How To Start A Business

Nick James: 
Good morning, Facebook, how you doing Nick James here? What a phenomenal time to be alive this morning? I’m joined by the amazing, incredible Suzy Ashworth, indeed. So this this interview, I’m going to make a big statement here. This is going to be very, very interesting. We just have like a, literally a 32nd chat before we went live and already we’re going. Oh, do we agree on this? I don’t know. So I think there’s going to be a healthy debate here, which I’m excited about. So, um, Susie, if you don’t know who Suzy Ashworth is, um, is a quantum transformation and embodiment coach and she supports female entrepreneurs to make six figure breakthroughs fast. So I suppose, Susie, well, how does all that mean what that means or what I, uh, my specialty

Suzy Ashworth: 
Jealousy is really fusing practical action, strategic steps with deep transformation. I believe that in order for people to make quantum transformation, so massive leaps in their businesses and in their lives quickly, you have to do the inner work. And so I work across four pillars of transformation, physical transformation, energetic transformation, conscious transformation, subconscious transformation. And I fuse that with taking, as I say, very strategic, practical action steps.

Nick James: 
Love it. Um, and like, I’ll put this in the title, you built a seven figure business doing this. So I’m just going to put this out there and stuck in theory, as far as I’m concerned, you might disagree in his theory, this business shouldn’t work. It’s it’s actually, and this is why I’m doing the interview with you. And actually you just mentioned to me that you’ve watched the Intuity report was a fellow seven figure mastermind members. Um, you know, in theory, these business shouldn’t work either because what you’re doing is in fact quite generic. Um, there’s a wide range. I mean, I think female entrepreneurs six-figure breakthroughs that does make it more niche specific, but like in effect, it’s a lot of mindset work. It’s unconscious work, which my argument is the there’s so much of that out there. It’s such a crowded market. There’s such a lack of specificity when it comes to what problem it solves in the promise or the result that gets to the clients that I see countless coaches or consultants or mentors or therapists failed this money to get their business off the ground in this kind of area.

Nick James: 
So I suppose the question is, how the hell have you made it work? Maybe, maybe for those tuning in here live with us this morning, or maybe they’re listed as a bit of the catching up on the with podcasts. Just give us a bit of like how you got started in this field.

Suzy Ashworth:
So what is really interesting and I think we have to go further back and the reason I smile when you were like saying it all about the niching and stuff is that I’ve been in your orbit for about four and a half, five years. And my business is now seven coming up to seven years old. So I’ve heard you say all of this stuff many, many, many times before. And actually, um, I took a lot of what you said on board. So where I started was a hypnobirthing business and teaching women and their partners, how to create calm, positive births. And I quickly realized that actually, what was way more exciting than talking about babies and vaginas and all of that stuff was actually the marketing and building the business and building a platform. That’s what really got me excited. And very quickly I started training other birth professionals on how to build a business and many times

Nick James:
What, what stage, cause again, you know, my philosophy and how I work in phase, the growth of a, of a, what I call an expert empire. What, what level of business did you get to in the hypnobirthing before you switched into the business guide?

Suzy Ashworth: 
Oh, well, not very far actually, but what I did was I created a niche for myself within the hypnobirthing world. So there was three big players at the time and I saw an opportunity to create something new, packaged, something that was all about packaged in a new way. So I was able to make a big splash in a very established area by serving a new market. And people were like, how have you done that? And so I started sharing them

Nick James: 
And for everyone tuning in listening to what Susan just said, she was in an already established market where there were already big players. And what she did was she took what was already there and packaged it up in a new excite in different way. And that, like, if you just take one thing from this interview, if you’re a coach or a mentor or a therapist, and you’re struggling in your business, write that down and own it because unfortunately there really is no sustainable, very rare that you see something that is genuinely new and there’s never been said or seen before. Normally it’s what has been said or seen before, at least in our industry really packaged, delivered in a new, different, exciting way, which is, I do believe why people like you and people of color boards have had so much success because you found a way to make it sexy, make it difficult, make it stand out.

