Samantha Riley — A 9 Point Process To A Million And Beyond

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

What's up, everybody? You're listening to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast with your boys, Matt Wolf and Joe Fear. What's up? What's up? Welcome back to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast presented by evergreenprofits.com high five.

High five. Nice. I got the microphone in there just so it had the sound effect. That was real, everybody. That was real.

All right, today we've got a badass chick on our podcast.

She's awesome. Her name is Samantha Riley and she is from Australia. But she's always around the world, traveling around, doing crazy things.

But I mean, at least that's what her social media looks like. And it's really cool. She was a very fun episode. It was great to talk to and we really dove deep into systems. And I know it doesn't sound sexy, the whole systems talk or anything, but it's absolutely crucial to not only scale the business, but to really just start off with a great business that you're not pulling your hair out on. And you kind of have this whole thing documented so you can actually leverage your time best. It's what we all need to hear. And we also get into this whole nine step flow pretty much map that you can pretty much swipe and deploy for yourself. And it's the procedure of how she runs her clients through this whole thing so they can kind of leverage their skills the best, talk to the right people, get a lot of eyeballs on whatever they're trying to do, the promotion, grow their brand and all that fun stuff. That is what our specialty is. So, Matt, anything else before we dive in?

Nope. Let's just dive right in with Samantha Riley. She's got some good stuff we're going to talk about.

All right.

Hey, Samantha, thanks so much for joining us today. How are you doing?

I'm doing so well. Thanks for having me here, guys.

Yeah, we're really, really excited about this. In fact, I think our mu mutual friend Tina Marie said that you were one of her go to experts for some of the topics we're going to be talking about today. And you know her, her opinion of people we value very, very highly. So we're really, really excited to chat today.

Oh, that's so awesome. And don't we love Tina Marie. I love the episode that you guys did with her. It was fantastic.

Awesome. Yeah, she's always a fun one. And she's one that I think we'll probably have for another round two because, yeah, definitely, when it comes to metrics and all these different things you should focus on to scale your business. I mean, I don't think you can ever get enough of that.

Right. Metric nerd. I love it.

Nerd out. That's a good thing.

Well, cool. Let's go ahead and dive in where we start with pretty much everybody and get a little bit of your backstory. We want to learn how you got into business and what you're doing now and the sort of progression of events.

Sure.

Well, I'll give you the quick version because I have been in business for 25 years. I went into business in my first business when I was just 20 years old. And at that time I was married, I had a mortgage, I had two little kids. So I kind of did life quite fast. And I was doing a corporate job and I really didn't like it. I was in a finance department talking about metrics. I actually was working in a government department in the finance department. And I just, I was sitting there one day and I looked around and everyone was unhappy. I was going to say that doesn't.

Sound like the most entertaining place to.

Be, but, well, not as an extroverted 20 year old, that's for sure.

You know, everyone was the age of my grandparents. They'd been there their whole life. And I thought, oh, far out, Sam. This is not what I signed up in this lifetime for. I come from a very creative background. I danced all my life. So. So having that logical being in an office environment wasn't really great for me and I wanted more for my kids. So on the side, I opened a dance studio. And that was my very first business. And within 18 months we had grown that. And I say we. It was me and my husband at that time. We grew that quite quickly, which meant that we were able to take on a commercial premises. And because dance studios need a huge amount of space, we actually took a piece of that in the front and opened up a dancewear store, which meant that we could trade in the day and at night. Because there's a dance studio, you're only trading at night after children finish school or on the weekends. So, you know, to pay the rent. It was. That was a great trade off. And we ended up growing those businesses. I think it was maybe about seven years to over a million dollars a year. They kept growing from there. We opened up another store and that was mostly what I did for 18 years. But you know, as most of us have these sliding door moments and these transitions, in 2010, I separated from my then husband and rather than. And it was A shock, because I'd been married since I was 17. I didn't have access to a couple of those businesses overnight. It got a little bit ugly there for a bit, and I sort of stopped and used that time to go, okay, you actually were starting to be really unhappy in those businesses, too. You'd been doing them for 18 years. You were kind of. Even though I'd managed to move out of them, I was only working between three and ten hours a week across three businesses. I still didn't like the fact that they were traditional businesses. Someone had to put their key in the door. You know, 2010, I was starting to learn about online business, and people were doing these really cool things. So I really took stock and went, all right, well, you've got this opportunity now to change what you're doing. And that's when I started really exploring the online world. And my first coaching business at that time was in the health and wellness space because I was quite passionate about health and wellness. But I discovered quite quickly that just because you've got a passion for something doesn't mean that that's a great business idea. Because I was passionate about training myself, but didn't love training other people so much, so.

