Unlock Your Genius Zone

Storytelling that Sells with Ashley Renders | Ep. 47

• Ine-Wilme Coetzee • Episode 47

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🚀 Storytelling isn’t just an art—it’s a business growth strategy. In this episode, I sit down with Ashley Renders, a storytelling expert and entrepreneur, to uncover the secrets behind using storytelling to 10x your business, boost sales, and build a brand that truly connects.

📖 What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

✅ Why storytelling is the #1 skill entrepreneurs need for success in 2025

✅ How Ashley went from burnout to business owner (and what she’d do differently!)

✅ The biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make when telling their story—and how to fix them

✅ How to balance creativity and structure to stay productive

✅ The key to making sales feel effortless (without sleazy tactics!)

🕒 Make sure you watch until the end where Ashley shares a real-life transformation from one of her coaching clients—this part alone will change the way you see storytelling forever!

🔥 CONNECT WITH ASHLEY RENDERS:

👉 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ashley.renders

👉 That Storytelling Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@thatstorytellingchannel ****

👉 That Storytelling Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/4VD7JvES5CbAZ269dM0zWS

👉 Join Ashley’s Storytelling That Sells Challenge: https://stan.store/ashleyrenders/p/take-the-challenge-g5ye6whn

💡 Ready to take your business to the next level? Make sure to subscribe to this channel and turn on notifications so you never miss an episode! Hit the LIKE button if you found this helpful and drop a comment below: What’s one way you use storytelling in your business? ⬇️

Podcast intro music: J.S. Bach Cello Suites, Suite No. 3 in C major, Prelude 
Musician: Mari Coetzee 

_______________________________________________________________

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You can connect with me over on Instagram at @ine.wilme

Ine:

welcome back to the podcast. I have been waiting for this day for quite some time. I have a special guest with me today. Her name is ashley renders.

Ashley:

And ashley, welcome to the podcast hi, thank you so much for having me.

Ine:

It's such an honor well, it's an honor to have this conversation with you, ashley. Can you tell us more about your story? How? How did you get to where you are now? What's your story of entrepreneurship long time ago, when?

Ashley:

I was working as a journalist just getting my feet wet in the media world, and I was working in a really busy newsroom at a big, big media company and I had my dream job that I had fought my way into and fought for, you know so much, and thought that I wanted, and found myself on my lunch breaks watching YouTube videos about how to start a business.

Ashley:

And I worked so hard in that job and did my best and I honestly learned some of the most important skills that I use in my business today. But I ultimately burnt out and wanted to start my own business, so I took off and went to Mexico City and tried to start a business and failed and came home a couple of months later, polished up my CV, got another job and dreamed about it for another eight years until March 2024, there, eight years until March 2024, basically one year ago now, when I decided to try again and finally had all of the pieces and all of the skills that I needed and started teaching storytelling to entrepreneurs. And here I am today, a year later, working on my business full time. Wow, it's a dream.

Ine:

That is incredible. And what is so amazing about this story is you started off thinking you had your dream and then you realized that it really wasn't what you wanted it to be. And then now, like, you end the story by saying now you're living the dream, you have the dream, and tell me more about the whole designing your life to that dream. How do you do that? I know that's something you're very passionate about.

Ashley:

Yeah, it is something I'm really passionate about and that's so interesting. What you just said that I thought I had my dream and now I have my dream, and at many points during those eight years when I was back in the media world in that sort of middle ground, that I like to think of it as I thought that I had my dream job at many different points throughout that journey as well, and the last job that I had, right before starting my business, was a huge dream. I think one of the reasons that I actually went back to work and that my first business didn't work out because it wasn't that I didn't have a good enough idea. I actually had a pretty good idea in the end and if I had just continued, it would have worked itself out. And it's honestly like a little bit nauseating to think about what my life would look like now if I had just continued. Like I would have been one of the first people on YouTube. I would have been one of the first to use Instagram to market myself. Like I would have had the first podcast. Like there's so many things I could have jumped on early of.