Suzy Ashworth: 
Exactly. And so people were asking me how I did it. So I started sharing and quite often people would say, you need to everyone, this is relevant for everybody. This is what I want for everybody building a business. And I always go, and I would say, no, I am just working with baby business owners because one just marketing to baby business owners. Because if I broaden it out, I’m then competing with you or Marie Forleo. Or if we are a big player, it teaching people how to build an online business. And I can’t compete with that, but I can, I can build a market because there was nobody really serving baby business owners in the way that I wanted to. I can absolutely make a name for myself in that way. And that is exactly what I did now. What’s really interesting is that I have never, and still do not have a huge platform I have for some people that starting out, maybe they look at it and say that it’s big, but for somebody who’s done over a million in sales this year, the numbers don’t really add up.

Suzy Ashworth: 
I still only have an email list of 6,000. I’ve only probably got six, six and a half thousand on my Instagram. So, uh, there is, and what I teach is how has she done that with such a small, um, small audience? So anyway, I worked in that field probably up until about three years ago when I got bored of only working with baby business owners and I started to broaden it out. And this is when I came back to you and I did bums on seats. Um, um, what’d you call it bums. And what was it called?

Nick James: 
Obviously it’s bootcamp. So what about it was a, it was a three-day workshop. We don’t do that anymore, but it was all about how to promote, fail and generate profit from live events anymore, because I don’t think anyone would be particularly right now since you cover a lot of events, but that was, yeah.

Suzy Ashworth: 
And do you know what? I started to go broader and I was doing a half day event and you said to me, and I came about three weeks before the event was going and I was having trouble selling the tickets. And you said, it’s too broad. You need to bring it back down to baby business owners. So I did, I had 50 people in the room. Um, I sold from the stage. It was my first selling from the stage experience, I think probably using your, and I made some sales and it was great, but I had already made the decision I wanted to broaden out. And so I broadened things out. And when I came back to you at the end of last year, my business had plateaued. So I’ve got to about a 400,000 pounds Mark. I’d done like 460 the year before. And then actually it dipped a bit to 420,000. And I was like, I want to learn how to do events. And I want to learn how to I came to you because I wanted to learn how to really narrow the events. That’s the reason I came to you. And what I got was something very different.

Nick James: 
Well, you know, that we’re, um, one of our core values is working in real. If I remember right, you actually came to me because you wanted to speak on stage. And one of my opinions and inspired from that conversation. And by the way, just as things have planned now, I’m still desperate to get Susie on stage at one of our events. When we originally, we already had speakers lined up for like the next two, and then we have two new events since COVID. So by the way, anyone watching this, this is my commitment, my promise, the next live expert, assuming we can, where we can get her from wherever she is in the world seems to move around a lot, Valencia, Valencia, and before Mexico, if we can physically get her to the UK, um, I would love to have Susie on stage. So originally it was about getting on stage at our event. And, uh, of course, what transpires from our conversation was, um, where, you know, where the gap was you between being, uh, you know, mid six figure business and being a seven figure business.

Suzy Ashworth: 
And what I actually said to you remembering it now was I’m not buying anything. I’m not going to buy. I don’t want to buy anything. I’m not buying anything. And we had a conversation and I bought something,

Nick James: 
My probable response, [inaudible] swabs, I’m not selling anything. I talk about this a lot on the podcast and at our event, really that the art all over leave because for a lot of people, selling is really hot. And the reason that make it hard is because they’re trying to sell to people that don’t want to buy. So what I do is I seed a lot about how I can help and what we do. Um, and then some of the guys, so hold on. So tell me about that. Tell me about the seven figure mastermind. I go, Oh, well, I’m glad you asked now. You’ve just asked me to sell to you, which is very different. So anyway, that’s, that’s a, that’s a bit of a tangent we’ve gone off on there. So I guess the, I guess the question you got the marketing for baby business, that, that business got to what kind of level

Suzy Ashworth: 
I was talking around 250,000 when I started then to broaden out and then I made another 200 ish K on top of that.

Nick James:
So I want to just highlight this as well. I mean, your journey could not be a better example of Accor philosophy of building the phases of building an expert empire, because that’s say you’ve got to be specialists, you’ve got to be niche to get started. And what I find is that a wrap, I mean, literally it’s almost exact around the quarter of a million Mark. You realize that a small niche, your Mo I’m not saying it’s impossible to grow beyond that, but you might start to find it more challenging. And so almost needs what I call Dean niche and appeal to a wider audience. Now, the chances are that by that point, you’ve established a bit of a, a bit of an audience, like you say, email list, social media following. Um, and so you’re ready to go next to that. And then, so you went broader, um, you went not just baby businesses, you went on of all, what was the all female entrepreneurs at that point?

