Welcome to the Marketing in the Wild Podcast. I’m Julia from Stratos Creative Marketing, where we are obsessed with finding real-life in the wild stories about business and marketing. 

Julia: Everybody, I’m excited to introduce you to my friend and colleague, Virginia. She and I actually met at a StoryBrand live stream, and we got to work on StoryBrand messaging together. But then a year later, she popped up in an ad, and I was like, “Wait a minute, I know this person.” So we reconnected, and now she’s on the podcast. Virginia, tell us about yourself, where you’re located, and just a snippet about your business.

Virginia: Thank you so much for having me, and I was so excited when I saw you pop up in my DM.

Julia: And it also goes to show your ads are working!

Virginia: Yes! Ads are fine and well! My name is Virginia. I am a business coach, seven-figure entrepreneur, and have built multiple businesses already, being behind multiple six-figure launches, helped many of my clients hit multiple six figures. What I think is more important than just the income numbers is how I build businesses. I have a past where I used to be super, super workaholic. My entire young adulthood, childhood, all the way maybe four or five years ago, I was a serious workaholic and I had no idea. I didn’t know. I thought I was very productive, and I was hustling and working really, really hard my whole life. That is something that I got to heal over becoming a mom, and I really intentionally built my business going forward from that. What I do now is I really make sure that we’re not just building a business because your business affects so much of your life, you’re not building it in a vacuum. Life isn’t getting in the way, life is a part of your business. 

What I help my clients achieve is scaling their business or building your businesses even to the highest levels, while also honoring quality of lives, their needs, their desires, the lifestyle that they wanna lead. I always talk about building a business and the life you love, because they truly go hand in hand.

Julia: Let’s talk about workaholism before we get into anything, because I also would consider myself a former workaholic. How did you come to realize that, and what did it take for you to admit that?

Virginia: It was really funny. I was relatively in the beginning of coaching, I had a copywriting agency before. I think you noticed that at the event too, where I was like, I’m really curious how they pursue brand and instill programs. I wanna have a second me on my website, someone who knows what they’re doing. So that’s why I attended the StoryBrand workshop where we met. But it was really funny. I was in the beginning of my coaching business, and someone who is a mindset coach reached out near the end, and she goes, “Hey, I’m just starting out. I would love to do some research calls.” And I’m like, “I get it. Starting out is hard.” I was like, “I don’t really have mindset blocks. But I wanna help you, so if you can get anything out of it, my business is doing good.” It did pretty well. My coaching business, from day one, did pretty well, because it was the third business that I was building. But I will hop on a call for you and try to answer your questions. I get it. I ask my clients sometimes to do research calls, I’m gonna help you.

And then we were talking, and I was answering her question. I was like, “I already told you I don’t have mindset problems.” Because to me, having a good mindset meant being very productive and not having a problem or procrastination, which is not the same thing. And then in the end she was like, “Well, this was so helpful. Is there anything I can do for you?” I’m like, “I told you I don’t have mindset problems. I am very happy with how my business is going. I think I’m good.” And she goes like, “Is there anything in your private life?” I don’t know what rowed me, and I was like, “I’m unreasonably angry at my husband and I have no idea why. I have a great husband, he’s doing his best. I come down and I’m angry at him. It’s like I turn into this fire spitting dragon out of nowhere and I don’t know why.” And she goes, “Okay. We’re going to do a quick hypnosis.” 

So then we did a quick hypnosis session and instantly, I could feel quite a bit of relief. That feeling didn’t leave me for a while, we parted ways, we followed each other. Three or four months later, I was like, there are other things in my life where I’m like I don’t understand why I’m behaving in a certain way or feeling a certain way, because logically, it makes no sense. I reached out to her, and I’m like, “Look, I have this one really big topic that I wanna address, and then also I have all these feelings about things that don’t make sense to me.” I had no idea that feelings are messages that basically your authentic self and your body are just there communicating with you through how you feel. If something feels really, really good, it’s the message like, hey, this is true to you. You should do more. If something feels really yucky, that means that’s not true to yourself. So I had no emotional literacy, I was not in tune at all. 

