077: Celebrate being a slow-motion success story w/ Laura Robinson
Celebrate being a slow-motion success story
With guest Laura Robinson
Tune in to this inspiring story about Laura’s 14-year business evolution.
Laura Robinson is a marketing mentor for people who sell their expertise online as 1:1 services, courses, memberships and programmes. She has business, marketing and copywriting qualifications up the wazoo, and she especially loves to apply her 20+ years of experience working with people who want a comfy business — one that brings in the money they want and need, in a way that comfortably fits with whatever Life Stuff they’ve got going on.
Having spent years berating herself for making slow progress, not keeping up, falling behind people who started out at the same time as her, Laura realised she’s actually pretty freaking amazing for sticking with it, and growing her business slowly but surely each year.
In this episode Laura and I celebrate how awesome it is to have Life Stuff going on, and still be building a business anyway — especially when a whole lot of business advice is actually not that useful for us.
I'm a bit envious of the people that had an idea for a
business, and then they were really brave and they
left their jobs and they made it work.
— Laura Robinson
Episode links
Laura’s collection of FREE resources that includes a sales page template, free lessons on aligned persuasion and marketing messaging, and a whole bunch of useful blog posts!
-
[00:01:01] Expert with 20+ yrs helps comfy business.
[00:05:55] Autistic son, relatable struggles, open advice.
[00:09:11] Work-life balance success through intentional planning.
[00:12:44] Balancing family and work is challenging.
[00:16:06] Opportunity to see behind business doors.
[00:17:30] Transparency is hard to see sometimes.
[00:20:56] Various issues impact business success, including finances.
[00:24:48] Own choices, accept consequences, challenge conditioning.
[00:27:50] Criticism comes with freedom and jealousy.
[00:32:17] "Kids' age affects business focus, future uncertainty."
[00:33:45] Wanted to do baby seals, volunteered eventually.
[00:37:48] Restricted life due to chronic migraine.
[00:40:49] Build audience first, attract like-minded clients later.
[00:44:41] Drawing from past experience to benefit clients.
[00:46:23] Copywriting should reflect the client's identity.
[00:51:01] Connect with me on worditude.co.uk newsletter.
-
Disclaimer: The following transcript has been auto-generated and then cleaned up – and while the general flow of the conversation is there, it’s probably not 100% accurate.
Petchy: Laura. Welcome to Brand it! Thank you so much for reaching out. When I had your pitch come through, I was like, “yes!” because today’s topic is one that is also very close to my own heart as well. And I think especially maybe with the increasingly noisy and very sort of fast track to success, hustle focused world of business. It’s not just the online business industry either, is it? I reckon it’s across the board and I think we just need those voices that pop up to remind us, almost give us permission that it’s okay to not be an overnight success. Let’s be real. Not many overnight success stories are showing the full picture anyways, are they? But that’s maybe something we can get back to in a SEC. Before we dive in, I would love to invite you to introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about you and your business. What do you do? Who do you help? Why do you help them? What’s your story, basically?
Laura: Hello. Well, thank you very much for having me on the show. I am currently a marketing mentor for people who sell their expertise online so that’s people who do, like, one to one services, courses, programs, memberships, that sort of thing. My background is I will do, like, a very edited version. I left my job about 14 years ago in a shower of snot and tears, and my life was just a disaster zone. I had two boys that were 21 months apart. The second one was born with additional medical needs, so we weren’t able to use childcare. And he was in and out of hospital all the time. So my husband had been looking after him, like, part time. We were both part time workers and then took it in terms to be at home with him. That fell apart for various reasons. I was exhausted. I was so ill. Like, every six months, something terrible would happen that mean I’d be back in hospital as well. And it just wasn’t sustainable. So I took a year off to cry and lick my wounds and try and recover, and then realized, okay, I need to replace my almost full time salary. I was a middle manager in marketing and communications. I need to be able to replace that salary in a way that means I don’t leave the house. I don’t need any childcare. I can drop everything at a moment’s notice to take this kid back to hospital again if he needs it. It’s low stress. Like, the list of criteria for me to be able to make this money was just ridiculous, but it was necessary, so I had to make it happen. And so very abbreviated version. I started being a copywriter for online marketing agencies, like website agencies, digital marketing agencies, writing extremely boring copy about extremely boring subjects like London City office space or different flavors of Evape cigarette. And then once I’d grown some confidence and made some money doing that, I set up on my own and had my own copywriting business so that I could have a bit more control over the clients that I worked with. And then over time, that’s become more about people asking me more broadly, launching evergreen, funnels marketing, all of that kind of thing. And so it’s kind of evolved over that’s 14 years it’s taken me to get to that point. And there’s been a lot of different versions of my business and how I work and how much money I make and how I earn that money in that time frame.
Petchy: I love that story. It sounds like a bit of a roller coaster, but then again, that’s life, right?
Laura: It definitely was a roller coaster. I’m a bit envious of the people that had an idea for a business, and then they were really brave and they left their jobs and they made it work. And I was like, no, I just limped out the door in a puddle and then realized I had to rebuild my life. The other side of that.
Petchy: Yeah, but don’t you think that that’s often the case? Like, some of the people who do sort of pretend that they had this one marvelous idea and then made it happen. Don’t you think that the backstory could be different? Like, maybe they’re not telling everything.
