Piece Of Mind Podcast

Ep 38: Online Hate, Health Anxiety and Quick Business Growth

• Ashley Badman

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Sharing my journey of going viral on Instagram, handling unexpected hate comments, and navigating personal challenges while growing the Built for Better business.

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Speaker 1:

hello, my loves and welcome back to the potty. Today is going to be a little bit of a different episode where I'm just going to sit down and chat it out with you about what's going on with my life, honest reflections, just a little bit of a let's chat it out, let's update you on what I'm navigating, what I'm thinking, what I'm experiencing a life update, if you will. Let's start it off with the fact that I am currently going viral on my Built for Better Instagram page. So I started that Instagram page in December last year and I had such big hopes for that page. I was so excited. I was like big vision, big goals, big dreams, just so ready to create such powerful, impactful content.

Speaker 1:

As you guys know, I am so passionate about the mind and the brain and the nervous system. Nothing lights me up more than talking about this stuff. Like I am the gal that if you meet me in public, there's no way that we are not having a deep conversation. I cannot do surface level conversation. I'm like tell me about your childhood, tell me about you, know what your experiences were growing up. Let's like, let's go there. I just love having deep and meaningful conversations. Some people may call that trauma dumping. Other people may call that bonding, connecting, I'm not really sure, but I just love having deep and meaningful conversations.

Speaker 1:

So, to start my Built for Better page, to start the Built for Better brand and business, it felt like such a big moment for me, like I could just feel it in my body of making this decision for my business to be its own brand, for my events to fall under this brand name, for the page to be its own standalone thing. Not just my name, not just me, not just my personal brand. Bigger than myself, the vision is bigger than myself and, to be honest, it just didn't. It just didn't take off, it just didn't. I guess I don't want to say didn't do what I expected it to do, because I really didn't have expectation. I think having like a dream and a vision is different to an expectation.

Speaker 1:

I've worked on my mind a lot in the last few years and something I'm really good at now is being able to let go, being able to release expectation, being able to show up without knowing the outcome. So I'm not reliant on the outcome. I'm not going to be like I need this to work for me to continue to show up, I need to know the outcome. For me, to even start A lot of people, half the problem is that they want to be guaranteed the outcome. They want to know that their business is going to take off or their content is going to do well, or their career is going to take off or their content is going to do well or their career is going to take off, whatever it is. Whatever the outcome is for you, whether you run a business or not, it's still relevant for everybody. We want to be guaranteed that it's all going to work out, that it's all going to be okay, and that used to be me. But I've had to work a lot on myself, on letting go, releasing expectation and being able to move forward full throttle, make big decisions, go for things in a way, and obviously starting a brand new page is quite public. Everyone can see if it's working. Everyone could see if it's not working. All the different things and just being like you know what. I don't fucking care, because I care so much about my impact and my brand and my purpose and my passion that if people see me fail or people see it not work out straight away, I just have to be okay with that. So I was very excited, but then, yeah, it just wasn't taking off, my content wasn't performing very well.

Speaker 1:

I had this idea in my mind of what type of content I wanted to create and I really wanted it to be sitting down talking to camera, because I love to talk, I love to use my voice. Sometimes when I try and type things out or use words typing, I both use words. My brain moves faster than I can actually type. I feel like I think better in flow when I'm actually speaking what I say and I feel like I connect more with people when I use my actual voice face to camera and I enjoy creating that content. I enjoy sitting down in front of the camera and actually speaking because I feel like sometimes when you type things out or you use a carousel, you just use B-roll, where you put a video with words over the top of it and then a caption.

Speaker 1:

Your tone is missed, your personality is missed, your passion can be missed and I don't see myself as someone who's really good with words, writing them down, getting my point across through writing. So I really want to do talk to camera and I was consistent to you guys, like I was posting for six months almost every day, like I really missed a day and I really wanted this type of content to work for me and it just wasn't. I was getting barely any views. I was getting like 10 to 11, maybe 12 likes and I was like you know, it's not about the likes, it's not about the views, it's not about I need this to validate me or anything like that.

Speaker 1:

It's like I want to reach more people because I have shit to say. I want to reach more people because I genuinely believe that every single human being deserves to know about their nervous system, their mind and their brain. Every single human being deserves to know that they can heal, that they can heal through compassion, that they can stop judging themselves. They need to know that neuroplasticity exists. They need to know that their childhood is impacting how they show up every single day right now, like it is genuine and true passion for just like I want to scream this from the fucking rooftops. I want thousands of people to know.

