In this episode of The One Small Change Podcast, Yvonne McCoy sits down with Heather Cameron, an experienced business strategist and coach, to explore the power of embracing authenticity in the digital business world. Heather Cameron reveals why building a business that is truly your own—rather than succumbing to outside pressures, industry trends, or generic online advice—is key to lasting success. The conversation delves into actionable strategies for filtering out the “shoulds,” leveraging AI without losing your voice, and knowing when to seek real, supportive help. The episode also highlights the importance of models, practical delegation, and the value of continually revisiting your business’s core purpose. Whether you're an entrepreneur at any stage, you’ll come away with thought-provoking insights and concrete steps to strengthen your unique path forward.

Guest Bio:

Heather Cameron is a business strategist and coach with over 20 years of entrepreneurial experience. She specializes in helping women entrepreneurs grow their businesses authentically and confidently, without succumbing to copycat pressures or “one-size-fits-all” formulas. Alongside her coaching practice, Heather is the creator of the successful Scrapbooking Fun Summit, blending her business acumen with creative community-building. She is passionate about supporting business owners in finding the unique strategies and voices that fuel their growth and fulfillment.

Chapters:

00:00 "Entrepreneurship: Evolving Strategies Explained"

06:15 "Teaching Requires Talent and Flexibility"

08:10 "Be Your Own Advocate"

11:52 "Personalized Coaching Over Mass Approach"

14:24 "Objective Framework Through Models"

17:54 "Balancing Productivity: Personal & Work"

22:00 "Authentic Marketing, Anti-Jargon Approach"

25:08 AI Content and Strategy Questions

28:46 Time Audit for Maximum Productivity

30:01 "Evaluating Efforts and Outsourcing"

34:34 "Brain Growth Through Connections"

Quote from the Guest:

"Whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right."

Link:

Your AI Reality Checks Checklist

https://igniteyourmarket.com/AI-Checks

Hello everybody, welcome to The One Small Change. I am so

glad that you're taking time out of your schedule to join me today,

and I hope that you will find something that

will help you to grow your business. I'm Yvonne McCoy, your host,

and I bring almost 30 years of entrepreneurial experience. I

can't talk, but I bring the experience anyway,

and I have a passion for discovering growth through the power of seemingly

small change. And every week I try to introduce you to

somebody that maybe you don't know so that you can get

some different insights and help you to transform your

business. And today we're going to be talking with Heather Cameron,

and she's going to share with you a small, unexpected, or

insignificant decision that sparked a remarkable

transformation and growth in either their life or their personal business.

So Heather, thank you for being here. Thank you for

inviting me. I'm excited to have a chat with you. I'm excited too.

And, and I want you to tell everybody what it is you do and

what happened that makes you the expert at what you do.

I am— I have two things that I do. I kind of wear two hats,

which is always a challenge, but it's a lot of fun. So I am a

business strategist and coach. So I work with women entrepreneurs to help them

grow their business authentically themselves. I think there's so much pressure online these

days to be somebody else. And I think success comes when you step

into who you are. And then the second part of my business is I actually

took the— I've been in business for 20+ years, and I took the

experience I had running summits in the business space, and I run a summit in

the crafting space. And so we have a really successful summit called Scrapbooking

Fun Summit. And so that's kind of my other half of my business, and it's

always a bit of a challenge to balance the two. But I'm sure

that you do. And so I guess for the audience,

The main thing I think is the business strategy.

And I love what you said about not feeling pressured from

the outside because I hear that all the time from my clients as well, is

that they took expensive courses, they didn't get the results

that they wanted. It didn't make them feel

more confident. They felt worse, actually.

You took the words right out of the email that I'm writing this morning for

my newsletter, which is exactly— I was using the

Olympics as a I'm an Olympic junkie a little bit, and I

was using the Olympics. As you know, they have a successful athlete

has many coaches. They don't just have one coach, and most of their coaches have

not won an Olympic medal, right? And yet we get this thing that

we must hire somebody who's done what we've done, but that doesn't make them a

good teacher. And so I think that we really have to, number one, be really

strong in the conviction of what our business is and what we want it to

be. And we do know, even if we're just starting out, there's a knowledge of

what you want to do. So standing in that and being really strong in that,

I think, is important. And the thing, the thing that I think

is interesting and I think that's missing from most

things is the idea that,

well, this is what I say, you don't need to be fixed, you need to

be found. But that doesn't mean that you

can't tune in or dial in

as you go along. There are different stages in your business. There are different stages

in your in your message. You kind of start out wider, and then the more

you start to do the one thing, the deeper that you get

into it, the better that you get, the more clarity that you have.

