✨ True Wealth with Betty ✨

Finding Your 'Weird' to Amplify Your Culture-Changing Voice with Lara Eastburn

• Betty Cottam Bertels • Season 3 • Episode 1

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Marketing expert Laura Eastburn shares her revolutionary approach to authentic business communication with her powerful philosophy: "Speak Human, Win the Internet." Drawing from her grandfather's wisdom to "tell the truth and ask for help," Laura helps businesses break through generic marketing language to find their unique voice.

• Started her entrepreneurial journey at age 12 selling handmade hair bows
• Created an innovative approach called "finding your weird" to help businesses identify their unique selling points
• Analyzes business jargon through her "One Word" newsletter, categorizing terms as originating from military, industrial, or religious language
• Advocates for non-transactional list building instead of freebie-based opt-ins
• Developed "Pace and Prosper" to help smaller businesses with limited budgets access effective ad campaigns
• Values authentic connection over conventional marketing tactics like "pain point marketing"
• Believes speaking human online is revolutionary in a world of cookie-cutter business approaches
• Shows how authenticity isn't just more ethical – it's more effective at driving business results
• Encourages businesses to lead with their unique story rather than hiding behind professional facades


Lara's website: 

https://laraeastburn.com/

Sign up for Lara's One Word mailing list:

https://laraeastburn.com/oneword/

Pace & Prosper - MINIMALIST LIST-BUILDING ADS

FOR SMALLER BUDGETS IN 90 DAYS:

https://laraeastburn.com/pace-and-prosper/

From Betty: Being in business means being visible. Being ethical in business means not using dodgy tactics, of course, but also being authentic in how we present ourselves ~~

The trouble is… Many of us carry wounds around being seen, accepted, and celebrated as the individual we are.

Left untended, these wounds divide our will, i.e. we end up with conflicted desires:

Part of us wants to be visible to grow our businesses, but another part of us is absolutely dead set on staying well and truly within the shadows… Because that's where it's SAFE.

…whether that means literally hiding under the duvet (I've been there 🥸),

...mega procrastination & self sabotage

…or pretending to be someone we are not, so as not to stand out (I've also been there 🤫).

The push & pull can be utterly EXHAUSTING.

But the good news is, it's relatively quick & easy to fix, once you access the level of the subconscious mind, using a modality such as hypnosis.

Download my free 2 hour workshop, and I'll teach you how you can set yourself free from past hurts, and leap confidently in the direction of your dreams.


FB: Betty Cottam Bertels
IG: Betty_Cottam...

Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome to Lara. It's good to have you here. Thanks for being a guest.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, I'm so honored.

Speaker 1:

Oh well, yeah, it's funny, one of my who was it? Amanda Scott? When I said to her I'm so honored to speak to you and she said oh, that always makes me worry when people say that because they're going to be disappointed or something.

Speaker 2:

Hey and no, I feel like I'm in great company. Like I said you, you interview that the smartest people I know, so I do feel honored to be amongst them.

Speaker 1:

Oh, bless you. Well, it's an absolute treat to have you here. I'm so happy you agreed. And for anybody who's not watching, because this will be on YouTube as well as our podcast, can you tell us a little bit, because I'm seeing what's behind you and it's rather lovely. Can you just give us a little bit of a background about where you're calling in from, and it's very early morning where you are. So are you?

Speaker 2:

I just want the sunrise in, uh, northeast Texas, so about two hours east of Dallas and an hour west of Louisiana. So I'm in the green part and I live on this tiny little lake. So that's what I'm looking at, because water keeps me calm. So, and I work out here because that's my view, oh, my God For those of you who are watching and I look naked.

Speaker 1:

I'm not, I really do, I'm just, I was wondering whether to mention that or not, because when Lara leans forward and the camera kind of cuts her, her shoulders are bare, so it totally looks like she's naked, which I love.

Speaker 2:

It's just to raise your YouTube ratings, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, why didn't I think of that so good? And I see, and she has a hot tub behind her and I'm guessing the sky's blue, although it looks kind of white from the camera. But yeah, life is good in Texas. I'm guessing it is. You're working outside with a view of a lake and I'll tell you what I'm looking at. Today I am in West Wales, as most people listening will know already, and you're coming, aren't you, to Wales.

Speaker 1:

I'm so coming, so exciting. We'll talk about that in a second, but today it's like a kind of classic Welsh day, in that it's midsummer but it's completely overcast and I can't even see any blue. But all is well and I'm happy, so, lara.

Speaker 2:

Yes, ma'am.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, where should we start? Oh, I'm so excited. Where should we start? So tell us, yeah, yeah, give us a bit of backstory. Tell us, um, about what you do. I mean, what I love. I went to your website, as I always do before, you know, doing my due diligence and homework, and I'm looking at your home page and I love that the. The first thing that it says is speak human, win the internet. It's a hell of a tagline, isn't it? It's a good tagline. So give us a bit of backstory, tell us what you do, kind of how you got to doing it. And, yeah, just a bit of background.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, sure, let's see, all I've ever done is run businesses. I started my first one when I was 12.

Speaker 1:

Really 12?.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think some of us are just born to build stuff, maybe.

Speaker 1:

What was your business when you were 12?

Speaker 2:

Oh, I like made hair bows and sold them in the mall. You know one of the little kiosks. Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 1:

I borrowed $100 from my mom to do it.

Speaker 2:

I broke even, but barely.

Speaker 1:

That is so cool and obviously we're going to dig in more to what happened after that. But just while we're here, before I forget, my daughter's nine my eldest is nine and she's got that. She's really um. Okay, I'll give you a tiny bit of backstory, which is that when I was little, I kind of inadvertently picked up this belief that anything that I produced would not be of value in the world and that was like not a thing that I anybody meant to go in, but it went in and it was just because I was like I make perfume and stuff in the, in the bath perfume, in inverted commas, this is like rose petals and water.

Speaker 1:

And then I'd say I remember saying to my parents, um, I'm gonna sell it and they, you know, and however it came out, whatever they said kind of went in the wrong way, I think, and I inadvertently ended up with a big block around selling, which I've had to unpick as an adult and yeah, so it's interesting what I really love. And now that my kids are kind of getting interested in that entrepreneurship, yeah, that my kids are kind of getting interested in that entrepreneurship, yeah, it's just like supporting them in like well, you can create something of value, like what is it going to be, and it's so exciting, and their brains are so creative. So, yeah, I'm really excited to support my kids doing that. Anyway, go on, I'm so glad you are.

Speaker 2:

All I try to do is get out of their way. You know, yeah, and that's the rule, like if you're interested in something, it will be funded. Yeah, so cool. I could have a lot of hobbies, because it took I was like 40 before I realized I needed a hobby.

Speaker 1:

Well, you were too busy growing businesses.

Speaker 2:

Exactly I was like I just like to work, I love to work. And then I was like I don't know if that's awesome, Like I should be doing something else.

Speaker 1:

Okay, and so now I'm really curious to hear about the hobbies, but maybe we'll park that for now and carry on. So you okay. So you're 12 and you started your first business selling hair bows at the mall. What happened next?

Speaker 2:

Where did it go from there?

Speaker 1:

there. What kinds of businesses did you get into?

Speaker 2:

right, that was my foray um. And then I worked. I worked at the mall for a while and got like on commission and got sales. I was working 40 hours from from high school on. So I learned a lot about telling the truth in sales. Right, because everything I know about marketing I learned from my grandfather. So I am super old school. I just do it. I just do it in a very new, ultimately modern space what do you mean by being old school?

