[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to another episode of the So Here For It podcast. My name is Amy Mingin and it is such a pleasure to have you here today. I want to talk to you all about some different mindset shifts that took me from being a hobbyist and not even realizing it. And then stepping into the actual CEO of my business and, and stepping into becoming an incredible mum, an incredible entrepreneur, and realizing that I get to have both rather than thinking that I have to keep things separate in my life.
Now, I'm sure that so many of you can relate to this story. It's like when you're in your baby making era, and even if you haven't had kids, I think that you'll be able to apply this to, you know, something else in your life that feels really important to you. And sometimes things feel really important to you at a younger age. And then as we get older, we're like, Hey, is this still really important to me? It's only [00:01:00] natural that we grow and change and morph into a new identity over the years, because if we don't, then we're probably not pushing ourselves. We're probably not encouraging ourselves to grow. We're probably not doing anything that makes us feel uncomfortable.
And I'm one of those people, like even my best friend, even my husband, they go, Oh, you're a bit like a box of chocolates. I just never know what I'm going to get, but I love that about you. It's like, they love the surprise. They love that I'm so into what I'm into. They love that I am interested in what I'm interested in and that I love to teach the things that I'm learning.
And I think this goes hand in hand with me becoming such a great mum. I would say that I am elite at being a parent. Because I decided I wanted to, I know that sounds really crazy, but I decided that I wanted to be a really great parent. I decided that my kids are going to grow up as mini superhumans. I wanted them from the day they were conceived to know that they were so loved.
And [00:02:00] I wanted them from the day that I had them in my arms that they could rely on me. And this isn't to go into like parenting techniques or anything like that. This is showing you a little bit more of my heart, a little bit more of like how I do life. Because if I'm only doing something half hearted people around it, like they really feel it.
And I don't know about you, if you go into something half hearted, how does it make you feel? It's like, you're kind of there and you're kind of not. And little kids will feel that. Your partner will feel that. Your clients will feel that. And that's why, for me, I feel like it's a really big rite of passage to step into something and fully be in it.
So the tricky thing happened when I was wanting to run a bigger business and wanting to also be a really great mum, like something had to give. But there is this all or nothing mentality that tends to happen in the background, right? It's like, people go through this with their health. They think, Oh, well, either I'm fully on a health [00:03:00] journey or I'm not. But that's not the truth either. Like the pendulum doesn't need to swing to the extremes. And I want to show you how it went from quite extreme, like call me a crunchy mama. Like I totally was, I had my kids at home in water, like water births at home, drug free. Baby wearing, cloth nappying, all the things, right? Whole foods, all of the things.
Breastfed them both until they were almost two. Like, you're learning heaps about me right now. But also, this doesn't mean that I'm any better or worse than anybody else. This was my journey. And this was the journey that I chose as well. Like, I took a really big leap of faith into going, well, how do I feel safest?
I actually felt safest birthing at home. That's why I had home births. And how do I feel safest bringing my kids up? Will I feel safest informing myself as to how does a healthy human develop in this world? And so [00:04:00] I'm somebody who likes to find information and then apply it right away.
Now think about then like going straight into business. When Ivy was a baby, so that's my second baby. I went into business first of all, when Max was 13 months old. So he was still a baby. And I had Ivy three years later. Now in that three years between the two babies, I definitely would have been in my hobbyist era because what was more important to me? Being a mum was most important at that time.
I had a little kid and I was trying to conceive and I was happy with the amount of money I was making, but I didn't even consider how I was holding myself back. I didn't even consider that there were better ways to do things, that there were ways that I could have tracked my money and I could have saved more and I could have been more savvy.
And if I knew now what I knew back then, have you ever said that? The beauty of it is I got to learn, I got to learn, oh, okay, when I do have a really big sales week, X amount of that gets to be put [00:05:00] away for tax, X amount of that gets to be put away for GST. And how does this all fit together? Well, the hobbyist era for me just tended to happen inside of that time when I was having babies and I was new to motherhood.
And I think this will ring true for some people. And that's why I'm sharing it, cause it feels like a relatable story, is that sometimes we let our kids be our number one reason why we're not showing up. And I didn't ever want to use my kids as, as an excuse. Yeah I was bloody tired sometimes. I get it, like sleep deprivation is like torture. That's how I used to sound like, they're torturing me! Some nights, you know, particularly once you've got two kids, it's just like, or beyond, I can't even imagine how people do even more than two, but my hat goes off to you. But like some nights where like one wakes and you just get them back to sleep and then the next one wakes.
And it's like, this is beyond. And you just don't feel like you've had any sleep for weeks. But somehow the why of why you [00:06:00] started a business, it's still burning away in the background. And that's the thing that kept me going. I'm not in business just because of my kids. I'm not in business just because of my family.
