Allobee Radio

In today’s episode, Brooke speaks with Founder and CEO of Go Confidently Services, Julie DeLucca-Collins. They dive into Julie’s background. Julie comes from a background of teachers. She went into early childhood education herself and she loved it. Like many educators, she burned out. She had a part time job like a lot of educators do. She was a youth minister at her church and they offered her a full time position. It gave her good on the job training to create events and train volunteers. She was then recruited by Columbia University for grant writing. Throughout her career Julie learned that relationship building is key to being successful.Now she works with women and find out how she can support them to help them build the freedom and lifestyle they want.  

Julie’s favorite saying is “action gives you traction.” Action gives you momentum to give you traction to get you where you’re going. One thing Julie wishes she knew when she started out was realizing we aren’t perfect. We have to give ourselves permission to fail. It’s ok to say I don’t know how to do that and figure it out or learn. As business owners we try to do it all when we should be outsourcing because it is costing us time which is a larger commodity than money. On a weekly basis, one thing Julie does is go through her planner and categorize her tasks and associate a value to them. There are things only she can do whereas creating graphics for her social media is a responsibility for someone else. It’s not that there is less importance in a task but as CEO she is required to do the things that are income producing. Networking can grow her reach and get new clients. If it isn’t on your calendar, don’t be distracted because the little things add up. For every time you’re distracted, it takes 17 minutes to get back on task. We need to ask for help when we think we can do it all. 

One of Julie’s biggest challenges in the beginning was getting clients. When we have a problem getting clients, most people don’t have a clear strategy which doesn’t create a consistent message. Throughout her process, Julie realized she needed to create a strategy and run her business like a business, that she needed to be proactive and not reactive. Don’t be afraid to look at your numbers. Talk to the people you’re servicing and make sure you’re using the language they use. It needs to be spoken in a way that services them. 

The best resources that helped Julie along the way was knowing she needed to hire an assistant. It is an investment she knew she needed to make in order to clear her plate in order to do the work she needed to do. The first purchase she made was to invest in a program that allowed her to invoice and track her money. She calls this Finance Fridays. Along with that, she uses the book, Profit First by Mike Michalowicz. You need to pay yourself first, allocate for taxes, and keep your expenses in check. Find automations, do, delegate, delete and automate. 

Julie wrote the book Confident You to record the stories of people who impacted her and mentored her to help her who she has become today. These people are confident in what they did, mission-drive and habits that allowed them to show up consistently. She wanted to create something the reader can identify with and how to overcome challenges and implement in your own life. When you have simple habits that can ground you, no matter what happens, you can refocus and continue on in the life you desire. 

Julie DeLucca-Collins is the Founder and CEO of Go Confidently Services and the host of the popular Casa DeConfidence Podcast®. As a Business and Life Strategist Coach, Julie helps women business owners launch or grow their businesses, get clients, be productive, and achieve their dreams. Julie helps her clients create simple habits to achieve goals and change lives. Julie is also the best-selling author of the newly released book Confident You (simple habits to live the life you've imagined). 

Julie is a sought-after public speaker trainer and course creator. She is certified as a CBT Holistic Coach and Tiny Habits Certified. She is also certified as a Social Emotional Learning Facilitator and has completed her 200-hour Yoga Teacher Certification.

Over the past 20 years, she has worked as a senior executive in the education industry and recently completed her tenure as Chief Innovation Officer for an academic solutions company based in New York City. She gained significant expertise in policy-making, business development, and business operations throughout her career. Julie worked to expand several companies into new markets and negotiated contracts on their behalf.

Links:

Links:

https://www.goconfidentlycoaching.com/

https://www.instagram.com/julie_deluccacollins/

Profit First

Click here for the link to the e-version of Julie’s book

Click here to purchase the physical book of Go Confidently

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Listen is as Allobee CEO, Brooke Markevicius, shares an update on Allobee and her journey in entrepreneurship and the life of a founder. As a female business owner, she has found it is really hard to go far without self reflection and an analysis of not just how the business is doing but how you are doing as a business owner. It’s important to assess if you still love what you are doing. Brooke spent time over the summer reflecting on this and determined she loved the company, the team, what they are building, but did she love what she was doing on a day-to-day basis. She felt she was dealing with burnout. She knew she needed to grow the business but felt the pressure to grow and scale the business and move faster. It was unsustainable and questionable if that is how she should do business. When we start moving fast, are we losing the quality and relationships that we should be building? She believes in gut-checking and asking these questions. 