And I think, you know, I say all the time, being an entrepreneur

is shooting at a moving target. Your clients move at a different

speed, they go through the process of different things, your business

is at a different stage. And so something that might work at

one point may not be the same strategy that

you want further down the line. Well, and it isn't. It isn't,

right? It's a learning thing. But I think that, you know,

one of the shifts that I made that's been always something that I have to

go back to, and I think to me it's one of the important ones, it's

the model of I just have to have that one thing and then I'll start

doing that thing and I'll start being successful. But flipping that and

deciding who do I need to be as a business owner, who do I need

to be to be successful, and then find the things that are going to help

me be successful. Versus, you know, looking for if I could just get

the perfect coach, then I'll start to do the perfect thing. Well, what if you

started being in that of going, you know, I'm going to

be this successful business owner, what does that look like for me?

And I think that shift, and it's a bit of a mental shift, can

really help you land stronger on your feet,

if that makes sense. Well, I, I think the other thing with

that is This is

what I heard from the first speaking coach that I had.

He was like, you are perfect for the people that need

you now. So there's always somebody, you know, there's always

somebody who needs to know that's behind you or hasn't gotten to

where you are, who needs what you have. And there'll always be somebody

in front of you who is more, you know,

experienced than you are. And so it's not about comparing

yourself with, you know, the people who are further

along. It's about helping the people who need you now.

And a perfect example of that was

I wanted— at one point in my life, I wanted to teach weight loss

because I had lost over 100 pounds, but I wasn't at my

ideal weight. And I said, well, I can't teach this because I'm not

at my ideal weight. And he goes, don't you think there are plenty of people

who would like to know how to lose 100 pounds. Yep. And,

and the point is that you lost it and kept it off, which most

people haven't been able to do. That's something that you can teach

right now. So I think people need to

stop trying to be perfect because there is no such thing. But the

other thing is, while you're trying to be perfect for a certain situation,

by the time you get close, that situation is gone.

Yeah. And one of my mentors said the best person to teach you how to

learn a piano is somebody who just learned, not the concert pianist. Yes.

Right. It's not the concert pianist. It's not the person who's— and in fact, typically

speaking, the concert pianist is a terrible teacher

because they're focused on that. And I think the online space has opened

up that, right? We look for— and that's where kind of going back to the

Olympic analogy is there's lots of people out there

saying, I'm a coach, who have— may or may not have any experience, but they

were really good about doing something their way. And then they're teaching

their way and they don't have open and flexibility to teach it

that the way that's going to help you actually use it. And that's where you

get that dissatisfaction in courses and things like that. You know, I, I

honestly believe that mentoring, coaching, and teaching is a combination of

experience, um, learned things, and talent,

right? There's a talent that is in there. And when we, when we

dismiss the talent part of it is when we get into trouble and we take

courses that don't work. And there's a new player in the game. That's really

disrupting things, and that's AI, right? Because we go to AI

now for that first initial conversation,

and we believe AI. And AI is

just a— and I love AI, so don't get me wrong, I use it every

single day, but I use it in a different way. So we have this new

thing, this new layer coming on to all of this stuff where I

was working with a client the other day, and they— she had it right, and

then she went to AI, and a— right for her. And when I say right,

I mean right for her. And then she went to AI, and it totally took

her off track. And because of her

experience level, it was just taking her, and it would— it stripped

her of her own voice. It stripped her of who she was trying to be.

And because of the space that she's in, she's in a consumer space—

excuse me— it took her into a

corporate speak because that's kind of AI's direction.

And so it's another thing in the game that's taking people off track and

making them actually feel like they can't do what they want to

do? You hit on a couple of things that I think are

so important, right? So I guess I'll work backwards. I'll start with the AI.

No, I'm going to start with be your own advocate.

So I think that once you

know what direction you want to go in, that is

going to be the thing that's going to keep you on track. And

not only, not only with, you know, what you're doing in your business, but

also kind of your legacy, what you're le— you know, what you're— the way that

you show up in the world, right?

