Episode 204 – Gael Wood

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[00:00:00] Well, I was born someone who cannot stand to be told what to do. So that kind of set me on my path to becoming an entrepreneur. I just remember being a little kid and my mom telling me, like, you need to go make your bed and I’m just getting so mad being told what to do. So I’ve always had that part of me that just is like, I’m doing my stuff.

[00:00:27] And then I think another big piece of that is I grew up with no television and I had to just entertain myself with hundreds and hundreds of books. So I really learned how to get the information I needed so I could apply it.

[00:00:46] Heroes or an inspiring group of people. Every one of them from the larger than life comic book heroes you see on the big silver screen. The Everyday heroes that let us live the privileged lives we do.

[00:00:54] Every hero has a story to tell, from the doctor saving lives at your local hospital to the war veteran down the street, who risked his life for our freedom to the police officers and the firefighters who risk their safety to ensure ours. Every hero is special and every story worth telling, but there was one class of heroes that I think it’s often ignored, the entrepreneur, the creator, the producer, the ones who look at the problems in this world and think to themselves, you know what, I can fix that I can help people. I can make a difference and they go out and do exactly that by creating a new product or introducing a new service, some go on to change the world.

[00:01:21] Others make a world of difference to their customers. Welcome to the Hero Show. Join us, as we pull back the masks on the world’s finest hero preneurs and learn the secrets to their powers, their success and their influence. So you can use those secrets to attract more sales, make more money, and experience more freedom in your business.

[00:01:37] I’m your host Richard Matthews. And we are on in 3, 2, 1.

[00:01:42] Welcome back to Hero Show. My name is Richard Matthews, and today I have the pleasure of having the line, Gael Wood. Gael, are you there?

[00:01:48] Yes. Thanks so much for having me.

[00:01:51] Awesome. I’m glad to have you here. I know we were just talking before we got on here and you’re coming in from North Carolina, did it start to warm up over there yet or are you still getting the snow?

[00:02:00] It’s warm right now but maybe snow this weekend.

[00:02:04] Yeah, it was talking to a friend of mine who was in Amarillo, Texas this morning and they got like tornado warnings and a foot of snow last night. And then we’re over here in the desert and it’s warm and sunny here.

[00:02:14] Yep. I’m ready for that. I’m over it.

[00:02:17] You’re over the winter, winter takes too long anyways. But you know, the time change. So that means we’re on our way to the good stuff. So for those of you following along with my wife and I’s travels on this podcast, we are moved out of Southern California.

[00:02:31] We’re back on the road again, we’re in Arizona and on our way up to the Rocky mountains. So we’re starting off here in the Southern part of Arizona on the Colorado River. So that’s where we’re at. And Gael, what I wanted to do before we get too far into this is just do a brief introduction to you.

[00:02:45] So my audience who doesn’t know you can get a little bit to know you and they’ll just dive into your story. So Gael is a massage and spa professional with only over 25 years of experience in the industry. You graduated from massage school at 19 to open your very own day spa and therapeutic massage center in 2003, you it ran for six years. 2013 launched first online business.

[00:03:04] And you’re the co-host and co-founder of Global Wellness Professionals Marketing Summits and The Work Freedom Summit. And to date you’ve created over 60 successful online courses, launched popular massage and spa content clubs written and self-published more than 15 eBooks created a library of invaluable resources for massage, beauty, and spa professionals, such as the popular at Massage and Spa Resource Bundles.

[00:03:24] And you have created a mastermind called the ELEVATE mastermind, which is a program for people who want to learn how about adding an online income stream to their business. So you’ve done a lot. And what I want to start with is why don’t you tell me a little bit about what you are known for. What’s your business like now? Who do you serve? What do you do for them?

[00:03:43] Yeah, so currently I’ve kind of transitioned to a different business called Elevate With Gael, and that’s where I just focus on. Helping people to live the life that they want by making small changes. And so a part of that is often having some kind of online income stream so that you can have the freedom to travel as you do, and to just have more time to do the things that are important to you.

[00:04:12] So, yes, I’m doing a lot of different things in that area now. In 2021, I wrote 6 new books. My goal for 2021 was 12 new books that I never would have gotten to six without that goal of 12.

[00:04:28] And so, yeah, so I’m just really, and kind of transition and launch mode for my new business.

[00:04:36] Yeah. Are you still running the spa massage stuff as well? Like as you sort of transitioned to the Elevate or did you drop all of that and you just go full tilt into the Elevate Mastermind?

[00:04:45] I Finally dropped it. I had a final sale and close the doors on January 3rd.

[00:04:51] Wow. So just recently closed everything, did you actually sell the business completely?

[00:04:56] I have sold some parts of the business that were not too much for me.

[00:05:02] So I didn’t sound classes that are me teaching on video, but I sold the marketing content and things that somebody else could take and run with. So I’m excited about that. And I’m also mentoring those people to help them be successful with that.

[00:05:19] Before we get too far into your story. I want to find out since you just sold a business, is there anything you would’ve done differently right off the bat after having gone through a sale process to make your business ready for sale?

[00:05:35] Probably not. And that is because I also sold my spa many years ago, so I kind of had an idea of what I wanted to accomplish

[00:05:47] So you’re already been through that process before. It’s interesting cause a lot of people want to build a business that’s sellable and they don’t exactly know what they have to do because they’ll get to a point and realize like, hey, you didn’t build a business at sellable because it’s too dependent on you for it.

