 So today I'm here with Shailaja. Now, some of you may have already seen her around in my community. I am so grateful to be able to have her actually help some of my own clients and students and she has a terrific following on various social media platforms which you can look in the notes below. And so I'm honored and grateful that she has even shared some of my things with her people as well. Shailaja is a member of my MasterHeart Business Mentoring Group and I wanted to get her on this video today to share with you some of the progress that she's seen herself making in the past months, years. Shailaja, you can talk about whatever time frame you want. The purpose, of course, of this video is to encourage people, those of you who are watching or listening to this, that you could keep taking steps on your journey of authentic business and you will start seeing some results or continue to see even better results. Shailaja, welcome to this interview and thank you for doing this. Thank you so much, George. It's always an honor to talk to you and it's an even bigger honor to be interviewed by you. So thank you so much. I really enjoy being a part of MasterHeart and of course, even before MasterHeart I've learned so much from reading your books, attending your courses, watching your videos. I remember telling one of my friends that I think I must have single-handedly contributed to a lot of George's views on YouTube because I remember watching so many of your videos back to back. Well, you're very kind and ever since that, I mean, I've seen you doing more videos as well and you're terrific on video and I hope people will check out the links below to watch your content. So do you wanna say a bit about what it is you love helping clients with just kind of as a part of the intro? Yeah, because you do a lot of different things. Absolutely, so for those who don't know about me I'm a blog and social media coach and I've been blogging for almost 14 years now come August and I've been a coach for about three years now. So it was 2018 March that I became a coach and I've actually gone through different iterations of the coaching experience. So I started off being kind of a handy woman in terms of the tech and the social media strategy and the marketing and handling people's social media until I finally found a rhythm that worked for me. And as far as my rhythm is concerned now what I help people with is to DIY their own content strategy, their social media strategy, their blogging strategy. So I don't do the nuts and bolts part of it. So I help you figure out how you can do it on your own. So that's what I typically help people with. And interestingly, I recently also had a session on time management. So one of the clients who reached out to me said she was a previous client of mine. So we had a business call, but she said, I also noticed that you're extremely good with time management. Would you be open to doing a session for me on time management? I said, sure. And then we had a call based on that. So the interesting thing I noticed is that as we grow in our role as coaches we also learn to understand and identify how we can help our own clients. And if it aligns with our purpose I think it's something that we can stay open to as time goes on. That's brilliant. Yes, absolutely. I, yeah, it's a natural that you're helping people with time management too, because to be able to thrive on social media and yet still maintain a life of wellbeing, especially since you have a family to take care of too, requires really good time management. It's like, we don't have to be on social media commenting on everything all the time. We have to use it much more mindfully. So thank you for providing that service as well. And I just want to let everybody know Shailaja offers amazing value for what she does. So please go check on her website, yeah, and get a session with her if you can. I think her rates at this time of this recording anyway is extremely affordable. So take a look. All right, so let's talk about sort of what you've been learning in your progress. And we could talk about your own experience with content creation or with collaborations or anything anywhere you'd like to start. So let me start with content creation from the business perspective. What I mean by that is where I'm specifically trying to create content from two perspectives. One is just what you talk about when you're just creating it as content creation and then there is content as marketing or selling. So I remember or even up to eight or 10 months ago when I was trying to mix the two up when I was trying to sell people a product or a course or a workshop or even a coaching session after talking about something else it would never really translate into what I would call a quality client. Sure, I was getting calls. Sure, I was getting inquiries but they weren't really tangible. It wasn't something that I could say would definitely convert to a long-term relationship because I feel at the end of the day we want a client who values us and when we are able to provide value to the other person that has to be that synchronicity. And that only happens if the client knows you knows your work over a consistent period of time. So from about June or July of last year when I started creating content with a very clear distinction where the one part of the content is where I'm just helping people with no expectations nothing other than just putting the content out there getting visibility, getting a sense of being present in this space and hand-holding people with no expectation in mind. So that kind of builds or rather it built the idea that here's a person who enjoys what she does which is what I want people to understand about content creation that it's an enjoyable process. So that was the first thing. The second thing I started doing which was in November of last year and I've been managing to do it now consistently was I would post a video a week. And I do this primarily on Instagram because that's where most of my target audience is pretty active. And I noticed that the quality of the engagement improved drastically. One, of course, video