10 Non-Negotiable Habits of Million Dollar Course Creators
SUBSCRIBE HERE:
+ Everywhere else you listen to podcasts
Episode Summary:
In this episode, I dive into 10 Non-Negotiable Habits of Million Dollar Course Creators and how these practices can help you leverage YOUR income on a 3-day work week. From investing time now for future payoffs to mastering sales and embracing the mindset that it's safe to earn more, these habits make a big difference in your ability to monetize and scale your biz. Tune in to learn which habits can support your success in 2025, and make sure to register for my FREE live Million Dollar Course workshop on November 12th, where I'll help you design your course AND break through money mindset barriers.
The 10 Non-Negotiable Habits:
Be willing to invest time now for future payoff
The ability to put a buffer layer (think Jell-O) between you and your clients, you're still there and present and listening but you have that grounded energy as you grow and serve more people
Find aligned ways to get more visible and learn new marketing tools
Get better at selling, messaging, objections to enroll people at scale
Always be learning... but it doesn't always have to be about business
Adapt the money mindset that it's okay to receive MORE money for less or no work- it doesn't diminish your work ethic
Improve your boss skills- hiring, delegating, managing team
Find life giving hobbies so you can bring energy TO your business
Prioritize important (non-urgent) scaling priorities like hiring team, batching sales/visibility tasks, creating course content and allow discomfort around busywork going undone (i.e. inbox zero)
Get comfortable not working and make it easy to stop working at the end of the day (app blockers, group exercise class at 3 pm)
Episode Resources:
Join my FREE live workshop: Million Dollar Course happening on November 12th at 10 am PST
Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google | Stitcher
-
Anna (00:06):
Welcome to the Heart-Centered Entrepreneur podcast. I want you to be rich. Yes, I want abundant financial success for your business, but I don't just care about your business making money. I care about you too. I want you to be rich and happiness in the impact you make in your relationships and in how you give back. I'm Anna. I built my six figure business as a side hustle while I was pregnant with my daughter in 2016. Now I've helped dozens of women do the same. I'm here to help you build a profitable heart-centered fully book business with the latest tips on sales and visibility with proven mindset hacks and sneak peeks behind the scenes with what's working right now in the online space and in my business, ready to make more money with heart. Let's go.
Anna (00:49):
It is fall, or at least I am claiming it <laugh> because for me, I love the summer, I love the relaxation, I love more time with my kids, but for me, there's something about fall and the cooler weather that makes everything in life easier. Literally everything. And you know, I am just enjoying it. So it's cooled off a little this week. So I'm wearing my sweater and I'm just embracing the cooler weather and I'm just hoping that it sticks. I'm excited to talk to you today about 10 non-negotiable habits. A million dollar course creators. If you've seen any of my content lately, I have been sharing the fact that you guys know I love doing one-on-one coaching. It's the, like the heart and the life of what I love to do is work with women in one-on-one. But you might be surprised to know that as I was telling my numbers, I've made nearly a million dollars in course and program sales alone outside of my one-on-one practice.
Anna (01:45):
And when I realized that, I realized I needed to share about it because you guys know I work about a three day work week. I'm obsessed with that flow of about three days a week and then three weeks out of the month putting my work. And I was able to get to six figures in my business with the one-on-one on that schedule. But in order to expand a multi six figures, the group work, the courses, is what allowed me to continue to leverage my time. And so I wanna talk more about this because I think there's a lot of you that are at that point of making good money in your business, serving one-on-one clients, but you're getting ready to grow and scale and leverage your time. And you might be a little scared 'cause maybe you're like me and you're like, I wanna continue to make an impact and I work with my clients on all different things.
Anna (02:27):
So how do I pick one course topic to cover it? And you know, in our industry course completion rates are so low because a lot of people do not include any sort of like live support or they create their courses and they kind of just like throw worksheets at the wall and there's like a thousand videos instead of being mindful. And my core students get such good results and I get such good feedback. I just did another live round of one of my programs and just my inbox has been flooded with students that are on week two and week three and are just thrilled with that program. I'm so grateful to the, to the version of myself that allowed that expansion that stepped out in faith and was like, okay, what would it be like to create an online course? So we're gonna talk about the 10 non-negotiable habits so that you can ask yourself if these are habits that you either have or want to cultivate in your life.