Speaker 1:

what do you mean by telling the truth? I mean, those are maybe questions that have an obvious answer, but I'm curious to hear.

Speaker 2:

I mean, you think but I guess it's not.

Speaker 1:

Like telling the truth is such a revolutionary act.

Speaker 2:

Well, so my grandfather was a salesman and also a preacher, and he did not see the difference, as he told me. He was a preacher, he was selling hope and my grandparents raised me there at the end, and one day he took I think I was 16, he took me back out to the backyard for a walk. He would always tell me his wows, what he called his wows, his words of wisdom. Oh my God, I love him, I love your brother. What was his name?

Speaker 1:

uh, lee burns, lee burns okay, great, carry on. And lee's my middle name. Lee was my granddad too, so there's a nice connection love it.

Speaker 2:

It's also what I named my children. Uh, both of them.

Speaker 1:

I gave them their own last name, no, oh, I see, yes, okay, sorry digression, so carry on. So your granddad would take you out and tell him your his wows right, so we're out.

Speaker 2:

And then one day, when I was 16 this is the one I remember the most vividly he said Laura, do you want to know how to get anything you want? And I was like god, I was like duh, of course you know, and I'm just whew, your eyes light up and he said tell the truth and ask for help.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And you know it took me half a lifetime to truly master that. Yeah, but it's really all I've needed when I look back on things, you know yeah.

Speaker 1:

Tell the truth and ask for help. You know, like if we could just all live by that, the world would be a better place, wouldn't?

Speaker 2:

it. Yeah, and I still use everything he taught me today. So let's see, in grad school I I started building a business called Super Hooper, so you know the big adult-sized hula hoops.

Speaker 1:

Uh-huh.

Speaker 2:

I was at the beginning of that whole movement.

Speaker 1:

Okay.

Speaker 2:

I was like in the movie the Hooping Life when I was pregnant, which is my first one, wow, no second one. And so yeah, so you're selling hula hoops.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, we make it creating.

Speaker 2:

Yes, great, because you, you had, you had to make, still have to make, right, okay? Um, so we were crafting and selling these stilt-sized hula hoops and I, at the time, I really wanted an led hoop, one of those that like lights up, because I was performing oh, okay, in Atlanta, um, but on a grad school budget I couldn't afford one.

Speaker 2:

But I was living with three uh guys who were Georgia Tech students and so I just kind of brought the problem to them. It's like, uh, this is what I want, but I needed a, I want to make it, I want to be able to sell it for under a hundred dollars and at the time the only one was 400. So we ended up building the first led hoop under a hundred dollars. I like created the kind of tubing that we use now for for those and wow, uh, so that was, and that was one of my businesses.

Speaker 2:

We went all around the country on the school bus which we drove, literally right, oh my god when we moved here, oh 13, 14 years ago and now this now that school bus is the recording studio oh my god, laura, you're so cool.

Speaker 1:

I love you already.

Speaker 2:

Life is life is wild right that is so much fun.

Speaker 1:

I like you too, betty. Um, is it a yellow school bus? Because in my head all buses in America are yellow. Is that true? A?

Speaker 2:

school certainly start out that way.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, school buses yeah, okay, so it was, but it's not anymore, have you?

Speaker 2:

painted it there's well, those guys that I lived with right, we were all um. They also made like fire sculptures. We were burners, you know, like burning man yeah and so we needed a way to get all of our sculptures down to the burns. Um, so one of the guys bought this school bus for, I think, for like three grand yeah and then, when we moved on to doing this business, we bought it from them and painted it.

Speaker 2:

Let's see, it was already painted green, I think, and now it's burgundy to match my house and it's a recording studio.

Speaker 1:

Okay, I'll try and park that and we'll come back.

Speaker 2:

I'm just gonna write that sorry, non-sequitur was my nickname, yeah well, I am the same.

Speaker 1:

So like for anyone listening who's linear, um, I'm gonna try my best, okay, people, but we always come back around.

Speaker 2:

We'll come back around. We'll come back around um so, so, hoops, hoops yeah so, but you know that was that particular industry was a wide open ocean, it was a blue ocean.

Speaker 1:

Was this online? How were you selling them? Yeah, yeah, yeah, online. There's your dog Coming into the video background. Yeah, sorry, carry on yeah yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:

And so business was. You know, our little business was just fine. And then, I guess it's like 2006, there started to be more and more hooping and I was like, oh shit, oh, by the way, I test a bit, is that okay, that's fine, carry on. It's like, oh crap, I'm gonna have to get on social media.

Speaker 1:

I wasn't on it at all Okay, so here it begins.

Speaker 2:

I need a way to promote these hoops, uh-huh, and so I was messing around with it, as this was back in the day when you know you could do an organic post and it would just get all kinds of reach right.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, the glory days, the glory days, but so it was kind of hit or miss. And then one day I made this post, it was a picture from behind of my husband on the phone, in front of the lake with my youngest who was maybe like one, just you know run around with no clothes on.

Speaker 2:

You know, yeah that's how we lived okay, um, you know from the behind, from behind and uh, and I put some. The caption was something like you already know, we offer customer service seven days a week. You know our sizing helps 27 days a week, but what you may not have known is that our, our little toddlers are nice to us, or something like that and it was one of those posts that just did really well and because I'm such, an, such an academic and such an analytic person, I was like, why I wanted to, like, take it apart, why did this pose work?

Speaker 2:

And then I realized it's because it wasn't a picture of the hoops. It wasn't about how great the hoops were, and, like you know, all the hoops were. They're pretty much the same, right, like, just like with today, with anything we're doing, or especially product wise, they're all pretty much the same. The only way to distinguish ourselves, in my opinion, is with customer service, yeah, and so, um, it wasn't about the products themselves, it was about us as a family who was behind the. Yeah, and that's when I realized, oh, people care about that. That's where speak human, when the internet comes from. Okay, because I put that together with what I learned from my grandfather, right, uh, and I realized that, right, because, I mean, this is early days, right, youtube does not even exist at this point and so yeah, youtube is 2006.

Speaker 2:

it was about the same time 2004, I don't know't know, it was around there.

Speaker 1:

Sorry, I just had to pause for a minute to just imagine that there was a time before YouTube existed, right?

Speaker 2:

I remember, because this is how hoopers started to learn from one another.

Speaker 1:

Before they were there, you had to be there. That's why I was on the bus. Yeah God, Okay cool.

Speaker 2:

So, yeah, speak, yeah, god, okay, cool. So, so, yeah, speak. So I just like started clicking for me and I was like, right, this is, this is the problem with selling online. Is that because of the, because of this platform, folks are forgetting that on the other side of that screen are humans?

Speaker 1:

yeah, they're failing to speak to them, is that right?

Speaker 2:

yeah, um. So I was like, wait a minute, if I remember that this is. You know, I'm not just some anonymous whatever, and neither are they. Yeah, then, of course, everything my grandfather taught me is still obliged, and it was. It's like a lighthouse when you for me, when I have questions about what I should or shouldn't do, or like what I want to do or don't want to do, I mean, that's a lighthouse. I just, you know, am I speaking human Right? Okay, then that's the litmus test that I want to pass.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so can you define for people listening and me, how, how? How does that work? How do you know if you're speaking human and how? What are some red flags? Like how do you know you're not speaking human? What can we watch out for? Like what's the opposite?

