Gorgeous ones!

I had SUCH an incredible response to the last edition of this, and I wanted to do it again. I loved how many people found it so helpful last time, and I really do love to share!

I’ve been collecting this on scraps of paper for months now, and seeing as another round of the Business Goddess e-course is starting in a couple of days (February 1), and it’s the beginning of the year, it felt like now was the right time and energy to share it!

In this post I’ll be sharing as honestly & lovingly as I can about my gorgeous goddess business. I find it SO helpful when other entrepreneurs are willing to open up & share what goes on in their business. And I want to do it even bigger and deeper!

Again, this is a mega post. Almost 5000 words!

Imagonna cover a whole bundle of topics in this post:

• stopping my workaholic tendencies
• the lessons I learned from World’s Biggest Summit
• the team planning retreat I am organising
• where I get my insights from
• my decision to cough up buttloads of dobleros for a fancyschmancy CRM
• business coaching stuff.

Let’s get started, sweetpeas!

Not being a workaholic

This is the thing I’ve been working on for the last six months. Maybe more. Maybe my whole life time really.

How to stop being a workaholic and overachiever.

I’ve got SO much to talk about on this that I’m going to write a big post about it.

So that’s on the way.

In the meantime:

YAY! for finding ways to work and live that are sustainable, happy and fun!

A! Team! Planning! Retreat!

One month + three days to go until my amazing assistant Marissa lands for our dreaming and planning retreat.

It’s occupying a bit of my workmind lately.

I’m very, very excited we’ll at last get to meet.

I think having time to talk about ourselves, the business, where we both want to head, what we need to do for things to evolve is going to be the bestest thing ever.

How I’m preparing:

I loved reading this post on Offbeat Empire and these two posts on Promise Tangeman’s blog about having team retreats. I’d love to read more about other people’s experiences of team retreats, and would LOVE to hear if you know of any resources or inspiring posts.

I’ve been writing lists of questions we should discuss.

Me & Marissa have both committed to reading Double Double by Cameron Herold before we meet. Double Double is all about creating a painted picture or vision of your business in the next three years, and then working out the way to get there.

And hunky husband is preparing by renovating the bathroom.

When I told him I wanted Marissa to come over and stay with us, he said:

Okay. Whatever you want to do honey. Just let me renovate the bathroom first.

I love how this man’s mind works.

(After ten years of loving him, I still have NO idea what he’ll say next. True story.)

See, we bought my grandmother’s 100 year old wooden cottage.

And it’s pretty dang adorable & serves our needs really well.

But the bathroom was not serving our needs.

I remember watching my grandfather lay the tiles in there 25 years ago.

And while I love that he laid them, I did *not* love those tiles. They definitely needed a good old clearing out.

(I’m not really a things-sentimentalist. I don’t hold on to stuff because it holds memories. I’m the one that hold memories. And I don’t believe we ever lose people. They are with us all along. So I’m super happy to let go of stuff that isn’t serving me.)

And the walls are getting painted cream. CREAM!

I never thought I’d willing paint something cream, but I’ve had a love affair with cream since I had a retreat inside a cream womb.

And it felt it was just the colour it needed to make the funny lil sideroom that is our bathroom into a happy, open space.

So yay! Bathroom renovations!

And I also prepared the space for her arrival by letting go of my book collection and buying a dreamy bed for our spare room.

I’ve been making sure the bed is good for sleeping in by taking naps on it.

Happy to report:

IT IS AWESOME.

Brown paper packages! Filled with stationery!
These are a few of my favourite things!

And because stationery is UBER important to me, I ordered what I thought we’d need for our planning retreat.

When I first had that dream of having Marissa here and dreaming together, I saw us sitting in a room covered in paper, drawing out big plans and goals onto the paper with rainbow markers, and Marissa helping me decode my ideas down into doable systems over the year.

So I got four packs of 3M Giant Post it Paper & some markers.

So as far as I’m concerned:

I AM SOOO ORGANISED.

What else do I need to do?

As we get closer to her arrival, we’ll start winding down non-essential tasks & slating our plans clean for two weeks so we can concentrate on the dreaming and planning.

