Making 'realistic and sustainable business' sexy Ceri Gillet from Ceri Gillet Coaching
What’s this episode about?
This episode is a really honest chat between Ceri and Sophie about making money, feeling successful and how motherhood and our identity is wrapped up in it all. We talk about hustle culture, the impact of taking on other peoples goals (and not even realising it!), the push and pull of motherhood and running a business and how we have both been impacted by our corporate jobs when looking at how much we ‘should’ be earning.
Episode key takeaways:
Redefining what success looks like - and why that’s not always easy to do
Fighting against or succumbing to seasonality of business and your life
Guilt around not wanting to push harder in your business vs guilt for wanting to push harder and not having the time/space to do it
The importance of fact checking what you see on social media and your own business
INTRODUCING… CERI GILLET
Ceri left a 12 year career in business development to embark on two big roles. Becoming a mother & launching a business.
A serial entrepreneur Ceri has started, scaled, raised investment and taken a business to sale.
Her experiences as a female founder led her to launch a non-profit business accelerator that helps more mums to start and grow a business.
She coaches female founders to find ways to earn consistently in their businesses and regularly consults, creating strategy for corporate clients.
Ceri has been featured in Grazia, Stylist, BBC News, BBC Radio 4 & Channel 5. Last year she was named one of the top 100 social entrepreneurs worldwide by Pioneers Post.
All info about Ceri and her projects can be found here https://cerigillettcoaching.com
Follow Ceri on Instagram here: @cerigilletcoaching
Subscribe to the Growing Pains podcast
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Read the transcript:
NOTE: This podcast was transcribed by an AI tool. Please forgive any typos or errors.
Ceri - Creating a sustainable business
===
[00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to growing pains. The marketing podcast for brands who want to grow and get more consistent sales, but without the overwhelm of feeling like you have to be online 24 7, I'm Sophie, your host, and a Facebook and Instagram ad strategist
join me each week as I alongside some wonderful guests, she had practical tips and advice about how you can use and combine marketing strategies to get more impact for your effort.
Today. I am thrilled to be welcoming at Kerry Gillet to the podcast. Carrie left a 12 year career in business development to embark on two big roles, becoming a mother and launching a business. The serial entrepreneur, Carrie has started scaled, raised investment and taken a business to sale.
Her experiences as a female founder led her to launch a nonprofit business accelerator that helps more mums start and grow a business. She coaches female founders to find ways to earn consistently in their business [00:01:00] and regularly consult, create strategy for corporate clients. Carrie has featured in at Grotzia stylist, BBC news, BBC radio four and channel five. And last year she was named one of the top 100 social entrepreneurs worldwide by pioneers post.
I'm so excited to have carrie here today now that is the formal introduction out of the way let's get down to finding out a bit more about you carrie so tell me a little bit about your work life and family setup.
Ceri: So I live in a very little place in Southeast Wales. Very green, very country-ish, very tiny village. And I live with my partner James, our Cat George, and my seven year old son Fred. And my work life is quite varied. On purpose, I would say I split my time. Two businesses. So I coach and consult mainly in the areas of strategy and business growth.
And I coach [00:02:00] female entrepreneurs predominantly, but I also do stuff with corporates. And I also run a nonprofit social enterprise, which is a business accelerator. Specifically for mums, so I spent part of my week working in the nonprofit and going out into communities or developing digital learning products for mums on low to no income.
Sophie: Fabulous. Well, I mean so Carrie was my coach for a good sort of six months or so, and she's amazing at what she does and also her son Fred is really,
really cool
and
Ceri: of all my
coaching
packages,
Sophie: You do get a little bit of Fred in your life and it definitely makes things better. And if you do follow Carrie on Instagram, you will see some of the amazing countryside where she gets the lovely walks and it is incredibly beautiful.
So before we get into talking about money and motherhood, we need to know your St views on the important stuff. Are
you
Ceri: I'm limbing up.
Sophie: Okay. Good. [00:03:00] Right. Tea or coffee?
Ceri: coffee?
Sophie: I knew that already. Dogs or
Ceri: Oh, cats,
Sophie: so many people who have
cats
struggle
Ceri: I think cuz I would love a dog, but we have a cat, so I feel like I have to side with her.
Sophie: not many people who have a dog struggle to say dogs though I feel like.