Slowly transitioned into business coaching, which is what I knew it had been my whole life. And that's how I've wound up where I'm at now, which is working with thought leaders and experts, helping them to stand out from the crowd and get known, because as we know, the person who's known gets the business. And I think that's funny because you guys, the first thing you said when we got on the call was, oh, my God, Sam, you're everywhere. Which is not actually the case. It's just that I wound up in the place where you were looking.

Well, that. Isn't that how it should be, though? I mean, that's because we hear something similar, but it's. If you have the right message or you're just in. You're targeting the right audience, you will be everywhere to the right people.

Correct? Yeah, correct. You don't need to be everywhere. You just need to be everywhere where your ideal clients or your prospects are.

Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, that's. It's interesting to hear your shift, even though it's an unfortunate, obviously, circumstance, splitting up with your previous husband, but at the same time, it gave you a great opportunity to create this new life for yourself and then start creating this business that you really wanted to be in.

Absolutely. And, you know, and we're friends now, we talk regularly, which is great. And I've actually thanked him for that opportunity for, you know, people can be really nasty in breakups and hate their partner. But I think, well, you know, we got married for a reason. We were in love with the time, we didn't work out. We've got three amazing kids. And, you know, I'm extremely full of gratitude for the time that we did share together. And I'm so full of gratitude to be where I am today. And, you know, that's a really important thing to be able to look and have gratitude for what we have in our lives because we create our lives. It doesn't happen to us.

Yep. I love it. And that's, I mean, that's the big thing. And I think I listened to something recently, some video, and it was like, yeah, anything that, like goal that you have in the future and where you're at now, the only thing between you is just doing it, actually taking the steps to do it. I'm like, oh, it's really not rocket science.

No, it really isn't. Right.

So, but, so I'm curious because you, you had great success in your brick and mortar businesses. So you got up to, you know, over a million dollars in what you said seven years or so.

And that was back in the 90s, too. So in today's money, it's around about the 3 million mark I could see.

And it's probably using a lot of systems that were a lot harder and more expensive and slower, I would imagine, than online things that we have access to now.

Absolutely. We didn't have SaaS products. It didn't exist. There was no, I mean, there was no Internet back when we started the business. There was no social media. If you wanted to connect with someone on the other side of the world, you had to drive to the post office and find a yellow pages and pray that you could find them. And even then, the chances of getting through to them was quite slim in some cases. So it was very different.

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because Joe and I, we actually, we were just out having lunch not too long ago and we were actually having this conversation.

Cause were we.

We both used to work at a brick and mortar shutter company that made, you know, window covering shutters. And we were talking about how the break even in that business on a monthly basis, that business had to do $40,000 in sales just to cover its fixed expenses. That's not including any sort of variable expenses and cost of goods sold and all that sort of stuff. They had to break $40,000 just to make sure they got their payroll and their rent covered each month. And now we live in this time where we can go and set up a business and run $100 worth of Facebook ads and start generating sales. It's just a completely different world.

Absolutely. And I was thinking, I was having this thought the other day while I was going for a walk, which is where all my amazing thoughts happen. And I was thinking about advertising, and I was thinking about some of my clients saying, oh, my goodness, I can't afford to throw any money into Facebook ads. And I was thinking about it, thinking back in the 90s, I used to pay $25,000 a year to be in the Yellow Pages. That was just in my local area. No, I lived in a city where there was only a million people total. And I would pay $25,000 to have access to possibly a million people, hoping that they would pick out the book. You know, in quite a tight niche. Now we imagine how much, how many leads you would get from $25,000 in Facebook ads. Like, it's absolutely incredible.

It's amazing. And that's the thing we always remind ourselves. If we fall into that, it's almost like a trap. Exactly. What you just said is like, oh, I don't want to spend that money or I don't have that money or I shouldn't have to. But like, come on, what's $100? What's even $500 to do a test?

Well, absolutely.

Even just like SaaS products. Right. You look at a product like a Click Funnels or a leadpages or, you know, one of these marketing tools where you can build your website inside of one of these tools and it costs 100 bucks a month and people complain about that price. You know, it's just so funny to look at the sort of contrast of what we had to deal with as entrepreneurs 15 years ago versus entrepreneurs today.

Yeah, well, we were paying, you know, 50 to $60,000 a year rent just to have somewhere where my customers could go. And that was just that, you know, and then you had 25,000 in yellow pages and all of the other things. You know, we're very fortunate these days, and I think that we've got so much opportunity and people can't, I won't say, you know, everyone, it's definitely not everyone, but some people can't see the amazing opportunity we have. And if we can combine some of these old school principles from doing business in this online world, this is where I believe that right now we've got so much opportunity.

Well, ironically, that was my next question. What are some of those, what are some of those? Old school, quote unquote, old school. Not even that old business tactics or strategies or principles, I guess, that you used back then to get to over a million dollars. Because I mean, not a lot of businesses can even get to that mark as a brick and mortar business. So what are you taking away from that period?