[00:06:04] Yeah. So my best piece of advice would be to really run things under like the business name and not so much your name.

[00:06:14] Yeah, so you have something more sellable. So what I want to get into then is your origin story. Every good comic book hero has an origin story, and that’s the thing that made them into the hero they are today.

[00:06:27] And we wanna hear that story, were you born a hero, were you bit by a radioactive spider, that major you want to get into massage therapy, or did you start in a job and eventually become an entrepreneur? Basically, where did you come from?

[00:06:38] Well, I was born someone who cannot stand to be told what to do.

[00:06:45] So that kind of set me on my path to becoming an entrepreneur. I just remember being a little kid and my mom telling me, like, you need to go make your bed, and just getting so mad being told what to do. So I’ve always had that part of me that just is like, I’m doing my stuff.

[00:07:04] And then, I think another big piece of that is I grew, up with no television. And I had to just entertain myself with hundreds and hundreds of books. So I really learned how to get the information I needed so I could apply it.

[00:07:26] Yeah. That’s really interesting. So you grew up with books and you grew up with that sort of entrepreneur mindset. I remember my first job, I hated it because they kept telling me what I had to do and I didn’t want to do it that way.

[00:07:39] I eventually got fired from my first job for that reason. Cause I’m not very employable myself either. But I’m curious what made you want to get into the massage business as a first foray into business?

[00:07:51] Yeah, so honestly it was I guess my aha moment was when I got my first massage.

[00:07:58] I was working, cleaning people’s houses and I was cleaning at a bed and breakfast and the massage therapists said, would you come clean my house and I’ll give you a massage. So I always like to try new things and that sounded kind of fun. And this was back in the early nineties before massage was really mainstream.

[00:08:20] And so I got this massage and that was absolutely, I guess, as you said, when I was bit by a spider because I knew right then and there, that’s what I’m going to do. I want to make people feel that amazing. And I also knew it was a path to working for myself and doing my own thing and setting my own schedule.

[00:08:42] So, how did you go for I’m getting in the massage space to learning about online marketing and growing your massage practice, salon, marketing, and helping other massage parlors do the same thing?

[00:08:52] So throughout my years of growing and building my massage business, I needed to learn about marketing and I just loved it.

[00:09:02] It just lit me up. I thought it was so exciting and fun and creative. And I realize other people in this industry do not love marketing. In fact, they hate it. So, around 2013, I was working a lot of hours at the spa and taking care of my two kids. And I was just feeling really burning the candle at both ends.

[00:09:27] I was tired and I was like, I got to do something else. And I started seeing online these eBooks and workbooks and online classes popping up, I got my Facebook newsfeed, and I just thought, you know what? I bet I could do that. And I started a little blog and just went step-by-step.

[00:09:50] Yeah. And then you started helping massage studios all over the world with their marketing?

[00:09:58] I started with marketing and then also just helping therapists see ways they could make more money, like rebooking their clients more effectively doing, add on services, like spa services. So I started teaching all three of those things and it was all about, you know, I can help you make more money and everybody wants to hear that.

[00:10:20] Yeah, absolutely. So what made you want to change gears this year, where you shut that business down and moved into your elevate mastermind?

[00:10:29] You know, I just think on the path of life we’re always growing and we’re always changing. And after nine years of teaching in the massage industry, I just thought, you know what I’ve said, what I have to say here.

[00:10:43] I’ve had a lot of fun, but it’s time for my next step. And it’s time for new people to come up in the massage industry and do their business.

[00:10:54] So since you were giving this new business off the ground and starting, why don’t you tell me right off the bat, what is it that you want to accomplish? Who do you want to help with the elevate group?

[00:11:05] Well, I really want to help other moms like myself who are saying, is this all there is, can there be another way for me to make money and to share what I know? And so that’s really my target audience is, people who are saying, like I was, hey, I wonder if I could do that? I wonder if I could start an online business? And throughout the pandemic, a lot of my massage therapist on my list were saying, Gail, I want to teach, I want to do what you’re doing. Can you help us? So it kind of just evolved.

[00:11:41] Nice. And what’s the main program that you have with that business?

[00:11:46] With Elevate Mastermind. The first one that I recommend people start with is I have an eight-week course where you just kind of get your ideas organized and start the steps to building the foundation for an online business. So getting a website and coming up with your first idea for a product, figuring out how you’re going to take payments, all those little details.

[00:12:11] So it’s called e ght-weeki dream business creation.

[00:12:16] Nice. And that’s just like a self-study online course or is it like a group workshop mastermind? What kind of courses it is?

[00:12:24] So what I usually do is I teach a class live the first time, and then it goes into my mastermind program for first self study.

[00:12:33] So sometimes I’ll rerun a course with a live Q and A’s and everything attached, and sometimes I’ll just leave it there for people to go through on their own.

[00:12:44] Yeah, absolutely, that’s super cool.

[00:12:46] Yeah, there are so many different things you can do once you create a course. And that’s one thing I love to teach about is once you’ve created something like there are so many different things you can do with it.

[00:12:55] And that was one of my biggest aha moments in my massage and spa success businesses. You know, feeling like, oh my gosh, I created this course and only 20 people signed up and I worked really hard for just that much money, but then going, wait a minute. No, I can sell this for the next five years or 10 years.

