Making Millions Without and Throwing Out the Rule Book with Leonie Dawson

Okay, now for everyone listening, I've just hit record really, really fast because it's the first time I've ever spoken to Leonie in person. And she keeps saying things, and I'm like, what?

What?

Welcome, Leonie, to her empire builder.

Oh, my God, Tina, I love you already. And I can tell we're gonna have roaring time. This is so funny.

Okay, so what just, like, blew my mind. You just said, like, three things in succession that I was like, what?

What? What?

This is so. Because I love. I love different perspectives. And you. And I think we go. We're both lovely rays of sunshine by the looks of it, but I'm like the super anal organized version of you, and I need to know how this works. Okay, so first up, you work 10 hours a week with a multimillion dollar business. Really?

Well, I mean, so my company, like, we've brought in over $11 million. My company does about 11. Does about a million dollars a year. Really high profit margins. Yeah. And I don't really work that much. How? Like, I've never had the opportunity to work. I've. I've never had the opportunity to work full time on my business. So when I was first starting out, I was working for the Australian government, and so I was working full time, and I was just building it on the side just for fun. And I only left that job when I gave birth to my first daughter. And my first daughter was a baby that just screamed and cried all the time and never slept. And so I didn't. I've never had the luxury of full time hours. And I also didn't want to work full time once I'd had kids, you know, like, that was my priority, is I want to actually be a present mom and be there for all the things. So I have to create a business that's going to work with the minimum amount of time and create the most. Maximum amount of impact for that. And so I just follow. You know, I read the Four Hour Work Week back in 2007 book ever. Yeah, just take it fucking literally, Tina. Take it literally. That's all I did. I was like, well, he's doing four. We'll try for 10 babes.

But so. So here's the thing, right? Because I have all of these intentions, and my habit is to be a workaholic. And I try. It's prob. The biggest mindset area that I work on. And then I get there and I'm like, okay, I could stop now. But then I see all of the opportunities and more things that I Could do. How do you resist the temptation to not drive more?

Because it comes at a cost. And that cost is your lifestyle, that cost is your health and that cost is your sanity. And that cost is your creativity. And that cost is the time that you spend with your children. And the time that you have with your children is very finite. You don't. You. You've got like 10 years left max. Less. You've got seven years left. We're on Countdown, babes. We've got to like live it up. We can do all the opportunities later.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so. But there's still a lot of things to do in the business. So how much do you outsource?

Not much. So my first priority with outsourcing is can I just kill this task off?

Yeah.

Does this actually have to be done? And if it can't be killed off, can I like automate it with a piece of technology? And if I can't automate it and it absolutely, absolutely must be done and is revenue producing, then I outsource it. I have, I've got two part time assistants that work the equivalent of about 25 hours a week together. So they're kind of like one part time role and that's it. I don't have anybody else. I don't have any contractors outside of that. It's just. No, if like the tasks can just be fucked off if it's not that important.

Gosh, you've got it so beautifully streamlined then. Yeah, like.

Well, I mean, you have to in order to keep your profit. Because I've gone through the experience of having a really large team. I had 25 staff, we did all the things under the sun and your profit, it might just absolutely fucking die up the ass.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's what I found with my previous business was I actually. So I had tutoring centers and I actually made more money when I had 20 than when I had 30 because of the infrastructure and the staff and everything that we had to put into there. So it was bigger, isn't always better. But how did you get so 25 to now? Having two is extremely different. So what happened there? Did you get there and go, hold on a minute, let's cuddle. That's hard to change.

Well, it is. So a few things happened. I got there. Absolutely hated. Absolutely hated it.

Isn't it funny sometimes how we can like drive towards this dream and then you get there and you go, oh no, this isn't what I thought it would be.

