Maria Wendt - Business Coach to 100,000 Women | How to Make $650K/Month Working Less Than 2 Days

My journey towards working less started about three years ago when I realized I was becoming a mom. Now what I do is I just create content. That's the only thing that I have in terms of jobs. I always teach is whatever you're selling, the course you're selling has to be solving a hyper-specific problem. In a world overflowing with content, one woman found her voice and built an empire around it. Maria Went didn't just master Instagram. She turned her expertise into a multi-million dollar brand. A good course isn't when nothing more can be added. It's when the student can achieve the result you've promised and nothing more can be taken away. I work with people who are just getting started who are in that exact nine to five. They don't believe that that first step is possible for them. And what I tell my students, no one else can make for you that you are going to take that first step. Helping thousands of women create real income from digital platforms. With no shortcuts and no gimmicks, she transformed her story into strategy, her passion into profit, and now teaches others to do the same. I think a lot of entrepreneurs worry about things you don't need to worry about. If you want to be able to work, take that first step and then work on it as you feel excited and motivated too. If you're looking for happiness in achieving a milestone, milestone when you achieve it will be like dust in your mouth. Happiness is not in milestones, it's the journey. Maria, you work a day and a half a week and you're on track to generate 10 million annually. So how did working less make you richer? So my journey towards working less started about three years ago when I realized I was become a mom and I was like, I don't want to be on all these Zoom calls. I don't want to be doing all this work that I'm doing. It has to be simpler. And my mentor at the time told me, you can't do a seven figure business. You can't have a set because I was running a million dollar business, but I was doing like a lot of consulting. And so there's a lot of work. And he's like, you can't make seven figures just selling little courses. And I was like, I'm going to show you that I can. And so while I was pregnant, I started making that shift. And now what I do is I just create content. That's the only thing that I have in terms of job. And then I sell very low ticket courses, like $200, $50 courses, like really low ticket cheap courses that are very helpful and solve a lot of people's problems. And that actually scaled up to like I said, almost 10 million dollars doing that. So it all started because I knew the kind of mom I wanted to be. And it was not compatible with the current business model that I had. And so I knew I had to switch to a more scalable, less hands on delivery model. And I was very motivated by the deadline of, oh, my due date is August. That's what I got to make the sweat. You have to architect this life that fits what you want fits the time you want to spend with your daughter. Fist of time you want to actually be working and not working, but still like make the money that you want to make. I don't think a lot of people, especially entrepreneurs, think about that too carefully. And they start to just build. And they never take a step back and they realize what did I actually build? I actually want to actually want this exactly. So your like intro into entrepreneurship was consulting. Yeah. So I, well, so before that was graphic design. I actually went to school for a graphic designer and I was a little freelance graphic designer. So businesses would pay me like $60 to design a fly. This is back before like Canva or anything like you were in manually designing this. Have you always been pure entrepreneur? I have never even had a job interview. I've never had a nine to five. Like I am like I was 2013 Maria was like hustling on the job boards trying to land freelance gigs. And so I realized that you know, I had this knack for people wanting to pay me for my design services. Like I would have people who you know would want me to design their logo. And I would say, Hey, I've got a six month waiting list. Do you still want to do it? And they wanted me to design their stuff so bad they would wait six months for it, which was crazy. And so then I had started having my graphic designer friends come to me asking what I was doing to get so many clients and how I was positioning myself to be so in demand. And that's kind of how I stepped into consulting was like, Hey, here's what I'm doing to get clients. Here's how I sell. Here's how I position everything. Here's I packed it all up. And then one day I looked up and I had more people wanting to work with me to teach them how to get clients than wanting to design their logos and websites. So that was kind of my transition there. I got I did a stint. A period of my life was consulting. And it's one of the most difficult things you can never do. And it's just so time consuming. Very time consuming. Very, unscalable delivery. However, the thing I will say for consulting is like, you get paid well. Like yes, but if you actually look at the hours you put in. That's Charles probably too scared to do that. Yeah. Right. And you start to realize that like your dollar per hour. So what did you realize it was unsustainable? I think I just reached a point where I was making really good money, but I was on Zoom all day long, like literally like I probably was having like six or seven meetings a day. And I just like, I'm about to go on maternity leave here except I have no playing in for that. So that was about three years ago, about three and a half years ago. And the first year I made that switch to just selling courses, my revenue literally quadrupled. So I'm from making like a million dollars per year to four million dollars per year. And then it just it was it low ticket, low ticket, all the ticket, $300 or less. What made you because if we think about how like most people jump into entrepreneurship, I think that the first thing they do is they actually start where you started, they monetize their scale set, which I think is a smart place to start. But I think that and I felt this too, like I feel like the course world seems so oversaturated. Like how do you actually carve out like a niche? And how do you actually make four million dollars in revenue, like top line? Yeah, how do you make four million dollars in year one, which is an insane amount? Yeah, yeah. For a first year course creator in what 2021, 2022, this is not like the days of 2016 when Tai Lopez is selling like social media. So it's like it's it was saturated. Yeah, and it's and it I think that it is still saturated if you choose to look at it that way. But what me and my students done, because the thing that you have to remember is like it's not just me doing this. My students are thriving and running also million dollar businesses selling courses in their own industry. So it's not just the marketing industry. It's every industry is quote unquote saturated. And they're still doing really well. And what they do that I always teach is whatever you're selling, the course you're selling has to be solving a hyper specific problem. So you're not going to make a course on building wealth. You're going to make a course on like I'll give you an example of one I did where it's like how to make more sales with Instagram stories. That's very specific. And so people are looking to solve very, very specific problems. And in a world where it is a little bit saturated, although I don't I don't necessarily agree with that. I think that that saturation is a matter of perspective. There's a lot of shitty courses out there. There's very few course creators actually solving the problem people want to solve. Like implementation rates for most people's courses is abysmal. Success rates for most people's courses is abysmal. So if you become someone whose courses are actually a hundred times more valuable than what you're charging and they actually deliver results and they actually change your students' lives, that is very rare. That is a blue ocean. And that is why I've scaled I just had my first $700,000 a month. I'm scaling super quick. Thank you. Thank you. It's amazing. I'm scaling very quickly because my students are actually seeing really, really good results, which is kind of rare honestly. You don't have a background in education? Not at all. No, I was homeschooled. So I don't know. I was homeschooled all 12 years. That's very involved. But I don't think back then it was so popular. Back in the 90s it wasn't. No, when I was homeschooled it wasn't. But it taught me how to think critically and it taught me how to be okay to be different and to think for myself, which I think is really important. So when you put together like your first course, which was selling through Instagram stories, like super niche, super specific. What makes good courses? What makes good education? Like when you were, because I don't have an issue with courses online. I have an issue with shitty courses online. Because you get like I also think that you go spend $100,000 on an undergrad degree. Like what are you actually walking away with? You could probably have a whole conversation. Yeah, we could. Yeah, traditional education system. But so I don't have an issue with people productizing their knowledge. I think it's a really important thing to do, especially when you have like this lived experience. But I don't think a lot of people do it well. Yeah. So I apply something I learned in school for graphic design, which is, you know, good design isn't when nothing more can be added. It's when nothing more can be taken away. The same is true for course creation. A lot of course creators think that a course is valuable when it's filled with modules filled with videos. But actually the opposite is true. If I can teach you to solve the problem that you're struggling with in three videos or 80 videos, which would you rather have? In three. Yeah. And so good, a good course isn't when nothing more can be added. It's when the student can achieve the result you've promised and nothing more can be taken away. And so my courses are very simple, they're very practical, they're very tangible, they're like tutorials. And because it's a step one, step two, step three process, anyone can implement it and people do implement it, which is the big thing with courses is getting students to actually do the thing you tell them to do in the course. And because it feels so achievable, they do it. And then they turn into really good success stories for me, which is obviously what I want. And that's like word of mouth. Exactly. Exactly. And repeat customers. I've a 60% repeat customer rate, which is extremely high for our industry. It's like 15% is the average. And so my customers buy for me again and again and because they saw results with the first one. Do you think this is a version of entrepreneurship that you'd recommend to everyone? I, this is what I tell people who want to get into course creation. Don't get in it. If you think it's easy at first, it's easy later. So course creation and this sort of like passive income or or more almost passive income or handoff business, it's yeah, but it's it's in the sense of like people compared to like other forms of selling where you have to be involved in the sales process for every single sale. With the course creation and the way I do it, you make sales around the clock, but you have to work really hard to build those systems that make sales automatically. So as we sit here on the podcast, I'll probably make 20 to 30 to 40 sales, but the work I did to build the systems to make those sales is kind of intensive. And so I, I tell people, we need to set expectations here because you're going to nothing works harder than people trying to build passive income streams at first, right? Like it's a lot of work at first. And if you don't know that, you're going to quit and you're going to miss out on those