Latest / The Soap Box Podcast / How to spot online business bullsh*ttery, with Ruth Tsui

Transcript

How to spot online business bullsh*ttery, with Ruth Tsui · The Soap Box Podcast

• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: Come and join me to rage against the online business machine.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: Well, um not really because I run an online business and a lot of my clients are online business owners.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm being a little bit disingenuous.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: But today I am talking to Ruth Choi.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: Now, Ruth is a strategic thinking partner and implementation coach who works with solo online business owners.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the people who want to stay a delightfully small company of one without having to go alone completely.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um her online soapbox is the world of online business bullshittery.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: Everything from guru playbooks built for seven-figure businesses and handed to people who just want to do the school run to the weekly announcement all over Threads that uh email is dead, uh social is dead, uh blah, all that kind of jazz.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: So that's what we're talking about today.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Rue talks about her journey to this place and to this soapbox.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, she talks about how she helps the online business owners to um to notice where this online business border can be found and how to discern what advice and expertise and support will actually help them turn their business into something that they want to run.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: So if you feel like you are drowning in a pool of people who are pretending to be experts when really they've just done a week-long crash course with Chat GPT, then you should keep listening.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it's a great conversation.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: We go off on a lot of tangents, including uh one where I round about how we're now expecting solo business owners to um produce the same amount of content as global conglomerates.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um so grab a cup of coffee, grab a notebook and a pen, and sit back and listen to Ruth and a little bit of me get on our soapboxes.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: Ruth, it is so lovely to have you on the podcast.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: I'm very excited for our conversation.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_02: I'm super excited too.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_02: The fact that you have a podcast called The Soapbox is just perfect for me because I am probably the epitome of ranty pants.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: Brilliant.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: We love people who are ranty pants on here.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: They are my favorite people to talk to.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: So before we jump in to that particular soapbox, whichever one you are going to choose today, can you, for people who are listening who have not come across you yet, give them a bit of a rundown on who you are, what you do, how you grow here.
• 3:58
  unknown: Okay.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_02: So my name is Ruth Choi.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_02: I am a strategic thinking partner and implementation coach for solo online business owners.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_02: You want to create a delightfully small company of one without actually going it alone, because we have to do so much as a solo online business owner.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_02: Like everything falls down to us client delivery, client experience, marketing, finances, their whole shebang falls on our shoulders.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_02: And I think we can get very stuck in our own heads.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_02: We can get stuck in analysis, paralysis, not taking the action that we know that we need to take.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_02: We buy the courses, we join group programs, but they don't really make much of a difference.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, we're constantly striving, but not necessarily thriving.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_02: And there's so much contradictory on advice online about how we should run our businesses, what offers we should sell, how we should package things, how we should do our marketing, what social media channels we should use.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_02: And it becomes totally overwhelming.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_02: And I think now more than ever, we need to have a human that we are talking to to dissect some of the stuff that's going on in our heads.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_02: Like, yes, you can use AI with 20 quid a month, but ultimately it's a predictive language machine that tells us what we want it to tell us.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_02: Like it mirrors and amplifies what we give it, and it just keeps feeding the beast.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_02: And sometimes the ideas that we have are not actually that great for us in the season of life that we're in.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_02: And I think we can get very driven down a pathway and we need someone to rein us back in and go, actually, what is the focus?
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_02: What should we be doing right now that is going to serve us in the season of life that we're in to have a fun, profitable, sustainable business when we're not striving for millions, you know?
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_02: That kind of let's make 10k months, 20k months, 30k months.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_02: Like the people I'm working with, that's not what they're striving for.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_02: They want a business where they can drop the kids off at school in the morning, where they can take the summer holidays off.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's it's simple and it's overcomplicated by this plethora of nonsense advice often, because it's, you know, you're taking advice from the guru who is running a seven or eight-figure business and following their playbook for your very small lifestyle business at home.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_02: Like it just doesn't make sense.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_02: So that is who I am.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_02: How did I get here?
