Possums, 

You know how when you meet a new friend, you’re like “CATCH ME UP! TELL ME EVERYTHING! WHO ARE YOU? HOW DID YOU GET HERE? I NEED TO KNOW EVERYTHING STAT!”

No? Just me? Oh. 

I’ll just pretend that another Leonie from an alternate universe has asked me this very same question then. And I’ll share: My childhood. My grief. My ambitions. Finding my husband. Finding my career. Building a 10 million dollar company. Growing a family and a life well loved.

Enjoy, darlings.

Explicit AF

Just to reiterate: this is one sweary motherfucker of a podcast. So if you listen to it around kids… they will defo learn some new vocabulary from Aunty Leonie. MWHAHAHAHA. ENJOYYYYY!

How to listen

Listen below, or subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, PocketCast (or wherever else you listen to podcasts!)

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In this episode I mention:

 

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You can also just sit on your couch and yell “OK Google! Play me “Leonie Dawson Refuses To Be Categorised” podcast!” and your digital servant shall administer to your needs.

Who gives a fuck about privacy when you can have a little robot assistant at your beck and call so you may never leave the couch again.
HONESTLY HOW GOOD IS LIFE.
THE END.

Big hugs,

 

P.S. Transcript below!

Leonie: (00:00)
[A very excellent theme song] I feel like we should be one of those flash podcasts where there’s like an intro and an outro and stuff. But this is as far as we’ve got [BEST INTRO EVER] Leonie Dawson Refuses to be Categorized. The podcast where we talk about shit, we talk about anything that we fucking lack under the Senate. We refuse for it to just be under one motherfucking category. Fuck that nonsense. I should probably win a Grammy cause that was really good. So I want you to know I’m having so much mother fucking fun doing these podcasts. It feels so exciting. And like the whole goal with this was it to feel, it was to feel creative and to feel freedom and just to enjoy creating in this new modality. And I can tell it’s working because I was out walking this morning with my husband along Noosa main beach and I was thinking myself, Ooh, I can’t wait to get home and record another podcast.

Leonie: (01:04)
And I was thinking it’d be really cool just to be able to tell you my story. Um, because it’s kinda like, I guess it’s something that a lot of people ask me is like, yeah, but how did you get to be here? Um, and like what makes you, you and I guess like, you know, when you made a new friend or you’ve been like a friend, like, you know, being friends with someone for a while and you want to kind of do a deep dive, you’re like, all right, well tell me, you know, tell me how you got to be here and tell me how you got to be you and all that beautiful history. So this might be a little bit of a longer podcast. Grab yourself a cup of chai or a little bit of chocolate. Like I just had. Woo. And so let’s buckle up! Let’s have a talk about how Leonie got to be Leonie.

Leonie: (01:57)
So I was born in North Queensland in Proserpine in Australia. It’s a small country town. I grew up on a cattle property. Um, that’s about 2000 acres. And, um, my family were farmers. I’m number four out of five kids. I have two older brothers. And one older sister and one younger sister. And you know, we’re a working farm family. So I started horse riding when I was two. I started mustering cattle on horseback when I was four. Um, I spent a lot of my childhood on the back of a horse chasing cattle and I’m really grateful for that. It was beautiful. I loved being on horseback and I loved horses and I love being able to connect with nature in that way. There was plenty of stuff I really didn’t fucking love about that. Uh, I didn’t love cattle work and I didn’t love being put in dangerous situations with cattle, um, and I hated having to hold down a baby cows tail, um, and hold its leg back while it was being castrated and branded and all that kind of stuff.

Leonie: (03:12)
It’s, it was, you know, it was, it’s intense, but it’s really normal for a family, for a, for a farming family. And I’m still grateful that I got to experience it. Um, I was a really arty, sensitive kind of kid. I didn’t have friends for a really, really long time outside of, uh, my horse and my dog. And looking back, like I realized much later in life that I’m likely Aspergers who are on the autistic spectrum disorder. And that’s a really normal experience to have when you’re Aspergers is if just feel a little bit like you’re an alien. You didn’t get like the social news, um, and you’re just not that interested. And I wasn’t. So, um, I was interested in art. I was interested in writing. I was interested in creating and I was interested in animals and being outside. Um, so that was, that was kind of my life.

Leonie: (04:06)
I was a really dreamy kid, very sensitive. And um, I really liked school just for learning stuff, but I didn’t like it for having to socialize with other children. I found that just completely perplexing. So I spent most of my primary school years in the library at lunchtimes, and I was pretty fucking happy with that. Just being able to be around books. I just, I didn’t understand other kids and that’s all right. Um, by the time I was in high school, I’d kind of worked out that I understood boys better. And so I did have a bunch of really great mates, uh, at that point. And my sister was a couple of years older than me. And so we kind of had this, this gang at high school of some, um, friends that were boys and her and me and one of our cousins. And we had a pretty fun, amazing time of it. I mean, I was bullied fucking relentlessly at school because just a massive weirdo and a nerd. Um, and not somebody who fits in particularly well, but I wasn’t interested in fitting in. So it was just like whatever fucking losers. Like it’s, if you don’t think I’m magnificent, you’re wrong. Cause I am magnificent and I’m really grateful for like that inner knowing within me. That was like, if you don’t think I’m cool, it’s because you don’t have personality.

Leonie: (05:35)
Um, so I just kept trying to trundle away and enjoy my life as much as I could by the time, Oh, when I was 14, my eldest brother died in a farming accident and like it was a massive fucking trauma. It was, it was God awful sad. Um, and it took a long while to recover from that. Um, having said that, I think having such an early and profound bereavement was a big blessing in lots of ways because it taught me so much about life and death and love that I don’t think I would have learned in other ways. So I’m not really like particularly scared of death. I know that relationships change and bloom and grow even after someone has, has died. Uh, and I’ve had enough kind of kind of soul connection with my brother, um, since he’s died. To know that like, that bond of of love is eternal and, um, it does continue to bloom over time, which is such a big, big blessing.

Leonie: (06:51)
When I was about 16, I was like, right. I’m actually done with the small hometown that I was in, I was done with bullying. I was done with just being around the people that I was around. Um, not my friends but everybody else. Um, and so I told my parents that I was either going to go overseas as an exchange student or I was going to send myself to boarding school and I’m very grateful that my parents were so, um, supportive and they said, look, we would prefer if you did an exchange student after you’d graduated school. Um, so if you want to go to boarding school, that’s great. You need, we can’t afford it. So you need to apply for scholarships, um, and choose which one you want to go to. So I’m grateful that they kind of gave me the power to be able to do that.

Leonie: (07:46)
So I applied to a bunch of schools. I got scholarships at a bunch of schools, and then got to choose from there, which one I wanted to go to. And the one that I chose was probably not the most obvious choice. So I got offered once at like Grammar schools, which are like very, like very, very academic and I had amazing like art studios and um, like drama theaters and stuff like that. And as an artsy and drama nerd, um, like that was definitely exciting, but I didn’t want to be kind of in bitchy situations anymore. And I noticed when I was walking around the campus, I was watching what other students were doing, um, that were already there. I was on tour and I thought, no, it’s just going to be kind of the same. Like this is bullshit. Um, like I don’t want to be a part of like very competitive environments.