Yes, they are part of the why, but what, why am I doing this? I'm doing this for a greater impact worldwide. Like I get to go through this and I get to share it. And it excites me so much. You can probably hear the excitement in my voice. And if you're watching the video version of this, you can see that I'm smiling the entire way through this because it excites me.
I absolutely love learning things and I absolutely love sharing them. Now there is a really big limiting belief that I see in the hobbyist era. And the major, major thing that I see is, I don't know enough. So a lot of people will use their kids as an excuse or something else as an excuse, and they'll go and buy another course or go and get another distraction of some sort.
Like, you know, you might buy a Canva template or someone, or you might get a VA, thinking the VA is going to help you run your business, [00:07:00] but then you find out very disappointingly, like I did several times, you're paying this VA $400 a month, and you don't know what to hand them. And then you end up doing the work all by yourself plus you're $400 down. I did that for months. I actually did that for years, and I still didn't know what question to ask in order to get the answer that I needed, in order to move forward. I was the one standing in my own way. I probably, I don't even know what reasons I was using back then. I wasn't using the kids as an excuse.
I just kept saying, I don't know. I didn't know. I didn't know what I didn't know, it's these unknown unknowns. And this is what happens in business, right? This is why we join into communities where we've got like minded people around us, because this stage of business, like the hobby era, it feels really, really alone. It feels lonely. And I hear this fairly frequently from the practitioners and coaches who I coach inside my Woman of Value Mastermind, but [00:08:00] also those who I chat to on social media every day. They're like, Oh, it's just so lonely out here.
But the thing is, the thing that you need, it already exists. The thing that your client needs is probably you. And if you're not showing up for them, which I learned very early on, if I'm not showing up, they don't know who I am. If I don't tell them really clearly who I am, what I do, what the sort of transformation is like working with me, they do not know. And so I got really, really polished with the way that I speak. Like I've been talking for a really long time, obviously, I am that sort of person who used to get in trouble in every way, shape or form if they said you had to be quiet, I was the one talking. I'd be asking questions. I'd have my hand up. I am a talkative person most of the time. But also, we get to also bring our gifts and talents into the world in a way that really serves us. So if you're not a talker, that's okay. You don't have [00:09:00] to talk.
But if you're a writer, then I would expect that you get some blog posts written or you can do some carousel posts this week. I want this to be a really tangible episode for you to be able to see, oh, this is how Amy's done it. I actually think that I can do this one thing this week that's going to help move the needle forward.
Because a lot of the time, if you are in this hobby zone and you're looking toward becoming a business owner, but you know, there's the excuse and there's the I don't know stuff. And there's a, Oh my God, maybe I need another course. Maybe you do, but maybe you don't? Like, maybe you can make the most of what you have right now.
Maybe you can take a little bit from all of the things that you've already consumed. Because let's face it only 4 percent of the world are creators and the rest of consumers. 96 percent of people are consumers. That leaves us a massive platform to stand on. I don't know if you've heard that stat before, but it is humongous.
And I want more practitioners and coaches to be standing on that platform and owning who they are so that more people [00:10:00] can hear your voice so that more people get helped. Like that's actually like the biggest why ever. Is there's so many people out there who need our help and they just don't know we exist yet.
How do you get to let them know that you exist? You start showing up. And that's the first and foremost thing that I would get any person to do, regardless of whether you're working with me or not, I hope that this lands. And I hope that you actually take this and go, all right, I'm doing it now. And I'm going to commit to it and do it every single day, regardless of how shitty you think it is.
Sometimes like I would go as far to say sometimes my most janky looking things are the things that do the really good, like me with the messy mum bun showing up without makeup in my active wear. I do that at least once a week because that's relatable, right? Not everyone wants to see the polished version of me all the time.
They need to see, Oh, is she actually real? Or is she actually perfect? I can tell you right now I am far from perfect. What [00:11:00] I do do is I show up consistently. What I do do is tell people what I do. And tell them like, Hey, here's what I've been through, so you get to go through it in your own way as well.
Now let's step into like, how did I get into business owner? Because that wasn't easy. It really wasn't. I'm not going to lie to you. Like having a bigger business, it takes up a lot of time. Like you've got to actually create some space in your week, every single week. So back in the day, like towards the end of 2019, I was fully booked.
Was seeing anywhere between like 30 and 40 clients in a week, all one on one, I was starting to really build out some group programs, but it was hard for me to fit those in because I was seeing so many one on ones. And you know, I'd increased my hourly rate and I was doing really well. I think at that stage I was doing about $15, 000 a month, which to me at the time was fantastic, like so, so good, like far beyond what I ever [00:12:00] thought was possible.
