Welcome to Marketing Chaos
Welcome to the Marketing Chaos podcast!
For those of you who have been around for The Global Practitioners podcast, which is what this podcast was called for the first 81 episodes of its life, I have a story for you today. And those of you who are new to this podcast, it’ll be a little history lesson and hopefully a cautionary tale.
I want to start by talking about burnout … and burnout is a topic that I wasn’t sure was a real thing. To be honest, I thought people were maybe making it up. I never experienced it before… I myself have always loved working. I’ve loved my business. I love creating. I’ve always found those things synonymous. Creation and business were always one.
So imagine my surprise when burnout hit me … and hear how it led to an all new creation. This one! Welcome to Marketing Chaos.
Thanks for tuning into this week’s episode of the Marketing Chaos Podcast! If this podcast has contributed to you in some way, it will likely help others, too. The way we can reach more people is by you heading over to iTunes, subscribing to the show, and leaving us an honest review. Your reviews and feedback will help us to continue delivering amazing content tailored for exactly what you need.
Episode Transcript
You’re listening to marketing chaos, episode number 82. Welcome to the podcast. I am sitting here in the hot, hot summer, which is very strange as an American because in Australia, January is right in the middle of the summer. The kids are out of school for Christmas slash summer holidays. And it’s very strange because normally in America growing up there, we would be back in school and it would be cold and everything is just the upside down here on this side of the world. So kids are out of school and they’re going back. I have two, six and a half year olds. They’re gonna be first graders when they go back to school at the end of the month. But that is not why you guys are here. You are here because this is marketing chaos. And for those of you who have been around for the global practitioners podcast, which is what this podcast was on for the first 81 episodes of its life, I have a story for you today. And those of you who are new to this podcast and been listening since the name change, it’ll be a little history lesson and hopefully a cautionary tale for you as well. And this I hope will help you in your, this not to make the same mistake that I recently did.
So let me back up a minute and talk about how this marketing chaos podcast came to be named and came out of a dark place in my business, uh, not too long ago and how this might contribute to you and what you’re creating. So I wanna start by talking about burnout and burnout is a topic that I, I wasn’t sure was a real thing. To be honest, I thought people were maybe making it up. I never experienced, I myself have always loved working. I’ve loved my business. I love creating. I’ve always found those things. Synonymous, like creation and business were always one. And the same for me. In fact, uh, when I had kids, one of my biggest worries or fears was that I was gonna have to stop working, or I be able to work because I loved it so much. And also I am supporting my family. So I was worried about it financially. And luckily I have an online business and have had one long before COVID. And I think since COVID a lot of people have been forced into it, but I always enjoy the luxury of being able to work in the middle of the night or on weekends or from the beach or wherever I am. Whenever I, uh, wanna work as having twin babies would allow, uh, random hours.
And those of you who have small children, you know what I’m talking about. So you’re up anyway, 3:00 AM. You might as well get some work done, but back to burnout. So recently I had a, I did a challenge and I’ve done three challenges, and I don’t know what it was that made me think the third time would be a charm, but for some reason, cuz the first two were not, they were just a lot of work. Challenges are not for the faint at heart. Um, I think some people are really great at them and they love them for me. It they’ve just always been really exhausting. I’m an introvert and I prefer really having a lot of space. I like one-on-one interactions. I like to have small groups of friends, uh, having a large group of people and coaching them along a journey, live in a series of trainings in a challenge style for me is very, and it’s a lot of work.
So I did a couple challenges. They, they went okay. Uh, and then I decided to do a third one and this is where the cautionary tale comes in. So I basically forced this thing into existence. Like from the beginning it was off. I, I sent out an email to my list. I didn’t get the response that I normally get. I think one or two people bought, uh, it was a paid challenge. We ended up changing it to a free challenge because so many people went to the landing page and didn’t buy that. What we realized was okay, challenge in the last six months has the, the definition in the world has changed and people think it’s gonna be free. They get to the landing page. The sales page for the challenge is $37. They go away and I’m like, why are people not buying? So we changed it to a free challenge.