Speaker 1:

I want an audience of 50,000 people to hear what I have to say, because I genuinely believe in the impact of the words that I'm saying. And then it's like 12 people I think one of them was my mom. One of them was Dave, and one of them was me liking it from my other account because, like, if I'm not going to celebrate myself, who the fuck will? And I was just like, fuck, like this isn't working. Okay, like this isn't working. And I have two options here. I can either get in my head about it and be like this business is never going to take off. I should just stick to my other page. And I have 12,000 followers on my other page.

Speaker 1:

I worked hard to get that other page to that point, although it came from a different audience. I got most of that audience when I was doing nutrition coaching and obviously speaking about something very different. But I still worked very fucking hard to grow that page and I could have had a bruised ego and been like everyone can see that this isn't growing, Everyone can see that like I'm not getting followers come over to this page or whatever it is. And I'm so fucking grateful that I've worked so much on being able to drop my ego, being able to not need that external validation, not need everybody to get it, not need to have everybody see me win or nobody see me struggle. I'm so fucking glad because, old me, I would have like melted into a puddle on the floor and been like this is so embarrassing that it's not working.

Speaker 1:

And I'm a business mentor. I literally coach other women on growing their online businesses, and I just want to preface here growing an online business and growing a social media following are two very different things, and I've worked with people who don't have a big following, make lots and lots of money. I've worked with people who have a big following don't make lots and lots of money. So two very different things, two vital and important things, two things that I really help people with.

Speaker 1:

But I really just had to be like Ash, like you can either continue to do what you're doing and it not work and you just try and be stubborn, like you always fucking are, and stick something out and just hope that it works. You can give up and you can quit this page, delete the page and go back to your other page and just start putting all of your content on there, or you can remind yourself that you fucking care. You can remind yourself of who you are. You can remind yourself that you've been through worse than an Instagram page not working Hello, childhood trauma and a police career that went down the fucking drain in the most horrendous way possible, like you can get through this and you can be fucking resilient, but also know when to pivot, know when to change, know when to be able to look at what you're doing and, instead of judge yourself and instead of shame yourself, and instead of quit or self-sabotage, ask yourself what needs to shift here. What do I need to do? What is within my control that I can change here with this page? Because I'm not fucking giving up. There's no way in heck. I care way too much about this mission. I care way too much about the message behind what I'm doing to just throw it all away.

Speaker 1:

So I pivoted and I changed and I remember like I took a screenshot of my Instagram. This was literally like a moment for me where I was like I it's like I had a sit down meeting with myself, a business meeting, if you will, with myself, and I was like enough is enough, we're going to change. I took a screenshot of the page and I think at the time I had around 400 followers and you have like a little bar on your Instagram when you run a business or a creator account that tells you your reach. It was sitting around like seven to000 in reach and I think I had one post do kind of well and it went to like 20,000 in reach. As we sit here right now, I'm just actually going to open it because I feel like we're just having a little catch-up conversation, you know nothing serious, just sitting down with my cow powers who actually want to listen to what I have to say on long form, which is just really really cool.

Speaker 1:

So, as it stands right now, I have 2045 followers. Love the 45. Don't want to miss those people. Very important to me. Every single person who follows my page is important to me. Like I'm not one of those people where it's just like I just don't care. Like if someone follows me, I genuinely want to go on their page and like see who they are. Like hey, let go on their page and like see who they are. Like hey, let me check out your bio, let me look at your profile picture. Like welcome. Like I don't want to message everyone and be like welcome, but like a part of me is like I really want to welcome everyone. But 2045 followers and my reach was 20,000 when I took this screenshot, when I told you I had the business meeting with myself. It is now 1 million in reach. In the last 30 days, which is I don't think in my six years of posting content online I've ever had that number at 1 million, my profile has reached 1 million people, which blows my mind, and it's one of those things where it's like you say you want something, I want to, I want to reach.

Speaker 1:

I made a reel. Actually you can go back and look at it. I can't remember when it was. I think it was. Oh, look here, I have the date right here. Let's hope it doesn't blast us. I'm just going to turn my volume down.

Speaker 1:

I made a reel on the 9th of June that was making a joke of myself that I only had 400 followers and in the caption I wrote Delulu, that I will get to impact 50,000 people one day, and I didn't say I'll have 50,000 followers, which is so interesting that I didn't write that. I said impact 50,000 people and, as it stands, after doing that, I have reached 1 million people with my content. Which. Do you not think it's crazy when you put something out into the universe and you say, like here it is universe, this is what I want, this is what I'm open to receiving. This is the impact that I want to have in the universe is like all right, let's see what happens when you actually have it, because what has come with that is the most amount of hate that I have ever experienced in my entire life. And when I hate, I don't mean someone just being like loser, like I don't know, like you know what I mean. Like I, I mean hatred, I mean personal attacks on myself. There was a comment that came through yesterday.