And I think that a lot of

our uniqueness has been conditioned out of us,

you know, because it doesn't fit the mold. And so you have to be an

advocate for yourself, and that shows up can show up

in so many places. I mean, just when you go to the doctors, you can

say, wait, you know, I mean, when my dad

was really sick, you know, I said to him,

I said to the doctor, I don't want you to look at this man like

a 90-year-old that only has a certain amount of time left. This

man was walking up until, you know, a couple of months ago, he was walking

3 miles a day. He was doing this. His mind is

bright, you know. Do not put him, pigeonhole him into that.

And the same thing with AI. You have to train AI. You can't

just take it at rote. And so, you

know, I'm like you. I use AI all the time. And

once you kind of get it trained and give it different sources and

go, no, I mean, there are certain— I mean, and there are certain things that

just kill me. Like in my model, the D and B found is

delight, deliver, and delight. Because I believe that you have to

delight somebody before they will start working

with you and you can deliver to them. And even once you're delivering, you still

need to delight them. And AI seems to think that that's a

repetition and it takes out the first delight every single

time. I mean, I'm like, you know, you know, and even if you train it,

it's going to do stuff like that. So it's, it's an interesting— it is. I

mean, it's a great tool, but it has certain things in it. But you said

something that I wanted to comment on, if that's okay, which is being your own

business. Like, so one of the models I always use with my clients is— and

this is a filter, I find it's a filter to listen to anybody's

feedback— is what type of business do you want to do? Do you want to

be— and I use something called the restaurant lens. So all restaurants

have a model that works, but you can be the McDonald's of your industry. Nothing

wrong with it. It can be really profitable. You can be the,

you know, small diner. You can be the franchise

chain like Olive Garden or something like that. You can be a bistro, or you

can And when you choose what you want to be,

how you listen to everything else changes. And if you, you know, for

me, one small change I made was stepping into who I want to be as

a business. And I want to be a bistro. I don't want to be a

5-star restaurant. I don't want to be that top end. I also don't

want to be a franchise model. I love the fact that I'm very

hands-on with my clients, that you get a very intimate experience. I want to

be the bistro. And just stepping into that has really helped

me. I've been in business for 20 years and we go through evolutions and more

than 20 years. But stepping into that and reckoning that this is the business I

want to be helps me filter out all the shoulds from everybody

else coming at me, right? Yeah, so I should charge

$100,000 or whatever number you want to put in there. No, I'm not a 5-star

restaurant. I don't need to use that methodology. But I also don't need to

be mass on social media because I'm not a McDonald's, right? So

it helps you filter out the information that's coming at you. So

I, and I think the other thing is, and I think having a filter is

really good because, you know, it's— there used to be a

time when the expert had all the information, right? But now we can

go online, we've got AI, so information is not the issue.

It's how to use it and what's the right information that a

coach or an expert can help you with. And I'm with you, I am

more of— somebody said, oh, you're a boutique business.

And but I find that I like that

one-on-one and, you know, so that I can personalize what

you're doing so that you can be successful the way you want.

The question I always ask a lot is, what is the

purpose of this? You know, so if you're

doing something because somebody told you to do it, what is it that you

expect to get out of that? And, and will that really give it to

you? Are you just doing it because somebody told you? I mean,

it's funny, I've never had a

workshop that's had like 100

people registered, and I do a real workshop where

you participate and do exercises. I'm not sure I want

100 people to show up because I can't really filter, you know, I

can't really make the connection. So I'm perfectly fine when only

20 people show up for my workshop, and I could almost

consider that big. Right, exactly. And right, and so, and, but

you know what, what's interesting is because you and I talk from the same place,

but there's a tone of almost apology in that statement, right? Which there shouldn't be,

right? It shouldn't be, I'm fine. It should be, I'm ecstatic that 20 people

showed up. And it's— I love that you use that word because that was, that

was one of my models too. I am ecstatic. So yeah, but

it is, we get this thing in our heads that we have to be these

other things. And that my very first freebie that I wrote

20-some-odd years ago, whenever I did it, was called a should buster because

we are shoulded to death online, but we also should ourselves to death,

right? We tell ourselves we should do this and we should do that. And I

always tell my clients like, stop. And is this a want or a should? Because

if it's a want, it deserves your attention. If it's a should, then let it

go, right? If it doesn't move to a want, then you don't need to do

it, right? And then putting a timeframe on it is also important, right? I

want to do it, but hey, I don't have time right now. I'm going to

do it in 6 months. That's a good answer. Right. We don't have to do

everything right away. But yeah, we, it's not, we don't need to,

we need to be the business we need to be for ourselves, not the

business we need to be for someone else. I think the other thing

is you talked about models and I do a lot of models too. And one

of the reasons I do models is because it kind of takes us

out of our, what's wrong with me? What didn't, you know,

you know, I should have known this or, you know, like you were talking

about. And kind of takes that subjective judgment

and gives you an objective framework, you know. So when we

talk about— you were talking about, you know, the things I want to do and

the things I should do. I have a model called

Productivity Ahead. And the first thing is awareness,

awareness of the situation that you're in right now.