Yeah. Bagels or
crumpets,
Ceri: bagels.
Sophie: I think bagels are definitely the firm
favorite.
Ceri: I do love a Crumb
Sophie: like, everyone's like, do you
Ceri: but I have a really specific way that it has to be cooked and so not
Sophie: Oh, go on.
Ceri: on my toaster I have to do twice. So I like quite a hard crut.
Sophie: that is a hard crumb
Ceri: then I like
Sophie: Quite a
Ceri: I like a lot of butter to soften that
Sophie: Mm. Soften up. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, both of them are essentially vessels for a huge amount of butter.
Like I think that's like their
Ceri: But I've also got a very specific way of having a bagel, which is to slightly hollow it out.
Take a bit of the dough out,
then you get a [00:04:00] much better pool for your butter.
Sophie: oh my God. Like, or like a moat, Okay. I feel like I need to test
both of these things.
Ceri: let me know you get on
Sophie: of butter. I will, I'm gonna take you out. Well, obviously I'll probably do a story about it. Beach or pool,
Ceri: Beach, definitely.
Sophie: Winter or
Ceri: Oh, winter.
Sophie: Yeah, I know. Haven't, we're going into
that
Ceri: Yeah. I like a layered outfit to be honest.
Sophie: yeah. I like a lay it out bit too.
Color or
monochrome.
Ceri: most definitely Color.
Sophie: Yeah, I'm, you're like literally color personified. Early morning or
late
Ceri: early
morning, I'm useless. At night past 10 o'clock, I can barely talk
Sophie: Yeah. No, me too. Although I'm not much better in the morning. . Okay. So in this episode today, this is the other half of the two parts we're doing about money. So we spoke to Anastasia my accountant, all about like the.
Tactical, practical ways of managing your money. And in this episode, Carrie and I are gonna talk much more about the I guess the emotional side. The strategic side, [00:05:00] the kind of the difficulties I think often women come across when we're talking about money. And the reason I ask Carrie to come on and talk about this is because partly she has quite a. Maybe has, has a different view, I guess, than a lot of coaches. She's not your standard, you know. We're just going to imagine that we're gonna earn 10 K and it's all gonna happen and you need to just keep going until you hit it. We have decided that this episode is all about making realistic sexy, and so that's where we're going,
isn't
it,
Ceri: is that I think this is the best description as anyone has ever given of me, so thanks
Sophie: I You're welcome. So do you wanna give a quick overview of your kind of, I don't know your views or your
like style
Ceri: Yeah, so I, I've always had, I suppose I should say, I have been coaching for over a decade but I have a massive difficulty with coaching. As in the coaching industry, I do not believe that everybody benefits from coaching. I do not believe that everybody needs to have coaching in order to have a [00:06:00] successful business, and I actually don't believe that most people out there are even selling coaching.
So I think. , I have always tried to be very clear on what coaching is, what the benefit for that is, and also for business owners, how mentorship is a really important part of getting advice when it comes to trying to start and grow a business. So my kind of coaching standpoint is that I do both.
Coaching is not my only business. I have built multiple actual businesses that are actual things, not just inside my head. I have built both digital businesses and offline businesses as in premises. And things that you could actually go out there and touch. So I know what it takes to actually get something off the ground in both senses.
I have started businesses with zero budget. I have had bigger budget going in to invest and start a business. I have done things like crowdfund raise, investment for a [00:07:00] business, take a business to sale. I've had businesses fail, so I think I've got a good handle on what it is like to. Be in business, but also I do have the kind of educational training behind me to know what the process of coaching is.
And I think there is a benefit to having both. You need someone who can help you look at your business practically and spot some gaps maybe that you are not focused on or you can't quite see. But you also probably need someone to coach you through the blocks that come up for all of. When you try and make changes, whether that's starting a business or growing a business.
So I think realistic is probably my standpoint. I'm not very airy fairy and I just know that. Women are fantastic, fantastic business owners. There should definitely be more of us out there doing it, and I think as a mother of children, you have all the skills you will ever need [00:08:00] to grow a brilliant business.
So more of us should be out there doing it too.
Sophie: Absolutely. And in terms of the women that you work with, and we talked, you talked a bit there about the blockers that we have in terms of money. What do you see come up most often with the women that you work with?