You know, I was very lucky. My very, very first job was in a McDonald's store. And that's actually how I met my husband. He was my roster manager. And ironically, I always used to wind up on the shifts where he was working.

I wonder how that worked.

That's how we met. But because we were both, that was our background when we went into business ourself, we understood the importance of systems. And I think that the entrepreneurial dream for people that are leaving their, their jobs to go into business, it's because they do it based on a strong desire for success and freedom. And the trap that a lot of people can fall into is thinking, you know, I can do whatever I want whenever I want, you know, and have no structure. But in actual fact, without that structure, you won't get success or freedom. It's actually the structure that gives you the freedom. So we learned that very, very early on. Anything that we repeated, you know, two or three times, we used to have a list when we first opened our business because, you know, as you know, you build as you go, you can't build systems before you actually like play out whatever the action is, it doesn't work that way. So you're always playing catch up, building those systems at the beginning. So we used to have a clipboard and we used to write down. Anything that we did multiple times would go down so, so that we could create a system. And in the beginning they were little tiny systems and to be honest, they were little things that we were building along the way. But we didn't really start to build our bigger systems until we were around the three to four year mark. When we got our first business coach, we felt really quite stuck and we couldn't move forward. And it was through hiring him and starting to build the bigger systems and empowering our team to be able to do the things that we were previously doing that helped us to. We moved from 500,000 to 1.2 million in only about six months. And it was all because of the systems that we put into place.

So anything that, you know, it could be simply emails, a normal email response to A query that comes in, have the, you know, if, if you've noticed that you're doing the same sort of email a couple of times, do a canned response. It doesn't have to come across like it's a canned response. It can still come across like you are personally answering that, but just copying, pasting that, for example, rather than spending time writing the emails every time something comes through. You know, they can be as simple as that. And then, you know, they might be a little.

You know, like a.

System for creating a funnel, for example. You know, something that's a bit more complex.

Yeah.

You know, it doesn't matter whether they're simple or complex, but just replicating everything.

Well, I love how you guys both started. You literally McDonald ized your dance studio.

That's a term that we actually use quite a bit in our business when we're creating processes is we always use that analogy. We always say, let's figure out how to McDonaldize this.

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, having growing up or you know, my first job there and seeing everything in the folders, to be honest, I didn't realize there was anything different. I just thought that was business. So I was, I was super, super lucky.

Yeah, I mean that's, this is. And it's different for. So Matt and I, we both, I know we've talked about this on other podcasts, but just for you, here is, you know, we both have different ways of working, but we're starting to. Well, we do agree on that. Systems are the way forward and it took us a very long time been doing it. You know, we've been working together in different fashions for about almost 12 years and a lot of that time was kind of hacking it together and figuring it out and just doing it ourselves or you know, sending a rough plan to someone else to help us. But now it's like everything is a process and SOP team members do this. Yeah, bop bop, bop. You know, but it kind of allows us to be who we are personally. But now it's like we're scaling with these processes with no questions.

Yeah. And not only that, it's creating a safety net for your business because team members could just, they could leave without any notice. So you need that security that everything's not going to fall apart.

I love it.

Yeah, definitely. And we've experienced that multiple times where luckily we, we built out systems, SOPs little step by step processes that people can follow. And then if that team member leaves, you just plug somebody else in and they just pick up right where they left off because you mapped out the process for the last person.

Right.

So.

Yep.

So you mentioned that what you do right now is you actually help thought leaders, sort of, you know, experts, coaches, thought leaders, that sort of thing, sort of expand their brand and get more out there. What sort of things do you do with. With those people to help spread their word?

So there's three main pieces that I work with them. The first is their positioning. So how are they positioning themselves as the expert in what they do? I mean, you guys have probably heard people that say, oh, I can't do that thing. Let's pull out life coach, because that's quite a broad term. I can't put myself out there because there's a million other life coaches. Well, yes, there are, but none of them are you. None of them have your unique message, your unique experience, your unique life experiences, work experiences. So it's about positioning them as the absolute expert. And the three things in that piece is making sure that their message is absolutely clear, which I find is the number one problem with every single person that comes to me. Their message isn't clear. So the first thing we do is get clear on their message, get clear on their niche. And I. And I sort of call it the niche within the niche because there is so many people out there doing something similar. So what is it that you're going to do that? So pinpoint it down. And the third thing is building their audience. And that would be on the social networks. It would be, you know, through your email database, you know, doing things like we're doing here.

I love it.