Anna (03:14):
And I wanna hear from you after you listen, which is the one habit that you feel like you most want to work on and foster. The first one is being willing to invest time now for a later payoff, delayed gratification. The nice thing about one-on-one coaching is you don't really need an audience, right? You can really like show up pitch one person, they can buy your a thousand dollars program and you instantly are getting that gratification. That's why it's so nice as your first income stream, right? I think even when we're starting off in our business, we're like writing a piece of social media content, we're posting it and then people are liking and hardy and commenting right away. And it's like, oh, this is exciting. And at the beginning of your business, that's great to be in real time, but as you grow in your business, more needs to be delayed so that it's more stable.
Anna (04:02):
Right now I am working on a batching content that's not gonna see the light of day for another month, which is great because it creates stability. I have young children and so life is unpredictable. The downside is it's less adrenaline filled and it's a little bit less thrilling. But you guys know, I talk about having a happy, boring dream life. At the end of the day, we really want our business to be boring and stable, right? It can really only be stable with a side of thrilling or thrilling with a side of stability. And I really encourage my clients, like especially once you have team members, once your business is established, you want a stable business. You don't want a thrilling business, you want a lot of boring money. Money loves Boringness <laugh>. And so as you grow and scale your business, it's just gonna become more and more boring and profitable in a good way.
Anna (04:48):
And so being willing to do some actions that don't give you immediate gratification. For example, building out a course, my last course that I built out about two years ago, I blocked off some time on my calendar and it just took an extended amount of time to, you know, brainstorm what I was gonna do for the course, record the videos, write out the worksheets. I remember I even, I kind of did it like I was writing a book. A course is very much like a book. When I wrote my book, I feel like it was kind of a similar process. I remember even once I wrote all my course worksheets for all 12 weeks or like started them out, my printer wasn't working at the time. So my dad printed them all out for me. He was so sweet. He like put a post-it note at the top of them and I laid them out on my floor just like when I wrote my book.
Anna (05:30):
I wrote some of my chapters and concepts out and I laid it out on the carpet because I'm a big fan of like visual conceptualization and stuff like that. But anyway, I digress. I was working on this project and it really didn't see my core students for like weeks down the road. And I think now I'm really used to that even though I'm like an EFP Enneagram seven and I love to be excitable. I really have learned to mostly get the thrill out of my life and it's, and know it's okay that my business is boring, knowing that I'm reviewing sales emails that aren't gonna be read for a while, right? And so really practicing that delayed gratification and especially I talk about this a little bit later, but you know, as you're scaling your business, a lot of the initiatives you're doing, your business is doing fine.
Anna (06:17):
There's nothing going wrong. It's just not rapidly growing. And so in order to rapidly grow, you're going to have to prioritize some things that are important but not urgent, right? It's not your clients that are waiting on you, it's not an email, right? It's something that is not your taxes that need to be paid. It's like, well, I don't have to write a book, but I could and it would help me grow. I don't have to create an online course, but I could and it would help me grow. And immediately a course takes time, right? Immediately. A course doesn't give you money right away when you're planning it and creating it, right? Just like hiring a team member. And we, I mean, this is another point, but like hiring a team member at first does not save you time or save you money. It costs you money and it costs you time to train them.
Anna (07:00):
And that's what keeps so many of my clients back from hiring someone is they're like, but I'm really overwhelmed and I have to train them. It's faster. Just do it myself. Yeah, right now, right now. But then we just run ourself into a hole of never expanding. And at some point we have to take a risk. We have to invest whether it's our money or our time, and we have to stretch, right? We have to take that risk. And so it really is being willing to invest your time in writing the course, creating the course, even though there's no payoff right now. Even though there's a risk. And it's like, what if no one buys it, right? Like you have to be willing to invest and risk in a calculated way. Okay, next one is a little bit related, but being willing to have some space between your behavior and other people's reactions.