Ceri: I think getting our heads around the fact that we can earn our own money. Huge one. I think finding setting our prices or deciding what we want to earn problematic for a lot of us, basing our experiences on what we earned in corporate jobs and thinking that we have to identically replace this corporate income that sometimes a huge company used to pay us, and we need to do that very quickly in our business is a massive one.
quite often. I think probably the biggest one is that we don't want to talk about, think about or educate ourselves on. Anything to do with finances for our [00:09:00] business, and so therefore it's a massive blind spot for a lot of us, and we just leave it out there in the ether, which is why this kind of like I'm manifesting 30 K is so appealing to so many people because.
We feel like, oh, you know, well if I just think positively about it, it will come. And that means I don't have to do any of the work. So I think that sometimes could probably be the biggest one that I see is just that we think it's, we think it's gotta be difficult.
Sophie: I think the, the corporate one is a really interesting one and I definitely fell into that trap. I mean, we we, like Carrie and I have worked together on this quite a lot, so she knows all of this background. But I think for me personally, and I'm sure some people will resonate with this, I think I've talked about it before.
My corporate job was massively my identity. Like it really was like who I was and I had absolutely no idea that that's who I was until I left and felt really bereft and quite traumatized by being made redundant while I was on maternity leave. And [00:10:00] so my sort of fixation was, that for myself and saying, right, okay, well I will sell my own business then and therefore my previous.
salary is what my target will be. Cause that's what I need. That's clearly what I need and that's what I'm going to do. And there's so much messaging on social media around, you know, I left my job and I smashed my former salary in the first three months or in the first year, or, you know, I earn a hundred k or I'm earning 10 K months.
It's taken me five years and I'm still not back to earning that. And I'm, that's now quite a conscious choice. And we can talk a bit more about that later on. And I, but I found that really difficult. I found it like, I felt like if I wasn't hitting that, then I was failing like I my worth and the revenue of my business was so entangled
in those first
few
Ceri: Yeah. And I think it, whether you've had a massive corporate career or you know, you worked. Part-time before your previous salary becomes a benchmark of what you have to go on [00:11:00] in order to feel financially successful or financially viable in that first stage of your business. And I think one of the things that I do across the board with.
anybody is say, you know, is really question the numbers if they are available. So a lot of people will come in and they go, oh, Carrie, I'm trying to get myself from this much to this much. And I'm like, okay, why? What, why though? Like what? What is the number for? Where does the number come from?
Have we seen the number on an Instagram post ? Someone's told you you need that much money. Do you? Do you know what you need to earn every. That is probably one of my biggest coaching questions. And when people go, well, no, most people don't know what they need to earn every
month. Yeah. It's just like, well, I'm just gonna go for a lot of money, then I'm gonna be okay.
I'm like, yeah, but if you only need to earn, let's go for the ultimate success. If you only need to earn [00:12:00] like 750 pounds a month right at base, and you've got one client that pays you, then you are super successful. Like just get the 750 pounds and enjoy your week. And anything that comes after that is a, is a great bonus.
But people don't talk about realistic numbers, right? It's not exciting when we talk about realism. It's not exciting to go, well, actually, what I really need to earn is about 1200 pounds a month and I'd like to only work part-time and some days. I would like the flexibility to take a day off work or not do anything
there's a few things at play. There's the money thing. There's this, the the hustle culture thing that we've gotta keep going and going. And I think because so many of us consume so much social media, We are unable to separate what is our idea and what is something that we have read that somebody else is, and we take it on board in this weird osmosis way, and we find that [00:13:00] we are chasing something that we might not even want.
We've just not questioned. What it is. And so I think we've gotta prompt more of the questioning. If you are working with somebody or you are reading someone's post, at any point in this scale, you've really got a question and look at what the message you are being fed almost, and really sit with yourself and figure out like what you want.
Sophie: and what you want right now might not be what you want in three years, and that's like, that's okay. It might be that for a season you sit with what you are and you take the time and you are doing other things. And it might be that once your child starts school, you have more time and therefore you might change your goals slightly.
But I think we get into a bit of a trap of like, We've gotta earn as much as possible as quickly as possible. And then it's just gotta grow from there. It's just got to grow because it's about three figures and you know, five figures, then seven figures. And yeah, it's just like it's, it's just always more, isn't it?
