You are listening to My Freedom Grove podcast with Gretchen Hernandez, episode 70.

Welcome to My Freedom Grove podcast. The all inclusive podcast that teaches mindset and business tools. We'll help you rise as your authentic self. Be unshakable with your emotional freedom and unstoppable in achieving any goal and living your purpose. I'm your host, Gretchen Hernandez. If you want to put your mental health first in life, relationships and business, you've come to the right place.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hey, my strong friends. Oh my gosh. I have missed you guys. I had planned on taking about a month off or so for doing some of the re niching in my business and to create some new business classes. And it took a little bit longer. I'm still working on some of those courses, but, having that extra little break was definitely helpful so that I could do a lot of the work so that I could get ready to serve you even better. Now, I also had a little bit of fun because, you know, I want to put mental health first in everything that I do.

Well with this pandemic, most of us have been stuck inside our houses for so long. So now that a lot of the restrictions are starting to get lifted. I had my son, my eldest son come and visit. It was our birthday weekend. We decided we were going to have some fun. One of the things that we did was went for a canoe trip. So in Gualala, in California, that's where I want to have the retreats... Just gorgeous. You got the ocean, you got the Redwood trees and you have the Gualala river. We went canoeing on that river. Oh my gosh. It was so much fun. And to stick our feet in the water. There are swimming holes and stuff, but it's like a lazy river. It's really slow. So you don't have to worry about drowning or anything. It was so much fun.

My kids, they were like, we forgot there was this thing called outside. We've been doing all of the zoom calls. You know, for me, I do all of the zoom calls with my business. My kids have been doing zoom calls for school and for college. So to get out and just enjoy nature, enjoy all the surroundings. It just, it was amazing.

It also helped me to think about when I get ready to do the retreats for you guys. I want to do like weekend long retreats, where we do some business coaching and some wellness coaching and activities. But we also have those breakout sessions where we could go down to the beach or go for a canoe trip. How fun would that be? I don't know when these retreats are going to be. I need to build up my audience to make sure I actually have enough people that want to come to these retreats first, but it's going to be so much fun.

FULL CREATIVE LICENSE AS A BUSINESS OWNER

One of the cool things with being a business owner is that you have full creative license. That's what I wanted to talk to you about with this episode. I think it is time for you to start thinking about creating your own unique business. You have a unique set of skills that nobody else has in this world. You have so many strengths and you've overcome some struggles in your life. There is this magical component of all of those that come together. You can create a very unique business offering. That's going to help the world.

One thing that people are really craving right now is connection and activity. We've been trapped at home for so long. Our mental health has really taken a hit. You have that opportunity to create something that's going to bring people joy, possibly some healing, possibly some building, whatever it is that you want to do to help other people, you can create that unique opportunity.

When we start looking at business models, the cool thing with business models is that there are so many different interchangeable pieces. When we get into the online space, we tend to get overwhelmed by all of the things that we think that we have to learn. But if you remember there's only five things that you really have to do:

      1. Let people know that you exist.

2. Have a place of business.

              A store or website or something where people can interact with you and learn what it is that you do.

             See what you offer, be able to purchase products and services from you.

3. Have a product/service and a way to deliver it.

4. Market you, your products/services.

5. Be able to sell your products/services.

It's not too bad. But when you go out into the online world, you're going to see a hundred different things thrown at you. That's where the overwhelm starts to feel...well overwhelming.

Of course, we think that we have to learn every single one of those things. That's not true. It's like five things. You just have to figure out five things. That's where all of the experimenting comes in. You get to have full creative license. You can pick and choose the things that you want to try.

DISCOVER WHAT YOU LOVE

The things that you want to experiment with:

The people that you want to work with the most. The ones that you want to help the most.

What are they going to like?

What are you going to like?

Right? Because it's not just one sided. You don't want to go into a business and then just absolutely hate it.

You want something that is going to light you up inside. Something that's going to give you the freedom that you're looking for. Whether that is some time freedom, location freedom, money freedom, whatever it might be. You get to have all of that. You get to design the type of work environment that is ideal for you and that your clients are just absolutely going to love.

