Tiny Acts of Love That Grew My Business

Summer of Love + Profits Start Soon!

July 10, 11 & 12 — 3-day live immersion with business training, workshops, group coaching, and real community.

 Get Your Ticket 🎟️  brendaturner.com/summer

What does it actually mean to grow your business with love — and how do you do it practically? In this episode, Brenda shares the personal journey that completely changed how she runs her business, and the simple but powerful shifts that followed.

• From source to surrender
  How being "the source" of your business creates burnout 
• If it's not a HELL yes, it's a no
  This is a tiny act of love we can use to keep our minds clear
• Staying out of the inbox
  Is one of the most loving (and profitable) things I've done for my business

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Well, hello there, you glitter-covered alien. Thank you so much for being with me today as we embark on the journey of helping you to grow your business with the power of love. This is the whole summer's theme. At Brendaturner.com, the theme this summer is love and profits. This is the summer of love and profits. And we kicked off the summer of love and profits yesterday with our free training called Let Love Grow Your Profits. I'm going to be giving you a little recap because I'm not posting a replay of that, but I'm also going to be inviting you, just heads up, the three-day immersion happening July 10th, 11th, and 12th. The tickets are now for sale at Brendaturner.com/slash summer. So that three-day event is going to be an immersion with business training, partnered work, interactive workshops, all in a space of beautiful business owners who can support you and share stories and network with you while I'm coaching you. There's going to be coaching as well. And it's going to be a deep, immersive, transformative experience that you're going to love. So I hope you join us for the three-day live immersion. Somebody asked yesterday, is this a sales event? And I said, absolutely not. So I love that question. It didn't even occur to me to like, didn't even occur to me to like say that. Yesterday I was just letting everybody know about this invitation. But somebody asked, is this a sales event? Is this just one giant sales event? And no, it's absolutely not a giant sales event. This is an actual immersion that I've created for business owners like you, ready to grow your business with the power of love. So in today's episode, I wanted to talk about my own journey with how I came upon this whole framework. I'm going to share with you a couple things that I do some best practices in my own business and kind of the power of love and what I actually mean when I say grow your business with the power of love. And so the first half of my business, like I talked about in the last podcast, was not built by love. The first half of my business, I was a source of my business. And when you're the source of your business, that means everything falls on you. That means you're the source of the money. That means you're the source of all the stuff that needs to get done. You're the bottleneck in the business, but you're the the key, the idea is that you're the key source of the whole thing. And that is very stressful. If you're the source of your business, you're the you're also kind of wearing all of the heaviness of all that, all that responsibility, all that stuff that gets put on your shoulders. The second half of my business, after I had my awakening and I had a walkabout, and I learned a lot about the Course in Miracles. I study, I'm a student and a teacher of a course in miracles. That was something that I did throughout the journey and also ever since. So I've been a student and teacher of a course in miracles for about 10 years now. And um, what I learned is from the Course in Miracles, for those of you who don't know, it's just this giant book that talks all about how to use love to heal your life. And it really did. It healed every area of my life. And I was thinking, if I actually am going to go back to online business after I took my walk about, and I was not sure if I was gonna start YouTube again. Um, and I thought I don't want to go back to the way that I was doing it. And truth be told, I thought that was the only way when I was doing it, you know, to be staying up until sometimes six in the morning. That's not hyperbolic. I stayed up sometimes till six in the morning. I'd sometimes spend all day filming videos. I would start at like 12 p.m. I'd finish at 8 p.m. I'd pop the stuff in my laptop and start editing. And then I was doing everything else. I had one assistant answering customer emails, and I was doing everything else. Um, that's not very loving. So I was stressed to the max, I was overwhelmed, and I wasn't enjoying the business, and I wasn't fully expressed. So I, as a source of my business, uh when I put myself as a source, when when business owners put ourselves as a source of the business, that gives nothing, that gives nothing except for the mind to run the business and your stress to run the business. And so I had thoughts like nobody wants to hear anything except for health and fitness from the lean secrets chick. Nobody wants