Kirsty Knight:
Hello, my friend. Welcome to this very special episode of the podcast, where I’m going to be talking to the fabulous Julie Gibson, who was actually a client of mine when I ran my very first group program.
So this was my program, Becoming Bold, which was all about taking bold action towards a very bold, audacious goal in your business, which Julie actually hit, I think, which was awesome. And I think I also did a training for Julie’s community before that, and we’ve basically kept in touch since then.
And I wanted to have a conversation with her today because there’s a few things about Julie that I witnessed as her coach and even now as I’ve seen her move through her business journey online, particularly with regard to her mindset that I think are not just inspiring to see in someone else, but I think are really helpful reminders as to how we could think about certain things in our business that would serve us better, particularly with regard to saving us time, than how a lot of us are thinking currently. Or how we default to thinking.
So we’re just going to basically use this episode to chat about some of those things and then hopefully you’ll get something super valuable out of it. So welcome, Julie. Thank you so much for being here.
Julie Gibson:
Thank you for having me.
Kirsty Knight:
So please introduce yourself and your fabulous business because it’s a unique one that I love, and then tell us how you came to start that particular business and let us know something interesting or cool about you.
Julie Gibson:
Okay, so I’m Julie Gibson, as you said, and I’m a subscription box entrepreneur, and I run the End of the World Reading Club, which is two very niche topics mashed into one. So it’s a reading subscription box for people who love apocalyptic and dystopian fiction and who are also into self sufficiency. So each month they get an apocalyptic or dystopian book, and as they read through, I’ve put in little prompts in there for them to open a gift at specific points in the plot, and it all relates back to the story. So something will happen in the book, like the protagonist is trying to light a campfire, for instance, and then there’ll be a little gift in there that it could be how to card, how to light a campfire, or it could be a magnesium fire starter if you know camping, you’ll know what that is. And so it’s all related to that type of fiction and it just helps to bring it all alive. And as I say, two very small niches mashed together, but two things that I’m really passionate about. So I’ve been running that for coming up for three years now. And it’s kind of poetic the way it started because I used to be in the events arena. So I used to make very large showy baked centerpieces for parties, corporate events, weddings, that kind of thing, specializing in really weird stuff and things with electronics that lit up and spoke and all that kind of stuff. But obviously, come the pandemic, nobody was having events and parties. And I went from overnight, basically from a diary that was full 18 months ahead to nothing and having to refund an awful lot of deposits. So I kind of took some time to feel a bit sorry for myself and then kind of cast. I’m not one to sit and wait for rescue. So I kind of cast about myself and thought, what can I do that’s kind of pandemic proof? And I’ve always been a big reader. We have lots of books and I really like this particular genre of dystopian. And I’m very self sufficient. There’s not a lot that we can’t fix between me and my husband and we grow our own food, that kind of stuff. So I just kind of mashed those two things together and thought, right, we’ll do it by post so nobody has to go anywhere. We don’t have to break any pandemic rules. And that’s how the end of the World Reading Club was born. So very poetic, as I say.
Kirsty Knight:
Love it. Okay. Amazing. That sounds amazing. Very resourceful, very interesting. So tell us something interesting or cool about you personally, then.
Julie Gibson:
Well, I used to be a criminal intelligence analyst, which always gets everybody really excited when I tell them that they’re always rarely interested in what I did and did I put away any baddies and all that kind of, Have I been to court? Which is yes, yes and yes. So it was an interesting time in my life. People are always fascinated by that. I think they see kind of CSI kind of vibes. And it was very much not that glamorous.
Kirsty Knight:
I love it. Okay, amazing. Thank you for that. Okay, so one of the things I wanted to talk about today was I gave you a challenge in that group program. I gave everyone the challenge, which was to take bold action every single day in your business towards your bold goal. Basically getting out of your comfort zone, doing something that you might not typically make yourself do in the pursuit of your goal and then seeing what came of it. And the reason I included this is because oftentimes the results that we want take us. So much time to get simply because we’re being timid in the pursuit of them, like we’re staying in our comfort zones. We’re allowing fear to make us hesitate, pause, procrastinate, and not just taking the bold action sort of courageously or fearlessly. So can you share just your experience of that challenge? Because you basically embraced that challenge with open arms and you really went after it. And would you say that that largely contributed to you hitting your bold goal in the end?
Julie Gibson:
Definitely, yeah. That was really a catalyst for growing my business and keeping it growing. I’m a real numbers geek, so when I look at my numbers for the whole of the lifespan of the business, it was bimbling along, doing fine, and then we did the 60 day challenge and it went it just kind of took off. And there have been little bits along the way, but it is continued on an upward trend, and I definitely attribute that to doing the 60 day challenge. It helped me kind of get over myself quite a lot.