Speaker 1:

So I try not to go on my phone when I wake up in the morning, cause I just don't like like that energy, like that vibe. I don't want to touch my phone. I don't charge my phone near my bed for that reason, cause I just think it's so easy If you see your phone when you wake up, you're probably going to grab it, maybe check the time, whatever, and then you're going to see a notification that you're going to go on it Like, and then, before you know it, you've laid in bed for 25 minutes and the first thing you've done is consume other people's lives not to do that. When I did go on my phone yesterday, I went on my Built for Better page, clicked over on it and the first notification that popped up was a comment. So I clicked on the little notification and it was a pretty lengthy comment and it kind of scared me because it was very personal, it was very long, it was swearing at me a lot, it was telling me I'm a narcissist. It was like it was brutal and a part of me was like don't reply to this, don't give that person the time of day, don't give them your energy. But then there was a part of me that I and this is the thing like this has taught me so much about things within myself that I probably still need to like work on if I'm going to have big visibility. I replied. Anyway, they replied this really long message that was even more nasty than the first one, if you could even believe it, and it kind of scared me. So when I read it I had like a. My nervous system was like oh, like this feels really unsafe. So I just blocked that person straight away because I was like that just doesn't feel good for me.

Speaker 1:

I had someone on TikTok put a comment on one of my posts and I replied just being like I don't even know. It wasn't even a really mean reply. I was just like okay, like obviously we disagree a little bit here, that's okay, best of luck. They replied with an actual video. So they made a video. So it said replied with a video. I clicked on it and it was their TV. So they must've been sitting in their lounge room and they were talking and they're like I've Googled your name and I know more about you than you even realize and it was scary as fuck. It was so creepy I was like. I was like like I don't know, it was weird. So I blocked that immediately as well. But these are just things that I've never experienced online before.

Speaker 1:

So one of my posts, the one that I was talking about, that's gone viral. As it stands right now, it has 637 000 views from one reel. It has 284 comments, a lot of which I've just I've kind of just let it go like I've just stopped looking at it. I've stopped. If I see a notification pop up from a comment on that post, I'm like I'm just not gonna read it, like people are having arguments on my post that I'm not even involved in, and I've since had a few other posts go viral. So the one that I posted after that, I think, has around 64,000 views, I think one I have before that has 195,000 views.

Speaker 1:

So a lot of views, a lot of DMs. I have had hundreds and hundreds of DMs, of people just honestly saying to me thank you so much for sharing that. You have put words to things that I wasn't able to put words to. You have made me feel more seen than I have in 15 years or 20 years, or you know, they're in the front line, they're in frontline roles as well, and it's been interesting to see how I felt. So, even with the responses that were positive, I felt kind of like overwhelmed, like hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of messages, some of them extremely long, like paragraphs and paragraphs from one person telling me their whole story and their whole journey, which I am so grateful for. The fact that someone or many, many people can feel safe expressing themselves to me after reading my post. It makes me feel like honored almost, but, like I said, so much hate, and it's funny because I had said like I'm so ready for this page to grow, I'm so ready to get my voice out there, I'm so ready to get my passion and my purpose and my mission out there, the thing that I care so deeply about and I was, I remember, kind of making that post because I haven't spoken about the police in around five years I left five years ago and it's not a topic that I really have spoken about online and I was like it's interesting that I was in the police, because it's an interesting experience in itself.

Speaker 1:

Obviously, you see a lot, you do a lot, you navigate a lot and I was like fuck, being in the police actually taught me so much about human behavior, about patterns, about self-sabotage, about beliefs, like I did learn a lot in my time in the police and I was like I'm going to share some of the key points that I learned being in the police, because not only did I learn about what I saw, I learned about human behavior through the culture of the police, which was my biggest shock when joining the police the culture, the systems I need to do. I would need to do a whole episode on it, but I did share that in my post of like what I learned about trauma, what I learned about self-sabotage not just from interaction with the jobs that I went to, but actually within the structures of the police and the leadership and all those different things. And I woke up the next day viral. It went viral. I was like whoa, okay, I wasn't expecting this.