Just reverse. This is horrific. This is really bad. This is really bad. I hate this. Like, I'm starting to hate my life. I want to run away from my business. Like, I want to just not be in this business anymore. And that's. That sucked. Like, I cried so much because this business is the most beautiful thing that's ever happened, like, you know, apart from my family and my husband. And it's always been my dream come true. So when it got to the point where it didn't feel like my dream come true anymore, I thought, I. I can't give up on this. Like, this. What else would I ever do with my life? And so through a period of. I really got clear that it needed to be so much more streamlined. And so it was just kind of natural attrition. Some people left, you know, to go on to other jobs. Some people, unfortunately, I had to fire because they were underperforming. And whenever people left, I just didn't replace them. And I would go through their task list, and I would look at it and go, oh, my God, I was paying people just to do so much. Yeah, rubbish. That actually makes no difference to our. To our revenue or our profit. Our profit most of all. So this is bullshit. So I would just go through and just kill off that task list and just pull out the very bare essentials. And, yeah, it just kept on going. And it happened over the space of, I don't know, two years or so, that it just kind of kept on reducing, you know, as contracts ended, they just weren't renewed, like, all that kind of stuff. But just knew that I had to right the ship and I had to get back in contact with the soul of my business. And also I had to get, like, back in connection with my own creativity and with the connection that I have with my readers, because the more people I added into that, the more I felt removed from that situation. And I feel like my connection with my readers and the people that I work with suffered profoundly from the more people that were put between me and them, if that makes sense.

Yeah, well, I mean, with that many people, like, a lot of your job is just managing the people and making sure that they have everything. Yeah, right. How did you get into that situation? So how many years from when you started to. When you, like, peaked at those amount of employees?

Oh, so I, like, I started blogging in 2004. I went full time when I had my daughter in 2010, and I think we're at that peak around 2015 or so, I think. Yeah.

Okay. And so you just kept adding people when you thought we could do this. Let's hire someone to do that. Let's hire someone to do that. And it just kept going.

No, it happened quite rapidly in that I kept one person for quite a period of time. Like, you know, I had one VA for a long period of time. And then, uh, we started going through quite a lot of income growth. Like, and it was just getting to the point where I can't, I can no longer work out a way to manage this with me. I'm one person. I hired, you know, a couple more people. I hired someone who's to be the operating manager. And her response was like, well, we just need more people. And just kept throwing more people at the situation. So we had like an increase of $800,000 in employee expenses in one year, which was.

And what income we were, we were.

At like 2.8 million at that point, I think. So, you know, like, it's still processing. It's a lot.

Yeah, yeah.

And then like, you know, I have a lot of other. I had a lot of other expenses. Like we were doing print runs in China which would cost like half a million dollars and stuff like that.

Yeah, yeah.

It gets tricky.

Yeah. Okay. And so what was the biggest difference in what the business was doing with that many bums on seats to what it is now? Like, what are some of those things that you went, you know what, this is no longer important. We can just cut that out of the business completely.

You know what, it's so weird because it doesn't actually look hugely different from the outside. That's not good. I know. Isn't that like, appalling?

But isn't it true though? We do so many things that are like, busy work that don't actually make a difference to the customer experience or the bottom line.

Yeah. And also, like, because I had a membership program at that point as well, so we would just continue like adding, adding value, Adding value, adding value. And it was just an insane amount of value. So, you know, people were paying, you know, anywhere between $100 to $1,000 for a year's membership at our program. And we had 150 courses in there. We ran a complimentary three day retreat that they didn't have to pay for. Like, there was just so much val. And like, then we would like, negotiated all these deals so people would get discounts for a whole bunch of software. And like, we just, it was just so. It was so crazy the amount of value we piled into that. And people got overwhelmed, of course.

Yeah, yeah. You know, the hardest parts of A membership is not giving enough value without overwhelming the bejesus out of everybody.

Yeah. Yeah. And like just continuing to like every idea that someone came up with, you know, they kind of just went ahead with it and it wasn't. I, I didn't maintain that because of like, is this actually going to make a difference to our revenue and profit? Is this like critical? And if not, let's kill it off.

Yeah. And so you don't have that membership anymore?

No, I don't. I mean I absolutely could have run it in a streamlined way still. It's just that I'd run it. I ended up running it for nine years, which is a lifetime in on my world.

Yes.

And I thought I'd like to just try out doing just like one course at a time for a bit. And so that was when I moved over to Kajabi a couple of years ago and started producing simple like one courses at a time. I think there's, I've done like seven or something now because I'm somebody who just likes creating. I'm never going to be somebody who just has one program.

Yes. And I want to ask you about that later, but before I go into that one. So in your 10 hours a week, what do you do? What does a typical week like, what are you still responsible for in terms of where you put your time and energy?

