Work Doulas, Health Trackers and Failing Forward. w/ me and my work bff Regan Oelze

Join me and the amazing Regan Oelze of the Organized Chaos Podcast for a sneak peak into conversations you wish you were a part of.
 
We talk on personal health journeys, including managing Hashimoto's and hormonal regulation, as well as the herbal protocol we're navigating to tackle lingering health issues from our time in Vietnam.

If you've ever been curious about the voice notes ppl send each-other in private, this episode gives you a front-row seat to ours, filled with interesting (weird) topics and helpful health-tech insights.

and of course we dive into all things biz... from the resilience required in building a business to the essential leadership skills that pave the way to success.

Here's a summary:
- Health trackers and seeing which ones best ( Whoop vs Oura )
- Discussing helping people with kids, when you don't have kids.
- Leading a company vs being a boss at work
- Feminine energy in communities
- Functional medicine and my H.pylori protocol

Whether you're a solopreneur, a corporate professional, or somewhere in between, there's something in this episode for you.

Tune in for an episode that's as diverse and multifaceted as the listeners we hope to inspire.

Pop in!

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Chapters
8:36 Tech Addiction and Feminine Energy

16:39 Stress Tracking and Fertility Discussions

20:45 Exploring Passion and Career Paths

24:02 Challenges and Growth in Entrepreneurship

34:17 Leadership Skills for Future Success

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connect with regan
- insta →   / regan.oelze 
- tiktok →

🪩 don't forget to subscribe for a bi-weekly break and pick-me up from the chaos of leading a team.

come hang out with me
- insta → / emilyrosedallaracoach
- linkedin → / emilyrosedallara

Free resources for people who like to lead and still have a life:

• Grab the exact process I use to stop procrastinating
• Sign up to my newsletter to get exclusive content, tips and strategies to help you thrive at work, without the self doubt or working 24/7. Direct to your inbox each week.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:09

Welcome to Bubbling Out where we're popping the norms of leadership and creating new, sustainable, powerful ways to lead. This podcast is your sanctuary for discovering how to lead with resilience, manage change depletely and handle stress effectively. Join me for a series of breakthrough conversations, practical tools and mindset tips and a peek into my weird and wonderful life as a leader and entrepreneur, All aimed at helping you lead without compromising your time, energy, values or lifestyle.

Speaker 2: 0:44

Oh my god, even on this the balloons come up.

Speaker 1: 0:48

That's so weird. It doesn't do that for me ever Like.

Speaker 2: 0:51

I always watch it too Every time I'm on video chat with M the AI. Like balloons or celebrations on video chat, I'm using my camera. Right now, I wear it on a podcast.

Speaker 1: 0:59

Maybe it's your camera.

Speaker 2: 1:00

I should not no, but I don't always use this. This is my like vlogging camera that I'm using. I normally use my webcam Not weird so weird, but maybe squadcasts built it in like zoom did. Well, it's really annoying because I don't always peace sign what I like. It only does it once.

Speaker 1: 1:16

I like peace sign and try to do it. Oh, it's doing it again. Can people see it? We'll record the bullet. I don't know.

Speaker 2: 1:24

We'll see it afterwards It'll be amazing.

Speaker 1: 1:27

Anyway, so wild, we haven't even asked how each other are.

Speaker 2: 1:31

This is how it always goes. Let us know if you like these. This is a new segment for us. Emma and I send each other voice notes about every day. They're like three to five minutes long, depending, yeah, and they're about anything and everything. Why not bring it to the small screen? Why not bring it to your ears?

Speaker 1: 1:45

Yeah, because it's like I listen to all my friend's voice messages in the bath, because that's the only time I have a chance to catch up on everything, and so I'm like, oh, it's like listen to my own little podcast. Maybe other people want to hear what we've got to say, because we talk about so many interesting topics. So that's what this is going to be.

Speaker 2: 2:01

You will pick up little snippets of something helpful along the way, I mean, if we know what we're talking about, which I think we do maybe every now and again. So let us know if you like it. But really, how are you feeling? I'm fine. We both work with the functional practitioner. Wait, I haven't introduced Ila yet to my audience, so do you want to introduce Ila? So Ila, she's just here next to me.

