How to Grow Your Business Working 2 Hours a Day with Michelle Clarke

*Transcript is unedited (for the most part)

Gianna Diggs 0:05
You are listening to the mompreneur mindset podcast, a space where we empower you to build an aligned business. So you can spend less time on the things you think you should be doing in your business, and more time with the people you love. I am your host, Gianna Diggs, let’s get into it.

Welcome back to the show. So today I have another guest, her name is Michelle Clark, and a little bit about Michelle, her energy is infectious, and her words empowering and inspiring. She’s obsessed with helping so let entrepreneurs to achieve transformational success, by up leveling their energy, mindset and habits, and helping them to step into their power and speak to their authentic message. She encourages women to be unapologetically brave, tap back into their inner knowing and unleash their magic, so that they can become magnetic to their soulmate client, and bring their purpose into the world. Because the world needs what they have. So without further ado, let’s get into the interview. Hi, Michelle, welcome to the show.

Michelle Clarke 1:17
Hello, thank you for having me.

Gianna Diggs 1:18
Yes, I’m super excited for our conversation today. Because I feel like this is something that a lot of beginner entrepreneurs really struggle with. And that is how to grow your business, how to even get started with your business in a knot, that’s spending 10 hours on it, you know? And so, I want to know, in trying to figure out how much time to spend on your business, right? How can entrepreneurs know what direction and actions are the right ones to take?

Michelle Clarke 1:57
Yeah, that is a really good question. Because honestly, that is to growing your business and not burning out is only taking the aligned actions because there are so many actions that you could take. But it’s about taking the really aligned actions. And the only way to know which aligned actions, which ones are aligned for you and your business, is to listen to your soul. Your soul knows what should be doing already. I mean, you could be doing Facebook, you could do an Instagram, you could be doing Twitter, and you could be doing Tumblr, and you could be doing talking on podcast and you’re doing all these things. But if it’s not aligned to you, then it’s just busy work rather than aligned work. And I think that’s what most people struggle with, like I work with people on all ends of the spectrum of their businesses. And what I find in common is that people don’t know where to focus. And the reason they don’t know what, because as they’re watching, we get FOMO. You know, we watch what everyone’s doing on the internet and all that shiny thing over there. And all I’m gonna try that and all I could do that. And we try to do everything, we don’t do it. Well, like imagine having five boyfriends at the same time, right? You wouldn’t be growing any of those relationships very well. You need to really, really focus on your business as a relationship, you need to treat it like it as a relationship, like, really figure out what does your business want from you and what feels good for you like you wouldn’t continually and I do tend to talk about this, I tend to talk about marketing, like it’s dating and your business like it’s a relationship because we can all relate to, like you wouldn’t be in a relationship with with a partner and only do things that they liked, right? We need to be a little bit of given has to serve us, I think we come at it from the wrong angle your business is to serve you.

Gianna Diggs 3:34
Right? I think a lot of people do that. Because it’s always, it’s always the push of like what the client wants, right. And so how many people will create an offer, because they’re like, Well, everyone wants this thing from me, but it doesn’t feel aligned with what they’re doing. And so it’s like, you create this thing to appease your audience, which of course, we want to do that. But then you burn out quickly, because it doesn’t align with you.

Michelle Clarke 4:01
Exactly. And if you do something that’s fun for you, I promise you, that’s where the money is. But so many people at the beginning stage of their business as I see them doing what’s trendy at the moment. So what’s really might be mindset, or it might be busting money beliefs, or it might be you know, it could be any number of things depending on what industry you’re in, and they focus on what everyone else is doing, instead of what their soul wants them to do because they see other people making money doing that. But that might be aligned for their soul. So they will make money doing that. But if you try and do it just to make money, you won’t make money out of it. Whereas if you follow the joy if you always follow the bliss, that’s where your money is

Gianna Diggs 4:41
so true. So what what strategies would someone would you give someone who was like, Okay, you want me to follow my soul, but like how do I listen to my soul?

Michelle Clarke 4:51
It’s a really good question, because it’s different for every person. And I actually wrote a whole a whole part of the book that I wrote where we for women in business and actually teaches you how to listen to your soul. Because we’re all born listening to soul, right? It’s just forget about it. And we get, you know, we get taught that it’s a little bit crazy. So we stopped doing it, we stop listening to our intuition. So you have the ability to do it. It’s just you’ve forgotten how to do it. And there are there are certain things that you need in place in order to listen to your soul. And the biggest one of those, like, the easiest one for me to talk about here without talking about it for 10 hours. Is that you need space. We’re too busy. We’re too distracted. Yeah, yeah. Intuition. We’re scrolling on Facebook, and we’re gossiping with our friends. And we’re watching Netflix, but with the quiet time, you won’t hear the messages when there’s too much noise.

