From Freelancer to Founder: Uncertainty, Courage, and Business Growth, with Annett Forcier

What do you do when there is no clear path forward?

In this episode of Unapologetic Leadership, Cory Dunham sits down with entrepreneur, email marketing expert, and business owner Annett Forcier, Founder of EmailBoutique.io, to discuss the realities of building a business, embracing uncertainty, and creating opportunities where none seem to exist.

About Annett Forcier

Annett shares her journey from freelancer to founder, the lessons she's learned about leadership, client relationships, AI, productivity, and business growth, and why some of the most important breakthroughs happen when you're willing to step outside your comfort zone. From navigating risk and learning through failure to building trust, creating systems, and developing resilience, this conversation is packed with practical insights for entrepreneurs, leaders, and anyone building something meaningful.

With more than a decade of experience in email design and development, Annett specializes in custom email design systems, modular templates, and scalable email infrastructure for growing brands. As the founder of EmailBoutique.io and recipient of the Litmus Email First Innovator Award, she helps organizations move beyond fragile, one-off email builds to sustainable systems that improve efficiency, consistency, accessibility, and performance.

Known for her candid, no-fluff approach to leadership, boundaries, and business ownership, Annett also shares valuable perspectives on building a company on your own terms while navigating the worlds of technology, consulting, and creative work.

If you've ever felt uncertain about your next step, struggled with growth, or wondered how successful entrepreneurs keep moving forward despite the unknown, this episode will remind you that confidence doesn't come before action.

It comes from taking the next step anyway.

Connect with Annett Forcier

Website: https://emailboutique.io
Email: welcome@emailboutique.io
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/emailboutique/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/annettforcier/

Because leadership isn't about having all the answers.

It's about having the courage to keep moving forward when you don't.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to Unapologetic Leadership. If you felt stressed, overwhelmed, wrestling with the imposter syndrome, wondering if you're just not good enough, then this podcast is for you. So here's your host, Corey Dunham.

SPEAKER_01 0:21

Welcome to this episode of Upologetic Leadership, where I have Annette Forcier, who is the founder and managing director of email boutique Digital Inc. Welcome, Annette.

SPEAKER_04 0:34

Thank you so much, Corey, for having me.

SPEAKER_01 0:36

It's a pleasure. I appreciate that. My apologies for interrupting.

SPEAKER_05 0:46

That's why I love recording. You can always delete it.

SPEAKER_01 0:49

Right, right. Well, we're not going to delete this. This is like going 100%. It's perfect already. We've named it. Oh, I see.

SPEAKER_05 0:55

Okay. Well, let's keep going then.

SPEAKER_01 0:57

Well, yes, yeah. So again, you are the founder and managing director of email boutique Digital Inc. Tell me and tell the audience what do you do and how do you impact the world?

SPEAKER_04 1:08

Well, I'm an email designer and developer. I come from web design. I've been self-taught in the 2000s, and then I landed in email one way or another. I've worked for in-house companies, agencies, startups, and tech companies in Vancouver. And eventually I just ended up on an agency job that brought me to email. And I was very puzzled about that because the last time I checked was an email code, it was 10 years prior to that, and it hadn't changed much. So I couldn't find any resources to learn more about it. There was no courses or books. The only thing I found was the Litmus conference. And you know, I had to manage my job one way or another. So I went there and I found out that I'm not the only one. And I really loved the community. And I really wanted to master what is it all about email. So fast forward, I designed email design systems in Figma because I found that web designers have a hard time with email design itself because it has so much more limitations than a website does. It doesn't work the same way. It's still HTML4. It's basically coding in 1999. So wow, things like that have to be considered on a design level, otherwise, things go back and forth, which was the case back in the 2000s with websites a lot. So it's kind of a repeating situation for me. And I also develop email templates. I try to make them as modular as possible so it's a system that can be built upon. Same with the Figma file. And I implement these email templates into the client's ESP, email service provider. That's the tool where emails are being large amount of emails are being sent from.