Leonie: (08:42)
And so I ended up choosing a small boarding school in Charters Towers, which is kind of out West in Northern Queensland. It’s just a small town that’s got a bunch of boarding schools and one of them was Blackheath and Thornburgh College. And I was really grateful for it. I only graduated with about 40 other kids and um, they came from really diverse backgrounds. So, uh, there was lots of kids off super remote cattle properties who had done school of the air, um, until they were 13 and could go to boarding school. Uh, then there was bunches of Aboriginal kids from all over Queensland and we also had the AusAID program at that time. So lots of Papua New Guinea kids were over as well. And so it was really culturally diverse and in so many ways it was a very chilled out school because, um, there was no interest in really being cool.

Leonie: (09:44)
It was, it was not a cool school? No one was trying to be cool. Um, everyone was just a little bit excited to be there and lots of ways. It was very endearing and that way. And I had an amazing time there. I’m so grateful that I went to boarding school. I’m so grateful I sent myself there. Um, and it kind of ended up being fortuitous because at the same time that I went, my family who was in kind of business like family, like family farming business with my dad’s parents and some of his siblings, it blew up and it became kind of world war three. And I could tell you just absolutely fucking horrific stories of the bullshit that went down. But I was very, very lucky to be away from home at that time and to kind of just be physically safe and emotionally safe from the horrific stuff that was happening at home on the farm.

Leonie: (10:45)
So that was kind of my schooling. I loved learning and I was a massive weirdo and that’s just the way that I liked it and I just surrounded myself with other people who were really cool with that. Um, and that worked out really beautifully when it came to graduating school. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. And, um, I remember my mum at the time encouraged me to take like a gap year instead of going straight to university, just to take a year off and work instead. And in some ways I think, Oh, probably would’ve been better if I’d just gone straight into university. Um, I probably would have been more likely to finish a degree if I did it that way. But by taking a gap year, that was actually the way that I found my husband. So I moved back to my small town. Now my small town is like, my home town of Proserpine is very small.

Leonie: (11:46)
There’s like 4,000 people there. My family has been there for six generations on both sides. So most people are related to me. In fact, I had been set up on a blind date with my second cousin. Our grandmothers were very close sisters. Um, so I was like, yeah, nah. Um, and I just absolutely knew that I would never, ever, ever on God’s green earth find the love of my life in Proserpine because it was, it’s small. It’s very country. It’s pretty redneck. Um, and I am an artsy nerd, um, who is very socially progressive. Anyway, I got a job doing a trainee ship at the local council. And on the second day of work I was introduced to the IT guy at work, the computer guy at work. And I just looked at him and fell in love. I just thought he was the hottest thing had been put on the planet.

Leonie: (12:49)
Um, and he, he was and he still is. Uh, and it took me a few months to hunt him down and secure him as my own, but it was worth it. Like, guys, if you are interested in someone, just ask them out. Just hunt them down. Seriously. Don’t wait around to be picked. I have never waited to be picked in my life. Um, so we had our first date. I was just enamoured with him. We moved in together after our first about a month. Um, and we’ve just been together ever since. And I know that my parents at the time thought it was really not a good idea. I mean, I was freshly 18. My husband was 27. Um, moving in together a month after our first date at then making life plans like that of course sounds absolutely fucking bonkers. And if my 18 year old daughter did that, I’d be like, Oh, sweet Jesus, what the fuck is happening?

Leonie: (13:46)
Is this, should I be doing an intervention? But no, uh, it was just the way that it was. Um, and I’m very grateful. Like it’s now been 19 years that we’ve been together, I’ve been with him more of my life than less of my life and I will, like I’ve said this before, we are not perfect. We have argued like bitches at certain times. Um, and relationship counselling completely saved us about 10 years ago once we had kids and shit got real. Um, but yeah, we, we got to be together and have a very long love story in a very long history together and we’re still creating that. So I spent a year in Proserpine then we thought we would move to Townsville to go to university, for me to go to the university and for Chris to work. Um, so I went and started like trying to explore what I wanted to do with my life.

Leonie: (14:45)
I knew I wanted to do something artsy, but my parents had told me that I couldn’t have a creative career because I would be a starving artist and it wouldn’t pay the bills. Um, spoiler alert, they were wrong. Anyway, I went to university and I studied all kinds of things. I did like journalism and anthropology and psychology and sociology and, uh, just anything that had ever like taken my interest basically. Um, and we hated Townsville with a passion. And so we left, after six months, we moved back to Proserpine to make some more money. Um, and so we could move across the country to Canberra, which is Australia’s national capital. And it was Chris’s idea to like go to the kind of the big smoke, where are the Australian government was and to like look at different life opportunities, different work opportunities. And I was kinda hesitant at the time, but I thought, fuck it, why not?

Leonie: (15:51)
Let’s do it. And I’m so glad we did. We moved to Canberra, I think I was 20. And we spent the next seven years there and it was fucking blissful. It honestly, like Canberra is a utopia, um, in so many ways. There is smart and thoughtful and intellectual people there who are really socially progressive. And I just, I had the time of my life. Plus it’s got incredible cultural, um, activities to do from the national gallery, the national library, the Australian Museum of Democracy. Um, and it’s just, there’s just so much to do there. It is really fucking cool. So if anyone ever bags Canberra, I’m like, no, you haven’t been there. It’s amazing. And I have other friends who’ve lived there at different times as well. And if you leave, you’re kind of like, wow, Canberra is a kind of utopia. It’s just a pity about the fucking weather, which is really cold.

Leonie: (16:54)
But that’s fine. Like every place has got weather. Not everyone wants to live in a hot place like me. Anyway, so we, I worked in the Australian government, I worked for department of industry innovation, science and resources and tourism. Uh, they kept on changing their name, but basically that, and I, I worked while I was studying part time at Australian National University and I had a great time in the public service and for a while there I thought about being like, I wanted to be the Prime Minister of Australia or I wanted to be the secretary of a large government department. Um, and so I started studying like the public policy degree at Australian National University part time while I was working in the Australian government and really enjoyed it. I got to work in parliament house as well and work for ministers and kind of see behind the scenes, I became editor of business.gov.au, which is the Australian government’s business advice website, which won

Leonie: (17:58)
Like a United Nations award. Fuck. It was cool man. Like it was cool to have those experiences, especially coming from somebody who comes from a small town in North Queensland. It felt like a whole other world way. Like I was like, like Legally Blonde kind of nonsense. Like I’m like, uh, it was fun. I had so much fun. Uh, and at a certain point as well, pretty quickly I realized that I wouldn’t, it was not my soul’s purpose to be in government or in politics for the rest of my life. Um, and that I felt there was so much more inside of me that needed to be expressed and it wouldn’t be able to come out in those ways. Plus I want to say like ministers, like government ministers work fucking hard. Like they will work from 6:00 AM till midnight, they might get like four hours of sleep during sitting weeks.

Leonie: (18:58)
It is intense. And then meeting people from sunup to sundown and me being the, uh, very loud personality. But at heart I’m an introvert who requires a lot of downtime. I’m very sensitive. Um, I feel a lot, I knew I was way too much of a fucking delicate petal for me to be able to thrive in those kinds of environments and I didn’t want to sacrifice my soul or my creativity to be able to do that. So at that point, I think by this time I was maybe 23. I seemed to like learn lessons, like really like quickly, like I was like, right, okay, I’m going to do that. Right. Okay, that’s not going to work for me. I’m going to do something else. Um, and so about that time I decided, right, that’s it. I’m going to by hook or by crook, I’m going to work out a way for me to have a creative job.