Kirsty Knight:
That’s amazing. Did you find what was it about the challenge that enabled you to do it? Was it just the accountability, the fact that we were doing it as a community, or just you were like, this is time, it makes sense for me to step out of my comfort zone.
Julie Gibson:
I think it was all of those things, really. I definitely do well with accountability. If I know somebody’s going to be checking in on me, I’m much more likely to do things that I don’t want to do. And having the community there certainly helped as well. But really, it was the tools that you gave us in the run up to starting that challenge that really helped me get past some blocks that maybe I wasn’t even aware were there and stopped procrastinating on a few things and taking the action daily, doing something that made me uncomfortable daily rarely helped stretch the boundaries. So those things at the end of that challenge, not only had I hit and exceeded what I wanted to do, that my comfort zone had grown massively because I’d just been doing something every single day that wasn’t comfortable, and by the end of it, it was comfortable. So it just helped to get over a few things and to help me get over myself, basically, and get on.
Kirsty Knight:
With things that I didn’t want to do. I love that. I love that so much. Did you get rejections along the way?
Julie Gibson:
Yes, in a sense, my target for that particular challenge was to double my subscribers. And one of the things that I had been very much procrastinating on was regularly emailing my email list. So I’ve been building the list like a good girl and building it quite well, but then I wasn’t using it. And using the tools that you gave us during the coaching helped me to kind of identify why and talk through my worries with myself and realize that I was making a fuss about nothing. So it just helped to get to clear some blocks.
Kirsty Knight:
Rarely love that. Amazing. Well, so this is a lesson. This is just a reminder for everyone else because I’ve said it before, but I think it does well to just repeat that when we’re letting our existing comfort zone dictate what we do and where we go, we’re not growing and we’re not necessarily getting the best results that we could be for ourselves or our business. And so even if it is uncomfortable, the quickest way to your results is always going to be the most uncomfortable way. It’s like the success is on the other side of discomfort. And I think we have to remember that because sometimes I think we just get stuck in the same patterns of feeling comfortable. And like you said, doing something every day is a really nice way to kick start that. Even if it’s something small, just doing something a little bit uncomfortable every day is a nice way to get you to expand that.
Julie Gibson:
And I think even if the things you’re worrying about do happen, you realize that they’re not such a big deal once they’ve happened. So with my emails, I got a few people hitting the spam button even though they’d agreed to receive the emails, which is so annoying, but I also got a few people emailing saying complaining about what I’d sent them even though they’d asked to see it. And that had been one of the things that had been stopping me. Oh, I don’t want to bother people. So the things that I’d worried about and made really big in my head when they actually happened were no big deal. It was not a problem. So you build things up in your head, don’t you? And they’re seldom as big an issue as you think they’re going to be.
Kirsty Knight:
I love that. Yeah, that’s something to definitely remember. Okay, fabulous. So the other thing I wanted to talk about is that I know that in the coaching that we did, there was something that the coaching that I gave you really gave you permission to do something that you weren’t giving yourself permission to do. And that was, and you can sort of share more about this, but that was that you had another group or another sort of side business, if you like, that you were trying to build and totally different from the book subscription business. And you had thrown a lot into that, a lot of time, a lot of effort. You tried lots and lots of things and it was no longer feeling really aligned with what you wanted to do. It was kind of frustrating because you were putting so much into it and not getting anything out of it yet you were sort of hanging on just in case you were going to get there eventually. And I think that we do this I’ve definitely done that with the campsite business and other things that I’ve done, where it’s almost like the sunken cost fallacy, where we’ve put so much in that we don’t give ourselves permission to say, okay, that’s enough, let’s try something different or let’s quit and it be okay. I think we have this story about quitting or stopping something that isn’t working. That’s a negative thing rather than a positive thing of recognizing what’s no longer aligned, what’s no longer getting you the results and the amount of time that we waste by hanging on to things that are no longer serving us. And I think that yeah, can you speak more to that and say what you did in that scenario and how that has benefited you since?