You know, what else is going on in my life? You know, if it's—

is this the— you know, I'm not going to plant a garden in the middle

of winter. You know, so some of it's common sense.

Some of it is, you know, I'm

sick and I got this and I got that and I'm still

going to try, which is what I tried to do. Go ahead at 150%,

which did not work very well. The next thing is, what

can I put on hold? Right. It's not that you're getting

rid of it. You're just putting it on hold. The next thing is, what can

I eliminate? Right. And some of them

is, you know, you eliminate it. You can either, you know,

well, anyway, the next one is what can I automate? What I tell people is

automation is not necessarily technical. It's just the system

so that you know what to do, what to do next. And we, we used

to do this when my kids got to a point where they would cook. I

cooked on Saturday. My husband cooked on Sunday. We had leftovers Monday and

Tuesday. My one daughter cooked on Wednesday. My son cooked on Thursday. And

Friday we did go for yourself. And it worked really well because we knew

who was responsible, who, you know, had to take care of stuff. But you

also said something else. You said

the things you should— well, that you should— I know, I know

what it is. You

said, I went back and looked at one of my old models, and I—

that just happened to me recently. I was like trying to get rid of stuff

and And I found stuff

that I had done when I first started coaching,

and I went, oh my God, why am I not using this now? It would,

it would be in a different form, kind of, but the

nugget, the gem of whatever it was, was

still viable. And I, and I think what

that people should always go back every once in a while and revisit

where they, the thing that made them start doing what they're doing. I

agree. And it shows you that you're still on

track, that you're still in the right ballpark, and you've

just refined it. And it was like, oh

my God, I can't throw this away. This is great. I like this. Well, and

I redid mine. I took it and redid it because I still think it's very

important. You need to, like, putting places in the model that you just

talked about. I think we have the same brain in some respects. I have a

very similar model of what do I want to stop doing? What do I want

to do less of? What do I want to maintain? What do I want to

increase? And what do I want to create? And those 5 questions have

really a great way of assessing where you are in your business or in

your life. It doesn't matter. You can use those 5 questions in so many ways.

Well, they're really powerful, but they have that same kind of

putting things in their right place and giving them the right energy. So

just, just as a funny aside, the, the worksheet

that goes with Productivity Ahead has one—

has two columns. One is for business, one is for personal, because you don't

get 24 hours for business and another 24 hours for personal.

So the idea is that you, you know, you are one

person. And I always say, you know, it's great if you can get

all the steps in both your personal and your private, but at least

get them between the two of them. Get them,

you know, get one for each. And the other thing that

you said that, that, that we were talking about is one of

the reasons that I start where I start. And I think where you start with

what kind of business you want is because a lot of times in

terms of productivity and doing stuff, people go, what can you delegate? What

can you delegate? And what happens is when you start with delegation,

you're actually delegating the wrong things.

You're delegating the junk stuff. Delegation is actually training

someone who can help you and represent you in your business.

Well, it's also delegating the things that are going to have the biggest impact. Yes.

I mean, there are some stuff that we just have to— we all have to

do taxes, let's face it. We all have to do the stuff. There are some

things that are nice to delegate that, you know, accounting, all that kind of stuff

that we have to do. But delegation and hiring a VA

or however it is should strengthen your business, not just detach

Right. Because it's funny because I was having this conversation yesterday.

If you remember the Eisenhower Matrix, I think it's Eisenhower, which is, you know,

important, not important, urgent, not urgent. Yeah. You don't need

anybody to do the not urgent, not important stuff.

Right. No one needs to be doing that. And so, but that's

often what gets delegated. What should be delegated is the important, not urgent

stuff. Like that should not delegated but supported. That should be

supported with delegation. Um, and the

urgent and not important, why are we even there? Yeah, right.

And so just even that simple. So there's so many models out there that we

can use that are so simple, and yet we make things very

complicated as human beings. So the other thing,

let's talk about this just a little bit, because both of us are talking about

being our real self. And so, you know, one of

the things that I like to do is share a lot of my

models. And if it doesn't click with you, that's fine.