[00:13:14] And so that’s what I love about online business.

[00:13:17] You’ve created an asset for your business. You’ve had quite a journey over the last 20 years for your business. But I want to find out is if you have discovered your own superpower in business? Every iconic hero has a superpower, whether that’s a fancy flying suit made by the genius intellect, or maybe the ability to call down thunder from the sky in the real world heroes have what I call a zone of genius, which is either a skill or a set of skills that you were born with or you’ve developed over the course of your career.

[00:13:48] And really sets you apart. And it allows you to help your people slay their villains and come on top of their journeys. You have a superpower and we want to know what it is and the way I like to frame it is if you look at all the skills that you’ve developed, there’s probably a common thread that ties all those skills together.

[00:14:02] And that common thread is probably where your superpower is. So what do you think your superpower is in business?

[00:14:08] Well, I think my superpower is just consistently. And not giving up.

[00:14:16] Just six books in a year is pretty consistent.

[00:14:18] Yes. But all that takes is getting up and spending 30 minutes a day and being consistent. And just, emailing my list very consistently and just everything I do, I’m like, well, if it’s worth doing it’s worth doing pretty much today.

[00:14:37] Yeah. A mentor of mine say that if it’s worth doing it’s worth dedicating the next 10 years of your life to do and made the comparison to like parenting, right.

[00:14:46] If you commit to being a parent, you’re gonna be a parent for 20 years. It’s worth doing it’s worth committing to. And why don’t we treat all of our business commitments, the same way we treat our family commitments that we’re like, hey, I’m here for the long game. And it’s when you take that long game commitment that you really are capable of doing the consistency and doing the stuff that really lets you win in the long term.

[00:15:07] It’s not easy, but when you’re like, it’s not working, it’s not working, it’s not working, but you have to believe that on some level it is working.

[00:15:19] I’ve been blown away by what I have been able to accomplish in 13 years of business. And I mean, I’ve been in business longer than that, I count like when I got married to my wife as a big transition period and deciding like, hey, this is what I’m going to do.

[00:15:36] And been very consistent over those 10 years to go from essentially, a poor, wannabe entrepreneur, eat crackers, kind of entrepreneur to traveling the world with my family over 13 years and being world-class in my space. Like it takes time, but it’s amazing how much you can accomplish if you put in the consistent work over a long period of time.

[00:15:59] Yeah. And so I just did a lot of just $5 a day, Facebook ads year in and year out, just kept the consistency going.

[00:16:13] What did you run the ads to, just like your eBooks that you write or anything particular?

[00:16:20] So I run my ads to my free opt-in and just built my list. And I’m not currently doing Facebook ads. It’s changed a lot in the past few years. So I’m looking at, okay, well, what can I do consistently next? So I’m really looking at Pinterest ads.

[00:16:39] Pinterest ads. Have you looked at TikTok ads at all? I hear those are doing really well. A couple of clients we have that are using them are doing good stuff with Tiktok ads.

[00:16:46] I have not yet, but I’m not closed minded to it.

[00:16:51] It might be worth checking out if you’re looking for new ad platforms. Cause Tiktok just overtook Google as the most visited site in the world, which is crazy.

[00:16:59] Oh wow.

[00:16:59] Yeah. So if consistency is your superpower, then the flip side of every superpower is generally the fatal flaw.

[00:17:09] And just like every Superman has their kryptonite or wonder woman. Can’t remove her bracelets of victory without going mad. You probably have a flaw, something that’s held you back. Something that you struggled with. For me, I struggled with a couple of things. I struggled with perfectionism. Kept me from actually shipping product.

[00:17:23] So, I can always tweak something else before I begin to bring it to market. And I also struggled for a long time with lack of self-care, which generally manifested as not having good boundaries with my clients and not having good boundaries with my time. So I worked myself to death.

[00:17:34] I once even decided I would see if I could go how long I could go without sleeping, so I could just work more. Just in case you’re wondering it’s about three days before you’re puking in the bushes. So I don’t suggest that. I definitely suggest taking care of yourself. But I think more important than the flaw, is how have you worked to overcome it so that our audience might learn a little bit from your experience?

[00:17:56] I’d say my biggest one is imposter syndrome. And just thinking that everybody knows more than me and like, oh, I’m just a little massage therapist. What do I have to say? And even just downplayed, like, well, I wrote these books, but they’re probably not very good. So I do, I struggle with that a lot.

[00:18:20] And you know, just having to step up and be like, yeah, I think my stuff is pretty good. I think it could help people. And I think that’s played into a lot of me not charging quite enough in my businesses. And so, we all have our stuff to work on and work through, but the more I got out there and helped people and got good feedback and testimonials and just people saying like, you’re just reading your blog has helped me so much that does help to build up your confidence, but it’s something I continue to work on.

[00:18:58] Yeah. I think it’s something a lot of us entrepreneurs struggled with. I mean, it’s a lot of things, you know, everyone struggles with my wife even tells me she struggles with imposter syndrome over whether or not she’s a good mom.

[00:19:06] And it’s interesting because if you were actually an imposter, you probably wouldn’t have imposter syndrome. Right?

[00:19:15] Exactly, overly confident.