Speaker 1: 2:21

We have to send this to Ila. So Ila is a functional practitioner. I've worked with her for four years maybe five years now and she has helped me with multitude of health things. So she's helped me with. I had Hashimoto's, which is an autoimmune disease. I managed to I don't know if it's a disease disorder. I managed to get that under control and that's in remission. She helped battle multiple gut issues from living in Vietnam. She helped me to regulate my hormones and now I have normal period cycles of 28 days Everyone will be very happy to hear, which is very bizarre.

Speaker 1: 2:56

Like being able to know what's happening with your body like clockwork is a very weird thing. So she's on our topic of discussion and she's put me on a protocol recently and my part and my husband on Twan to help us with something that's going on. Ever since we were in Vietnam last, about a year and a half ago or two years, we've been sick and so we were trying to figure out what that is. So we're on this strong, potent herbal protocol and I just feel a bit like shit quite often. I've got one moment left. What supplements? Yeah, what supplements does she have you on? We take stuff like oregano we have. Oh yeah, it's like the natural antibiotic it kills everything.

Speaker 1: 3:34

Yeah, and berberine, which I've taken it multiple times for different things. That's potent. Garlic allicin it's not like taking garlic, like people who can't eat garlic, like me, the chemical part of the garlic and you take that. It's disgusting, it smells like garlic, that's like the worst one. It's a big pill as well. We take that and then, but no thing. Yeah, no, lots of probiotics, lots of prebiotics. All of the herbs like cinnamon, thyme, fennel, clove. There's so many I take, I don't know, like 40 a day or something. Now, yeah, we've increased it.

Speaker 2: 4:06

We have to spread them out, right Because? Your body only absorbs so many at once. Yeah, so we've just increased it. We've fallen hills all day.

Speaker 1: 4:13

Yeah, and Antoine too. He doesn't have to do as many as I do, though Mine's full of multiple things.

Speaker 2: 4:17

Wait, I didn't realize that Antoine was working with Ayla as well, that's cool.

Speaker 1: 4:21

He's not working with her. He's working with her as a secondary person. So if you are on this protocol and you live with people, it's H pylori that we're treating, by the way. So everybody should get checked for this, because you can pick it up by living in a community environment. So in Vietnam, everybody uses their hands. They share all the food it's very prolific in Vietnam and so we got this and it's a microbe, I think it is. It's not a parasite, and so we're just treating that. But if you've got it, then your partner's got it as well. Wow.

Speaker 1: 4:51

And I was like wait, can the dogs give me it, because they like my mouth all the time.

Speaker 2: 4:55

Your dog's like your mouth? Yeah, I mean, I guess, but like, how are we talking? Are we talking about the makeup session? Are we talking like I love you? Hello?

Speaker 1: 5:05

I mean they're trying to like eat what was in your mouth previously, like a bird With its child.

Speaker 2: 5:12

I mean the bunnies lick my forehead, okay, and they smell my mouth for food, but they've never licked my mouth. Yeah, was it?

Speaker 1: 5:24

Yeah, they can. They can pass it back and falls to. You need to stop this. They get it, can get it, but we had a great time with them last night. We gave them, we made them, a assault course. Nikon is sorry everyone, this is off topic, but if you've got dogs you will appreciate this conversation. But when it's like a bit boring and you don't live in nature and the dogs can't run around freely we live in the middle of the city we're like always thinking how can we stimulate their minds as we create assault courses. So yesterday we were doing the Instagram trend of putting your legs, like making a bridge with your legs and getting them to jump higher and higher. So we had fun doing that last night.

Speaker 2: 6:01

Wait, I've not seen this that sounds awesome.

Speaker 1: 6:03

Yeah, this is because me and on to spend a prolific amount of time on Instagram now, and this is your fault, regan.

Speaker 2: 6:10

I know ever, since I can't stay with you.

Speaker 1: 6:12

When was it October? Both you and your husband sat me down. Like Emily, you need to be consuming more Instagram content.

Speaker 2: 6:22

But you can see it in the way that you create content, like you can spend more time on Instagram, on social. It's super important for you to continue to be involved in it. But then it's kind of a double-edged sort, because you create content, so you want to see what everyone else is creating, you want to follow up on trends and trending sounds and hashtags, but then you also end up down the alleyways of random Content that you just get obsessed with that doesn't really have to do with your own. Like yeah, it's the constant battle.

Speaker 1: 6:49

Do you have like tons of pet memes between you and Philip on Instagram?