What do I hope to achieve out of the retreat?

1. A holiday, frankly.

I haven’t had a decent holiday for a long time. And we really, really love having people stay with us. We’re planning on taking her out to the islands, and around our favourite beaches, and for dawdles around goddess village.

OOOH! I think I’ll ask my dear friend Trish as well to do a goddess team photoshoot as well! YEAH! GREAT IDEA LEONIE!

2. Natter.

Apart from our fortnightly Skype check-ins, me and Marissa don’t get much time to natter.

I think there’s a tremendous amount of soul + business + dream goodness we are going to get from having a large expanse of time to just natter.

Nattering is very underrated I reckon.

3. Plans

I am damn FABULOUS at coming up with wild ideas and brainstorming.

I am not as brilliant once I’m in that space of brainstorming of flipping the switch back into “How will we make this happen” and “What are the systems we need to create to support this.”

For me, it feels like two separate parts of my brain.

My vision is to receive a new business download of dreams and visions over the two weeks, and for Marissa to be there to support that and decipher them into what we can do, what is possible and all the rest.

She’ll be Chief of Dream Dictation I reckon.

I’ll just be Wild Shaman Woman Receiving Da Visions.

That’s our official business titles, and I’m sticking to it!

4. Results

I hope to emerge out of our planning retreat with the next year of this gorgeous goddess business mapped out.

All the creations I want to make.

And how we are going to share it with the people who need it in the most powerful, loving, abundant, joyful way possible.

Shower Insights

SO. I wrote this note down months ago.

Just two words.

“Shower Insights.”

And looking back on it now, I think:

Hurrumph.

Well that’s nice.

What in heckeroo does that mean?

So it takes me a while to remember what I was talking about when I noodled that down before in the age before time began.

It was just this:

I get my very best business ideas, insight + clarity

NOT

when I am working

or trying to brainstorm

or typing away frantically.

I get them in the shower.

My point is

(and I do have one)

if you’re feeling stuck trying to work something else,

switch modalities. Do something different.

As Julia Cameron talked about in the World’s Biggest Summit

“Move your muscles, change a thought”

Give yourself some zen time, some noodle time, some watch-crappy-rom-com time.

The answer will find you.

How Business Coaching Was Born

I keep getting emails asking if I’m opening Turquoise Membership spots for the next year (seeing as last year’s sold out pretty dang quickly).

And here’s the answer:

I’m not.

I checked in with Great Spirit, and got told that I’m going to be getting new projects & retreats set every month or two over the next year which I’ll need to devote myself too.

BUT.

I’m offering super premium one-off business/soul coaching sessions. My lovely assistant Marissa was talking to me this morning. Marissa has kind of the perfect view of this – she took one of my goddess guidance mentoring programs a few years ago, and has been working one on one with me as a Turquoise Goddess over the last year to grow her business & make some big, transformative shifts in her personal life too.

Here’s the conversation:

SO! I needed to tell you that one of my friends is emailing you. Except since I answer all your emails I’ll be answering it.

Ha! That’s funny! What is she emailing about?

Well! She wants to get business coaching from you. She keeps hearing me rave about you & how you have this ridiculous-sized business brain & has seen how much I’ve changed from working with you, and she asked me how she can work with you too. I told her you weren’t really doing private sessions at the moment, but that she should beg you and that you would.

Well! Sounds like a plan then! I really do want to do that anyway! Can you write the page for me, because you already know exactly what I do and how I help?

Yep! Cool! Writing it on my list now. So how long will the session go for?

It will be three things: they’ll fill out a workbook beforehand about their business & send it to me. I’ll meditate on it & check out their website & what they are offering. Then we’ll do a big business brainstorm and a download of information from Great Spirit/healing/whatever needs to happen in order for what they want to happen to happen.

Right. Because you could have given me all the ideas under the sun and none of it would have happened if you hadn’t helped me heal & unblock all those other issues that were really going on for me.

Exactly!!! And then, because I’m a bit of an introverted thinker and think best of all when I’m writing, I’ll follow up with a written action plan of marketing & business & sacred tools for them to start using straight away.

