Stop Running Your Business “The Right Way” – Make It “Work For You” Instead

Sophie

Sophie

And I love that because I'm conversationalists. I love building relationships with people. I love talking to people. I think I'm quite close. I'm really good at getting things out of people. I'm really good at making people feel what I am. You know, amazing at is following a script and that story of the way that I speak to a form or keyword subjects that would do really well on YouTube or as a podcast episode.

Sophie

And in all honesty, that's what I've been trying to do the past like a month, but had some external advice about how I stood back that improve my podcast on every single bit of advice that I was receiving was, you need to do more solo episodes. They need to get more. To the point, because the best episodes will only work if somebody gets to know me.

Sophie

So I went down this route of trying to build a podcast around what somebody else deemed to be successful, and what round of podcasting and YouTube. But like all of those things make perfect sense. But it's not me, and I can't keep showing up in that way. My entire business is built around great honesty, authenticity, alignment, like trying to create a business that really works for me, that I love showing up.

Sophie

Sophie

When I quit my first year at Industry Career and started working online, I've tried pretty much every online business model that you could name, and I have found one that genuinely does work for me, and I have high achievers who are like me. Six years ago start an online business that feels like it really works for them and doesn't feel like a job that they work for right now.

Sophie

In all honesty, this podcast feels like a job. It feels like a chore and not absolutely not the reason why I started it. I started it because I want it to feel inspired by other things. Journeys and costs are actually my favorite thing to listen to when it comes to learning about business, hearing people's stories, and just genuinely as a as a source of marketing or information for myself.

Sophie

Podcasts the my go to. So it made perfect sense for me to start a podcast. And I still think it makes sense for me to have a podcast, but the format that I was doing in in this doesn't work. So I want to give you a little bit more of real time, behind the scenes things that are going on and my thought processes, the way that I am building things, because that's probably more useful to you than a scripted podcast.

Sophie

That's episode on video about subjects that you're searching for, which is actually that's not really what you're going to learn. You're going to get that information regardless the way that you learn, it's from looking at other people's mistakes, looking at how other people think, looking at how other people are building. That is actually going to be way more useful for you and my entire business.

Sophie

It's built around the basis of we can build businesses that genuinely work for us and our business success. And my personal success with this podcast is not to have this studio recorded production, it is to create content that resonates and somebody that somebody can listen to and say, you know what? I see myself in that episode, I see myself in that conversation and I can pull XYZ that bit of information from that episode, and I can go away and run with that, because honestly, that is how I use podcasts.

Sophie

I pretty much every single day go on a beach, walk around from that time. I live in Thailand. If you don't know that about Rene and I go for a beach walk pretty much everything that I won't be today because any place you can't actually hear it raining outside and it is sunset probably about an hour or so.

Sophie

But when I'm on that sunset walk, and generally when I'm walking around, if they see me with headphones in, I'm pretty much always listening to the podcast. Even when I go to the gym, I'm listening to a podcast, and that is really, genuinely where I get so much of my inspiration from. I don't use Instagram, I don't use TikTok, I don't really follow shorts or media that often, but I do listen to learn from prompts, and I do read a lot of book content.

Sophie

In the past few years, I've really been trying to use the approach in my business of marketing how I consume, and that is also the advice that I give most of my clients, particularly my programs like, foundations, which is my signature group marketing program and online course. Well, I teach someone how to build an online business that works for them and their definition of success.

Sophie

So there's not many courses out there on the market that teach that approach, because I'm not the teaching you're one size fits all blueprint. In that program, I teach you how to build something that genuinely works for you. And even in my one on ones with my clients though, like two three years in business, I want to go back and really stick to the foundations in that business.

Sophie

The advice I always give them when it comes to marketing is that you have to market in a way that feels good. It feels authentic to show up those like something that you actually want to go ahead and do, and that you can make this an art. Because if you can't enjoy something, if you can't be consistent at something, it's going to be really hard for you to find success in that.

Sophie

And that's been fragrance me in so many different ways in my business, particularly over the past year where I love writing. And I went all in on LinkedIn over the past year in my business because I love writing so much, and I completely boycotted the short for Media platforms. I Facebook because the Instagram and TikTok, I don't use them anymore to market my business.

Sophie

Sophie

I found a formula that works for me. This is so easy for me to sit there and show up on LinkedIn honestly, and create content that makes it come naturally to me and therefore my energy in it, and it gets results right. If I'm trying to create content for Instagram, it feels like pulling teeth because I just don't care to perform friends, which is obviously what works with the algorithm on those short media platforms.

Sophie

Now, if I look at my focus right now and the kind of things that I like listening to in podcasts is things like this, it's people rambling, like people talking about the things that are going on in their day to day, in their behind the scenes, their lifestyles. And then on the other side of that is people having conversation.

Sophie

And I really just want this podcast. In all honesty, why would it work for me fast if I want it to work for you? I want you to take something away from it and feel inspired when you leave listening to this and think, oh, okay, I can really relate to how because so you've done X, y, z and maybe I could then do this because it's work for how maybe that works for me.

Sophie

And ultimately we need inspiration in order for us to build businesses that work for us. Aren't it impossible for us? Then? It's really going to be hard to identify that we could actually go and do the thing. My goal right now is to show up way more authentically on this podcast, and get the podcast back to a position where it feels like it's working for me.