Laura: Probably people are a bit surprised that I’ll just go, like, I’ll just tell you, I’ll tell you anything. Like, ask me anything. I want people to know that because there’s been so many times in my life when I’ve really struggled with something that seemed impossible. And even people were telling me, like, oh, no, you’re doing it wrong. So the younger son, who’s medically very fit now, but he’s autistic. I shouldn’t say, but he’s autistic and he’s autistic and awesome with it. So there’s been a lot of challenges when he was younger, and you constantly feel like people are saying, but have you tried this or haven’t you done this? And then you get the other side and you’re like, oh, you were struggling with that too, and you didn’t say anything, or, you also felt terrible in that job with that boss, but you never told me that that was happening for you, or, this also took you a really long time. So I feel like I’ve been burnt a few times. Like, that where I felt like I was the only one. And there were people who were sort of implying or suggesting that this was a problem or a situation that was uniquely terrible to me and that somehow I’d created it. And then you get further down the line and you’re like, oh, you could have just shared that that was going on for you as well. So I’m very open about that because somebody else is almost certainly going through what I was, even though my particular set of circumstances were very weird and unique, someone’s going through something that’s relatable to that, so I might as well tell them all about it.
Petchy: Yeah. And I love that. I’m much the same, actually, I would much rather share so that people can relate to my downs as well as my ups. Because I know that when I started out this is a bit of a sort of side story, but I call myself an entrepreneur by accident, but twice. So I never intended to have my own business. And it was just a series of unfortunate events that led to the first one and then again the second one, and now I’m unemployable. I can’t see myself ever being employed ever again, which is like, okay, so that’s an odd journey to have been on. But also when I started out, I felt like there were so many things that I was supposed to do or not supposed to do, and I just like, no, thank you. I’m not going to subscribe to this anymore. So now I’m very, very for being open, honest, transparent. Obviously, you don’t have to air your dirty laundry if you don’t want to, but you get to decide how much you’re comfortable sharing and if other people don’t like you sharing that, then they can scroll on by, can’t they?
Laura: They stop listening pretty quickly, especially if I start with that, like, early backstory of the slot and tears. They’ve usually got those, like, two words in and like, no, this isn’t for me, I’m going to go somewhere else now.
Petchy: Well, they’re not the right people and obviously so I feel like in this episode, we’re going to celebrate being a slow motion success story. Where do we start? Because there’s like, so many angles that we could come at this from. What’s your take on this?
Laura: For me, the most important thing is I feel like I’m successful all the time. This sounds really big. Hit it. I feel like I’m successful all the time because I’m not hanging on to one big success that I’m working towards. I’m always celebrating whatever tiny triumph I can cling to that week, that day, that month. So it might be something really small. Like in the summer, we 1 mile from the beach. My kids are 16 and almost 18 and they still love going in the sea if the tide is right. So the tide has to be on its way in, has to be a sunny day, the wind has to be up a little bit so the waves are exactly the right height. And I set my diary up in the summer, so I check the tide timetable and I set my availability so that nobody can book me if there’s a chance that the tide and the weather will coincide that we want to go to the beach. And so every time they come downstairs and they’re like, the ways look good and the weather’s great, can we go to the beach? And I can just close my laptop and leave. That’s a massive, like, I’m a success story. It doesn’t matter how much money I made that month, I’m a success story because we just sacked off work and we went to the beach for the day, or every year we go to the same air show that’s for free on our coastline and that day is booked off every single year. I don’t have to negotiate with anyone, I don’t have to check, like, well, is it my turn to go? Because if I worked locally, everyone wants that same day off a year, so not everybody gets to go. No, I never, ever work that day of the year. We go every single year. So there are so many little things that I build into my everyday life that I’m like, yes. And I don’t just let it happen and then let it go. I have it. Like, I own it, it’s inside of me. Like, I made that happen. I can sack everything off, can go to the beach, because I created this and I made this. Don’t make loads and loads of money. I make enough money for us to get by, but I mean that I can also go to the beach whenever I want to. And that’s how I’ve designed my business. And that’s just one example of the ways that I’ve baked it into my life so that there’s always opportunities for me to feel like, yay, that was a little triumph and I earned that. I made that happen and I feel really proud. I’m not aiming for some big success in the future. I still have goals that I work towards but they’re much more like I wonder if it’s possible if or how would it be possible if I got to this or I achieved this. They’re fun and fanciful and dreamy and a fun thing for me to sit in the garden and daydream about. But the little like, yes, I made that happen, are like a daily occurrence that I bake in on purpose. Do you know?
Petchy: I love that. And I think there’s like two things that stick out at me from that and that is like, I love how you’ve redefined success to be on your terms, on your own terms. And doesn’t matter whether someone else has that same idea of success or not. Because to you that is success. And I say this just to make it clear that I don’t think being driven by money is necessarily a bad thing. So if someone’s version of success is making a shitload of money, if that’s what success looks like to them, then that’s perfectly fine in my books. But it’s not what I think of as success. It’s part of success. I need to make enough money to live a comfortable life, but there’s also so much value in the freedom of being an entrepreneur, in being able to control my own day. That’s also part of what I view as success. And I think that’s the second thing that stood out to me. Like you place value on the experiences and family and things that may be in a very male dominated world up until now haven’t been as highly valued. So I really like that. I think approach.