Brooke shares the three things that helped her overcome being on the verge of breaking down. Society isn’t built for a woman to be a business owner especially as a mom and caregiver. Brooke has friends that are founders and business owners that she could share in this and not feel so alone. Brooke has always been ambitious and wanted to meet her goals but being so goal oriented can mess with your mind and be very exhausting. 

Brooke and her family spent the summer at their farmhouse in North Carolina. It was a blessing to have a place to get away and be together. They had no childcare and both she and her husband work full time. Brooke was scared how they were going to pull it off but her husband kept telling her they could do it. Next she shares 3 tips to avoid burnout: 

Tip 1: Get Away - Get out of your current physical location where your stress has been. Our bodies are aware of where we are at and it can be refreshing and hopeful to get away. It got Brooke out of her normal routine. She was forced to not work all the time because she didn’t have a choice without childcare. She also didn’t want to work all the time in this new place where it was beautiful and she wanted to enjoy time. It gave her a new perspective of what she had been missing. 

Tip 2: Look at the impact you are making as a business owner - Zoom out and look at the impact you are building. Brooke researched how much Allobee had paid women for their work. Allobee paid out almost $1 million dollars to women since 2020. Her goal was to get women paid for flexible work. Brooke realized she had reached that goal. Knowing that helped her destress a little. She knew she was reaching the Allobee’s mission. She also looked at how many businesses Allobee had impacted and helped support people. Over 70,000 hours were given back to business owners so they could run their business and enjoy their families and life. 

Brooke blocked her time starting in September so she has time for herself. It hit her that she had no time for herself and no flexibility in her own life which was counterintuitive to what she was trying to build for others. Is the impact you are making in align to what your goals are? 

Tip 3: Find something that you love outside of work - Brooke’s good friend Eve Rodsky, is the author of Free Play and Unicorn Space. Brooke didn’t put into play what Eve taught in Unicorn Space. She realized there was no Brooke outside of Allobee or mom life. She reread the book and sat on it for a while. She’s been thinking a lot about what this looks like for her but she encourages everyone to read the book and to make time for things you want to do and are not things that everyone wants you to do. She realized that trying to rediscover what that is for her is part of why she was experiencing burnout. 

Find something that makes you joyful and fills you up. Women are leaving ambitious “careers” for things they love for things that bring them joy and happiness. Find the right balance of ambition and joy. Brooke is still on that journey but it’s something we all need to find. 

Stay tuned for a great season of Allobee Radio! 

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Listen in as Brooke speaks with her friend and author Hitha Palepu about her new book, “We’re Speaking: The Life Lessons of Kamala Harris: How to Use Your Voice, Be Assertive, and Own Your Own Story.” Hitha talks about how writing this book was a team effort with her husband and family helping and supporting her through this process. Through all of her research, the one thing Hitha really appreciated was learning more about Kamala’s mom. She was one of the few Indians that were allowed to emigrate to the United States. Her advancement of research and moving up in her field reminded her of her own father and his experiences with speaking with an accent, looking different, and hitting the ceiling quicker in her career. Hitha could see how Shyamala mothered and it mirrored how her own mother mothered her growing up. Everything had an element of family and that is something women are able to relate to more. 

As she was writing the book, Hitha started her daily routine the same way Kamala started hers. She would have black tea and honey with raisin bran and worked out every morning. She returns to those rituals and daily practices whenever she needs to feel grounded. 

Hitha and Brooke talk about some of the false narratives from her own life that Kamala’s experiences helped with. Hitha talked about pitching to investors and the amount of time you have to prepare to be told no with no context or reason. Hearing I eat no for breakfast helped her understand each no got her closer to yes. Eat no for breakfast is her love letter to female founders and business owners who deal with this all the time. Stay focused on the vision, mission and impact you know you’ll make. People are encumbered by what has always been that they cannot see what could be. It’s a Kamala-ism that she always returns to. 

Brooke asks what is one thing that has happened because of the book. Hitha has heard from unexpected readers including a COO who was impacted on how to lead differently. It meant the world to her that this book isn’t just helping readers be their best selves but that people of power are learning how to lead differently. 