SPEAKER_01 3:02

Is there are there certain companies or there's probably a bunch of them potentially?

SPEAKER_04 3:07

From my client perspective?

SPEAKER_01 3:09

Well, ESPs. What do you know? Oh ESPs. Yeah, I'm sorry, ESPs. Yes.

SPEAKER_04 3:14

Okay. That is a tool where you cannot just send 20,000 emails from your Gmail address, right? So brands usually use an email service provider in order to manage their CRM. Sometimes they're connected to the CRM as well, where they have their client base, or they're connected to a sign-up form on their website. And this is how email addresses would ideally come into this list. And there's many different ESPs. The smaller ones people are probably familiar with, like MailChimp, or then there's Clearview and Brace, and the larger ones are Salesforce, Marketo. So and all of them offer different other options than just sending emails.

SPEAKER_03 3:53

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 3:53

Usually you can manage your list segmentations and all kind of analytics and results from the email campaigns. So they're all different. I have personally worked with about 37 of them, and that's a large amount that you only get to do that if you're freelancing. If you're with a company, most employees in the email field are usually used to one email service provider only. For agencies, it probably will be more because they're clients, they come in with these tools.

SPEAKER_01 4:26

Okay. And then and can we go back a little bit just with the idea of a CRM? Because as I coach executive leaders and some business owners, they don't know what a CRM is, and many of them don't have one. So if you could go a little bit into detail what a CRM is, just in general, if you'd like.

SPEAKER_04 4:57

And so it's depending on what the needs are. But every brand probably manages their customers in some way and has them on a database, and that's what it is. I don't personally work, so any marketer who's listening and rolling their eyes right now, I'm not usually working with CRMs, I just know they exist.

SPEAKER_01 5:16

I'm on my side. So that's a big key because like I said, some people don't even know they exist or that they should manage their customers in a type of a database. And some companies don't do a good job of that. Even I hear some sizable companies don't do a good job of that. So if you need to know who your customers are, yeah, and what they're up to and what's the relationship that's been developed over time.

SPEAKER_04 5:39

Exactly. And where do they come in? That really helps, I would think. That helps with the you know the client cycle, life, the client life cycle. When do they come in, when do they drop out, when they're most engaged, and things like that. That if that can be organized upfront, then you know in the end how to speak to them in what language and you know what emails they should be receiving and which ones they shouldn't.

SPEAKER_01 6:03

Can you give an example of that? Because that for some people would be very vague as to what example of emails or content those particular clients or prospects should be receiving. So what can you give just maybe a couple examples of different types of marketing email?

SPEAKER_04 6:21

Sure. The first one I would think of is if someone signs up on a form on a website and gives the brand their email address, which indicates they have some kind of interest in the brand. Ideally, this usually triggers, first of all, an email where they can confirm their email address was entered by themselves. So it's a confirmation email where you know a person clicks a link and activates their email address. That's a very good process to have. And so after that, in often cases, there is a welcome series starting with one, two, three, four emails that helps the client to or the user to onboard and find out more about what is this about. You know, are we saying we're explaining, for example, that you're gonna receive a newsletter once a week, or you know, and here you can change and manage your preferences. Maybe you want the newsletters only, but not the offers, or vice versa. So that's a nice idea to basically inform the user what is coming, why they signed up for it. So that that is a whole strategy on its own. Then we have emails that are transactional emails, which usually have a really high open rate. Like when I order something at Amazon, I'm gonna open it and I want to see the tracking link and I want to see when it's here, like ideally today. So there's different purposes for different um for different emails, and yeah, uh that these are the best examples that probably everybody knows about.