more auto pilot sales that come later, which is when it gets exciting. That's what people want is the ability to go to the beach with their kids and and make sales or do whatever, but they miss the part that it's kind of a lot of work to build you do the same amount of work you just front loading it at the beginning. I think that's important. I that's why I hate the idea of passive income because there's so much work that goes into actually creating some of the people want to buy. So they think that if they're just, so this is where the course world, I guess because there's not a lot of people that teach how to do it properly. So the course world is filled with people that are throwing together a PDF and selling it or thinking that their experience is worth $997 or $4,997 or some other. Yeah, something that ends in seven. Yeah, yeah, for some psychological reason, that somebody on YouTube spoke about once, but like 100 years ago too. Yeah. So it's like, I think that people just don't understand where their value is, what their knowledge is actually worth, and also like what good is, is there is there something that you use when you first started this to figure out what actually resonated with your audience? Is there something that was like because you know, even before press record, I was talking about my content strategy. I'm saying like I test a lot of ideas on Twitter and threads and like that's super easy to test shit out because there's not a lot of energy that's put into like tweeting 10 things and then I can take the one that wins and turn into newsletter podcasts, whatever. But putting together a course, it's like, it's a lot of effort and it's a lot of front loaded effort. I think people could easily get discouraged if they put in months to build a course. Maybe they don't know what an MVP is. I don't even know what a course MVP actually is. And then it flops. So how do you, how do you remove the chance of a potential of failure when you're doing this? And there's so much front loaded work? That's a really good question. I think there's a couple different ways you can hammer at that problem. The first one is that my best students, the one that see really good results, they create content for their audience. I always say like a little metric is like 180 days and just create content, hyper solving, hyper specific problems for your intended customers, right? And in that, you're going to get comments and you're going to get engagement with your community. And that's going to help get a sense of is this product going to be good or not? But I also want to remove the pressure that your first product is going to be a winner. It's probably not going to be a winner. In the same way that your first YouTube video that you make isn't going to go viral. It's about starting. Really do give it your best effort. Do your best market research. But remove the pressure that your first product is going to be your last and your first product is going to be the one that makes you a million dollars. My first product, I put my heart and soul into it. I worked so hard to sell it. I worked so hard to pitch it. I charged 200 videos back in like 2016 or something. And I finally got one customer. And I was like, you know what? I'm going to show up for this one customer and give it my best. And I did. And after the first call they asked for a refund. So like, but now here I stand with so many product lines that have individually scaled up to a million dollars. And the lesson there is like let's just remove the pressure that it probably won't it won't be amazing right away. And that's fine. We master things in iteration. We master things with experimentation. I love that. I have a number here about how much you made in your first year. I have no idea if it's true. It's just 63 dollars. 63. And my first year, I made 63 dollars in my second year. I made like 350 dollars. So in two years of giving it my all, I made less than $400. All this bullshit about overnight success and other idea that doesn't exist and isn't real. Like the self made also not real. If you actually think about it, there's always an investor customer, a mentor, a somebody that's, I mean, self made, we mean self made, you have customers like shut the fuck up. Like there's nothing to self made. But all these like incorrect entrepreneurial ideas are implanted in young people's heads. And then when the reality isn't not when the expectation doesn't match the reality, that's when you sort of throw in the towel. So these are really important stories. You've done it with courses where you've gone through so many different iterations and finally something worked out. But every single person has come on this podcast, whatever they've built that they're known for was not the first version. I think for me, the other side of it is, yes, understanding that it is there is a shadow side and a light side. But also falling in love with solving problems. The more I teach my new beginners to fall in love with solving problems, the less they discourage they get. And really entrepreneurship is just a game of solving problems. And so, oh, I'm not getting sales. Well, let's diagnose that problem. Oh, you don't have people coming to your checkout page. Why don't you have people coming to your checkout page? Let's solve that problem. And so when you start to fall in love with solving problems and you understand that the game is problem solving, you're not so shocked in such emotional angst when you run into a problem as an entrepreneur. You're like, oh, this is average fucking Tuesday. That's how it should be. Where did your love for entrepreneurship come from? Well, it's actually really similar to yours. I was seven years old and my dad had been an adjunct English professor. So like a part-time English professor teaching at a community college. And so not a lot of money in that. And I'm from a big family. And so money was very tight. And then he started a business and our family's financial situation changed when I was seven. Obviously, very developmentally important age. And so the lesson I learned is that when you work for yourself, good things happen. And it happened at such a pivotal age that I just somehow at seven years old knew that I was going to start a business. And so when I was in high school, I was learning how to make money blogging. And I was into the blogging world for a hot second. I was so interested in it. I was like little nerdy Marie in high school reading the blogs on that. And so I just knew watching my own family's financial situation improve that why would I ever start with the less than good thing? Why not start with the good thing right away? And so I started high school even, not even just college, but I started high school knowing that that's what I was going to do. And so I was training and learning for my career as an entrepreneur when I was like 13, 14, 15 years old. So it's been a long like I'm only 30, but I've been doing that doing this for 15 years. You're exposed to it. I was exposed to it. Yeah. If somebody isn't, because I think that's like that's the reality for a lot of people. They're just not exposed to it. And most of your world view is shaped by the people around you. I would say if you don't have the fortune of being exposed to entrepreneurship, I've thought about this all like, how do you architect that? Like where do you go to feel confidence in yourself? Because yeah, I can go tell you to watch YouTube videos. But if you come from a family of like again, nine to five W2s, watching a YouTube video, people may disagree, but I think a lot of people will watch those YouTube videos and think that's like for other people, not for me. Yeah. Yeah. And that's a really hard mindset to get over. So what would be your recommendation for somebody that's in that space that realizes that I wish I could, but I just don't know anybody that ever built anything themselves. How do they have the confidence to take the first step? Yeah, that's such a good question. And I think really you hit the nail in the head. It's it's not just about whether you're exposed to it's it's a fundamental like this is for other people. And it's not for me. And I deal with that mindset belief day in and day out, because I work with people who are just getting started who are in that exact nine to five or you know, they want that, but they don't know how to take that first step. And they don't believe that that first step is possible for them. And what I tell my students is that it is going to be different. So where that resource is, where that exposure is, is different for everybody. But it comes down to an internal decision within you that no one else can make for you that you are going to take that first step. I can't, I tell my students, I can't come to your house, pick you up by the collar and make you do it. Although I wish I could. And I would I really know that you would be breaking down your house because I want your life to change. But it comes down to you making that internal decision. And the thing I tell them is you have more support and a more of a path clear for you than I actually do at this very moment. Because what I'm trying to accomplish here running a really what I want is a hundred million dollar company. But let's just say 10 million dollars with a low ticket thing. Not that many people are doing that. Certainly not that many people in my sphere where I can be talking to them every single day. And so for me, scaling my company, I'm flying blind. I'm reading a book or two and grasping onto the little kernels of things I can get or anyone like talking. And so you have more knowledge and education and access to information than I do at this stage. And so part of that entrepreneur journey, no matter where you are, is just I'm flying blind a little bit, but I'm still going to take that step forward. And that's something that you have to decide to do for yourself. I don't know. It's like coming from my background that was in tech. I didn't really have exposure to this. So I never really understood the whole I get it. I mean, if you're going to sell a product, make it 30, 40,000,000 people buy it. But it also it also puts a lot of pressure on people. That's the road I came from a lot of pressure. And I don't love the idea of not everybody does this, but like the mortgage or home to go learn how to is a car. Yes, that is a conversation I would love to have with you because I think it's an I think it's an issue. I used to be in the like 30,000 dollar per, you know, you were buying courses or you want to watch. I would I would sell I was selling that. That's what I was doing when I was doing the consulting. It was like 30,000 to $72,000 per customer. And I did it really well. And I and but the thing is you hit the nail on the head. If you were a person of integrity, you should be taking an investment like that really fucking seriously. And I did. And it was a ton of pressure. So my students love me. I got really like everyone was happy with their investment. But the pressure took me to deliver on an investment like that that I did take. I mean, let's just say someone who's making $60,000 a year is investing $30,000. That's half of their annual fucking income. They live in a high tax state. That's 100% their take home too. That's yeah. Hello, California. So like I take that really seriously. And and again, like you also ran into issues like I would tell people, you know, don't put it on a credit card. Like don't and so I and I can I believe that like I'm a big Dave Ramsey fan and so like I'm a big believer in like no dad and I've built my business on no debt and stuff. And so yeah, there's a it to me being able to genuinely change people's lives for $24 for $30. Like and help them get customers and grow their following. And it's for like the price of a Chipotle dinner. Like that feels great. I sleep so well at night. And my customers, I think that's very they like that too. Obviously, I think I think they like that. I think I mean they do because they're they're voting with their like their credit