What is next for Hitha? She wants to explore how to support startups and will also be doing more speaking events. Her focus this summer is long walks, resting and writing a children’s book series. 

Giveaway:

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We will pick 3 winners May 15th!”

Links:

https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/hitha-palepu/were-speaking/9780316283052/

https://instagram.com/hithapalepu?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

Tiffany is a psychologist by training and moved to North Carolina to start her professional journey in academia. She soon realized that this was not a good fit for her and she then moved to Washington D.C. where she worked as a federal policy maker in health policy. During those 7 years, she enjoyed her time in the government and also became a mom. She decided she wanted to do something entrepreneurial and moved back to North Carolina. She started making candles 5 years before launching her company with her husband as a hobby. She thought Bright Black would be a side job with research being her primary job but Bright Black took off.

Tiffany wrote her business plan in the midst of a government shutdown while she was still working in DC at the end of 2018. She pulled together 5 years of thoughts and ideas. Their goal is to use scent to tell a story and it was a good way to have tough conversations about stereotypes and misunderstandings of black cultures. They wanted to break the connection between black and negativity by having a beautiful product that also allows people to have a good experience with dialogue and researching on their own to then share with their own communities. 

The work Tiffany did in the executive branch was on resilience. This experience helped her with the rapid growth in the midst of the pandemic and the challenges the pandemic placed on the company with supply chain shortages. They source everything from the US but still experience challenges. They still experienced growth because people were home and burning candles. They didn’t have jars or other materials available to keep up with growth. Despite these challenges, most people were very kind and understanding of their challenges. They communicated a lot and eventually made it through. 

Her biggest hurdle has been the supply chain issue of 2020. It was important to Tiffany to keep the same packaging for her product and she ended up making her own. Hard work hasn’t been enough. From the outside people think she’s crushing it but Tiffany has had moments where it hasn’t felt that way. Those moments have been hard for her.

Her focus this year is to get her production space set up and figuring out how to engage with the public again. She knows this interaction is important to her brand. They are negotiating a contract with a large retailer which would give them a lot of momentum in addition to new limited edition scents coming out. 

Pamela has been a serial entrepreneur for over 18 years. Her current venture is Hustle LIke a Mom. She is there to bridge the gap between mom life and entrepreneur life between pickup and drop off. She came to create this venture out of frustration. She was and still is a journalist on tv and in print. She knew she wasn’t the only one in her 30s where something wasn’t jiving. She knew there had to be a better solution so this was solving the problem for herself which helped solve it for other women in the community. 

Pam’s best advice for building community is not being afraid of starting literally in your backyard. Don’t be afraid to start with your first five to ten friends if they are the right people for your community. There is nothing wrong with being narrow and exclusive. You don’t need to appeal to everybody. Not everything you have to offer will be for everyone and that’s ok. Pam said whenever she has gone too wide with her community, those are the times she has failed. There are good lessons to be learned from failing. You can be more successful with the right 50-500 people than you can with 500,000. 

Pam gives strategies for getting started. The first step before marketing is to figure out your dream customer and make her real. Where does she live, does she have kids, etc. The one piece that people miss is not making her real beyond the purposes of your company. If you are a jewelry customer, make her real beyond how she styles herself. Give her a full existence such as does she have a family, what career is she in? When you’ve made her that real, you’ll pinpoint where she will spend, what Facebook groups she would be in. Then you can move on to the next step, which is what are you selling? Pam was hesitant with hiring out VA services but spending money on the right person, coach or summit saves money in the long run. 

Once you’ve decoded your community and who your customer is, the next step is figuring out what you are selling. Couple that with whom you want to attract. Pam likes to keep it as simple as possible. Come up with your two sentences, your messaging, and it should be something that anyone can remember and tell someone else. It shouldn’t be catchy but messaging that resonates. It takes 7 times for someone to remember what you are talking about.

If you would like to learn more about Pam and her business, Hustle Like a Mom, visit the links below. 

Links:

https://www.hustlelikeamom.com/group-coaching

https://www.hustlelikeamom.com/quarterly-planning-party

Freebie 

http://hustlelikeamom.com/plan-pro

On today’s episode, Brooke talks with Justin Minott. Justin is an entrepreneur who got his start creating a non-profit that allowed him to accomplish his goal of traveling the world. During a trip to Africa, the idea to source coffee was born and he took that idea back to Canada and started a coffee shop there. He then moved to North Carolina and expanded his idea of a coffee shop to fulfill the local need of opening one that is family friendly. 