The second piece is building their profile. So it's helping them get very, very clear on what their values are. Because these days, you know, there's a million snake oil salesmen out there. So what's going to make you cut through? And so you need to be very clear on your values. So energetically, you're attracting the people into your world who are vibing with what you do. The second thing is getting clear on your product offering. Because I cannot believe how many coaches come to me and say, sam, I can't pay the bills. And I say, cool, what can you sell me right now? And most of them stand there like a gaping fish. They actually really don't understand what their product is and that they can sell it right now, which absolutely shocks me, but it's true. And the third piece in building your profile is your content creation. So what's the content that you're putting out into the world so that people understand what it is that you do, because, again, a lot of people will write content because we, you know, we know that content's king, but it doesn't relate back to what it is that they're actually doing.

Yeah.

And the third piece is exposure. And I find that a lot of people like to get this exposure piece but don't know how to get it to work for them. So the exposure piece is getting the IP out of their head and getting onto paper and getting into a book. So becoming a published author, getting partnerships, because that's how you're going to leverage and grow your business. And the third piece is media. But understanding that, that media piece, so whether it's podcasts or webinars or regular, you know, tv, newspapers, whatever it is, how that actually plugs back into the rest of, you know, the positioning in the profile piece, it doesn't just sit out there on its own. So. So that's the nine main pieces of how we pull that all together.

I love it. I want to see, like, a map of this or something. I'm sure you have one.

I'll send it to you.

Yeah, seriously. Because that is. That is an amazing structure because as you were talking about, I wish I wrote it down, but I mean, I can kind of form in my mind that. I mean, that's more or less what we do. And I love how you. You just encapsulated everything right there because it all plays together. Yeah. I feel like a lot of people jump straight to the, like, the promotion piece or, you know, the part where you hop on podcasts and all this stuff, but you don't even know your avatar. You don't know what your expertise, like, what it is that you're really good at selling.

Yeah, Well, I mean, even, you know, just going all the way back to when you mentioned, like, one of the first pieces is figure out your niche or your niche within the niche. Like, how many people out there that just go, oh, I'm in the health niche? Well, what does that really mean? Do you sell exercise equipment? Do you sell supplements? Do you teach, you know, diet plans? Like, what does it mean to be in the health niche? But I think a lot of people think so general like that, and I think that's actually a big piece to why so many people struggle is because they just think, I'm in the general health niche. But when you niche down niche, down niche down to the point where you have a very, very, very clear avatar of, this is the person that I'm speaking to, that's where you Start to find some real results.

Yeah, absolutely. And I saw, and I don't know the name of this person, but when I really understood this in a great way, I was reading about YouTubers and you know, YouTube's such a massive platform. It's got opportunity, but, you know, it's pretty tricky to cut through these days. And there was a woman that loved to cook and cooking shows on YouTube are a dime a dozen. So she thought, what can I do to cut through? And what she does is she does recipes or she, she goes through recipes from well known movies and she dresses up as the character that is in the movie. So whatever movie it is, they might be sitting, you know, when Harry Met Sally, when they're sitting down having the apple pie at the table, she'll create the apple pie. She would go through the apple pie recipe dressed up as the character of, you know, Meg Ryan's character. So.

And then would she actually recreate that specific scene and what Meg Ryan does next? Not sure.

I haven't seen it. I just pulled that out of the air.

That's a brilliant idea.

Let's not go there.

Okay.

I love it. No, that's. And that's the thing.

It's.

People are thinking a little bit too, you know, by the book, I guess. And it's not until you tell your story, like, why is it that they should listen to you? So tell your story but also transition into, you know, what's the thing that makes you special and why should they even listen to you? I mean, that could be like your awareness phase, more or less.

Yeah. And the huge hint is to look at what's happened to you in your life. I've landed in this niche or niche, whichever way we want to say it, because of the issues that I've had previously. When I came into the online space of, you know, when I first came into business coaching, I was a startup business coach. I had a very clear niche. People knew what it was. At the beginning of 2015, I left that behind because I didn't want to coach startups anymore. And the reason I'm doing what I do now is because I was a generalist business coach and my business went from really good to really average. So I had to do something about it. So the hint there is to look back at you six months ago, 12 months ago, three years ago, where did you have problems or issues? Because that is normally where you've got the life skills or the experiences to be able to help other people.

Yeah. And you don't have to fabricate that. You don't have to think too hard about that. You can literally just start creating content based off of those experiences and then transition that into, okay, well, this is what I am doing now because of that and what. Why other people like me. That is you, the one listening to me right now is the person on the video or whatever it might be, should also maybe heed this advice a little bit and learn more.

Yeah, I love that sort of perspective on it, too. That perspective of, let's look back over my journey so far, pinpoint the biggest struggles I've had in my life, and that's sort of my unique expertise to present to the world. You know, I love that perspective on it. And I've never really kind of heard it explained so succinctly as that.