Speaker 2: 6:54

Weirdly enough, philip which for everyone who knows is my husband he stopped being on TikTok. He logged out of TikTok, deleted it off his phone and now stocks my TikTok for my likes and favorite videos he's like like you, just give me the curated feed. Okay, but when we first met, the man had no social media, like this was. I was really his first foray into social media outside of LinkedIn or Twitter.

Speaker 1: 7:18

I mean, I don't know him, I can understand.

Speaker 2: 7:21

I know it's very analytical, very linear. Like all sudden I just came into his life and was like, no, but you really need to download. And so no, we don't have pet memes that go back and forth, but on our WhatsApp we definitely do. We have a family channel with my mom, my brother, philip and I. That's called family.

Speaker 1: 7:45

Your mom's got a dog as well. I can't remember my mom has a dog.

Speaker 2: 7:49

Her name's Millie. She's a white lab. I'm gonna have my mom on the podcast. Are you really?

Speaker 1: 7:54

Oh my god.

Speaker 2: 7:56

For her and I to get to. Just like I love my mom so much my mom's the best Like we can just talk about anything and everything. I want to talk about careers and family planning, going back into the workforce, because these are all different things that she did throughout her life. But I also just kind of want to shoot the shit with my mom and yeah, I thought about random things like skincare, beauty, like she'll call me sometimes and be like I'm at Costco and I'm deciding between who to a hair straighteners Regan, what do you think I should get?

Speaker 1: 8:21

I'm like I don't know. She's brilliant. Is your brother gonna help her with the microphone?

Speaker 2: 8:27

No, but she's actually pretty good with it. She has a mic, she has everything that she needs and I know she's very tech savvy.

Speaker 1: 8:34

That's amazing. My mom isn't. I was thinking, wait, if I brought Fiona on, she's fun, we have she's I don't know anyone who's listening and they've got a good relationship with the mom. I didn't for many years. We just not get on. And I moved to Saigon and that's when we got closer. We became friends and now I'm much older and and she's living it. She's living like this bloody great life. She lives her life so much and I'm like if I could live my life like her and I'm like in my sixties I've done all right. She's the only person who makes me feel okay about everything like she's that one person like it can go two ways Can either she's pissed she'll piss me off even more, or life is good again.

Speaker 1: 9:14

She's the first person who introduced me to the concept of the universe. She's been talking about the universe and putting it out there and and she used to get emails from the universe. Yeah, what do you mean? Emails from the universe? So she was signed up to some newsletter years and years and this is like when it was just email Years ago, like early day news, yeah, and she used to have her laptop plugged in all the time. I don't think she understood that you didn't need to do that. I should remember it being on the dining room table like mom what are you doing? Why is it always plugged in and turned on? But then she used to get these emails from the universe, which I think is such a nice concept though she does, she doesn't tell me them.

Speaker 2: 9:48

Yeah, amazing, are you sure they weren't those email chain forwards of like, if you don't tell seven people about this, something terrible will happen to you.

Speaker 1: 9:59

Oh my god, can you imagine some people listening to this might not have ever experienced it.

Speaker 2: 10:04

No, no, please let us know if you've never experienced an email chain Like we used to get them with a thousand smiley. You'd have to scroll forever. First of all, they'd have a thousand smiley faces and like email addresses, because it would be forward after forward. You scroll all the way down and at the very bottom it was like. I remember getting the ones that were like if you don't forward this to eight of your contacts, you'll never have your first kiss, because it was being like sent around by 13 year olds.

Speaker 1: 10:32

Yeah, it literally was that's how we communicated back then. If we didn't have emojis, so we had to create them.

Speaker 2: 10:38

You'd get like the random photo added in. I still get those from my grandma every so often. I still know I don't want her believing these things. It's like I'm pretty sure my grandma's had her first kiss already. She's good.

Speaker 1: 10:53

Bless them. It's great. I love looking back at how we use technology, because now it's so easy to take it off a granted like it is. This is how it is, and we're all on instagram. I checked my screen time for the first time ever Yesterday on because Antoine's got his bloody smartwatch. I refuse to get a smartwatch. I've got my woop band and we can talk about that afterwards. Actually, because that's a great topic, I refuse to add extra screens. I was like no, I'm already on the laptop all day. And so he was like oh, my screen time is two hours today and I was like you know what hours? Yeah, on his phone, not his laptop.