More and [00:14:00] more and more. It's never ending. And actually that's incredibly stressful. And when you. Don't hit that or you are, it's inconsistent and you hit it. And then the next month, so I had where I hit it, my gold for a few months and then massively dropped off for a few months and that was really, really difficult for me.
Like I really struggle with the fact that. I think it was still back to that corporate mentality of, right, I'm achieving this salary now I'm achieving this amount of income. So this is gonna be my baseline, and then I'll just go up from there. And then to have a few months when then dipped back down again.
It was like, oh my God, it's all gone to pot. That's it like, , I've lost it all. I don't have to start all again. And I think seasonality in our businesses in particular when you work for yourself is something I've really in the last few years really got to grips with. Like how it, you cannot guarantee, especially in the climate at the
Ceri: No, you
Sophie: and you have to kind of go with it though, rather than
Ceri: Yes. And if we were [00:15:00] talking, if you had someone here who was talking to you about huge corporations, right? Big businesses know this. This is a natural phenomenon, that it's not the same, you know, that they take exactly the same or more money each month. Everything is a fluctuation.
So as your business grows, the fluctuations just get bigger. That's, that's the only thing that happens, right? So it's not. Exciting and sexy to talk about consistency in paying yourself like a consistent wage every month. And, and I, and that is the thing I've been banging on about for years. You know, my key for my business was to get myself to a place where the business paid me.
Like it, it was my actual job, like on the first of every month my salary went in. I was not worried about it. I knew that that money was consistent and it was happening and. There wasn't this big push to constantly be like, where are the clients coming from? Oh my gosh, I've gotta launch something new. And that doesn't [00:16:00] have Instagram launch excitement about it, but it's much more peaceful way to live your life to go.
steady income is what I need in order to live well, you might not need that, but for me that that was a big thing. And I certainly see that a lot with my clients and the women that I work with. It's actually when you take away all the shiny glitter east, And you drill down to what they want. It's actually very simple.
It's usually around freedom, consistent income, the ability to gain some self worth back because they want to do something for themselves. The ability to reclaim some of their own time and use part of their brain. It is not all the stuff that we are being sold.
Sophie: yeah, yeah, absolutely. And we were talking a bit about I was talking about self-worth there, the, what was it? I keep getting it wrong. Charge what you're worth, worth. It's just such a problematic statement and I, I hear where [00:17:00] it's coming from in that, you know, we don't wanna undersell ourselves, right?
I guess is the underlying thing is that you don't undersell yourself, charge your worth, but ultimately it, it, really, what it implies is that your worth is tied up in what you charge. And that is, that is definitely what we're saying
is not the
case,
Ceri: And it also means that a ton of us end up looking at other people on the internet. No one wants to admit to it, but we all do it, right? So you look at someone who does a similar thing to you and you are like, well, she's charging this. So if I don't charge that, that, that means I'm not as good as her.
So I've gotta charge as much or more. And guess what? There are people out there on a massive spectrum of charging. So there's always gonna be somebody that you're gonna look at who is charging more than you, who ha has gone to that next level and, and you just have this massive comparison constantly of going, well, it's got to be more, it's got to be more.
I have lost count of the amount of rooms that I have been in. Work-wise, sometimes by choice, sometimes not, of people who have picked apart my pricing [00:18:00] structure and told me that it's wrong, that I need to charge more. That in order for people to see value in what I do, I have to charge more money. and I continue to buck that trend and be like, no,
because you know what I, it, that's not what is important to me.
I, and I think I'm not willing to buy into that. That is something that you buy, you have to buy into. So just because there is someone who is, who is higher price than me, doesn't mean that I have to change my. My business the way I charge. Like that's fine, let them be them. But I can look at my pricing and honestly be completely at peace with it and say, you know,
does it, does it mean that I have poor self-worth because I'm more quote unquote affordable than other business coaches?
Absolutely not. My self-worth is actually as high as a kite. I would say it's great, it's in tiptop condition, but I just don't believe a lot of this stuff [00:19:00] that, that people are selling, and that's okay for me. So I think, you know, there is this big, it's a, it's an industry, isn't it? You know what I mean?