card and like their their money every single day. So obviously it's working. Yeah, I don't know. This is why I've always been turned off from like the whole course world. It's just if I love the idea of education. Education is great. Education changes the world. Education can change someone's life. I feel like when you exploit it, that's when it like turns me personally off. And I think that I think that listen, if you want to have like an introduction and help somebody sort of get themselves off the ground, you can if you want to have like a done for you or something that's a little bit more high value, like you can do that too. But it's not like I don't think the first version of entrepreneurship should be somebody going like 30, 40, $50,000 into debt. I agree. I think I don't even recommend that like founders should raise money before they figure out product market fit. I would agree with that too. Like I just think it's it adds pressure. It adds pressure across the board. So whether or not it's someone else's money or it's the banks money and interest, like there's a lot of things that you can do to figure out if your business is going to work without spending an insane amount of money. Like people that spent 30,000, 40,000, 50,000 as a consulting fee, those are people, those are companies that are established. Those are companies like where they know there's going to be a massive return. They can track that they're not they're not mortgaging their house. They're running at 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 million dollars in revenue and they want to hire a specialist. A totally different totally totally different. I think the fact that there is so much exploitation in our industry specifically is a big reason why I show up the way I do because I do think that I am one of the good guys and I think that it's important that people find me. We talked about this before we hit record, but one of the things I do is share not just what my business pulls in but I share how much profit I make. I share how much I spend on my business expenses and how much I spend on my personal expenses too. I so be like you want to know what I spent on my clothes like you can find that and I think that level of transparency is really important for people to have some sense of like I actually really do need someone to show me what to do. People do like they want an online business, they want to know what we're doing, but they have no idea where to start. So they need help, they need someone. My mission is to have them find me because I know I'm going to take good care of you. I know you're in good hands with me. So how do I find as many people as possible and bring them into my world where I know you're going to be well taken care of? What was the value or the benefit to you outside of being hyper transparent to like putting all of your all of your stuff online, like how much you make, how much you take home, like you know the concept of building in public where you know you'll see on Twitter like people posting their their stripe dashboards that they're you SaaS startup whatever. But that I mean that there's not many examples of people that post their entire like life. My life. You know what I spend on subscriptions. I share my personal tax returns. So like you can see my tax forms to see like what I made in every column. What do you do that? A couple of reasons. One, I want you to trust me. That's the most important thing in my industry. You have to trust me. And so me having that level of like almost taboo levels of transparency. A little bit. Yeah, a little bit. Like it's like a yikes, Maria. Like but like that's what I want. I want you to sit up and pay attention and be like that's different. And it does. The other thing that it does is like you said building public like it's a little bit of healthy pressure to build in public because when I have a month, it's like oh you know I only did $500,000 a month like everybody knows that because I share my numbers. And so it's a little bit of that like you know like a publicly traded company like they do their like reports is kind of a little bit like that where it's like a good bit of like pressure. It also expands people's minds to what's possible. I back in 2012, 2011, I was reading like blog reports per month and how much I made blogging every single month. And they would be making like I made $13,000 in a month. And I was like you can make $13,000 in a month. I want to do that. And so it just expands your mind. And my my girls that I work with like they need their minds expanded. You know where I come from even like I know how like people are excited when you're making $60,000 in a year. So then you come across someone on the internet that started with their first year mind you being $63. And they're first year. And it it just shows what's possible. And it really stretches their mind in the believable way because they're seeing where every penny of that $700,000 is going like oh she's spent $250,000 an ads. That's where that money went. She spent you know whatever it is $50,000 in labor. Like so they're seeing where the dollars are going in real time. I think that's really important for them. I like that. So that that whole idea of entrepreneurship isn't for me. It's for other people. I would assume that transparency actually brings somebody like brings that reality closer to them. I think so. The other thing that I think that I do that helps them feel like it's possible is all the like vulnerable stuff I share about being a single mom and just the like human side of me all the time I've messed up like there's the income almost puts me on a pedestal and then me sharing all the vulnerability all the ways I've messed up brings you back down to humans like oh she's a mess hot mess expressed just like I am and she's running a $10 million company. That marriage of really good social proof like I made this and yet my I am a mess in like the best way possible that combination has been such a winner for me in creating trust which is I really that's the only thing I care about online is like I want you to trust me. I want you to feel like you're in good hands with me. I want you to feel like Maria someone who's going to take care of me in my business stream. That's what I want. Quick question. What's your go-to when you got 10 minutes before a meeting or a workout? For me it just used to be whatever I could grab which usually meant skipping meals entirely or just grabbing something that left me crashing an hour later because it was just full of garbage. That's why I'm partnering with fuel. This black edition ready to drink is a complete meal so it has 35 grams of protein, six grams of fiber, 35 essential vitamins and minerals. It is no sugar added gluten-free under five bucks. I always keep a few of these in my fridge and honestly it's solved the whole back-to-back meetings go go go non-stop no time to eat problem super well. And this one's new for me it's fuels daily greens. I had the blueberry this morning honestly first impression it was way better than I expected. It's developed by registered nutritionists and dieticians. There are 42 vitamins minerals and super foods only 25 calories four grams of fiber and just one gram of sugar. I throw one back first thing before my morning calls every single morning. Look if you're running a business time is the most valuable asset. Fuel makes healthy eating simple and they also just launch into target source nationwide so you can get it everywhere. Try both products today with 15% off your purchase for new customers with my exclusive code Scott at fuel.com slash Scott. Try both products today with 15% off your purchase for new customers with my exclusive code Scott at COTT at fuel.com slash Scott use my code fill out the post checkout survey to help support the show that is fuel.com slash Scott they really make healthy living case amazing even if you're on the go healthy eating healthy lifestyle doesn't have to taste bad it doesn't have to suck. NetSuite is a success story partner now what is a future hold for business if you ask nine experts you'll get 10 answers bull market bear market rates are up rates are down at the end of the day it just be easier somebody invented a crystal ball but until then over 43,000 businesses a future proof themselves with NetSuite by Oracle the number one AI cloud ERP that brings accounting financial management inventory and HR into one unified platform here's what I love about it instead of juggling multiple systems you get one source of truth real-time insights and forecasting that actually let you peer into the future with actionable data when you're closing your books in days instead of weeks you're spending less time looking backwards and more time focusing on what's next whether your company is earning millions for hundreds of millions NetSuite helps you tackle immediate challenges while seizing your biggest opportunities if I needed this product in my business this is what I'd use it's a game changer for business visibility and control if you want to see how AI can transform your financial operations download the cfo's guide to AI and machine learning for free that's net suite dot com slash scott clary that's net suite dot com slash scott clary net suite dot com slash scott clary how does the audience because authenticity it's a word that's like thrown around a lot and I think that I think that if you want to be authentic online I think it's good to include parts of your life and this is more from like the lens of like a creator trying to create good content but I don't find it's it's good to be authentic and talk about the things that you experience but I don't feel like you have to non-stop talk about it because it distracts if that makes sense is there like a percentage of like how much you actually share to accomplish a result versus like trauma dumping every day on your stories good question there's such a right way and a wrong way to do that right because if you do it the wrong way you're like oh you should share that like a big it's a big yikes right so it's it's and I think the people just default to not putting any of themselves online because they don't know where that line is where it's actually going to help me become a human versus oh my goodness is this person selling courses or do I feel like I'm this person's therapist yeah and and almost like is this person mentally okay like I've seen sometimes where I'm like that sometimes I think people are not yeah and they're not and they shouldn't have access to their phones and so like I've seen that too but I think for me what I because I I do see people do it the wrong way a lot and I advise vulnerability and be transparent but like let's not error dirty laundry what I find is a good balance is like what talk about what you're talking about from a healed place if you have unresolved emotions like when I went through my divorce three years ago you didn't even know what's going on at all I waited and it's a good thing I would not have been classy I would not have been graceful at the beginning that's good once I work through that only in the last I would say six months or so I'm more at a place where I'm coming at this from a very healed very like this is actually amazing for me like I'm I'm not the other side in my life is beautiful and it's incredible and oh my gosh like what a gift this all was but but it took a hot second to get there and so I think really like analyzing your own emotions about something people can tell when you're coming across as angry or bitter or resentful they can also tell when you're coming at a lesson learned from a place of healing and a place of wow what a gift this was and so really you have to have enough self-awareness to know what mental space am I at as it relates to this taboo topic or this vulnerable topic that I'm sharing where's my own headspace about that because that's going to energetically come across whether you try to mask it or not people can tell I like that and then that's what and so when you are healed that's