I started working with her for a year, and over that year, I eventually came to recognize I’m angry at my husband when he’s just sitting on the couch doing nothing because I’m really tired. I’m over expending the energy that I have, and I feel like I am not allowed to take a break because I’ve gotta do all the things, but he isn’t chasing me, it’s me who’s chasing me. So that was one of the big realizations. And also, the first time in my life, I was like, I’m not an angry person, I’m tired, and my anger is trying to tell me to slow down, take a rest.

Julia: I love it! You are speaking everything that I’ve been learning right now, so I love it. That was a little bit of a detour everybody, not my question.

Virginia: But an important one. If you have feelings that don’t make sense, sort them out.

Julia: I also feel like that is part of building a business and a life that you love. We can build businesses that we love, but like you said, if our life is not one that we also love, then we built it wrong, or we built something off. And if our feelings are telling us that, then we should really listen to them.

Virginia: I really like to look at business building as in like, it’s full bloody business building. If you wanna be happy, happy is a feeling. There’s so many people who are really successful, and they don’t actually feel successful at all. And you don’t get a second shot at life either. Every day that passes is a day passed. So make sure that when you’re building your business, you’re not just shooting for the next milestone, and as soon as you hit it, you’re moving the finish line and then you’re dissatisfied again. That’s not the vibe. Make sure that you’re prioritizing quality of life every day, and really build that connection and get in tune with your body. You can’t build a business and a life that makes you happy, or feel successful if you aren’t aware of what you’re feeling.

Julia: Totally! I love it! One thing that I love about your content, Virginia, is that you are very honest with people, and you say things how they are. And you’re speaking to people around business coaching and things like that. One of the things that you posted maybe a month or two ago, I was like, she just said everything I’ve been thinking. Because the business coaching world is complex. I feel like everybody and their mother is a business coach, or a life coach, or something, and so it’s hard to stand out. One of the things that you posted was something along the lines of, has your coach done what you want to do? The reason it resonated with me was because I had a coach who I was helping with marketing at one point, and she wanted to sell a $100,000-roadmap. And the whole time we were selling this, I was like, but has she even made six figures? Has she done this? Should people buy this if she hasn’t done this? You do approach social media with this no BS approach. How did you get to that point? I feel like sometimes people wanna hide behind safe opinions, but your posts are bold. They have bold messages. How did you get there?

Virginia: I approach social media the way I approach life. So I’m shooting for honest marketing. Honest and kind. And if my content triggers you, that’s okay with me because I’ve healed the people pleasing inside of me already, and I’ve done that confidence and inner work. This is what a lot of mindset work actually comes down to. I’m self-led enough that I don’t get upset. I shared my income and my follower numbers a while back when my account was still pretty small, and it was like under 500 followers, and it was a 22K cash month and a 35K sales month. This was before I started leveraging ads to increase my reach, but this was my first ever booster post, and someone commented underneath it, you’re full of shit. And it didn’t faze me the slightest because I’m so grounded and anchored in who I am and what my intention is with my content. 

The thing is, I’m not scared for people to feel certain ways about my content. Also, that person, he’s saying it’s not possible, but I know the facts, that’s why it didn’t faze me. It pearled off like a drop of water or rain on my windshield. I’m not gonna slow down because of it because I’m like, “Look, this is my following number, these are my sales numbers. You’re trying to argue with reality.”

Julia: You’ll be like, I can’t make numbers up. These are there.

Virginia: I’m going for honest and kind marketing. It is not kind in my opinion to sugar coat reality. I’m not gonna go sit there – and this was a different post – you’re not gonna build a six figure or multiple six figure business sipping coconuts on the beach. You’re just not. That’s not possible, and anyone who shows you this in their reels being like, “I just sat here and did nothing.” That’s not true, because these kind of people work with me. I help them scale to seven figures, and I know the work that they’re doing behind the scenes. Now, when someone talks about effortless, it doesn’t mean that they are not pouring effort and working hours into this business, it’s the kind of work that feels like fun and joy to them. Maybe you can think of a time when you were a kid, there were some things that you could do for hours, and others where you’re like, the minutes are not passing by fast enough. Maybe in school you really liked to draw or to sing and you could have done that class for hours no problem, but then you’re sitting in geography and counting down the seconds

One is aligned, one feels effortless, the other one is not so much aligned, doesn’t match your personality, your interests, your natural gifts. Doesn’t fit your true self, or isn’t taught in a way that fits your true self, and thus, it feels like a ton of effort for very little return. I never got better than a C in geography or history, because it didn’t matter to me the way it was taught. Then I started traveling the world and I was like, “I can name all the capitals of all the states. I know what’s the capital of Mongolia, I know where things are on a map.” Because now it was true.