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_02: My goodness, that's a very long story, and I'm gonna have to work out how to condense that.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_02: I had a mental breakdown in 2017.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_02: I was a primary school teacher, bought into a franchise business, which was the most costly mistake I've ever made.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_02: It cost me£35,000 when I invested into my contract, which is over five years.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_02: After a year, I realized that the business model was not going to make me any money.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_02: I agreed by mutual consent to terminate my contract and then set up as an education consultant.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_02: So I went into schools, preschools, earlier settings, ran STEM enrichment sessions, so science, technology, engineering, maths, and training sessions for staff.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_02: Obviously went online in the pandemic, and that's when I got sucked into the whole like online bullshittery, which is my soapbox.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_02: During the pandemic, and it was almost like I'd forgotten how to run a business, or I felt like I didn't know how to run a business when I went from being in person and building relationships and talking to people and actually doing human-to-human stuff.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_02: I came online and that putting a screen between you and the person that you are nurturing, selling to, delivering for, it the whole playbook is just so different and fundamentally flawed in many ways, I think.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_02: Grow a membership, got 100 people in, did all the online challenges and the Facebook group and invested in the masterminds and all of this online bullshittery, burnt out, burnt it down, went back to in-person, realized I was done with education.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_02: I couldn't be in another staff room with really sad, miserable people anymore.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_02: Like I love teachers, but it's a hard job.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_02: And being in those environments is so you cannot train somebody when they are not in a like a psychologically safe space.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_02: And I just felt like I was fighting for their attention and they weren't actually ready for me.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_02: So I did a coaching certification and started doing what I do now, which is working with solos, solo experts, solo service providers who are growing their businesses online, but with an element of humanity compiled.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: That is quite the journey, having been in those staff rooms.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: I can concur that teaching is not what it used to be.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: I grew up in a family of teachers, grandparents, grandparents, parents, uncles.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: Always assumed, well, for a while assumed that I was that that was what I was gonna do before I decided to be prime minister.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: And then it turns out that actually when I got to the classroom, it was not in any way suited to me, and it was very different to the reason that everybody in my family had loved teaching and been very good at teaching.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, no I completely, yeah, completely empathise with that.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: With that kind of layer of context on your experience in different areas of business and and kind of different things in life.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: Your third box is online business bullshittery, which I mean is quite the title and needs to be a book, frankly.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: I might be right on that.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: Just, you know, to give you something else to do, obviously.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: Talk to me about why that.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: So this has been something that has been in my mind heart for a long time.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_02: And I was saying just before we hit record, it has become a very prevalent rhetoric now to kind of rage against the online machine.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_02: I've been raging against the online machine since at least 2022, and I feel like it's now this growing sentiment of actually there's a lot of smoke and mirrors, there's a lot of manipulation, there's a lot of haptics being deployed and cited as best practice, which aren't remotely ethical, human-centered, et cetera, et cetera.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_02: And I think AI is accelerating it too, because you can pretend to be an expert and AI can generate content for you and all of this kind of stuff.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_02: But I think that lack of genuine expertise has been at the heart of online business for a long time.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_02: Like you have people who are selling, turn your knowledge into a group program or a course, and this has been, you know, talked about for years, like 2020 and and previously, where you only need to be one step ahead of the people that you're helping.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_02: It's led to this entire industry that is based off shallow expertise or non-existent expertise, where you have inherited your wisdom, your knowledge from a coach, a course, and then you've decided that you're going to take that and run with it as your business.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_02: So you get this kind of diluted regurgitation of somebody else's half-knowledge.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_02: And it's just the whole pool is filled with toxic non-experts who are selling their expertise to vulnerable and naive people who are new to the industry who think, oh, like I did when I came online, I don't know how to run a business, even though I've been running a business for three years by that point.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know how to run a business, I don't know how to operate online.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_02: It's all lead magnets and funnels and AI clones and all of this kind of stuff.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_02: And everything is flavor of the month.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_02: Funnels are dead, causes are dead, this is the only thing that you need to do to survive, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_02: And they're dying all over the place.