It's an industry and as long as you. Happy with what you are charging. You are not stretching yourself so thin so that you are working all the time and you are actually getting nothing from it. And you have, obviously, you've been speaking to an accountant, you have looked and developed a structure where you are actually able to make some money cuz that's a problem I see.
Sometimes people are not, you know, there is no profit for them. Then I think you are good, you know, and you can move and change that over the years. And equally, you know, it's no one else's business what you're charging to be.
Sophie: Yeah, absolutely. And I think as well it comes down, I think from what you're just saying there as well, like how you define success for you as well, isn't it? Like, you know, for you, I know you've got such a passion around working with women across all the different spectrums, and for you that is successful helping [00:20:00] a range of different women in a range of different kind of income brackets.
It's not just about. Helping people that can afford you, you know, who are privileged enough to, you know, have access to those funds. But also I think as well attaching you know, your su success metrics almost to the whole business rather than just the
revenue. So the fact that it allows you to do, you know, pick your kids up or you know,
whatever it
is.
Ceri: everyone could benefit, I think from working on what success actually means for them. And ditching the, you know, really examining what you think success is, right? And then looking at each of those items as I mentioned before and saying like, is this mine? Have I picked this up from someone else?
Like, where did this come from? Because when we really drill down to it, as I mentioned before, success is actually usually a very simple thing for us to get to, and we get sucked in to. A version of success [00:21:00] that is not ours. And I have done this seasonally in my life. I think we start off young with it.
You know, our education system builds us in a certain way so that we have to perform in order to achieve. And so high performance and reward is. is promoted. You know, we are told from a very young age, you need to do well academically so that you can get a good job, and if you get a good job, you'll get paid a lot of money and you will do well in life.
And so we set people up from a really young age to think that they have to. Earn a lot of money and be successful. And that means working hard. A lot of messages around hard work and, and how we perform to the outside world. And many of us do not fit in with that criteria. So there's a lot of, a lot of work to be done there on how those people then feel if we don't fit into that very, very tiny box of, of what is acceptable.
And then success as you scale in work is do more, be more, have more. Right. So [00:22:00] you'll. No one's really questioned why we're doing it. We just all get on the train. We are plowing forward. And at some point in our lives, for whatever reason, there comes a a moment where you go, oh, hang on. I got the thing that I thought I wanted and now it doesn't feel the way I thought I was gonna feel.
And so that happened to me when I turned 30 in a really, Pivotal way. So it's my 30th birthday and I couldn't be home for my 30th birthday because I was working for a company and a sale was going through and a lot of us had to be in London to do the legal parts of what was happening, to run back and forward in taxis, basically.
And the company had said to me, because, Said categorically I wasn't gonna be working cause it was my 30th birthday. Oh Carrie, you know, we've booked you a hotel and you're gonna have a great time and like, just do this one thing for me. And I've never said no in a work situation because she loves her work.
So I'm like, yeah, fine, I'm gonna be there. And they paid for me [00:23:00] to stay at the Savoy Hotel. Sounds, sounds super bougie, right? So I'm like, great, I'm staying here. So fancy. And, but the reality was I was on my own. I turned 30 on my own in a hotel on my own, in a restaurant on my own. I went and bought myself a lovely gift on my own and went home super sad that actually none of that mattered.
Like it looked great in photos, and they occasionally still pop up on my Facebook memories from back in the
Sophie: Yeah.
Oh,
Ceri: And I'm like, look who she was all glossy and fancy and staying at the Savoy, but I would've given anything to not be there, like why I wanted to be with my family and I wanted to have like more friends.
And actually I was single and really wanted to be in a relationship, but I couldn't have any of that stuff I really wanted because I worked. , every hour God sent in order to have this career and earn this money and drive this car and buy this handbag. And then suddenly I got home [00:24:00] with the handbag, threw it on the bed, and didn't unbox it for like five weeks because actually I didn't care about the handbag.
And it really made me look at what I was doing with my life because I didn't really wanna do any of that stuff. And I started to unpick. everything from there. And, you know, I'm about to turn 40 next week, so this is a decade long work in in what I've done. But it takes you time to really examine all that things.
But from that moment, I worked completely differently. There are times I slip back into my old ways, but I'm able to, I think, have a toolkit of skills that drags me back to reality. I've since become a mother. Started different businesses. I live much more peacefully now in a more sustainable way.