Justin talks about his biggest challenges: sustainability and scalability of your venture. When impact is at the center, it makes you approach your business differently. His coffee shop in Canada used this idea as they used 25% of profits to reinvest in communities in Africa. It also increased the quality of the coffee because helping the community clean their water was also cleaning the coffee which improved the quality of the coffee. They would reverse engineer their business plan based on the impact, not the other way around. Getting and running as an efficient business so you can scale while having the impact that you want is challenging. That is why he is an impact business coach now. 

As an impact business coach, Justin gets a great amount of joy by seeing people win. The driver for him was thinking often about his legacy and how it aligns with how he wants to be remembered. When he reflects on running businesses, the impact there was the community he could create, but when he got a glimpse of investing in the lives of other impact entrepreneurs, the impact was exponential by his sharing what he has learned with others. A good business coach isn’t a cheerleader, but someone who collapses the timeline and gives the entrepreneur the straightest path to where they want to go. The customer/client has to be the hero of the story and he helps entrepreneurs achieve that. 

Justin is also really good at building community. His best advice for fostering community is bringing people together towards a larger vision that isn’t  just hanging out, but adding value to people’s lives. It is having a compelling and clear vision for what you want to accomplish and building that community. It’s important to figure out why that matters to you. As entrepreneurs come together, what can we share so we can navigate this landscape in the best way possible? This journey is collaborative and that is the power of community. Justin says barriers to community is the facade of having it all together and that you have to present in a certain way and can’t look like you don’t know something. The lack of vulnerability and transparency in the entrepreneurial space is one of the biggest barriers to a connected community. Vulnerability and authenticity is power. Inauthenticity is exhausting and you can fit in but you will never belong. When you are you, you’ll find your people. 

Justin plans on creating momentum throughout the rest of the year with consistency and focus. He is going super practical this year, one foot in front of the other. Perfect practice makes perfect. He enjoys going fast but to go fast is to go slow. If you want to get to fast, you’ve got to go slow. The second piece of advice is figuring out how to get more of who he is accessible to a community. His focus has been digitally since he takes on a few clients at a time but it still allows for scaling as people have more access to him at a lower cost. The key is to build that community without the expectation that they will give you something back. Celebrate with them their successes instead of expecting something in return. 

You can find more about Justin or follow him at @justinminott or visit https://www.justinminott.com/

Listen as Brooke and New York Times Bestselling Author Eve Rodsky discuss her new book, Find Your Unicorn Space. Eve shares her work with her previous book, Fair Play and how it has led up to her new book. The books have shown her that the antidote to burnout isn’t walking around the block, but being interested in your own life. She says having a four word audit is important to determine who makes your decisions and that there is a cultural movement to have people make different decisions about how they work, such as new decisions not based on assumptions but choice. 

Eve is trained as a lawyer but she has been involved in organizational management specifically with family foundations. That lens of how to design an organization has led her to understand that how we spend our time is subversive. She noticed that her husband had time to watch tv but she was doing household duties until her head hit the pillow. She said this creates a cycle of rage and resentment and we need to learn to fill our time nutritiously. 

When Eve researched how people feel about home life, the word that came up often was drowning but when she unpacked what that meant, the next two words that came up were overwhelm and boredom. These trends were triggering for Eve and she wanted to tell people how others have found how to rediscover the talents and curiosities that make you uniquely you. 

Unicorn Space is active pursuits that make you come alive. It’s not a hobby because people associate “infrequency” and “nice to have” as hobbies. How do you get there? It’s not a passion because that connotes we all have one that we can return to. We are allowed to change. Eve feels like she changes her passion sometimes daily. The connection with the world and completion are the other two pieces to Unicorn Space. Eve’s rest is the restorative practice of her Unicorn Space. It is a mental and physical space you can go to outside of your usual roles. 

Eve asks you to journal what is one thing that is important I am doing today that is outside of your usual role. 

Her word for the year is flourishing. Languishing was the word of 2021 and so she likes the -ish and wants to figure out ways to restore yourself through the active pursuit of flourishing. She wishes that for all of the listeners. 