Ashley:

It is because I had these unaddressed dreams in my life around filmmaking, around things that felt really shiny and exciting to the outside world, and I needed to just get them out of my system. So my last job in the film industry, before I started my business, was with a huge producer in Toronto who makes a lot of Hollywood movies here in Canada. We make a lot of Hollywood films in Toronto and I was working right under him, right behind him, doing all of the business affairs we call it in film, which is all the paperwork, the business side of film and television, and that was like the perfect marriage for me of business and creativity. And I got to walk the red carpet at Cannes. I got to walk the red carpet at TIFF so many bucket list items crossed off for me and once I had them, I had this feeling of like, okay, now what?

Ashley:

But it was the dream at the time. And then it was time to go and do dreaming about and that could look like going back to school to learn the business of film and television, like I did in 2021. I went back to school for a whole year during the pandemic to do that, or it could be starting my own business. It looks like so many different things and I'm very aware that it's never one final thing like that would be so sad if it was like oh, this right now is my dream and I'm good and I'm done, you know yeah, yeah, making the dream the priority means also being open to the changes, and that's what I'm seeing as a common thread in each area.

Ine:

You were following your heart, you were leading with your heart, and the cool thing about being an entrepreneur now is you actually get to design your business and what you offer around your dreams, instead of switching an entire career. So, in a way, it's like you have more control now. You have more control on what that dream looks like. You don't have to move yourself to fit into someone else's dream and create their business anymore. You get to do that for yourself, and that is so cool.

Ashley:

Yes, it is so cool. You're 100% right, yeah, yeah, that's amazing. It's interesting because entrepreneurship comes with a complete lack of control in so many ways. There's so much uncertainty and things that you can't control, and then you also have an immense amount of control and the things that you do have. Control how you start your day, the routines that you use, your, you know, your whole practice of life, you know, really influences how you're going to succeed or not.

Ine:

Yeah.

Ashley:

Yeah.

Ine:

And that actually is the perfect segue into a question that I I've been thinking about for like a week and a half, since we booked today as the day we're interviewing you. I was wondering how do you structure being creative inside a disciplined routine? How do you have that feeling of your creativity being out of control in the best way, even though you are setting boundaries?

Ashley:

Mm-hmm, that's so interesting. I feel like I I don't know if you believe in this or if you've ever heard this before, but there's this idea that we choose our parents and I feel like I chose the perfect parents to come into this world too, because my mom is so creative. She is like when I was born, she was a photographer. Her whole career was around creativity and her house is like so beautiful, everything's so aesthetic. Like everything that you see behind me in my home is because of my mom's influence and I just grew up in this really beautiful place with like this gorgeous garden.

Ashley:

My mom's always really well-dressed, just like aesthetics and creativity were so important, and she was like a very hard worker and, you know, was a single mom and a photographer and needed to go back to school to become a nurse in order to actually make money, and so I saw both sides of it. I saw how creativity could be. It's so important to living an enjoyable life. Things being beautiful around me is so, so important, and I think that's why I actually love being an entrepreneur and I love making money is because I always want to make my life more beautiful, but I know the grind, like when my mom became a nurse.

Ashley:

She worked the midnight shift and she would come home at 7am and I would get on the bus at like 8, 10. And she would stay up for that hour when she was so tired Like I remember her just barely being able to stay awake, and she would stay up for that hour when she was so tired. I remember her just barely being able to stay awake and she would sit at the window and watch me get on the bus. And so I have this almost duality to me, where I'm so structured and I know what it takes to get things done in a day and I follow my calendar kind of relentlessly maybe to a fault, but inside of that there's so much focus on beauty and just making people feel things. By watching what I'm creating, I'm always thinking about the music that I'm using and the visuals that I'm using, and sometimes my calendar doesn't give me the space to create something really beautiful, and so it has to be something really simple. But I'm always trying to make people feel things, and I think that comes across in my business.

Ine:

I can see that in everything you post, like every word you write, it's intentional and it shows how much you care. You care deeply about how they react to what you create, how it makes them feel and if it makes them feel like they can do what their dreams are. So, your story is a reflection of how you want their story to be portrayed too, which makes you the most incredible coach.