Laura: It’s funny, you sort of made me chuckle when you said about men because I recall having a conversation with a coach who was a man because I seem to attract people who I want to make. I think you could achieve so much more. You’ve got so much potential. I’m like, I know it’s not because I can’t. It’s because this is what I’ve chosen. And I remember having a conversation with him along the lines of and this is the same. I mean, it’s the same for men and women. It’s not like but to me it felt like I was making a decision every day between making a really great life for us now and enjoying that versus investing in a great life in the future. And it’s not an either or. I’m doing that balancing act all the time. I could sit down. It’s not that I can’t spend 6 hours focused on my business and create something awesome that I could sell for money. I can do that and I’ve done it. And there’s times I look at my husband, I’m like, we need more money this month. You are in charge of the kids for three days because I need to get in and do this work. It’s a constant trade off between am I focusing on on now? And we’re just going to have a really great time now and enjoy it. And I’m going to do the minimum amount of work to get by so that I can give you as much of my time and energy as possible? Or am I going to let the kitchen go to pot and everyone’s going to live off takeaway for three days and then we might run out of clean clothes? And I’m not going to see my kids properly for a week because I’m really focusing on something that I’m building, that I know has potential for the future. I’m doing that all the time. Like both of those things and I feel like that’s often not recognized or it’s kind of prescriptive that one is right and the other one’s wrong and they’re not. They’re both equally important and the trick is to do them both enough that neither one of them falls over. So you’re just like trying so that your family know you still love them and you’ve enjoyed time with them and life feels worthwhile. But you have also done some things for the future so that you don’t get to next year and go, oh, I’ve got no money and no prospects. I struggle with kind of traditional coaching or the business world that wants you to be more and bigger and better because they’re invested in they want you to invest in the future because that’s their success story. If you drive hard and hustle and do the things and follow their three step program and in six months time they can say, look at Laura and she achieved X, Y and Z and she did that with our help. That is their success story. They’re trying to get to be their success story. And I’m looking at going, no, if I want that, I’ll do that on my own. But I also have these other things that I consider to be success and I’m going to do those at the same time. And that means it’s in slow motion. It’s going to take me a really long time, but that’s fine because it’s a really broad, colourful, enjoyable experience while I’m doing it.
Petchy: Yeah, you want to be your own success story, not somebody else’s. Yeah, that’s fair. I just wanted to mention as well, when I say like the traditional sort of masculine way of looking at things, I don’t mean all men. So I don’t want anyone coming back at me to say “I’m not all men”. I know that, I know that not all men are hustling, sleazy, scumbags. That’s not what I’m trying to get across here, but I think it’s just that sort of whole patriarchal, traditional view of things that I’m not so comfortable in. And you can be a man or you can be a woman, whatever gender that you identify with and still be trapped in patriarchy, or you can choose to break free from it, whatever your gender is. So I just wanted to make that clear. I’m not anti men. Anyways, I wanted to get back a little bit to this whole notion of overnight success as well that we spoke about briefly in the beginning, because I don’t think that most overnight success stories are telling us the full picture at all. And I think that’s where something that you mentioned comes in. And that’s life stuff. We all have life stuff. So, yeah, what’s your take on this? What’s your take on the overnight success story? What do you think? When people say, hey, I went from this to this rags to riches, I.
Laura: Think I was quite lucky. I got quite an early privilege behind the scenes access to those kind of stories, because as a copywriter, I was quickly hired to work on launches and sales pages and sales funnels for people that were already recognizably successful. And I even had a proposition of, like, quit your business, come and work for me. And I was so tempted because to get that behind the scenes access this, and see what was going on would have been incredible. So I didn’t have to learn it by my own experience. Lots of people try it and then realize, oh, this is a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. Whereas I was only a couple of years into having well, not even that, a few months into having my own copywriting business before I got that real first, like, oh, this is what it looks like on the outside, but I’m here on the inside, and I can see how it really is. And to be fair to those business owners, it’s not that they are intentionally not sharing what’s behind. It’s not like a conscious thing of, I want to make it look shiny and perfect. I just think it’s such a small part of the message that gets through, and the rest of the message of, like, look at how amazing I’m doing, or a lot of their sales were built on that, I’ve done it. So you can, too, is the underlying message that it kind of dwarfs. You can’t see easily what’s really going on. They may be sharing it a little bit, but it’s just proportionately. It’s quite small, and so it’s easy to miss. But then equally, I’m like this 1012 years in now, 14 years in, since I left my job. Twelve years into having making money online and having my own business. And I get people show up and say, I just want a business like yours, it looks like this and they’ll describe this amazing business. Firstly, that’s not how it is. Secondly, I’m 14 years in. Thirdly, how did you get this impression from me? Because I cannot imagine anyone who is more transparent, open, shares all of the terrible stuff and they’re still showing up going it just looks amazing, like it works really smoothly. I’m like, there’s something gets lost in translation where we look up to someone and we just see the glossy shiny bits, apparently, even if they’re showing all of the raw, ugly stuff as well. So I now have a much bigger heart for the people who, when I was earlier on looking up going, oh, you’re just telling me the good stuff. And now I’m thinking, oh, maybe they were showing me all the horrible stuff as well. But I was just completely immune to it and it was just bouncing off me while I imagined this dream life that I was striving towards. And maybe that was my filter saying I don’t want to know. I do not want to know that once I get to that much money or that many subscribers or that level of popularity, that there is still hard stuff. So maybe I was just filtering it out and not seeing it because definitely people, plenty of people see mine, but there’s definitely people that don’t. And I’m like, how can you miss it? It’s so obvious.
Petchy: I think it’s comparisonitis, actually. I think it’s so easy to want to compare yourself to others that we forget that we should maybe compare ourselves to people who are sort of on the same level. For someone who’s new to business to come in and compare themselves to you, who’s been doing it for like 1214 years, doesn’t really balance because you’ve had twelve years to make it happen.
Laura: Even if they’ve had a this still happens to me. So even though I know I should not be comparing these things, I’m still doing it all the time. And I was admiring someone who’s in the similar sort of space to me, has had their business for a similar amount of time. And I knew their home set up was different to mine. I have a lot of life stuff going on, a limited amount of time and energy to work, and they have, like, a bit more. And they’d achieved this thing. And it was like a passing conversation between two people where she mentioned, oh, yeah. Now, so far, I reckon I’ve worked about 1000 hours on it, and I was like, I don’t have 1000 hours in a year. I genuinely would not be able to work on my business for 1000 hours in a year. That just wouldn’t happen. And I’m so glad that I overheard that tiny snippet, which I heard was just not a big deal at all. That was just well, I just really focused on this thing and I did what it took to make it. And to me, I was like, I cannot imagine having a thousand hours to concentrate on one thing and then imagine how that’s going on everywhere. Everywhere. I’m comparing myself. Some version of that is happening that I’m completely unaware of. And I’ll remember it now because of that conversation. But in six weeks time, I’ll have forgotten and I’ll be back to looking at someone else going like, how have you done that? Yeah, I think it’s so easy to forget.