when you can start to bring it into your content and you can sort of tell those stories when you're starting to feel grateful for it you're starting to realize the lessons that come from it and you're not so angry about what's happening to you or you're not in a victim space you're like hey actually this happened and it wasn't great but here's the beautiful good things that came out of it that's a really good place to talk about it I like that a lot I just I had one more thought on on pressure and then I want to talk a little bit more about how you the idea of life architecture I love it I mean like I mentioned I'm five feet from my bedroom here it's like there's it's all done I'm like very what's the word I'm thinking of it's all done like by design right like everything in my life I try and do by design even the amount I work or what I work on I know that you're very specific as well but before I go into that you mentioned about building in public and creating like a healthy amount of pressure for somebody who's never built anything themselves entrepreneurship can feel super overwhelming obviously adding on like the pressure of disclosing your own financials I'm assuming for some people is very stressful that thought of even being an entrepreneur stressful so how do you how do you sort of leverage pressure as a positive that is you are you are throwing some good questions I mean these are good because these are things I think about all the time um well that question gets into some of my theories around entrepreneurship in general which is like I think sometimes you have to have a little bit of like I don't even want to use the word toxic but like like like there's sometimes the pressure isn't good but it achieves good things if that makes sense and so it's like my pressure to help people make money is an obsession like it's I'm obsessed with it to an almost like unhealthy degree and I don't want to put that label on myself because it works for me and so by the way I think that's very normal yeah and anybody who's built something understands like I think about it the minute I wake up in the minute I go to bed that like really my business and Ellie my daughter are like the only two things on my radar and um I can't offer advice on how to modulate pressure in a way that's like doable because that's not how I operate but Jeff Bezos is something that I really liked which was work life harmony not work life balance and so I have pressure to reach every person on the ends of the earth like I literally want to touch every human being and help them take a look at their income and say hey is there a way if you want to you can make more income if so put me in coach like I want to be there to help you that I truly believe is the reason I was put on this earth and like I will be doing this until I'm 90 like that is my life's mission and so like with that sense of urgency there's going to be a lot of pressure but it doesn't feel negative it feels exciting and I think a lot of entrepreneurs worry about things that like you don't need to worry about like if you are an entrepreneur take that for if you want to be an entrepreneur take that first step and then work on it as you feel excited and motivated too the pressure as you call it is like my fuel and I love it and most entrepreneurs that I know we have that pressure but it fuels us to do really good things so I don't believe in work life balance I believe in work life harmony and my life is harmonious very much by design and that comes with the pressure but I like the pressure what I agree with everything you said what pressure is bad pressure then the pressure that makes you feel like shit the pressure that makes you feel like you aren't doing enough and you're bad for not doing enough the pressure I feel is there's more people who need help making more money and I haven't reached them yet and I want to help them like I it's a positive pressure where it's like it is but you can't also but also you can't like be down on yourself because you haven't gotten to the level that you know it's more people do that exactly yes it's a very good distinction because I know that there will be some people that I will never impact and that's okay but I get excited about the people I've already helped and it's like can we do that a hundred times more and so it's this positive this beautiful thing where you realize your work makes a difference and you're like what if I could just like help another hundred people and that's good pressure it's the duality of two things being true at once where you want to help more people but then you can't discredit and discount the work you've already done true exactly and and the work I've already done is what creates the pressure for more is beautiful I love it I really do I think that that's I think that I think that listen we're talking to different crowds here like people that are just starting out um we'll feel a lot of pressure and and I think that's a healthy thing but then also being to sort of like a more uh advanced entrepreneur crowd something that I deal with all the time and I'm sure you do as well like you do move goalposts so you don't realize that you realize a far you've come but you aren't happy about you're not like satisfied oh you're not satisfied and you're not happy let's be real like if you're if you're looking for happiness in achieving a milestone that milestone when you achieve it will be like dust in your mouth like it's it's tasteless it's it loses flavor immediately and so happiness is not in the money or in the milestones it's the journey truly and that's why I really don't know that I buy into the idea that there has to be pressure at the beginning like when you're a new entrepreneur you're invited to sit at the table and play the game with us it's like a board game night right like yeah there's some rules you gotta learn and like if it's a little bit like okay what are the rules of the game but like you're having fun you're playing a game and so I challenge the idea that it has to be pressure that there it is and that is a reality but like what if it what if it was just fun from day one that's what was for me it was just fucking fun from day one and I've had fun for 13 years and it's been awesome when you when you have a very specific product and it's working and people are getting results as a content creator and a course creator because I would say that those two things for you are synonymous and you create the courses but you create the content to support the courses and to drive the traffic how do you decide what you want to do after so I mean you you have the trust of this community of people so you mentioned you don't want the first course to be about building wealth and you only focus on how to you know sell through one particular channel even as a million different channels to sell so how do you think of the evolution of your business as I say solo printer obviously you can have a team but still like very solo printer E what do you give them next in terms of product where do you take them but also when you expand your offering to more than just one thing how do you create content that serves multiple products yeah that's you are that's a great question so a couple of things I just read a book by not necessarily by Jeff Bezos it's a collected writings of Bezos and I recommend everybody read it because there's so many misconceptions about who Jeff Bezos is but if you actually when people don't take the time to really study him and what he's doing what he's actually spending his money on but he he his shareholder letters a lot of people recommend them and I just read them and one thing he said that really stuck with me has someone that is in the low ticket business that I have like 200 250 customers a day right so like every single day 200 plus new customers a day so I'm in the like customer acquisition business and he said something that just really cracked me up because it's just so true he's like the good news is the customer is always dissatisfied there's always new problems to be solving for which you're going to find as soon as you launch your first course they're going to immediately be begging you for the next one you don't have to think the marketplace tells you what they want next so I have a long list of problems my customers have that I need to solve next for them right so like using the Instagram story one for example well the more followers you have the more people see your stories so my next course should probably be on like how I got so many Instagram followers I need to make a course on that or like they're getting views but their checkout pages are shit and nobody's buying from them okay I needed to make a course on how to make a checkout page that actually like get sales and so that there's a never-ending list of things our customers are struggling with and they tell you very clearly and very loudly what they need help with and so the marketplace tells me what courses I launch next sometimes their courses I don't even really personally want to be talking about but I know it's what my customers need and so I'm always servicing my customers and what they need and what their problems are and then you mentioned like how do you make content that promotes multiple products at the same time there's a book recommendation that I have for you it's called on Ready Fire Aim it's by Michael Masterson and he talks about how stage one entrepreneurship is zero to a million and you should only sell one product at that stage once you're at a million trying to scale to 10 million which is the stage I'm at you should be launching as many products and marketing as many products as fast as you possibly can and so it's a big it's a big switch from going from selling one product to multiple products as fast as you can and what I learned is that we as individuals overcomplicated in our heads our customers are not paying attention to every piece of content that we put out and so they might not even know that you have multiple products they're just going to see that one piece of content that's pitching that one particular product and they're going to buy from that and what I wasn't expecting but ended up being a beautiful source of profit for me was the product ecosystem where the products recommend themselves and so all of a customer who buys my selling with Instagram stories one but then I might happen to mention that I also have a course on copywriting and the better your copy is the more your stories are going to perform and so they'll naturally go and buy the copywriting course because they might not feel confident about what they're writing and they want my my little guide to doing that and so I wasn't prepared for the way this product ecosystem they probably have like 200 products at this point the way the product ecosystem recommends itself and it becomes this like a little machine that like scales very naturally sell products that help people master the skills to make the first sale first product even more effective and and not always but I mean like that's like a nice sort of like I guess ecosystem is the perfect word for it that's how you think about expanding the ecosystem exactly and they tell you what they want next and them telling you what they want next like just is it a couple of comments or is it a couple of DMs like when do you know when it's like a casual interest versus what people will actually pay for yeah that's a really good question one is just instinctive mastery like you do it enough you have your finger on the pulse of your market so you just know but two so we have a Facebook group where all of our students are in so it's a pretty big Facebook group at this point and I just pay attention to the chatter in the Facebook group like if I'm saying 20 comments and I'm like hey does Maria have a course on filming stuff with an iPhone and then 20 people are like following and they want to know if she does and and I don't I'm like huh maybe I should be launching a little micro course on filming with an iPhone that might be something