Julia: It matters to you.

Virginia: It was aligned. Yeah, it mattered with what I cared about.

Julia: That’s such a good point because there are so many people who are like, “Oh, I retired my whole family and it was like 1, 2, 3.” And I always am like, “It wasn’t that easy, but tell us the real story behind it.” But that’s a really good perspective, is that maybe it was easy for them because it was truly aligned with what they were doing.

Virginia: No one stumbles into alignment, not the way we are raised and educated today. Like there’s no maternity leave and so on in the US. Here in Germany, we get 14 months of maternity leave, and in that time, you’re unfireable. You’re not getting the same amount of money obviously as from your job, but you’re not fireable. They can’t let you go or even give away your job. You have a right. Otherwise, you can sue your employer and they’ll probably lose and be fined. 

From a very early age on – I have two kids – the way I look at parenting is my job is to help them discover who they are, what they want in life. It is self-discovery, and support them in that journey; what are their gifts? What are their talents? Get to know them well enough so that I can help them get to know themselves. Now, most of us didn’t have the benefit or the luxury of our parents being close by or being that connected or emotionally aware. Most of us were raised by people who were raised by post World War II generations. There was no room and space for emotions, it was survival, especially here in Germany. So a lot of us are feeling really anxious, now we’re depressed, and that’s because our natural needs aren’t met, like emotional connection, rest, play. Depression is a lack of play, anxiety is a lack of safety. All of these needs aren’t met, so when you wanna build a business, you’re not gonna skyrocket overnight. 

I have a friend who took her business by herself, more or less, to almost a million dollars. And she cried at the end of the year because she almost hit a million, but it was only 950K. This is when you don’t do the inner work in business. My business building philosophy is really, really simple; focus on the essentials and then constantly check in with yourself to make sure it actually aligns with you, because it’s really, really difficult to build something big based on unaligned strategies, and later do that pivot. It’s like wanting to turn a container ship. You need so much time and space to actually U-turn a container ship. So better make these small little tweaks along the way. Every month I check in, what felt really good? What didn’t feel really good?

Julia: I was just looking at my phone because I think you posted something that you have not done reels. Is that accurate? 

Virginia: I haven’t done reels since November or something, or October.

Julia: And you said that it was because it wasn’t in alignment with what you wanted to be doing, right?

Virginia: Yeah! And also, I think most of the times, I run around with a mom button and yoga pants, I barely ever wear makeup. The reason my hair looks so pretty today is because I was at the hairdresser earlier to record some videos. This is a rare glance where I feel happy or aligned with how I look, and a lot of the time, it’s just not the priority that’s worth it for me to get up an hour earlier. I don’t wanna do that, I prioritize my sleep, and I like to wear yoga pants so I can actually go play with my kids. I’m the kind of mom, I don’t sit on the bench and look at my phone when I’m with my kids, I climb the structures on the playground, and I hang upside down and go down the slide, so yoga pants it is. 

I don’t really feel like talking on video, and I know I don’t need to. My words can have enough of an impact, it doesn’t matter if they’re spoken or written. And most of the time, not even my Instagram stories are spoken. I use mostly photos and boomerangs from my everyday life or my face sometimes in between. I don’t feel like it takes away from the personal connection because people can still very much get a feel of who I am and my vibe just through what I actually talk about and how I choose to create my content.