Speaker 1: 11:26

Wow, I'm so impressed and I was like always online the same and I was like I bet mine was only one hour today. Like he was like well, check, I don't even know how to check. It was like three and a half hours. One of them was an hour on my yoga app. So I was doing a yoga class. That's fine, that does not count, yeah. And then the rest was WhatsApp. That's work replying to clients. Then the other part was 30 minutes on instagram. I was like well, it takes 30 minutes to find trending audio, so that's why, there you go, it wasn't toxic scrolling.

Speaker 2: 11:57

Bada, bing, bada, boom. Yeah, I have a friend who he's actually killian. You know, killian, he's founded this company called Zario, which is supposed to help you get rid of your tech addiction. It's really interesting because they have this quiz that you take as a part of their onboarding process and you go through it. In the beginning you're like tech doesn't really affect me, and then at the very end you go, oh, holy shit, tech like not only does it impact my posture and my energy, it impacts my mental health, it impacts everything that you don't even think about. And then it makes you feel really bad about yourself and you want to turn off the tech.

Speaker 1: 12:31

It does. However, we've created a world where we can't, because our businesses run off it and our social life runs off of it, and we've isolated ourselves and we live in homes Like I was actually speaking to Eila about this last night how community, what we knew as community, is completely shifted. We all grew up with the women washing clothes by the river and birthing babies together, and now we just live in these little boxes and our connections moving further and further away, and that's why there's this big focus on bringing back the feminine energy. I don't know if you've seen this, in the spiritual community especially, it's like bringing back the feminine energy because we've been forced especially since the world wars and stuff we were forced into a masculine energy. We had to provide, we had to look after other people more, but in a more regimented way. Wait, if that?

Speaker 2: 13:23

makes sense. It wasn't nurturing.

Speaker 2: 13:25

There's an interesting point there about community. I just got my IUD out a couple of weeks ago and my cycle hasn't reestablished back yet. So I'm almost sitting on pins and needles and going am I going to get my period? Am I going to get my period? I know my aura ring keeps telling me I'm going to get it next week. We'll see if it happens next week. But I was looking around in class the other day in my spin class that I was in and for the first time was like wow, I am a part of this bigger community. It was almost. It was really weirdly empowering. I didn't think I'd feel that way, but it was almost empowering to go. There are a ton of badass women in here. Some of them are bleeding, some of them are about to, some of them are ovulating, some of them aren't. We're a part of this community and it was an in-group feeling that I hadn't felt for a very long time, at least not in person, because my whole life and my whole community is online.

Speaker 1: 14:13

It's so powerful to be in a room full of women focusing on one intention, which is like do the best you can in that spinning class right. It's really powerful.

Speaker 2: 14:23

You get yelled at by the spin instructor and told how kick ass and baller we are and you can do this. Yeah, I love that. The amount of energy that spin instructors have at my studio, which is named Rocycle, it's just, it's outrageous. Sometimes it'll take a 7 am class and there's this one instructor. She's dancing and bouncing off the wall and has a mantra set for the day. I love this. I'm so happy to be in this class. If I wish I had that kind of energy.

Speaker 1: 14:47

I think you can create that energy. Though You're way more of a morning person than me.

Speaker 2: 14:51

I choose not to be a morning person, see, that's the thing I choose to be a morning person. What do you mean? Does your group tell you what time you should go to bed? Yes, I love it.

Speaker 1: 14:59

Okay, you go first on your aura, because you mentioned that aura tells you when your periods come in. Does it measure your basal temperature thing?

Speaker 2: 15:06

Yes, every day it measures. So it takes about 60 days for it to really sync with your cycle. Then it'll go into your follicular phase luteal phase You're going to have your period on these days. It tracks your temperature. It doesn't give you an exact temperature in Celsius or Fahrenheit. Instead, what it does is it says your based on your base temperature, your.2 degrees.3 degrees below or above. That's cool, and so you can see the fluctuations in that way. And then it gives you a readiness score. Every day. I'm obsessed with my aura. I wake up every morning and it's a weird addiction. I normally don't look at my phone in the morning, but now I'm like aura. I have to sit there and go. How do I think I slept? Okay, let's see if my stats align with that. Oh, I love this Did you.

Speaker 1: 15:48

When you saw Kili in last, was he like, oh, it's just another piece of tech, regan?