Suzy Ashworth: 
It was creative professionals. And for me, people who desire to make an impact. And I would say that that is still my audience, but what is interesting is that, so I joined you at Christmas, but I had also, I’ve been living in Mexico for a year and been having this whole spiritual awakening and where lots of the tools that I’d been using to grow my business from a mindset perspective had stopped being so effective. And so I knew that I needed to do something differently. And so I was starting to use different tools and I was also tapping into different mentors. And then, so then we got to January and, um, I did an event, I did a three-day event. And actually again, I, we had like a little SOS call cause I had the whole plan

Nick James: 
Just enrolled in something, a mastermind at the time. And then I’ve got an event in a couple of weeks. Like, um, I don’t think we, we hadn’t actually started you in the program. We’ve got an event in a couple of weeks. I’ve got, it was a decent number, a hundred people, a hundred people come in, like, what do I do?

Suzy Ashworth:
Yeah.

Nick James: 
What I think was a very nice and effective strategy for the things I talked about, serving seeding and closing.

Suzy Ashworth: 
Yeah. And that event rocked it. And we closed out at like 265,000 pounds. And that was the third week of January. So it was a really beautiful start to the year and it was strategy. But also I had been mentally preparing myself to receive amount of money. You have to know that you can, you can’t receive anything that you’re not mentally prepared to hold. So, uh, like years ago I joined a million pound mastermind, but I couldn’t even imagine receiving a million pounds. And when people say, what are your goals? I’d be like half a million. And isn’t it funny that I stopped just before half a million, because my mind was not expansive enough to hold a million, but Christmas, 2019, there’s a video of me saying 2020 is the year I make a million. So we got off to a really cracking start with my event and then COVID happened.

Suzy Ashworth: 
And COVID is the reason that I have made over seven figures this year. COVID was the time where the whole world stopped and had to think about who they are, how they want to show up in the world and how they want to serve their people. And I did a lot of serving and a lot of holding my community who were all freaking out. And I really, yeah. I just made me go inwards and made me think about, do I want to do what I’ve been doing for the last five years? And the answer was no, the answer was, I believe that people need more than ever now, something different. And so, uh, in, uh, may after not really selling so much for a couple of months, I did a lot of holding in may. I decided to release my first, um, non-business program. And I gained, I remember coming to the mastermind and I’d said, I’m pivoting from being a business coach to quantum transformation. And you said, if it was anybody else saying this, I would not recommend it, but it’s you. So I’m like, you know, go for it

Nick James: 
Saying, I mean, I like everything you have said agree with a hundred percent. I believe that, you know, obviously I’m probably more a strategy guy when it comes to business. Um, but I also know that the best strategy in the world will fail unless you have the mindset to support it. Um, and the term mindset is used, but it’s thrown about a lot casually in our industry. And I think anybody who’s done an LP or life coaching or any of that stuff, they go, Oh, mindset. I know all about that. It’s like, but do you really? Because the fact is, and I don’t know how you feel about this Susie. Like you probably thought, I know I did when I was at most six biggest mistakes because I felt, yeah. Mindset, money, mindset. I’m set that, that isn’t a problem for me. It’s like, well,

Suzy Ashworth: 
It isn’t a problem

Nick James:
For you as far as getting you, you are now, but it probably still is a problem to get you to where you want to go in the future. And so you’re right. Unless you’ve got the mindset to receive that amount of money to receive that wealth, abundance. I mean, even now, like, by the way, I’m an open book, as you know, like my target, my, where I’m looking into in the future is to get our business to, I figures a million. If I started thinking about 50 million or a hundred million right now, I’m not ready yet. My mindset isn’t there yet. And I’m, I’m okay to

Suzy Ashworth: 
Accept that everybody’s

Nick James: 
On that journey. So it’s not about saying tick the box, my money mindset is fixed or it isn’t, it’s what stage of the journey you’re on. And there’s always further, you can go if you want to, if that’s important. Um, and there’s always things that are going to hold you back, um, if you let them.