Julia: What I love about that is obviously just in the past month or so, Instagram is reversing its decision on video. But you stuck with like, hey, this is what I like doing and this is what I want to be doing, and I don’t wanna be doing these other things. And so it’s very much aligned with this idea of alignment that you’re already talking about where you’re checking in with yourself. So I love that. I think that’s really admirable because so many people have been trying to chase what’s shiny. And while it is important to do some of what the algorithm wants and things like that, we don’t have to be tossed by it back and forth.

Virginia: Let me shock you I don’t even use hashtags. 

Julia: I love it! One of the other things that I saw you talk about, and this was the reason I was like, we have to have Virginia on this podcast, is you have been talking about selling offers to the right people. You talked about making a large revenue even though your follower count isn’t ginormous. Right now, you have 5,000 followers, which is more than what we have, but it’s not as big as some influencers have, but you’ve had really big sales months regardless of your follower count.

Virginia: I was in Brazil all of last month with my in-laws, and I’m not surprised, but it was unexpected that it happened while I was on holiday. I actually had a $350,000 sales month.

Julia: That’s awesome! How have you figured this out? What are you doing that is working?

Virginia: First, let me preface this. I’ve been in business doing online business on Instagram since 2013. Before I had my first 100K month, I was $100,000 in debt. So let’s put that inside, step off the pedestal, whatever you’re thinking. It’s not magic. I was miserable and my first business was a product business, I just couldn’t sell it. It was not selling. I had a friend whose wife was an influencer. He was a business coach, and eventually he was like, “Okay, show me what you’re doing. Why is this not working?” He looked at my stuff, and I had 30,000 followers from our product business, and within seconds, he goes, “Yeah, of course, you’re not selling. You’re not selling, so you don’t have sales. If you want sales, you gotta learn how to sell.” And then I actually did get lucky. He was like, “Look, you need to learn how to write copy, you need to actually learn actual sales.” So I was like, “Okay.” 

I live in Silicon Valley, I asked people out for coffee, bribed them with cookies, being like, “Can I pick your brain for 20 minutes? You’ve written this incredible sales campaign for this brand, can I pick your brain?” A lot of people were really helpful. So I completely just stopped doing business for three months and just took a deep dive into copywriting, and I really just got so freaking lucky. I am naturally a good writer, and I am extremely good at reverse engineering things. So within three months, I developed exceptional copywriting skills.

Julia: That’s awesome! 

Virginia: There was no other way to put it. I really understood like, okay, this is how you sell more, good enough to turn around, plan basically one launch. I used extra urgency being like, I’m sick and tired of this business, I’m done. I am planning this launch and I will sell everything that I can possibly do. And after that, I don’t care if I have to go clean houses, I’m done with this business. I’m working day and night. I would get up at 4:00 AM, drive from San Francisco to LA, work 9 to 5 in LA, and drive back home on the same day. 

Julia: Wow. That’s crazy! 

Virginia: That’s the level of workaholism we were speaking of. So I was like, I’m burnt out, and I have lost all the passion for my business. So I planned this launch and within three months, I sold everything that I couldn’t sell for three years. And I made back enough money to at least pay my debt.

Julia: That’s awesome! 

Virginia: I could not believe it, and my friend could not believe it, so he hired me to be his copywriter. 

Julia: That’s awesome! 

Virginia: And that was my ticket out of cleaning, which I wouldn’t have been able to do legally because I didn’t have a visa outside of running my own business, because I’m a German citizen and I was living in the US. So I was like, I don’t wanna do anything that I’m not allowed to do. At that point in time, we also decided, “Okay, you are done here, let’s move to Europe.” So that’s where we relocated. I started copywriting for him, and before I knew it, I had a copywriting agency. I was so good at copying people’s voices, and I really just had that natural copywriting gift. Every single person that you see out there who’s really successful either learned copywriting technically, as in they actually got education, or they have a copywriter on their team, or very, very, very few of them are naturally gifted at copywriting. There is no other option.

Julia: Copywriting is one of the best skills in my opinion. There’s no way to say this. 

Virginia: I think Donald Miller said it on his podcast once. If you know how to write, we will find a job for you. If you know how to write, you will always find a job in our business. The position doesn’t matter, you will always be hired by us. That is how valuable the skill is. So if you have never invested in your copywriting skills, go find a course ASAP. Take a StoryBrand course, that’s a good start. There’s more, I think, to sales than the StoryBrand concept. I like it. 