[00:19:17] Yeah. So generally speaking, the way that I’ve found overcoming imposter syndrome is it’s a couple of things. It’s one it’s examining your skills, like, do you actually have the skill that you’re thinking you’re an imposter about. And if you do, you do, you can look at the results that you’ve got and be like, oh look, this is just something in my head. It’s not actually a reality. And then to your point, one of the things I like to do is I have a little tag of testimonials in my photo library.

[00:19:46] So every time I get testimonials, I take a screenshot of them and I have Multag with testimonial. And if I’m ever like feeling it, I just go into my photo library and just type in the little search for testimonials and I’ll just read them. I spend an afternoon reading all the testimonials I have. And I was like, I know testimonies are supposed to be used for like helping you close sales on your sales pages.

[00:20:02] And I’m like, they really helped me to just be like, hey, look, I’ve helped all these people. I actually am doing good work.

[00:20:08] Yeah. Especially on those days where maybe somebody is asking for a refund or it’s not the best day, or you’ve got some comments or something like that. But yeah.

[00:20:22] Definitely working on your beliefs, you know, like, oh, I wonder why I believe that. And I think getting into that kind of like curious mindset too, is a good way to address it. Instead of being like, oh gosh, something’s wrong with me. I don’t have any, self-confidence just be like, Hmm. I wonder why I’m feeling like this.

[00:20:43] Yeah and you discover that maybe you don’t actually have anything to be an imposter over cause you’re actually doing good work or maybe you’ll discover like maybe I should do a little bit more work here. So I don’t feel that I’m not doing a good job for my clients. You might discover someplace you could do better. So that’s a great way to approach it.

[00:21:04] So, I was gonna say you’re if you’re superpower is consistency, fatal flaw is that imposter syndrome. I know that’s something that a lot of us have struggled with. What I want to talk about is your common enemy. And this has to do with the clients, let’s say in your business now, right?

[00:21:25] The ones that you’re working with, help them grow their online business. Every superhero has an arch-nemesis, it’s the thing that they’re constantly having to fight against in their world and in the world of business, that takes a lot of forms, but we like to talk in terms of your clients, it’s a mindset that they have that you constantly have to fight to overcome.

[00:21:44] So that you can actually help them get the results that they came to you for. So if you had your magic wand and as soon as someone read your blog or bought your product or got into your course, you can just bop them on the head and remove that mindset. What is that common enemy that you see?

[00:21:57] The common enemy is probably that it’s complicated, it’s hard. Only people that have a lot of technical skills can do this, just that idea that it’s difficult to do anything, marketing, raising your prices in your business, starting an online business, starting something new teaching, a class like we can just over-complicate everything.

[00:22:26] And so, what I love to do is just say, okay, but let’s break it down. Let’s just look at the first step and let’s just start there and we’re not going to worry about any of the rest of it.

[00:22:38] Yeah. It’s that the whole micro completion thing, right. Completely. And stack your completions together. And that ends up being a big business.

[00:22:46] And I don’t like one of the things that I’ve noticed is like people, people talk about it being complicated, being hard. And, you know, I work with some pretty large organizations at this point, they’re doing several million dollars in sales and online courses and whatnot. And you’ve taken a look at their funnels and take a look at their back ends.

[00:23:00] And like not everything works. It’s not all perfect. Right. And it’s not all put together exactly the way that it, you know, the, you know, the most ideal way possible. And you realize. That’s just sort of the nature of things. And we look at it like it’s super complicated, therefore, I can’t do it, but you know, you don’t have to do it perfectly.

[00:23:17] You don’t have to do it well. Like if you just do it, like momentum and course correct along the way.

[00:23:24] I mean, I was in business five years before I even had a funnel. I just got people on my email list and then I just emailed them. And then I finally built a funnel and I was like, oh my gosh, I should’ve done this years ago.

[00:23:37] But what I was doing was working. So it’s like, well, funnels are nice, but you don’t have to have one. There’s nothing you have to have. There are always multiple ways to do things.

[00:23:49] Yep. And it doesn’t have to be more complex than you want. I know a guy who his entire business, he runs a multi-million dollar business.

[00:23:56] And the only thing he does is he has a single opt in for his email newsletter that he promotes on. And he sends emails. That’s it. And I’m like, that’s super easy.

[00:24:11] Oh man. So common enemy is the complexity. The flip side of your common enemy is of course your driving force. Your common enemy is what you fight against your driving forces is what you fight for. So just like Spider-Man fights to save New York or Batman fights to save Gotham or Google fights to index and categorize all the world’s information.

[00:24:29] I want to know what it is that you fight for in your business.

[00:24:33] Yeah, I fight for just seeing everybody reaching their full potential and reaching their goals in every area of life because I think we can often kind of, you know like I’ve had times in my life where I’ve been reaching my business goals, but like you said, like my health wasn’t optimum because I was working too much or, my family life was not what it should be because I was focusing on my work.

[00:25:01] So reaching your full potential and having that in every, every area of life.

[00:25:07] Yeah, that’s really fascinating too. I know one of the things that I’ve always struggled with is the metaphor that people use for work-life balance. The whole legal scale thing when people are like here’s work over here and here’s your life over here, and you have to try and get them to be like balanced out.