Suzy Ashworth: 
Yeah, exactly. Um, so I released my first non-business program and made over six figures in may was so many people were saying, people aren’t buying people want strategy. People want to, how to people want blueprints and I didn’t sell any blueprints, any strategy. I didn’t do any of the things that people would have necessarily expected me to do. I did what I believed was the right thing for not just even my market, but for the world. And that mentality is the type of, um, that’s what I talk about. It’s my message. It’s never just about you. It’s not just about your family. It’s not just about the immediate impact, but it’s about the ripple effect that how you show up can have on humanity. And right now, when the world is in a real mess, you need people who are really tuned in to making a difference in that way. And because so few people are talking like this, it activates the people who are ready to be activated. And those people invest with me to change the way that they are thinking and to change what they are doing. And what’s so interesting is that in six months I’d made the same amount of money during a global lockdown as what I’d made the whole year before, and then it just carried on growing.

Nick James: 
So, so, um, I want to get to the bit that we might maybe disagree a little bit on, which is good. It’s healthy, I think, to have this debate, this discussion. So, um, you just shared, you came to mastermind and he’s dead. I don’t want to do a launch of a business program and continue his strategy. I want to go purely on this different direction. And I don’t recall, but you you’ve mentioned the, I said something like, if it was anybody else, I’d say, don’t do it. It’s a terrible idea. But, and by the way, you said that in passing, but I think it’s important that it’s not off the, in our business. It, it’s not really about the product, the program people are buying you. Um, now in some cases, maybe your personal brand isn’t strong enough. And so it has to be about the product or the program or the niche it serves in your, in your case.

Nick James:
I think the reason I honestly believe you can do anything. I really believe that you can do absolutely anything. You can make any launch, any program work, because I think you’re so good at what you do explaining this stuff that we were in a bit difficult to really understand. Um, so here’s, here’s the bit that you and I might have a discussion on. Let’s say, I’m like, look, you are quantum transformation in embodiment coach. I said, I said, this year before we went live here, if somebody walks into my office and I did, I’d never heard it. If you walked into my office and I didn’t know you, I never heard of you. Um, and, and they went, yeah, I want to start a business as a quantum swing transformation and embodiment coach, I would immediately think they are going to fail, but most likely there are exceptions to every rule.

Nick James: 
My job isn’t to work out how to be the exception. My job is about how do I make 99% of people that speak to me have success. So I’m trying to work out the formula that gives them the best chance. So I just feel like if somebody was to start and what, I don’t want people to I’m please, we talked about your journey and where you started in the niche, because I don’t want them to watch this interview or listen to this on the podcast and think, well, I’ll just, I’ll just set up a business as a quantum transformation and embodiment coach. And because that’s what sushi does automatically, it’s guaranteed to work. And it isn’t. In fact, I would argue that you’re more likely to fail by going that broad from the start the SKUs.

Suzy Ashworth: 
So there’s nothing that irritates me more. And I get this a lot with people in my community who are not yet working with me, who say, you can do it because it’s you. And I want to, I don’t believe that to be true. I can do it because I work with tools. I can do it because I have done the work on my conscious transformation and my self belief. I’ve done the work on my subconscious. I’ve done the work energetically and I do the work physically. And I do it every single day. Now, quantum trance, it doesn’t matter what you call yourself. That is what I genuinely believe. It doesn’t matter what you call yourself. It matters who you’re calling in. So what you need to be specific about is your audience. What you need to be specific about is the problems that you help people solve when you’re starting out.

Suzy Ashworth: 
Now, what’s interesting. And you said it, Paul said it in his interview is that he allows people to fill in the gaps. And actually with my course that I launched in may, I did say, I’m not going to help you get to 10,000. I’m not going to help you lose weight. I’m not, which was a, which was a strategy that was suggested in the mastermind. Um, and it was very, very powerful, but I’m not going to help you do any of that. You’re going to decide. And that is, it’s not necessarily what I would recommend for people who are moving up. But what you heard, what you’ve heard just a little bit of is me talking about mission and me talking about vision and people enroll in my mission and they enroll in my vision to make this world a better place. And they enroll in my framework.