And then, I was writing copy for a long time, but I was still trading time for money, and my copywriting agency was very successful, but I was tired of agency life. That was not fully aligned with me. I’ve always loved teaching more than just delivering services and living on the deadline. So then my coach friend encouraged me. He was like, “Well, if you love teaching, go teach.” I was like, “But what should I teach? Yoga?” And he was like, “How about copywriting content? Start there.” And then I started with that. I started my own Instagram account. Within 14 days, I had my first painful client, within the first 30 days, I had a 6K month. Because I didn’t have to learn how to sell, I could just show up and sell. And from there, I had a baby and still hit six figures in that first year. But the thing is, I’ve never wasted my time and energy creating random content or trying to figure out content. I showed up on social media knowing exactly what makes people understand if you’re for them or not. It’s not about convincing people into your offer, it’s about being so clear what you are selling and what it will do for you that the people who naturally want that, say, “Yes, I want in. Am I spying for it? What other upgrades can I have? Give me all the things.” Don’t try to sell a vegetarian steak!

Julia: Right. It’s not gonna work! 

Virginia: And so just be really clear, “This is a vegetarian meal. Okay, great.” Every vegetarian goes yay. But you don’t have to work hard to sell if you’re just really good at explaining exactly what it is and what you’re gonna get out of it.

Julia: And so in the end then, follower accounts don’t necessarily matter because if you’re clear and you have the right people in your audience, they’ll want it if it solves their problem.

Virginia: All of my clients have more followers than me. None of my clients makes as much, or a few of my clients make as much money as me.

Julia: That’s so interesting!

Virginia: And so follower numbers don’t matter. Stop putting so much emphasis. You don’t need more people. If you’re standing in a crowd in Market Square in China, but you only speak into your megaphone in English, still no one’s gonna get it. But if you stand at a right corner in Great Britain and you speak into the microphone in English, and there’s even just 10 people around that, and one person is a vegetarian, they’re gonna be like, “Yeah, cool. I’m gonna pick you up on that.”

Julia: I have a friend who is a copywriter, and she has 150 followers, and sold a five-figure package to one of those 150 followers because she had the right people and she was saying the right words. That’s awesome.

Virginia: She knows her skills!

Julia: Yeah, seriously! So I’d be curious, you’ve talked about two skills that are extremely important; sales and copywriting. You mentioned StoryBrand as one resource for copywriting. What are some of your other favorite resources to dig into copywriting if people wanna get better?

Virginia: I have a course around copywriting, which is a very reasonable price point that I really like. It’s called Spice Up Your Writing, and I love selling it. I always have the best launches, because I just can really lean into all my quirky sides. So I really have a lot of fun with that. There is a fabulous copywriter, her name is Laura Belgray, she was Marie Farleo’s copywriter. Her website is the Talking Shrimp. Sign up to her emails, buy some of her offers too. They’re really affordable. They’re like 100, 200 bucks as well. Spice Up Your Writing is $100.

Julia: Sweet! What about sales? In my opinion, and you might disagree with me, there are people who, same thing with copywriting, there are personalities and skills that people are born with or nurtured that led themselves to sales, but there are also people who need to be salespeople who it doesn’t feel natural to them.

Virginia: I’m smiling because is it not natural to them to stand out, and that standing out is what leads to sales? Or have they just practiced their whole life to not be themselves in order to please other peoples and to blend into the crowd? Because what you’ve really learned is that when you stand out in the crowd, you’re gonna be bullied. If you’re too loud in school, you’re gonna be told to shut up and be quiet until the class is over. And if you actually say what’s on your mind, you’re gonna be ostracized by the other people. And if you actually stand up and say, “I’m really darn good at this”, someone else is gonna walk up and be like, “How dare you show off?” I am standing for a world where I wanna see women show up and be proud and say, “I’m a really darn good mother. These are all the things I do for my kids.” “I’m a really darn good wife because I’m really in tune with my husband, and the things that I do, I do them with all my heart and I’m fully aware of the work that I’m doing, and it’s value and it’s worth being fully grounded in that confidence and in knowing that I can handle it.” 