But I see it, I see the same behaviors that I had show up in a lot of clients. There's this thing that coaches say, like, you always coach mirror [00:25:00] clients. People come to you because there's a part of you that that resonates with with them. And so I see a lot of these women who you. I think we get on so well is cause we have a very similar story.
I have a corporate background. I lost that identity. I didn't know what to do with myself. I had to really. Do a lot of work on who I wanted to be and how I balanced what I thought motherhood should look like and what I thought my career should look like. Had to do a ton of work on, on my self-worth.
And so you, you see the same kind of patterns coming up with women, and I'd love to say that this is not an uncommon story, but I see hundreds and hundreds of women a year who have exactly the same feelings and ingrained messaging that I.
Sophie: Yeah.
Ceri: so I think my life's work has now become jet washing it so that we can see the reality of what's underneath
Sophie: absolutely. And I think actually what you, when you're talking about there, I've been seeing quite a lot of posts recently and it's. I think there's [00:26:00] two elements for women really. Some women have have a business and maybe have felt really passionate about it in the past and have driven really hard and have like made good money.
And then maybe during Covid or the last few years, maybe they've had another baby. They're just not as engaged with it anymore and there's almost like a guilt that they're not wanting to push harder and make more money and have, you know, grow the business. It's almost like I just, I'm not feeling at the moment, but I dunno what's wrong with me and.
I don't know from what you were saying there as well, like that 30th birthday thing as well. It's like if you want to spend time with your children and you can just earn enough money to keep you ticking over and you just want to focus on your children, like there's just nothing wrong with that. And I just feel like nowhere on the internet really says that.
It says really, you either need to be like a full mother or like a full businesswoman , and it's like, like where's the bit in between where you can just ebb and flow and sometimes you create just enough. to focus on the children and other times you know, you go really much much stronger. [00:27:00] And then I think the, the flip side of it, which is what I really felt when I started and my business wasn't making very much money, was very much around why, like, why are you putting your children as childcare to run a business that isn't making you very much money?
Ceri: Yeah. I think, again, I mean, I'm gonna say it a hundred times on the podcast, I'm sure, but it's like, it's examining like what is right for you. Right? So for me, I. Was am a better mother to Fred when I have time for myself. Time for myself in the early stages of motherhood was working on the business because I think I felt so guilty framing it in any other way, , that at least if I framed it in work like that was gonna make sense to other people and they, they could accept that.
So I could, I could do something now I'm so unapologetic about. Some time to myself that I'm like [00:28:00] no friend. I'll do what I want. But I think important to note that we live in a funny time, right? If you're a mother now, because we can have, and we can have it all right. Our, our mothers, our grandmothers didn't have this opportunity sometimes to work the way that we do have careers, the way that we do have children.
And live our lives this way, but just because we can have it all doesn't mean that we have to have it all and we don't have to have it all at the same time. Right. We can space this stuff out. Little children, I used to hate this messaging. I used to hate it, I've gotta tell you, but little, your children are tiny for such a small amount of time that if I could go back, I would say to myself like, Hold on.
Like, you know, yes, there's, there's gonna be a balance. Like of course you need time for yourself. Absolutely, absolutely applaud it, but also savor, savor it cuz it does go super, super quick. So [00:29:00] I have some friends and clients who have really loved and embraced that early part of their motherhood. I could see them lapping it up and I wished I could be more of that woman that isn't.
Necessarily, but I am glad that I found a way of making both parts enjoyable for me. I am in a place and have been in a place for a long time where I do enjoy my time out from work. I love being able to finish work and pick, pick Fred up or drop Fred to school every day. And it never being a, a stress, I wouldn't have had that if I'd have stayed in my old corporate. I do wish, like you, that I hadn't put so much pressure on myself to like, have free days
Sophie: Mm.
Ceri: and maybe pay those exorbitant costs to you know, actually for days when I was so tired I re wasn't very productive with them always. And that could have been. that could have been different. But I was so keen to excel sometimes that I didn't think always about what was best.
It was always like, you know, [00:30:00] I'll create the space and then I'll have time to do more work. And that wasn't always right. I'm happy to to say that, but also I have ha got a very good relationship with Fred. He's a very well-rounded kid, I think, and we do what we think is best at the time for us and for our children.