SPEAKER_01 7:59

Yeah, and I used to agree with that. However, like I said, I found with a lot of small business owners that are getting out into their business in the last five to ten years, many of them are just kind of running by the seat of their pants, and many of them don't understand or even know about that the database of tracking their customers because they're so intense on doing the work, the projects, and everything, and they're just not all about kind of the some of the admin things and marketing tasks that they need to be on top of. So I thought so too, with a lot of things, including what I've heard with the adoption of AI, it's not being adopted as fast as everybody thought it would with organizations, and then even with individuals, people are using it on a very small scale, but not really adopting it in a productive way, and especially these organizations. So I was surprised by that by some people who have been in AI and they're like, Yeah, hardly anybody's adopting it really, and not so they're training individuals and organizations on how to adopt it in an ethical way, and also to a way that's going to be productive and not just, you know, dumb down their employees because their employees aren't creating skill sets and using their own muscles or their own mind to think on strategy and critical decision making, all those types of things. So just different ways to elevate organizations while also empowering the employees in them. So yeah, this is good stuff. So do you deal with AI much in terms of email and producing creating the things you do for the email?

SPEAKER_04 9:35

I do it in my process because you know I run this on my own, and sometimes it's a lot with you know, same with any other team. You know, there's work I have to do, these are my billable hours, and then there's organizational work, which are non-billable hours. So, you know, as a one-woman show, I need to think about that because billable hours have priority, but if my process isn't in place, it takes too much time, which cuts down on my billable hours. So I have to be smart about that. And so I don't create content at all in the first place, so I don't need AI for that. But what I do need is help with my processes. So, for example, if I can give an example of how I use it, is every initial meeting is connected, or my calendar in general is connected with a tool called Read AI. It records every meeting, it gives me a summary, it gives me the takeaways, it gives me the key questions and the full transcript and the video, and even more. So that is very useful because I no longer have to take notes.

SPEAKER_01 10:39

Yes. I've enjoyed that feature also.

SPEAKER_04 10:43

I really enjoy that because I notice I listen better, I can be more alert, I have the time to ask the right questions, I don't jump ahead. So that's gold for me already. After that, I have installed a sapier that sends as soon as the recording is done, the sapiers activated and sends the summary and the key questions as well as the takeaways, what to do, to my Asana and creates a task for me. I have split that up so that the key questions or the tasks, I can just copy and paste and create subtasks to it. I prefer to do this manually because then I can have it in the back of my mind that something's coming and then I assign it to me and I can schedule it. So this has helped me a lot to speed up the process. And of course, you know, simple corrections and a proposal. That's the other thing. Out of this initial meeting, I'll take the whole transcript and run it through ChatGPT, which helps me to create a proposal. And that is something that took me at least two hours in the past. Wow. Especially if I had my own notes taken. Now I have everything that's included. I ask the right questions in the initial meeting, I ask for the pain points, I ask where you know how they heard about my work. So I can with these transcripts, I can also see where do my clients come from, like how many are referrals and such not. So I get a lot of information that will help me target my clients or you know, produce a proposal much quicker than it was before. So I still read it, I still correct it, and but I have a template where I can put in, you know, all the essential parts of a proposal and I can submit that quite early in the process because I want to close the project or kick it off.

SPEAKER_01 12:42

Yeah, no, I think that's great. And also to the fact that you mentioned there's a few things I'm gonna mention. But one is that the fact that AI has to be corrected at times because it's not always correct. Some people feel it will be.

SPEAKER_04 12:54

Well, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:56

Yeah, so I think that's a great point. And then the other two things you had mentioned is either Zapier or Zapier. People pronounce it differently. You mentioned that along with Asana, and many people probably don't know with either which either one of those what they do, what they are, even though it's been a part of you being more efficient with your process and it saved you a ton of time. But can you explain what's going on there just briefly?

SPEAKER_04 13:21

Yeah, sorry. I'm sometimes I'm so much processed like what I'm gonna think about that. People might not are aware. I use the project management tool because I often run multiple projects at the same time. They often have a similar flow, but they're not always including all the things, all the steps. So Asana is my project management tool. It's similar to Monday or Rike, or you know, there's many out there. Asana works best for me. Sometimes I give my clients visibility to come in, and some teams already work with that. That's great. Then I work on theirs. So it's simply my project management tool where I have my tasks and you know my boards and what I need to do every day, and the open projects are all in there. And Sapiar is as a, I'm probably not explaining this correctly, it's been more or less an integration. It's a connection between tools that don't have an integration. So some tools can easily be integrated with each other, and Sapior is the part in between. So you can say, go to this tool, when this happens, do that, and if something will be triggered, and so you can connect two tools and make Zapier your integration.

unknown 14:34

I hope.