Speaker 2: 15:53

No, he loved it. He was like oh my God, one of my friends has the aura. And then we got on the topic of the whoop and I told him that you have the whoop, and we were debating between the two because I don't totally understand the difference, except for mine's a ring, and I think mine might give me a few more stats than yours does. The whoop is great.

Speaker 1: 16:12

Yeah, so the whoop is cheaper, that's number one, and you don't have to do the ring fitting and it's it's a less. It's fucking expensive. Yeah, it's expensive, and it doesn't have a payment plan or anything, so it's not as accessible for people who would benefit from it, whereas the whoop has this payment plan where it's like 30 euros a month, is 25 pounds a month for 12 months, and that's much more affordable for people who would like to benefit from trekking their health. And I got the whoop as well because there's no screen like you got the aura. There's no screen. Manually enter and then it'll track it in the future. It tracks the strain, the recovery and all the other vital statistics like stress. It tells me you were in stress zone for 19 minutes two hours ago. What was happening two hours ago for 19 minutes? It's usually if the dogs are barking. It instantly spikes and your heart rate increases. It's like little things.

Speaker 2: 17:02

It's very cool. I love the stress tracker. I think that's it. That's been the biggest insight for me, because I've always I know that I'm stressed, I know that I have anxiety, like I am no stranger to that part of my brain and I've accepted that part of my brain, but it's different when you see it on paper. I think it's almost validating when you see it on paper, because then it gives me something to work towards in a different way, because you get that immediate feedback, which is something that I didn't have before. I just was like oh, my heart's always beating fast, my stomach always hurts, my back always hurts, my shoulder, you know it. Just, I had this Pain, but I didn't realize how tight it was to like for me.

Speaker 2: 17:39

I recognize minds really tied to meal times. Yeah, you mentioned this to the day Breakfast, lunch and dinner. I get really anxious, and so I'm trying to figure out, okay, what's happening around meal times. How do I start working through that with my therapist or with conversations with Phillip, what I'm eating? I'm going to talk to Ila about it. I freaking love Ila. She's such a chat, she's so good.

Speaker 1: 17:58

She's a fairy princess. She asked me the other day if I wanted children and I said no. She said great, neither do I, so let's go and look after each other when we retire. I was like, okay, cool, I'm down with this idea, so sweet.

Speaker 2: 18:12

Yes, I also love that she has made an admission to work with women to build and increase their fertility. But she's like no, that is my job. My job is to prepare you to have children. I am not going to have children. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1: 18:25

She's like the do-la and she really helps people and gets women to their perfect fertile state and beyond, and that's her mission in life and that mission, like she's actively chosen, that she for her. A bit like my reason in why I don't want children, like the economical reasons, and I just don't. I don't feel in this lifetime maybe in different lifetimes I do, but that is what it is right now and it's nice for women to make these statements and be able to stick to them and not feel like they should be squashed into a little box. I think it's really cool that you're doing this and you're not having children. If I was the fertility and practitioner, I would feel pressure while you don't have children. How can you tell me to have children? Like I would feel that pressure Interesting, yeah, but she doesn't.

Speaker 2: 19:10

Why do you think?

Speaker 1: 19:10

that is though.

Speaker 2: 19:11

Because I think for me, the fact that she doesn't want to have children actually never, it never changed my opinion on whether or not I wanted to work with her, because, a little bit like great, you've worked with women before to bring their body to this level of fertility. My goal is to level out my hormones with somebody who is non-judgmental, which is so Isla. This is an Isla sales pitch, officially, yeah.

Speaker 1: 19:34

I think all of my episodes.

Speaker 2: 19:35

Are Everyone go work with Isla? Yeah, We'll put her details in the show notes yeah, exactly. So when you is non-judgmental, somebody who has this wealth of knowledge, who's patient, who's kind, who is just a good person, your decision as to whether or not you want to have kids. In the same way, I don't care if my doctor is what sexuality they identify as yeah, that's true.

Speaker 1: 19:59

And I actually think this is one of my own beliefs that is not actually serving me, because a woman that I met here in fact all of the women I meet here have children. So it's just the age range and I think I'm just this weird 34-year-old who's? I'm not weird, but I'm a 34-year-old who doesn't have children. Right, that's the community. And so I find all these women and we usually meet in coffee shops and she said to me the last time I saw her, you should coach women with children. Because of all the questions about what I do and the leadership stuff and I was telling her about the leadership bubble of balance and how I support leaders to create their own inner bubble and how that reflects on the outside I have no idea that I could work on myself and have children. I said I can't do that. I don't have children. That was my belief. Why can't you do it?