Gianna Diggs 5:45
That’s, that’s so powerful, because I think that our cell phones and technology has really created this world where it’s great for us, right? Like, you know, you’re all the way across the world. And we’re able to do this podcast together, right? So it’s created this this connection, but at the same time, is created this space where it’s like, most people can’t even meditate for five minutes, right? Without feeling like, Oh, God, what’s going on? Like, oh, did I hit my phone? Dang. Or? I know, that’s something that I struggled with when I first started meditating was I was like, Oh, I cannot sit here for 10 minutes. And it’s just created this, this process that we just don’t know how to do nothing. And I think that that’s so key, especially as moms, right, like, you know, my daughter, she’s four, and it’s just that iPad, sometimes I have to say, let me get that iPad. And it she’s just like No mom, like, like, she doesn’t know how to just sit there and do nothing. But I’m glad she has an imagination that she’ll at least play when most kids don’t even do that.

Michelle Clarke 6:49
Yeah, exactly what we teach them right, from an early age to be distracted. It leads nowhere. Good.

Gianna Diggs 6:56
Right? So so how do you think that someone trying to grow their business and figure out the what is that the time? Like? Let’s say we said two hours, right? Where, like, what’s the process of even just being able to pinpoint where those two hours would go?

Michelle Clarke 7:21
Yeah. So it depends on where you are at your best. Like, for me, my brain works best in the morning. So when my daughter was little, I would just get up really early, she got up at seven. So I’d get up at five, I’d get up at 5am Quick journaling, to get myself in flow and get myself connected to my soul. And then I’d already have pre planned out what my actions were going to be. So then I once I tapped into soul, I would just really knuckle down and do all of the actions that I needed to do to grow my business. And then it seemed more o’clock. My time was with her. And so I just took the really big actions, instead of getting distracted, I didn’t even look at any social media or any emails until after I’d done absolutely everything else that I needed to do to grow my business. And in fact, when I coach my girls, this is what they do. They all have to agree otherwise, I won’t coach them that they’re not allowed on social media to lunchtime, because it fries your brain, it takes you out of your soul and into the chaos and you cannot grow your business when you’re on chaos. You just can’t. It’s that simple,

Gianna Diggs 8:21
right? Oh my gosh, I love that so much. Because I was just thinking how the notifications like that sometimes that’s the first thing you see in the morning, right? And even if I have it on, like, Do Not Disturb and take it off, and you see an influx of notifications. And you’re like, oh, this person finally responded to me about this message I sent them and then you get what we call squirrel, right? It’s like, Oh, I gotta get this done. And then by time you look at the clock, you’re like, oh, like three or four hours have passed by and I’ve gotten nothing done. And I only have three more hours before I have to go pick up my kid from school. And so I think that place that’s, that’s, I love that that’s like a hard rule with your clients is like, you cannot check your social media until. And so after, after lunchtime, I think we should all try to follow that rule. And also, if you have iPhone, you can also put the little one is that the notification that will like you can’t go into certain apps until a certain time. So that’s also a little tip if you didn’t know, um, let me see what else do I have for you here? Because I feel like you have my brain going. So I’m like, How can I pick you?

Michelle Clarke 9:30
Why don’t we talk about how to know what actions to take in your business because that’s what a lot of people struggle with when when they first sit up. And that is all around having a strategic plan. Like I know strategic planning is corporate and I know it’s boring. But there was a very fun way that you can see your annual strategic plan by if you think about your annual strategic plan, like a book. So if you think about where you want to be in a year’s time, and then you you call that book something like what is it like Let’s say like, like, where do you want to be in a year’s time you want your podcast to be so famous that you get interviewed on Oprah say, good, right?

Gianna Diggs 10:08
Like, who wouldn’t love that interview?