Ashley:

Thank, you, thank you. I think it also really helps with sales, which is something that I teach in my program and in the Storytelling that Sells Challenge, which is people need to feel how they're going to feel on the other side of working with you, and when you can give people those positive emotions, it just it changes sales. You know, I'm never like you need to buy this thing to make this amount of money. It's like imagine if you felt this way. You know and I do that by saying I feel this way and sharing my life, and then they can feel it in the process. And I think that also comes from my filmmaking background, where I'm constantly thinking like how can I make them have this emotion? Because that's kind of what we're always going for in film as well.

Ine:

Yeah, yeah, I'm nodding my head so aggressively, my hair is like going all over the place. Because I have similar experiences with being a professional musician, I know that what I'm feeling is what the notes I'm producing is going to make the other person feel. So, before I even hop on stories, before I play the cello, it's the same process. It's a way of connecting how do I feel, how do I want them to feel, and then change how I feel so that I can make them feel a certain way.

Ashley:

And.

Ine:

I love how you do that with words. You have the most incredible techniques to produce those feelings in other people. So, on that note of like storytelling, why is storytelling vital to grow a business, in your opinion?

Ashley:

Hmm, Well, I always say that connection is level one of the business video game. So if you are starting a business and, let's say, you're trying to figure out exactly what you're going to sell or how you're going to help people, some people come into business with very defined frameworks and they know exactly how they're going to help people and I really envy people like that. That's such a beautiful place to start. I was just talking to our friend, vicki Abelson, who's an incredible executive coach, and she had 20 years of coaching behind her in her executive role and a coaching certificate and was just very clear. She was like I am a good coach, I know that. And so she came in kind of armed, knowing how to help people.

Ashley:

But a lot of people come in thinking I don't really know. I know I have something, I have some skills, I've helped people in other ways, and then connecting with people and understanding what they actually need from you is really the first step of trying to build a business, and there's no set amount of time for how long that can take. And so to start connection, you have to start by telling them stories, especially today. Start connection you have to start by telling them stories, especially today. You know, I don't know how people would have started this process 15 years ago or even 10 years ago, to be honest without all of the access that we have to huge groups of people. But today you can access thousands, tens of thousands of people.

Ashley:

If you post the right story, if you tell the right story to the right people, you can absolutely build your dream business, which is why I always say that your dream life starts by telling the right story to the right people. It's a little bit of the world that we live in right now. I always say this is the storytelling era. We, as entrepreneurs whether you're just starting out or you're extremely successful, like the Hermoses you have to tell a story every single day, sometimes multiple times a day, in many different ways. You might post a reel and then an Instagram story, and then a YouTube video and then a podcast, and then you might teach. That is literally what I'm doing today. I've been editing my podcast. I'm on here with you, I'm coaching right after this, I've created a reel for today, and all of those include stories, and so if you're just starting out, it's your starting point and if you're established, it is your path to growth really in today's world, simply because of the amount of content that we need to create, and that content has to contain stories.

Ine:

I agree with that wholeheartedly. When you're actually working in your unique purpose, then every single area of your life will have these common threads. And what I mean by unique purpose is like delegating the things that are not telling stories. You want to be doing the things that allows you to use that unique purpose of not only telling stories yourself but coaching other people to tell stories. So then you take away all of the 80% that is not telling stories and you structure your life around the 20% that is. Let me know if that is correct, like if I'm making the correct assumption there.

Ine:

Yes, like for me personally is that how I do it.

Ashley:

Like for me personally, is that how I do it? Um, yes, I think. I think I see stories everywhere, I see opportunities to tell stories everywhere, and so I naturally infuse stories into everything that I do. And so it's just naturally that everything I do has stories in it. But I do things that, um, like I do admin work and there's other parts of my business that I have to do that don't include storytelling, but I would say, like 95% of it does. But I think this is true for any entrepreneur who's doing anything Like every time you communicate with your audience which today is multiple times a day if you want it to land, it has to include some kind of story. Otherwise it's going to be simply educational or just sales, and there are ways to make those work for sure. But if you really want to connect and really build a community and like an audience around you that loves what you do and wants to buy from you, then storytelling is key to that.

