Episode 430: How I've built this business since 2015
In this episode, Fiona shares her personal journey of evolving her business over nine years. Learn how aligning her business with her values has allowed her to thrive. Tune in!
You'll Learn How To:
Personal business journey and evolution
The importance of aligning business
Experiences with corporate consulting
Impact of personal events
Initial steps and strategies for starting a business
Developing and offering workshops and courses
Building a business that supports life balance and well-being
Challenges and lessons learned from working with clients
Strategies for marketing and growing a small business
The role of strategic partnerships in business growth
Insights from working with a business coach
Launching and testing group coaching and courses
Managing a business while on maternity leave
Dealing with personal challenges
The impact of COVID-19 on business and personal life
Expanding the business globally through podcasts and books
Maintaining work-life balance and prioritising health
Rebranding the business to align with future goals
The importance of aligning business practices with personal values
Coping with significant personal losses and their impact on business decision
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She said, "You are the only person standing in your way." And I was like, I am. I realised Ibecausewas because I realised then that all these like niggly little doubts that I'd had about where I was at in terms of this career were starting to chip away. I'd also been having a lot of conversations with friends who ran small businesses and had been asking me for opinions about their e-commerce because I’d previously worked at Amazon Senior in a senior role there in the UK. I'd worked at Audible, I'd worked at an agency looking at audience engagement and content strategy for big brands like Porsche and VIC Health and other places. I thought, I could do this myself and I could maybe do it in a way that would allow me to have a bit more time with my son. I had a 2-year-old at that time, he was almost three when I quit. I decided I'm going to try and make this life happen because as the woman had said, the stuff that you're talking about, it's not, it's not like I'm trying to create this incredible Hollywood celebrity life. I was just trying to have a life where I had time to be with my child and I wasn't always half present, half not.
Welcome to episode 430 of the My Daily Business podcast. Today is a coaching episode and this is something I don't think I've ever shared outside of Group Coaching and maybe a couple of masterclasses that I've done for other people's memberships and masterminds. Today I thought, I'm going to share it here. It is quite personal, but it is also how I've built my business year after year and how it's changed because I think a lot of the time people see changing their business as some failure or that you only change if you are pushed into it or things aren't working. Whereas I think you can change and adapt according to where your life is at that point. I'm all about building businesses that align with your values and your life and give you the life that you want to have.
I don't think that anything has to be set in concrete and my own business is a real example of that. I go through how my life has shaped the way that my business has evolved. I'm in my ninth year now, so before I get stuck into that coaching episode, I want to of course acknowledge where I'm coming from and the traditional owners and custodians of these lands that have held me and nurtured me through that whole nine years and well before. For me here in North Warrandyte, that is the Wurrung and Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation. I pay my respects to their elders, past, and present, and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded.
The other thing I wanted to mention is that Group Coaching is open. This is the last time that we'll offer this for 2024 If you're interested, please go on over and apply and you can see all of the things that are involved and included at mydailybusiness.com/groupcoaching. It's a 12-month program. We meet every two weeks for the whole 12 months and you have access to me outside of that as well. With one-on-one sessions, you have access to all our courses for free during those 12 months, including any other courses that we decide to run. This year you also had, if you're in group coaching or if you decide to join, you'll also be able to access our new course, how to get your first book published, which we've just put the price up on so there's so much that you get from a Group Coaching program. In addition to all the stuff that I and my team offer you also get just this amazing curated group of wonderful small business owners that you can feel free to talk to and vent to and celebrate with and all the things. If you're interested, go on over and apply at mydailybusiness.com/groupcoaching. Let's get into today's coaching episode.
As I said at the start, this is something that I don't know why I haven't shared outside of Group Coaching, but I think it's sometimes, I guess I wonder if people are that interested, but every single time I've shared it in group coaching or in other classes that I've run for other people's group coaching programs or different things I've been a part of, I've always had such amazing feedback from people being like, I had no idea that your business has changed that much, or I had no idea that that's why you did that or why you moved into doing that in your business. And I think this is something that I maybe take for granted because I get to see behind the scenes in so many people's businesses that I get to see why they did this or why they've chosen that path or why they've gotten rid of that offering or introduce that new thing.
I think it's something that maybe I take for granted, but I thought today I would go through my own business journey to date, why I've included different offers over the years, why I've got rid of things that I was doing even though they were bringing in good money and how all of it has been so closely aligned with what type of life I want to have and the values that I live my life by and align my business to. I have always been anti-hussle and my first book Sidestep the Hustle was the tagline and the whole Group Coaching program is called Sidestep the Hustle. In that, I explain what that means. Part of what it means is to do things on your own terms to sidestep the way that things have always been done or the way that people tell you this is the only way to do it and do something or do your business in a way that works for you.
It may not work for everybody, but it works for you because we have this life. That's it. And it is short. You want to have a business that, yes fulfils you financially and all the other things, but also fulfils you emotionally and spiritually and is something that works with and supports your life not the other way around. Your life should not be the thing supporting your business. Your business should support your life in my opinion. I'm going to crack into how I've built this business and how it's changed over the nine years that I've been running it. I hope that it's of interest to you. I guess my business journey started in 2015. Way back in 2015, I was employed as head of marketing for Mimco, which is a large accessories, footwear, lifestyle accessories, and bags company here in Australia.