You know, let's come up with a model that will accomplish the same thing that

makes more sense to you, or let's change the words or the way you think

about it. You know, so you may not, you know, with the Eisenhower

model, you may not say important, urgent, not important,

not whatever. That may not be something that you can pull up real

fast in your brain. Right?

You may have different words for that, but it does the same thing.

But you will be able to use your version of it where you

won't use the other version. If you don't use it, what good is it?

Well, exactly. We all think differently. Actually, I have a— in my corporate— when I

first started my business, I did leadership development in corporate world for the first like

10 years, and I'm certified in something called, um,

got I can't even think of the name of it right now, but it will

come. But it looks at the fact that we all think differently. So,

you know, one model isn't going to work for each other. Effective intelligence is

what it's called. We all

perceive the world differently. We all have different filters. So you're right,

each model has to be filtered for us. And that's what,

and again, AI is playing into this and all of the people out there we're

talking about is that Instead of trying to highlight individuality

and making our businesses our own and making us shine through, because that's what's

actually going to get people attracted to you, there's a flattening going on right now.

Yeah, right. There's a tone flattening going on right now, which my passion, part of

what I'm working on, is to get people to maintain their voices,

maintain their uniqueness, maintain their business model,

because that's what's going to make them successful and shine in this world that's being

flattened by AI. What, you know, one of the things that this happened

yesterday, we were rewriting my landing page and I'm

like, I would never say, you know, these marketing words,

right? Can we take these out? I mean, I, you know, I kind of

consider myself the anti-marketing

person. So

this is not going to, this is not going to attract the kind of people

that I'm looking for. You know, this is, and it's not me.

So, you know, it was— I forgot what the word— there was

differentiation, right, was one of the words.

And I'm like, I don't care for that. I would just say, what makes you

stand out? What makes you shine? What makes you,

you know? And, and so that is a perfect example,

I think. And the people that I want to

attract have had enough of the differentiation

language and that kind of thing. And I don't think most of our

clients— I mean, when we You know, when I

talk to people about their introduction, I say to them, I don't want you to

start your introduction with, hi, I'm so-and-so. I have, you

know, I've trained for years. I've got this, I do this, this,

this, this, this. I don't care. As the

person that might be attracted to you, I don't care unless I know you can

solve the problem I've got. Your voice is in my head. I

used to do a lot. I grew my business because when we started business long

ago, there wasn't Facebook and Zoom and all this stuff, right? It was face-to-face. And

I used to teach people how to introduce themselves at networking events. And I used

to be on one and I would count in the background, in particular when I

would count how many people said the word I. And I'm like, if you said

I more than once, then your introduction is not working. Right.

And to really rephrase it and get rid of the I, and I find

particularly women, we tend to overexplain the I part.

So, you know, pulling that out and going and changing the introduction to what

can I do for you? Yes. What do I do for you? What problem do

I solve? Or— and creating intrigue even sometimes.

Um, there's a woman I interviewed when I had a podcast several years ago, and

she was like, you know, you want to leave them hungry. You want to give

them an introduction that makes them want to come and talk to you. Yes.

Right? And so you want to leave them hungry. And she was a comedian, actually.

That's how she ended up moving to coaching. And she's like, that's part of what

you do. You want to leave them with that kind of little pull, um, and

not say the I word. So I 100% agree with you. I used to count

the I word for people and say nope. All right, before we run out of

time, because you and I are like having too much fun,

let's, let's talk about your free gift and some

actions that entrepreneurs can take because we want them to be able to

use what we've been talking about and having so much fun with to actually

grow their business. Well, actually, the, the, the

freebie is called Your AI Reality Check. And it just, you honed in

on your doing your page yesterday for exactly its purpose. It's a set of

questions. They're not hard that ask that you should ask before you hit publish.

And one of them, is this my voice? Would I actually say that? Would my

audience actually expect that from me? Right? So there's a

series of questions for how you want to do

AI from a, from a published point of view. So content, sales pages,

blog posts, emails, all that kind of stuff. And then there's a series of questions

for strategy because AI can take you totally off your strategy as well,

right? Like I've used it to say, okay, what's my, you know, now let's work

with 90-day plan. I'm like, I don't want to do that. Like you're telling me

to do something and it's not AI's fault is to always make it better.

And what it uses for better is stuff that's in the world out there, right?