Julie Gibson:
Yeah, definitely. So one of the other things I tried during the Pandemic was taking all my knowledge from running a baking business for twelve years and teaching other people how to do it, because what a lot of my peers were doing were selling like little treat boxes, brownies and cupcakes and things, and dropping them off at people’s houses. And that thought of doing that, just a piece of me died inside the thought of doing it. So that was not a way I wanted to go. But my mentality at the time was I’ve got all this experience and I should be using it. I’ve spent all this time and money learning all about this industry and I should be using that. So I set up this group to help people who wanted to either grow their baking business or get into the baking business, or adapt it for the Pandemic, helping them with their business skills. Mostly it wasn’t about how to bake and decorate, it was all about business skills. And a lot of people in my kind of business sphere were saying, oh, this is the way to go, you need to be teaching, it’s the only thing to do in the Pandemic and this is how you do it. And they were people whose opinion I respected and had successful businesses doing what they were talking about. So I set this group up and I created different products for them to buy. Training courses, downloadables, all that kind of stuff. I just tried so many different ways of getting them to buy into it. And I was doing all the things that people said I should be doing, even the ones that made me uncomfortable. For instance, going live made me incredibly uncomfortable. I remember the first time I did it, I spent like 20 minutes with my finger hovering over the Go Live button. So I was doing all of the work, but I wasn’t getting enough benefit back from it. So I was making sales here and there, but it wasn’t what I needed it to be, given the effort I was putting in. But because I had all that experience, I felt like if I stopped, I’d be wasting that that would have been a waste. And I felt like I would have been. I’d already stopped baking entirely, so that was a big thing for me to do. To completely stop step away from the baking and the pandemic certainly made that easier. But to actually step completely away from the industry felt like, it felt like I shouldn’t be doing that. Like I was failing because I wasn’t making it work under the current circumstances, which was complete nonsense. And doing the coaching with the model of how to work through your thoughts and think about how that’s stopping you taking action and just talking about through the group coaching with it as well, just helped me to realize that I wasn’t failing. And even if I was, what did it matter? It only mattered in my head. And I’m not normally one for worrying about failure. That’s not my bag at all. But I think because I knew I could be successful in the industry, and I had been for twelve years, it just felt like a big deal to step away from it. And I was having a real hard time letting go. But talking it through, I realized I was putting so much time and effort into it, I wasn’t happy. The people on the other end of this deal were happy because they were getting stuff for free and not paying me for my courses. But you can’t pay your bills on other people’s gratitude. And by holding on to it, I wasn’t making room for something else that was actually making me really happy. So I’d started the subscription book box, but because I was spending a lot of time on the baking coaching business, it wasn’t taking off as fast as I wanted it to. So it took a while just to realize that I needed to let go of that old thing so that I had more time for the new thing that was so much more aligned with me and who I am. It was a big decision, but as soon as I made it, I was like, I don’t know why I’ve been holding on for so long.
Kirsty Knight:
I think that’s so good. I think I’ve recognized the power of letting things go and redusing redeciding for myself all the time. Do I want this? Would I choose this? Again is a really powerful question you can ask yourself. If you’re doing multiple things, you only have so much time and so much energy and so much brain power. And so if you’re trying to do seven different things, then it is what you say that is taking up a space that you could be using to fuel the things that you really want to be doing. And so it’s almost like saying no to a couple of things means you can say yes to the things that you want to do. And I’ve definitely done that because I had like three businesses that I was running at the same time and multiple projects, I just realized I didn’t feel like I was doing a great job in any of them.
Julie Gibson:
Yeah, I could relate.
Kirsty Knight:
Right. And I think that part of me was telling myself, yeah, I should keep going with all of these things, diverse income streams and all of that, but I wasn’t aligned with some of them. Some of them definitely did not make me feel happy. They weren’t my passion. I was just keeping them going because rather than redeciding, this is actually what I want to be doing. So I think that was amazing, watching you sort of decide for yourself, like, actually, yeah, this is okay. I can let it go. This hasn’t worked out. I’ve given it my all. Either I did fail and it’s okay, or I’m not failing and you get to decide that. And I think that’s also really powerful because sometimes we want to be like, no, I’m not failing. Because if me telling myself I’m failing feels really bad, you just get to decide. But also how powerful to know that you can fail at something and still have your own back, still be like, I’m still awesome. I just didn’t get this thing off the ground. That’s a gift that you can give yourself, that everyone can give themselves if they give themselves permission to.
Julie Gibson:
Yeah. You’re already a step ahead of so many of the people you’re comparing yourself to or worrying about the opinions of, because you did it, you tried it, and so many people don’t. So I think people need to give themselves a pat on the back, even for just dipping their toe in the water and giving it a go.
Kirsty Knight:
I love that. Yeah, for sure. So many people fail by default by not even trying, by writing it off before they even step foot. It’s like, what is the quote about being in the arena? If you’re in the arena, even if you’re battered and used and you’re failing in the arena, hey, at least you had the courage to get into the arena. Exactly. Lots of people will never step foot in the arena. Yeah, I love that.
Julie Gibson:
And I think I have always, since I was a child, had the kind of mentality that I don’t like the phrase nothing’s impossible, because that’s not true. But my dad has this phrase if somebody says, oh, nothing’s impossible, he said, oh, okay, then do a double somersault and disappear up your own backside. And it just illustrates his point. Quite humorously. But what I do believe is you shouldn’t be saying, I can’t. You should be saying, how can I? And so many people get stuck at the I can’t, instead of thinking about, how can I do this? And I’ve always approached everything in my life of, how can I do this? How can I make it work?
Kirsty Knight:
Love that. Oh, my goodness.