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_02: Like every day.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_02: Things are dying.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_02: Everything's dying.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_02: Everything's dying.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, my soapbox is one that I just want to help people to discern better what is right for them to dull down the volume on all of this advice.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know, quack psychology nonsense.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_02: Like, there's just there's just a lot.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of it, Rita.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: There is, no, you're right.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: There is a lot of it.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: I think the whole it was really interesting.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: I've been thinking, I've been all over threads the last couple of weeks.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: And there's been this this thread this thread running through, hence why the name.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: This idea that millennials are a pretty unique generation in how we approach new things and working out how something works because of the tech context that we've grown up in.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: So we have that unique perspective of being around kind of well, being born before the internet existed, but became mainstream and then and living all the way through that and everything changing and and then coming out the other side to whatever.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: Fresh hell we're in now.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_01: But like the generation before us didn't know, does like doesn't know how to kind of like work these things.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: And the generation after us assumes that everything is really intuitive and works in one way, whereas millennials are just like, okay, so we know how to to turn something into a PDF and we know how to deal with Excel spreadsheets, but we also know how to build apps and navigate AI, whereas the generations either side of us don't.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I feel like what it was really interesting what you just said about like that shallow expertise thing and only having to be one step ahead, because that is a very and I realize not everybody who listens to this is a millennial.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not even sure if you are.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: I can't remember how old you are.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: I am.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: I am a millennial.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_01: Excellent, great.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: But that feels very congruent with the tech, the attitude that we have towards towards tech or programs or systems.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, give us five minutes and access to Google and we can work out how this works, and what then then we can teach a bunch of other people how to do it.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: And whereas that does work when you're talking about Excel spreadsheets and and how to convert PDFs and and how to teach your gran how to navigate her smart TV.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: Not that I'm traumatized or anything about that last thing.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: It works well with that.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't necessarily work well when you're thinking about more impactful and more complicated things, like human psychology and trauma-informed responses, and all the things that might go together with coaching, business strategy, and and all that kind of thing.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: All those things that are bigger and need that more strategic overview and that depth of knowledge, we cannot attack with a millennial mindset of we just need like five minutes and access to Google.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's absolutely fascinating.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_02: Like I never really thought of it like that.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_02: But you're right, there are some things that yes, give you five minutes, you can pick it up and teach it to somebody else.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_02: But I think with running a business, it's so multifaceted.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_02: Like obviously, you aren't if you are a genuine expert and you're listening to Peter's podcast, you are a genuine expert, otherwise you wouldn't be listening to it.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you obvious You obviously have your expertise and that excellence in client delivery that sits at the core of why you run your business.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_02: But that alone is not a business.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_02: Like there's all the other stuff that sits around it.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that this is where we get buffeted by the storm that is online build, online business bullshittery, because we're not experts at marketing necessarily, or sales, or systems, or ops, or finance, or all of these different things.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_02: And it's very easy to get swept up into this ecosystem, you know, of noise and advice that isn't suited to you as a person where you're out in business, etc.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_02: And I think there has been such a prevalence of business coaches in particular coming into the space, having never run a business before until they decided that they were going to do their coaching qualification and become a business coach.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_02: I don't call myself a business coach.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_02: Like my primary objective, my primary skill set is actually in helping you to make better decisions and to help you turn those decisions into action.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_02: So a lot of my work is around behavioral science.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_02: It's how do we reduce friction in our environment to make the hard stuff easier to do?
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_02: How do we form habits that are going to help you?
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_02: How do we get you into a deep work flow state so that you can actually be more productive?
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's not necessarily marketing strategy that I will spar with you on.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_02: It's actually how do we function and run our business?