Speaker 2: 20:45

I think if you came in there and said, well, you're doing it wrong, your parenting wrong, then yeah, my initial reaction would be like you don't know what it's like to have kids Not that I have kids right now, but I want them but you know you won't come in. I know you, you won't come in there, like that. You'll come in there and you'll go okay, tell me what it's like. Well, have you thought about this? Is this a possibility for you? I've seen this work before and then that knowledge just ends up compounding and I think, like I said, you would be that patient Work doula.

Speaker 2: 21:13

Yeah we'll call you the work doula.

Speaker 1: 21:16

Yeah, I mean that's what I do, right? It's like helping people have a nicer experience. If I can help other people have a good day and not be as impacted by everything that's happening around them, then after my job, there we go. Sorry, I'm going off on one. Today We've got a lot to talk about. Find something you love doing and you can do it really well and do that.

Speaker 2: 21:37

Yeah, I was watching New Girl last night. Yeah, you ever watched New Girl.

Speaker 1: 21:41

No, you've mentioned it a few times though.

Speaker 2: 21:42

Okay, new Girl is the best comfort show. I am obsessed with New Girl lately. I think my sense of humor has changed over the years because I watched New Girl. This is my third time watching it through. I watch sitcoms, I just love sitcoms and a storyline behind it. New Girl is great because their sense of humor is a lot more mature than a lot of their audiences and so they're super sarcastic, they're hilarious. But I was watching New Girl.

Speaker 2: 22:05

One of the characters was saying how he's tried so many different jobs in his career. He was a radio host, an artist, and he ended up being a cop and loving it. That's where his passion lies. I just don't think enough people do that. Whether you want to try a ton of different job areas and focus areas or you want to do it a little bit more narrow, like you're doing where you go, okay, we're going to try one-on-ones group coaching, we're going to see what really fuels me. I don't know if people do that. I think we're told you have to do this one thing and stick with it. That's unfair, it is.

Speaker 1: 22:36

And I think that there's a narrative as well that, especially in the older generation, like our moms, that you can't enjoy work, that if you enjoy work then you're not going to be money. There's like so many weird narratives around it and I absorbed a lot of that when I was younger and then when I failed, so like, oh my God, so many failures and we talk about this a lot with each other but I had so many businesses right that I tried to build. I remember when I was in Bali I was trying to build this is when I first was introduced to funnels and tripwires and all the really OG style marketing tactics, when that was first really popular. And I remember I met this guy and he was making a shit ton of money selling an ebook and I was like I want that. And he gave me the login to his course that he learned funnels.

Speaker 1: 23:26

And for me at that time I was what 23 or 24? I had no money. I was desperate to like make something work and I built a blog and Instagram around supporting your gut whilst travelling. I told you in the past I've got extreme knowledge around this topic because of this. I researched it to death. I built communities on Facebook groups, like I had big Facebook group but I never figured out how to monetise it.

Speaker 2: 23:55

I did not know nearly this amount of detail. I knew that you sold an ebook, but I didn't know what it was about. I don't know. Okay, continue on, I invested.

Speaker 1: 24:02

So this is ages ago. I was sick all the time. All the time I had IBS symptoms what they called IBS at the time. Now we know it's a lot more than that. I noticed that other people were really struggling with travelling. It was stopping them from being able to travel. They were like terrified of leaving their country because what if they got sick? What if they couldn't find a bathroom, like all this kind of stuff, right? So I thought this is my reality. I've been able to do it. I'm sick a lot, but I know how to manage it in different places and each country. I know how to deal with it. I know what food to go to, especially in Southeast Asia. I'll create a blog about it. And so I did SEO blogs. You have your one SEO pillar. Then you spoke with us.

Speaker 1: 24:40

I did that tactic and it was like eating in Malaysia with IBS, eating in Vietnam with IBS. And then I built a Facebook group and I managed to sell like five e-books of like 20 euros, 20 dollars, nice, and I just something didn't work and I lost interest because this isn't working. I need some money. And that's when I got into the tech. I was already in tech before and this was like my diversion, when I was like being a digital nomad, I failed in my head Like I didn't try hard enough, in my opinion, doing something that I really enjoyed, so then I had to go and get a job.