Sure. It's really simple content creation. So like blog posts, podcasts, like free lead magnets, whatever I can give away for free. And then like creating course that people can buy and just keeping it pretty simple like that. It's just creating content. I'm. I like to make shit up and I like to share it with people.

And some of the spectacular content as well that we're getting. Your blog posts are just like, there's no comparable to them.

Yeah. Like I like to include like all my art in there and photos and just whatever. Yeah, I just like it. Whatever makes me happy will likely make my people happy.

Yeah. And so when you started, you said before that you started not with massive plans in going, like, I'm gonna have a multimillion dollar business at Worldwide Domination and we're gonna do this. And then you actually grew that. How long did it take you to go from you know, I'm doing this hobby business on the side of my government job to I'm going to do this while I have babies to then, oh shit, I'm running like a proper grown up seven figure business here.

Oh yeah. Right. So it's about 2008, I think I got serious about, okay, I want to really earn money from this. And so I decided I wanted to earn $30,000 the next year and, and really push for that and did that. I didn't know how I was going to do it, but I thought it, other people have learned how to do business. I'll just learn that as well. So it went $30,000, $60,000. By the time that we had my daughter, it was about $100,000. And I thought that was so cool because it meant that we could both, you know, both me and my husband could retire effectively to look after our kids. And then it doubled and tripled every year since then. So I think we hit our first million dollar year around 2014 or so.

She's been doing it a long time.

Yeah, I have. Because it's like the best fucking thing on earth. It's so nice. I agree.

I totally, totally, 100% agree. Now we were, One of the things we were laughing about before I hit record was you said, so I said, when this comes out, do you want to promote anything? And you said, I don't plan my launches. And I was like, what the fuck?

How do you not have a launch?

Like I have, like, oh my gosh, if you saw my plans, you would think I was the most anal retentive human in the world. Like I have like the full next two years broken down with launch plans, with the content that leads in through the customer journey to prime for the launches. Like day by day, like everything is.

You are amazing. That's incredible.

Well, I don't, I don't, I don't know about that. I'm listening to yours going, hang on, these are, here's an easier way it sounds. So talk to me about how you do you wing it. Do you just, do you feel, you go, this is what people are asking me for, this is what I'll bring out. Or this is what I've got on in life. I could launch right now. I've got a bit of energy, I think I'll do it. No, I don't feel like it. This month I waited like, how do you do that?

Basically, yes. So I've like, I've definitely, like when I had larger team, especially like when you have a large team, you have to plan further in advance because like all your team has to know what's coming. You have to allocate resources, all that kind of stuff. That's why I fucking hate it. One of the reasons, one of the many reasons I fucking hated managing staff because I don't know what I'm gonna feel like doing in a month or six months. I don't know, like, what my obsession is going to be by that point.

Oh, my gosh. I want to be you when I grow up. This is amazing. I'm just like, oh, my gosh. Imagine like just doing something because you feel like it or don't feel like it. Like, that's the dream. I've never actually spoken to someone who has done that and been so successful in doing that.

Well, I mean, it's not like, I mean, here's the thing, like, when you're still, like, I'm still a high. Like that, you know, that high achiever inclination where you have that drive. So it's not like I, like, have ideas but don't execute them. It's just that my energy works better when I go with where I'm really excited by and what feels like the right point. So, for example, life happens and sometimes I get burnt out, sometimes I'm sick, sometimes my kids need more attention, sometimes we go into lockdown. And sometimes there's other things that are happening in the world that need more of our attention. So last year, when Australia was going through all the bushfires, one thing, like, I was going to launch something that week and I thought, there's no fucking way I'm going to launch something this way. There's other things to do and I'm totally cool for other people who have that, like, who go, no, I actually need to, like, good, go for it. But it meant what I could do instead was like, fuck it, I'll just put on a sale. Anyone who wants to buy anything for me, I'll just donate 100% of, like the sale directly to the Australian Wildlife Conservancy to help them with bushfire rescue stuff. And so we could, like pivot at the, like just like that and go and run to the place that needs it. And we've been able to do that a few other times as well. For me, what's most important is I've tried the planning approach. It makes me really hate things because I feel resentful. Whereas if I just wait for me to want to do something, or I'm excited to do something, or it's just a brand new project, yeah, I will just throw myself into it and really exciting things happen, like with the money. Course, I was never planning on creating that, but one Friday night I just had a bit of an idea while I was going to sleep and I was like, oh, my God, I should do a Money course. Fucking really. And then I just kind of had the whole download of the whole course. And so it was launched by Monday and out in the world, and I was teaching it, you know, four weeks later. And it's gone on to be one of the biggest sellers of my program. So I like that. I like just being able to do whatever the fuck I want whenever I want to.