Speaker 2:

uh, I think the most direct and reliable way of speaking human is to continue to ask that question every time we write copy Right. So that's actually what led to the project that I called one word. It's now my mailing list and it's because my my background is linguistics. So language is what I care about. And I started thinking about the vernacular that we use for sales and business. It's very formulaic, it's jargon and there's these sort of. We have this inherited vocabulary that we use for sales and business and it's what we're taught, it's what the internet says to do.

Speaker 2:

It's what everybody learns and the stakes are so high you don't want to do anything else. Um, because the odds of failing a business are astronomical, right? No, but what I found is everybody just sounds like everybody else. Yeah, useful, like lingu, it was not effective and over time, especially with as I started getting Facebook ads clients, I would you know I had to figure out how I was going to position them and I would read their website and, over and over again, I'd have to say right, cause we're just going to tell the truth.

Speaker 2:

I'd have to say I'm so sorry, I don't know what you do, right? I don't understand this. Yeah, because it would be phrases, like you know, back in the early days of life coaching, like live your best life, get the life you deserve, and just all of that stuff, and I was like I have no idea what that means. So, just on a literal, like I know what it's supposed to mean maybe Right, but it was leaving the definition of these things up to the consumer, like just relying on them to define them for you.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, In which case I don't. I wasn't confident that communication was actually happening, so, and I couldn't sell it if I didn't understand it. So I was having more and more of these conversations and I was like man, I want to start this project where I just look at these words when do they come from? Why do we use them? And I ended up like creating three categories. I think either come from military.

Speaker 2:

Okay, oh yeah, wow Okay, military, okay, military, yeah, write them down because I'll forget the voice yeah, things like carpet bombing and target audience, right, those, lots of them come from military, a lot of them come from industrialization. So that'll be, you know, step by step, automated systems, uh, formulas, models, um, and then the other category would be religious. Right then?

Speaker 1:

I saw that even the version right.

Speaker 2:

Is is a is a religious uh term, so I gotta put them in those three interesting you're right.

Speaker 2:

And I was like, okay, I'm just gonna do this one word at a time. I'm just gonna do it like I did in grad school. It's gonna be super brainy. And. And then I got nervous about it because it's like who's gonna want to read it? Like nobody's as interested in words as I am. There's no way. Yeah, and at the time my business coach was Kelly Deals. She said to me some of the words that I just never forget them because I remind myself all the time. She said laura, you are allowed to be smart on the internet. It's like fucking hey, kelly, you are right, I'm doing this. It's gonna be a blast for me. Why shouldn't?

Speaker 2:

I do it uh, so that's what we do. It's called what it's called, one word, and once a month I take one of those words and, uh, kind of break it down etymologically, historically, like how did we come to use this word? Is it what we think it is? Is it what we mean? And so it's just a question that I ask, uh, continuously beautiful I love I love language too.

Speaker 1:

Um, I I'm a real geek when it comes to words too and so yeah yay, um, so I'm with you on that, and I did look through your archive of all the one words that I could see just before this interview and, yeah, it's fascinating, isn't it a lot of those words? One of them, which one was it? Now I thought to myself oh no, I'm not going to agree with her on this one.

Speaker 2:

It was resonate because I say that a lot. Yeah, I expected a lot of pushback on that one but.

Speaker 1:

I didn't get as much as I thought no, um, but what you offered as a, as an alternative I quite liked, which came from French, wasn't it? Was it rejoin rejoindre? Yeah like to meet where you are instead of to vibrate at the. I mean, I guess resonate is like vibrating at the same frequency or something, is it? That's how I tend to use it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that one was a tricky one and definitely comes from the. I guess we could say it comes from the musical world. But it comes from the religious and spiritual realm today?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, and so Go, check, check out so anyone listening? Oh sorry, what was that? Words that are shortcuts, you know shortcuts, yeah, and then we just use them automatically without really examining them.

Speaker 2:

That's that's. All I'm advocating for is that we just examine the words we're using.

Speaker 1:

I'm not saying there's bad words at all no, no, I love that, I really appreciate that. And you know, a lot of times people just say use the words that other people are using who are in a similar industry, don't they? I mean, and particularly where AI is involved, I mean it comes up with all sorts. I mean, when I have my limited use of it, when I've experimented with it, the kind of stock phrases it comes out with, and I just think that is not my voice at all. Anyway, maybe you've got it's a mirror.

Speaker 2:

It's a mirror of the Internet. That's what everybody uses, and it does such a disservice to us as the humans behind these businesses. Right, first of all, it's not effective like you just glaze over it, you're not saying anything new, so it doesn't register with me at all yeah, I can't tell you apart from your colleagues, I don't know if you're for me, because you haven't told me anything right.

Speaker 1:

Sometimes I think, about it like I'm sorry, I was just going to say so. You're anti. You're kind of not encouraging your clients to use AI. Is that a firm? No, oh okay, so more Okay, go on, carry on.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, ai is a tool like all tools. Yeah, you know, and I work with AI in lots of ways, so I'm running meta ads. I'm sorry, I'm going to gonna pause. Can you hear my dog barking? No, okay, he's barking back there oh no, it's fine actually it's not just. I'm gonna rely on you to tell me yeah, it's not picking it up so running meta ads.

Speaker 2:

I've been working with metazai for quite some time, right from her infancy to now she's she's a teenager. We spend a lot of time together. So I call her, she, I've given her a name, um, and you know, she doesn't talk to us, of course, but she, you know, we get, I get to read what she does, right, so, and there's no, it is on me to interpret that yeah and in the future, that's exactly what will be needed.

Speaker 2:

These are tools, but we will always need the people that know how to speak to them, the people that know how to read, understand what they're saying. In this particular instance, it's data I'm getting data and. I have to parse it. Somebody's got to make sense of it. To synthesize it yeah, synthesize it. Yeah. So it's like here's a hundred variables that happened in this campaign and figure it out right. It wants to interpret it for me, but it's, it's not. Um, it's not great at that yet got it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, so it is. Yeah, I think it's the with the creative bit, isn't it? When you get it to write copy, it just is. I mean, this is my experience that I just hate everything and it just actually wastes my time because I could have written. Like, when I try and get it to write something for me, it takes so much longer because I'm so unhappy with what it's coming up with and I mean, I just have given up on it.

Speaker 1:

Quite frankly, I'm like make it sound more like this, make it sound more like that, and it's just like you give it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, okay.

Speaker 1:

So where did we get to picking out what makes a business more human, I suppose, and you would do you lead then with what? No, I don't know, tell us about. Tell us about that what. When you work with a client, how, what's that process like of? If you're creating an ad campaign, how do you sieve through what you? What you said was I don't know what. A lot of the time there's this like I don't even know what you're doing, so you're clarifying their message into something quite bite-sized, presumably so that it just captures people, and you know what human beings at the moment, our attention is so, um spot, you know sparsely, uh, spread thinly, that that, how, how do you do that like? How do you that that? How? How do you do that like? How do you know what will get people's attention whilst, and also whilst also speaking the truth, what was the other thing your granddad said? What was it?

Speaker 1:

tell the truth oh, and ask for help oh yeah, okay, yeah, um.