At the time we had stores across Australia, I think that we had about 108 stores. We had also stores in New Zealand and Africa and I was the head of marketing, so looking after all of the marketing across in-store, online, and all the different things. Within the team that I was managing were the PR team, marketing, the online e-commerce team and then our creative team, which was made up of stylists, social media, graphic design, and all sorts of amazing, wonderful people who many of which I'm still in touch with and a couple that I'm working with. It was a great environment in a lot of ways, but I also knew that it wasn't the environment that I wanted to be in long term. In 2015 I'd been there for a little while and I decided I was going to build my own business.
I'd wanted to do this before I took that job in 2013, 2014 I think. But I'd been lured by a nice title, a nice salary, an executive role. I stayed there and originally I came in as a different role and then I got promoted and it's nice, it's flattering all the things, but I realised that I was in a position where I was head of marketing for a brand that I didn't feel that aligned to personally and I'd never bought before I worked there. I was not a huge fan of it before I worked there. I mean I knew I knew of it. I had to question myself and my integrity and thinking, is this something I want to do long term? Can I still show up and be the head of marketing for a brand that I'm not fully in alignment with?
I decided that I couldn't be. There's no shade to Mimco or that whole business, it just wasn't the right place for me at that time in my life. I learned a huge amount from that. But I decided, I got invited to this visualisation workshop with a friend of mine and to be honest, I just decided I'd go for like the free champagne and like it was nearby where I was working. We went and I remember we did this one-year visualisation exercise where you had to write what your life looked like in a year if it was this ideal life that you were living. I remember at the end of that exercise I was so overcome with how great that life sounded that I just wanted to jump into the page. And at the end, we talked and we were all sharing what we'd written throughout the activity.
I remember the woman who was running it asked me to share part of mine and I did. And she said at the end how do you feel? And I said, I want this life, I want this so badly. And she said, “You are the only person standing in your way.” And I was like, I am. I realised I was because I realised then that all these like niggly little doubts that I'd had about where I was at in terms of this career were starting to chip away. I'd also been having a lot of conversations with friends who ran small businesses who had been asking me for opinions about their e-commerce or I'd previously worked at Amazon Senior in a senior role there in the UK. I'd worked at Audible, I'd worked at an agency looking at audience engagement and content strategy for big brands like Porsche and VIC Health and other places.
I thought, I could do this myself and I could maybe do it in a way that would allow me to have a bit more time with my son. I had a 2-year-old at that time, he was almost three when I quit. I decided, I'm going to try and make this life happen because as the woman had said, the stuff that you're talking about, it's not like I'm trying to create this incredible Hollywood celebrity life. I was just trying to have a life where I had time to be with my child and I wasn't always half present, half not. I had time on the weekend to spend with my aging parents. I had time to go for a walk, I had time to have a hot cup of tea. I wrote that in, I remember reading it going a hot cup of tea or coffee because I always felt that because I was running from meeting to meeting, I was constantly microwaving my cup of tea or coffee and the idea of having a hot cup and just making a cup of tea whenever I felt like it was such a luxury.
It's these small things that add up over time to make you feel like you're having a great life. Because in 2015 I did that. After that workshop, it just happened that my husband and I had booked a trip to Bali with our son and friends of ours. We went on that trip and I remember I spent a chunk of time just thinking, having this thinking time to think about what the business looks like that I was going to build, and how much money would I need to make. I mapped out my revenue streams. One of the big things that I did, and I tell this to a lot of people, is that I put in every single person that had inspired me or was creating a business that I thought was great and I wrote down their names or anyone that had ever asked me for work had ever said, if ever you do consulting, I'd love to hire you.
Or I wish you could come and work for me. I wrote down all of their names and there were about 62 names on that list. And by the time I got back from Bali, I was like, I'm giving myself six months to make this happen now. I was not in a position to just quit and have nothing to fall back on. I'd been raised to always like if you're going to leave a job, have a job lined up. I mean my family were fine, but there was not a trust fund or an investment property or a big stash of cash somewhere that was going to sustain me. I needed to be able to make money from the day I quit my job. I needed to have more money lined up for the next. In that time, in that six months, I decided to figure out what exactly I would be offering.
I decided that I would do corporate consulting and then I would have enough money coming in from corporate consulting that I originally thought would be a marketing strategy and brand strategy. I would have enough money to then be able to work with small business owners who maybe couldn't pay as much. And that was based on some of my friends who were like, I'd love to hire you, I don’t know if I could afford you. I started lining up meetings. I put those 62 names into LinkedIn at the time, LinkedIn and Hunter.io, which is still a tool that I use today. They used to integrate easily. You'd be able to find anyone's direct email address through LinkedIn with Hunter, the Hunter-like Chrome plugin thing switched on. They stopped that I think in 2017.