How much do you want to charge? I told my friend that she should pay whatever you are charging because it is SO WORTH IT and that she would get ten times back at least what she’d spent. You just have the best ideas!

Oh YAY! That’s the best ever. Okay – so sitting with it. Well, I really don’t have much time to do these sessions. I really want to limit them. And I only want to do them for people who are totally willing and able to commit to the process. And I know my life is going to get even busier. I really need the number of this to reflect that spaciousness & expansiveness. I need to be given what feels like the best so I can pour my best into it unreservedly.

(I close my eyes and sit with it in silence for a few moments. I open my eyes.)

I will charge $1000 for the first few brainstorming sessions. After that, it might stay at that price. Or it might increase. I feel good about this number because I know they will be able to get at least $10 000 more for their business at least when they implement it. I mean, I’d prefer if they doubled their income from it, but that’s going to be really up to them.

So thus, it was born.

I’ve already done a session for her friend, and it was the most incredible download of business wisdom and advice ever. I was reeling from it. I just kept thinking to myself:

Holy dinger I have REALLY learned a HUGE amount about business to share!!!

And I’m really excited to see her business take off wildly + exponentially, and I know she is too.

If you are interested in a session, you need to email us at support@leoniedawson.com with BUSINESS COACHING in the email heading.

I will only probably do three sessions over the next two months, but I would be honoured and delighted to help you grow your business blossom in the most incredible way. This is not for people who are just starting out. This is for business owners who have already got things moving and grooving and would like to take their business to another gorgeous level.

Okay! Yay!

Turning comments off on my blog

I’ve been asked a number of times to share why I turned comments off on this blog since I did it months ago.

My reasoning was this:

I used to think that the success of the blog post was about how many comments it received.

And I used to obsess over it. And compare myself to other people’s blogs + the number of comments they received.

But I didn’t want to misguide myself. I believe blog comments are false validation of success.

For me, the success of my blog is this:

The more money I make.

And that sounds very very decidedly UN-hippy.

But here’s the thing:

the more money I make is in proportion to the number of goddesses I am helping.

The more goddesses I help, the more money I make.

I absoloodely believe in every single one of my products.

I pour my heart and spirit and wisdom into every single one of them.

I don’t hold back.

None of them are crap.

My destiny has always been to help other people wake up and see how beautiful the world is, how amazing life can be, how good they truly are.

And this beautiful business of mine is the vehicle, the vessel that helps me do that.

I believe deeply that I help women to heal. I help women to be very, very happy. I help them to be the goddess they are.

I help them be more creative. Have more abundant businesses. Be more peaceful mamas.

And I want to help the whole world.

I truly believe I’m supposed to help millions of people.

So that’s what I’m going to do.

I’ve also learned along the way that the more money I make, the more I can help people.

When I made nothing or very little from sharing my soul’s gifts, it meant I had to spend 90% of my time in a job not helping people.

When I made more, I was able to start reducing my hours at work & help more people.

When I made more, I was able to leave my job & devote more of myself to helping people.

When I made more, I was able to hire Marissa for more hours each week to support me so I didn’t burn out, and support all our clients so they got what they were needing, and help even more people.

When I made more money, I was able to let my husband leave his job to be a stay at home parent with me, and at long last study for his dream job in Psychology. I know he will help people with his simple, sage counsel. I am grateful he has been one of my teachers for these ten years, and I am grateful that me making more money is enabling him to have a job where he can be a teacher for more people.

When I made more money, it meant my daughter could be at home with her parents everyday. She’s a lucky button.

When I made more, I was able to donate more money and give to more people. In larger and larger amounts.

I’m now at a stage in my business where I can give to SO many more people than ever before. It just grows and grows with the amount of abundace I receive. I give away more free stuff than anyone I know of. And I’m incredibly generous with the amount of stuff that comes in the Goddess Circle – over $900 worth of my products for 1/10th that price. I absoloodely walk my talk of helping as many souls as I can.

I’m not afraid of making more money.