SPEAKER_01 14:36

Yeah, so basically, if somebody has, let's say, a Sana, I forget the example you used, how you connected them, but like if you had a Sana project management tool and somebody says that they would like to find out more about this topic, then that could be a connection through Zapier to then send it or something like that.

SPEAKER_04 14:54

Say that it's not information to be shared, it's like the report is done in my read eye, and it zapier is connected to redi, so it will get triggered as soon as a report is ready. And in Zapier, I basically define what information do I need out of that report.

SPEAKER_01 15:11

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 15:11

And that information is being transferred to my Asana into a new task. So it's a connection between two real tools, and the information that you define in Sapio will be transferred.

SPEAKER_01 15:24

Yes, which makes sense instead of just dumping all the data out, which may not make sense.

SPEAKER_04 15:29

You can still do this by hand, but it takes much longer. So that's my main goal to reduce the amount of time I'm spending on a task that is non-billable.

SPEAKER_01 15:40

Right. No, I think that's great. And a lot of people need to know about these types of things because one of the challenges I find is because there's so many tools coming out, so many AI tools, people get excited and start on some of these tools, but then the next thing comes out. And then now either they're trying out this free new tool, you know, the free level, or they're paying 20 bucks a month, whatever it may be, and then they're never really getting in depth and using some of these things. But like you're doing, if you latch on to a handful of them and find out the best ways to use them, they can dramatically increase your productivity, like you're doing, on billable things, so you can focus on billable things instead of focusing on admin tasks, which you don't get paid for. So I think that's awesome.

SPEAKER_04 16:26

Sure. Well, don't get me wrong, I'm ending up very often in the rabbit hole.

SPEAKER_01 16:32

Well, you're you're doing you're you're down there with the rest of us. I mean, I'm seeing you think about it.

SPEAKER_04 16:42

We are used to distance to times of internet happen to us. So it's like it's always the same. There's a demo out, you want to try it out, you sign up. So there's to help with that, if I do sign up for a thing for a tool that has a trial time, um, I usually put it in my calendar when I did that, and it sends a reminder a day or two before. If I haven't used the tool during the trial, then I get a reminder to unsubscribe or cancel it because I know I'm guilty of that too. We often have tools running in the background, we don't even realize we're paying for that on a monthly basis. So I put a reminder on my calendar because there are a lot. I, you know, you go to a conference or you listen to a webinar, and blah, blah, blah. There's like five new tools, and you gotta try them out to see if there are any use for you, right? But I try to take notes of these tools, maybe create a task where I add the tools like try this, try this, and I give myself like a half an hour or something. If I see anything, run it through ChatGPT, give me some other tools that are similar, like that. I want to do this, this, and this. Which one would you recommend? Which I should try out. I only have in half an hour. So that is another point where I could help us to compare because we don't know what we don't know. And you just, you know, pick something up, and if it's not a recommendation by a friend or some trusted source that you know, just heard it on the internet somewhere, and you don't really know if the use case is good for you. That means you know, either way, you're trying out and wasting time with trying all these tools. So I'm again, I'm trying to be better with that. I'm not pretending I'm perfect. It's just like I need to write it down and see when I have the time, maybe on a Friday afternoon or so when all the work is done, prioritize it, right? Because it's something like, okay, this is playtime. Let's play a little. Friday at 3 p.m., we stop working, and this is when you know I play around a little bit and I see if that would work, if I, you know, if I like it or not. So yeah, that's all organizational, and it happens to everyone.