It was the saddest day of my life. But anyway, Hunter.io is such a great tool if you're trying to find a direct email address, just hint there. Although I think you can only do five a day. I used to do about 30 a day and I'd get direct email addresses and I could connect with people. I started connecting with those 62 people, a bunch of them I did not know. Some people I'd just like to see speak at an event and I was like, I saw you speak at this Westpac breakfast event. I thought you were amazing. Could we catch up? I'd love to take you out for a wine or a coffee or whatever it is. I just started talking to people and the more and more people I talked to the more gave me this validation that you could do this, you could go out on your own.
I know at least three people I can connect you with who would hire you in a heartbeat as a consultant. I did that. I met so many people, I chatted to so many people and I lined up enough work for at least six months. I knew that when I quit I would have a bit of a break, which is what I wanted. And then I would start. I think I resigned in November towards the end of 2015, I think October. I remember the day that I resigned from the printer, did not work with my computer and I'd written my letter but I had not printed it. I had to ask one of my staff members to print it. I said, please try not to read what I'm asking you to print. Of course, she had to read it because it came straight up on her screen and she just looked at me and was like, because she knew that I was about to go and resign.
From that moment, I had a couple of months to just enjoy the summer and then I started in February. I locked people in, I had contracts, I had everything set up. I technically started in February 2016, but I'd locked in and got all of the paperwork done and figured out my name and ABN and all of the things in 2015. In 2016, I was working as a corporate consultant. I would go into the city and I was working on everything from, originally I thought I'd be working on marketing strategy, but often I'd get into these places, even large corporates and realise that the business strategy was not very clear. Because then I began working a lot more on business strategy and brand strategy. I worked a lot on brands before, but looking at all the parts of the business from finance to operations to marketing, brand, people, all of it.
In some cases, I was brought in originally to do a marketing workshop. And then it was pushed out to could you like help us build our whole team? Could you help us do our whole brand strategy? Could you help us with this? I was working across all sorts of different things with big brands, some other brands I got to know through small business owners. They'd bring me in to do a wonderful person that I adore and have always adored in my whole career. She used to be my boss, she had a social media agency. She employed me to come in and help figure out their operations and figure out how they could be pitching and charging differently. Also look at just their efficiency, looking at systems and processes.
I was working on all sorts of things and that was amazing and it was fantastic. But in 2016 I realised that in some of those cases, I had not necessarily built a business, but I was employing myself in other people's businesses and having four different bosses instead of being my own boss. I decided that thatbecausewasn't what I wanted to do. I knew that I could do business coaching and I'd already been doing some of that with small business owners, but I realised that in that lay a lot more freedom. I could work from home, I could choose my own hours and I wasn't necessarily coming into an office to do the consulting, which had been what I was doing, which meant driving most of the time to the city, I live about 45 minutes from the city.
That wasn't great. Finding parking, always having to rush and move my car multiple times during the day, all sorts of things. But also in that year, I experienced the miscarriage of a child that was desperately wanted. That changed things as well because it brought to the fore that this whole idea of having more children may not happen for me or us I should say. And also pushed in even more of a reason to, there has to be some work-life balance here. I can't be just trading one because stressful job for other stressful jobs and I need to close it down and figure out what I want from this business. I knew that I wanted to start doing more business coaching and working from home. I started thinking about where could I find these small business owners outside of the people that I already knew and my own networks.
What I did was I started doing workshops at the General Assembly. General Assembly is an adult learning place institution. They have them all over the world and you can take yourself forward to run workshops to run classes there. What's great about it is that the General Assembly have an incredible audience all over the world. They find the people to come to your workshops, they pay you hourly, well this is what they used to do almost 10 years ago. They pay you an hourly fee, you come in, you present, however, they have a venue, they're paying for food, they're getting the audience together, and they would do the marketing of the event. You would turn up and teach. What that helped me do was figure out, I knew I wanted to run my workshops and I knew that through workshops I could also be potentially sharing what I know.
Those people who come to the workshops could then become one-on-one clients. But I didn't want to necessarily go out and like hire a venue, hire people to help me do all the printing, do all the costs that are involved with running these sorts of things. I knew I could test it through the General Assembly. I started testing these workshops and that was phenomenal. Such an incredible learning ground because what I originally thought was a three-hour workshop, was an eight-hour full weekend is what it became. And now that is Marketing for Your Small Business, which is our signature program, which is about 56 videos. How I thought I could deliver that in three hours is beyond me, those poor people that came to that first class because I was just, if you think I talk fast on this podcast, I was talking so fast, I was trying to get through so much content in such a short amount of time.
2016 was a big learning year, and I think anyone who goes into business that first year is going to be such a gigantic steep learning curve in that time. I also had another client and I've had about two clients like this in nine years. I've been very lucky. But I had a client at that time that I met and I just got a bad feeling and I thought, should I take this on? Should I not? And I did. I took it on. And that then turned into such a problem in terms of needing to get legal advice and everything else. That also helped me hone, because everything's a lesson, it helped me hone things like contracts and understanding where my responsibilities lie, and also things like invoicing and making sure that I'm invoicing upfront and payment upfront.