Well, certainly I. When I wrote a book back in 2015, I took on a publicist, and it was her that explained that to me. That, you know, when I was on the publicity campaign that I had to pull all these stories out. And it was actually that process of pulling the stories out that helped me get to where I am today, because I had to really think back. And I was thinking back to maybe I would get questions about something in my business from 20 years ago that I'd actually forgotten about. So it was pulling all these stories and experiences that actually helped me get clarity on what that message was and what that niche was.

So is there a process of extracting those stories from the past that you might have forgot about? Because I'm sure we all have a million stories that are probably very timely and effective, but just they're not tip of our mind. Yeah, there's not a prompt or something. I mean, is there an exercise or something you use or were taught?

There is. I don't have an exact structure in front of me. You caught me off a little bit, but it's really just sitting down and going, okay, what's four stories that I can think about at a time where I felt like I was really winning at something and really thinking back and then, okay, well, what's four stories that I can think about where I overcame a specific challenge? And what was that challenge?

What.

What were four stories that I can come up with where I felt like I was absolutely on my knees and I, you know, it was that. That moment where. Where something dropped in and that was the change and starting to. To go, okay, well, you know, there's the stories, the. Looking back, what are the learnings? What are the wins? What are those transition moments? And once you Start actually noting those stories down. The more and more you talk about it, the more and more you will re will come up, the more you will remember. So that's what I would suggest doing. Keeping some sort of journal or diary.

Yeah, I guess it's just constantly thinking stream of thoughts is kind of just like unload your brain as much as you can and then see what comes out of it.

Yeah, totally.

Yeah, I love it. Well, cool. I guess. So when you transition. So, you know, back in the past, you had all these systems and all that stuff. Now that you're working more in the digital space, obviously you're working with a lot of others. It's probably a lot to manage. Obviously you're growing your business, their business. You're doing podcasts, I know you go on other ones as well. So you're doing a lot. Are there some systems that are your kind of go to processes that you couldn't live without now in this day and age?

You know, my favorite system, and it's a system that I take my clients through every single month and I still do. And this is a process that my very first business coach taught me. And the reason I use it so much is because so many people are in overwhelm. Like you say, I do so much. So does everyone. There is so much to do and people are overwhelmed. So this is a really old school system that I've bought into 2018, and it's how to prioritize your week so that it doesn't get out of control. And it's about sitting down and working your personal calendar. So this isn't as sexy as some amazing flowchart or some click funnels or anything like that. But this system will help you get your, you know, feeling like you're back in control of your life and your business.

Yeah.

And it's breaking your your week up so that you're covering all the different aspects in your business that need to be done. So the very first. So sit down with your Monday to Friday and start to think, what are the things that I need to do in my life to make sure that I'm showing up as the best person I can be? And the reason that's the very first thing you need to think about is because you can get caught on this treadmill, on this hamster wheel where all you're doing is getting up, working, and then all of a sudden it's bedtime and you haven't actually stepped away from your computer. Right. So it's going, okay, well, what are the things that I need to do. And for me, like right back, back in the day when I first did this, it was making sure that I got my three gym sessions in a week in the morning, because that's what I personally like to do. That gives me energy, so gives me clarity, helps me just, you know, that's my version of meditation. And the second was spending time with my kids when I picked them up from school one day a week we used to like go get coffee and cake because I used to take them back to the business with me. So there was one day a week where we would just go out. So I put those in my calendar first. So start to think, you know, what is it? Do you like to meditate? Do you like to walk on the beach, Go to the gym, you know, have lunch, whatever it is, and put those in the calendar every single week at the same time. And the second thing you do is put in the must dos. So the admin, the balancing the books, reconciling your books, making sure that you're doing sales calls, clearing up admins, speaking to the team, all those kind of things that need to be done. Your deliverables. So what do you need to deliver on for your paying clients? And that goes in the calendar next. And the reason that you do that is so that you, at any time of the. What happens is over time, that turns into a habit and you don't have to waste time thinking in between each say, you know, Monday, I do my. Reconcile my accounts at lunchtime. I know that that's done. And I don't need to think, oh my goodness, what needs to be done next? Because I just know, bang, this is the next thing that needs to be done. And it has. And once we implement this with our clients, I would say the productivity goes up about three times because you're taking away the overwhelm of thinking what needs to be done next? And it's all there. And you're making sure that all of the things, the things even that you don't like doing. I hate reconciling the books, but it means it's done. It's just done and it's out the way and we've ticked that box and we move on.

I love it. And that's the thing is some of the most effective strategies, like this one here, don't need to be some shiny, sexy new app or whatever. It could just be something as simple as that. And I bet like over time, and you can probably speak to this is you'll start doing the things and you have note of all these things you have scheduled. But maybe the reconciling your books, you're like, why am I doing this? I could just hire that out.