SPEAKER_01 18:59

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, I think it's totally normal everything you're saying, because I know I've gone down rabbit holes, and everybody does, just that the once again, the accelerated rate at which all these apps and tools are coming out. So I really appreciate that. We talked about offline, we talked about your values, integrity, how you operate with yourself along with your clients. Now, how do you keep aligned with your values when pressure is on, or do you know, whether we say doing the right thing?

SPEAKER_04 19:30

You mean when I worked with my clients, or what do you rather mean like work and life balance?

SPEAKER_01 19:35

Or actually I was gonna ask for both because I think both are but I think we mostly talked about your clients, you know, when we first were introduced to each other. We talked about that, but then it to me that showed up in your personal life too. It didn't just start with business. Right. So yeah.

SPEAKER_04 19:52

Well, it's a good question. Usually clients have been recommended to me. It's a hundred percent recommendations, so one way or another, someone has heard of my name or my work, and oftentimes it's past co-workers. They drag me along in every new job, which is really great because they've felt pleasant working with me, and or they knew I could do something that they needed to get done. So there's oftentimes a very natural connection present between the client and me because I don't pitch my work, I don't have to do any sales, it's usually the clients that come to me. So the level of trust I feel right away. And so for me, that means that is a lot of pressure on its own because you know, when I'm at capacity and someone was recommended, I struggle a little bit because it's like, how could I say no to that one? Like, what would this do to my reputation? So I worry about that. Um I usually start with the initial meetings where I ask a lot about their pain points, the things that don't work, to see where I can help first on an emotional level, or supporting them to pitch something to their stakeholders. So I really like to inject myself into the team and become one of the team members, and not just the contractor from the outside and who cares, does who delivers and doesn't care what's going on the inside. That's not what I do, and because I have seen a lot of problems reoccurring during my time working somewhere in house, and when I'm asking these questions to my clients, I see that they're still existing and that they're repeating. So that makes me think the problems that I hear are. not based on individual failure, they're process problems. So that means they're fixable. And that's no one's fault. It's just that the system wasn't aligned yet. So when I work with the team where they're stressed, they are stressed out too because of timelines or pressure from stakeholders and things like that. Which you know every marketing team goes through to one amount or another, I can communicate that and actually normalize the situation.

SPEAKER_01 22:37

So what do you mean by normalize?

SPEAKER_04 22:39

But it's not only them. It's not, I hear this a lot, you know, it's like this is a problem often like how I explain it right now that it is a system problem and not an individual problem. So people feel instantly feel you see it on the facial expressions that they feel a little better instantly because the it's like oh my god it's not me. I thought it was me. You know so if we start from there, you know I try to come across as somebody understanding the problem because I do. I've been there. I know how it hurts or how hard it is to learn something that no one teaches you. You have to learn it all the hard way. So that is the case in email there is no email school I recently wrote an article about it and then I had a lot of traffic on it because like oh I heard hit a nerve here. So coming back to your question is more about me aligning with the team aligning with the client on a human level and not just I have a solution for this do it my way. That's never the case. So I try to understand the problem I try to offer options. I don't even have just one solution for things because I only know so much. I only know so much what they are what the client is telling me from the outside. So I haven't looked inside and I might not because I'm a contractor I might not I never get this visibility inside of the team to see what the real problem is. So therefore I cannot claim that I know the answer. I don't when it comes to email particularly the services I provide I can suggest a few options so they can pick one of them that works best for them. And the decision is with the team it's not mine to make right yeah so that's that approach actually works and I adjust my own workflow and I see when I have a repeated problem as well I'm like hmm maybe I should deliver this earlier to get the the process going the thinking process going with the client and not in the end. So I'm adjusting my own workflow constantly when I notice something is repeatedly not working the way I thought it would. So I'm adaptable this way and that's how I work on the client level with pressure and with pushbacks things like that. I'm familiar with a lot of pushbacks that are in this field so I try to move my workflow around those to reduce them.

SPEAKER_01 25:20

Pushbacks in terms of the client and moving forward with the project or is there something else you're more on the technical end.

