 All right, happy to be here with Lea Cooper. We always have fun, this is like the third take and we're just laughing along the way. So she is part of my group coaching program and is, yeah, I just enjoy hanging out with her and she's been such a great contributor to the group as well. And what we're gonna do in this interview, I was gonna say, because usually Lea's interviewing people these days, so you get to be on this side, Lea. So what I'm gonna interview her about is what she's been learning along the way as she's been developing her authentic business. She's got some great insights to share with you all. And so I think you'll be inspired by this. And also the purpose of this interview is to provide a bit of public accountability for Lea's progress. So that's kind of what we're doing. So you're gonna see Lea several times in this series and we'll kind of update, she'll update you along the way. So I'm excited for this, Lea, welcome. Thank you for doing this. Thanks George, great to be here. And yeah, it's really lovely that you're doing this this year in the program, you know, getting us having these sessions of interviews and then yeah, really public accountability, I love it. And yeah, I think having people see someone, you know, kind of working and learning and making progress along the way just shows others that maybe I can do it too or look what they're doing and let me integrate that inspiration into my own work. So first let's start off with how are you introducing your work these days? However comes out today is just great. Great question, yeah. So I'm a yoga teacher and a Whole Foods cook. I do workshops for Whole Foods cooking and I'm mainly seasonal plant-based, that type of stuff. And I'm just looking at at the moment expanding my business into other offerings, things like one day retreats, workshop, more different types of workshops. And yeah, this year might be the year of the webinar. I don't know, I kind of feel called to just, I was watching one of your videos the other day about just, you know, plan it, you know, advertise it. And then if people sign up, run it. If people don't sign up, well, then okay, next one, you know, just keep playing with some ideas. So I think this is my year of content experimentation, which it has been all the time anyway, but I think more focused content experimentation. Yeah, different things that I feel called to share about. And those watching or listening, you can look at the notes below the video for the links to Leia's content. So right now you can find her on YouTube and Facebook. And so I'll have the links below so you can check. So as you're thinking about, I'm just curious if you have any thoughts about the workshops and the retreats, like what kinds of topics are exciting for you these days? Hmm, yeah, so it's more just about providing opportunities for people to experiment with themselves and with things that might be of interest. So with the workshops, it's mainly the workshops I'm doing at the moment at cooking workshops, but expanding that into the one day retreat, you know, getting other practitioners in as well. So I contacted a lady recently who does pottery and so I had this idea. I spoke to her at this market where I met her and like you could do like this blindfold pottery session or something, you know, like do some yoga and meditation and then take that further and do this like blindfold pottery idea. You heard it here first, it may already exist, but yeah, just strange things, you know, just getting people out of their comfort zone. Yeah, and I'm also interested in exploring some sort of different types of movement as well. But that's probably with a slightly different audience to the one that I'm currently working with. So yeah, just it's a whole experimentation process I see. I love it, yeah, really cool. And for those who don't know where you are, tell us where you are in the world and also, yeah, go ahead, let's start with there. Yeah, so I'm in South Australia. I'm in the Barossa Valley, which is about an hour north of the main city of Adelaide. So it's a fairly rural area. It's actually well known for its wine production, great growing region, but I don't drink. Yeah, well, you drink, you drink just not wine I guess. Yeah, just not wine, yeah, I'm sorry. So Anne, since a lot of people watching this aren't local to you, if and when you start doing workshops online or webinars, what might some of the topics be? Yeah, so things like, I've got a list somewhere, things like gut health. So I guess natural, a natural approach to gut health and also things like women's health, like menstrual issues, things like that. And I guess this is more coming from a macrobiotic perspective as well. So that's not my passions. Yeah, so a lot of these things will probably be in macrobiotic focus as well. So, yeah. And for those who don't know, yeah, those who don't know what macrobiotic means or just review for us how you define that. Yeah, gosh. So macrobiotics essentially means big life, macro big. Ah, okay. But it's a lot of people would have heard of the macrobiotic diet. It was quite popular sort of the 70s, 80s. I've heard of it, but I don't really know what it is. Yeah, so originally, if the hardcore macrobiotics, it was like brown rice and miso soup, but it actually is a lot more than that. And it's seen as a healing diet, but it's also, there's a real philosophy behind it as well as a whole philosophy about how, I guess how the universe came into existence and how human evolution has taken place as a result of the energy. It's all about Qi and Yin and Yang and incorporates the five elements. Or here in the US we call it Qi. Qi, yeah. Yeah, and the five elements as well in traditional Chinese medicine. And also the Meridian body, all those traditional healing methods that have been around for centuries and incorporates all that. So it's really, it's basically just a modern approach to the traditional way of living, even back when we were hunter-gatherers or