Speaker 2:

Well, what I'm looking for is I call it my gosh. My dog has just destroyed my umbrella. Oh, I call it. I call it finding my finding your weird. I call it finding your weird. So, uh, when I've got a new client call, I'll go to their website and I'm looking for. I'm looking for what they're saying that nobody else is saying, or looking for what they're saying that they're saying, in a way, differently than everybody else is saying it. So at this point in my career, I have the luxury and room to choose who I work with, and at this point, I choose to work with what I call culture changing voices. So I'm over, I'm over in my corner of the internet, just trying to make the world a better place, right, right, so I use I like to think that I use my powers for good. Yeah, so I use my powers to amplify voices that otherwise would just get drowned out. Okay, yes, in order to do that, I've got to find, I've got to find that weird, I've got to find. That's what I call it.

Speaker 1:

I've got to find the weird.

Speaker 2:

I've got to find something that's different or a way that they're doing it that's different. So that's the first thing I'm looking for. So I'll scour their website Eight times out of ten. I'm going to find it buried at the bottom of the about page Always the first place I look, especially if it's a very jargon-filled front page.

Speaker 2:

right, I'm going to find it at the bottom of the about page. It's like a throwaway, it's like an aside. Oh, and, by the way, blah like an aside, oh and by the way, blah. I'm like, and then I'll generally say, okay, so that little blah at the bottom of your about page, that's gonna be your front page now.

Speaker 1:

Okay, have you got an example that you could give for, for what that can be like?

Speaker 2:

is it?

Speaker 1:

something. I mean, is it something about the person's backstory or is it something about the work that they do?

Speaker 2:

yeah, sometimes you know, our weird, our weird is always going to be weird, right they're, they're different. So, for instance, uh, one time it was, um, a lady who was. She was what's she doing? She was doing, um, she was doing a business that sort of catered to gosh. I can't even remember now because we completely changed the brand.

Speaker 1:

So you're helping to change the brand actually.

Speaker 2:

Not on purpose, and it doesn't always need to be that way. Some folks have their messaging down. But, every once in a while. Yeah, a lot.

Speaker 1:

It's confusing. It's's confusing, isn't people just at the bottom?

Speaker 2:

of her about page. It was like oh, and, by the way, I'm this sort of alphabet soup right. So like lbdqia adhd, you know all these yeah and. But the point is that was kind of her whole perspective, that was her paradigm for approaching her work, and so mainly I ended up saying like, look, I'm just going to need you to make this a whole lot gayer, okay, because this is, I can see. That's, that's who you are, yeah.

Speaker 1:

That's who she wanted to present. You know that was a key piece, yeah.

Speaker 2:

And it was. It's important for those that she works with that are looking for that to know that was a key piece. Yeah, and it was. It's important for those that she works with that are looking for that to know that. So sometimes I look at it, a lot of times I look at this as though it's a dating profile. Right, it's your business dating profile for your clients. If you tell them, if you tell your clients you like pina colada, the long walks on the beach, then you're telling them you're.

Speaker 2:

You know it's a cliche yeah how are you gonna, how are your people gonna find you, if you don't put yourself there?

Speaker 1:

so I want to pour as much of them into their messaging as possible yeah and um yeah, and how is that met when you, when you you presumably you go to their website and you're like looking for the thing, and then when you find it and you bring it and you say, okay, and maybe I need you to make this a whole lot gayer, or I need you to oh how about leading with this thing that you probably just thought was a throwaway comment? Do you find that there's resistance to that, or do they tend to love it? I mean, how does that get received?

Speaker 2:

I met with a lot of resistance. Uh, I don't, yeah, that's not true. I mean, I'm always a little nervous. You know that they're going to take this the way wrong way. Sometimes I'll say, I mean, this may not be what you want to hear, you know, but I feel like I owe it to you to tell you what I see here. Um, and this is what I see. This is where, this is where, on your website, my, you know, my interest, my curiosity peaks. I'm looking for what generates curiosity.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I want to know more about so and usually, and I mean, look, all I'm really like, hey, how do you feel about being more yourself here? And generally they're like yeah, that'd be rad, let's do that. I mean, I met with someone recently who teaches folks to heal through nature right.

Speaker 2:

Like long walks or trips like this, or hiking or visiting the mountains, but healing through nature and that's super cool, right? Except at the bottom of her about page, she's actually a cancer survivor. She came to all of this because, you know, she was freaking out about death and all this other stuff and she started going for walks and this is what like. Why in the hell are you not telling that story? Yeah, right?

Speaker 1:

um, why do you think, sorry, can I jump in, like of course? Why do you think people don't lead with that?

Speaker 2:

because they don't see it. They don't see it modeled any. I mean it. Look, there's lots of us that do this, but we're not the loudest right, um, so we don't see it modeled.

Speaker 2:

We see on the internet, they see everybody that's making money and they're talking about their six figures and they're like, you know, laptops on the greek islands, like it's. It's a cliche itself. You know, it's the yeah, the version of the guy in front of his Lamborghini. That's for women, and so they see that and they're like I have to do it. This is how you make money.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and the stakes and the stakes are too high. So then there's people, like you know, tad Hargrave, they're out there directly speaking to the folks that are like Ooh gross, no, like I need to money, but you know, I need to feed my kids, I need to pay my mortgage, but I can't do that, I'm not going to do that, and so then they just get stuck.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And I think most of the people that I work with find themselves in that position as well.

Speaker 1:

It's really interesting because this my, my work kind of crosses over with yours at this point, at the point at which people feel really uncomfortable to be seen as who they are. And you know, I don't know if you that's why I was asking about you know, how does it, how is it received? When you pick up on a thread that they've maybe hidden and then you're saying, lead with that, you know that can feel, I'm just, I'm kind of imagine, as we all do, just imagining it for myself. You know, there's certain parts of my story I kind of think, well, that is interesting and I would be really interested in that, but somehow, if I lead with that, that's going to make me a I don't know arrogant, like a you know it's like not I don't know what it is, but there's a sense of like. I shouldn't put that front, front and center well.

Speaker 2:

I mean, it's certainly understandable that folks would be hesitant about it. It's why we don't start there. Yeah, um, because the consequences are real. You know, putting yourself on the internet in this day and age is a scary thing to do, totally yeah. So we arm ourselves. This is that's armor. It's what I call the virtual business suit, right? So, yeah, um, you know what you do, you know why you do it, you know why it's important. Yeah, um, but then you go to put it on the internet and all of that, just kind of sure. No, I can't say that.

Speaker 2:

I can't say I can't yeah, yeah yeah, slowly the virtual business suit comes back on yeah um, and you end up saying absolute nothing at all. What happens? And so I? I there's that fear and I respect that fear. It's very real, but the consequences of not putting ourselves out there is the way that I'd like to look at it Like you're not going to sell anything. You're not going to blend in, you're not going to stand out, you're not going to be able to pay that mortgage and feed your kids, and so it's a weird space to occupy, yeah.

Speaker 1:

I'm sorry, sorry, nora, sorry, I'm so talkative, me too um. Shall I go are? You yeah, I was just thinking, you know, and tad hargrave talks about the marketplace, as you know, and making during the comparison between and he, um, in fact his, his book that's going to come out at some point is called restoring the beauty of the marketplace, and you know I love that. Yeah, right, god am I allowed to say that.