Petchy: It’s been said before, but we don’t all have the same amount of hours in a day. We don’t. Let’s just face it. There are people who have full control over their time. They don’t have any other responsibilities, and they can really immerse themselves in building their businesses, and that’s basically their life, and that’s fine. And then you have people who have the financial means to buy time off of other people so that they can buy their own time. They buy maybe cleaning services, maybe they eat out every day. Maybe they have someone looking after their kids while they work. And those are options that aren’t readily available to everyone. And then that’s not even taking into account other issues. Like people could be struggling with their mental capacity or they could have health issues. There’s a whole list of things that impact how much time and energy you are able to spend on your business. And I think that’s so easy to forget.
Laura: I think something that I really underestimated, probably until recently as well, is we didn’t have financial security. So I think things would have been very different if I had money in the bank or, like, significant a partner with a significant income that we could live off even for a short period of time. Because it enables you to be way more like playful experimental, take bigger risks, give things longer to see if they’re going to pan out. But really, for most of the 14 years, I’ve needed to be quite like, is this going to pay me this month? And then if I’ve ever got any traction in that time, I think it’s twice or maybe three times. My husband’s been made redundant. Three times in 14 years, he’s been made redundant. And so it’s like a reset. We’re like, oh, okay, now I’m the breadwinner immediately, and I need to change my business to be able to meet these needs. So even beyond childcare health, things like all the other things that impact your time and time and energy, it’s like that platform of stability. If you don’t have that, it is much slower because you can’t do the risky things that are likely to have the big payoffs. I’m shuffling. I describe it. My progress is shuffling. Like, I can afford to take small shuffling steps in the direction I want to go in, but it’s very hard to take big leaps because time, energy and financial constraints.
Petchy: Yeah, I can recognize that a lot of that in the way I’m building my business as well. It’s slow and steady and sometimes it’s two steps forward and one step back, but then over time there’s progress and I’m okay with that because that’s just the way it has to be. Because I’ve chosen to not go like all in and sacrifice time with my family or to hustle and grind until I’m mentally completely broken down. That’s a choice that I’ve made. So yeah, I’m totally okay with that. Meaning that my business not going to move along at the same pace as someone who has millions to plow into it or endless amount of hours or resources to hire a team or whatever it might look like. So I think that’s also something to make peace with. I think if you’re going to build a slow business, you just have to be okay with this and you have to accept that, yeah, I’m building this thing and it’s taking longer than that person’s business but what I’m building is sustainable for me and strong and that’s something as well.
Laura: I think I remembered what we had instead. I had this instead. So my kids, I took them out of school when they were ten and twelve. The school system just wasn’t working for us and I was at home anyway, so I thought, well, we could all do without the stress. You might as well be home educated. And I’ve got that forever. I experienced it for that season of life, but I’ve got that memory forever. So it’s easy to get caught up. Like I should be over here, like I should have done this by now, but I didn’t. And then that’s because I didn’t do this work. And the reason I didn’t do that work is because I had this experience instead. And that was a choice I made and I would never swap that like a thousand times over, choose from what I had already. But can be a bit like little kids, you know, when they’ve got like one lollipop and they see someone else has got a different one, it’s like, oh no, but I wanted that one. You’ve got this instead. That’s the one that I offered you both and that’s the one that you chose and now it looks nice. That the other one. Other person’s got that other one. I just think inside we’re still like a six year old going, “oh, but I wanted the other lollipop without having to give up this one.”
Petchy: …Or “I wanted both!”
Laura: Yeah, you wanted both.
Petchy: Yeah.
Laura: I mean, I’m not saying you can’t have it all, but we are making a choice all the time and so I think a big part of that kind of feeling of success, this slow motion success, comes from owning or reminding myself you made that choice and you would never unmake that choice. You would never choose differently every time over. I would have chosen that. And that’s the big decisions, like, do my kids stay in school or do I have them at home with me? And little tiny decisions like, do I suck off work for the day so we can go and catch some waves? Or do I stay out of my computer and get this job done? It’s just owning that choice, knowing I’m making the choice and then owning it, and knowing there’ll be some consequence of that either side, but being okay with that.
Petchy: Yeah. And also owning that choice, that can be a little bit difficult when you are conditioned to sort of behave in a certain way as well. I know when I started my business, and even now, sometimes I’m like, oh, no. But I should be in my office now if I’m like, oh, the weather’s really nice out, and I really want to go for a hike, and I don’t have anything in my calendar that needs my immediate attention, I can go for a hike if I want to. And then there’s this little voice at the back of my head that says, but should you though? But should you, what will people say? And I think it’s so important to just talk about these things because it’s, you know, and I’m like this business, I started it coming up to eight years ago now, and I still to this day, I’m like, some some days I’m like, yeah, I really shouldn’t be doing that, or I should be doing that. I don’t think it’s ever going to go away completely, but I’m getting better. But I think I just, like calling myself out over it and reminding myself that, you know what? It’s my call. I can choose this. And if there are consequences, then they are the consequences of my own actions and not of someone else’s expectations.