But I was using up every single bit of my time. I didn't want to have to do treatment plans in my spare time. I wanted to hang out with my kids more. I wanted to connect with my husband. I wanted to exercise more. There were so many parts of my life where I was like, Oh, I've lost freedom because I'm doing so much in my business.
So things had to change. I got together more of a calendar situation. And I actually took, like blocked out some times. And I particularly, and I share this inside Women of Value. Like I encourage women, especially because we're cyclical in nature, find the best time of month where you are able to see more people and increase your capacity that week, meaning if I were to do a 40 client week, that would have been the week I was doing it, where I had most capacity. And then I would literally take about four days off per month. And it's not that I get really bad PMS or cramps or anything like that. It's just purely because that is [00:13:00] time for me, I get to rest and recharge. And that's late Luteal. And it's where I would prefer to go inward. And it's where I get a lot of deep writing done, where I get some deep thinking done. And if I'm constantly on the go and helping my clients all the time, if I'm doing that in that last bit of my cycle, I can start to feel like quite empty. And when I feel empty, I don't feel good.
I don't know about you, but I don't like operating from an empty cup. So I started to put these things in place. And I was honoring my cyclical nature and then I was like, okay, well now I can fit in this group program work and I started to ease that in. But there was a certain amount of pressure I was putting on myself to still be making the same amount of money.
What I didn't realize is as soon as I started doing programs, like the very first program that I offered was $26, 000 in a month. Like that, people bought it. And I was [00:14:00] like, oh my God. Oh my God. And like, this is before COVID days, you guys, this is well before then. So we're talking ages ago. And so this really solidified my belief in myself that I could do it.
And I don't think that I did anything in inverted commas, right. I just put things together that I thought that someone would want to buy. And I talked about it from my heart. And I just want to say to you, if you think that you have to have all of your email sequences and all of your sign up pages and everything ready before you start, then you just don't. Like you can start exactly where you are. You can start selling an offer before you've got it ready. In fact, the first time I ever do any, any offer, I create it as I go to make sure that I get feedback from people at the same time. So that it is what it, what people want, you know? So don't be afraid to pre sell things.
And, so me stepping into business owner has actually been quite fun because it's been experimental. It's been feedback on the fly, but I've actually been able to be [00:15:00] paid while I'm trialing things. And I do something, I do my best at the time, and then I learn, and then I do better. And so it really gets rid of this fear of failure.
I would say that's a really big thing when somebody is in that stage of like, pre-burnout, which I was in, in 2019. It was like, Oh, I've got this big fear that if I don't keep going, then, you know, where's the money coming from or where are the clients coming from, or who's going to want to do a group program, they're only going to want to do this one on one with me.
And it's just not the truth. People do want to do group programs. It's about you packaging and positioning it in a way that's actually going to land with them. And as soon as they can see the value in it, which i.e., hot tip. You value it first. As soon as you value it, they value it. Everybody wins. Everybody loves it because they're actually connecting with people who are in the exact same space as them and they love on each other. Like it works so, so well.
So I just want to say, [00:16:00] this is the way forward. I am all about women in business creating six figures, multi six figures, all the way up to seven figures and beyond. I want you to feel great about what you do every single day. Now I'm running a masterclass on the 3rd of April at 7 30 PM, Queensland time.
You're invited. I'll be going through all of these steps that I went through, but also exactly what I take my clients through. So this is strategy. This is how to actually do it. So you'll have some tangible takeaways to be able to apply right away. So you can start showing up on your social media, actually have people replying to your messages, actually having people engage with your content and get more followers and more views. That's number one.
You're going to see exactly behind the scenes, like what goes into a bigger business? Like, do you actually want this? You'll be able to tell by the end of that masterclass, you'll be able to see the exact steps that I've taken some of my very [00:17:00] successful clients through, who have been in the niches of skin, who have been in the niches of fertility and who just are absolutely loving leading where they are. They lead their lives. They don't wait for life to happen to them.
And then lastly, it's going to be all about boundaries. Like I want you to have better boundaries so that you don't burn out. This is really, really big. I want you to be able to set energetic boundaries with yourself. So you're operating from a full cup. Also boundaries with your clients. So they actually feel safer. A lot of people are scared to set a boundary because they think that someone won't like them, but boundaries are so important because your clients will feel safe around you. It actually builds a better relationship.
And there are so many more techniques that I'm going to take you through on the night. So if you would love that, I'd love to invite you come over to my social media @amymingin on Instagram. Let me know that you would love to come and I'll pop you onto the wait list and I'll send you the email as [00:18:00] soon as it's ready.
So thank you so, so much for listening to me today. It has been such a journey and I just love sharing it. So share this with a friend who you know is going to get so much out of it and I will see you on the next episode.
