about business, life, and everything in between. Um, what it actually looks like is to build something meaningful without burning out in the process. And I'm really glad you're here. Um, thank you for welcoming me back. Uh, join me for more episodes, uh, and I can't wait to share them with all of you, all with you as well. So thank you so much, and I will see you on the next episode.