Anna (07:46):
Basically just diving more into self-trust, more into intuition and not having other people's reactions or opinions mean as much to us When you're creating a course or when you're doing some bigger moves in your business. I find for me, I move a little further back from the world, right? When you're in your first starting your coaching business, like maybe you have like two paying, three paying one-on-one clients and every time they're doing well, you're like super happy every time they're having a hard day, you're like, oh my gosh, I suck as a coach, right? Like, it's just a roller coaster. You can't avoid it. It is what it is, right? I think about that even in motherhood, right? Like there is so many days where like, my kids are doing well and they're happy and I'm like, I'm a great mom. And then other days where they're like really struggling, it's easy for me to be like, but, and not remembering that like, it's not my job to make them happy.
Anna (08:35):
It's my job to be the best mom I can be. Sometimes they'll be happy, sometimes they won't, right? Not that we don't want our clients to be happy, but ultimately that's not our job and we don't have control over that. And we'll drive ourselves wild if we expect everyone to be happy and or everyone to be robots. Like people can have their emotional reaction. And when you become a course creator and or leverage your business and grow, you are growing your audience. You are growing the amount of clients you serve. And so it's just really important to not take things personally. For example, even before you have an online course, as you're seeing more clients, maybe you're hopping on more discovery calls. I find this from my clients all the time in my mastermind, right? When they start signing more sales calls, right? They're hearing more yeses and they're signing more paying clients, but they're also hearing more nos, right?
Anna (09:18):
And that can be shocking to your system. Maybe before you're signing like one or two sales calls a month and you were hearing like, yes, almost all the time. Maybe you're signing 10 sales calls and you're hearing six yeses, but you're hearing four nos even though you're making more money and you're hearing more yeses, you're also hearing those four no's. And our brain likes to magnetically attract to that negativity. And we like to think about that. And so think about this, if you have an online course and you enroll 10 women and maybe one of the women for whatever reason is unhappy, maybe it's not even with your program. Maybe it's just in her life where she's in a hard situation or whatever. And then it's so easy to be like, oh my gosh, like someone's unhappy in my business and I cannot tolerate that, right?
Anna (09:58):
And so as we're exposed to more humans, I just think it's more important to keep diving into how am I showing up and am I proud of that? And am I showing up in a way that is an integrity to me? Am I being accountable to the people that I want to be accountable to? Like for me, if there's a hard situation, I run it by my coach and I'm like, what do you think? Do you think I should do things differently, right? And really have a little bit of space between people's reactions. And I have found that like, you know, over the course of time I worked with like over 400, 500 students and clients. Now there have been times when clients haven't been happy with me for a certain reason, but I find when I give it space when I'm responsive, but I'm not overly reactive, they almost always come around, right?
Anna (10:39):
I even had clients that have like maybe been unhappy with something and then a year later sent me this long email and been like, oh my gosh, I thought about what you said and I saw it to be true in my life. And you were right. Not that we always need to be right, right? Though it feels good <laugh>, but it's just this reminder that, you know, humans are humans. They're, they're imperfect. We're doing this, I always talk about coaching as an art form, right? We are showing up in the world and like, it's like a website designer. You are creating this website, you're doing this piece of art and you're vulnerably showing it to this client and you're like, what do you think of my artwork? That's this passion and my creative piece of my heart? Same thing as a coach in real time we are creating and we are doing our passion.
Anna (11:21):
And that's beautiful and fulfilling, but it's also vulnerable, right? Like when you have a day job that you're not passionate about, like it's really easy to not take it personal. And so it can be easy to take our business personal because it is personal. And I actually think it's the trade off I take because the upside of having a passion-based business is so big and fulfilling and gratifying and easy. But the downside is that it can feel personal sometimes. But again, this point is just being willing to have a little bit more space as your audience grows between. And it's not, I still listening to your audience, audience members, still listening to your clients, but having a little bit of like, I almost think about it like a thick wall of jello between us and ultimately this serves our clients too, right? Because like think about like for me and my coach, if I was having a bad day, I wouldn't want my coach to suddenly be dysregulated and be like, oh my gosh, and consume with it.