Now that was an educated decision based on past results and data and against all of my better judgment and my awareness of what was actually going on, which was that this thing didn’t, it didn’t wanna, it, your stuff has its own energy and this thing didn’t wanna be this thing <laugh> it didn’t wanna be this form. It didn’t wanna, it just wasn’t right from the beginning. So I went against my awareness and I put it out anyway and had about 600 people join. The challenge, did the amount of work that challenges require long, long, long hours put my team and my family through a lot of stress, uh, not being around the family, uh, to help out with dinners and lunches and school runs and all of that. My husband took a, a random side job in the middle of my launch, which was so annoying.
And I was like, oh seriously, why are you doing this to me right now? So it was super, super stressful. Uh, my team was just exhausted. I was exhausted. And the icing on the poo pile at the end was that very little people actually bought the offer at the end of the challenge. So if you’ve never done a challenge, the way it works is you sell something at the end end. And that’s how you make the money back, that you’ve spent to get people into the challenge. And that is what makes it all worthwhile in the end. Although I think people that really love challenges and it’s fun for it. Wouldn’t be about it making money in the end. But for me, they really aren’t fun. And there are so much work that I’m like, okay, this thing better pay off, which probably is a bad attitude.
<laugh> maybe I need to have a look at. So only about three people bought, um, the first couple days and I just pulled the plug and I called it off and I gave refunds and I, you know, just said, Hey, this isn’t happening. And I think probably like one day before I made that decision, it still up in the air and I was like, okay, what can I do? And I got on a meeting with a friend of mine and we talked about all the different options and I, and she’s like, well just send an email. And I said, you know what, I’m too exhausted. I can’t even write an email. And I realized at that moment, like, I, you know, this isn’t, this is not how I want to run my business. Like where I’m so exhausted halfway through a launch that isn’t working, that didn’t work from the beginning.
That, and also my number two, that was on the call. She, you know, I said, well, can you write the email? And she was basically just as bad off as I was. So I’m like, we’re all burn out. No one has the energy to even write an email is I’m calling it. This is, this is over. And I crashed and I, I, I call it, my brain broke because it literally hurt to think, I couldn’t seem to do anything. And I just went into this sort of hibernation. I remember my, my husband dropping the kids off and coming home. And I was laying in bed middle of the day, middle of the week. And the TV in our room was off and I’m just staring at it. He comes in and he looks at me, he looks at the TV and he is like, are you okay?
And I was sort of like shook my head, like, uh, like up almost, but I, my eyes were open. I’m like in this catatonic state, I’m like, no, I don’t, I don’t think I’m okay. You know, and I, and I was close to tears and he’s like, what’s going on? You know? And I said, I just need a break. I just need a break. And if you’ve ever been there and what I learned, it has a name burnout. <laugh>, uh, it’s, it’s very strange for someone who’s very creative to not wanna create, like, not have the energy to create, or to even have energy of like the energetic, the generative energy of just energy. It was just dead. I was like, my brain is dead. I can’t do anything. I don’t wanna do anything. And I just, I gave myself permission to rest.
And then I kind of had enough energy to do small things around the house, walk the dogs cook, but I definitely wasn’t doing my business. I stopped doing the podcast. I stopped, uh, just about everything. I had a few calls that I had to, uh, that I had already scheduled for my programs that I, you know, honored. I showed up. I did as best as I could with no brain and, and, uh, just pushed through it. And then I went back to hibernation and I allowed myself to do that. And I didn’t give a timeline on that. Uh, and I just said, look, I’m gonna take a break until I feel like I’m, you know, can come back. And it was about 10 days, which thanks to a lot of body, you work and rest and energy healing and all the things I know to do self care and being in nature and really just giving myself the permission to not work or do anything.