Julie Gibson:
Mic drop.
Kirsty Knight:
I also love what you said. What did you say? You said your bills aren’t going to get paid by other people’s gratitude.
Julie Gibson:
No, exactly.
Kirsty Knight:
Yeah.
Julie Gibson:
Or their opinions.
Kirsty Knight:
Right, for sure. So knowing not choosing to do things that are not aligned for you, that don’t make you feel good, that isn’t actually in the plan of what you want to be making and certainly not doing it just because people are grateful and just because they’re getting something out of it. If you’re not, you have limited hours, limited energy. So just being okay with protecting that, I think that’s the lesson. Yeah. Amazing. Okay. The other thing that you nailed, I feel, or that your mindset is amazing around, is that you are very willing to test things and fail at it. And one of the things that costs us time is being unwilling to test and then spinning an indecision and again, not stepping outside of your comfort zone, being afraid to lose time or money. And so it stops us from trying in the first place. And so the skill of being willing to experiment and being okay with losing money or losing time as you’re learning, I think is a superpower that you have because you’ve done it with I mean, you’ve done it with both. You did it with the baking group. I mean, you were investing time. There’s always a cost time or money, but you were investing time into that and possibly some money too.
Julie Gibson:
It was mostly time at that point.
Kirsty Knight:
Mostly time, yeah. So you were willing to give it a go even if it wasn’t potentially going to work out. And you’ve done the same with Facebook ads, but obviously with that you’re testing with money, you’re risking money. Yeah. So can you share more about that mindset of being okay with just willing to test things?
Julie Gibson:
Yeah, I mean, the big thing to remember is your situation is unique. So if you don’t test things yourself for you and your business, you don’t know. So a lot of people out there will say, oh, Facebook ads don’t work or this method doesn’t work. That method doesn’t work. What they mean is it didn’t work for them and the amount of time, effort, or money that they were willing to put into them. So you’ve just got to remember that your situation is completely unique. And if you want to know what’s going to work for you in your business, then you have to be willing to play around and see what works. And like you say, there’s that balance between time and money. I spent an awful lot of time in that baking business trying to make things work, and it didn’t work to the extent that I wanted it to. So when I started looking at growing the subscription box, I was already inclined not to do that this time, even though it was a different business. I’m like, I don’t want to put mega loads of time into this. So my alternative is money. So I suppose I approach it a little bit like a game gamification. That’s a buzword in business at the minute gamification. And I do do that for myself quite a bit. So I’m like, I’ve got this amount of money and I’m going to see how many customers I can bring in with that amount of money. But the really important thing is at the end of that, I’m not going to say that didn’t work. I’m going to look at the data, I’m going to get all the data I can, all the information I can, and then I’m going to tweak something and I’m just going to tweak one thing and then I’m going to try it again. Did that make it better? Did it make it worse? So it’s like just playing a game or being creative with something. Just keep trying and stop having these absolutes in your head that this does work, this doesn’t work, because things will work if you find the little key for your business. So it’s all about tweaking and not drawing those absolute lines in the sand and saying, this will not work, just have a play and have fun with it. Really. And I think people do get quite hung up on, oh, it’s going to cost me X amount of money. But the alternative is to sink hours and hours of your life into building an audience organically. So you’ve got to make a choice. You can’t complain that audience building is hard if you’re not willing to experiment with other ways of doing it. I think it’s about being realistic and understanding that something is going to be hard. It’s either going to take you a long time or it’s going to take you a bit of money and you’re going to have to be okay with sinking that and forgetting about it. Not kind of harping back to your bank statement or the time that you’ve missed your kids school play or something. Once it’s gone, it’s gone, then you can’t be kind of looking back over your shoulder with regret.
Kirsty Knight:
I love that.
Julie Gibson:
But again, it’s something you get used to, something you stretch your comfort zone in it. So at the minute, the environment is really tough for social media. Advertising people are very protective of their spare income, if they’ve got any. So the advertising and the messaging you’re putting out there has to change. So for almost a couple of years, my ads have been humming along really nicely, very predictably, bringing in what I want them to bring in. I’ve been able to control the flow of new customers, which is amazing, and that’s something I hadn’t been able to do in twelve years in my baking business. It happened custom came in, but it happened in fits and starts and I could never predict it. With the new business, with the box business, I could control it. But with the current circumstances in the economy, that’s changing. So I have to change. So I’m now going back to that point where I’m testing and sinking money in and having to look at that amount of money and think, well, that’s an investment in learning what’s going to work. Now in this environment, it’s a much bigger sum of money than it was when I started doing it, because it’s a bigger business. So there’s always going to be the kind of gulp, but you have to do it if you want your business to grow. You have to either sync the time or you sink the money and be comfortable with letting that go.