Speaker 1:

I hope I'm allowed to say that, um, um, I'm sure it's fine. Yeah, restoring the beauty of the marketplace and like when you think of a in-person market, in a square, somewhere, you know, and everybody's just talking to each other and they're talking about what they do and like saying, oh yeah, well, this is what's happened since I last saw you and there's all this conversation happening and somehow that is less threatening to our nervous systems. Like that feels good, doesn't it? Like being in a marketplace like that and hearing about maybe your favorite cheese maker, I don't know, whatever it is, whatever somebody's selling, you go to this market, you can talk to them, you can hear about how it's been for them, you know, um, and presumably you know, then they feel comfortable in sharing that. But something about it being online changes that feeling, doesn't it? Because I'm like with reason, with absolute reason, because people are mean online, like in a way that they're not in person exactly.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, no, the consequences are real. Council altar is real, like all of that stuff is real. But what you're talking about, that, and or what ted's talking about is is, is exactly that. It's that, speaking human, at the very beginning, when I was trying to figure out how to, how to inspire clients, right Like, how to get them to get started in writing something different, right Cause I didn't know at the beginning, I had to figure it out I would say, okay, how would you tell me this? At a bar, we're across from the, the, we're across from the, the, we're across the table from one another. You know, we've got a weapon in our hands and I'm like, yeah, sorry, you've got a wine in your hand.

Speaker 1:

Oh, whatever you know, whatever you, whatever you drink, I thought you were gonna like give away your your favorite drink then, but whatever, yeah, go on whatever you drink.

Speaker 2:

And, uh, you know like, oh, I'm having, I'm having so much trouble with you, know blah, and you're like oh, laura, you know what you, you know what you can do with that. Like, how would you tell me? How would you tell me?

Speaker 2:

that across across the, across the park, and I generally will get them started or just when I meet with them I'll be like this is a wild thing that you do, like you've got to tell me how you, how did you start this? And in that story is generally they're weird okay, interesting if I don't find it at the about page, I'll find it there, because some folks will completely sterilize their online presence to where it has so little right. Won't even put their pictures on their website.

Speaker 1:

That is weird, isn't it?

Speaker 2:

Well, it's understandable too.

Speaker 1:

I think it's weird when it's a kind of therapeutic work or a coach even. You know, for me I'm like, straight away, I just want to see this person, I want to watch a video of them. And when you scroll through and you just can't find a photo or a video, how are you going to make the decision to hire that person?

Speaker 2:

Exactly Well, I need to know about you.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I want to feel you.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you know the lady who comes to healing through nature, through her own journey. That's something I understand.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

That because you could be somebody who took a life coach course six months ago, Like I don't just decided to do this and that's prevalent right.

Speaker 1:

In all of our industries.

Speaker 2:

We're surrounded by charlatans. We're surrounded by people that are just there, you know, to to make money or whatever. But so many others of us are passion-based. We do this because we're passionate about it and I bump into a lot of folks that are so passionate. That's how I started with hooping, right, all these other businesses. That's how I get into ads, right. So all of these new businesses started coming up in hooping and then I started seeing them fail. I believe in competition, so I got really you know there's enough for everybody, and so there's. I got really concerned that they were failing and I started reaching out to them and it's like, just because you're passionate about something, does not know you does not mean you know how to run business.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, running a business is there are lots of part of parts of it that suck tedious, you know you get into it because you love this thing, and then you're like, oh fuck, I kind of want to do all this stuff or I don't know how. And the people out there teaching it, um, aren't teaching stuff for us. They're like they're not talking to small businesses, they're just for their cookie cutter formulas that they're trying to put on every business, and to me that's the death of a business right there yeah, totally.

Speaker 1:

So we need to lead with our weird is what the big takeaway here like, just totally I mean that's one phrase that's on my, my naughty list. It's probably need to and should to when I when I hear my yeah, when I hear myself saying those, that's a red flag naughty list is probably need to and should to.

Speaker 2:

When I, when I hear my yeah, when I hear myself saying those, that's a red flag to me, right yeah sure my own language, but to me if I say I should, yes or oh, I need to, nope, nope, I have to go back and examine that one.

Speaker 1:

So those are like blaring I was being very lazy with my language there uh, let's try again. Um, it would be helpful to show the bits of us that are unusual it is effective effective yeah and it is fucking fun and it's fun right.

Speaker 2:

Yes, I went for fun unless you get past the, the, the fear of it, or maybe we never get past it. Like, for instance, I don't do video, I can't, I have a serious block about it. It's not like a thing I want to take a course about. Yeah, it's just a thing I've accepted about myself and that's right.

Speaker 2:

Right now I can speak to you because I'm looking at you yeah but to speak into the ether um it's weird for me it's weird, yeah, for me it's why I don't like recording music, because I, I can't, I'm not playing for someone, so my husband has to come into the recording studio with me, because the way that I play and the way that I sing changes depending on my audience and if there's no audience. I don't know what to do.

Speaker 1:

I feel like that is so important what you just said there, because I know exactly what you mean Right. And like, even so, something happens when it's a communication, like there's magic. When it's communication, when it's received by another human being, and yeah, and it's natural and normal, I think that something that sparkle, that something is missing when it's not actually being transmitted and being received by somebody. It's very interesting.

Speaker 2:

It's a given you take you know, I can't see. I depend so much on body language too. If I can't see you, I don't know if my jokes are landing.

Speaker 1:

I don't know if you're actually interested in what I'm saying.

Speaker 2:

So and I want it's not like I want to conform myself to the listener, but I do want to be aware of my audience and what's what's around me and that's a natural human thing, isn't it to be to be aware of how the other person is and know like, oh, they're bored, I'm gonna stop now, but that's yeah, it's interesting.

Speaker 1:

we need to overcome, in a way, yeah, oh, so much to say, all right, so this is, and this is also why it's so helpful to get support from somebody, because then you have communication with another human being, and another human being who's walked the path ahead of you, who can be a guide, is always so helpful, obviously. And also there's something which my partner, rob, and I always joke about this have you heard of the Pygmalion effect?

Speaker 2:

I'm sure I have, but it's been a minute, remind me.

Speaker 1:

So the Pygmalion effect we always laugh about it because I always talk about it is the idea that when you're being experienced by someone, that when somebody's respecting you kind of like, you rise to meet that respect and so something about their respect of you and the way that they're perceiving you at a higher level makes you that higher like level. It's kind of like a self-fulfilling oh no, not self-fulfilling, but like a yeah. It's kind of weird how it happens. But this is why coaching works, I think, or why any kind of relationship where you're, where you're hiring somebody, so like if I hire you and you're an expert, then you're, I don't know, there's something about, you, see something in me, and then I rise to become that thing, and then that lifts the coachee, as it were. Does that make sense?

Speaker 2:

It does, it does. I didn't know it was called that. I call it teaching to the front of the room. So when I was a professor I taught French.

Speaker 1:

Okay, oh, oh, you taught french. Oh nice yeah uh, french linguistics.

Speaker 2:

And so when I was teaching, you have, you have a decision to make, right? Who? Who are you going to talk to in the room? Do you teach to the lowest common denominator, that's the guy who, like has to take this class and like doesn't really care yeah um, do you teach to the highest common, the highest denominator, right the person who's like so gung ho about this really into it? Yeah loves it. Or do you teach to the middle of the room and so, like somewhere in between?

Speaker 2:

in my mind, you always teach to the front of the room because, um, they're there, they're there for it, right, they're into it yeah and those who are somewhere in the middle are going to rise to rise to meet that level, um, and you know, maybe some in the back too, but you know, you know, you never know, you can't count on it. So, exactly that. And and it's also part of speaking human right and remembering that the person on the other side of that screen is a human and deserves respect and doesn't want to be talked to like idiot. You know, and that's most of the language, right? Is the most of the language for sales. No, I don't like the word most.