Isn't incredible. Like, it's different personality types, because I go, if I have the absence of a plan, I feel very, like, unsafe.

Oh, okay, yeah, right.

Security of the plan and to go, okay, if I want to have one week, like, my thing is one week off a month and one month off every six months. Like, how am I going to. And I've got it. Move all the pieces around to give myself that clarity and certainty. That's like, I love that. Okay, so with. Do you still have things every year where you go, how big do you want to go and set those revenue goals and targets for that?

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And I have, like, a rough idea of how we might get there. And I play around with, like, oh, if I sold this amount at this price, then this is how that look. And maybe I could do this amount of launches per year. But I don't like to set it in stone. And a really important part of the puzzle I've discovered is that I need to have staff that are very comfortable with me not telling them things in advance.

Yeah. Which is nice. That'd be exciting for them, though, too. It's like, all right, Leonie, what are we doing this week?

Basically. Basically. And here's my hot tip is, like, if you have a neurodiversity, try and hire people who have the same neurodiversity as you. You're much less likely to piss each other off. It'.

I love that. Okay, so you do buck the trend a lot for course creators. Have you always been comfortable with those boundaries in going? Like, I know how we met was I'm running women online conference. And I was like, oh, my gosh, I need to have you there. And you were straight up, like, I don't care what you're doing. No, I am not leaving my house and coming to get on a stage. Like, it's just. It's just a hard no for me, but I'll go on your podcast. And I was like, okay, awesome. But I was like, like, pretty impressed at going, this is going to be, like, an incredible opportunity. But you were, like, hard, just, no, not worth it. Have you always had those boundaries?

Yeah, for sure, kind of again, out of necessity. First, like I had a job, so that was my priority. Secondly, then I had a baby and I'm an attachment parent. So, you know, I just didn't leave my babies for years and years and years. And thirdly, I have autism and adhd. So if I do any live events in, it's going to take about a month of my energy because I will have autistic shutdown afterwards. I fucking love live events. I love meeting people face to face. I am the biggest party animal on the planet for that short period of time and then I'm toast. Yeah, yeah.

And so what about with boundaries? With. Because I know. And this is where, when I started learning more about you and it was mutual. Friend of ours, Denise.

Oh, love her.

When, when I had her in my book Million Dollar Micro Business and she's like, have you spoken to Leonie? She's amazing. And I started reading all about you. But when I read the 10 hours a week, I'm going, I like, I know so many people spend more time than that just trying to like get those boundaries in place. With messages that come through, emails that come through, like customers that just want to pick your brain on different things. How do you have the walls up for that so that people aren't taking your time all the time while they're still feeling loved up?

Right. Well, I mean, how would they contact me? Like there's no way for people to talk to me directly and that's an exercise of protection because I could spend my life answering all the thousands of emails and people of messages like, hey hon, just pick your brain. Like I could do that or I could just like create amazing things that thousands of people could use and write books that thousands of people can read. So there's no way for people to contact me directly. It'll, it all goes through to my, my assistant. And I have very clear ways about how people can work with me. If they want to ask me questions, sure, they have to buy one of my courses and then they can come to my group coaching calls. And even on my group coaching calls, I don't let people unmute themselves. They have to ask me via text because otherwise people will spend five to 10 minutes telling me their whole life story and no, thank you. No, no.

Is that part of the reason why you chose high volume, low price products?

Well, it's a lot of reasons I did it that way. One, I just prefer it that way. I don't like people having to go into much debt to be able to buy My stuff, I like teaching more people. And I also feel like it's doing one to one stuff is not my, it's not my gift. It's. It is very draining for me. I would much prefer to teach a thousand people than one person at a time. Don't make me repeat myself. Like, I don't want to have to tell the next person the same fucking thing.