to hear me talk about bigger ideas. I'm just gonna stay in my lane. And all the while I was wanting to create something totally different for years. So I was stressed, overworked, not fully expressed, not really showing the world who I, who and what I really am, not really offering my best and most powerful solutions, something like this, I would have never talked about. Here's how you grow your business with the power of love or what I would never have thought to put all this stuff together or or anything else, really, besides health and fitness stuff. But when I made love the source of my business, when I came back to all of the online business marketing stuff, doing YouTube, promoting stuff with live events and all of that, I thought maybe I can apply the Course in Miracles to my business. Maybe that would be something that would help me to enjoy the business process. Because up to that point, I was like, I don't know. I just, I just loved wandering around Austin, going around Town Lake, getting on my paddle board, being completely and totally just floating around the world. You know, I was just kind of floating, not sure what was gonna happen next. And then I got this insight, this little tap on my shoulder, it's time to get back to work. And I was like, well, I don't want to. I really don't want to because I was in my mind, I was like, I don't want to go back to the all that the way that it was. I don't want to stay up till six in the morning. I don't want to talk about stuff that I don't want to talk about. I don't want to, da-da-da. I was just like, I didn't want to do it. And then I thought, wait a minute, maybe I could do it with love. Maybe I can apply the Course in Miracles. Later that same day, I was in a conversation with somebody about Whole Foods. The original Whole Foods is here in Austin. If you haven't been, you got to come to Austin, go to the original Whole Foods. It is amazing. But somebody was mentioning, oh yeah, that originator of Whole Foods actually is a student of a Course in Miracles. Have you heard of it? And I was like, no, stop it. And they were looking at me like I was an ale, and I'm like, what did you just say? This was the same day that I had that insight where I'm like, I wonder if I can use a Course in Miracles in my business. And then I here I am sitting across from a friend of mine, acquaintance of mine more, and they were talking about, oh yeah, yeah. He's a he's a student and a teacher of something called a Course in Miracles. I was blown away. It was like the biggest god wink, such a god wink. And I thought, okay, message received. If that's not a sign, I don't know what it is. If it worked for the Whole Foods guy, it can certainly work for this little Chicago girl. So then I started doing that. And I thought I thought, okay, what would that look like to have a business built completely on love? And that's more or less what I've been doing since I came back these past many years. And so what I found is not only can your business be built on love and thrive, when you build your business on love, it's it's profitable, it grows, and you enjoy it. Hallelujah. Who would have thought? It's a source of love and joy in your life. Whereas before, how I experienced business was it's just this big giant boulder I had to push up a mountaintop and it was exhausting and it didn't feel great. And there were parts of it I did enjoy. And there are parts of many business owners, they have parts of their business they enjoy. But on a whole, the business is kind of a a source of overwhelming stress, and not the good kind of stress, because I do have good stress with my business. I experience good stress. I think there's sometimes it's it's very healthy for us to get these little tinctures of stress. There was a little bit of healthy stress with things like the live event that I did yesterday. And I'm in love with that little rush of exhilaration of, oh my God, I'm gonna put together an event and there's gonna be people there and it's gonna be awesome. And that's good. But I'm talking about the unhealthy stress that makes you feel kind of sick and that can create health issues and it can create a lack of profits and a lack of growth and all that stuff. So, what I found was, like I said, when I applied love to my business, it grew. And not only did it grow, it was a source of love, and it is a source of love in my life. And it makes me healthier and it brings me joy and it makes me feel full and full of myself and full of all that's good. And it um, it's reflected in the products that I put out there in the videos. I love the video so much and all that stuff. And so I don't want to just um just give you concepts here. I want to just talk a little bit about some of the things that I do that look different now in my business. There's so much that we're gonna cover in the three-day immersion. So you should join us at Brendaturner.com slash summer in my immersion, where we're gonna dive deeply into business training that's built on love. Um, but the first thing I want to just mention is my business is built 100% on love. So this is kind of the devotion. And what this kind of what I kind of mean by this is if it's not a yes, it's a