Michelle Clarke 10:12
So we’re gonna call the book How I got interviewed on Oprah. So then once you have a theme, right, and don’t pick too many things, when you write a book, you’re writing a book about something like I wrote woof, a woman in business. It’s about woo woo. And it’s about business. It’s not about how to bring my dog or how I love running around my farm. It’s about woo woo. And it’s about business. So it’s been the focus, the title of the book gives you that focus. So how I got interviewed on Oprah, and be the title of your book, and then you think, Okay, I’m actually going to write this book, just like, you know, how you did essays at school you like, right, what are the parts? What are the paragraphs that I’m going to write for this essay? So when you think about how I got a nude on Oprah, what would be the four parts that would make that up. So for an annual strategic plan, you need quarterly goals. So you need four, right? So we need four chapters in your book. And it might look something like, you got your podcast to 2000 listeners. And then it might look like you started interviewing famous people on your podcast. And then it might be take some notes, in your strategic plan, after all, in the third thing might be that you that you did some advertising and promotion, and you got your podcast to 10,000 listeners. And then it might be that you actually reached out to Oprah, that might be the final thing, right that you reached out. So the first part of your quarterly plan is going to be getting your podcast to 2000 listeners. So with that quarterly plan, then you plan out what are the actions that you need to take in order to achieve that. And those are the actions that you take in your two hours that you’ve got in the morning, or the two hours that you’ve got at night, you’ve set aside to actually grow your business, because working on your business, and your business are two different things. Yes, working in your business is doing a social media posting and answering your emails and working with clients working on your business as the two hours two hour chunk that you spend every day, taking the big actions that will get your results. So what that might look like if you’re gonna get 2000 people listening as you might run some Facebook ads, you might go on other people’s podcasts, you might get people into your mailing list, you might you know, there’d be a whole lot of actions that you take. So then when you sit down at the end of week, and you plan out your business actions for the way to look at your annual strategic plan. And that’s what you put into your calendar. And that’s what you do in the morning when you have your time. Oh, yeah, I

Gianna Diggs 12:32
love that. It’s actually really, actually it doesn’t because I think that and like we were talking about before we started recording, that’s the biggest struggle that that we have is, you know, balancing it all in trying to figure out what actions we need to take because you know, everyone has something different, right? Like, you’re gonna go to one person, and they’ll tell you, you need to do this thing. You’ll go to another person, they tell you, you need to do that thing. And that’s why I love you said like, what’s aligned with your soul? Like, what’s going to move you forward, of course, but what’s also is aligned with your soul. Because too much noise is it’s gonna just create confusion.

Michelle Clarke 13:12
Exactly. And definitely watching other people creates confusion, you get FOMO you think about doing it better than me or you think oh, that’s a good idea. Like to stay in your lane stay with you.

Gianna Diggs 13:24
Right? Do you have that? That I just got a download of like, Do you have any, like specific techniques that that maybe you do or your clients do that kind of prevent you from that comparison that you get besides, like, of course not logging on until a certain time?

Michelle Clarke 13:41
Yeah, I literally don’t follow anyone. People are like, Ah, you’re so someone said to me a while ago, I didn’t even know who Ben Abraham was like, You’re so much like been a random like, am I so I googled her and I’m like, yeah, she’s amazing. Oh, that was like being a brown. But I literally don’t follow anyone I follow Oprah, like literally my hero. Like I just don’t follow anybody else. You have to stay in your lane. If there’s too much external noise. You can’t hear what’s going on with you. But that’s just one of the strategies. You know, there’s other things like it’s all about energy, I spend a lot of time in nature. I spend a lot of time journaling. I really listen to my body. And that’s how I know to stay in my lane. That’s how I know what’s always going to work for me. That’s how I can like bang out a program and people automatically want to get into it because it’s aligned to my soul. So therefore it’s talking to the souls of my soul soulmate clients.

Gianna Diggs 14:34
That’s, that’s so powerful. So, there’s another download, I literally had it she was talking. So if there’s someone who is like, they want to listen to their soul, and I mean, I don’t know if I asked this before. But there’s still some like deconditioning like, did you go through a deconditioning process or have you kind of always been, you know, into like hearing your So,

Michelle Clarke 15:01
I’ve always been into hearing my soul. But there was definitely a period that I didn’t. I certainly was born psychic. In fact, we all are, right. But my dad hung around for a very long time, because my family is quite psychic. So it just wasn’t considered not normal. It wasn’t till I got to school that I realized it was really abnormal. It was a surprise. And so you know, as I, as I grew, I learned to turn it off, and not listen to it, because it makes you too much. And all you want to do is fit in, but it made me miserable. It made me not want to be on this planet, doing jobs that killing my soul, you know, and eventually, I got to a point where I’m either gonna be me, or I’m actually not going to be here. So you know that those are the choices. So yeah, so I read tapped back into my soul. And I, I took a, you know, a real, brave step. And I left a very, very well paid corporate jobs that I actually love. Like, it was a really good job doing really good things with really good people. But I took the really big step of leaving it and following my dreams and doing what I wanted to do. And I mean, I make 10 times more than what I was making now. So I never needed to be afraid. But I only make the money I make because I do follow my soul. And people are like, Oh, I must be so lovely. You know, so I told her what to do. And you do. And it’s easy. I’m like, There’s nothing easy about following song. Because soul tells me to do some crazy ass shit. Sometimes I don’t want to do that I’m afraid to do. But I do it because I know it’s always the right thing to do.