whatever. So it's like eating in the seasons, eating what's grown in your area, avoiding things that are toxic. Sounds very reasonable and good plan. Yeah, it's pretty illogical way to approach life. I feel like you should do, since this is a public accountability type of session, I would encourage you to do a webinar on, and I just want to say hi to Mr. Turtle, by the way. Mr. Turtle is now coming over to say, oh, okay, over there, all right. Mr. Turtle is very, very active right now, and that's part of Mr. Turtle's macrobiotic lifestyle now. So I feel like a webinar on Leia's perspective about macrobiotic lifestyle and diet would be fascinating. I would personally be interested. And you can bring in kind of the holistic view of, you know, like you said, how the universe came to be or how humanity evolved and the five elements. I mean, I think this is all fascinating stuff, and people will probably walk away from that, being more aware of, even if they don't go hardcore in the macrobiotics, they're just more aware of their choices going forward. So anyway, that's... Yeah, thank you. Oh, yeah. I think that's a fascinating thing. Yeah, because I mean, these days, of course, paleo is more popular, but essentially, what macrobiotic is kind of a more holistic view of paleo. I mean, from what I can hear, I don't know paleo either, but... Yeah, paleo is very animal-based. It's based on lots of animal protein. Oh, I see. See, I don't know any of the stuff, but yeah. It avoids all carbohydrates or most carbohydrates. Oh, okay, okay. So I completely... It's very carbohydrate-focused. Oh, interesting, interesting. Okay, perspective. So it would be interesting in that webinar, perhaps, to compare these different viewpoints. Maybe that's a different webinar. Maybe there's webinar on microbiotics, but maybe there's webinar on Leia's perspective on these popular diets. Diets, yeah. Yeah, I think that's... Anyway, I'm fascinated. Thank you. Good to watch something there. Yeah, no, I think it's good. So I'd love for you to share any sort of insights you've gained along the way, as you've been learning authentic business methods, and people who are listening and watching this are at different levels, and I think anything you wanna share that will be a good review, good inspiration for others, yeah. Yeah, thanks, Georgie. I was actually thinking back about this, just yesterday I was wondering, when I first kind of came across you online, I think it was mid-2019, I think, and I think the first course I signed up for was your online course creation course. And I actually used that straight away. I actually created a few short yoga courses, put them on my website, sold it to my students, and I think I actually made like a thousand bucks that year just from those courses, which was like, oh, okay, it actually works. But I haven't really sold that many since then, but I haven't been promoting it, and it's just sitting there. And yeah, and then sort of joining you in Masterheart for a couple of years now, and now in your other group, ABC. It's been, there's been so many different things that have come from it. So for instance, one thing that I really have gotten a lot of value from is just meeting other like-minded people. I think that, because like I said, I live in sort of a semi-rural community and the social circle's not that big. So especially people who do things that I'm interested in. So just being able to connect with so many people with similar ideas, but even maybe not similar, but just hearing about what they're doing, which is something things I've never even heard of before. And it's like, oh, wow, that's actually a thing. You know, you can make money doing that. That's amazing. So yeah, that's just been inspiring and really lovely, and I've really gotten, yeah, I just love those connections that I've made. But on a more business perspective, I mean, those connections have enabled me to be confident about, you know, doing my podcast, which I launched in 2021 as well. So that was a side project. That's not a money-making venture whatsoever at this point in time. Podcasts usually aren't. No, but that's more just a hobby project. But yeah, I thought about that for 12 months. And then we discussed it a couple of times in the coaching session, I think, or Q&A session. And I think you were sort of having a rant at one point about it, but I went and did it anyway. And I'm just so glad I have. And I'm proud of you, yeah. Yeah, thank you. You've gotten a lot of experience from that and met some work, developed connections with other wonderful people, yeah. Yeah, and I got to interview you about Solgium as well. So yeah, it's just been a nice outlet as well, because I'm not the kind of person that can have a conversation easily with people. I'm a bit of an introvert, I think, at heart. And I like asking, I like learning. Like, learner is one of my top strengths in the Clifton Strengths thing. And so an input as well is a close second. So just being able to chat to people about things that I find really interesting and want to know more about and learn about, I think that's just so valuable. Like, it might not be making me money, but it's filling me up inside in other ways. And then I think with the content creation, that's been something that I've really benefited from your teaching about consistency on that. And maybe I haven't always been every week consistent, but more often than not I have been. And I started my YouTube channel back at the end of 2019. And now I've got over 150 videos on there. And my subscriber numbers are still fairly low at 260, but my most popular video has over 2,000 views. So it's kind of a bit of a, it's not my main topic video. It's kind of like a side topic video about how to use mouth tape. So that's kind of interesting. But it's all an experiment. Like I said, it's an experiment. I'm just constantly experimenting and enjoying that process. And this year I really want to focus more on stage two content, which is what you just got the other day in a call. And yeah, and I think I've actually finally maybe worked out how that works. Because before I was posting yoga videos mostly, and it's like, well, how can I make a stage two content from a yoga video? I mean, I guess I could write a blog post about it, and talk about the poses that we did in the yoga in the video, but I find that would take a lot of time. To do, and it's like, I'm not, well, I may have a lot of time really soon, but at the time when I'm working full-time or part-time and yada-yada, it's not necessarily the best way to use my time. Just for people who don't know what stage two content is, do you want to say a bit about that? How, I don't wanna put you on the spot, but yeah, go ahead. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So well, so stage one content is basically how I see it. It's sort of any content that you've put out that you haven't put out before. It's a new idea or a blog post, a video, or something on a topic that you're just experimenting with. And then, what stage two, from my understanding, is that after a while, you just see how your stage one content is performing, and then from the ones that perform the best, and get the most likes, or get the most views, or most watch time, and then sort of adapting them or editing them slightly, or say a video to a carousel or a blog post to a video or something like that, and just elaborating a bit more, or condensing it a bit more, and then putting it out there again, and just refining it in some way, and then sharing that with your audience. Would that be- Exactly. Yeah, totally, like improve on what was liked most from stage one. Take the best of stage one, improve on it, and then redistribute it even further. And this is stage two is really what I feel makes our audience grow. I mean, because that's the best stuff that gets seen by even more people, whereas stage one is just like maybe our best fans, maybe see our stage one stuff, or our most supportive connections or audience see the stage one. And then the stage two, we make more of an effort to get the best of it, out there. So I mean, I have an idea for your stage two, for your yoga videos. Okay, yeah. Is have you ever edited, so take one of your best yoga videos, have you ever edited part of it and shared it as a shorter video? No, that sounds like a little work. Oh, well, that's why I don't do it. I do stage two in other ways. I usually work with stage two in terms of text to carousel or improving a text. But, or I do stage two video by just re-recording a shorter version of it after I listen again to my stage one, get the gist of it, like, okay, and look at the comments to see what people like the most. I then kind of, I'm lazy about editing. So I re-record in a shorter way and then redistribute that and it tends to do really well. But with yoga, it's different because yoga, you are just demonstrating things. And so the great thing about YouTube, as an example, is with YouTube, you can look at the retention charts or the engagement charts for when people watched, when people dropped off versus when people kind of paid more attention and things like that. And I wonder if you could study the one of the, where your best videos and look at the retention chart and go, ah, let me edit that portion of it that had the best retention. Yeah. And the other thing I've been looking at on my YouTube stats is looking at the videos, the analytics and seeing which get the most percentage view. Yes. Like the percentage of the video, like 50%, 20%, 80%. Yeah, and looking at which of those videos they have the longest retention. Because I think with yoga, that's, you know, and it's hard to know because someone might just click on it and watch a minute and then stop. But then someone might finish it and watch it all. And then it's gonna skew the stats a little bit. But looking at that, I haven't done much with that yet, but it's, I dip in there and I just have a look and I say, oh, okay, this shorter video, like the mouse type video I mentioned, like that gets quite a high retention rate. It's only like a two or three minute video, but it's, most people almost watch it almost to the end or... Right, yeah. Yeah, so like I think there's some opportunity sounds like to study the retention graphs and do something with it, either to edit a portion of it out or to basically make more videos like that, you know, that where we learn studying from the retention. But anyway, that's great. That's really good. Any other lesson or insight you wanna share? Yeah, I think just experimenting with different ways of like, like I said before, I was mainly just doing yoga videos, but now I'm actually doing shorter videos where I'm talking about, you know, things like self-love or journaling or just topics that come up and I've been thinking about and then I just make a short either three or five minute video on. And that's where I see the potential for more stage two content to come from. Like I was looking at a video, you know, something about self-love, you know, like top tips for self-love. And I thought, okay, well, I can, I actually ran, funnily enough, I ran the transcripts through chat GPT just to see what it came up with. But I didn't end up, I kind of used a bit of it, but it kind of still felt like it was a computer talking. So I've edited it a bit, but I've got like probably about eight sentences or something or a couple of, it could fit onto eight, eight to 10 carousel, you know, it could be a carousel post. So that's kind of my thing. I'm like, oh, I'm just gonna turn that into a carousel post. And that leads to my next thing, which is kind of probably what you're gonna ask next about the goals. And now, before you get there, I'd be just for those who are just heard what you said and not really understanding what chat GPT is. For everyone, you can look up, I have a video called easily turn a blog, easily turn a YouTube video into a blog post with chat GPT, just like it sounds, you can