[00:25:21] And I’ve always thought that was kind of ridiculous because it’s not really the way the world works. And you’ll never really achieve work-life balance. And so I think it’s not that way. I think it’s a metaphor problem. Not a reality problem, if that makes sense. So the metaphor I give people is that if you look at it instead of a scale that you’re trying to balance out and then failing when you realize you can’t balance the scales, look at it instead as a rubber band where you have periods of time where you’re stretching their rant, where you’re working hard to accomplish something. Maybe that’s a product launch or a book writing, or a funnel launch or some portion of your life, or maybe it’s a health goal, right? I’m working to lose 30 pounds or gain 30 pounds, which is what I did last year.

[00:26:02] I tried to gain 20 pounds of muscle, which I succeeded at, but you stretch, right? You have periods of time where you’re stretching the rubber band, but there’s a limit if you continue to stretch. You’ll break the rubber band and then it won’t go anywhere. But if you stretch it out just enough, and when you release, you get a lot of forward momentum, right?

[00:26:20] Because you can shoot the rubber band and the stage after the progress is the rubber band comes back to rest. And you sort of have to have both of those where you have the periods of work and the periods of rest, and you have to go back and forth between them. Cause if you just continue to work, work, work, work.

[00:26:34] You’ll snap. And if you just rest, rest, rest, rest, rest, you never have any forward momentum.

[00:26:38] Yeah. And that’s why one thing I like to talk about is like, what qualities do you want in your life? You know, like if I want the quality of like, I have a great relationship with my kid, well, what does that look like?

[00:26:51] And that doesn’t mean I have to spend time with him every single day. It just, it’s like picking out. What it would look like to you?

[00:27:00] Yeah. Your perfect day. How many kids do you have by the way you mentioned your mom.

[00:27:04] I have two kids.

[00:27:07] I have four. How old are yours?

[00:27:09] 24 and 14.

[00:27:12] Okay. So you made an adult. Congratulations. I don’t have any of those yet minor 3, 5, 8, and 12.

[00:27:19] It’s hard to imagine them ever adulting at those ages.

[00:27:24] Oh man. My oldest is hitting that early teenager stuff. And it’s like having a little irresponsible adult in your house. It’s weird.

[00:27:37] Yeah. You’re in for an adventure.

[00:27:43] Oh man. I’m sure. I’m sure, but he’s just the greatest thing ever. So hopefully the whole next season of life where you. I guess because I’ve had little kids, my whole life, not my whole life, but this whole last chapter is all been little kids. And we’re moving into this next stage of having, like, I don’t know, they’re like, it’s that transition into adulthood.

[00:28:01] So it’s like a whole new chapter.

[00:28:03] Yeah, you’ll love it. Like the different phases, like when you’re like, oh my gosh, I could leave my kids home alone. That’s really freeing.

[00:28:10] I know. So my son is 12 and we have three little girls and the youngest one is three and she is just head over heels in love with her older brother.

[00:28:21] Like he’s the coolest thing that ever happened. So in her order of life, there’s like her brother and then her mom and then her sisters and then all the peasants and then dad so like that’s how her ranking goes. But then it’s always cracked me up cause like he’s to the age where he can like babysit now.

[00:28:40] They all just love staying with him and they love hanging out with him. Like we can go out to dinner. We have like a built-in babysitter. Cause they all love it.

[00:28:47] Actually 10 years of not being, we’ll do that. It feels pretty amazing.

[00:28:51] Yeah, it does.

[00:28:53] When my son was little, he thought every family had a mom, a dad, and a grace.

[00:29:00] Grace?

[00:29:01] Grace, that’s his sister. And we were with this other family. He said, momma, where is their grace?

[00:29:10] It’s funny. I remember my son, he was three and a half, four at the time. And he didn’t have any younger siblings. And because we have a hard time making babies, it’s worked out all right, but we have a hard time with it. And he was all upset because all of his friends had little sisters and he didn’t.

[00:29:27] And he’s like, how come I don’t have a little sister? And it’s funny, cause now he’s got three little sisters and I was like, you wished too hard son.

[00:29:33] Be careful, yeah. Or as my daughter would sometimes call her a little brother a little life ruiner.

[00:29:43] So I know this is like totally tangent wise, but my wife and I, we tease that the acronym for children is children are gross. G R O S S the great ruiner is of sleep sex and silence.

[00:29:57] That’s very true.

[00:30:02] Cause you’ll never have a silent day again, once you have children.

[00:30:06] They are gross. The stuff they spill in the car like they are gross too.

[00:30:10] Yeah. All the time. Like my children came back from yesterday playing at the park and I was like, it’s they changed their race from like little Caucasian kids to little dirt monsters.

[00:30:24] CAuse they were just head to toe. They were completely brown from dirt. And I was like, we had to like hose them off outside before we’d let them inside because they were, I don’t know what they did in the dirt. Let’s like roll around in it and take themselves with it. But. It’s the way they are.

[00:30:44] So I want to talk then a little bit about some practical things in your business. And I call this section of the show the Hero’s Toolbelt, it’s like every superhero has their tool belt with awesome gadgets, like their batarangs, their web slingers or their laser eyes, or, Thor got his big, magical hammer that he can fly with.

[00:31:00] I want to know the top one or maybe two tools that you couldn’t live without in your business. It could be anything from your notepad, your calendar, to your marketing tools, to something you use for product delivery. Anything you think is essential to getting your job done?