Speaker 2:

So much of the language that we use in marketing and business is pedantic, it's. It assumes that you're dumb. You know what I mean. Like, just the whole idea of pain point marketing makes me so sick. It's so gross, right, I mean they teach folks to find the pain point and stick a fork in it and turn it, and it's like, oh, oh, come on, why would you do something like that? It's horrible.

Speaker 1:

Isn't it so horrible? And have you been victim to that kind of thing before, because I know I have. Have you fallen for it?

Speaker 2:

I mean maybe when, maybe when I was younger. You know now that it's my job, it's just just, it's all legible to me yeah. And linguists, just sort of examining the language that's used. I mean, it tells us so, it tells us so much.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

It tells us so much. So you know like the act now, or you'll regret it, or you know that kind of stuff. It's like it treats me as though I have no decision-making capacity, as though I need to be saved. So my advertising. I start with the idea that the person on the other side of the screen is as smart as me, as emotional as me as discerning and people recognize it.

Speaker 2:

You know. They tell us that it's impossible to stand out on the internet. Yeah, I believe the exact opposite. It's like so easy, especially on these platforms, you tell the truth and that it's so rare that the humans on the other side of those screens they recognize it. They know, they know. They know when you're blowing smoke up their ass and they know when they're being treated well or like equals right, they know it, they respond to it and it works every time and literally breaking records by just telling the truth you're breaking records, did you say oh, yeah, yeah, tell us about that.

Speaker 2:

incredibly good at doing this one thing, as my, as my grandmother said you could well she wouldn't have said it like this, but it's how I paraphrase it because she's a preacher's wife but she says you know, it was like you can do one thing extremely well, or many things half-assed. So I took the route of I wanted to be the best at one thing.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Don't ask me to cook dinner, but I can make you a list building ad.

Speaker 1:

Great, I'm like okay. Okay, Laura, take my money, let's go, All right. So for somebody like me who's like, okay, oh my God, I'm so excited about the prospect I mean what I love about and you talk about non-transactional list building. Do you want to talk about that?

Speaker 2:

Sure, yeah, I love talking about that. Sure, yeah, I love talking about that. Okay, go, I made that up.

Speaker 1:

I mean, okay, yeah, so well, for people who aren't sure what that means, like you know how you get free freebies to get on people's mailing list. You get like a free PDF download or what are the? E-book.

Speaker 1:

A meditation, a meditation, a free pdf download, or um, what is it? What are the ebook? Yeah, a meditation, a meditation. Yeah, okay, and I'm, and I'm, and I'm actually doing this. So now this is really where it gets juicy, because, um, it's a, it's a recorded class, that is my freebie, that's on my website, so tell me why that's not a good idea.

Speaker 2:

Um well, I mean it can be a good idea, like there. There are no hard and fast rules here, except for one, which is the only thing that you should do. Right, there's that word again. Yeah, the only thing that you should do is the thing that works for your business yeah, right okay, I mean, I'm really good at what I do, but I don't know your business. I don't. And and as soon as there's a rule, there's another cliche, right?

Speaker 1:

so okay, so tell us how, uh why, you tend to prefer non-trans. Well, what is non-transactional like?

Speaker 2:

right. So transactional opt-ins. An opt-in is someone signing in for signing up for your newsletter. The opt-in that most folks will be familiar with is is that it's transactional, because I say, um, you give me your email address, I will give you this thing for free, okay, and that's a. That's a particular economy, right, I'll give you this. You give me that when the thing that you want is for them to be interested in your style, right, your voice, your thing, the way that you're approaching your industry, which is why I need to find it. So I want them. I want them to sign up for your voice. I want them to sign up because the thing that you're saying and doing in the world is not being done anywhere else or in the way that you're doing it. I want them to be on your list because they want to be there. I don't want to build you a list of people that wanted a free thing.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And it's not. It's not wrong to want a free thing. Give them the free thing in your welcome email.

Speaker 1:

I don't care.

Speaker 2:

It's great, it's like you know. Welcome. Here's the swag bag, right Welcome to the party. Here's your swag bag, so deliver it. Absolutely. I actually want to get you in front of your people as quickly as possible. Yeah, because if I don't meet you, I have no idea if I trust you. I don't know if I like you, I don't know if you speak in a way that moves me Right. I do want to get you in front of them quickly. I just don't want it to be the reason that they sign up for your email list. You're paying for every one of those. You're also then paying to email them and there's no reason anybody should be where they don't want to be.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I love unsubscribes bring them on, yeah right if I don't get them, if I don't get unsubscribes or replies, and I worry that I did something wrong I love that.

Speaker 1:

This is such a good and helpful reframe, isn't it? I was literally just saying to um somebody before this call, like you know what, I think I'd just been reading your website and then I had this call with somebody, um, and I said I think you need to just clean out your email list, just like, if they're not engaging, just it's time to let go.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I love that it's great isn't it like, hooray, they've unsubscribed, that's one person less to kind of worry about. You know kind of cleaning, it isn't it it? Hooray, they've unsubscribed, that's one person less to kind of worry about. You know kind of cleaning, it isn't it?

Speaker 2:

it's making it more engaged let's just, let's free up everybody to go where they want to go right yeah, I mean the last thing, the last reaction I want folks to have when I put something out into the world is meh, yeah. I mean I want you to either love it or hate it. But I don't want it to be like nobody's going to say about Laura Eastwood I'm like she's fine, yeah, right, either like, oh, my God, I can't deal with her at all, or she's the best, yeah, or she's something.

Speaker 2:

Do you know what Marmite is? Lara Marmite? Oh right, that's an Australian thing, right? No?

Speaker 1:

that's Vegemite.

Speaker 2:

Okay, so that's the UK thing.

Speaker 1:

Yeah Well, this segues nicely into the last thing I wanted to talk to you about, which is you're coming to Wales and so, yeah, be like Marmite is often what I like to say. Marmite is renowned for. Either you love it or you hate it, and there's like no middle way. You're firmly in either of those camps.

Speaker 2:

Word yeah, to be clear, I don't want anybody to hate me, right? No, no. But I want to be so present that if I'm not for you, that it's clear for you, yeah right you can make that decision. It is so hard for businesses to make decisions, yeah, about who they're going to work with because, yeah, because the because we put so little of ourselves into our brands yeah and you're just looking at them, you're like, well, I could pick her, I could pick her.

Speaker 2:

You know, it helps me to know which way to go If you tell me who you are.

Speaker 1:

Right, so this is so. This is the crux of it all. It's like it's actually kind. Yes, it's actually a kindness to be like Marmite, to be love it or hate it. Okay, not hate, but to make it clear, make it easy for people to know which camp they're in, Because that frees up like bandwidth in their life for them to find the thing that does excite them. You know, there's so much noise isn't there in the world. We get so many emails Like that's actually a kindness. We get so many emails like that's actually a kindness, like be weird, be extreme and and let let them go if they don't love it.

Speaker 2:

I feel like it is my responsibility to tell folks who I am. I go. I don't want you to get on the call with me and then realize I've got the potty mouth to evolve potty mouth. I want you know, or I'm gonna tell you the way it is, if you need, if you're someone who wants to go, you know needs a lot of handholding. You know that's part of your process.

Speaker 1:

Like I'm probably not going to be for you, I'm going to be.

Speaker 2:

if you're somebody who loves clear communication, absolute transparency, you want to know where every dollar is going and why and why I'm making these decisions. I'm your girl.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Right Communication is the hill that I die on.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, Ah, so good, I love that. So just yeah, throw it all out Like just be unapologetically yourself and see what happens. I love that let's see what happens. See what happens. Yeah, and you know, I did this podcast interview with somebody called Jeffrey Van Dyke. Do you know of his work?