2016 was massive. In 2017, I decided to change the brand name. I'd been Fiona Killackey Consulting Proprietary Limited, and that is still the business name, the company name we trade as My Daily Business. But I decided to change it to My Daily Business Coach, and I started that on Instagram. I didn't tell anyone I was doing this, I put it on Instagram, I put a little link on the top, which was from TinyLetter, which was a website, I don’t know if it still exists, where if you didn't have a website, you could build your email list through there. I put the link, TinyLetter, I had like nine people sign up for my Sunday email and I decided I'd start sending a weekly email. It was very much focused on small business owners who couldn't necessarily afford a consultant to come in and maybe weren't even at the stage of getting coaching, but they wanted to learn. They were eager to learn and they were ambitious.
I started sending that and that quickly gained momentum as did the Instagram account. In 2017 though, I changed the name to My Daily Business Coach and decided that I wanted to be clear about what I was doing. And I changed the USP, I changed the audience, all of this did. I did quite a bit of brand work on myself and the business, but in 2017, early into that year, Ibecauselost my mom. My mom was my best friend, my absolute biggest cheerleader, even right now as I'm saying this, I feel her spirit around me as much as that sounds for some people. But she did not feel well. And within half an hour she was gone. And it took them a few weeks to figure out what happened, which was a very stressful time.
It turned out that she had a giant blood clot that had got into her heart and stopped her heart from working. That was massive because I had started getting a lot more small business clients and I'd started still working with them through strategy and workshops and brand strategy events and things. I remember having a bunch of these agencies that I was working with at the time, and I thought everything is good. Everything is going in the direction that I want it to go in the business. The next day, Mum passed away. That just reaffirmed, I'm on this path, but I also need to have the time to grieve my mother. I was so thankful that I was not locked into these jobs where I was going in and working for people because what I was able to do is I reached out to all of my clients and I said, this is what's happened.
I don’t know when I'll be back, but if you need to take that work and give it to somebody else, that's completely fine. But I'm not going to be able to do coaching for the foreseeable future for at least a month. I ended up taking, I think six weeks, and I just spent that time with my dad. We just talked and talked and had this wonderful period of sadness, it was horrible. But this time to have that time. I know that if I was in an employed role, there's no way, especially in the head of marketing, that I could have taken six weeks off. I also realised that I was attracting the right people because every single one of my clients was like, I've gone through this, or My nana just died, or I've gone through this, or I had a brother pass away in my twenties, or all sorts of beautiful stories that allowed us to connect.
But they said, take your time and we'll be here when you're ready. And to their testament, every single client kept the work that they'd locked in with me. 2017 also allowed me to hone in on the type of people and my values and make sure those values were front and centre in my marketing and in messaging. It also led to a bunch of strategic partnerships, which led to greater brand authority. One of those in 2017 was working with the wonderful team at The Design Files. I had a small business column that began in 2017, it was every single month that I was doing a column about small business and talking to creative small business owners.
That was huge for awareness of what I was doing, awareness of me, the team at The Design Files just could not be nicer and I think Lucy has just created such an incredible culture there. That was amazing. I also started doing partnerships with different people, running workshops together, running workshops at different venues. It was just this wonderful community here, even though it had been such a horrific, horrible start to it, I think anyone who goes through the death of somebody very close to them, shakes things up and makes you look at what is important. That was a huge year as well. But I feel like with each year I started adapting and changing what I was offering as a business. In 2017, I stopped doing so much corporate consulting or any work that involved me being there a lot of the time and did a lot more remote work.
In 2017, I decided, or in 2016, that I would create a podcast that I decided that I wouldn't do it because I told myself all of these things, I told myself that I had to have this perfect studio that was completely soundproof and I didn't have the space for it at the time. Just totally put things off because I was reading all of these things and doing all this research that told me I needed to only do it this one way. I've since learned that I did not need that stuff. I am recording this right next to a window in a room that is not completely buffeted or soundproof or anything like that. And the sound seems to work just fine. But 2017 was a real turning point as well. Personally, as well with the death of my mom and looking, we don't know when our life is up, so what life do we want to have?
In 2018, I had my workshops humming, I decided to run my first passive income product or passive income in Inver commas, which was an ebook that we still sell on the website. And I remember that made I think $39,000 very quickly. I thought, there is something in this. I could have like a whole series of eBooks, I could start courses, I could do all sorts of things. In 2018, I also hired my first business coach. This was somebody who was outside of Australia, and I realised what I didn't want to be. I realised they were wonderful, they were a lovely person, but the way that they sold and the way that they suggested that I should sell was very much against my values and against just how I felt that my audience wanted to be talked to.
That was a big turning point as well because I had admired this person from afar and I thought, everything they do is perfect and if I could just work with them, I'll figure it out. But one thing that I realised with them was that was very much like my way or the highway, but also this is the only way, and I've since worked with different people and the way that I teach people and work with and mentor them is that you've gotta figure it out your way. You've gotta figure out what works for you. I will show you, I will guide you, and I'll do as much as I can, but ultimately it's your business and it's your life. You've gotta figure out how those two things intertwine your way. In 2018, I realised I wanted to do it my way and I started getting out onto podcasts.