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, to that point of millennials teaching themselves things in five minutes, I think maybe that is why online business bullshittery exists, because we've got a plethora of individuals who don't have lived experience or enough lived experience beyond their own experience.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_02: I did it, so I can teach you how to do it.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think that's enough depth of expertise to be guiding other people with when it's like you say, a complex interconnectedness of multiple facets and that goes beyond just teaching someone how to use a spreadsheet.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, definitely.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: There's so much that I want to dive in from what you've just said.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: One of which is that when you talked about you become an expert at whatever you do and and your delivery and your kind of and delivering a client experience and and working with clients, and that's what you're really, really good at, but you're not an expert at all the other stuff.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: Twive years ago, you would have had other people who were experts at all that stuff, and you would have built a business of a bunch of like that you would have built a team.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: You would have a team who could do all those things, and you would have just been able to.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, if you were if you were running the business, you would have had to have learnt about all the different things that the team were doing so that you knew what was going on and you could like lead and manage, but you wouldn't have had to have been become an expert in all of those things.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: But obviously there are there were massive barriers of entry to building that kind of business and that kind of team.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: And now we have like in in bricks and mortar and also online, the barriers to entry to starting a business have well, not they've they've essentially completely disappeared.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like if you've got access to the internet and you've got and you've got a Stripe account, then you can actually set up a business in like little bunny inverted commas.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: Like there are no barriers to entry anymore.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: But while we have while that has good implications for representation in business for different people with different kind of life constraints and and geographical constraints setting up their businesses, which is great.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like it means we've got a bigger variety of types of people doing good things in the world.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: But it means that we now, as those individual founders, individual business owners, are expected to be experts in all those other things.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you because those people, generally speaking, especially when they're just starting out, do not have the financial ability to build that team of experts that help them.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: So they have to do it all themselves.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: And that means that you are it's almost like you're in that feedback loop like you are when you sit down with Claude and it continually tells you that the thing that you've just said is a really, really great idea.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like if there's if there are no other members of that team who are experts in their fields feeling back to you when you sit down at your kind of like board meeting of one and go, this is what we're gonna do because somebody in a group called on LinkedIn told me that's what we should do, then you're going to end up in a big hole.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: I think.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I if you it's I'm gonna draw in my son, because he has just started secondary school and he came home the other day, and his RE teacher had given him four out of ten for this piece of work that he'd done.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, I don't understand, because she didn't tell us what she was expecting.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_02: So I didn't know what to do because she didn't tell us what good looked like.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's what you've just touched on is if we don't know what good looks like, then we're gonna submit the work thinking we've done the right thing, and really it's only a four out of ten.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_02: And how do we get it to a 10 out of 10?
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_02: We need to know what we're doing and we need to acquire that knowledge over time.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_02: Now, I don't have any answers for how do we address that as solos, because you know, for me, the thought of having a team is not something I'm interested in.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I have invested tens of thousands of pounds in support from so-called expot, another reason for my soapbox.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_02: I think we have to be so discerning with where we put our hard-earned cash in terms of the support that we are choosing, you know, the experts that we're choosing to fill the gaps that we have.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_02: And firstly, you need to know what your gaps are, and then you need to be able to discern what's the priority gap.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_02: Is that something I can fill by going on YouTube and watching some videos or reading a book?
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_02: Or is it something where I actually do need to invest in help?
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_02: And I think this is where the everything is dead, this is the only strategy.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_02: It's so easy to get swept down the wrong rapid.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you're just going, all right, I'm just gonna go this way with this flow.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_02: And like you said, when you're sitting down as your board meeting of one, it feels like a really good idea.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_02: And we need that external perspective to say, hang on, hang on a minute here.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_02: Like, why why are you?
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_02: Doing that?
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_02: Like, this doesn't make sense for where you're at with like with your business and and and who you are as a person and all this kind of stuff.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, I shamefully, and I try not to carry the shame, but it is shamefully.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_02: I've bought into uh you know in group programs before because I like the look of the bonuses, and I just think those tactics drive you away from your rational thinking brain, and they tap into the unconscious, emotional brain, the sense of fear or the excitement or the you know, that kind of dopamine hit.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_02: Like there's lots going on.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_02: And these non-expert experts are actually expert marketeers.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_02: They are they are experts in leveraging your own human psychology against you.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, in some ways you could say, like, hats off to them, great, like they've they've cracked the code.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_02: And if you're willing to sell your soul to the devil, then you can follow their playbook and you can leverage leveraged the human psychology too, and get people to buy stuff that they don't even need that isn't the right thing for them.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_02: But I think as ethical practitioners who want to have impact in the world without the extraction, without the manipulation, we need to be much more discerning, like even more discerning than the average person to make sure that what we're investing in is truly going to serve us.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_02: Like I once invested in the sales coach whose advice to me was to sell income claim marketing, like that kind of, you know, that income claim messaging.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_02: What do business owners want?