Yes, yes. Okay, okay. So that works there. And the other thing that you said, which is a beautiful segue into, into going into one of your. I don't know how new this course is. I don't. I don't think I've seen it for very long. You're marketing without social media now. You legit don't use social media.

Correct. Yeah, yeah. I'd stopped and again you blow my mind. I stopped earlier this year as a 21 day experiment. It felt so miraculous and brain healing and soul healing. I thought, there's no way I could go back. I don't care if I lose money on this, I cannot go back. And so I decided to pull myself personally and my business off social media. And it was bizarre because I never thought I'd teach about it, but I just got so many people saying I need to do the same thing. Please teach me how to do it.

Yeah.

And my business has earned more like off social media than off.

So, like, where are you concentrating most of your marketing efforts now?

So most of my marketing efforts is on one. I already have 55,000 people on my mailing list. So I concentrate on like sending them really good quality information and just helping them and nourishing them and being fucking bonded to them. And one, they'll buy more and two, they'll tell people about me. What I really want is word of mouth because I want other people go, have you heard that Kooky fucking Leonie Dawson? You should totally find out about her. Because here's the thing, like, I've done Facebook ads before and it's very hard for me to target Facebook ads on for the particular type of personality that, that's like going to be the right mesh for me. Because there's a lot of people that are not going to get this fucking unicorn. They're not. They're just going to go, what the fuck is this? And I'll be like, oh God, it's a boring beige Karen. I don't need you in my life. Like, please just bring the rainbows to me. I want the neurodiverse. I want the kooky people. I want the awesome humans. I want the rainbow. People like, come on in. Everybody else just ignore me. So I'm very. I prefer word of mouth. And of course, you know, I get about 20% of my sales through affiliates as well. And I love affiliates because it's just supporting small businesses, really. It's just chicks who want to share about my work and get cash for it.

Yeah, I love that. Now, do you think you would have been able to build your business to where it's got to without it if you had started from scratch?

For sure. I think I would have done a better job of it if I hadn't done social media, because I think social media is an enormous time suck. When I looked at the statistics, this is what really broke me. It broke my addiction, is that I was talking to my assistant and I said to her, what percentage of the time do you think that you and me both spend on marketing? Like, of our marketing time is spent in social media. And she said, like 85%. And I was like, that feels about. About right. Okay, let's have a look at our traffic and our sales. Let's see what traffic and percent. Like, what do you think would be worth it for 85% of our marketing time? And she's like, oh, fuck, like, I don't know, 30, 40%, surely. And I looked at the statistics and I was like, 20%, 20% less than 20% of ourselves. And that included thousands, tens of thousands of dollars in Facebook advertising. And I thought, get fucked. I'm not spending 85% of my time for 20% of this bullshit. Yeah.

So when you launch now, when you do a live, open launch like you did last month, how do you. Because I know when I launch, I get a lot of my sales through going live. This is a lot of my things. It's live video, going live on Instagram, going live on Facebook. What do you do for your launch activities? Is it. Is it just the emails that go out? Like, what are you. Just the emails.

Basically just emails. Because, like, the vast majority of sales come through emails. Marketing. And here's the thing, all statistics say the same. If you've got somebody on your email list, they are 40 times more likely to buy from you than a social media follower.

Yeah, completely. So how would you advise someone that's getting started to build your email list without social media?

So think about all the people you already know already and then do a very simple 22 page plan as well. So the 22 page plan is like, where are all your people already hanging out? And that could be like, what community organizations are part of, what associations are they a part of, what forums do they hang out on? Who else do they follow? What else are they watching? Like, write that huge list and it doesn't matter if, like, you have no idea how to like be in front of them. That's fine. Just write it all fucking down anyway. And then on the other page, start brainstorming, like, how am I actually going to let them know about me? And really start thinking of all the guerrilla marketing ways that you can, like get in front of them going, hey, here's how I can help you in these ways.

I'm just like, mind blown. Is that even possible? I mean, obviously it's possible because you're doing it, but I'm like, it's so far removed to how I've built my business. I love it. Yeah.

And this, and here's the thing, because I've been doing this for a while now, I've had so many people reach out and say that their business grew once they quit social media because they had so much more time that they could build their businesses in all kinds of ways. And there are really large companies around the world that don't use social media marketing. Apple were a billion dollar company before they even opened a social media account. Yeah, like, social media is not the, like essential for business growth. And I can't believe we've been conned into that idea.