Anna (12:13):
And like I would want her to be grounded for me. Like I think about the people in my life, my friends, my, my parents, like they have their own sense of grounding and they're, they listen to me, but they're not like torn around like the ocean waves, right? And so that's what we wanna be for our team members, for our clients, for our family. We wanna be this, this, this stability, this grounding and have this buffer the jello between us so that we're hearing it but we're able to respond. Something that else that really helps with this is making sure you have solid work hours so that you are tuning into that conversation when you have the capacity. Are you checking your email at 10:00 PM when you're exhausted, right? Just I think about this with my kids. I try to do our bedtime routine early because when it's late I just have less emotional capacity, right?
Anna (13:04):
Same thing. I try to sit down and answer my course clients or my one-on-one clients when I'm feeling good when I have energy. Or are you looking at on your email and opening loops and ruminating it about it all day, right? Or are you coming to it when you have that capacity, when you have that patience? Okay, next one. Number $3 million course creators. And by the way, this concept a million dollar course creator means, I can't believe I didn't explain this over time, you're creating a course that creates you a million dollars. It will not, I mean it could but create you a million dollars when you first create it. You might make 10 K on the first launch, you might make 5K in the launch, first launch, who cares, right? But the point is that this is your million dollar asset you're creating and so hopefully it's giving you a little bit of drive, like it will make you a million dollars over time.
Anna (13:52):
And so it's giving you that long-term vision to get you through some of these things that might be more challenging. Okay? Next is getting more visible, spending more time on marketing and learning new tools. If you absolutely hate marketing in your business, you may wanna rethink being a course creator and doing group stuff. You might wanna just do one-on-one because the thing about one-on-one services done for you or coaching is you are doing more of your work than the marketing, right? Which is why it's such a great fun income stream because you're mostly coaching and doing a tiny bit of sales in marketing to get the client right? When you have a course or a leverage program, you are saving yourself a lot of time on the delivery, right? My programs have videos of me and worksheets of me. And so my clients are getting me without me being there, right?
Anna (14:45):
I'm really selling something and I don't have a lot of work on the delivery, right? I just have that one call with everyone there or I'm doing feedback or whatever. But really you are spending more time selling, more time marketing and less time on client delivery. For me, that's okay because I enjoy the course delivery. I actually like marketing and sales as I found a way to do it in a way that lines with my personality. I also have my one-on-one clients for delivery. So that like itches at scratch for me. But I see this all the time where women come to me and they're like, oh, I don't like sales and marketing, but I wanna have this online course. But here's the thing, when you have an online course, most of your time is the marketing, most of your time is the selling because you are, you are saving time on the delivery.
Anna (15:28):
And so your main job is to fill it, right? To fill more people. And so reminding yourself like, okay, now it's my job to get more visible, to spend more time marketing, to learn new tools, right? For me, I've really invested my time and energy on like learning Facebook ads a little bit more. I've been spending a little bit more time on Instagram reels, right? Of course you can find marketing tactics that fit with your personality, but just owning that, oh, you know, part of my job now as a course creator, as a group program facilitator is the marketing is the sales to fill the program with 30 people. Someone's gotta do it. Who's gonna do it? That's gonna be you, right? Okay. Related number four is remember to always get better at selling. This is something that I have a whole mastermind on Sell with heart because I'm a big fan of helping women who have existing businesses improve their sales skills so that they can do this, fill their courses, fill their programs in a way that feels natural to them, right?
Anna (16:27):
So this means understanding your client's objections, understanding your messaging, getting better and better at your messaging. I'm a big fan with my team on using brand keywords. Like lately I have added, you guys know I use happy boring dream life lately I've added three day work week because it's what I do. But I didn't realize that a lot of my clients were wanting that too. And so just thinking through words or phrases that your clients are wanting, not just the method of what you do, but the outcome, the result, right? So yes, selling with heart is super important to me, but why? Why do women want to sell with heart so that they can get more efficient and work a three day work week, right? So really making sure that you are devoting time to getting better at the skill of selling. If you feel icky about it, if you feel off, if you're not feeling excited about the way that you're marketing and selling, trying some new things, until you figure out how to do that right?