does tend to do better on social media that's there of course. But I think the fact that when any of us are on video we tend to be a little more transparent we tend to be a little more accessible. There's a sense of approachability. So people know, hey, she's talking my language. She's a person who understands who I am. She's somebody whom I can reach out to. She's somebody who if I comment on her posts she's going to respond to me. So I think that sense of accessibility really helped. And how I saw this directly impact my business and I remember mentioning this in Master Heart as well. I remember starting to post the videos and I wasn't posting the videos with an intention to gain clients. It was just a way of content testing. I was just trying to get my content out there get more visibility and things like that. The interesting thing is people started reaching out to ask about my calls, to ask about my coaching sessions, to ask about my group workshops or my webinars. And I remember at the time I started scrambling around because I didn't really have a set calendar in place yet. So I began to set up a calendar I began to set up very clear timelines, booking slots. It was very interesting because although I wasn't creating most of the content with the intention to gain a client it became a very organic process. So people started trusting me more because they were able to see that there was a sense of comfort and there was a sense of authority in the way I was presenting the content. So that made it much easier. And once I realized that I would be able to sell directly as well. So I made selling a very integral part of my overall content strategy. So if I was going to talk about a client session that went well, I would actually put up a testimonial directly from the client. And then at the end of the caption if I was putting it up on Instagram I would mention that this is exactly what I do. This is the kind of hand holding I help you with and you're welcome to send me a message or hit the booking link. So since I have a paid equity account equity allows you to add a booking button to your Instagram page. And I noticed that a lot of my clients were actually finding me through Instagram. So it made sense to have the booking button visible. So people could just go ahead and send me a message or book a call directly. And that was a very significant book. So and as a result, I started I think November with about three or four calls per month. December that went up to about six to eight. And then January and February I filled my booking calendar that was about 10 calls a week. And I actually had to do a couple of extra calls because a couple of clients said they couldn't wait till March for the next round of calls. So that was the really interesting progress that I saw. That's fantastic. I love it. And just like you said, when we have a genuine relationship with our audience by showing up with helpfulness and with transparency in our content we're welcome to sell as well occasionally. And the selling, you know, well, you're selling in a very grounded way meaning that you are sharing the experiences of your clients testimonials. This is what actually happened or this is what they said. And if this sounds interesting to you then we could think about doing that for you as well. I mean, it's a very, it's a simple, but it's so, yeah, it makes a lot of sense and it works obviously because I'm so happy to hear that your client booking is doing really well. And I think it's well deserved, well deserved. So one of the things that you've been so extraordinary at really, I mean, compared to so many others that I've collaborated with over the years is that you really, you know, I talk about net caring, you know, as a process and as a theory, you really put into practice every day, I, you know, all the time. And I want you to share what is your thought, what are your thoughts about net caring and how you do it? Like, yeah, and how is that, what has that done for your connections, for your business? All right, so here's the thing, as far as net caring is concerned, I really try to take my time to understand people where they're coming from, what they're talking about. And I wait to see if it aligns with my core belief system and my sense of values, because I feel if I have to collaborate with someone, I need to know them well enough before I can do anything, you know, whether it's commenting on a post or sharing a post. And I say this as someone who used to be a part of a lot of collaborative groups in the blogging universe. And a lot of that was, I wouldn't say a lot of it, at least some of it was kind of, it was kind of an expected reciprocity. So if I go and visit your blog, you're expected to visit my blog back. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, except that over time that can lead to you having to do that because you're expected to and not because you necessarily want to. So I would prefer that if I were to build a relationship with someone, I should do it on my terms and also do it in a way that will make the other person feel valued. So I shouldn't just, you know, I shouldn't just comment on George's post because he's a friend or I shouldn't just share George's post because he'll feel good. I should share George's content because I know that it has value, not just for me as an individual, but for my audience or for people who follow me. So I always think of it as, would I share this piece of content with anybody who knows me, not just my business audience, let us say my family, my friends, if I were to send somebody a link to your post on time management or joyful productivity, I still recommend your book to a lot of people, not even those who are necessarily in business, you know, people who ask me for links to productivity books, George is one of the few books I recommend. And I always think about that, you know, at the back of my mind. So that's the first thing I keep in mind. I really need to find the right vibe with the person in order to be able to do justice to the net caring. That's the first thing. And the second thing I ask is, how would I like to be treated in