There was one particular podcast, shout out Tracy from Mums with Hustle who we've had a lovely ongoing relationship for years. I remember getting on her podcast and I used a voucher code on that podcast. I always suggest to somebody that if you're going on a podcast and you're going to give away any discount, use a particular voucher code so you can track whether that did anything for you or not. I realised the power of podcasting because that voucher code ended up being used again and again for years. That's the great thing about podcasts. People don't often listen to them in chronological order. Someone might just learn about a podcast and then they go right back to episode one and listen to them.
She is listening to this particular podcast from the first episode all the way through. People do do that. Never discount if you have been on a podcast if it was years ago that it might not blow up again and you get suddenly all this traffic and all this attention again. I realised in 2018 that podcasts are powerful and I should go forward with this idea of having a podcast. In 2018, the email list began to grow a lot more as well. I started doing a lot more like conferences and speaking on stages and speaking to large and small groups alike. 2018 was also the final year that my husband and I decided that we would be trying to conceive a second child. We decided if that year it didn't work, then that was it. And we would be very happy with the one child that we had.
But we did decide in 2018 that would be the last year. We did all sorts of different fertility treatments and anyone that's gone down that path, my heart goes out to you because it takes a lot out of you. It is like a full-time job in terms of all the different specialists and doctors and all sorts of things, blood tests. That also led to the idea that my business needs to work around my life and not the other way around. And we were very lucky that in September of that year. I got pregnant with our second child who was born halfway through 2019. In 2019, knowing that I was going to have a baby that year and knowing that I did not have all of the things set up as I did with my first child who I had whilst I was at Amazon and Audible and I had maternity leave, I had all of these things. I was not running a business. I realised that if I'm going to run this business and keep it running, I need to figure out how that's going to happen.
Whilst I also take time off, I am running a service-based business. I am a huge part of the business. People book in to work with me. Me, being away from the business for months and months was huge. I decided I'm going to have to figure out how I'm going to keep money coming in when I can't or don't want to do the one-on-one coaching or anything like that.
I launched group coaching in 2018, but running it for 2019, I created it after I pre-sold the first full course of Marketing for Your Small Business. What I did was I put that out to market and tested it and I had people sign up and it's bizarre now that this is what happened. A lot of people signed up knowing that they wouldn't get access to the course. I think it was for three months. However, I gave myself enough time to build the course from scratch. I'd been running it as a live workshop for a long time before that. I had a lot of the content, but I hadn't filmed it. I hadn't done anything like this. I created that and the wonderful Bianca Fusca from Bianca Fusca Films who I'd worked with at Mimco because she was a videographer.
She came out to my house and I was heavily pregnant. I remember we filmed a bunch of the videos for the course. I had that sold well before I made it so I knew that I had enough money to take time off. But also with Group Coaching, I knew that if I came back to work after three months, I could just do group coaching for at least three months so that I'd have six months where I was just delivering a group coaching session every two weeks for an hour. It wasn't a huge amount of work and there was a bit little bit of work in between, but not much. I also had a virtual assistant and I'd had a virtual assistant since 2017. That was crucial for me to be able to take that time off because somebody else to answer inbox to escalate something to me if needed.
But at that time, I mean we told everyone that I was going on maternity leave. 2019 was a huge year because the course launched, group coaching launched, and I was able to take a bunch of time off. However, when you have a baby, you have no idea how the baby's going to come out if everything's going to go well. And my baby came out and he was absolutely beautiful. He is beautiful. However, he did need surgery at five months in, so he had issues feeding. There were a lot of things going on that if I hadn't set the business up to be able to have that cash injection from the course and group coaching, then I don't know if I would've been able to handle that time and stress as much as well as I did. In 2019, my father also passed away at the end of that year.
About two years after my mom passed away. In 2018, I also helped him sell his house and move into a nursing home along with my siblings. In 2019, I was pregnant having a baby and looking after Dad. My eldest son also started school that year. It was a big year and I think this, again goes to the idea that your business should support your life, not the other way around. That year I had to be very present obviously for my eldest son starting school. Also very present for my new baby and present for my father who was elderly, getting more and more unwell and in a nursing home I lived closest to the nursing home out of my siblings. I spent a lot of time there and did a lot of things like going and getting him coffee, going out for breakfast, getting his shopping, going in and tidying up.
Just little small things. I mean not that need to tidy up the nursing home did that. But it was a huge thing and it drove home that I wanted to get a large percentage of my income coming through my courses so that I didn't have to beat doing one-on-one stuff or showing up physically to do workshops because a lot of the money was coming in through courses. We expanded on the courses and we introduced many other courses that we have in the business. In 2020 we all know what happened that year. I had thought 2020 was going to be the fresh start, it was going to be the new decade. I turned 40 that year. I thought I had a travel plan to New York. I was going to go to this amazing conference, all this great stuff was going to happen.