Speaker 1:

Initially, my first feelings when people were leaving me hate comments was I thought it was kind of funny. Like I was like some of them were just someone just wrote to me, whore. And then someone was like dog, like they were pretty nasty. But then Dave and I were kind of reading them and then laughing at them and then looking at the people's profile and like their pictures. You know how people do that. Sometimes they like look at the hate comment and then look at the person who left it and it's like lol. But then two weeks of hate. Every time I went on my page there was another comment, a DM. I was getting DMs being like fuck you, you two-faced dog, you're a fucking bitch. I have never experienced that. Like I have never experienced that. And whilst I was like I'm fine, consciously I'm like I don't care, I was like I'm fine, consciously I'm like I don't care. I know on a subconscious level it started to impact my nervous system. I know, because I was like I didn't want to do another post. I was. Every time I clicked on the Built for Better page on my Instagram, I felt a sensation in my body that was like like it's almost like I would hold my breath because I was so scared of, like reading another hateful comment.

Speaker 1:

And there's an experiment I don't know if you guys have seen people do it, but there's an experiment where you can put rice, cooked rice, in a jar two jars right, and one jar. You speak to the rice really kindly, like you're amazing, you're so beautiful, you're so smart blah, blah, blah, blah. And the other rice? You're like I hate you, you're disgusting. And over time, the rice that you speak kindly to goes whiter and fluffier. This is an actual, real experiment, by the way, I'm not making this shit up. And then the other jar of rice that's been spoken to like shit goes brown and moldy in the same time. They're in the same jar, they're right near each other, right.

Speaker 1:

And there's experiments with plants as well, where you speak to plants with love. They grow, they flourish, all the different things and you speak to the same plant right next to it with hatred and that plant dies. And it's the same with humans. It does something to us. We are not meant to experience that much hatred towards us. We are not meant to read that much negativity about ourselves and I could feel it impacting me and I almost thought to myself I've asked for this visibility I was open to receiving. I had a conversation with myself every single morning. I would wake up, put my feet flat on the floor and I'd be like I'm open to receiving abundance, I'm open to visibility, I'm open to more, more impact. I'm open to my voice being bigger and more heard. Like I would have this conversation with myself, of me stepping into this new identity, of someone who was ready to hold more.

Speaker 1:

Because whilst I was changing my Instagram strategy, I was posting different content, styles of content, I was making it more personal, I was making it more storytelling, all the different things. The whole strategy was changing. At the same time, I was working on myself, on a subconscious level of what I can hold and what subconscious beliefs may be getting in my way, and I feel like the universe was like cool, okay, let's test you on this, let's see how much you actually want this. Let's see how well you can get through this, because this comes with the thing that you want. We say we want these amazing goals, but we forget that with the amazing thing that we want comes challenges comes hardship, whether it's more eyes, whether it's more hate, whether it's more judgment, whether it's more responsibility. Whatever it is, it's going to come with more, and we have to build a mindset and a subconscious belief system that allows us to carry the positive and hold the positive, which can sometimes be really hard for people to hold success, but also navigate the hardships, navigate the challenges.

Speaker 1:

I needed to learn how to not let those negative comments infiltrate my beliefs about myself and how I continued to show up. I needed to show myself that I knew how to regulate through that negativity and through that hate, and it has been a really cool learning opportunity for me. But I just think it's so interesting how we say yes, I'm open to this, and then it's like well, cool, you can have it, but can you overcome the challenges that come with it? Can you be the person that can still move forward even when there are barriers, blocks, hardships, hurdles, when it's not smooth sailing and it has been. It has been an interesting ride, one that I feel like I am still navigating and I don't have all, like I don't have all the answers to it.

Speaker 1:

I feel ride One that I feel like I am still navigating and I don't have all, like I don't have all the answers to it. I feel like the more that I show up now, the more I do, kind of in the back of my mind, think like how could someone turn this, how could someone manipulate this, into making something negative towards me? And I just have to stop doing that because the people that are pushing their hatred towards me it's a projection from themselves and consciously I know this right. So consciously we can know something and tell ourselves something. But if, subconsciously, there are still wounds there or there are still things we need to work through, it will still show up in your nervous system. Your body will still respond and that's what I'm recognizing about myself of like, oh okay, like these are things I still have to learn to navigate and I will learn to navigate them.

Speaker 1:

This is not going to stop me from speaking and it has taught me as well that I have left the police five years ago, not spoken about it, and what I've learned is that actually speaking about something that was a big part of my life, it shaped who, I am for sure. I moved states to join the police. My experience in the police ended in a way in which was quite dramatic, quite big, quite traumatic, and it shaped who I am as a person. It shaped the trajectory of my life and what I ultimately chose to go on to do and I feel like speaking about it is something that I will probably continue to do. I I say that with hesitation in my voice because I'm like it scares me, but it's kind of opened my eyes when I've received hundreds and hundreds of dms from all of these frontline workers. I've paramedics have been messaging me, people in the defense force have been messaging me and it's like I have experience in this job. I have experience actually being in this system and I also have experience understanding the mind, the brain, the nervous system, patterns, stress, trauma, healing all the different things.