SPEAKER_04 25:28

Technical yeah it's more on a technical end if someone you know wants to consider dark mode or not I mean this is no longer an option or a choice. So I mean deeper what are those two things I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_05 25:41

That's why I didn't want to go there because I wanted to ask you answer your second question.

SPEAKER_04 25:45

So let's anybody wants to dive deep they can connect with me and we can go nuts about that.

SPEAKER_05 25:51

But okay no that's fair I'm trying not to enter the rabbit hole.

SPEAKER_04 25:56

So for you know balancing I think your second question correct me if I'm wrong I think your second question was about work and life balance as a yes someone who works by themselves. Is that true?

SPEAKER_01 26:11

Yeah yes it is and I'm glad you reminded me that because I couldn't think of what my second question was I tried to say I'm topic yes no no thank you for being here I appreciate you helping me out here so yeah you are correct that's what I remember too is but you know I was asking for both sides of the coin the business side but also your personal side because that's what usually gets to do everything else that we're doing.

SPEAKER_04 26:31

I mean it's continuously a struggle I try to get better you know it's the amount of projects I can take while I'm trying to improve my process and spend less time on things that need to be done and so I can take on more clients because right now my workflow is still mostly in my head partially built but not there yet to bring someone in.

SPEAKER_03 26:58

Right.

SPEAKER_04 26:58

So I'm on this moment where you know my business coach and friends who run businesses tell me you should grow, you should do this and should that do that. It's like yes I know I know right but hold on I have no way of onboarding someone at this point because I haven't straightened out my entire workflow. I do this naturally by learning and improving every little step but it's not like a tutorial yet. And the thing is you might be able to onboard somebody I have to break it down to certain tasks that's my idea because I cannot stop the engine and sit down and work on this concept how to onboard someone in the full extent so I have to basically think about what are the tasks that take me a lot of time but I could outsource because a more junior person could actually manage that. And then just look at that task and then document this task and then you know hand it over. There's still the danger I need to keep working I need to you know work for my clients and take care of them. So onboarding a person I do want to pay attention to it and not just let you know throw them into the cold water like I have been thrown in so many times. So I do have to make space for that. I also have to make space for that for mistakes to happen. I cannot expect someone coming in and doing it exactly the way I said you know it's not realistic. And well from my own experience I learned most of my things or most of the skills I have the fastest way if I did mistakes.

SPEAKER_01 28:44

Ah ideally I only do them once it's not always true but in in a perfect world well if you find that perfect world please give me directions because I never did there.

SPEAKER_04 28:56

Because no I hear you this is normal from what I've seen with executives business owners yeah so if I train someone I have to consider that there will be mistakes. And ideally you know if I have considered in the first place all I need to do is make a little extra room in the end. Either way you know I explain how to fix it or I fix it myself. If I want them to become better then I let them fix it and give them the time you know when you do something for the first time it always takes longer. That's true for everyone. So I have to put this into the project too. So I'm not there from that kind of perspective because I want to be someone that educates well and doesn't want to make someone feel like they failed or they can't do something. It's not true. So I don't believe in that I know how terrible that feels and so I do not want anyone on my team to feel that way ever. So that's why I feel like okay I have to run it for a little bit on my own until you know but this until I have to define for myself too I mean it's until it could be forever. When will it happen? Like at what stage do I say okay I'm here now I can train someone on this topic on this task and I can outsource that and maybe once they you know we worked a little together have learned from each other how things bounce back and forth they can take on a little more and a little more so that's what I feel like email boutique will move forward to hopefully this year. But at the same time you know I work from home I have an office which is great. So I need to step away from the computer and from all of it because there is not only the design thinking there's the development thinking there's the organizational thinking so sometimes it's a bit much and overwhelming. Yeah I think that is true for anybody running their own thing and the only thing that helps me is a physical detachment.

SPEAKER_01 30:54

So in the middle of the day on Monday, Wednesday Friday I pay for a personal trainer to torture me so I'm away from the screen and I've moved and I can reposition my anger towards someone else and I've never heard them but oh this is going way off but I'm glad we're on two ends of the spectrum here that's one way to get rid of you know energy.