Because I know it will create good things, for me and the world.

My dreams of money is that my business will continuing doubling in profitability each year.

I dream of being able to employ Marissa for even more hours to help me do even more.

I dream of taking more holidays. Working less. And helping even more, through my paid work, free offerings, through my blog, my newsletter, through my energy.

And I dream of being able to one day buy a sweet lil farmhouse and live in the countryside, where I belong, surrounded by trees and a horsey or three and maybe a beefalo. And have goddesses come and stay with us for live-in retreats.

Yup. So that’s my answer dearest.

Because I’ve got bigger dreams than the number of comments I receive on my blog.

And I turned them off to remember.

P.S. Also? I’d MUCH rather goddesses share along a post by Facebook or Twitter to other goddesses it might help.

And I don’t tend to obsess over the numbers of how many times it has been shared.

I do notice what posts tend to get shared along the most. Some totally surprise me. Goddesses tend to share a post if it is incredibly, wildly helpful beyond all expectations or deeply heart felt and touching.

That advice is probably worth $10 000 right there. WOO!

The Joyful Embrace of the Potty Mouth

Another thing: I’ve realised lately how dearly I love people who swear. And how in daily life, I’ve got a sailor’s mouth. And it makes me giggle a lot. But I don’t often swear here, when I write. Sometimes I video about it, especially when I meet a snake up a tree. But I’m gunna try writing it, okay? Drop the f-bomb when it wants to be dropped. Let’s face it, it’s a dang good embellishment.

If you aren’t open to hearing a well placed fuckityfuckityfuck, I understand.

And I’m also letting you know that I enjoy being a swear bear and will be embracing it even more.

Routine

SO! Our life routine is shifting & melding again which is lovely.

Right now, we wake up around 7am when Ostara wakes up. We lounge around in bed reading books, listening to music, playing & reading ipods for an hour or two. Sometimes if I’m running behind, I’ll do a bit of work in bed on the laptop.

I have phone interviews or coaching calls at 8am for a couple of hours each Tuesday & Wednesday.

When I was pulling together the World’s Biggest Summit, that ended up stretching out way longer than that.

In the mornings, I usually either take Ostara adventuring on my own so Chris can do some study for his Psychology degree. We will go for strolls through goddess village or meet friends for creative mornings or go to mums & bubs yoga. Otherwise, all three of us will go for a jaunt across the countryside to the holy mecca of Big W for nappies, stationery + gardening supplies.

Around lunchtime, I’ll nurse Ostara to sleep then head out the door to my Creative Caravan.

Chris will hang out in the cottage studying. Once Ostara’s awake, he’ll take care of her.

I’ll work for about 2-3 hours before Ostara starts getting restless & trots out into the yard & into the Caravan for a breastfeed and cuddle.

From the moment she was born, she’s always been a mama’s girl… very much a velcro baby towards me.

She loves her Daddy-o, and they have a really special time hanging out together, but she needs mama-energy often.

From the reading I’ve done, this is totes normal, and I respect that she really needs to fuel up on energy through me.

For me, it’s been about learning how to balance all of this :: my energy and needs, hers and Chris’ so we can all live happily together.

She’s 21 months and still doesn’t sleep through the night (which I know is totally normal).

It’s just working out a way for me to not live in a constant swirl of exhaustion.

It’s very much a balancing act of work, life, mamahood, alone time and rest.

I feel like I do much better at it now, but it’s definitely something I monitor on a daily basis.

So for every mama out there who is doing it out there ::

I just want to say: I understand. This is the hard work we are doing here. We are on the fast train to Buddha-hood, I tell ya. I love you and want to feed you tea, chocolate and sleep.

Now where was I?

Oh yes. After I’ve done my work for the day, we usually head out into the yard to do some gardening and playing. Or onto the verandah to make art together.

We ALWAYS have an early dinner (3-4pm) – it’s our natural inclination. Then we’ll watch a movie and nestle in for the night.

Ostara usually gets breastfed to sleep between 7-8.

Then me and Chris cozy up on the couch together and (very romantically) open our laptops for more work. He studies, I tackle my To Do list.