And so the intention really is to give them a

reality check before you hit publish, before you agree to your final content on your

sales page. There's a series of 5 questions. And before you set your

strategy, there's a series of 5 questions to keep you aligned.

And it's really meant to be that gut check.

And everybody can use this. I mean, you know,

I think I've gotten pretty good at my AI. I mean, it's

like I will go back and I'll say, I want you to, you

know, tell it specifically what I want it to do. I want to make sure

that it's pulling in, you know, I've fed in all the models.

You know, so I want to make sure it's touching on those. I want to

make sure that the tone is right, you know, that kind of thing.

And it, it comes back pretty much 80 to 90%

right, and I still, you know, need, need to fix it.

So this will be something that will really help people, especially

if you're just starting out. Yeah, and AI drifts.

Like, even Mew has this, right? AI is changing every single day.

Right? And so it's drifting even though you may have trained it 6

months ago. It's drifting and you have to keep

yourself, you have to keep a check on it. And that's the

responsibility is us as a business owner to keep a check on it. And

AI tends to have a certain way of drifting you towards.

Right now, a lot of negative marketing comes out of AI, right? Why

you don't do this, why you don't do that. So it's really about checking. It's

a check and it's meant to be a gut check. But once you get used

to it, you're going to ask yourself those questions every time you publish something.

What I did a post once that said AI helped me delegate

better because I thought I had fed in all the

instructions that I wanted. And when I got back was like,

what? I'm not being

clear, you know, about what I'm asking. So that's really funny. All right. Give us

3 things that people can do or whatever number

you've got. I mean, let's get it. 3 people. One is make sure you

really decide what type of business you want to be. Like really, and it can,

it can morph and it can change, but you can use my restaurant analogy

or whatever makes sense to you, but step into the type of business you want

to be because it's going to be the most powerful filter that you can

put for yourself because you're going to filter out all the noise that doesn't apply

to you. And you get to say, nope, that's not in my model. I don't

need to do that. Right. So I think that's probably one of the biggest,

strongest things you can do. The second one is

Seek help when you need it, but seek the right type of help,

right? I think most of us have the skills within us to run a business,

otherwise we wouldn't have started this. But we need help that supports us,

not help that tells us how to do it. There's kind of a— that's, that's

a big one. I mean, so

I guess my feeling is I find that a lot of times people

don't want to ask for help because they think I should be able to do

this myself. What is something to

help them to realize that they need help, or that

they're— because there's a

couple of things that come to mind on that one. I actually— we keep landing

on conversations I had this week. Um, I had a conversation with a couple of

people yesterday morning, and it was, um,

you know, one of them was auditing what you're spending your time on, like, and

auditing it with a dollar value to it, like a simple audit And you can

use the matrix that we talked about as well and just say, okay, I'm spending

my time and I'm not getting a return on my

time, like a non-return on my investment, but I'm not actually getting a return on

my time. Where can I get help that's going to help me on this? Could

be that I need a coach to help me move my business to the next

level. It could be I need a VA. I don't know, but it just, it's

a great way of kind of, is my time effectively being used?

And it takes a little bit of honesty. right? To go like, okay. Um,

and one way to do that is just to, you know, give yourself dollar brackets.

Is this a $20 task? Is this a $50 task? Is this a $100

task? I.e., what it's going to do for my business. And you could

use numbers, whatever makes sense. But that's one way to start. It's just kind of

like the other one is, am I spinning my wheels?

Right? Am I keep doing, you know, that old adage, if you keep doing the

same thing over and over again and expect something different, well, no,

you gotta figure out where the changes are. Required. And to add

to that, I would throw in my question, what's the purpose?

And the situation that you described is exactly the

situation I had that I went through at the, you know, at the end of

the year, that I have my weekly newsletter and I

spend an ungodly amount of time on it and finally

decided that I was going to get a VA to do it.

And, you know, so The first thing is, what is— is this something

that's actually doing something to grow my business? What am I, you know, why am

I even doing this? And one of the reasons for me

was it is— for me, it's a lead generator because when I talk to

people, I go, I can list your event. And it's also

a way for me to give back to the community. It's kind of my heart,

so it's important to me. But I was spending

so much time on it, partially because I

was taking responsibility for finding people to be in

it. Like, they had been in it like 4 or 5 months ago,

and I tracked down the website and I was like, oh, I haven't seen so-and-so

stuff. Let me see if I can find what they're doing now. And, you know,

so it used to take me hours to do it and finally got

a VA, got a new submission form and said to people, this

model is not working. We have to change it. And I

actually got it. I got the VA's version of it.