Suzy Ashworth: 
So it doesn’t matter what you are, what you call yourself, but have a framework has your IP that you can talk about. And I talk about physical, you know, energetic, subconscious, unconscious, that’s my framework. And I also have the freedom codes, which is my specific mindset tool, which is unique to me. And anybody can create their own framework. Anybody can create their own IP. And when you weave that in to your mission and your vision, and you’re able to say, I can help you solve this problem, then you can be whatever the you want.

Nick James:
Yeah. And I do agree with that. And I think, you know, you started off going to give me anything. It doesn’t matter. I’m not sure I agree with that. I wouldn’t suggest somebody go out and start a business, trying to be a life coach. But I do agree with what you said, which is, it’s not, doesn’t really matter what you call yourself, who you call. Um, and so, you know, could you make it work if you I’m a life coach, I’d probably wouldn’t go with that, but you could, but I think you could make it work if you weren’t, I’m a life coach for this niche group of people. I think that would give you, well, it give you 10 times more chance of being successful than if you were just a life coach. So I completely agree with your, um, how you summarize that you don’t want to, what you call yourself and it does about who you call in.

Nick James: 
Um, so I think that’s a, that’s a, uh, very, very good distinction there. A good distinction. Everyone should take note. Um, this has been fascinating, interesting. Um, I love, uh, we have different views and different ways of doing things. And I think the reason I love that is because it proves that there is not a one size fits all approach. Um, I think your point on framework is brilliant. Um, you know, I mean, you know that I’ve always, since you first attended my workshops few years, but always have frameworks for everything. It’s a skill that I learned many years ago from Andy Harrington. So to take my information, my ideas, and put them into a framework and, you know, I think there’s too many people out there that don’t have that. And it’s very difficult. We actually let’s face it. We’re in an extremely difficult market because we’re not selling physical goods.

Nick James:
We’re not selling something tangible, we’re selling the intangible. And so we make the intangible more tangible is by putting it into a framework. And so you’ve got your freedom code and I’ve got my three phases of building an expert empire, or have bums on seats, blueprint for events, for example. So I think, yeah, a great piece of advice and some of that fuel to take away from this session. Um, of course it would be many things would be if you haven’t already to create a framework for what you are an expert in. Um, so, you know, and, and that way you can show the way I like to think of it is could you show somebody on one PowerPoint slide or one sheet of paper, here’s an overview of everything that I do. I think when you’ve got that, that then becomes your, um, you know, it can be everything literally from the front cover of your book, to your, um, one hour keynote presentation on stage at an event to your three day workshop to your 12 month mastermind, it can be the framework for everything.

Nick James: 
And all you do is you go into different levels of detail, um, and take it to advanced levels, of course, in your coaching or your group coaching or your mastermind program. So I think that framework, it’s not, it’s not something that I’ve really talked about that much, um, because I don’t really teach it per se, but I do think it’s an invaluable asset to any expert business. So Suzy Ashworth, thank you. This has been an honor. I’m not just saying this. Um, you can check every interview and see, I don’t say this. This has been one of my favorite interviews of all time. Um, going on the empire builders podcast, I am going to have to put some kind of parental advisory notice on it for the, for the, uh, for the podcast. When you work with each stream, people like you, like these things happen when we’re in the flood, but honestly, thank you so much for taking the time this morning to share your infinite wisdom with our audience.

Nick James: 
Really appreciate you. Um, I cannot wait until the day that we can do this live in-person onstage expert empires. It would definitely have been this year. Um, but you know, we’re going to have to be patient, but, um, I’m convinced it will be well worth. The wait, if you tune in, live on Facebook, please show some appreciation for Susie. Give us all the lights and the loves and tell us how you, uh, how much you love this and what you learn in the comments. If you watch it on the Facebook page, hit the share button, share this interview with people in your community, people that might benefit tag your friends, who you think needs to hear this message. Suzy Ashworth, final words. I’m leave it over to you.

Suzy Ashworth: 
My final words are faith. Plus action equals miracles. So just go out there and do the thing.

Nick James: 
I love it. I couldn’t have finished it any better. Thanks opportunity season.