Speaker 1: 25:12

So the idea there was it solidified that you can't do things that you really love and make money. That was where that thought came from. Now I don't believe that, obviously, but that was there and that's why I kept working for people, because I felt like, well, the only way I'll ever be called this money is as a CMO or leading a marketing team or whatever. That's the only way I can make money. Took a long time to like understand that I could make money in different ways.

Speaker 2: 25:39

Yeah, I mean something not working as hard. Like that, right, because I think it ingrains this thought process in your head where, even if it's not true, it almost reinstalls that fear. Like, for years, I'd wanted to do exactly what I'm doing right now, but it took me a really long time to get there. Like in 2018, I started an Instagram account and I was like right, I'm going to be a. I wanted to be like a body positivity influencer.

Speaker 2: 26:02

I was like this is what I want, and I never ended up doing anything around it because I thought about it way too much and I just convinced myself I would never be able to do it Like I did. There's just no way. I'm it's way too vulnerable for me, which, to be fair at the time it was. There's no way I would have been able to tell my story with you know, in relation to food and eating disorders and my own life. I'm still getting used to it. It still feels vulnerable.

Speaker 2: 26:28

Then I went and continued working at Google at the time and then I moved to London after a while, was like I again, I just had this little, you know, like what do they call it? Like in my ear, I just had this voice going no, you need to do something else, you need to do something that's a lot more creative. What do I love doing? I love decorating, I love DIY projects, and so I'm going to start something called bougie on a budget. I wanted to make my life as a hobby inside project around doing things that were bougie but lower cost, and that started to pick up slowly. But then I stopped doing it because I refocused into work. I didn't understand what the monetization options were for it.

Speaker 2: 27:08

I wasn't bleeding tech into it and I love tech and it's interesting how you end up coming full circle, because now, through organized chaos, I work with women in tech to help them navigate life without the chaos, and I love that. I love that I can talk about lifestyle, I can talk about strategy, I can talk about skincare, I can talk about, you know, really everything in between with all those different areas. But it's the puzzle that has now become my reality and I think sometimes you have to put that piece together. You have to start somewhere. You have to fail, but it's like failing up most in a positive way.

Speaker 1: 27:41

Exactly and you found this thing that you can do consistently and I think a lot of the time businesses fail because they gave up way too early or they were not in the financial circumstance to be able to pursue that mission. When I was in Bali I was broke, like I've talked about this on the podcast. I literally had one contract. I was freelancing for ERP software but I found this guy inside gone random story. He was my first ever client and he, like I've stayed with him for two or three years and so I was in Bali at the time and I remember calling him, being like hey, just wondering if you've got any extra projects any of your clients.

Speaker 1: 28:18

He's like no, I'm like Fuck, need some money I literally had like $300 coming in and I was like what is going on? All in all, that was the right thing to have happened at the time, like I wasn't meant to have the money. Then I believe anyway, because I went back to England recovered from my eating disorder, everything was much better. But when you're not in a financial situation to build a business, nothing that you do is going to help, because it takes time and consistency. To build a business is no overnight switch that's going to build it into a successful engine. You just have to do the things over and over again. You have to have the free space to do that, and I think that's what makes people fall off the wagon and not get back on again.

Speaker 2: 29:03

Yeah, you'll have to have the resilience to like I said. You know 25, I didn't have that resilience. I was beaten down by my anxiety. I overthought everything and, like, I still do a lot of it. But now I have the tools and templates and the coping mechanisms built into my own life where I can go right, like anything I do after 9pm I can't believe, anything I say to myself after 9pm is just I can't believe it, because I will talk to myself down. I just didn't have the resilience to support myself through that. And as a solopreneur, entrepreneur, whatever you want to call yourself, creator, you have to have that resilience because there will come a point where you have that hockey stick growth but you have to wait it out and you have to try things and you have to fail and you have to learn from that and not get stuck in the hole of oh I suck, I can't do this, this won't work for me. Yeah, because it will.

Speaker 1: 29:54

Exactly. It's well, yeah, exactly, and that's a resilience, and I think you only learn that with time, and I think even this year, like January, has helped me understand the meaning of trust the process. Nobody on the outside sees what entrepreneurs are putting in. They don't see all the little things that they're doing every day and not getting results on. They don't see all the little things they're doing and they have no idea how it's going to turn out, these small, small things that are adding up and going to lead to success at some point we don't know when. That's the thing. Especially when you're externally motivated, like I am, it's difficult not to see the money going the bank straight away and having to see all of these other things come out of my bank account that are helping me build for the future, and so that's that takes grit, and you have to work on that all the time, every day, and that's something that I've really had to learn in the last year and a half. I would say it's like come on, keep going.