Speaker 1:

And it's making me think about and this is just to update you guys on direction of business and things like that the direction of my business is staying the same, like the women that I want to help, the people that I want to help. I'm still going to be doing that. But it has opened my eyes and my mind to the possibility of like, where could I actually be doing more? Where could I be speaking up more and being a safe space for frontline workers. Where could I be intentionally offering services for frontline workers to work on their mindset, to have that safe space, to be able to navigate the stress that comes with a job like that and the internal things that can come up when you do a job like that? So it has opened my eyes to a lot of new things, but I would be lying if I said that the hate wasn't something. That was a curve ball, a new learning thing for me, and it did get to me at some point, like it did get to me at some point of where I was like, oof, okay, this is starting to not feel. This is starting to not feel very, very good.

Speaker 1:

Moving on from that in my life update, the next thing is my son, isaiah, who is 11 years old now which is wild has started NRL. So the reason this feels like a part of a life update is because I navigate a lot of anxiety around Isaiah and parenting Isaiah, and it's something that I actively and consciously have to work on each day. For those that don't know, isaiah got very, very, very sick around three years ago. We ended up in hospital for six months. Six months, sorry, six weeks or two months, it was around that range, and it wasn't just like we ended up in hospital.

Speaker 1:

It's like I actually thought I was going to lose my son, like at one point in my arms, all the alarms started going off in the room. He went completely limp and I thought in my mind that that was like that. Was it Like? It was the most trauma and I've been through some trauma in my life that I have ever, ever, ever experienced and lived through in my life the most pain, like excruciating pain of like I wanted to take this hurt off of him. No answers. We were in hospital for weeks and weeks and weeks when they didn't know what was wrong with him. He was getting worse. It was just an absolute, fucking living nightmare, and one that I have not recovered from.

Speaker 1:

And I don't believe in the concept of fully healed, because I just think no one is fully healed. I believe in the concept of healing and improving ourselves and bettering ourselves and learning to live with what we went through so that it doesn't limit us and hurt us. And our life isn't created from pain. It's created from authenticity, from being empowered, from being who we want to be. But I don't believe we are fully healed and I believe that our experiences we don't just get rid of them, they live with us.

Speaker 1:

And this has been a really tough one for me to navigate with Isaiah because from that experience with him, he now has a disease that will live with him for the rest of his life, called primary sclerosing cholangitis. It is liver disease. It's not something that has a cure and there's a lot of unknowns with it. He goes to hospital every three to six months and we do tests blood tests, ultrasounds, all the different things, sometimes MRIs, different tests, mrcp, which is like a more detailed MRI. He has severe procedural anxiety because his experience in the hospital is really shit. So even like the thought of going to get a blood test for him is basically like throwing him in the ocean with sharks and saying have fun, like it, it panics him. So we're still navigating so much with that, and not to mention that it is a lifelong disease. It is something that we have to be mindful of.

Speaker 1:

He takes medication every day and if you had seen him when he was first initially sick, it was terrifying. He lost so much weight, so much weight. He was already a tiny, skinny kid, so his bones were sticking out, his spine was visible. His knees looked so big compared to his skinny little legs. It was confronting. It was hard to see. His skin was yellow and gaunt. His eyes were sunken.

Speaker 1:

This was my baby, my eight-year-old son that I had to see like this. I remember my sister flew up too. We took him out of hospital for the day and he had a wheelchair because he didn't have any energy just to take him to Seaworld to give him a bit of joy with his cousins, a bit of happiness in this, in this dark time. And when my sister saw him I could see in her face like she looked at him and it, it it took her back, like it took her breath away seeing him look the way that he did. And cause I had been with him the whole time, I knew he looked sick, like I knew it wasn't good, but because I had been with him and it had been like you know what I mean, like I hadn't seen it where she'd seen him healthy and then seen him like this. So it was like a really, she said. She said to me later which she couldn't say at the time because I was obviously struggling myself. She said it was really, really confronting for her to see him like that. So it was hard and it's been three years since then.

Speaker 1:

He still has this disease. We still manage it as best we can. It's scary, it's hard, it's heartbreaking, but for the most part, my role in his life is to allow him and show him that he is not his sickness. This is not his identity. He can live a normal life and he can do normal things. So that is not his identity. He can live a normal life and he can do normal things. So that's what we've been doing.