And if I’m really good at copywriting, I’m not gonna stand here and be like, “Yeah, I think I’m probably decent at copywriting.” Who are you serving with that? No one. Because someone who’s looking for a great copywriter is dying, looking for you right now, and they can’t find you, because you’d rather choose to buy into that illusion of safety, but safety isn’t real. At least not the way we perceive it. We believe if we stay small, don’t say what we want, don’t look at what we need in our life to thrive, then it’s gonna be “safer”. But what is that safety? For most of us, it’s the fear of abandonment. When we’re born, we have this big, big attachment need because we need to be attached to our caregivers, otherwise, we’re gonna die. So our “delusion of safety” that we’re looking for is this like, what can I do to make sure I’m not abandoned because I’m so not lovable? That if I am myself, I’m gonna be abandoned.” Well, it’s time to heal that in your child, my friend. 

And this is the thing, there are two reasons why I sell there, and there are two ways that I sell that are extremely different. Sometimes I sell my programs, and then I sell the transformation. That’s a different story. That is one way of selling. But I also, and this is what people are so drawn to, is I also very much am myself. By being myself and showing up as myself, I’m “selling myself”. I’m selling my opinions, my beliefs, my points of view. And this is what people feel so drawn to on my account that they will find me, and within three days, they decide, I wanna join this person’s mastermind, and they sent 15K in full. And it’s like, I had no idea you were in my world. And the answer is, I wasn’t. I just found you, but I feel so drawn to you. I know I need to work with you. 

Julia: That’s awesome! 

Virginia: That can only happen when you stop hiding yourself, because no one can find you, specifically you, if you just blend in with the crowd. And that authenticity is so rare, and this is why people feel so drawn to it.

Julia: For sure! And then it becomes not, do I have the skills to sell, it’s more about am I solving a problem and showing up authentically in a way that people feel seen and want that transformation? Whether it’s because they resonate with me or they want the transformation, I’m showing up for people, and standing true in healing our own selves and being bold around whatever our offer is.

Virginia: It doesn’t really matter what format you pick on social media or what the algorithm is doing or whether your story views today are high or low, all of that doesn’t matter very much. The medium doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if you do a Facebook group or you have an email list and so on and so forth. The principles of sales are very much the same across all social media, across all platforms, across all media as in writing or video or audio. If I read one more time on social media, “You just gotta give more value.” It’s not about giving value. If you give value, this is what you get. You’re gonna get freebie seekers who are out to get free value. They’re like the people who steal the ballpoint pens in hotel rooms, and get the swag bags at conventions, and then they leave. It’s not about giving value, it’s about showing people what is possible for them and helping them see how they could also have that thing. 

This is one of the reasons I’ve always had this exceptionally high conversion rate, it’s because I don’t focus on “giving value”. Yes, what I tell you is valuable because it makes you actually think, and for the first time, I’m opening up your point of view of what is possible. I don’t need to share my income numbers to sell, but I do share them because I want you to stop believing that $1,500 a month is all you are ever gonna get for your services.

Julia: What I love about what you’re doing is you are showing your income numbers not to brag or anything like that, just simply to say, hey, this is what I’ve done, and here are the numbers. You can’t contest them, and so your manner of doing this, and showing up and being your aligned self is working, and it’s translating into both your life and your business. That’s what I love about it.

Virginia: And if you really truly embody what you sell, social media is such a no-brainer, because you literally just have to turn on the camera, and hold it onto whatever it is that you’re doing in your life because your offer is what you’re selling. And then to come back to that question from earlier, that coach with the six-figure roadmap or something 100K roadmap, and she’s never actually done it, that’s a recipe for imposter syndrome, because you can’t energetically get behind something. Your subconscious knows like, we haven’t actually done that, and we feel like it’s completely justified that you feel like an imposter then.

Julia: And most of the time we say, “Hey, imposter syndrome is just that. You don’t have to feel it.” But you actually have not done it. You should feel imposter syndrome.