Ashley:

Yeah, no that makes sense.

Ine:

It's something that's not applicable to just you, but every entrepreneur needs this. It's a key skill.

Ashley:

Yes, especially in 2025, I think storytelling and authenticity are going to become really the key to being successful as an entrepreneur, especially with AI, because it's already happening, but there's going to be. If you think it's noisy now on the internet, it is going to get so much noisier because content is becoming is already easier to create than ever and it's just going to become easier and easier. And it's going to become harder and harder to tell who is a real person, which is important in business, because you need to know who you're actually buying from, and so the ability to be authentic and really prove it sounds crazy, but prove that you're a real person is going to be so important. Um, I, you know, interestingly, I just started creating YouTube videos. I'm on my seventh video right now and you know it's a podcast but, um, I used this feature inside of my editing software. Um, that changed my eyeline, because in my first couple of episodes, I was really bad at just looking at the camera and I was like, oh, let me turn this on and it looked fine to me and everyone.

Ashley:

Most of the comments have been popular or positive, but a couple of people have said what's with her eyes? Is she real, is she a robot? And I had to go on and say thank you for pointing that out. I actually used, you know Descript's eyeline feature and I don't love the way it looks either now that I look at it. But immediately they were like. And then someone else said you know, when you cut all of the dead space out of your words because I'm very intense about not letting anything trail on he was like it's harder to tell if you're a real person. It has a very AI feel to it and I was like that's so interesting that people actually want to hear me trail off and get confused and they want to know that I'm real.

Ine:

It's already starting, that's fascinating and such a relief as well, like for entrepreneurs creating content, your imperfections are part of your story and it can be the very thing that makes you stand out. I know that that has been something that has kept me from being consistent on content for way too long. I'm not allowing that anymore, going into 2025, but what a relief Like that is just hope actually, yes, it is so much noise.

Ashley:

It takes the weight off of having to show up on camera and be perfect and you know, look at the camera perfectly every single time. But it's also, I think, it can be intimidating to people because they think, okay, so I need to show up and be myself and be a little bit messy. Because they think, okay, so I need to show up and be myself and be a little bit messy. But let's say, for example, you're an interior designer and you work with super high profile clients, that they spend a lot of money and they expect you to be perfect.

Ashley:

So how do you show that you're a real person without sacrificing that authority and credibility? And so there is kind of this filter that you need to put your storytelling through your life, through to really think about what you're sharing through the eyes of your ideal customer, always because you want to be seeing it from the other side of the person who you want to buy from you. And so that is what I really teach is that balancing of realness with credibility and authority and really shaping the life that you're sharing with people, because we're never sharing 100% of our lives. Even a reality TV show isn't the full story, and we know that right. So it's like what is the story that you're telling If your life was a reality TV show and you took it all back to the cutting room, the editing room, what gets left on the floor and what makes it onto the TV screen? That's what we're talking about.

Ine:

That makes so much sense. And not only does that give freedom, but it also gives structure to that freedom which we talked about in the beginning. That's amazing, ashley. That is fascinating, ashley, because that structure can be a vehicle for the freedom of creativity. I love that. Yes, yeah. So on a super practical note, I am curious what does a day in your life look like?

Ashley:

I love this question. I love this question because I loved productivity and time management and I love knowing what other people's days look like. So I start my day at 4 am, which I know sounds crazy to a lot of people, and sometimes it doesn't, and that's totally fine. Today I've been sleeping through my alarm lately, to be perfectly transparent, which is really strange, but I actually wake up to the lightest vibration of my phone. I barely need any noise to wake up, mostly because my daughter's usually in my bed by the time I wake up. She's two and a half and she just wanders over in the middle of the night. So when I hear my alarm, I wake up at 4 am. Today it was like 5.10 and I pray that my daughter sleeps until six, and usually it's between five and six. Today it was right at 510. And usually I'll work for two hours.