Kirsty Knight:
I love that so much, and I think that you kind of expand your capacity for coping with the different numbers when you’re talking about investing money and when you’re talking about investing money in learning, which is really in failing, you’re either getting a customer or you’re not. And I think that it doesn’t feel very comfortable and maybe it feels a little bit unsafe for some people, and I think it definitely did for me. When I first I was terrified to test Facebook ads because I had heard all the terrible stories.
Julie Gibson:
There’s a lot out there, right?
Kirsty Knight:
And investing so much in and not making anything that I was like, oh my God, I don’t want to do that. And I really had to develop the capacity to decide, this is the amount of money that I’m willing to lose, this is the amount of money that I’m willing to test to learn this. And I did, and it was very uncomfortable. But I was able, particularly with my coaching tools, that I can use on myself, which is very handy, manage my emotions around it, manage my mind around it. Not freak out, remind myself that I’m safe, I’m in a house, I’m not homeless yet, it’s all fine. And then get more and more comfortable with spending money and not seeing the return. And I love the way that you think about it, like, okay, I’m investing money in learning here, so if I’m not winning, I’m learning. Basically, if I’m not getting a customer, I’m willing to do it. And even just the act of being able to manage your mind and being able to expand your capacity to test things and fail and be okay, that is what business is about as far as I’m concerned. I think that the online space, lots of people think that consistent monthly income is normal, and it’s the dream. And so lots of people are selling that consistent monthly income. And I was thinking about this the other day. There’s probably no other business on the planet that I can think of that every single month has exactly the same income coming in. No matter what the economy is doing, no matter what the season is, no matter what if there’s a bank holiday, if something happens in the news, if they launch a new offer, it’s very rare that a. Business will be consistent with exactly the same income. I think that it’s kind of we’re being miss sold, that this is realistic. And really what happens is we make some money, we make some choices, we spend some money, we try to make some more money, and it just fluctuates. And I think that it’ll fluctuate with as we’re learning, as the economy changes, Facebook ads change and I think that we have to be able to cope with that. And the more you’re able to cope with that. And I think that actually setting yourself up in a way that is thinking intentionally like, okay, this is what I’m going to do and I’m willing to either invest time or money here and it not work out and I’m going to be okay. Is how you set yourself up for a long term sustainable business, basically.
Julie Gibson:
Yeah, completely.
Kirsty Knight:
Yeah. So I love that you did that. Thank you for sharing that, because I was like, oh, I’m going to share this. And then the other thing I wanted to talk about, because this was a major thing for you this year, is that one of your son? Is it one of your sons?
Julie Gibson:
My one and only.
Kirsty Knight:
Oh, your one and only. Why?
Julie Gibson:
I thought you had only ever fur baby as well. Maybe that’s what it was.
Kirsty Knight:
Maybe that’s what it was. I count that as one of my so your son Archie had a major health issue this year. Yeah. Do you want to share more about that? Because the thing that what I really want to illustrate here is your resilience around it, your willingness to reprioritize and take time out of your business. Even if it felt scary, even if it felt like, oh God, I might lose some customers here. How you handled it, how you approached it, and how you gave yourself grace during that period while you were sort of managing things. I think you managed to juggle some aspects of it, if you can share.
Julie Gibson:
Yeah. So Archie, he’s just turned 20, so he was 19 at the time. It was last November. He had basically we found him on the floor of his bedroom unresponsive. He’d had a massive seizure in the night. So obviously the ambulance came, we went to a E and they found a tumor. So he had a tumor round about here. It was quite a big one.
Kirsty Knight:
She’s pointing to the back of the head.
Julie Gibson:
I’m sorry, this is a podcast. I’m not on TV. I’m on a podcast. Yeah. So we went to the hospital and they scanned him and found a brain tumor and quite a big one. They thought it’d been there a long time, growing slowly, and just got to the point where it started causing problems. So they had to take that out. So he had a massive nine hour operation in February to remove that. And then you wait six weeks or they do masses of tests to make sure that it wasn’t cancerous and luckily it was benign. So now we are on, he’s on antiseizure meds, but he is back to normal, which is absolutely astounding, given the size of the operation he went through, what he went through, back to college, back to his regular running, he likes to run and other than a bit of fatigue, he’s back to normal. It’s been amazing, but obviously it was a really difficult six months going through all that and also trying to run a business. So initially I just had to say to my clients, bear with right. One of the things I absolutely love about my bookbox business, I can’t say it, book box business, is my clients, I seem to attract the loveliest of people. They’re really my kind of people and we have a really strong community within our members that we run in Facebook and I let them know what was happening and they just were so lovely and supportive and willing to wait because we were in the middle of packing. So the house was an absolute bombsight because I pack, everything happens in my house at home and Archie is my, he’s my box troll, so he helps me pack. So we were mid packing. His seizure happened on the night of the 11th and our dispatch day was the 14th, so nothing was complete. It was all mid happening, so they just had to wait. So I had to be I think that was probably the easiest decision because it was in the moment. I just emailed everybody and said, really sorry, but you’re going to have to wait. And luckily they were brilliant about it. But then what was harder was after that, looking at what I could deliver and what I couldn’t deliver, whilst helping Archie through a hundred different hospital appointments, managing my own, regulating my own emotions, if you like, and trying to deliver what I’ve promised to deliver and people are paying for. So that was much more difficult than the in the moment decisions of, okay, this is going to be late, there’s no choice. That’s just it.