no. And that's the most loving thing that we can do as business owners because that gets us out of our head and into our heart and our body. So it's either a yes or no. This keeps us out of that analysis, paralysis, hyperlogical, overthinking, procrastination situation that really blocks our profits. So I'm constantly getting ideas for things that I could be doing. If it's not a yes, then it's a no. It's really helpful for me to use this loving boundary with my business. If I'm offering a product or service and it's not a yes, it's a no. If I'm doing a video or kind of video, and it starts to feel like not a yes, then it's a no. So anything that's not a yes is a no. We can apply this down the line. We can take a look at your daily operations. There was a beautiful member in the um free workshop yesterday who was saying how she doesn't enjoy copywriting. And she's like, uh, there are parts of this thing that I enjoy. I really enjoy the delivery. A lot of business owners, we really enjoy our area of genius. And the hints that I'm gonna give you here, and we're gonna talk a little bit about at the immersion, probably a lot about at the immersion, is we do we actually shouldn't really be doing things that we're not in love with. And the area of genius that most of us have is gonna be in the delivery part, doing what you're actually good at. So if you don't really love copywriting, for instance, you can just simply delegate that. You can stop doing anything that's not a yes. You can go down the line and say, I really don't like the tech stuff. There was another beautiful um attendee who shared she was kind of bogged down by the idea of learning a whole new tech stack. And that's an example of I personally, I feel that it's valuable for us to learn the tech stack, but I also want to offer if it's holding you back to the point where you're you're not flourishing and you know that you probably could grow your business a lot faster if you took on something like, for instance, circle.so, but you just feel like complete and total shutdown at the idea of doing that, you can hire that out as well. And you'd be surprised at the pricing of some people will um, some some freelancers would be willing to do that for a couple hundred bucks to just set up a circle situation. But anyway, long story short, for this first little pointer is if it's not a yes, it's a no, and I apply this down the line in my business. Are there gonna be some diapers that we need to change sometimes? And we don't love to change the diapers. Of course. You know, that's not what I mean. I'm not talking about there's probably gonna be some times where all of us business owners are doing a couple things here and there that we don't really love, and that's fine. There's no getting around the fact that when you have a child, you're gonna have to change some diapers. I said that in the last episode, and that's the best analogy I can come up with. But I'm talking about your day-to-day, everyday systems of operations and what you do with your time and all that stuff. If it's not a yes, it's a no. Get it out of there. Okay. Take no prisoner, hold no hold, no holds bar. If it's not a yes, it's a no. Okay, the next point that I wanted to offer, I have this long list here, and there's no way that I could cover all of them. Um I I wrote down a list before I started this podcast, and it ended up being three, three pages long. So um I'm just gonna go ahead and let the Divine Beloved guide my way on the next point. And I'm looking at this one saying, I have a YouTube channel. I have a YouTube channel, but that points to the fact that my business is built on love. So I still have a YouTube channel like I did before. But my YouTube channel, if I'm being honest with you, I absolutely love the creative process. And that YouTube channel that I have, and thank you for subscribing to my YouTube channel. But the YouTube channel isn't just about promoting my stuff, and it's not just about customers and all that. Our YouTube channel can actually be a channel of love. So, this is a way for us as business owners to connect with our work and to share our work with the world. So the YouTube channel that I have, and why I am a huge fan of YouTube and why I teach about YouTube in seasons of my business, is because I feel that it is the most generous and loving thing we can do as business owners for ourselves if we're called to get our stuff out into the world. There are some beautiful clients of mine that are um doing some big work in the world. Um, I have a client who is a therapist who is an evangelist for, hey, you're not broken. Mental health issues, they don't, they don't really, you're not really broken. You don't really have depression, you know, you don't really have anxiety. Here's what's actually happening. She's she's got this huge message and she's getting it out there in the world on YouTube. And I I feel that she was she would be completely stifled if she didn't have some outlet to share her big ideas. Her videos are very important. I have tons of clients like that, all kinds of clients that are getting their work out there into the world. This is an act of love that we can give for ourselves. Um, the the immersion