[00:31:12] I think the biggest thing is my imagination and giving myself space each day to work on new ideas.

[00:31:25] Like if you’re going to create 60 courses in just a few years, you’ve got to have new ideas bubbling. And time to create. So it’s really easy to wake up in the morning and get up on the computer and start looking at emails and did anything sell while you were asleep at night and checking customer support.

[00:31:49] But I think my biggest tool is to give myself just some space each day to have those ideas bubble up.

[00:31:59] Can you walk us through how you do that? Cause you are incredibly prolific with courses and books and stuff like that. And I imagine a lot of people, myself included wonder how they can even do half of what you do from a creative perspective. Like what’s, what’s sort of your process?

[00:32:18] I think my process is I read a lot. And I learned a lot. I take a lot of classes myself, so I always have new good stuff coming in. And then I try to spend just some quiet time each day. Usually it’s going for a walk and leaving my phone at home. And then I do f cuso journaling and idea-generating.

[00:32:43] So I’ll just be like, what’s next. I need 10 ideas for a book and I’ll just try to brainstorm 10 ideas for a book. Or 10 ideas for my next course. And at the same time, I’m kind of watching and listening, like, what are my clients mentioning recently? What’s coming up for them? What are people saying in my Facebook group that they need help with?

[00:33:06] What are they talking about? My marketing content club. Which is definitely my most successful program ever came from my marketing Bootcamp, where I was like, you guys here’s what you need to do, you need to have a social media strategy and you need to send email newsletters. And they’re like, well, that’s great Gael, but who has time to create all this content?

[00:33:27] And I was like, I do, and I’ll sell it to you. So, a lot of times, one thing will lead to the next thing, but I think, just give yourself that space to have a clear head and listen and don’t shoot your own ideas down. You’re going to have a lot of ideas. They won’t all be good, but some of the ones I didn’t know were going to be popular.

[00:33:56] More ad paths. Right? You have to show up and put more buy buttons out there and see what works. I was reading a book by Alex Hormozi and he’s like, the entrepreneurs who really succeed are the ones, you know, they’ll put a thousand offers out and they’ll find one that knocks it out of the park.

[00:34:11] Yeah. And if something’s a big flop, you know, you can roll it into a bonus with a different course or, stick it in your free opt-in, cause I don’t create anything. I don’t think is important, but not everything that I think is important is really what people want to buy. So it’s kind of that whole sell people what they want and then give them what they need.

[00:34:34] Yeah, absolutely.

[00:34:35] So when I try to sell them, what they need, sometimes it kind of doesn’t apply.

[00:34:40] It’s not sexy enough, I don’t want that.

[00:34:42] Right.

[00:34:43] It’s not shiny enough. And it’s very true. Like I have a program that teaches people how to structure content, like how to structure the content for a book or for a webinar.

[00:34:57] And like, it teaches you the mindset behind how you outline persuasive content. Which is a very unique thing. And it’s also super powerful and everyone I’ve ever shared it with, it’s been like, I never knew I needed this. And then once they have it, they’re like, I use it on everything, but no one will ever buy it.

[00:35:15] Because it’s not the kind of thing that they think they want, so it’s a kind of thing that like I have to sell other things and then show that to them in the process.

[00:35:25] Yeah. I did a program I did writing to sell in your massage and spa business. I was like, this is great writing to sell. I’m going to teach copywriting.

[00:35:34] Nobody bought it. Nobody wanted it, but I put it on as a bonus with almost everything after that, I was like, well, you need this.

[00:35:43] Yeah. You’re going to need to know this information. Right. That’s the same thing I’ve built a framework. That’s how to do persuasive teaching essentially, and persuasive writing.

[00:35:51] And it gives you a n an outline, like how to outline courses and how to outline webinars and how to outline anything you want really following a really tried and true psychology background on how you actually write this kind of stuff. And I love it. And I use it like every day and we use it for writing ads and we use it for writing email sequences.

[00:36:11] We use it just constantly. I use it for writing home pages. How you write your about page story it’s over and over and over again. It’s like an adding content kind of thing. And I couldn’t sell it to save my life because nobody wants it.

[00:36:27] Maybe it’s just in the name, it could be like your million dollar template and then everybody would buy it.

[00:36:35] Yeah. I’ve tried a bunch. We’ll have to see maybe I could create something good at some point. But yeah, I totally get it that, you create everything, you just have to have more that’s best. You gotta find the stuff that really connects with your audience. And then the stuff that connects that’s the, you know, sell them what they want and then give them what they need.

[00:36:48] Right. So you can give them whether it’s bonuses or mastermind group coaching calls or tools like I’ve got you can give them the things that are important.

[00:36:59] Yup.

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[00:38:33] Well, then I want to talk a little bit about your own personal heroes. Every hero has their mentors, Frodo had Gandalf, Luke had Obi-Wan Kenobi. Robert Kiyosaki had his rich dad even Spider-Man had his uncle Ben. If you watch the newest movie, it wasn’t uncle Ben, it was aunt May. But who were some of your heroes? Were they real life mentors, maybe peers, speakers, authors and how important were they to what you’ve accomplished so far in your career?