It was going to be a turning point. I'd lost both of my parents in the last couple of years. I'd gone through the whole trying to get pregnant, all of that. We'd had a second child and were so lucky. In 2020 it was like this is a fresh start. 2020 is going to be my year. That didn't happen for a lot of people around the world, but in 2020 I was incredibly blessed that I had enough work coming in, but I didn't know how I was going to fulfil that work because I had a brand new baby. I had a grade one child who was being homeschooled and my husband had to keep working full-time. It was a juggle. I don't know how we did it honestly. I don’t know how any of us did it.
We were very lucky that we had enough coming in and we had enough work coming in. I know so many people were not that lucky at that time, but that was the first time that I had to think about who am I if I don't have the identity of a business owner. Because I didn't know how I was going to keep the business going. As I said, we had enough work coming in, which is amazing, but I just didn't have the time. I was like, how am I going to do this? I'm juggling a brand-new baby. I have a child that I'm supposed to be homeschooling. I am trying to do 1,000,001 things. I also grieving the loss of my father. A lot of things happened in that time. Also, in 2019, forgot to mention, I also wrote a book.
I got and offered a book deal. We signed the contract midway through 2019 and I had three months to write that book, which then became Passion Purpose Profit, which has sold I think 14 or 15,000 copies now, which is amazing. In 2020 it was also the launch of the book. That was also where I was like, yes, this is going to be the best year. And yet the book came out and I couldn't do any launch because it was locked down here in Melbourne. I think we had the longest lockdowns in the world. The book came out, it was very exciting, but I couldn't go out into a bookstore and see it because it wasn't allowed out. There was a five-kilometre radius. I don't live near any bookshops within five kilometres or there's a vintage like a secondhand bookshop, but who knows, maybe it's held my book now that it's been four years.
But there was no way to see the book. This is where that power of community that I'd built through my Sunday email and my online presence through social media chipped in. I have to say a massive thank you to every single person who took a photo of the book in their bookshops. I had people all over Australia and in England and the US taking photos of the book and sharing it and being like, I know that you can't get to a bookstore, so what I'm going to do is show you me in a bookstore. I remember people I didn't know, people I had never connected with, they took photos and they were like, I've been following you, or I'm on your Sunday email and or I'm started listening to your podcast, which I decided to launch in 2020 and I'm here for you and I'm going to take a photo.
I think that goes to that incredible connection that can happen when you show up as yourself. You show up with humanity, you show up with your real marketing messages, and you align with your values. Other people see that and they are also aligned to their values. And you have that shared value alignment connection. That was amazing. In 2020 though, it was a very hard time. As I said, I had to think about who am I if I don't have a business. Because if this business folds, I literally cannot deliver the work because my family comes first, who am I and am I okay with not being defined by having a business or the career that I have? That was big. But that was also another proof for me of the type of people that I was attracting.
I felt strongly that the marketing that I was doing was attracting the exact right audience for my marketing, sorry for what I was trying to do in my business. I remember in group coaching that year, I remember just breaking down and I've probably told this story a few times and I just couldn't hold it together anymore. I was so overwhelmed with everything. Also as a business coach, hear from people who were going through incredibly hard times. And that takes a toll. Anyone who does business coaching will know that sometimes you are, you are just feeling so empathetic for people that you work with and you have to have boundaries and figure that out. I remember in group coaching, I just started crying and one of the wonderful people, Kate Stokes from Coco Flip who is amazing and it has become a friend, took over for a few minutes of the session and said, we are all going through it Fiona, and you're no different.
We are all going through it and what I'm going to do is take a moment, take whatever you need and let's keep talking guys, what are we talking about? It was amazing. I realised then and there that I'm attracting the right type of people that I want to work with who are human, and who have community at their heart. They are just great, amazing people who also happen to run amazing creative businesses. That was amazing. And in that time I also decided I would put all of my courses onto Evergreen. At that point, they had previously opened and closed carts, which would have like a sense of urgency and people sign up they could only sign up at a certain time. I decided I was going to put all courses onto Evergreen. All of our courses, even to now are available at any time of year.
Sometimes we do a course in the coaching program. The coaching component is only available a few times during the year, but I put everything onto Evergreen and that was great because it increased sales and meant that I had more time to spend with my family doing the homeschooling, doing everything else, which because in 2021 we were still in lockdown. In 2021, I continued increasing the percentage of sales from non-cone-on-ones or non-me products. Where I don't personally have to use my time up. That included the eBooks courses and also I sold some of my recordings of masterclasses into other people's training programs. 2021 was also the year that I started seeing a lot more sales coming directly as a result of this podcast. In 2020, apple picked up this podcast two or three times and put it on their homepage.