Leonie: (19:51)
And I thought maybe I’d be a graphic designer. Um, but I started playing around with different passions and interests. So 2004 I started blogging. I must, yeah, it would’ve been around that, around that 24 point. Um, before that I was in message boards and I would just like share my art and share photos and stories of my life and I noticed I’d get like huge responses to it and I was like, Oh, Holy shit, that’s amazing. And I even still have friends and, and clients who know me from way back then, this is like 2001 2002, 2003 amazing. Right? So I would just kind of share whole of heart on there. And then once I realized that you could blog, I was like, Oh my God, like count me in. And it reminded me so much of when I was in boarding school, because I had an incredible art teacher at boarding school and he would give us all art journals and recommend that we use them, play in them.

Leonie: (20:48)
And so I became an art journal aficionado at that point and just wrote and drew and pasted everything in it. And I still have those journals and there’s some of my most treasured possessions. And then I would like share my journal with the whole other dormitory of goals. And I’d be like, Oh my God, look what I’ve written. And people are like, isn’t your diary supposed to be private? And I’m like, no, I don’t care. Like read my stories, read them. Like, read what I have to share. Um, and they fucking loved it. And then other girls started their art journals and I got to see their art journals. And it was such a beautiful celebration of creativity and connection. And so getting the chance to write a blog and share my, my thoughts and my art with the world, like it was revolutionary.

Leonie: (21:37)
And, and I know that we’re in the world of social media and nobody thinks fucking twice about the fact that we can share something like publish something instantly and that anyone around the world can see it. But in like 2004, it was fucking revolutionary to me. I loved that. I was basically creating an art journal that I could share with the world. So I had my blog and I started doing different things. Like somebody saw my art that I was sharing and asked for to do a commission. And so I think it was Tanya Schoffield, who bought my first artwork. Thanks Tan, if you’re still listening. I know you, I know we were still in each other’s circles. Um, and I thought, Oh my God, Holy fuck, somebody is going to pay me to do something that I absolutely love doing.

Leonie: (22:29)
Um, so that was amazing. I started selling art at markets. I started selling art and prints on Etsy online and sharing them on my blog. Um, and I remember like one Christmas in particular, somebody, um, like it was just busy and so I had like lots of custom orders. I did these orders where people could like fill out this questionnaire and then I’d do this artwork about them. And like it was kind of, of them and it was to remind them of the goddess inside them and it, it went really popular. So I remember going to a Christmas party at work and then I went home early because I had, so like I had just had dozens and dozens of artworks to do before Christmas to send out to their new owners. And like I was just thinking, what, what the actual fuck, this is like incredible.

Leonie: (23:20)
I can’t believe that this is happening. Um, and I also started playing with experiences. Like I ran my first women’s retreat and I think I was only about 23 at the time. I just had this idea for women’s retreat even though I’d never even been to a fucking retreat in my life. Um, but I put it on, it went for three days. It was meditation and healing and um, creativity and rest and replenishment. And it was so powerful. It was so beautiful. And there ended up being I, it was only kinda like invite only. I wanted to only invite it like people, I felt really called to being there. Um, and there was like 10 women there and it was amazing and I feel very grateful looking back on it. Bitch, trust in me, you know, at the fact, I was 23 running her a trade and they were, you know, up to 50, 50 years old and they were like, yeah, I’m in on whatever Leonie is doing.

Leonie: (24:18)
I know like, Oh my God, that’s such a blessing. And I just ran with it and it was so powerful. And I think that’s the thing, right? It’s just start before you’re ready. You start like pick yourself first and you only get experience by doing the fucking thing, right? Like actually just creating it before you even have a fucking clue and learning as you go. So that was kind of a retreat I did. And then I did a creative goddess workshop, um, and it was like a half day workshop that people could pay to come to. And I kind of advertised it everywhere and like put up my flyers like the spiritual stores and all that kind of stuff, cause that’s how you advertise things, things like that in those days. And we had about 15 people at it. And that was like amazing. It was such a beautiful experience.

Leonie: (25:14)
And then I blogged about it because I blogged about everything in those days. And somebody, somebody commented on my blog and said, Oh my gosh, I so wish I could have been there, but I’m all the way in the U S I wish. Like I would be there in a split second to learn from you. And I thought, Oh my fucking God. Like that is amazing. At around about the same time I heard of someone doing an eCourse and at that time I was like, e-courses, what is this mother fucking thing? It was, it seemed revolutionary and it was the artist Susie Blue who still does heaps of stuff. And, um, I remember, I think, cause I remember my best friend at the time called me and was like, Oh my God, if you heard what Susie Blue’s doing, I’m like, no. And she’s like, yeah, she’s charging like 50 bucks for the class and she’s had like 500 people sign up for it. And I did the math and I was like, Oh my fucking God. Like that is like, I think it was like $25,000. And I was like, Holy shit, I could like

Leonie: (26:22)
look, always quit my job if I managed to pull something off like that. So it was kind of like the more I kept on playing, the more things opened up to me. So, um, at the same time I decided as well that I was absolutely hammer and tong going to create a creative business and working in the Australian government. Like, and I knew that I didn’t know how to do it. I knew that like, okay, I could earn money in these ways, but I was never going to sell enough artworks at the prices that I was charging for them at the amount. And when I looked at the numbers of how many I would have to sell, I just thought, there’s no fucking way that I would even know how to sell that amount, you know. So, um, instead of like giving up, I thought to myself, no, there is something that other people don’t know if they’ve been able to create success.

Leonie: (27:17)
And, um, there is something that I need to learn and I’ve spent all this time in my creative and spiritual gym, like building those muscles. But my business and marketing muscles are just absolutely flaccid. Like I haven’t worked them at all. And so I remember the day I like made this commitment to myself that I was going to become a student of business and marketing principles and learn absolutely everything that I needed to know in order to create abundance with my creativity. So it was kind of this beautiful confluence of, um, playing and seeing what I wanted to create and what resonated with people seeing that there was a chance in the online market as well to create these experiences online. Um, and making an absolute firm and deep commitment to, um, learn about business and marketing and real like things really started shifting after that.

Leonie: (28:20)
I wanted to earn $30,000 in a year in order to be able to start reducing my hours at work. And, um, I ended up taking that creative goddess workshop and turning it into a six week e-course and selling it. And, um, I had about 150 people on my mailing list at the time and I got 150 fucking people to sign up for this course. Like that kind of conversion rate is insane and incredible. Um, and just like mind gobbing, I would love to get a hundred percent conversion right now. That’s brilliant. Um, but it was also kind of like testament to the fact that I’d been blogging for a few years at that point. Um, I’d built up a lot of trust and given so much stuff already to people that they were like just ready to say yes to whatever experience I wanted to offer them.

Leonie: (29:16)
So that was really fucking cool. And it also came with a whole lot of lessons because I had no idea about systems and automation at at time. In fact, to even get on my mailing list, you had to email me and then I put you into a fucking spreadsheet and I sent out my mailing list emails from my fucking email. Um, and very quickly during that course I discovered by sending out course emails, I kept getting banned and blocked from Gmail out. Cause of course I was looking like a spammer and like people would sign up for the course and I had no idea about like shopping carts or anything else at that point. Um, I didn’t know that you could do auto responders. And so every person who signed up, I had to manually email them back all of like the course emails and stuff. Fucking hell. Needless to say it was a really intense, intense learning curve.