a social media universe? And I'm not saying that with a sense of expectation, I'm just saying from the perspective of how would we like to be treated as a human being? You know, if you walk up to a person, if you say hello, I mean, there is of course that slight expectation in terms of, we want that hello back, but it should be genuine, right? It should be from the heart. And it's okay. You're not going to vibe with every single person you network with or every single person that you maybe even collaborate with. But I find that if we make the effort to truly find something that makes a sense of alignment with our values, we are able to net care much better. And I always remember this from my, one of my high school teachers, and she said, even if you have to criticize someone, you know, even if you need to criticize somebody, do it with kindness. You know, don't do it from a space of superiority. Don't do it from up, from with a tone of condescension. Do it from a space of empathy because I feel that's very important. So even if a person were to reach out to me and ask me, hey, you know, I wrote this post and this actually happened a couple of weeks ago, one of the fellow Master Heart members, she reached out and she said, I wrote this post and now I'm feeling terrible about it because I don't know how it sounds. She said, would you be willing to just look at it and give me some feedback? And it was a beautiful post. It's vulnerable, it was raw, it was, it was absolutely resonant of who she was and what she was doing. And I got back and told her that I said, I wouldn't change a thing. I wouldn't change a single thing about it because that's who you are. And if a person turns away from that piece of content, it's because they are not meant for it at that space of time in their life. They'll come back to it later maybe, maybe a year, maybe 10 years from now, it will hit them that, you know what, that was actually a very brave thing that this lady spoke about, you know, putting herself out there being that vulnerable. So I think compassion is a very integral part of net, net caring because if we don't have compassion, we tend to come to it with from a lot of expectation from a space of a lot of expectations. We expect that just because I left a comment, this person has to get back and leave a comment as well. So I think these two things are important as far as net caring is concerned. Yeah. And you really, from what I can tell, I mean, what I mean, actually our own connection really started because you were such so good at doing this. I mean, you were doing it without expectation. It came from, I mean, I get a lot of people trying to network with me all the time. And I can, I can just feel the energy when someone is, you know, has an agenda and they're trying to get something from me versus when someone is just from the heart, you know, sharing. And it makes me naturally want to reciprocate, you know, it's just because when you net care with a fellow giver or at least a fellow matcher, someone who understands that, you know, we all move forward when we collaborate more and when we learn from each other, when we uplift each other really as much as we can. So I love that. The abundance mindset, right? The abundance mindset works in so many ways. Yes, absolutely. So tell me about now that you have grown this audience and kind of give people a preview of what's to come, okay? Because a lot of people who are watching this or listening to this are, you know, have a smaller audience than you. Let's just say that. And, but, you know, as we all continue to share authentically, consistently, learn how to distribute our content, the audience is going to grow. And so I'm actually real curious for myself, you know, to hear from you, you have, well, you have a bigger audience on Instagram than I do. I know that. I forget how many. I think it's getting close to 10,000 or maybe more. I don't remember. No, no, no. I think it's, no, I think it's around close to 5k, not even. Okay. So don't worry. Well, I just know that it's very active. And you have, you have, you have a very, yeah, you have a really sincere fan base, essentially. So one of the challenges people might have, and this is part of the progress and learning because it's like, okay, as I keep building, building, building, what does that mean for the need to respond to everybody? You know, people are commenting, people are messaging me, will I be able to deal with that? How do I deal with that? And I'm saying it's especially asking you to respond because, one, you are a very caring person. So I think similar to a lot of the people who are in my audience, we want to make sure people are cared for. Number one, number two, you're good at time management and you have a family. And so I think you're really qualified to talk about this. How do we, yeah, I think it's a bit of a time management question, but as we grow, how can we deal with that growth? One, I would say as far as growth is concerned, see growth is going to happen whether we like it or not. So this is the truth, right? I mean, you're not going to stagnate. That's the first thing that people need to understand. We are going to continue to grow. But I think one of the things that we can try to stay true to is how we respond to people. No matter how big we grow, I don't think we should ever forget the fact that there are people out there who are just starting out and people out there who really love it when people who have an audience respond to them. And it's something as simple as just saying, thank you for your kind comment. And thank you for agreeing with that. So this is the thing that I even teach my clients. So one of the things I teach them is to respond to every comment as much as is humanly possible. That doesn't mean you have to do it all on the same day. It doesn't even mean you have to do it all in the next day or two. You can even batch it together. So here's how I do it. So let us say, and I get most of my engagement happens on Instagram because that's where, as you know, my audience is extremely active. So any given day I have between 20 to 60 to 70 comments to reply to