is gonna talk a lot about promotion, and we're gonna mention YouTube and we're gonna cover how to create great content. But if it's based in love, your content really does flourish. Whatever content you create, whether it's a podcast, a newsletter, your YouTube videos, whatever, if you base your business in love, the result is always gonna be such a great result. And that means every ounce of it, every every corner of it must be built with love. So there's some technical stuff in there as well. Technical stuff meaning if you're gonna promote your stuff with, for instance, YouTube, it's a really good idea to make sure that the packaging is good so that people don't miss it. But let's go to the next point. I don't check emails. This kind of goes back to the yeses and the no's. I haven't checked emails in a really long time. I haven't opened the inbox for my company in a really long time. I don't check emails because I don't enjoy checking emails. It's probably one of my least favorite things to do is to look at the email inbox. When you're a business owner, if you open that email inbox and it gets you all scattered and out of your area of genius, your zone of genius, you you've got this like bar, these bars of energy. And every time that we check the inbox as business owners and we see the little problems that need to be solved or the customer complaints or whatever kind of um the fan mail that isn't such such loving fan mail, you know, there's always gonna be some goodies in the inbox. I don't check the emails because I don't want to lose those energy bars. That's not my area of genius, and it drains me to get in the inbox. So what I do is I tell my assistant, please forward me anything that that might be really important, really important that you really need my help with. And any appointment stuff, like maybe forward that to me. But everything else, I don't check email. Next thing I wanted to share with you is I surrender. Um, I surrender to the outcomes. In the Bhagavad Gita, they talk about releasing the expectation of the fruits. And this was another paradigm that when I came back to online business, the second half of my business, when I was figuring out how do I do this with love? How do I actually do this and not make myself sick with autoimmune issues? Um, I was reading also, and I do read the Bhagavad Gita is another sacred scripture that really guides my way. And that concept of let go of the fruits. Don't worry about the fruits. The fruits of the fruits are none of your business, really. It was so liberating and so freeing because most of us, business owners and myself included, we are very outcome driven. We're very goal-oriented, we're very accomplished, kind of. We want to have these accomplishments, and that's very important. I'm all for that stuff. But the primary, um, the primary kind of stance I take with it is I'm surrendered. I have the targets that I set for my business. I do set profit targets, I do set goals and metrics, I really do. But those targets are little um kind of pointers to how I'm doing on the path in terms of am I in the right direction? You know, if I if I offer something and I have a profit target, the profit target is nothing more than a little pointer to how I'm doing, but it's not the key aim. It's not my primary focus. It's not, I'm not so worried about let's let's just make it very clear. Profits are important. We're gonna grow our profits, but we can't, we can't hold on to the profit targets like a dog holding onto a bone. If we make love the center of our business and we say, I'm completely and totally devoted to giving the most loving offering I possibly can, here's my here's my profit target for it, by the way. But the actual fruit of the thing is just the journey in and of itself. The fruits of the thing for me, this was a huge shift for me. If love is the source of my business, and the fruits are none of my business, and the fruits are are not the main reason I'm doing it, my goodness, that changes the whole thing. If I'm just doing this just to do it, for no other reason than I want to experience joy and peace and love. I'm not doing things I don't enjoy that are not a yes for me. I'm kind of free and I kind of beat the game. You know, I've started the game already winning. Now the profits and all that stuff, they're a measurement, they're a byproduct, they're a metric, they're a nice little clue. Um, they can't help to guide our business, but the business is a reward in and of itself when it's built with love. So I surrender to the outcomes. I completely let go of the outcomes. The outcomes are a nice little pointer, one last time, but they're not the key reason I'm doing the thing. You will be at a huge advantage in your market if you're doing the thing to be devoted to love. Because I'm just speaking from personal experience, money is not a huge driver for me. And it's not a huge driver for most of the business owners that I know. Not really. See, a lot of people say they want to make millions of dollars, but they don't really want to make millions of dollars. You can see you can see by their outcomes. A lot of people also say they want to make, you know, high seven figure or high six figures or