Gianna Diggs 16:29
I love that. I love that I tried to be spirit led. I feel like spirit our spirit lead in creating this podcast. And sometimes it is hard. Sometimes you’d like to override your intuition. But at the end of the day, your soul is never going to lead you to the wrong direction listening to other people, that’s what normally lead you to not where you need to be at. Okay, um, so my my last thing, and I feel like we’ve kind of already kind of touched on it. But I’m just thinking about that mompreneur, who is she’s like, I hear you. I hear listening to my soul. But she’s like, I’m still struggling. And I still am not sure. Right? It’s hard. I think I want to give up. Like, what piece of advice would you would you tell her,

Michelle Clarke 17:21
I would tell you that you probably won’t be able to give up, you will feel like giving up. But if you were doing something that isn’t soul alignment with you, you won’t be able to give up, you might check all your toys out of the cot. And be like I said, I’m burning on the ground. And I’m not doing it. But I guarantee you in a week’s time, you’d be like, right, let me pick it back up and write because it will be something that you just can’t stop coming out of you. If you don’t feel that way about your business, you’re in the wrong business, you’re doing something because you think it’s gonna make you money. You’re doing something because you think it’s trendy. You’re doing something just because like my advice to you is if you’re not absolutely passionate about your business, burn it down to the ground sooner rather than later. And do what you really want to do. Do what do the thing that you’re like, Oh, my God, no one would pay me to do that. Like, seriously, I love talking to people around it makes me a perfect coach thought that people would pay me lots of money to boss them around. Right? The thing that you said I couldn’t possibly be paid for? Is the thing that you should be doing that to answer your question more specifically, like that’s what soul wanted to say to you. But more specifically, what my brain would say to you, when you feel like giving up is instead of releasing all of the tension and checking all the toys out of the cop, just put a few little toys over the edge. Keep the important toys like the one that you really love and put the rest of the toys over the car. So you know, if what’s really important to you is sharing your message, then just share your message. Don’t do anything else for the day. Don’t reach out to any new people for broadcast or do any marketing don’t onboard any new clients just share your message like but don’t check it all out. Because what happens is we stretch and restriction we stretch and when we get close to achieving our goals, we start freaking out. The mindset comes in oh my god, it’s so if you’re gonna die, you know, who do you think you are. And so we’ve released all the thinking we slipped back to there. But if we get here and we get a little bit scared instead of slipping back, if we just go, it eases the pressure a little bit, and that for us to go. And then you can stretch a little bit further and you get to grow a little bit more. So don’t grow fast. Like if you’re earning 20k a year now, don’t come and coach with me or someone else and go I want to be making 300k By the end of the year, you’re gonna burn out you’re gonna freak out. You’re setting up too high on purpose. And I’m not saying that you can’t grow your business at higher fits and soul alignment for you. It’s great. But I’ve actually you’re saying it just because then you have a goal that you don’t have to reach because it’s too big. Right? So sometimes we set them too small. And sometimes we set them too, too big. So it’s actually got to be where you want Be and don’t release all the tension. Just release a little bit.

Gianna Diggs 20:03
Oh, snap to that one. I love that. All right. All right. Well, Michelle, thank you so much for coming on the show and delivering us a message that I hope touches. Everyone who hears this hope it touches their their soul, right? Hope it touches them on the soul level. So yes, thank you so much for being here. And we will talk soon.

Michelle Clarke 20:30
Thank you so much.

Gianna Diggs 20:32
So before we wrap up, after I did this interview, I realized that I didn’t ask Michelle where we could find her online. It was a long day. So my apologies. So I’m going to tell you, so she has a book called woowoo. For women in business, you can find that on Amazon and I will link that in the show notes. on Facebook. It’s backslash empowerment empires with Michelle on Instagram, you can find her at Michelle business coach. She also has a YouTube channel, Michelle Clark and Clark is spelt with an E at the end. So C A C l a r k e and she also has a podcast called empowered business we will show and I will link everything in the show notes if you want to check her out. Alright, thank you for listening. Talk to you soon. Peace.

Thank you for listening to the mompreneur mindset podcast. I hope you got a lot of value out of today’s episode. If you enjoyed listening to the show, I would love it. If you could subscribe and rate or review the show. Your support means the world to me. Also, if you write a review and email it to me, you will be entered in to win a by design day of boxer head to Gianna diggs.com backslash podcast for more information

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