Anna (17:20):
You will have to grow your audience and expose yourself to new humans online. And so how do you prefer to do that? Do you like doing a podcast? Something more audio? Do you like doing short form video? Do you like to write? Do you wanna really focus on your email list, right? Do you like to connect with others? Maybe you wanna do an interview show and interview people on Instagram live. Like there's no wrong way to do it. You don't have to be visible in all the places, but you do have to really be looking at how do I get better at selling? How do I get better at marketing? You guys know that I have a free evergreen webinar, but I kind of redid the way that it's done and that it's only 20 minutes and it's on demand and people can fast forward or listen to it at double speed because as a busy mom, nothing peeves me more than signing up for a webinar realizing it's two hours that they're pretending that it's live, but it's not.
Anna (18:10):
And I can't fast forward. I'm like there is 0% chance I'm listening to this. And so that's why I made my webinar like a 20 minute video. I cut to the chase. And also other thing that pees me on webinars is when people like tease the whole time and actually don't tell you the answer. So I like basically tell you the answer and I'm like, here's how you can go do it on your own or you can hire me to support you, right? And so again, it doesn't mean you have to like sell in a way that's icky or get visible in a way that burns you out. It just means that you have to sell and get visible. So figuring out a way to do that that's comfortable for you. Next one have it a million dollar course creators, dun dun dun is willing to be always learning, always learning, but not necessarily in business, right?
Anna (18:52):
I am a big fan of people ask me all the time for recommendations for business books. I have a few I recommend like The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks, anything by Mike Michalowicz. I really love the pumpkin plan when it comes to talking about niching, but that's basically it. I love reading personal development books, but I'm just not a huge fan of a lot of business books because I'm a big fan of like, you know, doing business your way within your personality and getting inspiration. But I don't really like a lot of business books. But I do continually learn. I'm a big learner. You guys may know some of the things that I have learned. I have really in times like studied selling and really tried out and really leaned into and Googled and read different articles, listened to different podcasts about that. You know, I am in the process of trying to manifest my next partner.
Anna (19:41):
So I listened to a lot of podcasts and philosophies and read a lot of books on relationships and healthy attachment, right? And feminine energy and all of that. I'm a big fan of trying to be the best mom I can be. So I read a lot of books and listen to a lot of podcasts on children's development and gentle parenting and all of that stuff, right? I am always learning. I have had a Spanish tutor, right? You guys know I'm lightly obsessed with dancing bachata and salsa and I have done so many classes and lessons on that. And so I'm always working on improving myself, but not always in business. But I'm always looking at the lessons that tie together. I'll give you an example in a second. And another form of my learning is just through one-on-one support, right? I have a one-on-one business coach.
Anna (20:26):
I have a one-on-one therapist. And just continually working on my growth edges and being radically honest with myself in the areas I need even improvement. And something I feel like I've always been good on. Shout out to my parents because I feel like they were very kind to me growing up. And so I have a really good self-esteem naturally. And I know that that's a huge, huge gift. But I find that I'm able to really look at my flaws and failures without taking them personal. And that's a huge asset when I can be like, well that launch failed, or Oh, I really didn't do my best. Or Oh, I shouldn't have said that to that client. I need to go back and apologize to her, right? I'm able to really look at like, wow, I really have a problem trusting people. I really have a problem letting go of control, right?
Anna (21:10):
I'm able to say those things without being like, oh my God, there's something wrong with me. I'm a bad woman. I'm never gonna find love. I'm a horrible coach. That is a huge thing as you're scaling and growing is really being honest about where you can improve without feeling like I have to improve yesterday or else, or there's something wrong with me in the process, or I'm not worthy of money and success and goodness and rest along the way, right? And I think it's just imperative that we're able to, you know, the CEO assessment that I share with you guys, you right at the top, your biggest opportunity area for your business right now is it that you're not making sales, you're not signing clients, you're not getting visible. Be able to say that. And I almost encourage you to say it in third person.