whatever. They don't really want to do that because if they did want it, they would already have it. But here's the mind trick. So the money is great. And of course, all of us want to have lots of lots more money in our bank account. But that's not our primary driver. And if we point to that prime to that outcome of, I want a high, high six-figure, maybe even seven-figure business, you're pointing to that outcome. And that's your main driver. But that's not really truly what you care about, not deep down. You can't make yourself care about the money. I uh to to be clear, I love money. To be clear, I love the profits, to be clear, money is really important and nice for us to have in this time and space realm. So I'm not saying, you know, forget all about the money. But what I'm saying is because we can't I can't force myself to look at a to look at a goal on a piece of paper that says make $1 million this year, I cannot force myself. Force myself to care about that. It's never been, it didn't, it never has worked for me that way. When I write down my profit targets, those are nice little metrics that I use to keep my business on track, but that's not my key motivator. That's not my key driver. And in the first half of my business, I tried really hard to care about money. And I really did create those profit targets for myself. And I would look at these numbers and I was pushing for the numbers. And it just didn't really light me up, truth be told. Um, so so anyway, this was all kind of based off of surrender, but the money thing, the the money thing, when it comes to building your building your profits with love, funny enough, profits flow in when you're not focused on the profits as the primary motivator in your business. One last time, I'm gonna say it one last time. Most of the business owners I encounter, when they actually when we really dig just like two centimeters under the soil, and it's like, what's the actual motivator here? Almost zero percent of the business owners I've encountered are like really lit up by the idea of um, you know, a $1 million month or something. You know, it also brings us joy to the idea of having so much money, we don't have to worry about money. That's always a nice idea. But writing down some arbitrary number on a piece of paper just isn't motivating for most of us business owners. Most of us business owners who are in my world, we're so far past that kind of um, it's just very arbitrary. Just picking a random number and saying, okay, once I hit this number, then I'll be happy. Most of us already know that's not going to move us. So, anyway, if you're running this race for no other reason than you want to run the race, you've already beat the whole game. And if you follow your yeses and you let love guide your way, your business will grow and the profits will reflect the fact that you're in this thing because you love it and you're only doing things that you love, and you're only doing things that really express love through you, meaning you're in your area and zone of genius. You're doing the things that you've been put here to do. You're doing the things that you're really good at, and you're letting go of everything that's not a yes. And you're not overthinking it. You're not doubting yourself. You're not saying, I don't know if they're gonna like to hear this from me. You're following that heart-led, soul-led, full-on, full body gives you chills. Yes, this is a great idea. You let that guide your way instead of the overthinking mind. There is practical and tangible tools and frameworks that I am gonna be teaching at the three-day immersion. So it's not as though we're just gonna totally feel our way through it. There is some structure that is involved. And so I'm really excited to teach you about that structured kind of the business training that I'm gonna be offering. So the three days is going to involve me teaching you about love-based business setup, the whole structure of your business, making it something that really honors you. We're also gonna be talking about love-based promotion. So that's gonna be your content and your emails and all of that stuff, how people find out about what you have to sell. And then lastly, we're gonna be talking about love-based delivery. This is how you show up in your business, what kind of formats you deliver to your clients, to your customers, what really lights you up, you know, what kind of business model you might want to employ into your business. We're also gonna be doing so much inner work, um, partnered work, group work. It's like one last time, it's like a summer camp, meets a retreat, meets a business training, and you won't want to miss it. So you can join us at brendaturner.com slash summer. When the tickets sell out, they're gonna be sold out and there is limited seats. So you're getting early access. I haven't taken this to my YouTube channel yet, but I'm pretty confident that when I do announce it to the YouTube channel, that um the tickets will be gone. So if you haven't gotten your tickets yet, you can feel free to join us at Brendaturner.comslash summer. Thank you so much for your time today. It's been lovely hanging with you. I will see you in the next episode.