my customers really need so I just start like writing it down and the thing is I can't produce products fast enough that's actually my bottleneck is if I could clone myself I would triple my business you can't hire a teacher I haven't yet figured out how to switch people trust me yeah I feel that and and and I my sister Rose she runs the ads so she's brought into my world and she is now a trusted person but people trust me and they trust Rose it's a process a Gore Institute did that and they had a ton of teachers do that but that's that's probably how I'm going to scale 200 million but I'm nowhere close to that right now and so I am the bottleneck I am the constraint I am the key like the key man risk is me as all me and so if I could produce products three times faster I would triple my revenue that's the bottleneck that's a good because they would buy them as soon as as soon as I buy launch something they buy it well I was just thinking again I don't have experience with this but I would just make the assumption just based on some of my past experience with like just selling products like if you if you if you're product if you have like a linchpin problem or a key man problem and it's you and and your conversion rates are say x percent because you sell the product you'll never replicate those conversion rates but from a business perspective conversion rates could be good enough yeah that's true that's true like if you're six percent and and it's two percent but two percent with no effort is better than you being a bottleneck that's all I'm thinking that's true no I think you're right that's something because again like we we are I'm the key man everywhere everywhere I'm the face of the exact same problem if I sold something through this podcast yeah but that's true like because we do have better than typical conversion rates and so we could afford to take a hit on that that's interesting the thing my like shorter term thing was like looking what I want to do is like I have team members that could create things that don't need my face like workbooks and guides and templates and that's very helpful it's stuff that we actually use here our team Maria but doesn't require my face figuring out that I think will help too but the long term that's exactly what we need to be doing is getting me out of it and Dave Ramsey did it really successfully with his Ramsey personalities he's got a bunch of people now and so he's he's really the person I look to that's in the low ticket world he does do events and hire tickets off but he mostly is selling like a $20 book and a $97 course I saw I saw you speaking about why you think he's such a great creator and I actually agree you can sort of drop that insight as well because like he is a workhorse yeah three hours every single day but I didn't know he did I don't actually know what he does as like a business Ramsey he does so his main product for like I don't know 20 years has been like financial piece university which is basically a course it's basically a course it used to be DVDs that got mail to you before that it was cassettes that got mailed to you like he's been in the information business since the 80s or whatever it is like it was real estate no well he does have real estate and he made a ton of money with real estate in 2008 but his Ramsey solutions business is in the information selling business and so he has done that very successfully for a long time and that's the business I'm in and I it's a great model because he's always he's over a hundred million dollars in annual revenue doing that all low ticket for the most part he does have like on trade leadership which is his higher level like masterminds and stuff but for the most part it's $20 books you know $37 for this the makes sense because the people that like sort of follow him are not killing it financially no they're a bunch of people yeah they're on a budget they're on the day Ramsey budget they're eating beans and rice yeah and it's funny because he is like the main advocate for no debt yeah and I that's kind of his thing it's no debt I mean he's like the opposite of Robert Kiyosaki right yes no literally there's like a billion dollars in that he's like he owns his real estate free and and that's what comes to like lifestyle architecture like and lifestyle design beautiful I design yeah think pro I do not want a life where even if I could make the stress for me of being overly leverage and being caught with my pants on that is not worth it so I would rather I'm I'm young I would rather take my time and build my wealth slowly and stably because Ramsey says the best he's like there reaches a tipping point where it's much lower to build off the way he does but you reach this point where then you're like so freaking cash flowing and that it just compounds really fast once you get to that like critical tipping point and so for me I might be making more money if I leverage debt I'm completely debt-free in my personal life completely debt-free in my business and I will never take out debt I don't even want a mortgage like I'm renting right now but when I go to buy I want to buy my beautiful coronadel mar mansion and cash because I just don't want debt I don't I'm like bully bot in do it and it doesn't make financial sense like I get the logic everyone always tries to it's like I get it but for me like I love that I drive my car and it's fully paid for it's been fully paid for since 2020 I love that I understand it because I know like people always say well you know if you can get a mortgage at x yes now by the way yeah whatever industry is gonna be shit yeah that's true too like if you could have gotten mortgages in the past I mean if you can make more on that money versus the mortgage but then the argument then yes if you are ever gonna play that game you're gonna play the debt game it's not like obviously it's something you can do very successfully and and and tons of people do tons of people do it and the US in particular set up for debt yeah yeah but like it's always something else to think about so if you are for example you have like a three percent mortgage and you have that money and you like refinance your home you put that money in an investment that's making you more yes fine but you just it's something to think about I know but I'm like go put that brain power towards making your money like it's like literally like draining cognitive brain power not something to think about isn't like you should do it something to think about isn't like you have to literally think about it exactly it's something to think about and and and people expense so much brain power on like half a percent here a percent here and I'm like that's good that those are some good critical thinking skills go put it to a business and triple your income that's where you're actually gonna see the needle really move for you financially my life dramatically change when I dramatically increase my income that is what really moves the needle for me financially and I don't think people they spend a lot of time doing other things and not worrying about that go go start a business I like that a lot and I also I'm I am a firm believer that like when you spread yourself too thin like nothing gets unproblem truly truly and there there is an argument to me like if you are I know I'll get shit on for this if you are always focused on like okay so doing the things people tell you to do and I do I do them myself but if you are I'll give you an example I'll give you a very practical example so we just bought a condo and Dubai there's like a wild wild move we had family that invested in like oh go try to buy this pre-construction and Dubai and it worked out very well but it was like to close on it it was like two months of my life it was going to Dubai it was signing paperwork it was back and forth it was figuring out this whole system was figuring out mortgage paperwork getting it approved through like all these regulatory massive fucking distraction like insane distraction so if you do this and you play this game and you invest it doesn't matter if it's as crazy as buying a condo and Dubai or researching like the latest tech stocks or putting even you know put your money in like a Vanguard ETL like all these things are options but they all require research and attention and energy and I think that when somebody focuses all of their energy and all their time on one thing one thing exactly it is crazy what it can do it is people don't even realize it also it creates space because if you only focus on one thing it's like then you have like these periods where maybe aren't busy for two three hours but the two three hours where you can be creative you think of solutions and you can think of things that can actually 10x that one thing I've always said I'm a one trick pony like I can do one thing really really well and it's this business and for the longest time it was like one business with one product two a million I did that for three years I just sold the same product over and over again and I also think with that in particular but really just in general but specifically with debt and there's an energetic side of it too where it's like debt is a leaky money energy I really and I'm like a little I'm into the metaphysics of money a little bit like not too too much but enough to be a believer because I've seen it work in my own life and money loves to come to other money so when I became debt-freex I had a lot of debt coming out of college and medical debt and whatever my just the act of paying off my debt all my personal was being completely debt-free before I was making a ton of money money started to come to flock to me like money loves money and it loves having a place to go and so I firmly believe that one of the best things you can do from an abundance mindset standpoint from a money standpoint is to just pay off all your debt like I just challenge people to like clear their balances pay your debt off and just see what happens for you financially my theory is you'll build on so much faster indeed is a success story partner now if you're hiring indeed is all you need let me give you an example if I needed to hire a new editor for this show I'd go to indeed and be super specific not just can you edit audio I'd say I need someone who's edited a conversational podcast for at least three years gets our style and knows our software someone who's done this before and here's the thing with indeed sponsor jobs I'd get people who fit that description I'm not digging through resumes when people who've edited one YouTube video I'm getting actual podcast editors who know what they're doing people who've worked on shows like ours and can prove it that's what makes a difference you get people who actually are what you're looking for according to indeed data sponsor jobs posted directly on indeed are 90% more likely to report a higher than non sponsored jobs and people are finding quality hires right now in the minute that I've been speaking to you companies like yours have made 27 hires on indeed according to indeed data worldwide spend more time interviewing candidates who check all the boxes less stress less time and more results now with indeed sponsor jobs and listeners of this show will get a 75 dollar sponsored job credit to help you get your job the premium status it deserves at indeed dot com slash clary just go to indeed dot com slash clary right now and support our show by saying you heard about indeed on this podcast indeed dot com slash clary terms and conditions apply hiring do it the right way with indeed hub spot is a success story partner now look if you're in marketing right now or if you're an entrepreneur who's hired marketers or if your founders who leads a whole marketing team you know the drill you are creating content for 12 different channels you're launching campaigns you're scoring leads you're analyzing all the data and somewhere in there you're actually supposed to do great marketing and it's exhausting and your spread to them but this is what actually works for marketers