And about 10 days later, I was walking the dogs and this idea came, and I remember remember, like, it’s like an old friend coming to visit. I’m like an idea <laugh>. And that generative, that creative spark was such, it was like a little flame, like a little candle, you know? And, and I just wanted to hold that candle and like protect it and make sure it didn’t go out because I was like, oh, an idea. And that idea was marketing chaos. And that is where this podcast was born. And what I discovered was this whole burnout and this state that I got myself into, a lot of it came from what I would call a deep dive into this reality. And by this reality, I mean, the way that normal people live, the way that experts tell you to do things, a world of answers, right, and wrong solutions, problems, and marketing done this way from that place is what led me to burnout in a really dynamic way.
And I had bought into a lot of other people’s points of view by joining programs, buying courses, reading books, studying, which I love learning. And I love taking in all the information, but at point I gave up my ability and my willingness to question what’s true for me when I started just doing what I was told from the point of view of this should work. This must work. And on top of that, I had, I had quit my day job. Uh, and I was actually started create, so back, back up, my business was always my like guilty pleasure. It was the thing that I would get up early to work on. It was a thing that I would like try and squeeze in around the edges around all the other work that I had to do that was paying the bills. And it, if you ever have had a hobby or a passion or something that you love doing, and then you turned it into a job, you will know exactly what I’m talking about because that killed it.
For me, it killed the way I stopped looking forward to going to work because I quit my quote, other job that was paying the bills. And now my business was in charge of supporting my family. My business was in charge of paying the bills. My business was now its job was to put food on the table and a roof over our heads. And you know, we’ve got a family of four and two dogs, and we live in the sunshine coast of Australia on the beach, in this beautiful paradise. It is not cheap. And my business now had this job to support us and it killed it, killed the joy, it of the fun. And I went straight into, okay, I have to do it the way that it’s going to work. I must do it the right way. I can’t afford to screw this up.
And that’s how I got to this burnout, this place where I couldn’t function and a failed launch, a really big pile of debt to create that failed launch. But one thing I will tell you is it was worth all of that because the awareness I got is worth every penny and every ounce of energy that I spend to get there. And if you can look at anything that you would call a failure and ask, what awareness do I have from this, it will never be a failure. If you are willing to learn from it and take the awareness, it’s way cheaper than going to get a degree in school. It’s way cheaper than spending 10 years learning it the hard way, like actually take whatever experience you’ve had in your business and use it for the awareness ask, what did I get from this? What’s right about this that I’m not getting.
So going deep into this reality of answers and marketing solutions and doing it the right way and having data and repeating and rinsing and repeating, which is what are told to do. And it failed. And I burn out and then this spark of chaos. So which brings me to the name of this new podcast, marketing chaos, where you will get no answers, but you may learn how to ask question. You may learn that you have choice. You may see possibility, and you may get that you are a contr contribution and that you have contribution that you can contribute to others and receive. So question choice, possibility and contribution, the elements of creation. Now, chaos is actually confused in this reality as havoc and people will talk about chaos as something to avoid. They talk about getting rid of all the chaos and making sure that everything is ordered and organized and set, and that there are no room.
There’s no room to doubt or question anything. And if that’s what you’re looking for, this is definitely the wrong podcast for, for you, because what I’ve learned and what I’m committed to now is to asking questions about what’s going to work for me and what’s going to work for my business, just because it worked for someone else doesn’t mean it will work for me just because it failed for someone else doesn’t work mean that it will fail for me. And just because it worked in the past for me, doesn’t mean it will work in the future. What you need to do in order to have a successful business from this space is always ask questions. So chaos is not havoc. Havoc is the, a disorganization and mess that you create when you try to function from an ordered world when you are an infinite being full of energy and question and creation.