Kirsty Knight:
Right?
Julie Gibson:
So that really was quite organic, I suppose I’m quite a pragmatic person through this whole thing that my husband and I have both discovered that we’re very stoic. I don’t know if it’s unhealthily stoic. We don’t flap, we don’t make a fuss. We’re just very pragmatic and we get on with what needs to be done. It helps when it’s your kid, because you can’t fall to pieces, it’s your kid. They need to know that everything’s going to be okay and if you’re falling to bits, they’re going to be frightened. So that helped. It was him and not us, which sounds awful, but it helped with me regulating my emotions and staying calm and I think that runs through into the business then, that I could look at things calmly and say, well, this is what they’ve paid for this is what needs to be done. These bits here that I flipping love doing and they enjoy are not things they’re paying for. And I had to go through that whole process that you taught us in coaching of I was worried about cutting those things. For instance, we have a monthly Zoom Book Club meeting. There are different things that happen in our community that are totally a bonus, and I do them because they’re fun and I love them. But obviously, people who’ve been a member for a while come to expect them. So I then had to work through my thoughts on not delivering that and convincing myself that it’s okay not to deliver that, because it is a bonus. It’s not something that’s in the product description.
Kirsty Knight:
It’s just something you do for fun.
Julie Gibson:
It’s okay to let it go. And you know that if anybody is remind yourself if anybody is going to be upset about something you can’t do because your son’s got a brain tumor, you probably don’t want them as a customer. And luckily, nobody was like that. Everybody was just so lovely. So, yeah, it just took a few sessions of kind of working through my own thoughts on it and why it felt uncomfortable to cancel a few things and move a few things around. But I think probably the biggest thing was being okay with not growing, because I wasn’t putting the additional effort of I wasn’t working on the business. I was just working in the business. So if you’re not working on your business, it’s not going to grow. And I had to be okay with it. Plateauing for plateaued for about four months, and then we had a tiny dip, and then we started growing again. So that was the big thing, looking at my targets and realizing there’s no way on Earth I’m going to hit these. And that’s okay. It’s all right for things to change when something that massive happens in your life. Really, I think we cope pretty well. I’m pretty proud with how we dealt with it in the end, which is weird. It feels weird to say that the whole family, I think, coped well with it.
Kirsty Knight:
Yeah, no, and I think it’s wonderful that you were able to give yourself that grace of looking at your targets and being like, this is what I wanted, and this is unrealistic, and it’s okay. I’m going to give myself more time, because I think sometimes we’re in such a rush, and I think a lot of people are still attaching their worth or they’re making it mean something about them. If their business isn’t growing, it’s not just, we need more money. It’s not coming from a need. It’s coming from a desire. But that’s fueled from a not so nice place of like, well, I’m going to beat myself up if we don’t get there. And I think this is something that I learned in running that group, because I have stopped running that group since you hit your goal. It was amazing. But the idea of the Bold goal initially was never really so that we’d hit it, we’d all hit it. It was to push ourselves to stretch outside of our comfort zones and also to bring up all the shit that we needed to work through that was going to stop us from making money anyway. And what I I made an error in that group in that I didn’t really do much coaching on us attaching our worthiness to the goal. And so when some people didn’t hit their goal, it was devastating for them. It wasn’t sort of useful to serve them moving forward. And I think that if you can learn the skill of sort of detaching your worthiness from any business goal that you’ve set, you will be able to have a sustainable, long term healthy business because you won’t push yourself so hard that you’ll burn out. You won’t expect yourself to do the unrealistic when you’ve got a family drama going know, or a family health issue going on, which will happen even hopefully not to everyone and hopefully not in the severity. I mean, Archie was so lucky. But that’s like the worst thing. You do not want your kid to have a fit and then realize they’ve got a brain tumor. It’s like most parents worst nightmare. But I think that you were able to have the grace probably because you weren’t going to make it mean anything about you if you didn’t hit.