Speaker 2:

yes, yeah, I know, jeffrey you know him, laura?

Speaker 1:

do you know him?

Speaker 2:

yes, uh, how did I meet? Oh, it was on. I was on a thing with Ted and him, and then I reached out to Jeffrey and I was like dude, you are so cool, like can we hang out? I'm going to be in LA next week and we totally had lunch and had a lot in common. He's a really groovy guy.

Speaker 1:

Oh great, okay, so you know him better than me. That's groovy guy. Oh great, okay. So you know him better than me. That's so cool. But I had him on the podcast and one of the things he said has stayed with me yeah, it's really stayed with me, which is, like you know a lot of us, a lot of us. When I say us like do I need to define that like outsider? I don't know if I'm maybe like a bit I've spent I'll speak personally. I've spent a lot of my life feeling like an outsider, like a bit of a weirdo, like you know, somebody on the periphery, everyone else is just getting on with their thing and I'm kind of out there doing weird stuff and one thing that he's for your service, hey thank you for your service.

Speaker 1:

We need people out there doing weird stuff um one thing that jeffrey said was like let me see if I get this right it was about some needing to crest the wave. Um, it's like to. I think what he meant by it was and I'm gonna have to go back and get the exact quote but it was about needing to like, once you crest the wave, sometimes you've got to get up and crest the wave in order to look around and see that you're not alone, that there are other people. I'm really butchering this. Um, he said it much more eloquently. And people listening, go back and listen to Jeffrey Van Dyke episode. He's he's great, but it was about finding your people and you know, I think a lot of us spend a lot of our lives feeling like not belonging or something. And then he said that he had to get to this certain level and when he got to the level, then he found his people. He like, like the.

Speaker 2:

The journey to get there was maybe hard, but when he got to the top then he found the, the people, his tribe I, I dig it, yeah, yeah, and the more we can speak human, the more quickly I think we, the more quickly we find them, because there's that profile right of our businesses and I'm like oh okay, I recognize that that's what I'm looking for. Tad says I'm going to paraphrase, but it's something like the first job of copy is to get rid of most people. Yeah, I 100% agree with that. That's exactly it.

Speaker 2:

Um, and that's, that's the responsibility I'm trying to meet in these campaigns, in these spaces where it's just, you know, not what a lot of us would call quality content yeah, in the in these spaces where that's true, when you come out and say, uh, you know, this is the way I'm looking at the world, like tell, tell the truth, I think you know this thing. That's maybe not not the status quo, and the people that think that as well are like oh, thank Jesus, you know, thank God, that's what I'm thinking, that's the way I think about it.

Speaker 1:

Finally somebody's saying it, yeah.

Speaker 2:

And they sign up for your list for that.

Speaker 1:

They love you.

Speaker 2:

For the way that they look at the world no-transcript.

Speaker 1:

So I think that we've gone over time slightly um really oh, that went by so quick I know, I was confused I'm linguistically fascinated by wales.

Speaker 2:

I already know I'm not going to be able to pronounce a thing.

Speaker 1:

Oh, my gosh. Yeah. So laura told when I reached out to invite her on the podcast she said she was going away and then it turned out she was coming to wales. So have you been before?

Speaker 2:

no, no, have you been to? Britain before oh, yeah, you know I've been to london for conferences and stuff, but yeah, I don't love the city. I don't love the cities. I like, when I travel, I like to go, you know, to the middle of nowhere and stay for three months until the bartender knows my name, you know and yes but we're going to a music camp on the top of a mountain right.

Speaker 1:

So yeah, you're going to this like very niche music camp, I think by the sound of it. I've never been, but friends of mine know it and, um, it's quite a small gathering, and is it americana and folk? Is that the, the vibe?

Speaker 2:

oh yeah, it's certainly what I would call americana. I think they call it old-timey music, which works for me as well. Yeah, it's fiddle banjo, and there's guitars too. My husband plays the dobro, so he'll be the what the dobro dobro the resonant guitar that you play, laying across your lap.

Speaker 1:

Oh yeah, like slide. You can certainly slide on it, but it's not an electric. It's not an electric slide. It looks like a regular guitar.

Speaker 2:

It's just different.

Speaker 1:

And do you make music with him, with your husband?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah so. I'm in a band that's been together for more than 21 years, because I was asking the guys the other day, like how long have we been together, and Ransom Jackson said, laura, our relationships can drink. You know, we've known each other that long 21 years, though, in America. So we got together like when we all lived in the same place, but since then we get together like when we all lived in the same place, but since then we get together once a year.

Speaker 2:

Uh, so four friend, five friends from four states, come together once a year to put out an album in three days and we do an album every year. We write separately and then kind of come together. We've known each other so long we just get each other so it's we call it music weekend, which is the name of our band now music weekend oh, so sweet.

Speaker 1:

I love that and you're, and then you're recording it in your baths oh, we have started doing that, or wherever we go sometimes. Okay, oh, you can travel what fun to make a tradition like that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and then I've got this little solo project because I learned to play banjo oh, have you Cool During COVID? Because I couldn't get together with my guys. Yeah, I was like I need to be able to play an instrument. I'm a songwriter, but I would just sing it and they would play it and I was like I can't make music without them. This is awful. I need to be able to make music without them how's it going playing banjo?

Speaker 2:

oh, it's great. It's great, yeah, uh, it's. It's cool because I make different kinds of different kind of music when I'm just by myself, so that was my hobby that I picked up at 40, oh good. Oh yeah, he told you we'd come around, oh yeah well done so good, glad you remembered um, beautiful.

Speaker 1:

Well, I feel like that. That was so nice. I really enjoyed that, laura. Um, if so, if somebody I mean if somebody's listening and they're really curious about facebook ads or whether what I love about from your um, from looking at your site, what I came away with with the amazing testimonials at the bottom, like saying, oh, my god, the you know, the vibe I got was like I wish I'd worked with laura sooner, you know. So how does a person know when they're ready to invest in somebody working with somebody like you, because it's an ongoing commitment, isn't it? It's like you like to work with people over. Well, tell us.

Speaker 2:

Right. So, with the non-transactional list building deal for list building, it's never too early to start, right? Um, when it comes to list building, I want you to have started yesterday, because it's the only data you'll ever own. Um, you know, if these platforms, or whatever platform you use to tell people about your work, disappears tomorrow, yeah, you, we always have our, our lists and a way to speak to our people. Yeah, um, sending, it's the most valuable asset. I think that we have. Um. So, and you know, you can't sell anything if there's nobody to sell it to.

Speaker 2:

So you're, you're built, you're create, we're creating this group of people that are way into what you do and the reasons that you do it, and you share values, and that's what we're trying to create there. So you know, you can start any time at all with solid messaging. You need solid messaging, and if we're not quite there, then that's what I'm here for. What did you say?

Speaker 1:

What messaging?

Speaker 2:

Solid. Solid Salad S-O-L-I-D Solid. Solid. Solid Salad S-O-L-I-D solid. Is that my southern accent, I?

Speaker 1:

guess it might have been. I thought you were saying salad.

Speaker 2:

It's like what the hell?

Speaker 1:

is that.

Speaker 2:

I call it distillation.

Speaker 1:

So we're going to take your message.

Speaker 2:

Oh beautiful yeah, into this high octane gulp of goodness that your people are going to understand.

Speaker 1:

Yes, and get excited about um, that's what I care about is does it generate?