[00:38:56] Yeah. So I’d say, Leonie Dawson. She was kind of teaching online business for hippies back when I started out online and I really resonated with her, I was like, oh, if she can do it, I can do it. And then a lady named Catla Torso. And she’s the one that kind of helped me learn that you don’t have to have everything done ahead of time.

[00:39:21] You can write a sales page and launch it and then create all the content. And that was a huge turning point in my business. And I was like, oh, I can just put stuff out there and start selling it and then create it. So James Altucher. With the Idea Generating

[00:39:38] His podcast.

[00:39:40] Yeah. I love his podcast, his show on prime. And then his books. So that’s where I really was like, oh, I’m going to do this focused idea, generating process and build my ideal muscle. So I learned that from him. And then Dr. Wayne Dyer, he’s just my go-to anytime I’m feeling a bit low, put it in my Dr. Wayne Dyer audios. And he’s like a reassuring dad.

[00:40:13] Help you on your way. Yeah, it’s always, my favorite question to ask on this podcasts is I just love to see where people get their influence from like who’s influencing them and it always pops into my head. I always wonder, am I doing the kind of work that if someone else asked that question, my name would come up.

[00:40:32] Am I worthy of that? And I would like to think through that as I’m doing my work, my acting any kind of way that I might be the hero in someone else’s story.

[00:40:42] Yeah, and I’m sure you are.

[00:40:46] I hope so I try. And when you know you are, you got clients all over the place that have been following your work, help them build their business.

[00:40:56] I want to talk a little bit then about your guiding principles. So one of the things that makes heroes heroic is that they live by a code.

[00:41:02] For instance, Batman never kills his enemies. He only ever brings them to Arkham asylum. So as we wrap up the interview and get near the end here. I want to talk about the top one or maybe two principles that you use regularly in your life. Maybe something you wish you had known when you started out in your own massage parlor at 19 years old.

[00:41:19] Yeah. I definitely, cause I had two failed massage businesses before I figured out what I didn’t know, which was marketing and business skills, and started learning those skills. So I guess I thought I would just print some business cards and people would come out, but they did not.

[00:41:42] So I would say. Getting out of my comfort zone, it always seems to lead to bigger and better things. So the more you can get out of your comfort zone daily take on things that you think you’re not ready for. You’ll step into being the person, who is ready for it.

[00:42:03] Yeah, I love that. One of the biggest pieces of advice my dad ever gave me, I was asking him about marriage.

[00:42:08] And whether or not I was ready to get married at one point in my life. And he looked at me and he goes, that’s the wrong question. And he goes, the act of doing something is what makes you ready. Because you’ll never be ready by waiting until you’re ready.

[00:42:27] Sometimes you just have to dive in because you’re never going to know if you’re ready for something until you actually do it. And that was in the context of marriage, but I realized it applies to a lot of things in life and business. And so if you wait until you’re ready, you’ll never do anything.

[00:42:44] Yeah.

[00:42:45] I had a mentor more recently telling me that life begins where your comfort zone ends.

[00:42:50] Yeah, I find all of that to be very true, like say yes. Say I do and things seem to either you learn or you win. That’s one that I learned from the wrestling room when my son was a little wrestler, but you either learn or you win.

[00:43:09] Yeah, I tell people all the time now they ask me what my biggest piece of advice in business is and what I tell them is take the risk, the one that you’re vacillating about, the one you’re thinking about the one you’re like, I don’t know if I can do this, do it, just do it. And jump off the cliff and learn to build a parachute on the way down.

[00:43:28] And that’s what will force you to create that success muscle is because the path to success is paved with failure. And we, for whatever reason, we’ve grown up with this whole, failure is bad. And I can’t do something. If it might fail, no, you have to fail a lot to get to the stuff that works really well.

[00:43:50] So just do it and learn. Learn and then succeed.

[00:43:54] I hired four new team members this week and any practical person looking at my business would be like, you can’t afford four new team members this week, but I’m like, this is what I need to do to get to the next step. Plus, I’ve learned that I always hired multiple people at once and see who rises to the top because there’s always a percentage that kind of don’t show up. Don’t do anything. Then if you only hired that you have nobody.

[00:44:29] I had a mentor of mine a number of years ago now. And we were at a mastermind thing and at the end of the mastermind, he pulls me aside and he goes, he goes, you’re your own bottleneck in your business. What I want you to do when you leave here, just go back home and hire this person full time to do this work for you. And I was like, I can’t do that. Like, I don’t have the money for it. And he was like, that’s wrong. And he’s like, I can’t really explain this to you because you’re not going to get until tell you to do it.

[00:44:55] And he was like, just go out and hire this person. And I was like, but I don’t know how to do that. Like, I can’t hire someone that I can’t afford. It was like, trust me do it anyways. And I remember I vacillated on that for three months before I just bit the bullet and did it. And the very next month our productivity went so far through the roof that we way more than paid for his salary.

[00:45:16] And I was like, oh, now I get it.

[00:45:18] Yeah, exactly. You have to leave before you’re ready. And I remember years ago talking to my VA on the phone one day and I was like, hey, I gotta go. I’m at work. And she was like, you have a day job. And I was like, yeah, how do you think I pay you? So, you know, but I just knew I needed that help to get to where I wanted to go and to be able to quit my day job.

[00:45:42] Yeah. At one point I was director of marketing for a big solar company, and I hired someone with my salary, I hired an assistant, like a virtual assistant. And so like, I already get a lot of work done, but then I had someone else working for me that helped me get things done.