Speaker 2: 30:53

Yeah, you have to keep pushing yourself. I've seen people experience it going from a corporate to a startup Like it's a very similar process, right? Because at a corporate, you have rules and hierarchy and things need to go up the ladder before they get approved and then they come back down the ladder. So it takes a really long time to get things pushed through and you don't ship every day. At a startup, you're constantly shipping, every single day. I remember we were putting something out, whether it was a campaign or something for approval or something I had to go to design. We had a lean team, so we were just moving super fast, whereas as an entrepreneur, you aren't shipping something every day. You are, but in a smaller way. So you have to go through that shift once again. You're not at a corporate rate because you have to build your own structure. You are the only one approving, but you're really the only one working on your team until you have the money to start bringing other people in, and that's a really hard shift to go through.

Speaker 1: 31:44

Like you have to push through it and I have them all the time, and, like we were talking about this earlier, I'm building a new funnel, the funnel that I'm going to be nurturing for a long time. That's the decision. I'm going to just keep feeding into this. But when you're building that, it's some of it's boring as fuck. Like you have to figure out the technical stuff, like I'm not good at this, and so I'm like Antoine, please help me design this landing page. I can do it, but it doesn't look as good as when you do it, and design is expensive. On time, right?

Speaker 2: 32:13

That's the thing is, you are used to being able to bring someone else in, whereas I really do think that being an entrepreneur makes you a 10 times better marketer. Like my, marketing skills have grown exponentially and I already thought I was a pretty decent marketer, right Like my work spoke for itself. I grew to a director role, but then I left and went oh my God, you don't know how to market until you've marketed your own product, because you don't know how to think about budget. You really don't. You sure you know how to manage a team around it, but you don't know how to make strategic decisions that are actually going to move the needle. That's kind of all that matters.

Speaker 1: 32:47

Exactly as a CMO, I was going to building up teams and managing budgets and reporting and making things move forward Right. But I was shit at social media. I was shit at building funnels, email marketing because I hired people to help me do that. I knew what I needed to do. I couldn't do it very well. I was great at product and getting people through the funnel and so when I didn't have that anymore and had to do it myself, I was like, ooh, better relearn everything that I was trying to learn when I was younger and I was good at when I was younger. You just discard the information.

Speaker 2: 33:16

You don't need the issue is when you first start out in your career and you're doing a lot of that execution work. You are learning what is trending and marketing. Once you stop you almost stop keeping up on those trends. So you end up with CMOs whose marketing program is 30 years outdated. Right, they have this really outdated strategy. I was talking to the meme marketing agency, Lucid Meme.

Speaker 2: 33:38

Oh yeah, that sounds so cool, they were super cool and that episode has probably dropped by the time that this episode comes out. So Shameless, plug go and listen to it. But they were saying that one of their biggest barriers is you run into these heads of marketing, cmos, who are like that'll never work. Our audience is not going to be interested in memes. Well, they don't understand the true power of social media, because their opinion on social media is it's pure top of funnel. They don't understand that it can actually nurture, it can actually confer an audience that is really engaged and obsessed with your brand. And that's the big problem, and that's what I love about doing what I do, which is you can really keep your ear to the ground on trends.

Speaker 1: 34:17

Definitely and I think there's a message here, especially throughout this chat as a leader, you must keep on top of what's happening around you and not just be on your little bubble and not just rely on everybody else, because it will help you in the long run. It'll help you if you one day decide to go and be your own boss and have your own person on brand. It'll help you understand exactly who to hire and maybe save money on your budget instead of hiring people. Maybe you can lead the strategy yourself, right.

Speaker 2: 34:42

Yeah, exactly. Like there's just so much to be learned from it, you know, resilience-wise with strategy-wise, like there's so many different skills that you get to pick up that you can go and apply towards the rest of your life, whether you stay in a corporate job, a small startup, or go out and do something on your own. Yeah, definitely, and we'll leave it at that. Yeah, we will continue and with that, I'll see you later, ok, bye.

Speaker 1: 35:40

See you next time in the bubble.