Julie Gibson:
Yeah, definitely. And I think it’s something that I perhaps wasn’t great at before. I probably attached a lot of meaning about myself to not hitting various targets in such extreme circumstances. I think I couldn’t make it mean anything. I’m always hard on myself, but even I’m not that hard on myself. Even I wouldn’t judge somebody for letting slide a bit in those circumstances. But what I found is it’s helped me going through that has helped me become much kinder to myself in other circumstances. So like, for instance, at the moment with the very tough economy, although we’re growing, we’re not growing as fast as I wanted us to. But I’m not stressing about it. I’m not getting upset about it and making it mean that I’m failing at anything or that I’m no good at this business. I’m not thinking, oh, I’m going to quit. There’s none of that dramatic thinking now where perhaps there would have been a bit more of that before I’m able to kind of separate the goal out from my own virtues.
Kirsty Knight:
I love that. That’s so valuable. If we could just give that to everyone because business is not fun if you are attaching your worthiness to it. And I mean, it’s great if it’s working because then you’re like, oh, I’m on top of the wheel because I’m amazing, because my business is amazing. But like I said about the consistent income, you’re going to hit a month in your business. Doesn’t matter how big it is and how successful you’ve been, you’re going to hit a month where sales aren’t happening for some reason, there will be a dip at some point. And I think knowing that and knowing that it means nothing about you and you can still be a successful person, you can still have learned all these skills. I think that is the key to enjoying your business journey, even if it’s ups and downs. It’s certainly the key to not beating yourself up about it all the way. Yeah. So I’m so glad that you were able to give yourself the grace, and then when you had more time, be like, okay, now it’s time to get back.
Julie Gibson:
And on that front, I definitely had a couple of little false starts where I was trying to get myself to do it too early.
Kirsty Knight:
But I was.
Julie Gibson:
Listening to myself, if you see what I mean.
Kirsty Knight:
So good.
Julie Gibson:
I wasn’t kind of going gung ho where I might have done in the past and not listen to my body and my health and my mental state. I was actually listening. And I’d try something and think, no, I’m not invested. I’m not committed to this. I need to stop and give myself a bit more time.
Kirsty Knight:
I love that, and I love that.
Julie Gibson:
Archie’s back at college.
Kirsty Knight:
Crazy.
Julie Gibson:
Bless him. Yeah.
Kirsty Knight:
So good. Thank you so much for sharing that story. And then the last thing I just wanted to touch on is just how important it is to have a passion for your business or at least enjoy it. And you’ve mentioned this before, but I think that because of the hardships, because of the challenging times, because of the fact that you have to put money or time in, it’s so important for you to actually like what you’re doing and to check in if you don’t. And I think that one of the things the fact that you love the dystopian fiction and you love your subscription box business, it just makes it a little bit easier. And so you never have to battle with that lack of motivation or the resentment of, I don’t really want to do this. Though I’ve certainly found, like, in my other businesses where I’m like, this isn’t really what I want to be doing, and I’ve had to really battle against it. Everything takes so much longer because I’m fighting through my own resistance to it. And so the more that you can make decisions in your business for things that are aligned, that feel good, that feel fun, that you’re interested in, that you enjoy, I actually think the more productive you will be.
Julie Gibson:
Exactly. Yeah.
Kirsty Knight:
Do you have anything? Yeah.
Julie Gibson:
And I think along those lines. So never think that you can’t run a business on your hobby because it’s too weird, because you can definitely do it. If I can do it with my business and you can definitely do it, whatever your interests and passions are. And it really does make everything easier. After all the drama of Archie over the last six months, I couldn’t wait to get back into it and really start pushing it again. I wasn’t dreading it, I wasn’t thinking, oh, I’ve had this time away and I don’t want to go back to it. I was absolutely champing at the bit to jump in there and get it done. The first thing I did when I got really back into it was put out a special edition box and boost another five K on the month that month, because I was really enthusiastic, like, guys, you’re going to love this that I’ve got for you. And they’re like, bye bye. Because I relate to them, I know what they’re going to love and I’m really excited about putting it in front of them. And there was no reticence about jumping back into it and spending more of my time in the business again at all because I just love it. It’s become actually quite a touch point for new ideas. So I recently had a new idea for a subscription box that would be a really easy sell into corporate to the corporate market. It would have a business to customer application as well, but it would be really good in business to business and I could do it and I could make a fair bit of money with it. But I was procrastinating on it and not really getting the work done, even though I knew exactly what I needed to do because I’ve built the model out with my current business, wasn’t doing it. So I sort of sat back and thought, why am I not doing this? And it was because it was boring me. It was not interesting and fun and I have so much fun in my book box business that I just couldn’t do it without the motivation of having some fun. It was feeling too hard knocking it on the head. I conceptualized it and branded it and bought the URL. I invested a little tiny bit of money into it, not probably only a couple of hundred quid, but it’s taught me something really important now and that’s that if I’m going to do it, I need to love it and I’m not going to do something just because it’ll make me some money.