We head to bed around 9:30.

If I stay up any later than that, I’m doomed a day of exhaustion. So 9:30 is my limit.

On a weekly basis, we have a couple of days where this isn’t the case: Sundays which are my Switch Off Sundays and Friday nights which are date nights.

Date nights are nights we designate for couple-connection time. Once Ostara’s asleep, we either watch a movie together, or drink tea and talk talk talk.

This is gooooood.

And that’s how I run my life!

I’m also mindful of going slow and taking it easier once I start getting rundown. I’m getting MUCH better at seeing the early signs of burn out and taking the foot off the pedal before I hit Exhaustion Train.

Getting my To Do list sorted

This year my goal is to work more strategically instead of more busily.

So, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m a 7 on the Enneagram.

I’m overexcitable, prone to wild ideas, riding wild donkeys & basically doing extreme acts of making dreams happen.

I never thought I’d be into an extreme sport, but I am. Making-dreams-happen sport.

And it’s really really awesome and useful and all that stuff.

It also means that I can get a bit disorganised, and forget my original intention.

There’s so many donkeys in the paddock! I want to ride them all!

When really, I need to focus on the big stallion donkeys that have my name firmly branded on their bums. Donkeys that I’ve already looked at and gone “ohhhhh yeah, I be needing to riiiiide you.”

Not get distracted by those pretty young filly donkeys that flit in and out.

You know?

This year I have tattooed everywhere possible:

MAXIMUM IMPACT

MINIMUM EFFORT

Not in a lazy-ass way.

But in a “I need to do my big wild dreams above and beyond the distracting tiny little ones.”

I have a propensity to burn out, to exhaust myself, to go above and beyond my normal energy supply.

This year I am even more firmly committed to living a business and a life that is sustainable, originated from natural energy, is not generated by my overexcitable adrenals and walks its spiritual talk.

So I want to be strategic. Look at ways I can help the most amount of people in a way that is healthy and happy for everyone in my business and life including my assistant, me, my husband and daughter.

So:

MAXIMUM IMPACT

MINIMUM EFFORT

One of the ways I am doing this is having more regularly Skype team meetings with Marissa to lay down our plans for the fortnight. (Oh, and you guys in the US – fortnight is English/Australian for “every second week”. What do you guys call that? Do you have a slang for it? Because “every second week” is a pain in the butt to say! C’mon! Join the “fortnight” train! It is SO MUCH FUN. I promise you will love it! Toot toot!)

Another way I am being more strategic is by doing weekly plans of me & Marissa’s tasks. Marissa works for me about 14 hours a week, in case you were wondering. Can you imagine how much more I’d be able to do if I could hire her full time? HOLY DINGER!!!

I used to have my To Do lists ALL OVER THE SHOP… some in folders, some on scrap paper, some in a text file, some in emails.

This year I’m much more disciplined at setting out our weekly tasks up in Basecamp. Which, by ze way, is totally free. I used the free version for a gazillion years, but as part of my organisational streak, upgraded to their $24.95 a month plan. I’ve been uploading lots of my course + website graphic design assets onto there so Marissa can use them when she needs.

Once I’ve worked out my priorities for the week, I pull them back onto my desktop productivity centre to work on them.

And that’s how dreams come true…

THE END!

hee!

And with that,

I think that’s everything I can think to share right now. As it ding dang should be… over 5000 words.

Pheeeewy!

Business is ding dang RAD to talk about though. It’s totally the vessel that helps our dreams go out into the world to help people (and ourselves) heal.

I totally believe and know that to be true.

I so deeply hope this is helpful.

If you know of any dear friends who might find it useful, please do share it along.

I just want you to know that I believe in you. Your wildest dreams are possible. And I’m total living proof of that.

LOVE!!!!

Like this post?

If you are looking to supercharge your business with delight, abundance + marketing power this year, the Business Goddess e-course group journey on the Goddess Circle is starting FEBRUARY 1!.

Sign up to be a Goddess Circle member to be a part!

(You’ll also get $900+ of the rest of my goodies too!)