SPEAKER_05 31:24

Yeah it's very effective and efficient highly recommended and if it's more on the mellow side it would be you know a yoga class or something like that. But you know I have all kinds of fitness tools at home they look really good in the closet I don't I really have a hard time to motivate myself at home that's just me some people are really good at it I am not I really not so I have to be somewhere else with other people and in a different location I live here I work here I cannot make this a fitness place on top of that.

SPEAKER_04 32:05

So it's just not my thing and yeah so the solution is to go somewhere else close by you know walk a little until I get there. And the third thing that I currently do I really enjoy drawing. Oh nice like this kind of drawing I use a pencil because I don't want to create a huge mess. I don't want it to be a money pit but it already is so it's easy to pick up a pencil and just draw a few lines and just detach and come back to um analog yes material away from the screen because we're also dictated by it now. I work on it my vision is you know defected I have a cell phone as well not just one also two for testing and all that and so for my social life I use it as well. So I want this time for myself because you know it is often recommended to do some meditation things like that. That is impossible for me. There's no moment when there's no thought in my head about something so it would be a huge huge learning curve for me to learn how to meditate. I would rather be frustrated so when I go to my art class which is on Monday night so tonight two hours they go by and like nothing I sit there with the ladies in their paintings and everyone does something on their own and there's a teacher can ask they're really really good art teachers so I just do something small like I just started learning. So I do a lip or an eye or you know things like that just to get going. It's not about producing anything really it's about the process calming down I'm able to focus just on that piece of paper and my pencil and that is doing the meditational part for me. So I basically just define where do I need to balance out was something physical is something relaxing and physical and then it's something for my brain to relax too because if my brain is not relaxed I cannot sleep. Yeah I hear you I hear you know everybody has their body works a little different so I try to sit down and define these areas where I need to relax in the summertime I last last two years or years I learned how to sail. Oh cool yeah it's one of my bucket list things to do yeah yeah yeah I started my first class I the first time in my ding in this dinghy by myself we had 10 knots it freaked the hell out of me I so it pushes me a bit off I like to choose things that push me outside of my comfort zone a little bit yeah because that is also something that will happen in business. Yep. You know suddenly you have a huge huge client or suddenly that happened the other day when an industry leader they featured me in their newsletter and I had 3000 people on my website in within 30 minutes I knew they got a heart attack. I was like oh my god what happened that's awesome and so these kind of moments happen in business as well and that's why I like to take them outside and it's like okay let's do something you have not done before that you might be a little scared of and try to manage it. I don't have to master it it doesn't have to become a hobby for life it's just like something I tried. So the next time this situation occurs I feel a little bit more relaxed. It's like oh yeah remember that time when you had 10 knots and you just like capsize the boat yeah I just want to mention 10 knots because I'm actually a I have a private pilot's license.

SPEAKER_01 35:49

So 10 knots is roughly of wind when you're sailing is approximately about 12 miles per hour and that can make a huge difference from my understanding with sailboats.

SPEAKER_05 36:00

I know it makes a difference when flying an airplane small aircraft so I can only imagine being in a sailboat where you have no power no engine and you're learning in this environment for the first time and there's no break no break either and you're just like shooting out there and like I have no idea what I'm doing. So this is my metaphor for when you know something exciting happens in the business that I couldn't see coming. So I remember that first day.

SPEAKER_04 36:31

Yeah that was actually a funny second day too on the second day we were supposed to learn how to capsize a boat and get back in.

SPEAKER_01 36:38

Oh yeah and trainer said Annette you don't need to do that you did that yesterday so you're still doing it yeah that's funny I was actually at ahead of the class suddenly oh that's funny yeah well definitely and when we were training to be a pilot they definitely didn't have us crash the airplane and learn how to get very different.

SPEAKER_05 37:03

I would not recommend to test on an airplane to get outside of your comfort zone unless you have a parachute on you like already attached.