[00:46:01] And I remember my boss was like, you’re like 10 employees. How the hell do you do that?

[00:46:06] I’ll take a raise, please.

[00:46:08] And I was like, cause I do things differently than other people, but yeah. And it definitely, you take the risk. So that’s a great principle to get out and do things before you think you’re ready for them.

[00:46:19] Well, I think that is a great point to wrap our interview, but I do finish every interview with a simple challenge that I call the hero’s challenge and I do this to help get access to stories I might not otherwise find on my own. So the question is simple. Do you have someone in your life or in your network who you think has a cool entrepreneurial story? Who are they?

[00:46:38] First names are fine. And why do you think they should come to share their story on our show? First person that comes to mind for you.

[00:46:44] My client Annabell, I think she has a great story. She is single. She is a massage therapist for many years now. She’s launching a coaching business. She traveled the world by herself.

[00:46:59] And I just think that she would be a great person to share her story. She’s a great storyteller too. She’s really good at speaking.

[00:47:11] Cool. Well, I will reach out after the interview and see if we can get an introduction. Sometimes they say yes, and we get cool stories out of that.

[00:47:17] And what I want to do here to just wrap us up is, you know, in comic books, there’s always the group of people at the end who are clapping and cheering for the acts of heroism.

[00:47:24] So as we close our analogous to that is I want to know where can people find you if they want your help in the future? Where can they light up the bat signal, so to speak and say, Hey, Gail, we’d like to get your help growing our business and making a small changes to get big improvements. Right. And I think more importantly than where people can go, it was for the right types of people to reach out and actually light up that bad signal.

[00:47:44] Yeah. If you just feeling like, I know I could do this, but I’m not sure how to put all the pieces together. I’m not sure how to find the time I want to invest in my business or in the things that I want to do. If you’re wanting to change, but you’re not even clear on what that might look like.

[00:48:05] And if you’re in start-up mode for an online business or thinking about starting one head over to my website, ElevateWithGael.com and have a look around at my blog posts. See if you think that what I’m about and what I teach and share is for you, you can also grab my free eBook. It’s called Decluttering Your Schedule. The most common thing I hear from people is I don’t have enough time.

[00:48:34] And I think that you do so in that book. ThereThere aret of mindset shifts about how we spend our time and just like hiring people in our business before we’re ready, sometimes hiring people to bring us our groceries or clean our house is exactly what we need to do so that we can get to the next step or the next place. And so that book takes you through a whole process of auditing your time, really thinking about how valuable your time is and you know, anything that you don’t like tdong. Creating a plan to let those things go.

[00:49:11] Yeah, absolutely. I know I made dramatic shifts with my relationship to time about four or five years ago. I told you I was trying to like if working a little bit as good and working a lot, must be great. Which is a terrible mindset by the way. And I learned that that was a terrible mindset when I tried it, but what I found instead works really a lot better is to put restrictions on your time.

[00:49:34] Because creativity thrives with restrictions. And I have found that when I started going from like, Hey, instead of working every day, maybe working just five days and instead of working five days, maybe working four and maybe instead of working full days, maybe we only work half days. I mean, you know, now I run two businesses on four hours a day, four days a week and travel the rest of the time and hanging out with my friends and family and do what I want and make more money than I ever made when I was working 90 hours a week.

[00:49:59] Yeah, because when you set up those limits, you’re like, okay, well I have to get my stuff done. I can’t, I’m not doing it tomorrow because I’m not working tomorrow. So a lot of times we need to set boundaries with ourselves. And then also with people in our lives and ask for help, you know, I wasn’t like I’m just going to do it all and I’m going to run my business and do everything for my kids.

[00:50:20] And it was just silly. Like my children have two parents.

[00:50:28] That’s one of my wife’s favorite lines to my children, because for whatever reason. All the time, any problem they ever have for anything, they always ask her first. And a lot of times it cracks me up cause they will walk past me when I’m obviously not doing anything and completely available to go ask my wife who is in the middle of something and not currently available to help her with something.

[00:50:48] And she’ll look at and be like, you have two parents, one of whom you passed by.

[00:50:52] And so sometimes we just do things because we’ve always done them that way. And it’s great to reevaluate every now and again, like what’s going on here, you know? Because my husband worked full time and had an employer, but now he’s self-employed and I was like, well, I don’t have to do, you know, he can leave his office when he wants to.

[00:51:18] So we really just kind of re rejigged the whole thing that we do here.

[00:51:23] Absolutely. So where was the the name of the blog where they can go to find your stuff again?

[00:51:27] Yeah, it’s ElevateWithGael and Gael is spelled GAEL.com and that’s where you’ll find me.

[00:51:36] Awesome. So ElevateWithGael.com, we’ll make sure the link to that is in the show notes.

[00:51:39] And again, if you’re looking to grow your business or make some changes, definitely reach out to her. See what she’s doing is a good fit for you. Gael, thank you so much for coming on the show with us today. Do you have any final words of wisdom for my audience before I hit this stop record button?

[00:51:53] Yeah, if you’re thinking about doing something and if there’s a risk that you want to take, just buy the bullet. Now’s the right time.

[00:52:06] Really appreciate having you on today.

[00:52:08] Yeah, thank you so much.