Speaker 1:

And then he's like mum, I want to play NRL. And my fucking stomach dropped and I was like, for fuck's sake, really, do we have to like, do we have to go down this path? Like he's tiny, he's a tiny little boy. Like he's smaller than kids, his age, which his disease can also um impact his growth and puberty and all those different things. So now that's something we also have to keep an eye on. But he's tiny, he's a tiny kid. Oh Lord, guys, like it is just so much for my nervous system. We took him to his first training and his first time getting tackled was so big he got slammed on the ground. He hit his head on the ground and I was like, oh Jesus, and Dave's like he's fine. He's fine, like it's okay, and Dave's trying to like, bring a short bit, this should be a fun time. Yeah, like watching your kid play sport and me I'm like he was doing tennis before this. Tennis tennis, very chill, very chill vibes. This was not chill vibes.

Speaker 1:

So it's been, it's been, it's been a thing for me of just learning to regulate myself, learning to not let my anxiety and fear dictate how he lives his life, not saying no to him that he can't try something because he's unwell, but also then trying to make good decisions for him as his parent and and protect him as much I can, but not protect him in a way that it limits his life. Anyways, the first weekend of him playing, they're like they usually just do one game on a Saturday. They're like, oh, this weekend is actually a carnival where we do five games in the one day, versing teams from like all over Queensland. I'm like I'm sorry, what? Sorry, excuse me, oh fuck. So we took him to that and I was literally like the whole day. I'm like just panicked. I mean like I still enjoy myself, but it's just been interesting to to navigate. So he's doing that. Now we're getting through it.

Speaker 1:

I I had severe health anxiety after I got sick, even with myself, like this is something that I'm so glad to say I'm I really, really worked on and I'm feeling so, so, so, so, so much better, with like a billion better. But my health anxiety with my kids and with myself was huge. Like I'd get a tiny little rash and I'd be like am I dying? Am I dying? Is that death? Like, is death knocking on my door? Like I would literally freak out, like, and anytime I'd be like mum, I'm really tired. I'd be like like I'd feel a panic, like when I tell you so.

Speaker 1:

When he got really, really initially we took him to the hospital and back and forth and got sent home lots of times. It's a whole other story, but he would wake up screaming in the night like this horrible, horrible, painful cry. And now, when I hear him cry or even sometimes he's fake crying, playing with his sister, my body literally, like it literally goes into a panic, like it's wild. Our nervous system is wild. Trauma is wild. This is why I'm so obsessed with helping people, because I do believe, like, with patience and with compassion and with actually facing it and feeling what we need to feel and navigating what we need to navigate. We can go on to allow our lives to live and move forward without the trauma being the thing that is dictating and controlling our life. But it has been a challenge and, with new things as Isaiah grows and new things he wants to try, has been a challenge and with new things as Isaiah grows and new things he wants to try, it it's been a fucking journey.

Speaker 1:

The next thing I wanted to talk about is just business in general. I, the last 12 months prior to this last maybe two months, I really pulled back because I was like things weren't just things weren't feeling how I wanted them to feel. Majority of my business was from my masterminds, my big business mastermind, which I decided to let go of because which is funny because they were making me the most money. People think like I've had people call me selfish and like that I just care about money sometimes in my business, like that's actually happened to me. And it's funny because majority of the decisions that I've made are so aligned with the direction that I want to go and usually come with me losing lots of money in the process, like I sometimes wish I was more money focused, so that I made more decisions that were based on money and not based on like alignment, because maybe I'd be a millionaire by now.

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But I just can't live like that, like I need to make decisions that are in alignment with the impact that I want to have on the world, and it's just really important to me. So I let go of my masterminds, I let go of the need to have money coming in from them in order for me to really connect back to myself and what I want to be doing and who I want to be helping and how I want to be impacting people, which is when Built for Better was born and it just really felt like I pulled back a lot to be able to launch forward. Pulled back on what I was selling, how much I was selling, how many one-on-one clients I was working with, like really pulled back. And there's a saying where it's like you have to pull back the arrow to be able to launch it forward. That's what I felt like I was doing. And then this last two months, I've been really, really ready to do the launch forward, like I've been really ready. I'm I feel clear, I feel grounded. I feel like I've really connected to my values in my business. I feel really ready to build, built for better, to really pour into my academy, which I've been doing. There's like 40 plus lessons in there now.