Laura: I think noticing it is the first step, but I think maybe I just have a lower tolerance for other people’s. Criticism tends to galvanize me quite strongly. I suppose that’s how I describe it. So I’m smiling when you’re describing that because I know if I post a picture, like, I’m sat in the garden in the middle of the day I sit in my garden in the middle of the day while everyone else is at school and work because I don’t want to hear their music or them talking to each other or I don’t want to hear other people’s lives. I want to sit in the garden and hear the birds. So I’m going to do that while everyone else is at work and then when they’re home enjoying themselves at the weekend, I’m happy being indoors working. And it’s the same with the beach. We want to be at the beach when nobody else is there. So I feel like by default, we do live like the opposite to everybody else. And that’s in part because that’s what my kids need and what I need as well. But always I’ll get comments, oh, it’s all right for you if I’m out at the beach, and then it’s all right for you. Lucky that you can take advantage of the sun while I’m at work. Or like some of us are in school, they’re always there, those comments. And then in the evening, if I’m working or I’m unavailable to attend something at the weekend because I’m working, because I have used up my free time elsewhere in the week, I get there, oh, but you can’t work all the time. It’s not healthy to be working weekends. Don’t you have any boundaries? Should you really be working in the evening? I’m like, okay, so I’m either not working enough or I’m working too much. And it’s a totally alien concept that I might just be working the perfect amount for me. At the times when I feel like I want to work, I hold that in my mind. Not because I’m not bitter about the criticism. It’s useful criticism for me because I’m like, well, damned if I do, damned if I don’t. So I might as well just enjoy myself when I want to do it and know that the criticism is coming either way.
Petchy: Yeah. And also that criticism, it’s probably because you’re self employed and that you are in control of your own time. Because if you see someone who perhaps works in healthcare or who works in a shop and they have like, maybe they have a Monday off or a Wednesday off, but they work weekends or they work evenings, they’re not going to get that from criticism, are they? So I think maybe, and this is just me guessing, but I’m kind of thinking maybe there’s a tiny little sliver of jealousy there of that freedom of being able to shape your own working.
Laura: Days, working with it’s not just employed people either. So self employed people have the same sometimes have the same approach. So I think you’re right, it’s the audacity. What do you mean? You just go to the beach.
Petchy: But you made your business so that you can and yeah, I like that.
Laura: So if you’re having that reaction, that’s great, because that’s step one of like, oh my goodness, they’re doing something that I want. Like, oh, excellent, you found something that actually you’d like to do that was previously hidden from you. Now you can dig into that and find out, how can I make that possible? Because clearly if you are having some reaction to me doing it, it’s something that you want. If it was if you didn’t want it, you wouldn’t be going, how dare you do that? I don’t watch people do cliff diving into the water and go, how dare you do that? I’m like, Good for you if you fancied it, but I’m not going to be doing it. So if you’ve got that little bit of how dare you, there’s probably underneath that, well, I’d quite fancy giving that a go too. And so that was my gift. Yeah, I could annoy you enough that you realize that you want that.
Petchy: They’ve got that and I want that, and therefore I’m going to be a little bit mardy.
Laura: If I’m looking at someone going, how dare you do that, damn it, that means I want it a little bit too. And now I have to figure out how much do I want it and am I going to try and get it. I think it’s so good that we’re.
Petchy: Having this conversation and that we’re talking about these things and normalizing it. Because that way if someone’s listening, they might get to bypass that little step of that little stab of jealousy when they see someone doing something that they would like. So this is permission to build your business around your life and not the other way around.
Laura: Really slowly. And there’s seasons for us. And you were talking earlier about at the moment, money is not the most important thing. I can definitely see a time when I’m like, I want the money, I’m ready. I really want to sprint for this. I’m ready to go up an income bracket or we have our eyes in the long distant future on a particular property that would be amazing for us to get our hands on, and we have plans for it, and that’s going to take money. And so eventually something will come along where I’m like, now’s the time. The thing I really want is this money. So I love that as my children, they’re not really children, they’re adults now. And for the amount of time that they want to hang out with me, they still like me and want to be around me. That’s incredible. I’m 16 and 18. I definitely didn’t speak to my parents once I turned twelve. I didn’t think I spoke to them again until I left home. So this is a revelation to me and I’m going to make the most out of every single minute of that. But equally, I know that we’re not very far away from a point where they’re not such a huge part of my day to day life. And so I’ll be excited to be focusing on something else. So it’s just like, this is my focus now for this season of my life. But yeah, so people that might be listening to this podcast and in a year’s time, I’m like, no, I’m all about the money now. And that’s because it turns for me.
Petchy: Because it’s a different season in your business. Then I’m laughing because I have a 17 year old and he definitely doesn’t want to spend time with us.
Laura: So I’m like they will come back.
Petchy: Enjoy it while you can.
Laura: They come back. I was so awful for my parents. No idea how they let me back in their lives as much as they do. But in the end, I came back to them. My two just I don’t know, we just really like hanging out for us, and I think the pandemic came at the perfect time because we didn’t have any choice but to hang out with each other, and we just carried on doing that. We like watching TV and films together. They play video games, and I watch that. We don’t do, like, massively intellectual, arts and cultural lofty things. Like, we sometimes play board games, and I watch them play video games, and we watch films together. But it’s fun. They let me be a teenager with them for a while.
Petchy: That sounds like fun. It also sounds a bit exhausting. So, yeah, I have a 17 year old, but I also have a seven year old, so they have very different sort of needs. But I’m like, since we’re talking about life stuff now that my youngest is getting to an age where, well, she’s eight later this year and she’s getting more and more independent, and I can definitely see that I have more energy and mental capacity to put into my business than I had when she was like, say, three or four and demanded a lot more from me. So I can see a season coming up. Okay, so maybe it’s ten years away still where I can absolutely focus more on my business than on my family. Will I want to? I don’t know. I’m I’m just keeping everything open. So I think I think that’s also a good thing to keep in mind that, you know, you might not want to run your business in the same way forever, and that’s okay too.