One I think with the new and noteworthy and then twice in like a business inspiration list. That was fantastic and I started seeing a lot more global sales. We'd already had global sales, particularly of our courses and the marketing courses. Always had global sales. Shout out to people in Sweden because you seem to always buy them it always surprises me. I started seeing a lot more people from around the world booking in for coaching, booking in for six-month programs, and all sorts of things. We always had people from overseas booking in for group coaching. That was fantastic in that I started to see the payoff of doing these things like a podcast. And the book also obviously helped with that as well in 2022. I have to say that outside of losing my mom in 2017, 2022 was the hardest year to date in my business and that was because there was a lot of personal stuff going on.
Halfway through 2022 or maybe in May 2022, I stood up one day after working and I was about to go from my office at home to run an in-person workshop class for the council. And I stood up and I just couldn't stand and my leg had gone completely numb and I realised I don't know what's going on, but I thought maybe my legs just asleep or maybe I've like pinched a nerve. Anyway, I drove, I could barely drive. I drove to this workshop and Ibecausehobbled from the car park into the workshop and I said to them, I'mbecausesorry. I'm not going to be able to stand for this. I'm not sure what's happening, but my leg is going from under me now again, an amazing group of people. They were all like, are you okay? I was like, I'll be fine.
But I was quite worried. I'd called my doctor on the way to this workshop and she had very gently said you've gotta check that this is not a blood clot. Having lost my mom through blood clots, I was quite worried. She said to me, as soon as you've finished, I mean she was urging me to just not do the workshop, which probably was a better idea, but she said, you need to get to emergency if this keeps flaring up. I did. I got to an emergency, and they couldn't figure out what was wrong, the ultrasound was not available they were like, sorry, you're going to have to look at the ultrasound tomorrow, but we're going to check everything and hope that you're not having a blood clot. Then the next couple of days was just a bit of a blur.
I ended up going back to emergency the next night and being admitted and then I needed to get an MRI and they just did not know what was going on. But it turns out I had three herniated discs in my spine and I didn't end up being able to walk for about eight weeks after that. Again, this is where I was very thankful that I'd set my business up in a way where a chunk of money was coming from online products and things where I didn't have to carry out the work so much. In 2017 when I'd lost my mom, suddenly I reached out to my clients and said, this is what's happened. I'm not sure what's going on, but I'll do the best that I can. However, there may be a bit of a delay. I think I ended up working from bed for about two and a half months.
I saw a lot of specialists, I saw neurosurgeons and all sorts of people. I was on a lot of medication and had to do a lot of work with a physio who I still work with and I still go there most weeks. Had to change the way that I was working. Setting up my desk with a standing desk, I have a walking pad and again, it brought forth that health is the most important thing that I've got. It doesn't matter how well the business is going, I've gotta put my health first because who am I going to be for my family, for my friends, for my loved ones if I am too sick? And then also what happens to the business if I'm too sick to work. That was massive, but it also led to me reassessing what am I doing with this business.
Where do I want to be? What can I say no to? Am I fully in alignment with my values or are there things that are just I'm going too hard in one way or I'm stressed or I'm not getting rid of the stress? That year was also hard in that we also lost my father-in-law. Again, that was sudden and unexpected and he passed away from cancer, which none of us, including him, knew that he had up until very shortly before he went for a routine checkup. The story is very common, unfortunately. It was difficult to go through that losing three parents in a space of five years and three amazing people and cheerleaders in our lives. And to have that gone in a very short amount of time, what it showed me was that I did have time to be there for my family and I did have time to put my health first.
I started prioritising that. In 2022, even though it was one of the hardest years financially, it was one of the best in my business. I think sometimes the universe shows you this by showing you what canbecausebe done and that you're okay to go on the path that maybe other people have said is not possible. As I said at the start of this, I've always been about sidestepping the hustle and even when my back went out, I still was working three days a week. I've predominantly worked three days a week since I started this business. And that has been partly to look after my children, but also partly out of a choice of like, if I could have the ideal business, how many days a week would I work? And for me, it would be three. I have three days working and four days off which is nice.
I think it's a good balance. That was 2022 and things started to improve in terms of people coming out of lockdown things improving after covid. In 2023 it was a real, let's just let everything settle year in my business. I got the offer for the second book. I started writing the book. I also decided that I would take the things that I wanted to do in 2020 that I didn't get to do and do them in 2023. In 2022 because of the back issue and also losing my father-in-law, who was an incredible man, I decided that I was going to go and see all of my family that live overseas. I don't have any relatives here besides my siblings. I didn't want to get a phone call saying that my auntie had passed away or my uncle had passed away or something else had happened that was outta my control.
I wanted to within my control, go and see these people before it was too late. In 2023 I did that. I also decided I would research a bunch of the book profiles and research different people whilst I was overseas. I decided to make a trip, go to the us to London, Ireland and Spain to meet a good friend who I'd met through a mastermind that I'd met in 2021. We decided we'd go on holiday together. We met in Spain. In 2023, that was a great year, it was also a year of change. Whilst I said that everything was settling, it didn't because that's the universe. You think this will be the year and everything just calms down a bit. But in early 2023, we were working on a renovation for our house.