Virginia: But at the same time, if you actually have done it, you need to put down that people pleasing, and these fears of abandonment, and all that childhood conditioning, you need to put that down and allow yourself to actually embody the thing and be that thing. And then also social media, people don’t know unless you tell them. So turn the freaking camera on and hold your phone on it and just take them with you as you are living, breathing, being what you’re selling. I could talk about business 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If I have a friend and they have a business plan, the first thing they do is they call me and I’m like, “Yes, let’s talk. What’s your plan here and what is this and that?” And they love it because it’s me. This is what I do, this is who I am.

I got in trouble in primary school. I was really good at drawing and I was drawing Pikachus and Pokemon, and then the other kids were like, “I wanna have one of your drawings.” I was like, “Sure. It’s one euro.” I was selling, and I was making 10 bucks a week. That wasn’t bad money when you’re seven years old. So I’ve always been a business builder. This is what I do. I’m not hireable because I will walk in and I will see all the flaws, and I will give unsolicited advice and be like, “I don’t wanna work this way. That’s inefficient.” Or, “There’s so much more potential here.” A lot of the time, that’s not what companies want. Companies just want clockwork and setting off your time. In that sense, I’m very similar to Tim Ferriss.

Julia: That’s awesome! I love it! I think that I am the same way. I’ll give people website advice that they did not ask for. I’ll be like, “This is what’s wrong with your website, and you should fix it.” Virginia, this was really good. I am gonna tell you, our producer and our team is gonna have a really hard time figuring out the name for this episode, because we’ve talked about so many good things. But really, what I’m walking away with is I feel personally convicted. I need to show up in a way that is really true. I just need to show up.

Virginia: For the name, Building a Business and the Life You Love. You spend most of your waking hours in your business, even if you’re only working five to six hours, or four to five hours. Starting at 1:00 PM, 2:00 PM I’m with my kids, that’s it. But your business affects your life, your life affects your business. Stop saying that your life gets in the way, and actually start thinking about business or work life integration. They gotta work together. If your business falls apart the moment you sneeze, or cough, or COVID hits, then is it really a business or is it you?

Julia: I think that that’s important for everybody, but also as a new mom, it’s especially important for women who have kids and are building a business. Because I answer emails while she’s eating breakfast, because when else am I gonna do it? And so there’s moments where it’s good to have it separated just to honor the people, but also so good to have healthy ways to integrate it too. Virginia, if people want to get in touch with you, how best can they do so?

Virginia: Definitely Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/contentloungecourses/). Instagram is where I love to spend my time and energy. I’m notoriously bad at serving my Facebook group. I do have a couple of trainings inside my guide section. It’s called the Content Lounge Facebook group by Virginia de Assis (https://www.instagram.com/virginia_deassis/). I have a podcast too, the Content Lounge podcast (https://contentlounge.co/content-lounge-podcast/). Take some of the free training. I have the six-figure bootcamp. It’s a free training. It’s on the podcast and in the Facebook group. You don’t have to sign up for anything. Not saying that you shouldn’t, I think everyone should sign up, but it’s a free resource. And even though it’s so good, I probably should charge for it, I don’t. Because it’s a two-part training, if you watch that, it’s gonna change your life because you will approach business building completely differently, and it’s gonna change your life for the better.

Julia: I love it! Everybody, we’ll have all the links in the show notes, so feel free to check those out. Virginia, thank you for your time and your wisdom. I feel like I’ve learned a ton, and I know our listeners will too.

Virginia: Thank you so much for having me. It’s been a pleasure.

Friends, thanks for tuning into this week’s podcast episode. I am so glad that you have. If you’ve enjoyed it as much as we have, I just ask you to subscribe so you know each time we have a new episode coming out. If you loved our podcast and wanna give us a rating or a review, I promise, we will read each and every one of them. A special shout out to our friend, Carson Childers, who is producing our podcast. We really appreciate him and all the hard work that he’s done for us. 

Also, thanks to the Stratos team. They have been behind the scenes doing all of the graphic design, brainstorming, et cetera, et cetera. Really, this wouldn’t be possible without them. I’m thankful for each and every one of you guys. 

Lastly, listener, we’ll be back next week, and I hope you will be too.