Laura: I think I kidded myself that when I when they were older and they didn’t need me as much, then I would spend more time working, and I’d be more disciplined and more focused. And then as they’ve got older I don’t know if I put this on the pitch form or not, but I’m a volunteer seal rescuer. That was so cool. No, you didn’t. I had my eye on it for a few years. So you do this training to be a marine mammal? Medic. And technically I’m trained to refloat whales and dolphins, but I can assure you that on the coast of Essex, I’m not getting called to do that very often, ever. Mostly it’s looking after baby seals. After the seal popping season, I wanted to do it baby seals. I think I’m nine seals in at this point. I’ve been doing it for a year, and I looked at it, I was like, I really, really want to do this, but my life is a met. There is no way I can possibly volunteer any time to do this because I have to work, I have to make this much money. And I kept telling myself, like, no, you can’t have this, because you need to concentrate on being a mom and running your business and then a year ago, the training came up and it was going to be in my local area again. And I said to my husband, I really want to do this. And I know it takes time away from us and it takes time away from my work. If I volunteer, it costs me money. I feel like that’s different. If you have a job, you can volunteer on top of your job. But for me, if you’re self employed and you volunteer for something, it’s always costing you money because you could have used that time on your business. But I really wanted to do it, so I did it. So I could have stepped up and worked more hours, definitely. But I chose to do this instead and it’s so much fun. And that is like a whole family affair as well because we all live by the coast. If I get a call out, like, at least one son is going to want to come with me to see what we’re doing. Often my husband comes down either at the time or pops down to see how I’m doing. On the last one. My parents, it was an all day event, so all day event, watching this baby seal have a nap on the beach. And I had to look after him for like six or 7 hours and my parents came down as well. So I kidded myself that when I’ve got more time and energy, I will definitely really concentrate on my business and make more money. And then what happened was I had more time and energy and I was like, no, I’m just going to watch a baby seal take a nap for a few hours.
Petchy: But then again, you had more hours available to you and that showed you what was important. Yeah, it was important to do something outside of work as well. And it is because we’re full human beings. We’re not machines and robots. We need to kind of fill our cup. It was somewhere as well.
Laura: Makes me a much more interesting person as well, I think. I don’t just get to talk about nobody wants to talk about my kids or my business anymore. Once they know about the seals, they’re like, so tell me about the last seal that you babysat while it took a nap.
Petchy: Yeah. So now that you’ve mentioned the seals, why don’t we make the rest of the podcast episode about the seals?
Laura: I could talk all day long about it. You can ask me anything. It’s fine. I’m very happy talking about seals. You could catch me.
Petchy: I’m a bit jealous.
Laura: You caught me at a good time because the time we’re recording this, we’re in between pupping season. So in the UK, we have a pupping season for gray seals in the winter and then common seals are in the summer. And so we get two periods of time where we’re really busy throughout the year and then it’s really quiet so I’m in a quiet time. So at the moment I’m like, yeah, I love doing this. This is amazing. If you catch me later on in the year when I’ve done like three days back to back of call outs, I’m like, I don’t never want to see a damn seal again.
Petchy: I wonder if we have this thing here, because I live on the coast, on the coast of Norway, so we do have seals here.
Laura: You’ll have some sort of association. Ours is called British Divers Marine Life Rescue. Which is unfortunate because we don’t dive. Like, I’m not getting in the water. It’s just one of those legacy names. And I keep thinking, like, please change it because nobody knows what this is. And also, if you’re someone who works in marketing or branding in any capacity, you never stop dear. So you’re just looking at other people’s charities or businesses going, this is really hurting you. Why don’t you understand?
Petchy: Yes, I’m familiar with that because I’m like, oh, this branding is really bad. You’re not doing yourself any favours.
Laura: This kind of this has taught me a new level of patience where I like, I’m in it and I can see it. Or I’m like, this is not my job. They haven’t asked me to come and fix their branding or their messaging or their positioning. I’m just here for the seals, and I’ll leave it to head office to do all that stuff.
Petchy: I think that was a nice little segue into one other question that you posed when you sent in your pitch. Since we’re talking about positioning and target audiences and stuff, all of a sudden that wasn’t going via sales into positioning, but yeah, you posed a question. What if you put yourself at the center of your marketing decisions instead of an imaginary ideal client? And I really wanted to dive into that a little bit as well because I feel like there is this pressure of really sort of defining your one very clear ideal client avatar and then that is it, and that you have to kind of only market to that. What’s your take on that? I would love to dive into that topic a little bit as well. Before we round off.