Ashley:

So that time from four to six is my most productive time. It's when I have my best ideas, it is when I will, it's when I'll work on my trainings, my podcast scripts. I put my most important thing for the day into that time slot and it's always writing of some kind or editing maybe, and then my daughter will wake up at six, we will have breakfast. I'll either take her to daycare for 7.30 or my husband leaves the house at seven and takes her. We're half an hour from her daycare, so we have to leave really early and we put her in early because she wakes up early and then she's out early.

Ashley:

So then my day starts again around 7.45 or 7.30. And this is when I'll start to do things like create content, like it's the second heaviest thing for the day. I'll create Instagram content. I will respond to DMS. Um, sometimes I'll have to go back to that heavy work that I was doing in the morning If it's a training that I'm doing later in the day. But that time, from eight until two 30, when I teach or coach, is really open, which is really lovely, and I will exercise. I'll go to go for a walk, I'll go to the gym Um, it's just like open admin time, which is so nice. I read a and then every Tuesday and every Thursday, I teach and I coach from 2.30 until 3.30. And then I pick up my daughter and then it's dinner and bath time, bedtime, and I'm in bed, usually with her, at 7.30 or 8. And that's my day.

Ine:

Wow, I love the sections. You can really then focus in on the heavy lift. It's almost like I think it's Brian Tracy Eat the Frog wrote that book. You eat the frog right away, do the hardest thing. But also something that fuels you, like the writing. I'm assuming, based on who you are, is writing a lot of stories where everything will be connected to stories, but that's something that is intense and you need your brain power, but it also then sets you up for the rest of the day. I'm curious if you find yourself being a better mother as well after you have that block of writing.

Ashley:

Yes, I can say that I am, because today I did not get that time and I was frazzled by 7 am when my daughter left the house. There's such a good feeling about hearing my daughter's feet hit the floor and then pitter patter out to me in the living room, closing my laptop and thinking like I'm good now for the day. If I did nothing else today, we're good, and then I'm able to sit with her she loves to cuddle for like 10 minutes first thing in the morning. We're able to start our day slowly, and what I was doing before, when I started waking up really early, is I was doing journaling and reading and trying to exercise, but I was using the whole two hours for that, and when my daughter woke up I had this feeling of like now my alone time is over and I have to start my day and I have the hardest thing ahead of me, and so now we have to rush out the door, because if we're not on time then you're setting me back, and so not only waking up early but doing the hardest thing first really changed things for me, and now I feel like I have.

Ashley:

My goal for starting my business was to feel like I could spend my days reading and writing and going for walks and doing whatever I wanted. That was my goal. I know now that that's not like a great goal. It's a great place to start, um, but I had to rearrange my days in that way to make it feel possible. And now I feel like I do kind of have that in between all of the sort of hard things that I have to do every day.

Ine:

That makes so much sense? Actually, because you inspired me. I also spent the first two hours of my day writing and just doing like the heavy lifting brain work, and then the reading and the working out and the journaling is like during the nap time, when my brain power is basically gone. So that is intentional and strategic within creativity. Such a fantastic example of how, when you're aware of your dreams, you're aware of how you feel and you just have this presence in each block, then you can be intentional and strategic and then you're actually able to build that dream life instead of waiting for it and trying to mold yourself into something else. And trusting yourself is the end result I have found anyways. What have you found for yourself there?

Ashley:

Well, I definitely have thoughts on that Before. On the morning thing, though, I just wanted to say there's this I don't know a belief, I guess, but when you think about all of the, you know the bad like the most. I don't know how to say this, but people who are like the most advanced at meditation.

Ashley:

You know all of our like spiritual leaders they would sit and pray and meditate in the early morning and in places that were removed from society, like quiet places, and the idea is that there's less sort of energetic interference from other people being awake and the world's sort of doing its thing. If you can be in those quiet hours, it could even be in the middle of the night. It could be really late at night or early in the morning, but kind of like between midnight and 5 am. It's not just that you're uninterrupted, which is great, but it's like everything is quiet, like you can access better ideas.