to give you your life and your time back hub spots marketing hub hub spots content hub combined with their new AI called breeze now what this actually does is basically everything that you shouldn't have to do yourself it remixes your content instantly so you're not starting from scratch every single time it handles lead scoring so you know exactly who to focus on which customers will probably convert and it pulls all your analytics and your data and KPIs into one place instead of having them scattered across 15 different tabs and tools plus the AI agents that hub spot builds for you can automate the repetitive stuff that's eating away your day bottom line you get better results faster without burning out see with hub spot everything's connected in one platform instead of duct tape together so if you're tired of being spread too thin check out hubspot.com slash marketers to see how this actually works I think that a lot of people if they have massive amounts of debt or their wealth fluctuate significantly or I mean even if you're a business owner it doesn't matter how much you're killing it there's going to be months where there's like barely any in the bank you have cash flow issues it really impacts you psychologically it does really it really fucks with you and I think that that people don't understand how much that can actually long term be a detriment to the potential success and in the short term to your mental health and and like you get in this scarce I caught like a scarcity spiral well if you ever build a business you know this like it's not like a like a job right where you get like paid every two weeks right so so you could have I was just watching this TikTok and this woman's like I'm at a conference to speak about how I scaled to a million dollars in revenue per year revenue top line but because she had cash flow issues and like vendors weren't paying on time she couldn't afford the deposit like her credit card wouldn't clear the deposit in the hotel that she was staying because she had no money in the bank but she was at a hotel to speak at a conference about making a million dollars in the first year. It's not an integrity again I again like I agree but I mean this is a reality for people this is something that happens so say you have say you have like three four hundred I don't know what kind of product is service which is like a tiktok it's 30 seconds but like say three or four hundred thousand dollars in like accounts receivable like net 60 payment terms because you suck on negotiating whatever it is like it's it's real and if you overspend you over leverage you you paid your employees before you got the income out of your own like personal checking yeah it could totally happen that you have no money in the bank so is it out of integrity oh what I here's what I will say you I really commend you for sharing that side of what you're going through on tiktok that is vulnerability that is transparency so I commend her for that but I would personally if she doesn't bring it up then it's out of integrity I think I was just like you gotta be at a bare minimum let's just be specific that it's top-line revenue like at a bare minimum let's just start like let's not do the funny business where it's like I made a million dollars but it's in sales and we all know that like the contracts on that don't always come through so did you really do a million dollars or did you do like three hundred thousand dollars and cash collect it right like to me people get away with a lot of like ambiguity with the terms that's why I'm so anal about it about like no it's like I'm on track for ten million dollars in a year I haven't hit that yet like I'm very specific with every term I put out there because it's we have to start having some self-policing of what we're doing in this industry or the FTC's going to come in and we'd rather I'd rather police me than have the FTC be policing me let's just put it that way tell me about your one and a half work days per week and then I want to talk about why it's important to you how you did it some of the things I just mentioned and what they mean to you yeah I think it's even less now I think it's probably like one day a week now I lost my half a day I don't know it's just like it's like one day a week now so like today's my work day explain explain what one day a week actually means because it literally this is what my if you want average week there will be one day per week where Ellie's either with her dad or she's with a nanny and that's when I work that's it I know I I'm with her a minimum of 85% of the time and I'm off my phone I don't work when I'm with her so whatever needs to get done gets done in that period I will occasionally check in with a team member via Slack but I typically don't do that so like this week podcast we're working today that's it I'm gonna write some emails that's it that's it that's all I do so that's it that's my work for the week and the so architecting your life if you cannot scale within the confines of that 24 hours meaning like you said before you're a bottleneck or removing the bottleneck would be you record content seven days a week that's removing up but to you that's not worth it I can't make that trade at this time in my life because I'm choosing to be a very present mother I could easily have far surpassed my revenue in my business by choosing to have a nanny more than I do or by choosing to not be with Ellie as much as I do but she's three years old she's gonna be three once and then to be four and I don't want to miss a minute of it this business stuff is so dust in the wind compared to being a parent and again I have a very feeling fulfilling career I love what I do it is so meaningful to me to do what I do but in comparison to being a parent and especially being the parent of a little kid like that where she's just like up my butt in the best way possible like I everything we do together like we really like that is what I want and there are and I just wouldn't even about this this morning because there are so many moments where I do feel like I'm failing both like I feel like I'm failing my business because I'm not working on as much as I could or I'm failing Ellie the one day a week I work because she's sat like she really likes to be with me 24 seven and so even that one day a week is a big sacrifice for both of us like I don't like to be away from her she doesn't like to be away from me we would love to be just with each other all the time 24 seven and so I there are many days where I do feel like I'm literally failing both because the reality is if you're only working one day a week some stuff's going to get back burned it's just how it goes that's just that's just going to happen and the reality is I sacrifice some personal fulfillment to be a present mother that's just my reality that's the it's not even a sacrifice it's just the trade I'm eating and so and so I think I think really it's just that's it's you have to become and I think your friend is exactly right time magically changes once you have a kid it's literally magic and you get done in 30 minutes what you used to take you eight hours and I'm not kidding like you literally just collapses and you figure out what needs to get done and you do it in a way short amount of time and I promise you if and when you do have kids you're going to look back to what you thought filled your day and you be like I had so much fucking free time I had no idea like you just and every parent will say that that's just how it goes so first of all when did you when did you consciously decide this is the way you wanted to build because you were you were you were not working one day a week before you had no I was working like seven days a week six days a week like I was working excessively I just got smart I knew to me I'm I'm very like values minded person and it's very I think it is very important for a mother this is my opinion but I think it's very important for a mother specifically to be very present to her kid especially in the first three years of a child's life there's a lot of studies that have been done on that and it's so important for that bond and for the kid's security to have her mother be with her and that was like a value thing for me so it was like I am going to force reality to fit to what I want I am going to have a seven figure business and I'm not gonna work and whatever that looks like I'm gonna figure that out but those are the that's the standard so when you made that switch from from working seven days a week to to being a mother and I fully fully agree it's very smart way to to live and I think that's beautiful I just feel like a lot of people have trouble with this I feel like most people wish they could especially entrepreneurs wish they could compress their stuff down to one day one and a half days so a couple ideas difference between being busy and productive for sure um you obviously went through this sort of uh mental exercise figuring out what you had to do what you needed to do and what you didn't have to do and what you could delegate I'm sure that's what you you went into I'm version of that how did you how did you remove 80 85 percent of the work like 95 truly 95 because 5 percent of what you're doing is actually driving revenue and that's really all you need to do the rest kind of figures itself out so I all I did when I was making that pivot was look at what am I doing that actually drives revenue and I just stopped doing the rest like I just stopped and so it was fine like it was like there's so much busy work entrepreneurs do that they think is so important they think that it's very ego driven a lot of the stuff we do is entrepreneurs that we think is important is very ego driven we are ego likes to think it's needed but it's actually not um there's very few things that actually drive revenue for me it's content creation that's all I do but that drives 100 percent of the revenue and that's all I do and so for me a full day is looks like creating content and it's different kinds of content some days I'm in a studio some days I'm at home writing emails some days I'm scheduling out my Instagram or filming YouTube it's a lot of different content creation but you have to look if you want to work less look at what's driving the revenue and just start doing that and stop doing everything else but you also you also are very good at systematizing your content creation too so um you film an insane amount of content in a very short period of time you bring like wardrobe changes everywhere I think I think it really comes on to what our beliefs are like do you think you need to spend eight hours a day working in order to generate the revenue you've been generating I most people say yes I'm here to tell you you're wrong you actually can generate the same amount of revenue in 30 minutes maybe an hour if you just looked at the life you have to look at the activities and really do an audit of like what actually brings the money and what is the specific task that you do that brings the money in do way more of that and stop doing everything else you mentioned that entrepreneurs are super ego driven which I believe um because I like as you say this I totally recognize patterns in myself and like the others totally shit I should not do anymore but if you were going to if you're going to give advice to somebody who's just auditing what are like the what are the things that you had to kill that were the toughest that you real like you feel like across the board entrepreneurs do when they shouldn't be doing it massive over delivery that wasn't even giving the customers what they wanted so like coaching calls that like take up so much time that don't actually it's it's a time suck for you and a time suck for your customers um a by-crow managing of team like we have a zero meetings company so all of our team members we have a zero meetings all the same slack so slack we like don't we don't have team meetings but do you know how many people are having one-on-ones with each individual time members that is