CREATIVE PRODUCTS & SERVICES

Let's think about some really creative products and services that you can offer to other people. So if you're thinking about activities, I want you to get inspired by that idea of that canoe trip. Is there something with your products and services, where you would have normally done it just inside? Is there any component of the outside that you can incorporate into that? People are trying to get used to being outside. There's a whole lot of anxiety about being outside and around other people. You can help twofold:

1. You can help them with the product and service you offer.

2. You can also help them to get more comfortable with being outside and around other people.

You can help to minimize the social anxiety. Because we're all going through it. Back before the pandemic, not everybody had social anxiety. But now the commonality of it, I think is probably pretty astounding. I don't have any studies on this. I don't have any statistics, but the people that I've talked to that have never experienced this before now, they're really struggling with it.

I know that when I first moved out here to the coast, I was struggling with it. And I'm a complete extrovert. I love being around people. But there was something about uprooting my whole family, moving out to a new location that going and being with people that I had never met, I was feeling super uncomfortable. I was having a little bit of an anxiety attack going from my car into a community center where they were doing a breakfast. It's like none of us even had to mingle yet. I was having all this stress. And that was before the pandemic.

So imagine the service that you could provide, where you're helping people to get more comfortable, just like inch by inch. It doesn't have to be, you know, a huge event. You could even start this with an event with like three people. Three people, just to get used to being around each other again.

You can incorporate some other activities. You know, sometimes regular business might not be super exciting, but you can incorporate some fun. One of my first friends that I met when I moved out here to the coast, was talking to me about possibly going in together to create The Artist's Way workshop. I believe that uses a lot of art and painting so that you can express your emotions. There's a lot of healing that still happens as a result. But you're doing a fun activity of painting.

I loved this idea. I've always enjoyed painting. I may not be the best painter in the world, but I have fun pushing that paint around and being around other people. I don't know if you ever went to one of those paint and sip nights. Somebody created a whole business model on bringing people together, giving them a canvas, giving them a styrofoam plate with some piles of paint in it and some paint brushes. And then they had one painting. They're like, I'm going to teach you how to paint this one thing. And then everybody's there, they're painting the same painting. And they're having a good time together, like virtual strangers, right? People have that opportunity to be one individual and they could come and participate with a whole group of people doing something fun. That is quite the gift.

It was a pretty profitable business model. When I went and I did one of these, it costs $40 to go to it. We were encouraged to bring our own wine. So we didn't have to worry about that. The business owner did this at a restaurant. The restaurant donated the space. So it was free space to be able to do this because they knew that the clients would end up wanting to eat dinner ahead of time because it's a social event. So the restaurant wins, the business owner wins and all of the clients win.

If you have $40 per client, who's coming in, the only thing that you have to cover is just the cost of your materials. And of course, if you have overhead for a website or any of your marketing, you have that to cover, but seriously, that's a pretty good return on investment there. If you incorporate that with people being allowed to talk about their feelings, even better!

A coaching friend of mine just got back from a hiking trip to Mount Rainier. I can't even imagine. I would love to have the physical ability to climb that high. I have made a lot of progress with strengthening my legs from my knee surgery, but the idea of climbing that high, Ooh, that would be an amazing feat. Anyway, as he's getting ready for his coaching business. I asked him, what would you think if you created a program where you take people out on these hiking expeditions and somehow incorporate some of your coaching along the way?

It turns out he was already thinking in that direction. I was so excited. I love how creative we can get with what we're doing. He already had some ideas. He was familiar with another business model out there. I'm going to call it fancy hiking, just because I've experienced, fancy camping before. You start off at a nice resort, go out for a hike, and at the end of the night, you're back at another resort.

I went to a Grey Eagle Lodge. That was my fancy camping, probably a decade ago, where we had little cabins that we stayed at instead of tents. During the day we would swim in the lakes, climb and go on nature hikes looking at all of the different lakes we could find. In the evening time there was a five course meal by a professional chef. It was in a central lodge with linen napkins and tablecloths. We're there covered in dirt, sunburns and our hair up in ponytails. It was such a weird experience. I remember my son having a cream puff Swan that was dipped in chocolate and I'm looking at him and it's like, you can see the mosquito bites and stuff on him from when we went on this hike.

So back to what my coach friend was sharing with me. He was familiar with a business model where it really would it start off at some fancy resort somewhere. Then people would go out for a big, long hiking trip. It was something that required a lot of physical stamina. And then they would end up at the next resort. I don't think there was any driving ever involved. Instead of staying at a tent each night, they were staying at a really nice resort. They'd get all cleaned up and sleep in a bed. And then the next day go out and hike. And that would end up at another resort. I thought, oh my gosh, fancy hiking is so cool.