Sophie: Yeah, I think that's it, isn't it really? It's, it's constantly checking in with yourself, like in, within, you know, over different periods of time. Cuz what you might feel is right at the moment might not be right in a few months time or, you know, six months time. We are actually dropping one of o's nursery days.
So she's going down to, yeah, we're going, I'm going from four days to three days. And at the moment that just feels right from us from a kind of cost fixed cost perspective. The amount of work that I end up doing on one of the days I end up having a and just for me spending a bit more time with her and as well.
So I would never have dreamt I would've been doing that. Six months ago, like six months ago, I remember my husband saying, do you want to put her in for a fifth day? And me being like, mm, maybe, [00:31:00] no, not sure. And then we didn't. And now I'm like saying, Tim, I'm really feeling the need to pull her out for a day.
So that's what we're doing.
Ceri: that's good. I think
Sophie: I know, I know. I'm looking forward to it in September, she'll have her last year before school, so she'll probably. , we'll probably go up again then. That's kind of what we're thinking. She gets the 33 hours, but yeah, exactly. But I think in the meantime, it's gonna be just a little bit of a more time with her.
unless we are really looking at, you know, with everything that's going on in the economy is how can we reduce the stress in our lives and they're reducing the stress in our lives for us. Looks like reducing our heavy fixed costs. And like the ones that each month calls me stress because they're so, you know, her nursery fees are almost the same as our mortgage.
And actually that is, I would rather have a little bit more of a buffer to. You know, do nice things with the children and not put so much pressure on myself to have to earn so much each month. And, you know, if one of my clients has to close their [00:32:00] business, that is then catastrophic for me.
Ceri: And I think, you know, that is not only excellent sense for you, that makes the best business sense because the pressure is not just less on you. The pressure is less on your business. And so like that is a brilliant, brilliant thing to do. I think when we are talking about seasonal business. I, I say this, not in a way to You know, promote that I've cracked all the answers because I haven't.
But I notice now, you know, Fred's in school and I thought that would give me time to work more. Right? When I got him to school age, I'd be like, right when he gets to school age, I'm gonna have so many hours a day I can work Like this is gonna be fantastic. And I actually work less now than I ever have out of choice.
because now I can see now I have a much better grasp of what success means to me and it's not working all the time. It's how it's not having a business that is massive. [00:33:00] It is having a business that's impactful.
Sophie: Yeah.
Ceri: it is being able to drop Fred every day. It's having variety in my work. It's concentrating on the stuff that I love, and if I don't love it, I leave it.
And that has meant now that I work. Less now, I still work a full-time job. But before I was stretching myself, I was always stretching myself because there was always this like, there's the possibility of always having more money. There is always more possibility for your business, more things you can launch, more things you can do, things that someone's tried that might work for you.
And if you are that way inclined, which I am, you could fill every hour of the day with.
Sophie: every hour
Ceri: So in the examining, you have to make a choice, and that choice, you know, is that you wanna have some balance in your life.
Sophie: Yeah, absolutely. And I think just as well looking at. , you know how much, when we go really circling around, I guess back to where we started, we [00:34:00] are looking at what do you need to earn, you know, it is kind of like that. Good, better, best, isn't it? Like what's our baseline? What are we really comfortable on and what would be kind of ideal within the amount of hours they want to work and look and then kind of. you know, when you see these 10 K posts and you know, earning this amount, really examining it from like a profit and revenue perspective as well. You know, like at the moment in politics there's a lot of fact checking going on , like this is fact check some of these posts because you might earn 10 K, but if you have got a team around you, if you are paying for a load of software, if you've spent a lot of money on Facebook ads, and I see this all the time, you know, I earned, you know, I.
Hundred grand launch and they've spent 60 K on ads and 20 K on a team. It's like their actual profit and like what they're actually making for themselves is, is probably less than I could make on a, a
Ceri: many words though, isn't it? For a bit, for a, for a Facebook post, like just not snazzy or an Instagram post. And, but I, I see that like with client, I have client, I have some clients who [00:35:00] earn, whose revenue is massive.
Sophie: Yeah.
Ceri: Massive. And I'm like, oh my gosh. And then you dig into it, right? And I'm like, look what they're spending on team.