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And you know, I do have bookkeepers, but I do like to reconcile them myself. I like to see where everything thinks going. But you're dead right. And you know what's even better is that your team, you're actually training your team, that I'm not available at these times and instead of them coming and bothering you and stopping you in your flow, they know, you know, Sam at this time is at the gym. She's not even going to pick up the phone. She's not going to be sending me a message. So I'm not even going to bother, you know, messaging her right now. I know she's at the gym. And half the time they figure it out themselves anyway.

Oh yeah, yeah.

No, we've actually implemented very similar strategies with our team where we pretty much is just clearly setting expectations with the team. Right. So Joe and I, we both, we're both big fans of time blocking as well. We have, we basically have shared calendars. My wife has access to my calendar, you know, Joe's wife has access to his calendar. And then Joe and I's calendars overlap so that like everybody in our lives are sort of always in the loop with things. And you know, that is one thing that I think was a big game changer in our business was we went to our various team members and started saying between this hour and this hour, don't even bother trying to get a hold of us. We're not going to respond and just sort of setting those expectations and sort of getting them trained, that this is the hours you're able to get a hold of me and these are the hours that I'm. I've got preset things blocked off, so don't even bother. And so now we've got our team to a point where they check in once first thing in the morning within like an hour of us kind of getting to the office and getting rolling, and then once at the very end of the day. And that's the only time we hear from any of our team members. We only want those two check ins.

Yeah. And I have exactly the same time. And I love that you said that because I don't bother checking in in the day. Occasionally I'll get a message because they have a question and I actually like my team to ask questions rather than stuff a task. But they know that I get up my I set the day at 6am all of my stuff is to them for the whole day, because I just don't want to be bothered. And then we'll check in at the end of the day and make sure, you know, make sure that they're in a good place as well. Because I really care about my team, and I don't want to just dump them, but I also want to empower them to just make sure that they get stuff done.

Yeah. And I think. And you noted the whole thing about flow, and I think that's a big thing that a lot of folks don't think about. They might create this really good to do list and. Or even they might prioritize their maybe top three things they really, really want to get done that day. Maybe if it's even just one thing. But if you can't find that flow, if you're just constantly interrupted with all sorts of stuff, like even, you know, potential sales calls, they're calling you on unscheduled times, or your team's checking in, asking questions at all times of the day, it's like there's no way you can find that flow and work your best.

No. And you're always just trying to play catch up all the time because you're being, you know, interrupted, and then it takes how long to get back to what you're doing? But, you know, flow even goes further than that is. What is your personal flow? How do you flow? I know you guys said that you. You batch your podcast recordings for me. I tried that because everyone told me how great that was, and it doesn't work because I would have someone else's topic in my head, and I. And I found that I couldn't flow into the next topic easily. So you need to discover your own flow as well.

Yeah, yeah, that's. That's a good point. Yeah. And luckily, we're okay with that. And it could be because there's two of us, so the dynamics. Okay, we can kind of shift, which. About that, it's very interesting because usually every podcast day, there's always a common theme that weirdly intersects all of our interviews together without saying anything. But it's kind of cool.

Yeah, no, that's probably something that's like, sort of subconscious about what you just said is we probably unconsciously lead these episodes down the paths that, you know, we've had other interviews that day about, because today the theme has definitely been processes, systems. Make sure that anything that you do repetitively is something that's mapped out and shareable. With other people. And that's something that we've actually talked about with multiple of our guests today. So it's probably like an unconscious thing that we don't even realize it. But flowing from podcast to podcast, we tend to come back to the same themes that we've had throughout the day.

Obviously, it's exactly what your listeners need to hear, so that's not a bad thing.

Right? Yeah. So I guess other than, you know, so we talk a lot about systems and things like that and the process. I love the whole, the flow that you take your clients through.

What other, I guess what other, I hate to say, like secret sauce or magic. Magic tricks. Do you. But like, what's something that's very unique to what you bring to not only your own business, but to your clients that you feel you'd love to share here?

Oh, far out. You've thrown me on the spot there, haven't you?

Keeping it interesting. You don't have to answer that immediately.

So here's another question we can kind of circle back around if we get to it. So you mentioned that a big part of the strategy you do with your clients is through a lot of content and content marketing stuff. And we're huge proponents of content marketing. Our entire business for the last 13 years has been focused around content marketing, blogging, podcasting, YouTube, that sort of stuff. What sort of content strategies do you apply to your various customers, businesses?