Laura: I’d love to say it comes from an amazing amount of wisdom that I’ve really researched this, but basically my life is so restricted in terms of what I can and can’t do. So I live with chronic migraine, and at the moment that only means like five to ten pain days a month, but then there’s sort of tiredness and fatigue that come with it and lots of brain fog before and after. So I have to be really mindful of the ways in which I work so that I don’t aggravate that and make it worse. But also, you know, what isn’t very compatible with having migraine is being a copywriter for launches. I can imagine there were certain types of work where I was like, I’m not going to be good for you because I might just disappear for five days, and that’s going to seriously put us off schedule. And so I had to be really honest, that’s kind of evolved. It was well managed for a while, so I’ve lived with that most of my adult life, but it was well managed for a long time, and it’s only really come up since about 2020. So that has become like, a stronger feature of my life. And then my 16 year old son requires more care than your average 16 year old, and it’s becoming apparent that that will be the case for for a while at least, or possibly indefinitely. And so my idea of what business would look like, I’ll manage until they’re older, and then I’ll be able to do this. And it just became obvious that’s not going to be the case. I’m going to have to recreate my business in some way that works for our reality right now. And I got to the point where I was like, I just can’t do it. I can’t do anything. I knew I had skills. I knew I had knowledge. I knew people wanted to pay me for those things, but I literally couldn’t see a way to make it work without having lots of zoom calls or endlessly sitting at a screen. It just looked impossible to me. And that was because I had my ideal client, and I was like, here are the things that you can sell that person. This is what they want, and this is what they need. And this is like the irresistible offer you can put in front of them that they can’t say no to. If I started with that, I was like, well, I can’t do any of those things. That’s ridiculous. But equally, I had people queuing up, going like, I will pay you whatever you want to help me with this thing, and we’ll work whatever way works for you. So I was like, well, why would I say no to them? They’ve got money and they want to pay me. But it doesn’t look like this. So I redesigned it around, okay, this is my reality. This is what I need to work for my health. This is what works for my family. These are the hours I want to work. These are the platforms, the mediums I want to use. This is the type of work I love doing. I did it completely the other way around and then said to people, do you want it or not? Here’s how you can access me. Here’s what I know. Here’s what I can do. Do you want that or not? And the answer was a resounding yes. And then quite a lot of the people that I’ve worked with have since been saying they’re choosing to work with me because they’re in a similar position where they’ve found out something significant has to change and they need to redesign their business around that, not around their ideal clients. There’s people who they’ve recently become divorced and so they’re setting up a whole new life for themselves and recovering from that process or kids being diagnosed with special or additional needs or they’re decided to homeschool or they’ve got their own health issues. Like the list of people that I work with is very colourful and I love that they’re saying they can’t run their business in the way that they thought they were going to or the way that they had originally designed. And if they do it around this audience that they’ve built, it doesn’t work for them if they do it around themselves. And then just say to the audience, are you coming or not? I’m good either way. Some of them will come enough to keep the business going and then you’ll be able to attract in more people that are a good fit for how you want to work.
Petchy: Now, I like that there’s balance in this whole thing as well because I think the traditional way of looking at it is like okay, so you define a need in the market and then you look at the ideal client avatar and then that’s your full focus. I think what we’re forgetting is the human aspect of things, of us as humans, not as businesses. Because we are both when we’re running our own business, we are both we have 1ft in our business but we are also still an individual. We are a human being. And why should we have to compromise our own happiness to kind of satisfy the traditional way of doing things? I don’t want to subscribe to that anymore to be honest. And while I think there’s absolutely there is a need to kind of have a think about who you want to talk to because it makes it easier to work on your messaging and to actually formulate and talk about the things that you sell in a way that actually is going to reach someone who wants to buy what you have to offer. But we can do that in the way that you’ve just described. We can center ourselves in it and look at what’s going to work for me. People were saying to me that, but you should niche down. You should focus on one particular type of client within this one little industry. And I’m like, are you mad? I’m sorry. I would lose my marbles if I had to just work with one specific type of client within one specific type of industry. It’s the variety that makes my business worth running. It’s like that’s what gives me joy when I work with people. It’s like the fact that I can go in and I can work with a micropreneur. Like someone who just it’s just them and their kind of newly started business or business that has been going for a few years, but it’s still essentially just one person I’m dealing with. Or I can go into, like, a 60 year old 100 people plus business and do the same work for them. And that way I get to learn new things every new client that I bring on, and that’s something I’m not willing to give up, to be honest, in order to sort of niche down.
Laura: That variety makes you so much better at what you do. So it’s like a gift to all of the different parties that you work with that you have that breadth of experience. It is.
Petchy: And it’s really enjoyable to be able to go in and learn something about a new industry as well. It’s like, okay, so I don’t have in depth knowledge of everyone’s industries I work with, but I get little drips and I’m like, oh, when I go to a pub quiz, when do I ever go to a pub quiz? But if I was to go to a pub quiz, I would know a lot about a lot of different things, like cider making or that is one of ROVs.
Laura: That’s one of the things I wished for when I was first working for myself. I’ve always done, what is it that you want? Like, if you’ve looking up this pile of stuff you don’t want, let’s stop looking at that. Like, what is it that you want instead? And one of the things that I wanted was I loved knowing a little bit about a lot of things. We love going to pub quizzes. Before we had our kids, we were at the pub every Thursday. It was quiz night, and we were there, and I just love this ridiculous amount of useless information that sits in my brain somewhere, and I don’t even know it’s there. And someone asked me a question, I’m like, There it is. It’s coming right out. And so that was one of the things I asked for, was out of my work. I would love to have that breadth of knowledge and breadth of experience. I mean, it went a bit far when I was having to do Evape descriptions, and I’d never smoked an e cigarette in my life, but I was having to come up with 250 words to describe its delicious bubble gummy flavour. That was a breadth of experience. That was maybe, like, not quite what I was after, but since then, it’s become a lot more interesting. Yeah. And also, you were probably able to.
Petchy: Do that because of some of the experiences that you have with past clients. I mean, in other industries, because there are parallels. I find when I work with clients, no matter what industry they’re in or what stage of business, there’s always something that I can draw on from past experience with other clients to help my current clients.
Laura: Or blow people’s socks off by saying something that you’ve picked up from, like, another industry does this all the time. You’re like, have you tried this? And they’re like, I’ve never seen anything like it. Okay, well, over here in this corner of the world, over here, they’re doing it all the time, and it’s quite standard, and I love that, that you can go between them, go between the little pockets of people and share the knowledge in a way that they wouldn’t do it themselves. But as a copywriter, I got to do that less. So well, I probably do do it in the work I’m doing now, but really remember that from the copywriting of Being because I got to go right inside people’s businesses and see how they were doing things. And I’m not like, taking things they wouldn’t want other people to know, but it’s just not what they don’t go out there and teach it and they don’t talk to other people about it. And so then you take, like, a little bit of pollen from over there and then go over to your next flower and share it with them. I didn’t enjoy that aspect of it.