I made my tweaks, which I probably didn't need to do, but

because— and it was done in less than an hour. It was like, oh my

God, this is amazing. Exactly.

And, you know, help can be like that where we're just off-tasking something, and help

can be something where you're just stuck, right? You know, I— people

often hire me, just— and hire yourself, I'm sure— just to move past that stuck

moment because we are I, for example, on elevator pitches or

mantras or whatever purpose of business, I can write anybody else's, but I can't write

my own. And I'm really good at writing other people's

pitches and helping them define what their business is and nailing their niche and

ideal client and all that stuff. I'm really good at it, but I can't do

it for myself, right? We're too deep in our own businesses

sometimes to actually see what's going on. I'm going to

admit this to you, which is very embarrassing. I put— I'm

doing a talk and I put in, you know, some things and I go,

you know, give me your feedback, tell me this. And it was like, okay, here's

where it's strong, here's where it needs to be fixed. And the

number 3 issue was— and I'm talking about

being yourself— the number 3 issue was you don't,

you know, you don't differentiate yourself. You don't tell people why you're good at what

you do. And I'm like, oh,

Me too. I find it, it's really an interesting kind of analogy

about humans. I'm not great at telling people, but I can sell someone else's

business and I can nail it very quickly too. I've done hundreds of them, thousands

of them, right? Hundreds. But my own is hard. So that's why we need

help, right? We need somebody who can help us just kind of clear the

fog and pinpoint what's really the, the thing that we want or the issue or

the next step, whatever it is. Um, and so the help can come in

many different layers, but we need to know that businesses aren't built on an

island, right? And whether it helps just having a conversation with a friend— I've

always had an accountability partner. I've always had that. I've always

sought out accountability partners. I've never paid for one.

I've always just found the relationship that makes sense for me to create

accountability in my business. And that's something important as well. And also,

also, that's a good thing about some— if you, if you're in a good

community you can find good accountability partners. All right.

I hate to do it, but it's that time. So

when's the last time you did something new for the first time?

I did something new for the first time would be in a creative form.

So I love to do art. I used to do a

lot of drawing and I haven't done it in a while. So I have— at

Christmas I was given a gift card and I went out and I bought markers

and I am trying to learn how to draw in a completely different medium. So

I've done other— you can't erase things with markers. It's a very interesting lesson for

me. You can erase things in the other mediums I did. You could lift it

off, but with markers, you're done. You can't fix things. You

can't change things. But I really want to learn how to draw and do

illustrations in that form, finding my own unique

style, which I don't have at all. But that's kind of a craving I've had

for a long time on the creative side. So that is the last time I've

done something new and My drawings aren't that good yet, but they will get

better. Well, I also think when you do something new and you're curious, it

grows your brain, you know, keeps your brain from stagnating. All right,

commercial time. So one of the things I really want to ask

everybody to do is subscribe, share, and engage with, um,

on social media about the podcast. And one of the reasons I do it is

to help you supercharge your business through connections and connection with

people who you may not know that can help you. And so

You know, it's a way for me to give back to the community, and I

hope it's going to fuel your quest for growth

and impact. So I hope you will continue to join me on The One Small

Change, and we embark on, you know, how tiny shifts can yield

monumental transformations. And there are a couple of

individual episodes that I put in that you might be interested in.

Last thing, Heather, tell me what your words of wisdom, your last words are.

One of my favorite quotes, and I remember using this even with my dad when

he was sick, so this comes even to what you were talking about earlier, is

whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right, which is a

Henry Ford quote. And it's so true.

It is so true. The power of our mindset. If we think we can't, we

can't. If we think we can, we can. And so really catch yourself

when you're thinking you can't and, you know, not allowing yourself to grow.

Absolutely. Okay guys, remember that change is simple,

but it's not always easy, and it requires courage, resilience, and a willingness

to step out of your comfort zone. I always say this: if I'm doing something

and I don't have butterflies, it means that I don't care enough or I'm not

doing something new. So I hope you will continue to join me on the one

small change. I hope that your journey gets bolder and

you seek out more innovative possibilities. And until the next

time, stay very, very curious. Thank you, Heather.

Thank you for sharing with us. Thank you for inviting me. I've enjoyed our

conversation. It was great. Make sure you get our gift, everybody.

Bye-bye.