so inefficient for your team and that is so inefficient for you just hire good people pay them better than usual and don't make our manager I barely ever talked to my team we are we are good like we're all in good terms but like they'd rather not be on meetings either right but our ego and our need to control things we need to be having these one-on-ones we need to be servicing our clients and oh the customers want me like and even I have that right where I'm like oh I can't sell courses they trust me like it comes up like it's a typical thing um but it's very ego-driven we're not as important as we think we are in the business and that's a good thing that's freeing so that's what I think like what people are actually looking for like they're looking for freedom like true freedom and that is true freedom I mean you've probably heard this before like if you can't take a three month vacation from your business not a business just a job right and this might be a great paying job but I think even for me I don't think I'm quiet at the point where I could take three months off but I'm taking six out of seven days a week off yes you take a couple weeks off fine but still this is like you built a business around your name and you're able to take six weeks off I'm talking about an entrepreneur that built a business has no correlation with who they are which is like 99% of businesses yes but eventually actually I would I'm have you ever thought about how you're gonna exit out I don't know that I I don't know that I have to really I don't know I mean I have to do kind of what Alex and Rosie do with Jim launch but I don't know that an exit out is the right plan for me so much is building up other businesses that don't so much require me like I think I think me being so passionate about what I do but I don't know I don't know I'm I'll tell you what my weakness is is I can't see past my nose I'm so good at knowing what the immediate next step is but I can't tell you where the business will be in five years I know that also will be helping people make money but the specifics of it I really struggle with that long-term vision when you move yourself away from a lot of the day to day do you ever get concerned about like being disconnected from customers or like losing an edge I don't think so because part of what I do with my content creation involves paying attention to what my customers are saying so the act of content creation keeps me plugged in I think that you if you weren't as involved in content creation you could get unplugged pretty quickly but again I question like what do you actually need to do to stay plugged in probably read something for maybe five to ten minutes a day whether it's your group or your customers are in or it's you know the emails like it doesn't it's not as much time as you think it actually needs have you thought about like the definition of freedom and how it's changed for you over I think for me freedom you know going through the divorce that I did and getting out of the relationship I was in it's just like freedom to exist as I am like that is so amazing to me it's just like waking up and not having to walk on age shells is fucking amazing and just being happy to do what I want and do it in peace is amazing a peaceful home is amazing like my life is my freedom right now and getting out of that relationship is freedom and I'm just still savoring that three years later because that was that was tough to get out of that freedom to be with Ellie as much as I want to is incredible for me the the money freedom is just like I don't care about money I like not having to worry about bills and stuff that's very freeing but then I you could pay me like because I probably live on like I don't know $10,000 a month so you could pay me $10,000 and then like you move to Miami and then like six I really shit six half list well actually no maybe somewhere no not my Emmy because lifestyle cost of living is very expensive here but I would I would just like I would love to just like move to Miami for a little bit and just like not give a fucking just like a roll up in my paid for vehicle that's like fine like I just like I would just do it anyways this is how I am like the person who you're with like the life you're living like all of these if if you aren't fully in alignment I feel like people think they can just push through they can push through the bad relationship they can push through the feeling that they have to not be themselves in front of their friends because they're embarrassed they can put but it just over time it just like breaks you down and like entrepreneurship is hard enough maybe you can exist but I don't think you can thrive I think it takes up so much mental energy my you can look at like when I was married like my revenue my revenue my revenue and then when I was single massive spike it's because it's sad because it could be the inverse too it could be like the partner that you're with could be somebody they can I was excited for that day like that I'm manifesting that for me right now like very much like that is my next thing is like up true partnership with a mentally well equal I'm very excited like that's some women sort of voice they're concerned that their husbands aren't supportive and how much that sort of like derails all their progress I hear it every day now I'm assuming that there's obviously some men whose wives are also not supportive but I just think that I've heard it more from women that their spouse or their partner is not super supportive of and when I say creator that is being an entrepreneur putting out content selling a product building an audience that is full entrepreneurship it's maybe not building a software business or or being a consultant but it's full entrepreneurship and I've heard that in some cases men are not so supportive of their wives and I don't know how you thrive in that environment when it's already so difficult to do this even if you have somebody who's like a hundred percent behind you I know I hear it all the time to obviously work mostly with women and so I hear it every day and look when we give their husbands the benefit of the doubt we can see that maybe they don't understand like that's the bend that's the nice way to say it's like maybe they don't understand and so they're and I don't really either but like maybe for some they don't get what they're doing I think for a lot of the the men that I the husbands that I hear about there's a fear around what if she's successful and what does that look like for the dynamic and our relationship and I think that we're at a very interesting point in our culture we're for so long the roles of men and women have been very clear and very cut and dry and we're at a transition stage where now you have more women who are graduating college than men and and the income gaps actually closing I don't know if you saw that but like we've actually made a lot of progress to close the income gap they just released a study and so I think that I'm not surprised if if more women are going to college yeah exactly like it's kind of but like I feel I do feel for men I really do who are struggling with understanding well if my role isn't as provider what is it and so they're having to figure that out and I don't think that a lot of men are giving the tools to like emotionally intellectually like work through that and so I think their knee jerk reaction is to be unsupportive and really what they're just struggling with is like well what is my place in this relationship if you do take off and you're making more than I am what do I bring to the table and the wife answers many beautiful answers to the question but really it's fundamentally that husband really sitting with what where is my sense of worth if I'm not the main provider I think I think that's what I see over and over again is like that's where the lack of support comes from it's not fear failure it's fear of his wife becoming successful and what that will mean for their relationship I wonder why if you are if you're a guy and you're in your married to a woman and she is just super ambitious like why would that not light a fire in you to like support her but also like level yourself up to I think some men do choose that that should be the answer not to level up in terms of like oh I'm competing I'm going to make more money but like now you have the opportunity to have this beautiful relationship where two people are just like taking conquering the world together that's what I want yeah okay if she makes she makes ten million a year you make five million who the fuck care right I mean I'm competitive so like if I can be in competition with someone like in the best weight like in a fun competitive way like I want I want to hear like oh wow you did that like dang now I got it like like I want I want what I want in my next relationship is like this like we're running together and like maybe one month you pull ahead and then the next month all pull ahead I just I think that would be just so fun like I would be so enjoyable because then you're like that's why I think that if you are entrepreneurial it's much easier to be with somebody who is also entrepreneurs and I think especially when you're a woman like I think very very many male entrepreneurs very successfully have a stay-at-home wife who takes care of the kids and I think that's a beautiful dynamic that works really well too I think as a woman who's an entrepreneur I find that the stay-at-home dad thing isn't quite as succumbed people do it really well um but I think that for me as a woman I crave that still that role of like a man who's also running at least with me right like I don't want to be running by myself and I don't want to be running ahead of you at least run with me I think I think that's fair and also that's that's where people say well then like who's gonna be home with the kids I mean you're running a 10 million dollar business and you're home with the kids I really am yeah it's not like you can't have both I always joke like I'm a stay-at-home mom that happens to accidentally have a 10 million dollar business like it's really what I'm a stay-at-home mom like really it's most of my day is literally changing diapers and doing chalk and going to the beach with Ellie like that's my life and I tell it to people on Instagram all the time because you see this like this this is like a blink of an eye this is not my reality I am usually in sweatpants and just like and I'm thriving that's what I want that's my heart is so happy like I enjoy this business stuff but even more I enjoy Ellie Ellie and being Ellie's mom that's what lights me up that's really the thing for me and I think it should be so I think that that's that's the thing so just because you're ambitious doesn't mean the rest of your life falls apart I think it's so important that it doesn't you get resentful like the business is really important for me if I was just to stay at home I don't think I'd be mentally happy I need both you you're pretty no you go I don't even know you that well I know that you would just go not I just couldn't do it no because you people still everybody wants achievement and accomplishment it's just be smart about it and and and I think really the lesson you should take away from my story as it relates to lifestyle design and lifestyle architecture is that you don't have to compromise like you actually genuinely can have both I have a very successful business and I'm extremely present more than most parents I would say to my child and I started out with that literal sister perfect word that architect like creating my life designing my life by what do I want and then I figured out how to make that happen so you work with a whole bunch of women that are all trying to build we mentioned before like some of them have support of spouses some of them don't I think that the person you choose to partner with and marry date whatever is like the most important either advantage or disadvantage in what you're building so how do you know if somebody that you're