Ashley:

I heard that I just heard that one time and it really hit me that the quality of my work was improving because I was taking the time that time to channel what I needed to say to people, like if I'm scripting my podcast and I'm scripting my trainings and all of these things that are going out to thousands and thousands of people. Of course I want it to be not only at the time that I'm the most productive, but also when I can access the best ideas and not everybody's going to believe in that, but I really do and so when my alarm goes off, it creates this new urgency in me, or even excitement to get out of bed and think what can I create this morning that I'll close my laptop at 6am and be like whoa, it's good. Like when I get onto my training.

Ine:

Sometimes I'm like it's good today, you guys like I'm excited to deliver this to you and that feeling you can't get anywhere else, that satisfaction, but also also, actually, you are so smart that you have figured this out because your brain goes into REM sleep the last 30 to 30 to 90 minutes of in, like your, your sleep cycles, especially at the later parts of the night.

Ine:

So if you start doing brainstorming tasks or writing, like anything that requires connection, thinking so, like connecting a previously unrelated idea that's basically the definition of creativity. If you do that kind of thinking within the first hour after the REM sleep, you have the most brilliant ideas. So if you want to repurpose this another time of day, like, let's say, your daughter wakes up at 5.30 and you only get like 30 minutes in and it's not quite enough, then take a 30 minute power nap, or rather a 25 minute power nap, because that's the shortest sleep cycle 45, between 25 and 45. And then you can actually have an hour of that afterwards if you can get into REM sleep. So it's like you are so aware of your dream of yourself, like how you create your creative process, that you've discovered this, which I find so impressive.

Ashley:

first of all, and it just shows like how strategic you are. So Thank you, that's so kind. It's so that research is so interesting, because if you are someone who's like, okay, I don't really believe that you know, being in the quiet early morning is less energetically, interrupted or whatever. You can just say, okay, great. Then immediately after you wake up is the best time to do your work, and that's probably why, historically, people have thought that these early morning hours are the most productive, because they scientifically are so much sense.

Ine:

Thank you for sharing that, of course, and on that note of like that being part of your creative process, can you give us a rundown of how you create something from beginning to end, like what's the specific stages? Do you have a process? Really curious.

Ashley:

Yeah, it's different with. Well, it's actually not that different If it's a training or it's a podcast interview or a podcast episode. Sorry, it's pretty much the same. I'm writing long pages of my thoughts. I just start writing in my voice, which I've had a lot of practice at mastering. If you read my podcast notes or my training notes, it sounds exactly like how I speak.

Ashley:

I'm just very good at transcribing my thoughts, um, and so I transcribe my thoughts really loosely, and then I'll go back and fix it and, um, you know, mold it into something more coherent, and then I have some frameworks that I follow for storytelling. So it's kind of like the closest thing to a template that I have is, you know, a story arc that I follow if I'm telling a story, and then I have frameworks that I've been taught around teaching and you know, challenge material and all of that, and I'll put it into those frameworks. And then, if I'm teaching live, I will definitely go for a walk and do the training as I walk, and then I'll just get on camera and do the thing, and I usually feel very prepared by that point.

Ine:

But with content yeah, with content.

Ashley:

If, unless I'm promoting something specific like a podcast, it's very much. What do I think my audience needs to hear right now? I'm promoting something specific like a podcast, it's very much. What do I think my audience needs to hear right now? I'm always thinking and this is what I teach thinking through the lens, first, of my ideal customer and then through the payoff of my product, which I'm showing through my storytelling and giving them that emotion of what they're going to experience after they work with me. So I'm really thinking into almost like one set of glasses and then a second set of glasses, and then what comes out, the other side, I can plug into my storytelling framework and it all comes out coherent and beautiful and pretty and it's just packaged and ready to go.