Leonie: (30:15)
And I remember, um, like I would joke to myself as well, like on the day that a course would be released, I would have the day off work. Um, I negotiated to, to go down to four days a week and that felt like a massive leap of faith. But, um, my husband would call them like freak out Fridays cause everything was really supposed to release on Friday and he would come home that afternoon at like five o’clock and I am having a fucking panic attack trying to work out how to get my fucking microphone to work and how to get things to convert and all that kind of stuff. It was hilarious and a complete calamity all at once and it was also just the most rewarding experience ever. I just felt like the luckiest person on earth. So that’s how it kept on rolling from there, once I realized like, Oh, eCourses are a really fun way for me to make money, I just started creating more and more e-courses.

Leonie: (31:19)
So I think the next one after that was like the Radiant Goddess eCourse, which was all about raw food because of course it was like, I don’t know, 2008 by that point and everyone was into raw food. Um, and that was really fun. Then there was decluttering course like I was there before Marie Kondo. It was originally called Zen goddess. And then I changed it to, uh, Create Your Goddess Haven e-course. Um, and it kept on kind of rolling in those ways and I created like little eBooks and information products and stuff like that and was just blogging and sharing and, and selling those. And it was pretty amazing. So I went down to three days a week. I’m really risk adverse, like there’s no fucking way on God’s green earth I would just like quit a job and start a business.

Leonie: (32:11)
No, I was like, I used a job to fund my business and I worked, um, on the hours outside of my work hours and even at lunchtimes I would go and work in the park on my business. Um, so that was, it was just continuing to learn and explore different, um, business models and what worked for me. Then around 2009, I got pregnant with my first daughter and I was like, right, we’ve got to like take this up even a higher notch. Um, because once I had my daughter, I didn’t want to go back to work and I also wanted to be able to move back to our hometown and I knew that there was no jobs there for me or my husband. So I was really trying to bring my business, like keep growing it, keep growing it, um, while pregnant and while still working in the government for three days a week.

Leonie: (33:10)
Um, and I remember joining, like I remember buying my first information product back in 2000 and just like the, about about that same time for $100. And I was like, Oh Holy shit. Like I couldn’t even believe I was spending $100 on it, but it ended up being so hugely helpful and I ended up making so much more money out of it. And then I took like a really big deep breath and deep leap of faith and sign up like $400 to do a yearly mastermind. And, um, I just used the absolute shit out of it. I made sure I turned up every day and really practice brainstorming business ideas and marketing ideas for other people because I figured like this is going to help my brain grow and it’s going to help me see my own business and marketing in a different light.

Leonie: (34:01)
And it’s amazing because this is like over 10 years ago now. And I’m still dear friends with a whole bunch of the people who were in that course, including Hiro Boga, Tara Swiger, um, Chris Sydell, there was whole bunch of really cool people in there and I wouldn’t have known if I hadn’t like actually participated in being involved. So I want to say like if you’re a part of any mastermind or Facebook group, like turn up and help people. Turn up and be present and um, bring all of yourself to it because that’s how you create deep connections and that’s how you create people who are willing to follow you to the ends of the earth is if you turn up and help and be who you are. Don’t just take, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, like be as generous as you can. Um, so 2010 came around and, uh, my daughter Mermaid Daughter #1 was born in March.

Leonie: (35:03)
And, um, I remember thinking, thinking about how to take the business to $100,000 a year because I knew that we could survive on $100,000 a year. And I read a book called the One Minute Millionaire by Robert G. Allen and Mark Victor Hansen. And it’s just a really simple parable, but it talks about how this millionaire sits down with this, this kid, like this young person. And it’s like, right, well, in order to make $1 million, you could spend, you could sell 2000 things at $5,000, no for, $500. I don’t fucking know guys. Yeah, no, a million dollars is $2,000. Whatever. I just said, look. And then he just went through and gave like all of the, obviously math is still not my strong suit. And like, I’m a millionaire. Anyway, they just going to have pen and paper and wrote down all the different ways that you could make $1 million. And I thought, well, I only need to make $100,000.

Leonie: (36:09)
Um, so I just need to work out the different ways that to make $100,000. And my daughter was not a baby that slept. Um, and so I was just up all hours of the night breastfeeding and I was just kind of in this haze of dream and all of a sudden I had this absolute idea and I feel like it was like a divine download from the angels. And they said, just package up all of the courses that you have and sell them as a membership and charge $100 for it. And you only need a thousand people to sign up and there’s your $100,000. And I thought, Oh, Holy fuck, I can absolutely give away all of my products for 100 bucks. And if that’s a thousand people a year, who buys it? That is more than enough. And I remember leaning over and scrawling down 100 times $1,000. So that’s what I went on to create.

Leonie: (37:12)
I just, even though I was selling all of my courses for like 70 bucks at the time, also, I packaged them all up. Um, and all of my information products that I was selling and I think it was like about 200 and something odd dollars worth of value and, um, just offered it to the world and, um, with a baby in my arms and it, it, it went really well. It did exactly what I wanted to do. I did earn the a hundred thousand dollars in that year and it meant that we were able to move back to my small hometown and that my husband was able to leave his customs job, um, and stay at home with us, which was fucking massive for me because I was not coping with, um, mothering a baby that did not sleep. Um, so that was just huge. That was like a real life change for me to go, Oh wow.

Leonie: (38:09)
Like this membership, like creating a membership program with recurring revenue, cause people could pay $100 for that year and then they would also get any further courses that I created that year, just totally for free. And so we did that and just tried to settle into life as a family, as much as we could. And also navigate the change moving from a big city where we were really established our family with our friends and moving back to be close to my family and I thought it would be something that would last for the rest of my life. Um, I always believed that I would return back to Proserpine, um, and that I would raise my children there. Um, and I got back and it just wasn’t the right fit for us as a family anymore. And that was probably exacerbated by the fact that not long after we got home, my mum decided to leave my dad after 30 odd years of marriage and it was fucking devastating and it really just tore my whole family apart.

Leonie: (39:18)
Um, and like I have tears in my eyes, thinking about it because it felt like we’d come back to witness a train wreck. Um, and we were just absolutely brokenhearted. Plus we found it really hard as well to have boundaries with my family and they just didn’t respect boundaries whatsoever. Um, because they weren’t used to me being an adult and they weren’t used to me having other responsibilities that weren’t them, if you know what I mean. Um, I was, uh, I was a mum and I needed to um, focus on my daughter and my husband first and foremost. And for, for my family that was, that was not in their level of understanding. So we ended up making the decision and it was really difficult to leave Proserpine and go experience something else. And I really send so much love back to myself at that point in time cause I know how hard it was for me.

Leonie: (40:21)
And I also know it was absolutely hands fucking down the best decision that we made for our own souls and for our kid. And we also knew that eventually we would want to get into alternative schooling. I didn’t want my kids to go to just a state school or a Catholic school. I wanted a different education because my educational experience, as much as I loved learning, I hated school. I hated that whole experience of it. I hated the bullying and I just felt like there was so much better that could have been done. So we ended up moving to Cairns, which is like even further North. And that was just this incredible adventure because it’s very jungle-y up there and uh, it feels very wild, very tropical. And we ended up buying a, um, a beautiful house in the acreage and I felt like all of my dreams had come true.