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_02: They want to make money, so sell the money.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_02: And I obviously, you know, the diligent student that I was was like, okay, I'll sell like the 5k month thing while internally wanting to vomit.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_02: I did it for about three weeks and I was like, I can't, I cannot do this.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_02: I can't market my business in this way.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_02: It is not who I am.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't sit right with me.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_02: I cannot make these promises to people because income is reliant on so much more than the work that I can do with them and for them, and is dependent upon so many factors that sit beyond my control.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I just cannot with good faith sell this.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's just awful.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_02: That's on me for firstly investing in that person, secondly, taking their advice.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_02: I'll bite for three weeks.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_02: But I needed to be more discerning in where I was putting my money, what expert I was putting my money into.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_02: But also that kind of internal moral compass comes into play where you go, you have to stop yourself from following the playbook because it's very easy, it's very easy to be manipulated when you have a desire, when you are ambitious, the only way that your business will be successful is if you sell income claims.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, I'm gonna listen to the expert.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_02: But we have to be so much more wise to that kind of stuff, I think.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_01: So as an online business owner yourself, how do you make sure that you're not slipping into those traps?
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_02: I rightly or wrongly have withdrawn from a lot of the circles that I was in, where that was the narrative and that was the expectation.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_02: Like I said, I've invested a lot of money in programs and masterminds and things like that, where that kind of conversation is very normalized.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_02: So I have retreated from all of those spaces that I was in, and I'm now much more mindful of who is associated with who.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_02: So not just is this person somebody whose guidance I can trust, but where are they getting their guidance from?
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_02: So that kind of wider external network, because I think these this kind of marketing is very insidious.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_02: Like you can start working with somebody and you think they're one thing, and they can get swept away in their own world of like this online business bullshitry, and then all of a sudden you're swept into that online business bullshitry as well through them.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_02: So I don't have any perfect answers, but I think it does come down to discernment, and I also think it comes down to where you're putting your trust.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_02: I think we need to view online marketing with a massive lens of skepticism and really get to know the person before we invest in them.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't just mean looking at their website and I don't just mean kind of watching their YouTube videos, actually talk to them and get to know them.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_02: If they are a genuinely ethical provider, they are not going to mind jumping on a call with you and getting to know you better.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_02: The ones that don't want to do that because they don't do sales calls, because they only sell in the DMs, run a mile.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_02: Because if you are not willing as a provider to invest time in a potential client feeling comfortable and making the right decision, already for me, I'm then questioning your overall integrity.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_02: So I think it's getting wise to the tactics that they deploy, you know, like big shiny bonuses, the FOMO, the kind of BFF marketing where they make you feel like they're your best friend, and everything's like, oh hey man, how are you?
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_02: And then, you know, the minute you invest, that all slips away.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_02: And if you leave their world, it's like you're a pariah.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_02: So getting really focused on who they are and how they act, you know, focus less on what they say and more on how they behave.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_02: Spend time observing.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I I am a big observer, I spend a lot of time observing how people are online and then whether or not that aligns with who they are when you meet them in person.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_02: Like I think I know there's a big thing at the moment of like everyone wants to get back to in-person and events and stuff like that.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's really important.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_02: But I don't think we can run businesses solely online and thrive.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_02: I do think we need to get back to that human connection, energetic.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, this sounds so woo.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_02: I am not woo at all.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_02: But the energetic, the energetic exchange when you meet somebody in real life, that intuition and gut instinct that you get when you meet someone in real life and whether you connect and resonate with them is so powerful.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's it's maybe that's just me and maybe I have strong intuition, but when I meet someone for the first time, I can tell much more strongly in person than I can through a screen.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_02: Like, do I trust you?