I know. Yeah. Well, for me it goes. So social media, Instagram Stories is my second biggest traffic driver.

Yeah, right.

Podcasting is my number one and my second is Instagram Stories. So I go, if I removed that. But then you go, yeah, okay. So like, I'm such a fan of your blog posts. I rarely have time to write good blog posts now because I'm spending so much time on social media that I like. You can do higher quality things elsewhere. You're on something there. Yeah, it's food for thought. I love it.

Now.

What are the biggest mistakes that you see people that are coming into the course creating world? Because you would have seen it shift a lot with different seasons that have come in the last decade. What are the biggest mistakes that you see course creators come into the world and make?

Not writing long enough sales pages. Just like, you can't just write a paragraph. I think that people are going to buy. No. You have to spend days and days writing a really long sales page and giving them no other option but to say yes. Secondly, of course, is that you can't just like, hope people will buy. You need to push that through deadline marketing. So you need to have enrollment dates, you need to have, you know, some kind of way for people to like go, oh no, I need it now. And certainly you need to be really, really fucking clear about who it's for and how it's going to help them. Like, and stop using all the hippie words under the sun to be as vague as you can in describing it. No, I need to know exactly what this fucking helps me with and the real tangible results I'm going to get from it.

Yeah, yes, I love that now on that though, because clear marketing, which you very clearly have. I love your sales pages, but you do have very varied courses. Like when you say a niche, it's more a niche type of personality rather than you are the money personal, you are the books person. Like you've got things on sales, you've got things on money, you've got things on books, you've got things on creating courses, you've got such a wide array of things. Have you always had that wide array or did you start with your niche and expand or how. I mean, at one stage, what did you say you had like 70 courses?

150 including on sex, self, love, boundaries, email marketing. Yeah, just all of the things. Communication, just anything.

So how have you got to say I love in your bio? Like you say you refuse to be categorized and so you've got that open. But then how has it been like how have you managed such beautiful clear messaging when you like, everything's so different.

Yeah, well, so here's the thing, right? It's like I've never niched because it's just like killing my spirit. If I, if I can only talk about one thing for the rest of my life. No, no, I'll go get another job so I can talk about more things. So I have to be able to like have enough freedom to talk about whatever the I want. And so I've always talked about whatever the fuck I want. And I know that every single thing that I talk about and teach about is not going to be the right thing for every single person on my list. And that's okay. It's just going to be the right fit for like some people at some period of time. But they are a similar. Like, even though it's like a niche of a personality, they like me. But there's usually, it's usually women who are interested in self development and who are interested in their own businesses. And so I can talk about all these things and they're going to be interested in all of them.

Yeah.

So I don't have to, like, be known as the expert on one topic. I can just be. Oh, what's Leonie's take on this specific topic?

Yeah, that's so good. And you mentioned deadline funnels before. Are you. Do you have evergreen programs and live launches or you only open, close, open, close and choose what you're going to live launch at different stages?

So I've got. I don't have any evergreen funnels. I don't think currently. It's just not my. So my jam, I tried it, it was a bit boring for me. So it says, oh, no thanks. I do have live launches, but I don't tend to close the enrollments. I just really encourage people to sign up so they can do a live round with me. I don't like closing enrollments just because I figured, like, somebody might need it at some point and I just prefer to keep it open. And I know that that goes against marketing wisdom and I don't give a fuck.

Yeah. And so your deadline is to get in for the live, live taught round.

Yeah.

Yeah. And so you enjoy the live teaching more than the prerecorded.

So most of it's prerecorded. So like 99% of the content is prerecorded. It's just the live round is that you get like the one hour a week call with me or whatever so we can talk shit about the course. But it's just a. It's a way to create that, that deadline and for people to go, yeah, let's work through it together. So that's nice for them. Yeah. Yes.

It's so good. Okay, now, your monthly reviews are literally the greatest thing that I have seen.

Oh, babe.