Leonie: (41:16)
It was just the most stunning house in the rain forest. Um, and there was a Steiner school there and my daughter started going there and I was really, really grateful for it and Kuranda still feels like such a big adventure for us. Um, it was just one of those things that makes you laugh because things that happen up there probably just don’t happen anywhere else. Like we were always having to rescue stranded tourists, um, in these crazy situations. And um, because like it’s so verdant with wildlife as well. I was just telling my kids the other day about how we found a Pademelon, which is like a small Wallaby under our house and it was bleeding and it had obviously been attacked by something. Um, and I ended up having to catch this fucking Wallaby and put it in a box and I was so scared of it.

Leonie: (42:14)
Um, and then going to try and find someone who take care of it. And we went out, we went out to the wildlife carers and she had the most amazing house, this woman in her seventies, and there was huge kangaroos that lived on her veranda. Um, and then there’s just kangaroos the whole way through the house. It was like a zoo in a house. It was phenomenal. Um, and so it was just, it was just such an adventure. It was really funny. It’s like going to a very, very wild place and, um, on a holiday. But that holiday lasted for a couple of years and in the end we decided, um, that we weren’t going to make Kuranda our permanent home because we were concerned about the level of drug use in that community. Um, in terms of how free flowing the, um, marijuana or, and ice was up there and how it was just kind of an accepted part of the community.

Leonie: (43:13)
And it’s, me and my husband are really fucking clean. Um, I swear like a motherfucker and I’m inappropriate as fuck, but I’ve never actually even smoked marijuana in my life. I’ve never like. I’ve never like taken any illicit substance because I don’t want to miss with my beautiful plain chemistry. I’m a happy person and I’m also kind of bonkers in my own beautiful way. Um, so I just don’t wanna fuck with it. I just don’t want it to veer off in another direction. And I just didn’t want to raise my kids in an environment where, for example, um, I knew of some kids that went on a play date at the age of nine, and their friend’s parents got them to pick their marijuana harvest as the play day. And I was like, what the actual fuck. And I do want to clarify for all Americans in Australia, marijuana is not a legal substance.

Leonie: (44:05)
Um, so it was just, it just felt like it was kind of out of sync for us or like, Oh, it would be fine if it was just us, but we have children to bring into the world. Um, and they’re going to be really impressionable and they’re going to be around a lot of other kids for their childhood. And we just want to make sure that they have a very strong grounding in themselves and that that doesn’t include a lot of exposure to drugs. Um, I should say as well. We had another baby by this point and we had, I had decided to only have one child, um, because it was so difficult the very first time, uh, having a non sleeping baby and then now and then having postnatal depression and anxiety, um, as a natural repercussion of that. And, um, I’d also not had an easy pregnancy or easy breastfeeding experience the first time around.

Leonie: (45:04)
And so I just felt like, no, I’ll just be one and done, you know. But then one night in Kuranda, um, I had this little presence visit me and say, you’re my mum. And I was like, no love. I really am not. I promise I’m not, go find someone else please. And she’s like, no, it’s going to be different this time. It’s going to be better. And I had this vision of her as a baby and she was so fat and so sweet, and I just had this deep, deep feeling of contentment. And so I woke up my husband and after three years of saying to him, I don’t want another baby, I woke him up and I said, we’re having another baby. And he was like, what the fuck Leonie? I said, she just came to me in a dream. He was like, okay, love.

Leonie: (45:53)
And bless him. Bless my husband. He’d, he had always wanted to have two kids, but when I had had such a difficult time the first time around, um, he ended, I’d said to him, I really can only deal with having one. He said, okay, I love, like, that’s okay. I know how hard it was on you. And so I just like, I tear up with gratitude at the grace that he gave to me. Um, I don’t think I’m always as graceful, um, in not getting something that I wanted. Um, but he really just let me choose that for myself and then choose again when I wanted to have two. So we got pregnant pretty quickly. Um, and even though that sweet little baby said it was going to be so different and you know, so easy, uh, she neglected to mention that that did not include the pregnancy.

Leonie: (46:54)
So I had severe hyperemesis gravidarum during that pregnancy, which if you don’t know, is this absolutely horrific chronic, um, and debilitating kind of allergic reaction to pregnancy hormones. So it’s like morning sickness but on speed. So you basically just vomit so much that you die from dehydration. And if you are in a developing country or if you were born like 200 years ago, um, you would die from it. And in fact, that’s what one of the Bronte sisters died from. She died from hyperemesis gravidarum with her first child. Um, your organs start shutting down. You can’t even hold down any liquid. That’s what I had. It was fucking God awful. I can’t even talk about what hell on earth it is to experience hyperemesis gravidarum. Um, and so if you ever have a pregnant friend disappear, um, or just be horrifically fucking ill, like please, please, please, please be gentle with her and do as much as you can from her.

Leonie: (48:01)
Because it is, it is like living truly through hell on earth. And I know it sounds so simple, like, Oh, you’re just nauseous all the time. No, when you can’t even drink a little bit of water, um, without spewing it back up at any point during the day when you have to go to hospital for an IV Drip, but you have to go to emergency constantly and you turn up to emergency like, Oh, you again, come on through, we’ll hook you up and you’re on an IV drip just to have glucose and water because there is no other way to get, um, any kind of nutrients or any kind of water in your system. Your like, your organs start shutting down. Um, that’s what hyperemesis gravidarum is. And at least 15% percent of people who have hyperemesis gravidarum have to have a therapeutic, um, termination.

Leonie: (48:59)
And what that means is they have to have an abortion because you will die otherwise. Um, and also because you just fucking can’t cope, you just cannot cope with that level of absolute deprivation of human rights. It’s just, I can’t even, I can’t even say enough about it. If you are somebody who has experienced hyperemesis gravidarum, or you’d like to learn more, I actually created an illustrated zine about it. If you just search the only Dawson hyperemesis gravidarum or go to my free shit page on leoniedawson.com, you can find it in there. Um, and that shares even more of my thoughts about that experience. I feel so lucky that we were in Kuranda though. I feel like there’s no other place on earthI would have been able to have Mermaid Daughter #2 if we weren’t in Kuranda because um, there is an incredible acupuncturist team there.

Leonie: (49:54)
Kuranda acupuncture, Kelly and Leo. Um, Kelly treated me and I was seeing her daily. Um, and she is an absolute earth angel and she was there for the birth as well as, uh, as a birth doula and birth acupuncturist, which was incredible. But she helped me through so much. Um, the hospital has an incredible midwife run ward Gabe who trained with Ina May Gaskin who’s the founder of the spiritual midwifery movement. Fucking hell. Like I felt like I was like pure pedigree of, um, midwives and, um, maternal support. So I feel so lucky that, um, I got to have them. I feel so lucky we had my parents in-law living with us at the time so that they could help with Mermaid Daughter #1 because I couldn’t even look at Mermaid Daughter #1 because I was vomiting. Even just some movement, like seeing somebody else’s face and it moved, that sets off your nausea so much that you just start vomiting.

Leonie: (50:57)
So she didn’t get to have her mum for nine months. Um, but I’m grateful that we had my husband home and, um, my parents in law there and I’m grateful that we had a business that was able to financially support us even when I was in hospital and even when I was going through this God awful thing. So, um, we got through that by the skin of our teeth. I was nearly in that 15% of people who had to therapeutically terminate. And Gabe said to me after I delivered Mermaid Daughter #2, she said, look, I didn’t want to tell you at the time, but you were the worst case of hyperemesis gravidarum I’d seen in 30 years. And, uh, my expectation was that it would likely have to end in a termination. So I have tears in my eyes thinking about how fucking lucky I was to get through by the skin of my teeth and be able to have Mermaid Daughter #2.