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There's around 14 girls currently in our community and they chat in the community space and I really want to nurture those girls. I really want this to be a long-term space that they can really really settle and stay for. Like you know, the minimum amount of time is three months, but I really want these girls to be and women to be able to stay for, you know, a year, two years. I want this to be their space. I want this to be their grounded space where they can come and grow and heal and be held accountable and fucking take action and fully send it. And you know, when you're supported by other women, when you're supported by somebody like me who genuinely gives a shit about you, when you, when you're supported by someone like me who can understand your trauma and your belief and your patterns and see your potential before you can even see it, your blind spots are going to be revealed to you with love, but also sometimes with a gentle kick up the ass and you are going to succeed and that takes time.

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Change, real change, rewiring your brain and your mind and your nervous system and all the fucking things. It takes time and I want to create a really safe, amazing, incredible community where that can happen and where people feel genuinely supported. So I've been pouring into that, creating as much as I can for the Academy, and I've been truly having conversations with whatever I don't even know, like who it is. Is it the universe? Is it myself? I'm not really sure. I do believe there is a higher power than just me. Like, I do believe that, and every single morning for the last two months I've been having that conversation with myself of like you are ready to receive, you are open to receiving which is funny because my thing went viral and all the different things.

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There's so much that has happened since that moment in my life personal life, but also in my business. I feel like when you are ready and when you're in an energetic match for what you want, you will receive. So long as you are open to receiving, so long as you are doing the internal work to be open to receiving. I've had so many one-to-one inquiries lately. I've had so many conversations in my DM with incredible people who do want to join the academy. And if you're on the fence, like I, highly encourage you to do so, because this space is just going to continue to get better and continue to grow and I feel like to be a part of that, not just to join it, when it's like been going for years and years to be a part of the growth. To be there in those earlier days, I think, is just really, really special, because I do envision this having 100, 150 people in it and how cool to be a part of it when there's 15 of us you know what I mean when it's really really like tight and connected and special, and you know what I mean.

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So things have just been moving and the point that I kind of want to make on that is you have to be the one that is fully, fully ready. You can say, yeah, I really want X, y, z to occur, I really want to achieve my goals, but have you done the internal work to be able to fully receive it? Have you done the nervous system work and the brain, like rewiring your brain and your belief systems and your pattern? Have you done the work to be a match for what it is that you want to call in. Because if you say consciously you want something but subconsciously you believe something completely different or your trauma has caused you to believe something really different, you will not have the things that you want to have. You will continue to block yourself, you will continue to self-sabotage and I'm so grateful that I've been able to really do that work, to be like I'm ready to call in this now and it's like the universe has listened and some of it has been really fucking uncomfortable. Some of it has been really uncomfortable Even having conversations with people who want to do one-on-one coaching with me, where I'm like I just don't feel like that will be the best fit because I'm not just going to work with anybody Like I want to work with people that I feel mega, mega aligned to. One-on-one coaching with me is like I'm really letting you in and you're really letting me in, and to really make this relationship work and this mentorship be successful, it has to be super, super aligned. So even having those uncomfortable conversations being, you know, going viral, being viral, whatever you want to fucking call it, which is so weird, it's such a weird thing to say, but bringing in the good with that and the hundreds of people that are messaging me that I've impacted them positively. But having to hold all of the people that are nasty and horrible and hurt wounded people, pouring that projection onto me and having to hold that, has been really, really challenging. And the last little thing I guess for a life update is just event planning.

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So, alongside the Academy growth and pouring into that, I had hosted, launched my event. The crazy thing about this. Okay, so I hosted my first Built for Better event last month Was it last month? I don't even know fucking dates anymore? The other month and I sold 11 tickets. The price of that was I think everyone paid $122 to come to. Other month and I sold 11 tickets. The price of that was I think everyone paid $122 to come to that event. It was my first event. I wanted to price it accordingly. The location was very like, it was very cute and it was in a rainforest and like all the different things, but it was a lower cost venue, all the different things, and I was so incredibly grateful for those 11 people. I was over the moon. I was like this is the fucking best, like it was just such an incredibly magical, amazing day. It was better than I expected, better than I envisioned. It was absolutely fucking beautiful and I had launched my next event, which is going to be my first ever interstate event.