When you can incorporate different things, people are more interested in going to it, because it's an activity. We are so bored sitting inside doing the same old thing day in and day out. When you can incorporate activities into your business models, people are going to be so grateful to finally have something to do and to feel some life. And they're going to get the benefit of whatever your product or service was on how you're helping them.

THE BONES OF YOUR BUSINESS + FUN VARIETY

Now, the cool thing is, I have been documenting all of my processes. Everything that I do with course creation, all of the marketing stuff, all of the website creations, and I help my clients to do that too. No matter what your niche is, it can change over time. Your ideal customers can change over time. Your products and services can change over time, but the bones of a business, the processes, they pretty much so are always the same. You're just changing a few of the variables, like the activity, right?

The activity. It might just be that you pull that one piece out and you pluck in a new activity. The rest of it is exactly the same. So I started to get this crazy idea that since I have developed all of these skillsets, I could do something fun when it comes closer to the end of the year. One of the things that I've been doing for over two decades is a gingerbread house party. So I love to bring people together, do an activity, have fun together.

When I was in college, I found this recipe in an old Good Housekeeping magazine for making gingerbread from scratch. I rolled it all out and they had the little templates on the magazine pages. I had to blow that up, make templates out of it that were the right size for the house. I remember cutting out the gingerbread with a knife. It was all very much so by hand. So then I'd have all of the pieces to assemble the gingerbread house. And since I like to create parties, that very first year I invited a couple of friends over. There were four of us and we assembled gingerbread houses and we decided to do a little potluck between the food that we were going to eat. And also all the candies for the houses.

Well, it was so much fun that the next year I did it again and I had 10 people and that was so much fun that the next year I did it and had 20 people. Eventually I went all the way up to 50 people. That's a lot of gingerbread to roll out. I had to start taking several days off of work so that I could make all of this gingerbread. But I got my processes down. I was able to crank out that many batches of gingerbread and get the whole thing going so smoothly so it didn't take much time. It was so much fun to do those big gingerbread parties.

It even influenced what houses I would buy. It had to be big enough so that I could host these big gingerbread parties. Anyway, I had this thought that since I know how to make online courses, and I know how to teach people, that may be a business model to do as just something on the side. Because I have everything pretty streamlined. I know how to market it. It might not necessarily fit with all of the business process that I do with you guys. But how much fun would it be to teach other people how to put on a gingerbread party? This has become a family tradition of ours for well over two decades. My kids grew up with this. All of the pictures over the years of everybody. Watching everybody as they age and have kids. And watching all of the kids grow up and having gingerbread parties every single year, so much fun.

BUSINESS KNOWLEDGE LASTS A LIFETIME

Anyway, that's the cool thing with getting very familiar and learning all of this business stuff, you learn all of the business models. You learn how to put together your business processes. You learn how to build different products and services. Once you learn all of that, that knowledge is gold.

You can then repurpose that no matter what your niche is. No matter what customers you want to serve. No matter what product or service you want to create. You can continuously create these things. Anyway, I just wanted to throw that out to you guys.

I have been in a couple environments recently where I'm meeting more people that are interested in maybe dabbling and trying to create their own business. The idea of going and buying a business in a box, like multilevel marketing doesn't appeal to them. They really want to create something from scratch. And I love that. I love the innovation with all of it. I can't wait to be able to help them.

If this is something that interests you, I would love to be there to help you. I have some one-on-one individual business & life coaching spots available. I can help you through all of it, no matter where you are in your business journey. The Unshakable group coaching programs are also available. I have both a Men's Unshakable program and a Women's Unshakable program in there. We talk about how to start a business, achieving any goals in business or life, and resolving any emotional triggers that come up.

No matter where you are in life, or if you're trying to do business, emotional triggers are going to come up. We have families around us. We have other people, we have all of our confidence building and capability that we need to do as we're trying to create these businesses. Emotional triggers happen, left and right. I help you resolve your emotional triggers so you can get back to work, to get your business up and running.

You can check out those options at my website, www.myfreedomgrove.com/workwithme.

My friends, I hope that I have your creative juices going. I can't wait to see what you come up with. It's great to be back here with you. I look forward to having more of this time together. All right. Have a great week. Bye bye.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thank you for listening to My Freedom Grove podcast. I hope this podcast provided you some relief and some inspiration. If you know somebody else that can benefit from this podcast, please share the link with them. Together. I know we can make a difference. To access more podcasts and offerings, please visit www.myfreedomgrove.com. Until next time, take care of yourself. This world needs you.