Like, so for people that are listening, you share your month's revenue, you share your Kajabi dashboard, you share everything that you've read, everything that you're working on, everything that you. I love something you're like, here, I painted a bookshelf. But also, oh, look, I'm up to 1.5 million on my Kajabi dashboard. Like, the level of transparency is incredible. And like, I know when I read it, I was like, so gobsmacked and going, this is amazing. And such beautiful information to be able to see how the insides of your business work. But also I was going, gosh, I would never do that. Like, I could never do that. Like, there was a big part of me that went, in our industry, we somehow have to, like, prove that we've got to the success. And so Kajabi does that beautifully with swag to show that. But once I hit that million, I was like, okay, I won't talk numbers anymore. Because I didn't want people to think that I was, you know, like, big noting myself or going, look at me and how much money I've earned. But yours doesn't come across like that at all. It's more going, here's the nuts and bolts, here's how I do everything. Here's what I use, here's the software, here's where you can get it. Here's how you can do that. Like, talk me through why you chose to do that, how you do that, what the whole process is.

So firstly, I am absolutely using it to big note myself. I love you. I'm like, I'm so. Like, did you just see what I fucking did? Like, that's amazing because it's only chicks that will downplay their. You know that if I, like, if.

We would do it, we'd be like, yeah, yeah.

So I am going to have the confidence of a straight, white, mediocre man. Like, I honestly am. I give, so 1.5 million on my dashboard. Great. And I'm happy to share those numbers just because I want people to see behind the scenes of what it kind of looks like. And also for people to know I'm not talking on my ass either, you know, Like, I do know what the fuck I'm talking about. I'm really happy to help anyone, like, reach their goals. And I have some skin in the game. I know what it looks like.

Yeah. And. And, like, is that a lot of. It seems like a lot of work to put them together. How much time do you spend on doing your monthly review? I don't know.

90 minutes. Dot points.

Amazing.

I don't. I don't. I'm not. I'm not critical about my writing whatsoever. So everything you read of mine is the first draft. My loves everything you read. I just. Whatever. It's got to get out there. So who cares?

That is. Yeah, yeah, I totally agree. Like, sometimes I will get pulled up by my team in going, you just sent that out. And it has, like, two spelling mistakes and a grammar mistake. I get people sending me messages and saying, oh, my God. I don't know if you know this, but you had this word on, like, paragraph 50 that was wrong. I'm like, I don't care.

I don't care. The millions in the bank actually don't give a fuck about selling my station.

Well done. I mean, I'm very much done. Is Better than perfect. And if we worried about everything being perfect, it would be paralyzing.

But yes.

Okay, so I love that now you say you don't mind big noting yourself. Do you ever get pushback on that? Like, do people ever go, you don't see it because you're not on social media?

I see how this all works. So even when I was on social media, I don't give a fuck. Like, if someone wants to be offended by my level of success, they're welcome to it. If they. If somebody wants to have their buttons pressed, go for it, babes. If you want to go talk to your therapist about it, cool. If you want to bitch about me on a forum, like, what people think about me has got nothing to do with me. I'll just keep on sharing it. And I also think it's really important that women talk about money, because we haven't talked about money, and that's why we have poor financial literacy, and also because we've had centuries and centuries of financial abuse from the patriarchy. So I will talk about money. Thank you very much.

Yes. Do you know, I had. Like, I'll share something way too personal here, but it's yay exactly on what. What you just said was. So my husband and I have these discussions because a big part of why I don't share a lot of what we do is, you know, he used to. We used to go to, like, our kids soccer games, and he would say, like, just don't tell them who you are. Like, don't tell them what you do and that sort of thing. Because we want. We want the kids to be accepted. We don't want them to think you're a bit too weird, you know, in going off and doing what you think. So I would totally downplay everything that I did. And the other day, I was saying to him, like, I wanted to do this episode. We did more on the last day of June, a higher day in 24 hours than we've ever done in a month. And I was like, it was insane. And I was like, I want to share this, what we did, how we did it, all of that. He's like, people will hate you. And I will be honest with going, sometimes I do share that, and people do hate for it. Like, I get messages and going, you care more about your own success than your client's success. And all you're trying to do is, like, all of this sort of stuff, which is bullshit, because I know the more successful they are, the more successful I am, the more successful I am, the more success, like it all goes around. Anyway, on what you're saying about the patriarchy, he was saying you can't share stuff like that. You can't do that. Anyway, he was looking at investing in something locally. They're building a surf resort and he was going to invest in it and he talked to his mate and his mate said, no, I'm not going to do it because of this, this and this. And they were sharing all these things. And I'm going, this is exactly what I'm talking about. It was so natural for them to share it with one another that women are not sharing that stuff. Because he's even said, and he's very open, he's been a stay at home dad for 10 years, very supportive in me. So I'm going, can't imagine what most men are conditioned to think, but I'm going now if we don't talk about finances, we don't have those natural conversations about investing. What shares are we buying, what property are we buying, what do we feel is happening in the market, how are we hiring our staff and what's the ratio to revenue and all of the different things. So I'm like, that was the perfect example in going, you do that, we don't do that. But I'm still too affected by when people are mean.