Leonie: (51:53)
And here’s the thing with, with hyperemesis gravidarum, as soon as you give birth to that baby, you might be vomiting while you’re in labor, which I was. Um, but as soon as baby’s born, the pregnancy hormones go down and the placenta leaves your body and it just completely disappears. And so I remember feeling like slightly nauseous the next day because the hormones were still going down. But apart from that, I was, fucking right as rain and it is such a joy. It was such a joy to be back in the world again. Being able to eat, being able to enjoy life, being able to actually leave my bedroom, being able to leave the hospital. What a fucking blessing it felt like my whole world was born anew. And I got to have this adorable, sweet baby who just slept constantly. She was really just the, the easiest baby under the sun, especially after having such a hard, um, a hard baby who didn’t sleep. And I thought, okay, Oh my God, this is why people have more babies because they’re just so cute. And they sleep all the time.

Leonie: (52:58)
So it really was like, she was right in that dream. It was a very fucking healing experience to have Mermaid Daughter #2 because it really heals like that mother part in me to realize like, Oh no, I actually, we can and we’ll find that easy. Um, so we had sweet Mermaid Daughter #2 and we had sweet Mermaid Daughter #1 and they were born four years apart. And, um, not long after that decided right well Kuranda won’t be the place that we can stay in permanently. And we thought, we tried to think of where we would like go next and we want, we still want it to be around alternative schooling. Um, and we were really tossing up between the Sunshine Coast and Hobart and Canberra, which we had already come from, had been utopia. Um, we came down, we actually, Sunshine Coast was our first peak and we came down here, um, on a holiday and it was beautiful and we thought we’d, you know, we thought, Oh, we’ll probably move here.

Leonie: (54:00)
But then afterwards we were like, Oh no, it’s fine. Like, like it’s fairly similar climate wise and fairly similar to, to Kuranda. I can’t imagine like picking up our whole life and then moving across the countryside for fairly similar kind of lifestyle. Um, just less drugs. Um, so that was funny. And, but then we decided, you know what? Fuck it. Let’s go have an adventure and move to Hobart. My husband had spent his teenage years in Hobart, had always wanted to go back. It was like, you know, like when men have that lover that they never quite get over well, that’s Tasmania for my husband. And I was like, fuck it, let’s go on an adventure. So we did, we moved to, to Hobart. We bought this house that kind of looked over the mountains and um, we just had this incredible experience being in Hobart.

Leonie: (54:54)
It’s like a whole other world down there. It was so, so fucking stunningly beautiful. And I totally thought, Oh, you know, this is, this is it. We’ll just live here now. Um, and then at a certain point I injured my foot quite badly and couldn’t walk. Um, and I realized, Oh fuck, we’re actually really alone here. Like, we don’t have a community, we don’t have family. And being on an isolated Island because Hobart is its own separate Island. If you’re not aware of Australia, Hobart is part of Tasmania, which is like the Island right at the bottom of Australia. So it’s actually kind of isolated. It’s very isolated from the mainland. We felt really cut off from a connection. And so we made the decision to move back to Canberra. Now in terms of the business, what was happening in the business, um, the business was kept on going.

Leonie: (55:45)
So the Goddess circle, which is my membership site, the um, like all of my courses and people paid to be a part of that. That was, that was so still hugely popular. Um, and around 2010 when my first daughter had been born, I ended up having this crazy idea as well. I should mention this, Oh, I should’ve mentioned this back then. Anyway, we’re here now. Um, I really wanted to be able to set goals for the year ahead, for myself. You know, knowing I was going to have a baby and, um, that things might get difficult. Spoiler alert, they got real difficult. Uh, but I wanted to set goals in order to be able to hold onto something when I couldn’t remember who I was. And I looked at like other goals stuff out there and it was all like super fucking masculine, super black and white.

Leonie: (56:32)
And I was like, ew that doesn’t inspire me whatsoever. Plus it was very like career and money focused, which is not like, even though I love money, I love my business. It’s not my core values and the things that really make me passionate. Like I feel like life is so much more of a rainbow and just those two things, you know. Um, and so there was nothing that I, there was nothing on the market out there at all. There was, there wasn’t even in fucking like planners and workbooks. There was, you know, like a Franklin Kovey daybook planner. That was basically it. Um, and so I created something for myself and then I was creating it. I was like, Oh my God, this is adorable. I should put it up as a PDF online. Um, and see if anyone else wants it. And like if 10 other people want it, super cool, I put it online; within a month, a thousand people had bought it.

Leonie: (57:24)
And from then it just kept on snowballing. So every year after that it kept on growing and growing. So it’s kind of just been a part of what I do every single year now is to create goals, workbooks that are really rainbow and incandescent and make you feel so excited to do them. And they have gone on to be a huge international bestseller. They’ve been used by over, I think it’s close to 400,000 people worldwide now. It’s just insane. Um, so between the workbooks and my Goddess circle, like it was beautiful and blooming and really growing. And at that point I was printing the books myself. Like so for a while I did print on demand through Amazon. Um, before that I was just doing like selling PDFs online and then I was like, you know what? I want more, um, capacity to change the workbooks and put like spiral binding on them and change the quality of the paper, all that kind of stuff.

Leonie: (58:25)
So we started printing in China and then distribution houses in the UK, us and Australia. And it was getting to a point, so we would like sit like sell like 80,000 products in the space of three months and then we would have to like get the distribution houses to send them all out and then deal with all of the customers service behind that. And so the business had to like keep on growing in order to keep up with that. And I, and I thought like that was the widest scale basically was to like hire more staff to keep up with this demand of work. So by about like 2015, um, I think I had, I don’t know, it was about 15 or 20 staff, like a lot of full-timers and then a lot of contractors, but they were like working with for us a lot.

Leonie: (59:22)
Um, and it was just huge and I thought that was like the way to like keep on growing the business. And we were doing like over $3 million a year or whatever, um, or close to $3 million a year. And I realized, Oh, I actually fucking hate this. I hate managing staff. I hate that my work hours, which I always kept being really, really small. Like I’d only work about 10 hours a week because I was, I wanted to be a mom first and foremost. Um, well I couldn’t do that when I had so many staff. So it crept up to like 20 hours a week and I just hated it. And the worst part was, is that those 20 hours were spent trying to manage people dramas and like manage the latest, complete fuck-up, um, instead of creating. And so like my actual creating time was like, I had to like try and sneak that in on weekends because the thing that I’d built my business for and creating and my soul and being with myself and listening to spirit and whatever wanted to come through, like it got taken over by having to manage all this staff instead.

Leonie: (01:00:34)
And me and my husband spending more and more of each day just so stressed out trying to work out like the next business problem and the next problem person basically. And I tried like hiring to have a chief operations officer. I tried hiring for a, a project manager to take, um, so much of that off me, but it just didn’t work. And it’s still, it was creating more issues and more drama. At a certain point, me and my husband, were like, this is not fun anymore. This is not our dream business. Like we regularly, I remember like at one point I was so sick, I’d been sick for six months and I was so stressed and I went on a health retreat for five days because I was that ill and breaking down into tears. And there was this beautiful man who was at the retreat.