Anna (21:53):
Like, my business has a challenge area in this has an opportunity area to grow its audience size. Because right now my audience is not big enough to sustain courses or whatever, right? My business has opportunity to get better at closing on sales calls 'cause I'm landing on sales calls, but I'm not closing them, right? And again, there's nothing wrong with you. It just, maybe you need to learn a skill, maybe you need to change something. And this helps us grow so much faster when we're able to just work on the problem instead of working on the problem and also feeling really crappy about ourselves because we're making it wrong to have the problem in business. We'll always have a problem when we solve one problem, we have another, right? I need to make sales, I'm making all these sales now I have a lot of clients.
Anna (22:33):
I need to hire team so that I have more capacity to serve them. Okay, now I have the team, now I have more capacity I need to sell and get visible again. Like it is a rat race unless you take a minute and learn to enjoy it and learn to enjoy the improvement, right? And so even though I'm not always reading business books, I'm always, and I know my growth area, I also give myself permission to take a break from working on it. Like you guys know I work about three weeks and then have a week off on that off week. I'm not like feeling like now I need to catch up and clean out all my junk drawers and I need to double down on that personal weakness of my like no. Sometimes I can take a break from my personal growth and development. I know that I need to work on that, but I can work on that next week, right? And so pacing yourself, because we'll always have something to be working on improving. Okay? Next one is being willing to receive more money for less work. And this is huge, right? As you scale and grow your business, as you're creating courses, you're gonna have PayPal money dropping into your account at different times in the day at night when you're not working. And how do you feel about that? At first you're like, whatcha talking about that? Sounds good. <Laugh>.
Anna (23:42):
What? That's fine Nana, gimme all the money, right? But yeah, but wait till it happens to you, right? For me, there's been so many times where I felt nervous, like, oh my gosh. Like are they gonna, I hope they can get the value that, you know, I really want them to get a good value. I hope they can get good results. You know, maybe some survivor's guilt around like why is it that I'm able to make money so easily and other people are struggling, right? Well, number one, you took the risk <laugh> to start the business, but really opening your heart and maybe as you're listening to this, you just wanna put your hand on your heart right now and affirm it's safe for me to make abundant money. And for me, what really helped, because I have like a really strong work ethic and I really like to work.
Anna (24:23):
I worked since I was very, very young. I would take like receptionist jobs when I was like 13 and 14. I've done paid acting gigs and worked really hard for those. I worked in a restaurant. I really like to work, I do like, I like, I like to work. And so for me it was like I'm willing to receive money when I work hard and I'm proud of myself for having a good work ethic. But also, what if I believed that it was also okay to receive money when I didn't work at all? Right? Well, could I believe that it's okay to receive money not working or on an asset I've already created, I've already written the book, but I'm still getting paid for it or creating the course, but I'm getting paid for it. Is it safe for me to keep making money on something from a past version of me?
Anna (25:08):
That's the work. Number seven, get good at hiring and managing team and being a better boss. So this is a big thing, right? As you have your million dollar course, as you have your group program, you have more humans to manage and you can't do it alone, nor do you want to like, nor do you want to. And it's a learning curve to hire support. I feel like at the start of my business, I hired like seven different VAs and I was a mess. I was a mess. I apologize if you were one of those VAs, I was not the best boss. I was trying to figure things out, <laugh>. But now I've really been able to hone in about three team members that are just incredible exceptional women. And I realize it's better to have people do more work have less team members and have them do more work, at least for my current business model, right?