Speaker 2:

curiosity. Does it make me want to know more? Um, yeah, so distillation. So if you've got a met, if you know, if you know why you're doing what you're doing, okay, yeah, but then you're good to go. You just need a you know an email list and we can.

Speaker 1:

We can get going okay, so so that's, it's never too late, it's never too early too late, and it's never too early okay, both things for the list building, and there's something exciting, new, new and exciting on the horizon. What's going on?

Speaker 2:

what's the what's the new and exciting on the horizon? What's?

Speaker 1:

going on. What's the new and exciting in Lara's world?

Speaker 2:

Well, so the list building campaigns that I normally run are sometimes too large for folks, right? So sometimes it's too fast, like too many leads, like their systems aren't ready for it. This kind of thing shines a big honking light on all of your systems and there's always holes, uh, which is useful in itself, right, to be able to see them. Sometimes it's too fast, or sometimes it's just too expensive, right, I'm not. Ads themselves are extremely affordable, but I cost more. Yeah, so, and that's it's. It's just weird catch 22 that folks find themselves in at this particular, at that particular moment in business where they need people to know about what they do, right, and posting organically is not going to, it's not going to get there, it's not going to get you there.

Speaker 2:

You don't have to post all day long and every day. You really don't. I post maybe once a month.

Speaker 1:

Wow, wow.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's not. It does nothing for my business to sit there and post all day. I've got other things to do, yeah, but so that's it's. So they're in this catch 22 of, like I need the ads to get the clients, I need the clients to pay for the ads, and it's this, you know, awful kind of circle feedback loop that's very difficult to get out of at this crucial moment in their business. Right, it's this make it or break it, like I'm either gonna stick with this or not.

Speaker 2:

Um, and, like I said, I've run so many businesses. I know what that moment feels like and I know how important it is. And that moment is when we need something like this, just just a little helping hand, just like some way to get out of that organic bubble, right, where the same people are seeing your stuff over and over and over again. It's the only way to do that is with money. Okay, meta has no incentive to advertise your business for free. Nobody, neither does anybody else. So I created Pace and Prosper, which is designed for smaller businesses with smaller budgets, and it's a way to just get that process started. We work on your messaging and your ad images and then we make a very like minimal, minimally viable campaign that is still breaking records. We're still bringing in hundreds of leads.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I think hundreds of leads, yeah, and I think hundreds of leads a month, because I think I think it's because the clients themselves Hundreds a month, my God oh easily At $10 a day.

Speaker 1:

So we're, but I think that it's actually, and they're well, obviously they're like good leads, like well-qualified, like leads of people who adore what you're saying yeah, that's why they signed up oh my god, laura, but it's so cool but this is a track.

Speaker 2:

The reason I think it's working well and what I mean is breaking, I anticipated. When I started it I was like, okay, if this brings in 100 leads a month, I'll be super happy, so that's I advertised it at like 50 to 75 or 100.

Speaker 2:

I think is what I said. But they're doing that in the first seven days because I think I think the reason is uh, for, yeah, 90 of folk? Yeah, oh, my god, um, because I think it's working, because the business owners are so involved in the messaging problem. So generally sometimes I just, you know, with a full-scale client, I just do it, I just do it yeah I'll work with you. You know, like does this?

Speaker 2:

feel right, you know, but they're very much more like you handle that I got other stuff to do, and those work extremely well too, but there's there's something about having these uh folks involved in it and really down in the weeds with me and learning these linguistic tools that kind of helps them across the business must be amazing, yeah. I'm having a blast are you good?

Speaker 1:

yeah, so good. Isn't it like when work gets to be so much fun?

Speaker 2:

oh, it's, yeah, it's not even. It's not even profitable for me right now, but I get. I get to really work with folks and get these amazing voices that are saying something that's going to make this world a better place, get them out of that tough spot and into a place where they can't afford me right that's, that's the investment in, in the that I'm, that I'm making in the people that are that are working to change our culture that is so beautiful.

Speaker 1:

I, yeah, thank you for doing that. Like I can feel your intention there to bring about change and you know, I feel the same as you that a lot of the people who will make the most change in the world are the people without the access to the resources and like to have a I don't know if it's a loss leader, but something that, yeah, a first step on the ladder that makes it accessible. I that is, yeah, it just makes me very warm and gooey inside, like just, you know, hope. I think you know that hope of like actually we can all support each other, we can all help each other and actually when we do that, yeah, I get excited about that.

Speaker 2:

Nobody else will. Yeah right, we got to tell the truth and ask for help.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, tell the truth and ask for help.

Speaker 2:

Is that the episode title? It sounds great to me. My grandfather would be proud.

Speaker 1:

Oh, laura, it's been such a pleasure, really nice to meet you and have you here. Thank you so much for for being a guest, and if people want to find you, where's the best place? Where do you like to send people as a first port of call?

Speaker 2:

uh, one word is a great place to go, so laura, eastburncom. It's l-a-r-a. Eastburn, uh, which is one of the little. The village of eastburn is where I'm going in the uk to visit the eastburn inn yeah, is that?

Speaker 1:

one is yes, and have you traced your name back to that village, then? Is that? Where your ancestry comes from. That's so cool in yorkshire. Uh-huh yeah cool, my, my um the quakers oh, is it quakers.

Speaker 2:

And then we headed to philly you what then? We headed to philadelphia, right oh philly yeah cool right before, um, right before the american revolution. So, wow, we had a fight, but we were the ones that did the laundry and carried secret messages.

Speaker 1:

Oh exciting.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I love you. I love genealogy, and so my husband's family is from Cardiff, so that's where we're gonna hit that way as well oh great, oh so you.

Speaker 1:

So if you come from uh Baris with to Cardiff, you'll be coming past me.

Speaker 2:

Oh good, Well, let's figure that out. We're going straight from Eastburn to Stratford-upon-Avon.

Speaker 1:

Oh yeah, nice To the Shakespeare vibe.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I'm a dork, I got to go and then down to Cardiff and then up to Aberystwyth, aberystwyth, thank you.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I mean, I don't speak Welsh, so the place names are as baffling to me as well. I'm getting there. I'm getting better, we've been in. Wales. What five, six, seven years now. So my little daughter is Welsh and and they're learning. The kids are learning welsh at school, which is quite cool. Oh, that's wonderful. They come home singing songs in welsh and it's really just. I adore that. So beautiful. Yeah, wales is an incredible country and I'm I'm very happy to be here. I'm sure sure you're going to love it.

Speaker 2:

Okay, well, let's go hit up the pub for some sparkle water. The hubs will be having a beer.

Speaker 1:

You'll be on the sparkling water, will you?

Speaker 2:

Oh no, I think I'll probably you know win in Rome.

Speaker 1:

Oh, yeah, good, All right, lovely. Well, lara, it's such a pleasure to have you. If if you're curious about lara's work, go to what's your website, lara eastburncom, and forward slash one word. Was it for the yeah? One word, which is all one word for the mailing list and it's non-transactional, you don't?

Speaker 1:

you just get on there and then you get the good stuff straight to your, straight to your inbox. That's it once a month. Amazing, all right. Well, uh, laura, travel, well, enjoy your trip. Uh, the you know when you, when you head out, uh and we'll see you soon. Yeah, that'd be amazing, wonderful okay.

Speaker 2:

We're super flexed when we're traveling, so you do WhatsApp.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, we'll get connected. Amazing, All right. Thanks so much for being a guest. Thank you, betty, so much.