Leonie: (01:01:26)
He wasn’t leading their trailer. We just had this deep soul connection and he was an accountant. And um, we just like, it was just like platonic love at first sight for the two of us we were just like, Oh. Like it was like we needed each other at that particular moment in time. Um, and I was crying to him and say to him, I just don’t know what to do. Like, this is not the life I wanted to live. I don’t like feeling stressed out. I don’t like having to work more hours and this is not my dream business anymore. I just want to pack up and run away. And um, he said to me, well, you either change your business model completely and, or you sell the business and walk away. Um, and I knew like I had to make a really big change. The business was still, you know, of course earning huge amounts of revenue, but it was earning about the same profit as it always had.

Leonie: (01:02:29)
Um, so I was still earning the same amount. It’s just that when you have stuff, they add so many fucking expenses. Um, and also at that point it just wasn’t about the fucking money anymore. The point was that my dream was gone. My business, my beautiful, beautiful business that I loved so much, I felt like it was, it didn’t exist anymore. It was just full of this team of people who were creating so much drama. And, um, it just wasn’t my jam whatsoever. So we made the decision to, to change our business model, um, to stop printing in China because that was the thing that was creating the most amount of the energy, um, and requiring the most amount of staff, the customer service and that kind of stuff. And, um, we, we downsized the business back to just having one assistant and then, um, having contractors for different projects when we needed it.

Leonie: (01:03:34)
And it was such a fucking relief. It was such a blessing and such a beautiful thing. And I’m so glad I did it. It took a while to do it. It took kind of, I think a good year or 18 months to, to downsize. Um, and it kind of happened by natural attrition as well, like people would leqve and we just wouldn’t fill that role and I’d kill off a bunch of tasks because they weren’t needed and they weren’t following Pareto’s principle. So Pareto’s principle, in case you haven’t heard me, rabbit on about it before, praise principle says 20% of your action creates 80% of your results. And I had been up to that point before, a big team, really, really good at following just doing that 20% and leaving that 80%, that only creates 20% percent of the results. Just cutting that off, just going, well that’s actually not that important to business.

Leonie: (01:04:26)
I’m only going to do the really important things that are high impact activities. Um, but it was difficult to keep that same principle alive when you have more and more staff. And plus staff aren’t as entrepreneurial minded. They don’t give a fuck if it makes money for the company or not. Um, and then I give a fuck if they’re being as super productive, um, that’s like their priorities, a completely different, their priorities are about themselves, which is fine and normal, but it made it very hard to follow Pareto’s] principal. So I went through the company and cut out that 80% of activities that had been added, um, and weren’t essential. Um, and it, it took time and it was, I, I spent a lot of time crying and I had a lot of therapy and I tried, tried, tried, tried my hardest to coach and mentor and even have fucking joint therapy sessions with a bunch of the people that I worked with, the ones that I was really committed to try and work, work with going forward.

Leonie: (01:05:33)
Um, but it just wasn’t working. And like you absolutely need two people who are committed to like working through their own shit. Um, and it was a fucking devastating to discover that, um, other people weren’t as ready to work through it as I was. And that’s okay. It ended up being like the best outcome ever to be back in this place. So now I’m at a point where I am still like, it’s still basically a seven figure company with fucking huge profit levels, like 95% profit levels. And I have one part-time virtual assistant who works maybe five to 10 hours a week. And I feel like I’m having just as much impact as ever before. Um, I changed the, the workbook printing models. So it went back to print on demand, um, through Amazon. And then I signed a publishing deal with a US publishing house and that was a good experience too, to learn that and realize, Oh, actually like publishing deals really are not the be all and end all self publishing actually fucking rocks.

Leonie: (01:06:43)
Um, so I would probably go back to self publishing in the future. Um, and, and the Goddess Circles, AKA my the Academy, continued on my membership site. So it kept on rolling and rolling. And after that whole process, like we moved back to Canberra, we were having a great time with, um, connecting with our old friends and stuff like that. Um, we decided that we wanted to homeschool our kids, so my eldest daughter was still in Steiner school and we just didn’t feel like it was working for us. Um, at that particular school with that particular teacher at that particular time. Um, and I had this wild, crazy idea to try homeschooling and just see what that was like and even just try homeschooling enough for us to be able to move up to the sunshine coast and then hopefully get into another alternative school up here.

Leonie: (01:07:45)
So we started homeschooling my seven year old and my three year old daughter. And um, this was kind of like as the company downsize and it meant it was such a beautiful like, and healing thing for me because I’d gone through this very, very, very intense, um, like business growth and then having all this team and managing all of that and kind of having my energy away from my kids even though I was still spending the vast about time with them to just really placing my focus on them. And we got to have so many adventures together and it was such a deeply connective time. Like we really bonded so deeply as a family and it was so beautiful to get to have so many amazing times with my kids. We take them to Questacon and the national library and the national gallery and they both started horse riding lessons and um, then we decided to move up to the Sunshine Coast and the homeschooling community on the Sunshine Coast is incredible.

Leonie: (01:08:48)
Oh, we met so many amazing homeschoolers here. We joined a homeschooling co-op. Um, we just really have the fucking best time and it was such a perfect like thing for me as well to like have my attention like back solely, well not solely because I still had my businesses, um, but really devote that time to heart-centered and families into time again. At the same time I also got like a, I love having like crazy new side projects. It just keeps me alive. It keeps me excited. So we were homeschooling. Plus I had the workbooks, which I produced every year. Plus I had the membership site with all of my courses and I was producing at that point, 1 new course a month for them. Um, as well. I decided to add another business into the mix because I’d found doTERRA essential oils and they had helped me so much with my illnesses and my anxiety and all the things I had been going through at that point in time.

Leonie: (01:09:59)
And I thought, Oh Holy fuck, this is life changing. And I looked at the business model and I thought that’s really cool. That would be a fun business model, like a fun stream of income to create as kind of a gift of love for my husband. Um, because he gave up his career in order to support mine and to be able to look after our beautiful kids. So it’s just been us looking after our kids and I wanted to just to pay him back even though we have retirement funds, even though like absolutely we share all of our finances. There’s no mine and his, but I just wanted something that would be a passive income stream. So he knew, no matter what he was going to get money, you know, for years and years to come if something happened to me.

Leonie: (01:10:43)
So, um, while I was homeschooling and still running the other businesses, I decided to build up a doTERRA business. I did it all online. I broke the world record for building to their fastest rank in the shortest time possible because that’s what Leonie’s do when Leonie’s have a wild idea. So that was like, it was like, honestly, it was really excited to learn a different business model and also like I never got into it thinking I am going to be a doTERRA person for life and that’s the only thing that I’m going to do. No, I added it in as an extra side project, um, to keep me interested in life, basically, because I like learning new things. So I did that. We, and I knew that it wasn’t going to be something that I did forever, built it up, um, to a good income level.

Leonie: (01:11:35)
And now it’s, it’s pretty much passive for me now. I still fucking love the oils, um, and still use them every single day for me and for my family. Um, and I still, yeah, I, I’m grateful that I’ve kind of took that risk and built up that. Um, but my focus really is always with my creations and with my courses and my workbooks. Um, then we got to a point with my daughter, she was nine, nearly nine, and we realized, Oh, she probably needs something more from homeschooling. So we’d done it for a couple of years and I’d found this school, which wasn’t Steiner, but it is an alternative school. I won’t say what model it is or anything like that though. Um, just because I prefer people not knowing exactly where my kids go to school. Um, but I’d seen this school and I thought, wow, this is really amazing.