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_02: Can I yeah.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_02: I a neurodivergent brain, I think pat rapid pattern record.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_01: Well, yes, no, I'm I'm I'm with you on that one.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_01: But I also kind of very basic human things like pheromones, like the the things that we as a species have developed over time to keep us safe, that we make snap decisions on.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_01: Like like what you think about if you're in a situation and you meet somebody that you've never met before and immediately you're a bit like, I don't feel safe.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like that comes from somewhere, not somewhere that we can kind of consciously kind of sit down and and work out and attribute to different words or phrases or kind of movements, but like it's it's why we talk about gut instinct and and things like that.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: You're right, it's it's so important, and that in-person element is a massive part of it.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's interesting.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_01: I I completely agree with you.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_01: And as someone who started their business because of caring responsibilities and lockdown entirely online, I would never have been able to start and grow my business pre-pandemic, because in it starting in content and copywriting specifically, the expectation was that you would always have to slep to an office with a portfolio and a presentation to do everything in person.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_01: And there is value in that, like we've just discussed, and it would not have been possible for me.
• 32:10
  unknown: Yeah.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like I wouldn't I that as we discussed pre-pressing record, I live in the middle of nowhere surrounded by sheep.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_01: I have two children and other people I have caring responsibilities for.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_01: Like it would not my business would not be where it is now if I didn't have that online element.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_01: But there is definitely a there's definitely a trade-off that comes with that.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_01: And my relationships would be richer, my networks would be richer if there was more of an in-person element to it.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I try and make like when I am able, I make the effort to go to London in the hope that the train home will not be cancelled.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_01: I'm batting like a yeah, a 50-50 average in terms of having to call my sister and getting her to pick me up, which is fun.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_01: But there we go.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's a whole other subject.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so real life.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_01: Speaking about meeting in real life, you have a thing with a very cool name that you are that you're launching at the moment and talking about.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_01: Can you talk about it?
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so I have had on my heart, in my brain, for well over a year something in real life.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_02: And we can all see it.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_02: This trend, this desire.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_02: I I think it's more than a trend.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's a like a visceral human need is to get back to meeting in person.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_02: You know, lots of people went online in the pandemic.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_02: It feels nice to be online because it gives you opportunities that you wouldn't have if you were solely relying on in person.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_02: It helps, but you know, it's it's accessible as well.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_02: But I do think there's this underlying need to get back in a room and connect with people.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_02: And the events scene is exploding.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I don't know about you, but it's like everyone and his dog is starting a new or her dog, starting a new event.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, what I again, I'm a I'm an observer, is the same people in the same rooms, same speakers, same kind of conversations, and events are not cheap to go to.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_02: You've got your travel costs, you've got your ticket costs, and if you're essentially networking with the same people in the same room, and it's this real superficial, you know, like handing over your virtual business card to collect more LinkedIn connections, I question its validity in terms of trust building.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_02: Like I think it's it's been cited as the ultimate way to speed up trust is like speaking at events, but I question that reality, I question that truth.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_02: And for me, I think the in-real life stuff should be about being seen and being known.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_02: Like, not just being seen for the Instagram feed, but actually being seen as the human that you are.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_02: And that is the ethos underlining the fuck it Friday Club, which is a lunch club for solo founders who are running a business online, who actually want to meet people in real life, a step behind the screen and be seen and be known.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_02: I did some research earlier this year into client experiences in group programs, because I think group programs have a lot to answer for in terms of online business bullshittery.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_02: And in that research, I found that only 14% of participants got the results from group programs that they wanted, and only and 68% of participants felt like they didn't get the support that they needed.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_02: 68% of people who had invested in a group program felt like they didn't get the support that they needed.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_02: And when you drill down into the qualitative insights, it was a lot around psychological safety, being seen, being valued and heard as an individual.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_02: Like all of these things that are deep human needs are not being addressed in these kind of spaces.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_02: So the Fuck It Friday Club is a free, you have to pay for what you eat.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not, I'm not paying for everyone's launches, but free lunch club for people who are running business solo businesses online to just meet with other solo business owners.