Petchy: Yeah. And I think I’m that kind of because obviously I do the strategy and then I also do the design. And while people are like, oh, but I can see that it’s something that you’ve designed. I don’t have, like, one particular style that I do for every single client. I know some designers do, and it’s like, this is my speciality, this is my signature style. But the way I see it and the way I think probably you will recognise from your copywriting background as well, is it’s not my job to go in there and impose my taste on someone’s business. It’s my job to go in there and figure out what does this need to look like to resonate with the right people and then design something that helps them achieve that. I don’t care if the CEO doesn’t like pink. If they’re selling a product where I believe the ideal client will resonate with pink, then I also just pink, even though I’m not a very pink person either. And I think that’s probably similar in the sort of copywriting world as well.
Laura: Yeah, it has to be sustainable after you’ve gone. So there’s no point me turning up, like, writing a sales page in a particular style that’s, like, I know is a slam dunk for the win. But then when I leave, everything else they create does not reflect that style because that’s not who they are. And I’ve definitely been called in for cleanup jobs like that where they’ll say, I had great engagement, and then I put the sales page in front of people, and they looked, and nobody bought. And I’ll look at the sales page and go, well, who wrote that? Because it definitely wasn’t you, because it doesn’t sound anything like everything else that you’ve got. So I was trying to design something that works, but it’s almost like, took the best parts of. Them, like, their way of speaking, their style, gave them an absolute stellar example of what that could look like for that to be a jumping off point for the future. So I’d say, like, okay, before you write anything else in the future, read this because it does sound like you, but you on a really, really good day. So if you could start with that in your head and then write something from there. We should get some level of consistency, but we’ve kind of elevated the standard.
Petchy: Well, we’ve ended up talking about so many things. We’ve spoken about running a slow business. We’ve spoken about baby seals. We’ve spoken about copywriting and we’ve spoken about design and a lot of things. We’ve covered a lot. But I think it’s about time we start rounding off. Unfortunately, we could probably sit here and chat for hours on end, but I would like to ask you one final question, the same question I ask every single guest, and that is if you could leave the audience with just one key takeaway, what would that be?
Laura: Your pace is fine. Do things as fast or as slow as you want to right now and just have that awareness and celebration that you’re making a choice. If you are plodding along really slowly because you’re managing a bunch of other stuff that’s going on, or even you’re not, you’re just plodding along slowly because you want to read eight books a week and you don’t really want to work very hard, congratulations. Good for you. Make that choice, own it, and celebrate the success of making that decision and going with it. If you’re working hell for leather, like 14, 15 hours a day and your kids are living off takeaway and nobody’s got any clean pants, and you’re making that choice because you’re working towards something again, good for you. Own it. Congratulations. You were already successful because you’ve made a decision about how you want to do this. And everywhere in between is absolutely fine too. And it’s quite subversive for you to choose to own that and go along with it, because everybody else, like everyone in the whole world but there are a whole lot of people trying to sell you their steps at their pace to reach their version of success so that you can become their success story and they can tell everyone else how great you did doing things their way. And it actually takes, like quite an act of rebellion to say, no, that’s not for me. I’m just going to do it at my pace, my way, making my decisions, choosing to celebrate things because I think they’re worthy of celebration, whether anybody else sees that or not, that’s what I’d say. You need that rebellious spirit to be able to just do it your way and know that it’s absolutely fine and sometimes I’m strolling, sometimes I’m crawling, shuffling, sprinting, like all the speeds in all the directions. Whatever feels right for me at that time and at that season of my life, it’s taken a lot of work to get to the point where I can genuinely say, I flipping love it. I described myself the other day as obnoxiously comfortable. So someone just sided. You just seem really comfy, like they couldn’t believe. I was just like, you’re so comfy, you’re so settled. And I was like, yes, I am obnoxiously, courageously, outrageously comfortable, and I’m really, really happy to own that. And there is a place for us, for people like that, who want to just be comfortable. Having a comfortable business that’s comfortable to run makes us a comfortable amount of money doing things the way we want to do them. That’s my manifesto over.
Petchy: I love that there is a place for you, even if you want to do things at your pace. And I think I’m just going to round off by saying I think that becomes a lot easier when you connect with people who are also okay with their business being a slow one. It’s an invitation, I think, for people to reach out to either of us to connect. If you’re feeling like you’re falling into the trap of trying to build the business you think everybody else wants you to build, then my inbox is always open for people who want to chat about that. So if people want to connect with you and learn more from you, where can they find you? Where’s the best place for them to connect?
Laura: My website is worditude.co.uk — and it’s a completely made up word for my business because when I started working online, there was just a ridiculous number of Lauras. Like, we are disproportionately popular in the online business space, so there were multiple Laura Robinsons. I was like, okay, you’re not going to be using my name. So I made up a word and if you go over to there, the best way to keep in touch with me is to join my comfy business newsletter because I love to write and so my best stuff goes in there and I’m not so much on social media now. I’m ramping that back to go for like I’m always looking like, how can I make this more simple or ruthless to see, looking at my business going, yeah, this bit chafe severe. Like, this isn’t comfortable, this is rubbing me up the wrong way. So I’m just going to hack it off for a while and then do something else and then see if I decide I want to put it back in later. So the newsletter is the more reliable way to hear from me because I’m not so much into social media at the moment.
Petchy: I’m going to hop right on over and sign up to that. Thank you so much for joining me today and for this, quite frankly, brilliant and very varied conversation.
Laura: You’re very welcome. Thank you for allowing me to shamelessly talk about seals and a business podcast. There might be a new mission of mine. Like, can I get the seals into every podcast?
Petchy: Yeah, that’s a good mission. We like seals!
Laura: Like that prompt at the end when you say, like, where should we find you — I’m going to direct people to find out what you should do if you find a seal on a beach, because that’s also very important. And continuing my seal education mission.
Petchy: I love it. [Laughs)
If you enjoyed this episode, remember to subscribe so you don’t miss the next one! I’d also be super grateful if you’d share my podcast with a biz friend or two, or leave me a review.