Kristyn lives in New Hampshire with her husband, kids and dogs. She started Wash Street with her co-owner Laura four years ago, and their goal is to make laundry services as accessible as meal kits, house cleaning and oil changes. 

Kristyn remembers struggling to get ahead in her household. She identified laundry having the most pickups and putdowns and decided to outsource the service. She tried to find a company to outsource this service to and couldn’t find one so she decided to start one.

When her kids were young she bought a laundromat and right before the pandemic it started to grow. They were able to stay open as an essential business. They’ve been on a growth streak and have dealt with capacity constraints. They offer pickup and delivery services for their customers in addition to standard laundromat services.

The most profitable customer is outside of the city and generally has large families. One of her growth goals is to service and support the customers outside the city. 

Brooke and Kristyn talk about how important outsourcing has been for both of their businesses and how their own companies started from a need they identified in their own lives. They also discuss Kristyn’s greatest challenge, favorite quote, her biggest failure and how she learned from it. 

During the slow season, she is surveying and trying to gather information on potential contacts and future clients for the beginning of 2022. 

Karla is a graphic designer who worked for a cable company for 10 years where she learned if you want something, you have to ask. From there, her family moved and she then worked for an agency and freelanced on the side. This is where she was introduced to Allobee. When the pandemic hit, she lost her job at the agency and decided to go home to Mexico for the summer where she began to focus on her freelance work. She lost her dad last year and wanted to use this opportunity to help support her mom. Her mission is to teach others similar to how her dad taught others in his career as a teacher. 

In the past year, her business has taken off. She learned it was important to have a plan and set goals to have something to work towards. She learns from other freelancers from all industries and has invested in coaching to help build her community. Believing in herself has been the most important tool. Networking is also key by making real connections and friends. They don’t have to be in person. Be of service and help other people because everything you give comes back to you. She also learned it was very important to be present in the communities. (10 min mark recast) 

To maintain productivity, she lives by her calendar and makes time to meditate. She sticks to her non-negotiables like being present for her family. She uses Asana for organizing projects. The resources that helped her along the way were a couple of courses she took called B-School and The Free Mama Movement. 

To keep momentum for the rest of 2021, she sets quarterly goals and adjusts them when necessary. Karla would like to have 6 more clients and diversify ways to find clients. 

KARLA'S WEBSITE https://www.karlapamanes.com/ 

FREE OFFER https://www.karlapamanes.com/brand-design-audit.html

Brooke speaks with Jill Mokaya, an Allobee expert in copywriting. Jill’s background is in education. She taught for 15 years and has experience not only in the classroom but VIP Kid and other remote teaching opportunities. She has a bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education and a Master’s degree in Art. She has certifications in copywriting courses. Allobee was her first introduction to offer her services to an agency. She had only worked with small business owners and solopreneurs. She was inspired by the level of organization and structure from the beginning. 

In 2010, Jill felt called to go overseas to teach English as a second language. The second major shift in her life happened when she came back to the U.S. in 2015 where she went back to public school teaching. After she had her son, she longed for more and was no longer excited about teaching because she wanted to be home with him more. Jill knew she wanted to work from home and knew she could thrive in an online environment because of her side hustle with VIP Kid. Jill was attracted to freelancing when she stumbled upon the Free Mama Movement program. She joined the community and got immersed in the training and videos. After a while of this, Jill decided to jump in and start her LLC and self-teach several programs. 

In her first month, she secured two retainer clients that stayed with her for 6-9 months. She was determined to learn by doing. As Jill worked with social media, CRM, email sequencing, and others, she realized that she wanted to niche down to copywriting. She attended a webinar on copywriting and realized this was her strength and she wanted to pursue it. 

The one thing Jill wishes she knew when she began her career is taking messy action can lead to some of your greatest moments. She learned quickly you don’t need a fancy website, elaborate sales page before you declare that your doors are open. She says to focus on relationships and the benefits of what you are trying to offer or sell and how to master your craft.

Her biggest challenge happened recently as she dealt with the feast or famine that comes with freelancing. She was used to steady business and then experienced a period of time where there wasn’t as much work. She reflected during this time to determine if she needed to pivot and step out of her comfort zone and connect with a different target audience. The seeds she planted during this time have started to grow. 

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