Sophie

And I don't mean that in like KPI metric results, because I look at the results and the results are, let's be honest, it goes up every month, so people are listening, people are downloading this podcast and working across multiple platforms, not just one, which is really great to set up. The format that I'm showing up on on this podcast isn't working for me.

Sophie

The past few months woke up. This felt like a show and I don't want anything in my business to feel like a show. I want my business to be fun. I want it to be playful. I want this work for me. I do not ever want to feel like I'm working for a job that I absolutely hate because I've been there, done that, I've spoke to, and I don't want to go back, and I don't want that for you.

Sophie

I want to show you that you can build a business that works well for you and feels good for you, and lets you live your life like, I'm just here in my apartment in Thailand. I'm watching the rain as I'm talking to you. I am literally just lit going about my day. I just take in ten minutes to set my phone up and I'm floating on Riverside right now, so it's on my phone.

Sophie

I haven't got any equipment, algorithms, little Mike. Normally I have a full production setup, and even that felt wrong because I'm not a visual person. Like trying to create a production setup is annoying for me, honestly. Like because my brain doesn't work like that, that's very hard for me to do and I want this to feel fun and easy.

Sophie

I'm doing it like this. In all honesty, I feel like a lot more enjoyment talking to the camera in this way because it feels authentic. It goes like it's coming from me. It feels like I'm talking to a friend, or if I'm trying to search keywords on YouTube and then build that persona around those keywords, that's where it feels inauthentic to me, and that feels like where it feels like I'm playing a game with the algorithm to get views on my podcast and on all honesty, I know the right people are always going to find my podcast, regardless of the keywords that I use.

Sophie

So for me right now, this is me showing up in a new way on my podcast. I'm trying to get my podcast to work better for me and work for my business, and also feel like a really fun thing to do. And I also want you to take something away from it as well. So expect more of these little ramblings, probably on different subjects every single time.

Sophie

But essentially this is what was life for me right now. This is what's going on in my business right now. I've got so many things that are working really well in my business. I worked really hard to fix so many of these things because at the end of the day, building a business that works for us is all about getting really honest with yourself and say, okay, I feel like I'm batting my head against a wall here and this isn't doing well, and saying, okay, I know when it's time to give something up, because that is not the way that's going to work for me in building a business that works for you is really

Sophie

all about just having so much fun and enjoying the way that you're showing up and letting your business work for you, not making it feel like you have a full time job. When you have rebuilt businesses to feel great, we built businesses to escape the 9 to 5 systems that, Coco was kind of built around. And actually, if we're operating in that way, it's not business or we're doing things that feel our obligation all the time, it starts to feel really soul destroying and not is when people start to lose motivation.

Sophie

They lose resilience. They lose so much of themselves to the business that then they end up giving up. And I've seen that way too many times. And I would say that I really like to persevere through things and find ways to work for me, rather than like, I could have just said, you know what? I'm not doing this podcast anymore.

Sophie

I've literally got my laptop here. I've been having a back and forth conversation because the path has now been like, this scratch doesn't work for me. I don't to talk about these things. And now I was like, do you know what? I'm going to scrap it. I'm going to scrap that. That doesn't work for me. So this is how it's going to work going forward.

Sophie

I'm going to be showing up with a subject going to ramble on about on that subject. I don't really care about having all of these hooks and a certain structure to this show anymore. I really just want it to come from an authentic place, and I hope that you take something away from that. I hope it inspires you to help you build a business that works for you, though.

Sophie

Take this today as your little sign to have a look into your business. If there's anything that is feeling like you just don't want to do it anymore, or you've been trying really hard and it's not been working, or even in your in your day to day career or day to day lives. If there is anything that feels that way, take a hard look at that and say, why?

Sophie

Why is that not working for you? Because for me to get to this point about just showing up with then rambling on for 15 minutes, it had to take the question of me being like, well, why am I not enjoying it? And the reason why is because I have no interest in following up and reading off a script.

Sophie

I want to have genuine conversations with people. I'm a relationship builder, and if I'm reading off of a script, you can't really film me. So here we are like, this is your inspo to go away and to fit your own lies, your own businesses, your own careers and see what hasn't been working for you. And then we can start putting you on the right track to help it work better for you.

Sophie

Now, on that note, I am going to be changing the name of this podcast over from the Freedom Method to Working for me, because essentially that is the core of everything I do in my business. I have an online course and group coaching program, which is all about building the foundations of your business to work for you. In my one on one work and everything that I do, it all comes down to building a business that works for you.

Sophie

So I only make sense that I do rename the podcast that works for me as well. And I've also recently started a Substack. So I'm going to invite you to go and join that Substack so that you can hear more from me and behind the scenes of my business, and find out what's actually been working for me on a weekly basis in life time.

Sophie

So I will drop the link to that in the show notes. If you have any questions about this at all, go free to drop me a message. I'm always going to be found on LinkedIn. My name is so the bigger stuff. In the meantime, thank you so much for listening to me, Rowling. I hope that you enjoy this new format of the podcast, and I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Sophie

If you enjoy it, enjoy it! Make sure you like and subscribe and I will see you in the next one.