Anna (25:57):
Some of my clients had different business models, but for the most part, really allowing yourself to just go through the school of hard knocks When it comes to being a better boss. This means getting good at hiring, right? Getting clear on a job description, putting it out there in the world, doing interviews. I also started getting really good at this when it came to hiring like nannies and babysitters for my kids, right? Asking for references, doing a two week paid trial with someone. And then once they work with you, how do you manage someone? How do you give them direct feedback? How you interact with them is gonna be different than how you interact with the client because the client's hiring you, you're hiring the team member. And so many of my clients, we talk about it and I'm like, wait, who's working for who?
Anna (26:42):
So often we feel obliged to the team member. Of course we want to be a good boss, but at the end of the day, our job is, their job is to make our job easier, right? And we have to be able to, to be direct and communicative about that and make it clear so they know how to make us happy. Some of you are not making it clear to your team how to make you happy. You're not giving them deadlines, you're not giving them clear projects, right? But at the end of the day, giving them feedback, allowing them to support you. So this whole thing of being a boss is a learning curve. It's a huge learning curve. Just like learning to sell, just like releasing your blocks and getting visible. But it is a skill that you must master. And so just get started.
Anna (27:23):
Number eight is find hobbies that give you life. So you can bring energy to your business, right? Especially as you're growing and scaling. You may have some weeks or days in business where it may not always be fun in the business or easy in the business. And we're, I'm kind of spoiled in that my business is almost always a really happy, fun place. My clients are amazing, my team is amazing. I love the work I do like it's just positive, positive, positive. So as you're growing and scaling, you might do something uncomfortable, like hire a team member, like have to fire a team member. Like you know, maybe you're learning a new tech platform and it's frustrating for you, right? You might have a day or two that's bad in business, like, oh, boohoo, right? Like every job is gonna have parts that aren't perfect.
Anna (28:05):
Doesn't mean you pick the wrong business. It just means that you're growing in scaling. Maybe you had a hard day, right? So when you have a happy life, you bring energy to your business. So often we expect our business to be our complete source of happiness. Just like maybe in marriage, like a partner, right? But of course our partner should be a source of happiness, but it shouldn't be our soul happiness. Again, that same thing about like if my husband's having a bad day, I don't wanna be like, oh, I'm having a bad day too. I wanna be like, babe, I got you. I'm having a good day. So how can I listen to you? How can I take care of you? Right? We wanna be able to bring energy into our relationship and of course take from it too. But in business, as we're scaling and growing, we need to make sure that our life on the outside is happy.
Anna (28:48):
Are we sleeping? Are we exercising? Are we spending time with friends? Do we have hobbies that make us happy so that we can come at those business problems with a good attitude? With a, with. We need to bring in energy into our business, especially when we're scaling. Okay? Next one is prioritize priorities. For example, like we talked about when things are important but not urgent and allow discomfort around undone projects. As you're scaling and growing, you just have more projects on your plate. For example, recording course videos, writing course worksheets, creating the course sales. But like you just have more. And then on top of that, you're probably still like serving your clients, serving your current clients, right? Doing other actions in your life, right? And so when you just have extra work to do, extra priorities, number one, time blocking. Number two, the three day a week work schedule so that maybe you do need to work on a Friday, but it's okay 'cause you have that buffer time, right?
Anna (29:49):
And really prioritizing things that are not important, that are not urgent. Allowing them to go undone. This is a skill I work on all the time in my business. I was just talking about my, to my OBM about this. Like there's this one thing in my Google Drive that's not currently organized and it's driving me wild, but we are not prioritizing it right now. Because if I had my OBM prioritize helping me with that, then it would mean we wouldn't be able to work on something I'm doing for my evergreen funnel right now. And that's the priority. It would mean that we'd have to put off something with my launch that's happening in a month and a half, and then I would regret that a month and a half from now because this is my biggest priority, right? And so this might mean you're responding to your current clients, you're working on your CEO projects, but maybe your email inbox is backing up a little bit when it comes to like random people pitching you or people that aren't paying clients from you, right?