Well, I mean it's up to like, they can do whatever they like with it. But here's the thing, like if I don't earn this amount of dollars, then I also can't do the philanthropic work I do either. So you know, like, guess what? I'd prefer for me to be a millionaire than another like straight white size head dude that's all privileged and doesn't do shit. Because we know that women, when they earn more money, they, they invest it in their families, their children's education, their communities. And they, they are a philanthropist at a much higher level than dudes are. So I think the chicks can have a go now.

Yes. Cheers to that. Yeah, 100%. I mean that's my. Because I go, I go the opposite. I go low volume, high price product. And so a lot of mine, like with my mastermind, my goal is to have 100 women making a million dollars a year by 2025. And the main reason for that is women change the world. Wealthy women put it all back into their communities, into charities. They help their families, they help other women, they hire other women. Like it all just changes the game.

We need it. We need it. The dudes have had their go. They've kind of made a mess of it. So like move over. It's time for. So for women, it's time for gender diverse people to take the stage. Thank you so much. Best wishes, kind regards.

Yes. So on that of your last, because you've been making big dollars for a long time, what is the best thing that you've done with your money?

Honestly, like I am still so excited when we pulled all of our money out of our retirement funds, our traditional retirement funds, we divested it out of funds that incorporated like invest in mining, gambling, warfare, all that shit, and we moved it all over into an ethical managed fund. So they're only looking at sustainable solutions and all that kind of stuff. Like it was just, it just felt like the most joyous fluctuator mining and to be able to like put our money where our mouth is and really like line up money with values just felt great. So that's what we continue doing and we specifically choose projects that align with our values. So we were invited to invest in a sub development that where they would clear a block and turn it like an acreage block that had rainforest on it and turn it into like six subdivisions that was going to double our money, blah blah, blah. And we were like, no. And we instead donated, you know, tens of thousands of dollars to Australia Wildlife Conservancy to buy up more land for wildlife. Sort of never been developed.

See the freedom of finances.

Yeah, it's lovely. It's so fun.

Yes. Oh my gosh, you are a delight.

I'm just like, so are you. We would have so much fun. I know.

I just like this is just so you do what you know, you're living by your values, which is rare and I think not so much rare but it's hard to actually do in practice.

So.

Well done.

Well, what would be the alternative? Like not do it and feel like shit? Like I just, I'm here for the fun, you know what I mean? So I might as well do it in the way that's right for me because I'm going to have more fun that way.

Yeah, completely. And so what are you most excited about? Like in the next 12 months with what's, what's, happening with everything. What are you going. You know what? I'm pumped about this. Oh.

I'm just, I like all of it. I like all the bits. Like I'm excited to see what I make next. I'm excited to see what comes out. I really want to produce more programs because I only have seven at the moment and that feels like, very few to me.

Well, I mean, all you need is a good weekend, so.

I know, I know. That's all I need. I have very small, content life, really. I'm really excited that we're going to go and stay in an Airbnb for a couple of nights in a place.

Two hours away, leaving that 10 kilometer radius jet status.

But I mean, things, like, things could change. Like, we'll see. Like, it's fine. And I've got, like, a lot of books to read, so I'm just excited by life, really.

I love that. Leonie, thank you so much. I know, like, you've spent 10% of your working time this week with us.

I feel very valued and honored. You're a babe. I know, I know. Treasure it. I know.

I respect the time.

No small talk. Go.

But thank you. I appreciate you. I thank you for putting everything out into the world that you do. I'm going to link to everything, but I especially encourage people to start with Leonie's blogs. Like, amazing. Just amazing.

Yeah. Thanks, babe. You are an absolute joy to know and I'm so glad that we connected. Yes.

Thanks, Leonel.