depending on how many posts I've put up that week and how many comments I have. So if I have 60 comments to get through, and even if I would spend about a minute or a minute and a half responding to every single comment, I do a simple thing. I schedule a focus-made session. I actually just schedule a focus-made session and I sit and respond to every single comment. And because I'm doing it in a deep work scenario, I'm actually able to put a lot of thought into the comments. I'm actually able to respond to every single comment and make everybody feel cared for. And I think this was either Josh Spector or Srinivas Rao who mentioned it on Medium. He says, treat everyone like an influencer, not just the people who have big audiences. Everyone is an influencer. We never know who is going to be a friend of yours. I'm not talking about a friend who may necessarily be, let us say, somebody of use to your business, but just a friend, a friend in need, right? And I think treating every single person who responds and comments and asks your question the way we would with a friend really makes a difference. I would say, yes, schedule a session, maybe once or twice a week where you can respond to every single comment. If most of your clients or your comments happen through email, you can do it over email. So you can batch a time when you can just respond to all your emails intentionally. So when I send out my free newsletter, I usually get about five or six emails back. And some of them send me really long emails. And I'm talking about really long ones. I'm not even talking about something they dashed off in a hurry saying, thank you for this newsletter. Some of them really open up. They're like these heart to heart talks which you would typically expect with really close friends. So, and I don't want to respond to such a long email with thanks for mailing. I want to take the time to sit and respond. And I think a lot of it is to do with how we grew up. We grew up writing letters. We grew up writing really long letters. It was not all email. It was not text messaging. It was not SMSs. It was not WhatsApp or Telegram. It was a lot of thought that went into each of these things. So I think those are habits and those are principles we can bring into our net caring as well. And as we grow as business owners. So I think that's kind of important to keep in mind. So make the time for the people who are making the time for you. Does that make sense? Yeah. And it's no wonder that you have such and a dedicated audience who respond to your content because they feel a sense of connection to you. Not only because, yes, you show up on video. You show up on posts, but you actually respond to them thoughtfully. And I love that you actually batch. You use that word. You're batching your time and responding so that it's more efficient while still being able to care for each person, at least a little bit. So of course, we both like using FocusMate. So that's one of our favorite tools. And those of you who are listening to this, like you hear me talk about it, hopefully enough to finally try it. But Sharadja, thank you so much for what you do and how you do it. Do you wanna say anything else about, anything else we didn't cover that you wanna talk about in terms of progress that you'd like to kind of celebrate or any insights you wanna share to encourage people? Oh, I would like to say that if you're a business owner of any kind, I would say keep experimenting with what works and what doesn't. And it's okay if things don't go as planned. I remember there was this coaching session that a few of my clients asked for an Instagram. I did a poll and they said, we want this training session on MailChimp. And a lot of people actually responded to the poll and said, yes, yes, we need a MailChimp tutorial. And then when I actually sent out the mail and then I sent up a couple of follow-up mails, only two people responded and didn't really make sense to conduct a workshop just for two people. So I ended up canceling the session. Now I could have said, what 50 people responded saying, yes, only two people ended up showing up. So there are so many reasons that could happen and I won't go into all the reasons right here. But the fact is sometimes things don't work out. And then there could be another situation. For instance, I'm launching a course next month and I sent out an email this morning where I took a leaf out of your book, George and I just went ahead and offered two beta sessions, scheduled for the end of this month. And within a few hours, all the slots were booked. I didn't expect that. I actually thought I'd have a few left over which I could then post about on social media, but that didn't happen. I just ended up filling with up. So things can turn around and surprise you. So I feel as business owners, it's okay to be ready to face anything. Both the successes and the failures, we tend to learn from both these things. And I think that's important to keep in mind. It's fine to fail, it's great to succeed, but it's, and I know being a stoic is not necessarily going to be easy for all of us, but it's something worth aspiring to for sure. Thank you so much, Shailaja. So those of you who have enjoyed this, be sure to check out Shailaja's content. She also, like I mentioned, offers very affordable and tremendously valuable services. So whether you are wanting to get feedback about your content, your writing, she's a tremendous writer. I really enjoy reading your writing, Shailaja. So writing, showing up on video, just kind of the technicalities of social media, Instagram, all those kinds of things or the overall strategy, and along with time management and things like that, blogging, feel free to reach out to Shailaja for some of her services and her courses, including upcoming courses too. So Shailaja, thank you so much for all that you do and for sharing your lessons with us. I hope those watching have found it encouraging. So thanks so much, Shailaja. Thank you so much, George. It's always a pleasure meeting you and it's a lovely opportunity to talk to your audience as well. Thank you once again. Yeah, thank you.