So this spark from marketing chaos brought me out of burnout and put me into my space of being as a creator, which is where I thrive. And what I’ve started doing is following the energy of that spark of that creation. And what I would recommend for you to do as well is start to look at the energy of what it is that you’re creating more so than anything else. So we have data and data is great. I love numbers and spreadsheets. And I won’t say that you shouldn’t do that because I think that it’s very valuable information. I also love learning and I love taking other people’s points of view and, and consuming it. The thing that is missing with that is the question. So what I do when I’m consuming other people’s, uh, information from whatever course or other podcasts and do this with my podcast, it’s like, take it all in, have it be just interesting.
It’s an interesting point of view. Don’t make it right or wrong. I learned this from access consciousness, which is where I studied for the past decade and have learned how to be aware of G how to know what’s true for me, how to know what’s a lie for me, or what’s false for me, even if it’s true for someone else, if it’s light, it’s true for you. If it’s heavy, it’s a lie for you. And only you get to decide or determine or be aware of what that is, and what’s gonna work for you and what isn’t <affirmative>. So take any information and there will be truth. There will be truths, and there will be lies. It’s not about buying all of it as true. It’s about asking what’s what in this, if any is true for me and what here is a lie. So discover what is true for me with marketing and with launching and with creating my courses.
And my programs has been such a adventure of fun and possibility and creation. And that is what I’m committed to now. And if I know one thing it’s that money follows joy, joy, doesn’t follow money. There’s a great book that, uh, Gary Douglas wrote called money. Isn’t the problem you are. And I think Dan here, co-authored that book. And it’s one of the first books I read when I came to access. And I learned about the tools they have around money and creation. And this is one of the things they say, money follows joy. So I was trying to give my business the job of making me and my family money and providing for us when in reality, when I’m having fun and enjoying everything that I’m creating the, he follows. So now I start and if I get halfway into something and it gets clunky, or it gets crunchy, or it gets weird or heavy, or I just get like a tightening in my throat or my chest, I stop. And I go, okay, what is the, is? And I just have a look at it. And I’m like, okay, is this actually true for me?
Or am I buying and trying to live someone else’s truth? What’s true for someone else. Or I’ve bought some point of view about, okay, like, let’s take a very practical example. Like if you’re gonna launch a course, you’re need to send emails to your list. And I think that’s a good thing. And you probably wanna include that as part of your launch strategy. Well, what I was taught and what people will tell you is to write those emails in advance and that you should, let’s say you have five emails to write and you send one and you let everyone know, uh, this very exciting offer’s coming. And you introduce ’em to it. You write a second one a couple days later, that’s overcoming objections. You write a third one. It’s like, got some testimonials. It’s got social proof. You write a fourth one. That’s like, Hey, you don’t wanna miss a out this bonus.
And then you write a fifth one. That’s like last chance come on in. This is the last chance that you can get this offer. All right. So there’s five emails just off the top of my head. Now this is a very pragmatic way to look at this energy of chaos, because you wanna have both order and both are required. So if I looked at this only from the point of view of order and systems and, and structure, it would be write these five emails, do them in this sequence. This is what you put in email 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. This is when you send it. And all of that is very ordered and organized, and it’s done there. You tick the box. Okay. And there is a time and a place for that. Sometimes. Now let’s instill chaos in this email sequence. Now, how do we do that?
We start by asking a question. Do I send an email sequence? Yes or no? Which one’s lighter. Okay. Yes. How many? Three. Okay. Well, there goes two of those emails right off the bat. And this is how you start to question everything. Okay. Do I send an email? Will it contribute? What will it create? If I send an email, not just go based on the point of view, I must write five email. I must write them in advance. I must send them at these times. And all of that is answer solution and ticking boxes without looking at what it’s gonna create. Now I could very well do that and it might work. However, if I haven’t asked any questions, we don’t know there could be something even greater. So now I ask a question. Okay. Email se yes or no. How many emails? Three. Okay.