When the mortgage broker said, why don't you just look around? This is taking forever, why don't you just look around and see what's available? I was like, there isn't anything that we want. I decided he pro, he's like, promise me today that you'll look around. I looked around, found the house that we ended up buying and we decided to stop the renovation and sell our house. In a very short amount of time, we had a weekend, I saw what was available on a Wednesday, made an appointment to see a house on a Thursday, put the offer in by Sunday, and then realised we needed to sell our house. That was another big thing that needed to be done. And if anyone's reading, who's in that position right now, it takes a lot to get your house ready to sell.
It's also very stressful. It's the biggest thing that you'll ever sell or purchase. That coupled with a lot of travel and trying to write a second book was a lot. However, again, I just want to thank me. I do want to thank me because I'd set the business up in a way where it was able to work from anywhere in the world. I was doing a couple of coaching calls from the US I was doing calls from Spain, I was writing my book all over the world in different airports and different places. It just again proved to me that you're on the right path. You've built this in a way that aligns with your values particularly one of freedom where you can do these things and you can go and visit the people that matter to you and make sure that you visit them before it's too late.
That was a massive, another learning year to go, what's important to me. Also, the idea of this second book business to brand moving from transaction to transformation is bringing together a lot of my beliefs around business, a lot of the things that I've learned in the last nine years and putting them into a format that people can follow. Hopefully, that's helpful. But 2023 was a big year for realising that everything that I do in this business comes back to my value of education, which is a huge part of how I was brought up to value education. To see education as a real investment in your life, in your future, but also that if you have access to an opportunity to have that education, you need to provide it to people who maybe haven't been as fortunate.
2023 was a real year of thinking about where is the business going to go in the next five to 10 years. In 2023 we rebranded from My Daily Business Coach to My Daily Business. The reason for that is that education can come in all sorts of forms. It can come through coaching for sure. It can also come through books, it can come through meditation, it can come through products, it can come through different tools and staples that you use on your desk or all over stationary, all sorts of things. I started bringing it back to what am I trying to do here and what name will help the brand for the next five years. And yes, I will continue coaching and I love coaching. It's a huge part of what I do.
But I wanted to have a name that stood for where we are going where we have come from and where we want to be. And that is My Daily Business. I worked on the rebrand in 2022 and then in 2023, put it out in April that year, 2024 has been an interesting year. I mean we're only halfway through it, but I feel like one, I feel my age and I feel like the wisdom that comes with that age and the wisdom that comes from almost 10 years of having this business, I'm very proud of myself for having it last for so long. I hope it keeps lasting. Who knows what's in the future? But I guess I wanted to share all of this in that your life and your business don't have to be some perfect linear path that is exactly what you're doing from day dot and that's exactly the path that you go.
It's all very straightforward. My business has changed and adapted every year almost. It may not seem like that from the outset, but internally there have been usually personal things that are going on that have made me either get even stronger in some parts or remove some areas of business that aren't working or bring them back or do this or say no or set boundaries or whatever it else it is. But a huge part of what has been stable throughout all of this is my values. I've continuously shown up in full alignment with those values of freedom, alignment, curiosity, education, and kindness. And that goes with the messaging that we put out on social media. It goes with the causes that we get behind. It goes with how I hope that we treat our clients and customers. It goes with who we partner with, who we say no to partnering with and also the offers and products that we put out there.
I have to say, I feel pretty proud of the business that I've built in that it has created a life for me where I can be with my children as much as I want. I can go for walks, I was very much there with my parents in their final years. I urge anyone who is reading this, if you do have parents and you have a great relationship, even maybe if you don't have a great relationship, maybe even more. Take the time to be there for those people because believe me, when they're gone, they're gone. And you wish like mad that you could have them back for 10 minutes or at least a phone call or something. But I'mbecauseproud that I've built a business that has allowed me to have that time. You could always make more money, you can never get more time.
I've built a business that I'mbecauseproud of in that I've had the time to do the things that I've wanted to do, whether it's my health needing to be looked at. Taking the time and and treating that with priority, whether it is showing up for people, not just my parents, but showing up for friends, showing up for other people in my life that, that need it. And whether it's showing up for clients in a way that maybe is just that bit different to maybe what they're used to or what they expected. I hope that everyone that's reading this if you've ever worked with me, that you had a good experience, but that you felt that you were connecting with another human who's also in business and who also understands a lot of the things that you're going through.
That is it for today, a bit of a different one. Just going through my business journey to date, things have changed, adapted, and moved around. And a lot of that, like I said, has to do with making sure that my business always supports my life and not the other way around. because as I said, and I've said it so many times, people are probably so sick of hearing it. But you can always make more money. You can never get more time back. My time is the most precious thing that I have and I'm proud of building a business that supports that. That is it for today. If you like to look at this in text format, you can find it at mydailybusiness.com/podcast/430. If you would like to connect on a deeper level and work with me over the course of a year and be able to share in these sorts of conversations, ask questions, share what you are going through, and get feedback from me and other people within the group. You might want to join our Group Coaching program. It'll kick off later this year. You can find all the information and apply over at mydailybusiness.com/groupcoaching and we'll link to that in the show notes. Thanks so much for reading and I'll see you next time. Bye.