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_02: It might be that we end up talking about business, it might be that we end up talking about the sheep in the field.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_02: Like there is no agenda other than let's get out from our laptop screens and really be seen and known as humans, not little icons on a Zoom boom.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_02: So they're going to be hosted in Waterloo and Winchester, because Winchester's close to where I live.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_02: Waterloo, London's accessible for more people.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_02: So it's basically once a month alternating between Winchester and Waterloo.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_02: I am being very strict with who I am allowing to the table.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_02: But if you want to find out more about it, you can come over to LinkedIn and we'll have a chat.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_02: I'll kind of get a feel for you, you can get a feel for me.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_02: I will decide whether or not it's a good space, good table for you to join.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's my in real life in real life thing.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_01: That's cool.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_01: I I recently I've been to Teresa Furgood, who is a past podcast guest as well, has just launched something called Women in an AI House.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I went to their inaugural like supper club, and it was just like 12 people, I think.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_01: And then she's done another one that I couldn't get to this week that was that was a bit bigger.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_01: And it was that was a similar thing, it was like curated.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_01: Like you can you can say I'd like to go, and then and yeah, and then we'll have a chat about whether actually this is yeah, this is the room for you.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_01: It feels this is because I've been spending too much time watching Victoria on Netflix and probably Bridgeton reruns, but like it feels like those curated kind of salons or like that people would go, right?
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_01: I'm collecting this group of people who I think are interesting and I think will really get on and we'll seat them in places because that I think will work because we considered what they do and who they are and what their personalities are.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_01: Like I kind of it feels like very intentional gatherings rather than like a mass event that you never know who's gonna turn up and and whether it's gonna be useful or interesting or inspiring.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that the word is intentional.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_02: Like I am not aiming for a 500 strong community, like that is not what I'm going for.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's real deep connection, like finding your people.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_02: And I think because I am a ranty pants, the the people that I am inviting in or like calling in because of what I say have very similar kind of mindsets on that.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_02: So that it's not going to be a room, and I hope it won't be a room of people who are coming in and just coming to, like I say, collect another LinkedIn connection.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_02: Because to me, that just seems so pointless.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_02: Like, why why are we why are we collecting another connection request when we could actually get to know somebody?
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_02: And I do think it it is a visceral human need.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_02: I think loneliness is an epidemic across, you know, whatever you do, whether you are a business owner or an employee, you know, regardless of where you sit on that spectrum.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_02: But loneliness in entrepreneurs in particular, and in particular solo founders, is absolutely massive.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_02: And trying to connect people with intentionality for me is how we break some of that down, you know, and not having to pay 20k to be in a mastermind, or in as I refer to them, the dick swinging mastermind, where it's all about being seen to be in the room and you know, sitting on the private jet and all of that kind of stuff, like it's all status signalling.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_02: I th like that whole that whole ethos is behind that just repels me, to be honest.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_00: Like I just let's not do that then.
• 40:35
  unknown: Cool.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_01: If someone wants to talk to you about what you do that is not in real life meetings about business strategy and things like that, who is the perfect person to get in touch with you and where should they go?
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_02: So I work with solos who want to stay solo.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_02: Like you don't have the grand visions of having a team or scaling an agency or any of that kind of stuff.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_02: Like you want to stay small, you want to stay intentionally small.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_02: You obviously are somebody like me who is similarly, similarly repelled by online business bullshitter, because that is does sit at the heart of what I do.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_02: Like the whole five o'clock club, hustle mindset, all of this kind of stuff.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_02: Like I'm just not into that at all.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_02: It's about designing the operating system for your business that works for you and the realistic constraints of your life rather than following the latest trend because that feels like what everyone's doing.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_02: Stuck in stuck in your own head, want to get out of it, want someone to spar with that isn't your predictive language machine that tells you what you want to hear.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, go and talk to Reef instead.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_01: And that, yeah, thank you so much for coming on the pod and talking about all of that.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_01: That was brilliant.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_01: I'm really excited to see what what people say about it.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_01: And and I am very excited about fuck Fridays.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_01: I think yeah, that's gonna be very cool.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, thank you for joining us.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for having me.