with is right for your ambition I think that's a great question I think that do they give you this space to work that's such a practical thing but someone who's supportive of you will give you the space and time to work and not bother you and just leave you alone which I know it's so practical but if you think about the opposite of that someone who's unsupported is going to be constantly interrupting you constantly trying to take you away constantly expressing oh you don't pay attention to me anymore if your person really supports you and they're they want what you want which is a successful business they will recognize that that's going to mean a sacrifice of time especially at the beginning and they will not just allow you to have the time to work on your business but they will facilitate the time to work on your business so if you share children they will watch the children with you so you can work on your business or they will help you get a nanny they will support you and not just not being up your butt and give you but like they will facilitate that time and I think that it's so easy to be supportive with our words like good job baby you did it but it's so hard to be supportive with our actions and so I would really like look at especially if you aren't married yet like really pay attention to how your partner supports you with giving you the space that you need because that's a sacrifice that they need to make they're giving up quality time with you which is a good thing it's good to spend quality time with someone but if you have expressed to someone that you're with this is my dream this is what I want and this is the time it's going to take me and they can't give you that that's really telling me they can't put their needs before your needs and that's not very supportive and so it's a season it's not forever but look to how much space they give you with the time that you need to grow your business so in your case because you were always entrepreneurial I think that more often than not the discord comes when you're both working jobs and somebody wants to be entrepreneurial and then who you started dating turned into somebody else which will always be the case but the the person that that the the the person that individual turned into is so far from what you expected when you first started dating that it's like it screws everything up but like what happened in your case where you're dating this guy you are entrepreneurial for somebody else who's dating somebody man or woman what are the signs that you notice that this wasn't that they were blocking your ambition over supporting because you even said like you're revenue is very I think for me it wasn't so much like it's subtle and it was so much more in me having the capacity to please and satisfy someone that took up so much brain space like they're always walking on eggshells they're being careful not to anger the personality that was what kept me without the capacity to even think about things in my business so when I became single and I wasn't worried about placating someone and walking in eggshells 24-7 I just had the freedom to exist and that freedom and that the capacity to not be walking in eggshells all the time is what then the revenue sort of went up from there because I just had mental capacity I could think about things I wasn't in survival mode I was healed I was getting out of a situation no I just think that that's something that I mean like all the things we're talking about on this in this podcast like they all take a lot of courage well yeah and I mean the crazy thing is like with my marriage like it ended because of infidelity it wasn't even all of the like other things that came out that was like an unexpected bonus that I wasn't even expecting getting out of that that was just like oh I also had all of these other things that kind of like went out of my life which was really nice so that story is a very long one but the the moral of that story is that I'd never been single before like I was straight 18 straight into that relationship and so to me like I'm still savoring my singleness like the piece that comes from just like getting to live life a little bit more free and a little bit more peaceful and and it's made me a better mother I get to show me the mother I walk that capacity I get to be the business owner and so sometimes it's not the person you are sometimes it's a friendship sometimes it's a parent like be really cautious and really aware of the relationships you find yourself in because there's such a trickle effect that really does bleed into all areas of your life what about those non optional relationships so parents yeah I every every relationship is optional every relationship is optional people don't believe a lot of people don't believe that but it is and you should start you should start it's I treat Ellie she's three years old I treat her with respect that I give to adults her with like I know right now what I'm doing and how I treat her with respect is going to affect our relationship later I'm earning a good relationship with her later right and so I'm very intentional on how I parent and I think parents who expect that their children should just be in a relationship with them because they raise them are entitled it's a privilege to be with your adult children it's a privilege to have a relationship with your sister it's a privilege and we should be treating it as such it know every relationship is optional they're only religion in my life it's not optional is me being a mom to Ellie that's like pretty I'm pretty committed to that one like I'm got a stuck that's such a tough topic because people just I think this people hate the I not hate the idea I don't know I think it's very entitled to think that your old relationship your old energy we realize it's very it's it is I don't disagree when you say it like that but I also don't believe that a lot of people would agree with you but a lot of people have bad ideas about a lot of things they have bad financial ideas they have bad they have bad I think that when you operate like every relationship your in is a privilege to be in you treat people a lot better because you don't take it for granted and and you work to make a relationship better because it's not because it's optional like my relationship with my parents as an adult is good because I had honest conversations with my parent there was clear communication there was you know apologies for maybe how certain things went like we both worked my parents and I both worked at our relationship as adults and it's good now but but it had to be it had to just be like fine tuned and smoothed out and like because it they value and respect that relationship with me and I do to them neither of us are showing up like we just take each other for granted oh families just the way family is no like my parents are committed to healing their generational trauma I'm committed to healing my generational trauma and it's this meeting in the middle where we're both working on our shit and we're doing it together it's not optional yeah I think that that see that's a thing it's like on the other side of that idea of it not being optional is a healthy relationship and I was willing to let it go if it wasn't healthy fully I made full peace with like it's if I need a lot of go I will completely because I you show up better and you show up different exactly and they did too it gave them the opportunity to apologize and again like they were great parents like we're talking about like not massive things but like every parent does the best they can and sometimes it's not exactly what you needed it to be so I think that I'm very very intentional with my time and who I allow into my energy and it's a it's a privilege to be in my space I really do think that way I think that also just like one last idea like any business you build you you are Stewart I like that a lot so like don't build it for yourself build it for but it's not just god alley it's like you build it for your customer yes yes you build it for your team that you will hire you build it for the community that you build it for I mean even the education you put together a percentage of those people will never buy from you ever but you're still changing their life 99% of the people who watch my content never buy from me and I have wanted that way that's fine I tell people start with my free content like that will help change your life right there it really is like you said you build the business for the customers that it is and that's very it's a much better way to do things and frankly I think it's a more profitable way to do things like I don't think money stays around very long with greedy people it eventually like they lose it that's what I notice everybody who I know who has built something successful like they care so much about the people that they serve they they can't like I think that's the only way to stay in the game long enough because if you just care about yourself you won't like you do burn out because you won't make enough to sort of scratch that itch or even if you do make enough you'll realize that what you were looking for wasn't even that much money in the first place yeah exactly and and when you're operating from greed it's so self-centered and our and we really aren't satisfied by those milestones at all and so like you said like that that stewardness is what reminds us that all of us we're just servants like I really do believe that like we are put on this earth to serve and to have an impact that's much bigger than ourselves and the gift that we get from that is indescribable joy and peace like I am the happiest I've ever been in my life I am I literally I'm so happy truly like that true contentment and it's because my life is not about me it's in service of my customers genuinely and in service of my daughter I love that and that's why I want it um where should people connect with you if they want to learn more about what you're working on I say either Instagram or YouTube I make a ton of free content there I'm very close to 100,000 subscribers on YouTube so if you want to like go get me and push me over the ads that do amazing like 92,000 I think so I check out like every two hours and I'm like I got 30 more subscribers so I'm really close to getting my plaque and stuff which I'm excited about last couple questions is to bring it home uh so if you could go back and tell I mean you're not that old but if you go back and tell your 20 year old self one really important lesson um about building a business or just life in general what would that lesson be and why? Trust your gut instinct in everything or you will regret it like I there's some choices I made that I shouldn't have that I knew I shouldn't have both in business and in relationships I'm like I should have trust in my gut instinct on that and I think I would have saved myself a lot of pain if I had just and we know like we are gut instinct just tells us things and we don't listen we don't trust our gut instinct and so if I had learned to trust my gut instinct at 20 I would have had a very different and probably less painful life not that I don't have a great life but like it would have been a lot easier so I wish more people trusted their gut instinct. How do you train that though? By making small decisions that are good and sticking to your word and small things and building like integrity with yourself doing what you say you're gonna do if I say I'm gonna wake up at 5am to work out wake up at 5am you have to actually build a relationship of trust with yourself. Last question obviously um Ellie is a big part of your life you're gonna have a lot to teach her but if you could only teach her one thing and pass on one lesson to her the most important lesson what would that be and why? Persevere in all things because when you can persevere in all things you're resilient you figure out hard shit you are self-reliant which I think is so important like that's a good life skill if I could teach her perseverance in all things she'll be fine.