spell like that, C-H-A-T GPT and watch it. It's like a nine minute video and it'll show you how to use this tool to just almost miraculously turn a YouTube video into a blog post, like it says. And even as you massage your use of it, it could become better about your voice. It could become rather than a sort of more generic voice. But yes, anyway. So that's, I'm excited to have you continue trying that. I kind of like the idea of the chat GPT thing, but it also scares me. Yeah. It's like, I don't want to use it, but I'm just curious. Both are valid feelings for sure about this. So yes, let's move on to the goals then. Yeah. So this, I've been really wanting to, because last year I joined your TLC and I hung around for maybe half of it and then I just fell off the wagon. But there were some things from there that I really want to focus on doing this year, especially this quarter. And that is the CCC, the Capture Categorize Calendar process, which I've set up, I'm using a Trello board for that at the moment. Yeah. Don't know, you could, I have a blog post about it. I have a YouTube video about it. You can just Google Capture Categorize Calendar and you'll find that. But okay, so we're gonna use CCC more. Okay. Yeah, and yeah, and using that whole, because I actually mapped out last week, all the key tasks that I want to get, like content creation, planning yoga classes, working on my podcast, that type of thing. And how many hours I think that would take each week or each month. And so I've yet to transfer that into my calendar, but that's gonna happen over the next day or two. Excellent. And so I wanna be, so in this time in a few months, I wanna have some sort of structure in place where I'm using that calendar effectively for those tasks. And so that I can then, I've got set time to do that blog post, or I've got set time to do that video, or set time to write stage two content. And then, yeah, and then hopefully also the start of day, end of day, weekly planning, monthly planning, and review process, still working out which tool I wanna use for that. Yeah, the way that's just like a word, like a document, or whether it's actually like a, I have been toying with a, subscribing, it's like $50 to subscribe to this online system, but I'm not too sure. So I think it's more just setting the habit in place. And I wanna have a tool that's gonna, I really wanna do that today, you know? And that is sort of, yeah, so. Okay, that's great, yeah. And for those who are hearing, these are different techniques in the joyful productivity course that I teach. And I love it. I think that is the foundation. Like if you, and it's always worth revisiting, like our joyful productivity systems are always worth improving upon because it tends, life and work tends to kind of make it go more chaotic if we leave it alone, and then we like tighten it back up again, and it kind of gets more chaotic and we tighten it back up. And every time we tighten it back up, we're kind of integrating the newness of our thought process and our life and our business and how we have evolved. So I'm glad you're doing that. So when we check in again next time, I'll ask you about that. Yeah, I just wanna say to people watching as well, it's like the things that I'm talking about has taken me like two or three years to get to this point. So I like, you know, if you're kind of the person that goes, I wanna do this, I wanna do that, I'm like that as well, but it's just taken, it just takes time. And then that's been the hardest thing I think for me to get my head around is that it's slow. It's a slow process. Like you can jump all in and but you're gonna probably burn out or fail. That's right. Well, as any real growth happens, it's a more gradual process than we like. Sometimes we have some big jumps, but usually when we have a big jump of growth, it's usually not sustainable and we kind of fall back to the original. Maybe we grew a little bit after we fall back down, but it's like, so it's absolutely, like when it took me years of course to also really integrate joyful productivity and authentic marketing, all that stuff as well. Yeah. Yeah. And one more thing, just to jump in on this, that I'm gonna be increasing the price of my yoga classes at the end of February. So February will mark the 10 years that I've been teaching yoga in the Barossa Valley. And I've had my price rise gradually over that time, but I think I'm due for an increase. My rent just increased as well. So I'm like, I need to cover costs. Yeah, absolutely, it makes a lot of sense. I mean, that's, yeah, I think there's a phrase called COLA, right? Cost of living adjustment. I don't know if that's there in Australia, but US anyway. I've heard that before, yeah. We use the term COLA, and that's usually when a job gives you a bit of a raise, at least a little bit. And also our social security system, retirement system has COLA adjustments as well. And it's like employers and the government has adjustments for this stuff, for increase in what we're receiving. Why aren't we solar printers and small business owners respecting the COLA increases in our business on a yearly basis? I think that's very normal, and most of us don't do it consistently enough. So there you go. So are you going to do any online yoga classes? Well, I mean, I do, all the classes I do at the moment are available online as well. Oh, right, right, right. Okay, yes. Yeah, but not specifically. I'm not specifically online classes, yeah. I don't know if that's where my passion is. Yeah, yeah, okay, okay, good. Well, looking forward to checking in with you again next time about the CCC and the calendar stuff and seeing what you're learning from that angle. I'm excited about it. It's time. Yeah, I think it is, yeah. Time. Yeah, it's time, it's time. Well, thank you so much, Lea, for doing this and everyone who's watching can follow Lea's progress in the links below and we'll check in with Lea in a couple months then. Yeah. Thank you so much. Thank you.