SPEAKER_01 37:13

That's good now when I say this random word to our listener pastry chef what does that tell you well that was my former life also what does it mean as a safe word as a safe word oh okay and I've talked about it or did we already forgot about it. Oh yeah that's all right yeah we talked about it just as you talked about you being a pastry chef just that the and and basically I'm alluding to we are near the end of this episode and I've enjoyed it a ton but the word you told me is kind of a safe word for you as a pastry chef because as a pastry chef you have to be very exact and that's when you told me hey Corey if I talk too much just say pastry chef as a safe word to get me to stop talking. And you are not talking too much because this has been I think a lot of fun and very I tried to think funny actually so that's yeah yeah it was fun it's funny there's a lot of things you said here that have uh been a lot of great leadership tips and especially for people who are business owners or solopreneurs that can learn a lot from what you've said so yeah no I'm being serious I I appreciate all that but one last question I was just gonna ask you is what is one of your biggest leadership lessons that you've had whether in business or personal and maybe you've shared it already but what do you feel that is say this again the biggest leadership lesson that or maybe you've made a bold move and you learned something from it well that every every uncertainty is not to be something to be afraid of it's it's an opportunity and I didn't invent that I just try to remind myself each time something new comes up something I don't know something I'm not sure about it shouldn't be stopping me from trying to to face it or to learn it or to do it.

SPEAKER_04 39:19

And the other thing is if I do fail it doesn't mean I cannot try a second time so that's what my 20s were usually about every step I took it feels like one forward and two back but I still got where I wanted to be you know I run a business I'm a dual citizen I can spend my time half a year in Canada and half a year back home where most of my friends and families are so I no longer feel like I have to choose between chairs. So that didn't happen on its own. It happened for a lot of failure it happened through a lot of times trying out to get there and just make your own path so not to be afraid of if the path isn't there yet. I'm gonna make it and if I have created that and shared that story maybe people can follow or you know if someone else is encouraged to try a similar thing on their and create their own path and you know if that happens I'm very happy that someone else is benefiting from it. Because it's not everyone's cup of tea right no I love that lesson I think that's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 40:44

So Annette thank you so much for being here just sharing all that you did and just all the funny stuff and for find it funny.

SPEAKER_04 40:57

Thank you so much Corey for having me this was really pleasant. Yep you're very welcome I hope your listeners enjoyed too yeah yeah so what's the best way they can stay in contact with you or connect with you oh the best way is probably LinkedIn uh Annette Forcier on LinkedIn or email boutique.io is my website and uh yeah this is pretty much the best way to keep connected.

SPEAKER_01 41:25

Awesome and then how on LinkedIn you said Annette Forcier how do you spell both your first and last name okay Annette is A N N E T T and the last name is F-O-R-C-I-E-R awesome thank you thank you you have a good day you're welcome you're welcome by and I want to thank you for listening to this episode of Unapologetic leadership where we learned a ton from Annette in terms of using AI to improve your process also develop trust because your reputation precedes you and that may be the way you're getting most of your best leads and referrals and also to have open lines of communication with your clients ask questions and be a partner instead of just a what do I want to say instead of just a supplier be a partner but on a strategic level the higher leadership level where you're thinking of them and thinking ahead especially when they have to make some strong decisions and when you can not when you can but actually make a determination to get away from your desk and your computer screens physically get away and if you can like Annette hire somebody to beat you up three times a week to get some exercise but that's gonna be something that's gonna be refreshing it's gonna clear a lot of challenges up or muckiness and some burnout and it's gonna create some clarity. So I appreciate you being here and we'll see you on the next episode of Unapologetic leadership.

SPEAKER_00 43:04

So that's it for today's episode of Unapologetic leadership head on over to wherever you listen to podcasts and subscribe to the show. One lucky listener every single week that posts a review on Apple Podcasts or iTunes will win a chance the grand prize drawing to win a twenty five thousand dollar private VIP day with Corey Dunham himself. So head on over to Unapologetic leadership podcast dot com and pick up a free copy of Corey's gift and join us on the next episode.