When get the dates. All right, cool. Write it now. No. Okay. So I would ask questions. When do I wanna write this email? Because sometimes actually I would say almost always the best emails that I write are the ones that are asking to be right. They’re like begging me to write them. They’re going, you need to say this right now. And I’m like, okay, give me a laptop. And I just, and I bang it out and it’s done. And it takes 30 seconds and it gets the highest open rates, the highest click rates and the best success comes from it. These pre-defined templates and things, they have their, they serve their purpose. Sometimes I’ll, I’ll see them and I’ll get an idea, but you need to add the question and possibility to it. Not just do it because it’s on your to-do list. It actually won’t create anything just to do it from your, to do list.
So now that I’ve asked questions and I’ve infused and instilled chaos into this framework, I wanna go back to the point of view of the email and look at it and ask it questions. And I did from this space, the energy, the consciousness that wants to be written and have it flow out of me and actually send it like, there is an order. There’s a organization and some elements of order in this as well. So I have a person on my team, Allison who sends emails for me. We have a system of, in place for how I get those emails to her. That creates ease for me. So I write the emails on a, on a Google doc. I put them in a certain thread. She knows, uh, where, where to find that it pings her. She knows how to set it up. And she gets it out to the right people at the right time.
So we’ve created a system around it. But that system is, is flexible. That system is changeable. That system doesn’t have to be a structure. That must be a certain way. And the thing I see missing, and that’s why I’m so excited about this podcast. The thing I see missing in the world of marketing is that space of possibility that goes beyond the structure, the elements of order, the rightness, the wrongness, the must do it. This weightness that stick. So many of us with these points of view, that actually aren’t true for us. And I know how tempting it is to want to have a solution for something and to have an answer and have somebody just tell you what to do, because then surely you’ll, it will work. And it’s a seduction thinking that you’re gonna have an answer because someone is gonna tell you how to do something and it’s gonna solve a problem.
That is the seduction of this reality. But I want you to have a look for yourself and not take my point of view or my awareness as true for you. And I want you to look at how many times that has actually worked for you and how many times, times, if it did work, that it was because you took it and you made it yours, you took that piece of advice and you infused it with your energy. You took it and you extrapolated it into something else, something greater, you took it, but you didn’t buy it as the answer and the way to do it. You took it and you became something greater with it. And you created from it. So what if all the advice that you get from everywhere in marketing and advertising and courses and books and experts and mentors, you just take it in.
You say, that’s an interesting point of view. What do I know? That’s an interesting point of view. What do I know? And start unlocking what you’re actually great at what you are the best in the world at, because you, my friend listening right now, yes, you are the best in the world at something. You may not know what that is yet. You per probably think that thing has no value because I’ll tell you something. Hint, that thing that you’re the best in the world at is something that comes so easily to you that you think it has no value. You think everyone can do that. You think that, that thing or those things that are so easy for you are things that are easy for everyone. And they’re not, they are not easy for other people. And if you actually take a moment and ask the people around you, what is it that you think I’m really great at?
I bet that they will start telling you things that then you hear them and you go to discount them well, but that’s just, that’s just easy. That’s just who I am. That’s like breathing. I could do that all day long. Yes, exactly. Those are the, the things that you should be doing all the time and that you should be charging the most for. So take the advice and make it yours or throw it away. Sometimes you hear it, great piece of advice and work great for someone else. And it’s crap for you. Just throw it in the it in. Don’t have to take everything. Not every piece of advice is for everyone. And it’s not all for you, including what I tell you here on this podcast. Hopefully it gives you a spark, a question to ask in your own world, allow it to be in your world and allow it to contribute.
Go beyond, take that and create from it. That is my wish for you. And that is my hope for this marketing chaos, this podcast, this new marketing chaos podcast, that it will be a contribution to what you already are being in the world. And that it’ll push you into question and that it’ll take away somewhere that you have been making yourself wrong for things not working for you the way they’re supposed to. I hope that this first of many marketing chaos episodes has been a contribution and I’ll see you next time. Thank you so much for listening by for now.
