My Favourite Books

I reread the same books all the time. Here are my top favourites, in no particular order:

1. The 9 Secrets of Women Who Get What They Want by Kate White

2. How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie

3. Better than Before by Gretchen Rubin

4. Essentialism by Greg McKeown

5. The Third Door by Alex Banayan

6. Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert

What are your favourites? Let me know in the comments!

21 Days to Build a Habit is Rubbish

I can confirm, it doesn’t take 21 days to build a habit. Or 42 days. Or 90 days.

I know, because I’ve been blogging for 600 days in a row, and it’s still not a habit.

It takes conscious effort every day to make myself do it.

But it turns out, the habit I was forming all wasn’t blogging each day.

The habit I was forming was discipline.

I was building the habit of making myself write the blog post, even when it sucks.

But nobody wants to hear that because it’s not microwavable advice.

But that’s the truth.

Even 600 days isn’t enough to build a blogging habit.

Often, I get to the end of the day and think “Ahhh! I forgot to write my blog!”

Zero blogging habit ingrained.

But then, even though I reeeeally don’t feel like it, I make myself do it anyway.

That’s the real habit.

Habit Question

If you were going to be 10x more successful this year than you were last year, what habits would you need to start or stop?

Calendar Hacking

Since I was about eight years old, I’ve been the queen of to do lists.

I have shopping lists, work lists, packing lists, general lists, specific lists, and best of all, the master list, the list where I keep a list of EVERYTHING. 

Time management is something I’ve been tackling for a few years, and recently I realised that to do lists are actually terrible for time management.

I have no idea how long a task is going to take, when I’m going to finish it, and how many I can *actually* fit into my day.

So instead, I’ve been working on calendar hacking.

A while ago I wrote a post about how I was going to start putting every to do list item into my calendar, and throw away my to do list.

I tried it, but I felt overwhelmed with everything being so tightly scheduled.

So these last two weeks, I’ve tried it again, but this time I’m being ruthless about what actually needs to be done, and what doesn’t.

Now my to do list is gone, my calendar is manageable and I actually feel like there’s room to breathe.

I LOVE it.

Goodbye to do list.

Consistency Is Only One of the Keys

I think “consistency” is the worst thing to happen to social media culture.

(And this is coming from the girl who has consistently blogged for 626 days in a row).

I talk with people all the time whose number one reason for not posting on social media is that they couldn’t keep up with the pressure of being consistent.

So they just stopped posting entirely.

And their project/passion/business fizzled out.

Because in our digital culture, we’ve confused consistency with perfection.

And perfection paralyzes us from taking ANY action at all.

What we think consistency on social media means:

• Posting at the same time each day

• Having a particular day of the week for livestreams

• Making sure our quote graphics fit our exact branding

• Using the same fonts all the time

• Putting the same filters on every picture

• Always writing with the same tone of voice

• Having a checkered "one-picture-then-one-quote" layout

• Planning content months ahead of time

What consistency on social media actually means:

You. Showing up. With value. Again and again.

(And if you think for a second that consistency alone is what grows a social media following, you've been duped. People don't follow you because you post Reels every day. They follow you because your content is valuable to them, no matter how often it comes out.)

Consistency is ONE of the keys to success.

But value is even key-er.

What if instead of trying to be perfectly consistent on social media, you just tried to be valuable?

The Only Reason People Don't Buy A Service

There's only ONE reason people don't buy.

It's not money.

It's not time.

It's not their husband.

The ONLY reason people don't buy is because they don't believe you can help them.

They don't think you're actually going to solve their problem.

They think they'll pay you to deliver your service and it won't be worth it.

They're worried they'll regret it.

Because imagine if they TRULY believed you could help them solve their problem? If they thought YOU were their magic pill and getting your services was the answer to their pain?

All of their objections – time, money, husbands – they would all fall away.

It's your job to show them that you can truly help them.

Show them that, and you'll create business for life.

Followers Don't Equal Connection

I have 21k followers on Instagram.

So guess where 95% of my clients find me? Facebook.

Having an audience isn’t the same thing as having connections.

And deep, genuine connection with actual human beings is what creates clients.

Not a large audience.

Until you're fully booked, the best thing you can do is let go of the idea of “building an audience.”

Build one-on-one personal connections instead.

As cliché as it sounds, it’s true: 10 genuine relationships are better than 1000 random followers you don’t know when you’re starting out.

But having 1000 random followers looks better, right?

People will think you’re successful.

So the question is, would you rather look successful or actually be successful?

You Actually Sell Croissants

Whether you’re a web designer, a coach, a consultant, a social media manager or any other service provider – you’re actually in the business of selling croissants.

People love croissants. They want to buy them.

They just don’t want the baker to turn up unannounced on their doorstep at 4 o’clock in the morning to force feed them one.

It’s the wrong place, wrong time.

And when we cold-message strangers offering our services, no matter how good they are, that’s what we’re essentially doing.

Stuffing a croissant into a surprised face.

How could they not love it?! It’s a croissant! 

Not a compulsory croissant in the middle of the night.

No matter what your business is, remember that you’re in the business of selling croissants.

People want to buy what you’re selling.

At the right place, right time.

Let them come to YOU.

Connect with croissant lovers in Facebook groups and networking events and supermarkets. Invite them to check out your space: your Instagram account, your email list, your bakery. Offer them a croissant.

And whether they decide to buy one today or not, says nothing about their desire for croissants.

Maybe they just ate.

Maybe they’ll come back later.

Maybe they’re just deciding how many to get.

You sell croissants. People want to buy them.

What if you believed everyone truly wants what you have to offer?

How would that change where you showed up to market your business?

How I Used to Overcomplicate Everything

I found all of these photos on my phone from 2019, when my business was barely generating any income at all.

It's really clear that I used to overcomplicate EVERYTHING to do with the marketing process.

These are just a few of the wall-sized diagrams and notebooks and whiteboards covered in flow diagrams and funnels and plans.

And the more complex it got, the less action I took – evident by the fact that I never finished any of it and made a total of $6000 in my business for the whole of 2019.

Once I discovered that there are really only three main steps to marketing your services, no matter what you do, I was able to make a full-time income with my business:

1. Connect with people in neutral spaces
   A neutral space is anywhere that neither of you own – the gym, someone else’s Facebook group, an online networking event.

2. Invite them to your space
   Your space is the place that you own – your Instagram, your house, your own Facebook group, your email list.

3. Offer to help them
   An offer could look like a valuable post (in your space) with a note at the end saying “message me to book a free consultation”.

Connect, invite, offer.

What if that was all you had to do?

(It is.)

New Belief

New belief: It gets to be easy. All of it.