Anna (30:40):
We think we owe the free internet things, and of course you need to be consistent in our marketing so that we get consistent money back. But maybe there's a week where you're a little less visible on Instagram because you're on the backend recording this course. Who cares? Who cares, right? And just making sure that you're prioritizing the money, making actions, not just for now but for the future that are the most important, right? Creating assets, hiring, selling, stuff like that. Okay. Finally feel like this is a little baby masterclass. Kudos to you if you stuck in through the end. The final skill is getting really good at not working. This is related to number eight, finding hobbies that bring you life. But it is a skill, especially like when we're starting our business. We are working a lot. Usually when you're starting, when you're first starting to push a boulder up a hill, you have to start with a lot of momentum before it can start rolling on its own.
Anna (31:37):
So it's normal that you're working a lot potentially at the start of your business, right? But as you're scaling and growing, you just have to keep pacing yourself and continuing to work your boundaries again, because you are kind of wearing different hats. You're wearing, I'm serving my client right now. You're wearing, I'm working on the CEO project and batching some of my marketing, my podcasts, right? I am working on creating this course. I am working on hiring these team members. Oh, and I still have my current clients to take care of, right? Like you're wearing a lot of hats and that task switching can be exhausting. And so especially if you're in a season of growth or putting yourself out there, it's remembering to get really good at not working. A way that I bully myself into not working is by like signing up for an exercise class at three o’clock.
Anna (32:27):
So I'm forced to stop working and go to the exercise class or sign up for 9:00 AM yoga so that I have to go to yoga and then I just start work at 10:00 AM and have to fit everything in. I always do. I always fit it in, right? And I always complain to myself. Like yesterday I had signed up for a dance class in the middle of the day and I was like, oh, why did I do that driving there? But like I felt so good after the dance class and I still got all my work done, right? <Laugh>. And so we just have to outsmart ourselves when it comes to not working. I'm a big fan of using app blocker and or any other platform that helps you block social media from your phone so that you're not tempted to check, right? Maybe it's leaving your phone in the other room.
Anna (33:06):
You guys know I have a whole phone detox system that I love, but really getting to be a master at not working, which is hard when you feel good at work, which is again, this is a good problem to have. Like this is the problem we wanna have, we love working so much, right? But it's really reminding yourself that it's safe to unplug, especially as I get more clients, especially as my business and audience grows, especially as my workload grows, unplugging so that when I do come to work, I can be productive, efficient, on point on task. Right? Okay. I hope that this was helpful for you. I am doing a free live workshop. If you haven't heard called Million Dollar Course that will walk you through the steps to create your course, that will be that million dollar asset for your heart center business.
Anna (33:49):
I hope you join me and thank you for listening to the podcast. Honestly, I love having you here. I know there are a million podcasts, but the fact that you listened to this one and that you are a heart-centered entrepreneur, a woman that cares deeply about your clients, cares deeply about your work, but also wants to make abundant income doing it, I just wanna thank you for being here. Thank you for listening. Thank you for reviewing the show. Every single review that I get, I read it and I'm grateful for it. It means so much to me. So thank you. Okay. Email me if you'd like and let me know anna@heartcenterentrepreneur.com. Which of these 10 habits, non-negotiable habits, do you wanna work on cultivating more in your life, in your business, knowing that it absolutely will help you be that million dollar course creator? Okay, I would love to hear it. Have a beautiful rest of your day. Thanks for hanging out today. Please hit that subscribe button so you can make sure to stay updated anytime a new episode drops. And I would love for you to join me in my free Facebook community. It's called The Heart-Centered Entrepreneur. We discuss the podcast episodes. I regularly go live and do free trainings, and you may even meet your newest biz bestie, so you can join at https://www.heartcenteredcommunity.com/. It's absolutely free and I cannot wait to see you in there.
PS: In the midst of this challenging time I’ve been asking myself what I can do to help? One of the #1 ways I support my clients is by helping them simplify their business so that they can increase the flow of money without creating extra work. In this season simplified visibility and sales is needed more than ever.
So if you’re craving personal support as you reposition your free and paid work, I’d love to help you simplify your sales process so that you can produce income in your business even during a challenging time. If you want support you can check out my services and book a free discovery call here, or you can send me a DM on Instagram.