Kirsty Knight:
I love that as a lesson. I definitely got to that place too. I mean, I love coaching so much and I think that there are other ways to make money. I have other business opportunities and I just want to keep coaching. But saying that if something in the coaching doesn’t feel aligned, like my offer or whatever, it’s kind of like I have the same issue. If one of my values is compromised or it’s not quite aligned, I cannot push through. I can’t go against I want. And I think that it’s the same for. Yeah. One of your values is that I’ve got to have fun in my business. Like I really wanted it to be enjoyable. Then it’s almost like your subconscious is putting up a block to say, no, we’re going to make it really hard for you to do this thing. So I love that. I think that’s great to have that decision filter, because, again, you’ve only got so many hours and so much energy, and so would you rather be splitting it and putting it into something that you’re not excited about? Or using that time to come up with more creative ways to make the business that you already have and love.
Julie Gibson:
Big or better or that’s what I’ve done now. That idea isn’t taking up space in my head. I’m thinking of another new thing that I could do with my existing business and market. It’s slightly different, but it’s the same market, the same environment, the same world, if you like, that I find so exciting.
Kirsty Knight:
Love it. Amazing. And then lastly, is there anything that you would say about the coaching with me? Just to anyone who is listening, who’s thinking about pulling the trigger and hiring me or joining my group program or anything either about the tools that I use or the way that I coach or anything that you’d like to?
Julie Gibson:
Yeah, definitely do it. I really love your no nonsense style. There’s no fluff. It’s all value and you don’t let people get away with anything. You know a lot about yourself. A lot of people are very self aware, but they pretend not to be so they know what their motivation is, but they’re just not going to admit it. And I think you don’t let people get away with not confronting what the issues are in a kind way.
Kirsty Knight:
I’m glad you added that.
Julie Gibson:
Not in a confronting, shouty kind of alpha male way or anything horrible like that, just in a kind and supportive way. You don’t let people get away with any bullshit.
Kirsty Knight:
And the tools that you taught us.
Julie Gibson:
In the group program I use regularly, I use probably on now back fully into the business. I’m using them on a weekly basis, sometimes daily, depending on what I’m doing. They rarely help me to understand my motivations or my lack of motivation in particular over things. So when I came to let go of that new idea, I looked at why I wasn’t doing it and worked through that model that you gave us to work through our thoughts and actions and that realized that that’s what was happening. So that has been an absolutely invaluable tool to apply to not only business, actually apply it in life as well. Like, why do I not want to do this?
Kirsty Knight:
That’s awesome. I’m so happy you still use it because I think the danger is that you do programs or whatever, you get coached and then you don’t use it ever again. And I think that the coaching that we did together has definitely it’s amazing that you’ve been able to take it forward and apply it.
Julie Gibson:
Really useful tool.
Kirsty Knight:
Amazing. Thank you so much. Right, okay. Is there anything else you’d like to add before we wrap up about anything that we’ve talked about?
Julie Gibson:
No, just to say it’s been a wild ride and really fun. And like I said before, it was really doing the group program with you was really that kicking off point of seriously starting to grow the business, and it hasn’t really stopped. Other than that little plateau, it hasn’t really stopped since then. So it’s all been good.
Kirsty Knight:
Oh, that’s so amazing. I’m so happy. I remember you shared a graph. You put it into like, a little graph, take a screenshot of it. I was like, this is so good. It was like, sort of going along, and then there was this huge spike and you’d, like, put an arrow and it was when you started the group program and it was amazing. Thank you for sharing that. It made me feel really happy about the delivery that I’d done. Amazing. Well, this has been so lovely. Thank you so much, Julie, for coming on and having this conversation. I feel like the listeners will have got lots of little nuggets. You’ve got loads of little truth bombs that you just dropped, like mic dropping things. Some great nuggets. Okay, so to finish, what’s the best way for people to find you if they love the sound of Dystopian fiction?
Julie Gibson:
Basically, if you want to find out more about the box, you can go to our website, which is www. Do you need the W’s these days? It’s theendoftheworldreadingclub.com, and there’s a little pop up there. You can join our email list if you’d like to. And then you’ll also get entered into a draw to win a box. And if you’re on Facebook, that’s probably where I’m most active with Forward slash Theftheworldreading Club.
Kirsty Knight:
Such a good name. I love it. Okay, so check her out if yeah, if that sounds good to you. Thank you again so much and thank you for tuning in and I’ll be back next week. Have a good one. If you enjoyed listening to this podcast and you are serious about getting back in control of your time yet, you have not yet mastered your calendar, make sure you download my free Time Blocking 101 guide. This will give you a really good foundation on which to build your own time system that works for you. The easiest way to get this is to go to my Instagram page at kirsty Knight coaching. That’s K-I-R-S-T-Y-K-N-I-G-H-T coaching. And click the link in my bio for it.
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