Look what they're, and I can say that like, you are an ADSD person. Every, it just astounds me. It astounds me what people's ad costs ad spend, like spending costs are. I'm like, you are spending how much on that launch? Like it somehow doesn't, I mean, it's great that you, you know, it's needed and it can get you there, but I'm like, I'm not sure I could do it.
Sophie: I, I'm not sure I could do it. I mean, I don't work on the big high-end launches, like but I, I see, I see them and I see, you know, the case studies and stuff with the t, you know, colleagues I work with. And it's like, it's eye watering and I don't think many people who. who don't, you know, aren't in that circles could ever comprehend how much people are spending on Facebook ads.
Like you might think, oh, it's a couple of thousand. You know, you could like, you know, you're talking like tens, [00:36:00] sometimes more than a hundred thousand on ads, like,
Ceri: a, yeah, I have a client who came through Mumbo and we are doing a little piece on it, so I could, I, I know she doesn't mind me saying that, like the amounts. And she came, right? She had to start a business. She had no money, she was on benefits and she started this product-based business and she went off.
And it grew fantastic. And her recent launch ran for six weeks and she spent 72,000 pounds on her spend. Right? So that's not having the ABS expert in who was doing all the fantastic work. 72 K on actually running. , she got, I, I think the product launch was about a hundred and 140 something, so there's still money in there, but when you, she could just say 140,000 pound launch.
It was fantastic. And I'm like, no, actually, when you take out all the stuff, just the ad spend was half of it. Then you are paying someone to run it on top. Then there's all the, you know,
Sophie: And with products as [00:37:00] well, you've got your, yeah, you've got your profit margin, like it's actually much lower on a product as well because you, I mean it's, I mean, it's eye watering. So anyway, I just wanted to bring that up because I just think, you know, when you. if you're feeling a bit crap about it.
You know, comparing yourself and struggling with not feeling like, you know, feeling like you're failing or your business isn't doing well enough. I think sometimes it's helpful to just take a step back and sort of a fact checked your own business. Like how much, where are, what are my numbers? Like what do I need to be bringing?
But also like kind of fact check other people's and think about the fact that whatev what you see is just not true sometimes.
Ceri: Yeah, and I think all of us, all of us can be really successful because when I drill numbers with people and we really get down, I have never seen an astounded amount of money that someone needs to earn every month. It's usually pretty low.
Sophie: Yeah, yeah.
Ceri: so I'm like, well, you, you can, you can do this. Here's 10 ways that [00:38:00] you can make that much money and you can do it consistently.
. It doesn't have to be difficult. It doesn't have to be hard, but the difficulty comes in when you add the extra layer and you are adding in all the stuff that you need to do on top of it. So much so that you completely forget about that number. That number is not even in your register, and you are chasing something that you don't need to chase.
That's the exhausting part. You don't need to chase it. We are choosing to chase it because we're, we've been sold into this ideal that success is, is that,
Sophie: Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you so much Carrie. We, I think we've covered loads of really interesting topics today. I would love to hear what you guys think about this. So do let me know over on Instagram and the end of every episode, I ask my guests, what's the one thing you sort of say to people to do today going.
Ceri: I think on the theme of this podcast, probably question, I would say question what you are taking in. Like you fall in love with a personality or an aesthetic or a feed, [00:39:00] and that's fine. You know, you can enjoy and consume people's content. But maybe don't do it so blindly. Maybe question why certain things are being sold to you or being said, and just know that it's entirely okay for you to walk on your own path.
Sophie: Yeah, love it. So if you've enjoyed listening to all of Carrie's tips and advice, and if you want to hear more, then you will find her over on Instagram. She's at Carrie Gillette coaching. I will put the link in the show notes. And she also have a brilliant guide, 12 Ways to Make more Money on your business.
It's a ebook and I will put the link to her website, which is where the signup form is in the show notes as well. Thank you so much, Carrie.
Ceri: Thanks for having me.
Thank you so much for joining me this week before you go, make sure you subscribe to the podcast so you can receive new episodes, right when they're released. And if you ever enjoyed these podcast episodes, I'd really love to ask you [00:40:00] to leave a review in apple podcasts reviews are one of the major ways that apple ranks their podcasts, and it only takes a few seconds, but really does make a massive difference to new people.
Finding me. Thank you again for joining me, Sophie, in this episode of growing pains, see you next time.
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