So for my clients, I always sit down and it's got to do with what is the outcome that they're trying to achieve. Because what I do and what works for me doesn't necessarily work for the next person. And I find that a lot of coaches will just cookie cutter, do this thing, do this podcast, do this blog, do this thing. But, you know, I've got a client, for example, who has a very large manufacturing firm here in Australia, and she's using the success that she's had in that and a lot of the awards that she's just recently won to launch her personal brand and her speaking career. Her content marketing strategy is going to be very, very different to mine because the avatar of the person that she's speaking with and the outcome of what she's trying to get is very different. So for her, it's okay. You're talking to CEOs and business owners, you know, 5 million-plus. Her content strategy is on LinkedIn. It's, it's, you know, a lot on LinkedIn. It's a lot of, it's actually a lot of old school networking for her in Australia, where whilst I want I'm on LinkedIn, I really love to podcast. I'm like you guys, I love podcasting. My people listen to that. So it's about sitting down and going, where are your people? I've got a property developer. His strategy is very, very. Most of his strategy is actually on Instagram because the people that he works with are in beachside million dollar properties. They're on Instagram looking at the beautiful other beachside properties that are, you know, millions of dollars and not so much on LinkedIn. And even if they are on LinkedIn, which they are, they're in work mode, not thinking about renovating their property. So it's very important to go, what's the outcome that I'm trying to achieve and where are my ideal clients hanging out and creating for those people? And not just creating willy nilly.

Yeah. And I imagine there's an element of sustainability to it as well because, you know, there's a lot of different avenues we can go down with content marketing that we probably wouldn't be able to stick to. The thing that's nice about this podcast is we do batch them so we literally focus on the podcast one day a month. The podcast, the audio files go to team members, they take care of it from there. It's sustainable for us because we only put that one day a month of focus on it. If we were to try to do a podcast where we were just kind of whenever it worked for our guests and we were trying to do schedules all over the place and it wasn't this daily thing, we'd probably never be able to sustain it. So I imagine, you know, there's going to be a lot of people that, you know, maybe they just love spending time on LinkedIn and that's the sustainable thing that they could keep on doing. And you know, I always kind of link that analogy to sort of like the diet analogy, like what's the best diet in the world? The one that you're actually going to.

To stick.

Stick with. Right, yeah. What's the best content strategy in the world? The one that you're going to keep on doing consistently and not fall apart on.

Yeah, and that's a really, really great point there that I just want to stop so that people realize that is that when you hear someone saying, you know, video is the thing, Facebook Live's the thing, that's where you're going to get all your clients from. If you really don't enjoy showing up on video, then don't do it because energetically we. We can feel that. We can see that you're really uncomfortable. And. But if you are a great writer, then just do that. Sure. Over time, as you get more comfortable, the more you write, probably, you know, you. You'll go into podcasting or some sort of audio or videos. That's fine. But right at the beginning, do what is your genius zone and do that well, rather than trying to be everywhere and do what everyone tells you to do. And I, And I'm not saying about using that as a procrastination, like, I don't like to do it. I'm not, I'm not. I don't mean that. I'm just tap into what it is that you're really good at and do that.

Yeah, no, I love that because there are a lot of folks out there touting the best tactic or strategy that you have to try now. And, but.

And that's because they're selling that, right?

Of course, of course. And it's kind of selling it. But there is no concrete way to do anything. I mean, that's. There's approaches for everything that you can do that fits your personality, feel a little bit more creative or do something different. I mean, it's totally up to you. And I think that's just a good reminder to everybody to always just follow what is really your flow. If you're trying to kind of work uphill, you know, doing something that's out of your realm, then you're not going to really succeed. Like, you should.

Totally.

I love it. All right, well, did you think of that one thing, that maybe.

That was kind of a gotcha? Qu? Not really a gotcha. I don't like doing that, but I was just curious. But that's okay.

Joe's always looking for a magic bullet.

No, no, no, no. So.

So you mentioned, you mentioned that you help the clients with. With exposure as well, sort of media exposure and that type of stuff. Now, does that kind of tie back to a lot of the content strategy or is that separate strategies?

Look, it all ties in together. So those nine pieces, whilst they might sit on their own, you know, we're talking about getting your message clear. And your content strategy and your media as separate pieces, they're actually all the same. I don't mean the same. That was actually really dumb. I mean that they all integrate together. It's like one jigsaw puzzle. Each piece has to fit with the others. They don't actually sit out there like an island on their own. So you were talking about, what do I do that's my thing with my clients. Everything that I do, I create a framework for. I'm huge into frameworks. And one of my mentors taught me how to create these frameworks. And ever since I saw the benefit of them, I create a framework for everything. So if we're sitting down, for example, with my clients and they go, oh, my God, I've got to create content. I don't know what to write, which a lot of people would say, it's okay. Here you've got this framework that I've, you know, the content creation framework. Write these things at the top and then just fill your dot points in. You've got a whole month's content within, you know, half an hour. And it's all pulled from, you know, the models that we've created. So I give them frameworks, I give them empty models, they fill their bits in, and it just makes everything really, really quick. Quick to create all the time. So that would be what I do with my clients. And then, you know, like you say flow, that's one of the things that I say. Here's your framework. Now you flow within that framework and create it so that it works for you. But just taking that, I call it blank page. Itis. You know, when you look at a blank piece of paper and you think, shit, where do I start? I don't know where to start. You sort of procrastinate for a while rather than do that. Here's a framework, here's some boxes. Just fill these things in here. Cool, we're done and moving on.