Ine:

I love that, love that so much. It's so practical and so inspiring at the same time. You know, ultra creative people have the ability to hold multiple perspectives at the same time. So what I'm hearing you saying is you have your own perspective, your own lens. Then you have the lens of how people are going to view it. You have a lens of what they're experiencing and you kind of put it all together and that's what makes your message so intriguing and attractive. And you've mentioned multiple times when I'm writing a training or my podcast or social media or any kind of content. Tell us where people can find you.

Ashley:

Yes, for sure. Okay, my Instagram is where I share content every day and you can kind of see behind the scenes of my business and where I share just daily stories. And that's Ashley dot renders Um, and it's easy to find, it's my name. And then I have that storytelling podcast which you can find on Spotify, apple, amazon Music, all the major podcast distributors, and that also goes on to YouTube, which is called that Storytelling Channel, which is where all of my videos go.

Ashley:

And if you are interested in actually working together and learning and hearing some of my trainings, I host a challenge every month called the Storytelling that Sells Challenge. Actually, the well, I won't say when the next one starts because I don't know when this is coming out, but it happens usually around the beginning of the month, the first or second week of the month. And, yeah, there is VIP coaching in there. If you get the VIP seat, you get an hour of group coaching before each training where you can ask questions, you can bring your stories, you can bring the content that didn't work and ask questions about it, and then we have is Ashley the storytelling expert Can?

Ine:

you tell me a quick story of someone in your challenge.

Ashley:

Someone in my challenge, oh my gosh.

Ine:

Yes, a transformation. What they?

Ashley:

got out of it. I have so, so many. I knew you would. Yeah, so many, I knew you would yeah, there's so many to choose from. One of my favorite ones that is just so clear and that I think a lot of people they, they, they resonate with it is um.

Ashley:

One woman was in my challenge and she is a dating coach. She works with young Catholic couples who are recently married and people who aren't married yet and are looking for their person or their spouse, and she has always felt insecure or hesitant about the fact that she's not married. And something that we talk about inside the challenge is sharing your extraordinary world with your audience and what that looks like for you, because if you have an extraordinary result, then in any area you know it could be in baking, it could be in anything. You live in an extraordinary world and when you show people what that looks like, they get to feel it, they have the feeling and then they feel excited to work with you. And she, after the challenge, she said I had the biggest aha moment, which is that my extraordinary world is one where I feel so at peace with dating, I am confident, I am not freaking out over finding my spouse. I'm enjoying it and I have done so much mental work and personal development work that this is like a fun season of life for me and so many people would love to feel that way, you know. So it's that your extraordinary world is the one where you kind of want to shake people when they say something and you're like I can't believe. You think that it doesn't have to be that way. Come into my world, I'll show you.

Ashley:

And she now has the confidence to speak to so many more people and to share her story and to not hide the fact that she isn't married. You know, to not downplay that. She now gets to show up on her podcast and in her world, talk about dating and talk about how she feels about it. You know, I was like if you got on your podcast every week and said I had a date this week and this is what happened and this is how I'm choosing to think about it happened and this is how I'm choosing to think about it. You're going to become a leader in your little world, your little part of the internet, your little part of the world where other people are going to gravitate towards you and say I want to be like you. Show me how I can be more like you.

Ashley:

And one of the most important parts of building a business right now and telling your story is to show up as somebody that people want to spend time around. This is so important, right? People need to feel like I mean, our coach, macy, always says this you need to be the kind of person where people think I don't even know what she's selling, but I need to be around her. I want to pay to be in the room with her, and that's how you do that is by showing up and saying like I know that you're in this difficult situation. Here's how I think about it and it's it's something you can't even imagine feeling yet. So I'm so excited for her and, um, I think it's going to allow for more play, more creativity, more authenticity, while building that authority and credibility and leadership.

Ine:

Wow, yeah, so freeing yeah, so fun. That's amazing, ashley, yeah, yeah, thank you. Thank you for your time giving us your heart, your mind. This has been one of the absolute highlights of my day, in fact of my week, so thank you, me too.

Ashley:

Well, thank you too.

Ine:

Yes, we will. Thank you so much for everyone. Coming to the end of another episode, we will see you on the next one.