Leonie: (01:12:31)
And I was really impressed with their model and how respectful teachers were towards the children and how collaborative it was. It was kind of like a homeschool co-op in a way, uh, because it’s very like child-focused and, um, they can decide what projects they are gonna work on and stuff like that and when they do it, those kinds of things. So, um, I took my daughter to go and see the school. And on the way there she was, she cried and she said, mum, but I really love homeschooling. Like why would I go to a school like homeschool is amazing. And I said, I know, but there’s this school that is also amazing. Let’s just go and have a look and see what you think. And we went, we met the principal and he was showing us like the library and at that, at this school, all of the kids write and illustrate books and then they get bound and then they get added into the library.

Leonie: (01:13:27)
And so other kids can check out, like literally do like a library checkout of other kids’ books and read them and like talk about them and that kind of stuff. And he was saying how one of the younger kids had created this very popular book series at school and he was up to like series. Like he was number seven in the series and all of the older kids were like, Oh my God, when’s the next one coming? They’d become like, like little fans of this even smaller kid. And I thought that was cool was I thought it was so fun. Mermaid Daughter #1 thought that is the coolest thing on earth. And we drove home and she’s like, yeah, I think I’m going to that school. And I was like, okay, cool. I thought that might be the case. And she went home and started illustrating and writing books to prepare herself.

Leonie: (01:14:14)
So she had the last year of school at this school, last year at school there. It’s been amazing. And so my youngest daughter just started this year, so she’s six years old now and we’re really happy with it and I would love for it to work for us for at least the primary school years and then revisit, um, you know, what they want out of high school and stuff like that. But for now I just feel so fucking grateful to have an alternative school option that’s working really beautifully for our kids because for me, education is for my kids. And having a really beautiful environment for them is so fucking important. It’s so important. Um, and I think I, I’ve cared more about that than I’ve cared about anything else in my life. So that’s where we’re at. We’re on the sunshine coast now. We have a couple of acres.

Leonie: (01:15:11)
Um, and we’re really, really grateful. We have a really gentle, um, home life. I’m not somebody who, like my kids very rarely sign up to do extracurricular activities. The schools that they’re at already has a whole bunch of extra curricular activities in built and the rest of the time I think they need some fucking home time. They need a gentle home life for them to be able to develop, um, really good, like a good inner life and a good base grounding of who they are energetically and all that kind of stuff. But that’s also because that’s who my kids are. Um, the, they’re kind of home bodies like us as well. So that’s us on the family front and on the business front. I decided after nine years to close down that membership site. So remember, like way back when my daughter was a baby and I just needed something that would create $100,000 a year for us to live off.

Leonie: (01:16:10)
I mean, it went on to create way more than that. Millions and millions and millions of dollars, which I feel so fucking grateful for. And it was still working amazingly and still earning me a lot of money. But at a certain point about a year ago, I knew that it was just time to bring in something new. And I love thriving on new projects. Nine years of having one online offering in the online space is just, it’s, it’s uh, it’s, you know, as old as the pantheons, it’s such a, it’s such a long period of time, um, in the online space. So I love that. What you want me to stay to decade? I love the connections that I’ve made through it and now I’ve just gone back to this simple model of just doing e-courses again, um, and creating them and sharing them whenever I feel called. So some of the e-courses I’ve got on offer at the moment is money manifesting.

Leonie: (01:17:10)
And multiple streams of income where I take you behind the scenes of my financial life, how I’ve built up a multimillion dollar net worth, um, exactly what you need to do in order to get control of your money and start creating true abundance for yourself. Then there’s 40 days to finish your book. And that’s for people who want to write their book. Um, and then it also takes them into a marketing masterclass about how to market and sell the absolute shit out of the book as well. And spoiler alert, yes, you absolutely can fucking write a book in 40 days. And lots of people who’ve taken the course already have. Then there is 40 days to create and sell your eCourse as well. Same philosophy but with an eCourse. I’ve also got anxiety balm, which is for people who suffer from anxiety and they want to know the tools that I’ve used to manage my anxiety disorder.

Leonie: (01:18:01)
Um, and just about to release the get shit done club, which is a membership program where you get to do daily accountability for your goals and for your work. And you get to do weekly, get shit done calls where we will call in and we work together and get as much shit done in that hour as possible. And I’ll happily answer any of your questions that has evolved from the Goal Getter mastermind that I released like three months ago. It was so hugely popular and it’s basically coming about because everyone who’s in that mastermind is like Leonie, we need to not ever let this go. So if you could make that so that we do this every week for all of eternity, please make that happen. Here’s my money, take my money. So, and I have loved it so much. I fucking love those calls so much.

Leonie: (01:18:55)
Um, it’s like kind of like online coworking in some weird way, but anyway, it works brilliantly. So those are the kinds of things, offerings I have now included end of course, the 2020 my shining year business goals workbook and the 2020 my shining year life workbook. Mostly I’m just turning up and seeing whatever wants to be created through me. I’ll let it dive through me. I’m also like working on other random creative side projects. Like I’m writing a romance novella to release on Amazon, I’ll release that on April 1st April fools. It’s actually not an April fool’s day joke, but that’s hilarious. Anyway, um, and like for fun as well, I have a group project with some of my friends where we have like these art journals and we like paint the art journals and then send it on to the next person. And it’s just the wholly biggest creative fun ever.

Leonie: (01:19:49)
So that’s my life. I’m talking to you while I gaze out the window at a big gum tree out in our backyard and I’m having a look to see if there’s any koalas in there because I know that we do get koalas on this street, which is very, very special. And I’m sitting in my turquoise office that is absolutely covered with artwork and knick-knacks and um, I am not someone who’s a minimalist, spoiler alert. My husband’s over in the house. I’m like 20 meters from the house. I’m kind of attached to it, but I’m on the other side of the garage and he’s doing, he’s probably just honestly upgrading our internet connection because it’s what he loves to do. That’s what happens when you marry the IT guy from work guys. They just constantly want your internet to be better. And I am here for it. And very soon I will go and pick up my kids from school and be with them.

Leonie: (01:20:49)
And that’s my life guys. It’s been a wild, wild journey from that very dreamy artsy kid who was deeply, you know, her best friend was a, an animal, a number of animals. Um, they were fighting between me. Like, what can I say, my horse, my horse and I dog. They’re like, Oh my best friend, no I’m my best friend guys. You can all be my best friend. OK. um, to that, that young woman who was working out what she wanted to be in the world, including if that would be prime minister of Australia and then realizing, no, I think I’ll have a creative career instead, to building an online business that’s now brought in over $10 million in revenue, what the actual fuck and it’s enabled me to only work 10 hours a week and just focus my life instead on my children and my very hot husband and just living and loving the absolute fuck out of myself and out of life.

Leonie: (01:21:56)
I feel so lucky to be here. I feel so lucky to connect with you all. If you ever see me in person, by the way, please come up and say hello. That’s how I love to make friends. It’s like because you already know me and love me. You’re pre-screened. Therefore you’re cool, therefore we can be mates. Thanks for sharing this massive journey with me and I hope this has not been well. I don’t give a fuck if it’s been massively long for you. It’s been massively fun to share this out and I hope it’s been useful for you to hear like the behind the scenes of how it’s just built and grown over the years. Let me know what you think. If you like, I don’t give a fuck. It’s going to be like, please like and subscribe but again. I just, I really don’t give a fuck. I just hope this is of use. I know I’m having fun.

Leonie: (01:22:45)
Alright, I love you all. Byeeee!