Oh, I love that.

There you go.

Yeah. No, Joe and I, we actually have this philosophy in our business of never start from scratch. We always say that, I swear, like, there's not a day goes by where we don't talk about the concept of never start from scratch. And even when it comes to content, one of the ways we do content is we actually go out and we'll hire very, very, very inexpensive writers, oftentimes not even English as a first language writer. And we'll get them to sort of do the initial research and write up sort of a blueprint of a piece of content for us. And then once they've done that, we take that and then sort of mold it like clay into the content that we really wanted, because we never start from scratch.

I love the hat. I love that. Can I pinch that?

Of course. Go for it. Have fun. I put you on the spot. So that was our thanks.

No, but in reality, that was kind of what I was looking for. Is that what you just said? It's really cool that we were able to kind of nail it on the head there with frameworks, because I think some of the most successful businesses, if it's internal frameworks or one that you're selling, I mean, those are like the best things you can possibly have because they're just so scalable and it frees your mental space, your energy, it's. That deloads your brain. Your brain shouldn't be storing all that stuff. Put that elsewhere in a system.

Absolutely. So if I'm doing a workbook for I run two live intensives with my advanced program and if I'm working on the workbook, I say, okay, well what am I trying to create here? What's the outcome? And I think I need to get all of this out of my head. Does this fit into a circle? Does it fit into a triangle? Does it fit into a square? And you just start to get the content that's in your head and mold it into a framework so that you can hand it on for other people to fill in their gaps.

I love it. Well, I think we covered a lot.

This is good because this is all the stuff that, I mean, this is exactly hitting us square we're at right now in our business. I know a lot of our listeners have asked for more of this stuff here. So where can folks go and learn more from you? Because I'm sure you have a lot to offer.

Thank you. So you can find me at SamanthaRiley Global right there on my homepage. You can download a free copy of my Thought Leaders Positioning Checklist, which is the five essential steps you need to make sure that you've got right at the beginning to position yourself as the expert. I've also got there at some point. Samantha Riley, Global Plan. There's a business planner which is a great framework in the system to sit down to see where the holes in your business are. And it's a PDF that you can print out and step away from your computer and just start to reflect on where is the business now? Where do you want it to be so you can start filling in the gaps?

Love it. And we'll make sure we put those links in our show notes too, so people have easy access to them. We do have one question that we like to ask everybody and that is about books. Are there any books that have had a big impact on your life or business that you find yourself recommending often?

So I'm sure that everyone has read the Four Hour Workweek that was the very first book that I read where I went, oh my goodness, there's a whole world out there that I don't know. So if you haven't read it, it's a good read. I don't know that I believe the four hour work week as such, but the principles in there you can pick up and move into your business. But once I'd really. The book that I recommend for all my clients is Booked Solid by Michael Port. It's such a great book that really helps you to understand your niche and how to create this red carpet system for your clients to find you and come and buy from you.

That's a new one Book Solid. Cool. We'll check that out and yeah, we'll link all this stuff in the show notes. So you guys listening? Definitely easy access. You can go there and capture all that stuff. Cool. Sam. Well, thank you very much for taking the time with us. And a lot of this stuff we're going to probably go away and implement even better than we are already doing before.

Thanks so much for having me. I've absolutely had a blast chatting with you guys.

Awesome. We'll talk soon. Bye. All right, thank you. And I hope you just enjoyed this episode you just listened to. Now, right now, before we sign off, I have a few things I would love for you to do. So the very first thing is to go find our guest on Facebook and tell them that you loved their episode with us. That's going to help them just feel good about themselves, but also it's going to spread the word a little bit more for us. Go find them on Facebook, everybody's on Facebook. And go say that you love their episode and maybe one cool thing that you learn there. The second thing is to go to itunes and subscribe to our podcast. Just look up Hustle and Flowchart and hit the subscribe button. And the very last thing, the third thing, is to leave us a review on itunes or wherever you're listening to this podcast and help us spread the word more. That's how more people are going to get this awesome knowledge, this, this cool podcast training and a whole bunch of other cool free training that we give out@evergreen profits.com. so that's about it. Go find them on Facebook, go subscribe on itunes and leave us a review. You would be amazing if you did that. But you're always amazing. So thanks for listening and we'll catch you in the next episode.

You're awesome.