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I am traveling interstate to host an event which just blows my mind, to be able to say that out loud. I honestly, truly cannot fucking believe that. And we have sold 16 tickets and we have 17 tickets available. So that is quite literally insane. We have one ticket left, 16 tickets sold and everyone that is coming either paid the VIP price, which is $400, or the waitlist general price, which was $430. Or I've had people purchase just after I've released to the public, which was $470. And the venue. So I've up-leveled everything. That's why the tickets cost so much more than $122. I have up-leveled the venue is insane. It is fully, fully catered. The whole experience is just going to be a absolute up level of the first. I have lots of people coming that came to the first one. I have new people that I've worked with one-to-one. I have new people that I've never worked with coming. I just literally my mind is blown by this. If you want that last ticket, like, please grab it, snatch it up. It is going to be the best fucking money that you ever spend, because in that seven hour day you are going to grow so much as a person, more than probably a three, six month or twelve month online experience, because in person is just like unmatched.

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I feel so ready to host this. I feel so. With my first one, I was extremely nervous. I had a lot coming up for me beforehand. I didn't sleep, I was worried, like it was. It was a lot, and I was sick afterwards because my body probably was just like well, that was a lot to hold and handle and you were completely dysregulated for the week leading up. I feel so calm, I feel so excited, I feel so ready to facilitate the most incredible life-changing workshops. Like I'm like, fucking bring it. Like I'm ready for this. 16 incredible women already paid to be in the room.

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One more left it is in Melbourne. It is on the 8th of November. Fuck, I should probably check this shit. Look at me, go running a business. And I'm just like how have I done this for the last few years? So it is 8th of November, I'm pretty sure. If not, I'll put the link in the show notes so you can double check. But there's only one ticket left, so one person listening to this could go get that ticket. There is payment plan available. So if you want to do payment plan, you can do payment plan. But I just feel so excited by these events, like I just love them so much and I just I just feel it in my bones like that I'm going to continue to run these events and like women's lives are going to be changed forever after they come to them and I just think that that is really fucking exciting.

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And the other thing as well which would be a bit of an update is the Academy. I am introducing another tier, so what that tier is going to be. At the moment it's $220 a month, which, for what you get, is just so, so cool. But you get three community calls per month, two mindset focused calls per month and one business call per month. So for the ladies who join, who are entrepreneurs, coaches or want to start a business, we have a monthly call in there where you can come and it's all about business and you know we do workshops and all the different things.

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You get every single resource lesson in the educational portal and, like I said, there's about 40 of them. You also get the community forum which, like I said, the ladies in there are just chatting to each other, celebrating reflections, questions. I'm in there to answer everything, read everything, all the things. It's very high touch for the price. And high touch just means like you get a lot from of me and I give a lot. Because this is going to be my main space that I'm building.

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I am introducing another tier where it's like if you don't want the community forum, you don't want the community calls, the three per month you just want the educational portal, all the resources and everything like that. You can now access that and it will only be $25 per week, which is wild. So every single course, every single lesson, every single resource is yours immediately. As soon as you sign up, you get access to all of it. And then, whilst you're in there, every single new course, lesson, resource that is uploaded, you get immediate access to. So you don't get coaching by me, you don't get community, you don't get the live community calls or anything like that, which are like a whole vibe, but you still get. You still get so much and it's $25 a week, like that's like you would spend more on coffee a week. You know what I mean. And this is like to change your fucking life. Although coffee can feel life-changing, this is like more life-changing than coffee. So that's kind of what's happening.

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There is some other stuff happening with Dave. So at the start of the year he applied for a job and the application process is one year long. So he has passed through five stages of that, now passed them, which, like he has blown my mind with how he has navigated this and handled this, and I've just been blown away by him. I think there's another three stages to go until we find out, but that, if he gets into, that will be quite life-changing for us as a family because there will be big decisions that we need to make and a lot of life changes that could come with that. So that's all happening as well. Our lease ends in October, so we're going to have to move house, deciding what we're going to do with that and the plans with that. So lots happening behind the scenes. The kids are playing sport.

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My business is fucking moving at the speed of light at the moment, which is so fun and so wild and so crazy, and I'm so fucking ready to hold it all. If you do want one-on-one coaching with me, now is the time, because I feel like my books are going to fill up because I don't like to take on a lot of one-to-one clients at any one time. So if you want that, like DM me, like send me a message on Instagram and I'll send you the application. It is application only, so you do have to apply, but that is like like we are fucking working in one-to-one and that's about it.

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I hope you guys enjoyed this podcast. I'm excited to hear from you. Can you please message me after you listen to this? If you listen, and just let me know if you enjoyed the update, if you thought it was cool, because otherwise I'm just talking into the abyss and I have no fucking idea if anyone enjoys it, if you even want to hear about my live update, but um, if you do, here you go and that is all. I hope you are all well. I love you all so much for being here and I will see you in the next one.