 I'm here with Mira Rao and I'm excited to talk with her about the progress that she's made in her business. I think a lot of you will find this insightful because this is, we're sharing not only progress but also the lessons learned along the way. First of all, hi Mira, thank you for doing this. Hi George, it's my pleasure, thanks for the opportunity. Yeah, so Mira is in my client group and so we'll get to see Mira several times in this kind of interview format throughout the year. So each time Mira will be sharing some insights and something that will be hopefully inspiring and helpful to those who are watching. But before we get going on that, why don't we just have you share your intro for your business? However comes out today is just great. Yes, it's always evolving. And I was thinking you'll see me three times probably in various locations because I'm not normally up here in my little tree house loft, but yes. That's the first time I've seen it. Yeah, so I'm a resilience and embodiment coach and I help people to heal trauma, feel more effectively and deal better with their lives. I help people navigate their nervous systems, their bodily sensations and apply the wisdom of this into their healing and into their growth. And I blend too many modalities to talk about now but we might get into that in the deeper in the chat along with somatic practice yoga, breathing practices and meditation. Awesome. Well, so tell us how your business has evolved over the past. Well, I mean, since this is our first interview but we've actually been working together for a little while. So just how has your business evolved in the past, let's say year? Amazingly. And you know I'm a total fan of yours, George and I'll happily do like a super evangelical testimonial in this as well. Just tell the truth. It is the truth, it is, it is. I'm inspired by God when I tell the truth as well. Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't have the business I have without having had your support, your strategies, your ideas and you know, I know, I took the action of course. But I think, well, I'll talk, I wanna, I'll say this first because you were asking me before we got onto the call as well like the lessons learned as well as the external signs of how has the business progressed. And I think like, and I was actually talking to my partner about it this morning, like coming in, I kind of did six months with you before I really launched into the business and I was really working on that joyful productivity approach. And I think one of the biggest lessons that I've learned is from you and over this time is how to find pace, how to find the right kind of tone of approaching the work, that holding it lightly to actually make it sustainable. So when we go up those elevations, hit a bump, go back, we don't just collapse, you know? And obviously that's my own stuff in there as well, the resilience teachings as you know, when I first started with you, I just lost all of the Facebook stuff but I think that's one of the biggest lessons and in terms of my business progress, so. So before you go there, I'm sorry, I feel like this is important enough to pause and reflect on this a bit. Working lightly, I mean, that's a lingo we use around here and to a lot of those who are listening to this, it's maybe their first time or second or third time they've heard this from me and I wanna hear what you mean by that for yourself and maybe what's one type of situation where you might apply that. Yeah, so what I mean by it generally is that emphasis on presence in the moment in the task. So focus on rather than where am I gonna get to at the end of this thing that I've done but what is the, I actually experience it, I actually experience it as a pleasure. What is the pleasure available in the moment of doing this task? So that I detach from that fixation on the outcome. So yeah, everything becomes joyful in your language. For me, I would call it pleasure, becomes pleasurable, becomes mindful and pleasurable. Yes. And actually, interestingly enough, as you know, because you've been watching my journey, one of the biggest challenges for me has been balancing working in my business, growing my business and getting my degree at the same time. And the area where I am applying it, where I've really learned, well, I'm practicing still but feel like I've had a really big shift around applying it is in the university context which impacts the business. And I think we all have this, we all have other things going on that we might take a bit heavily in our lingo that maybe people are caring for kids or parents or whatever it is, those examples that you give a lot that we then put all this intense emotional energy around and it ends up impacting us and our business more because of that. And so that space for the business is not there. So for me, I'm actually learning how to apply, oh, I just show up, I do a university essay, I enjoy the process and it doesn't take all this energy and away from the business. And of course, I do that in lots of business tasks but for me, the area where it's been most ironically impactful in allowing the business to grow in not having it suffocated is applying it to this additional area. Yeah, I love it. Thank you for sharing those, that's a powerful idea just like how much is this task taking energy away from everything else and this finding the pleasure in the moment now. So of course, as we work on the business, there are naturally, both people think there are things that are many things that we have to do that are not pleasurable that obviously we don't do for fun. So is there an example? I mean, gosh, even writing an essay, I mean, for me, that would not be pleasurable and I have to keep working on the joyful part of it but do you have an example of a business task that might? Business one, yeah. That might typically not feel pleasurable to you but you find a way to bring pleasure to it. Yes, so again, because you know me and I share a lot and quite expressively, tech, tech problems. Yes, tech challenges, tech, solving, I mean, we do many of us, we have faces on a daily basis, sure, yeah. So what I've learned to do is anticipate the reality of what dealing with tech is. So dealing with tech is not a perfect seamless. I just get this software and then I plug it in and I know how to use it and it works perfectly. Like that's never the reality as far as I'm aware. I don't, maybe occasionally we have that happen. So I finally accepted that the reality is I plug it in, it doesn't work. I do a support call to the tech team. I try it again, I don't know how to use it. I have to go on to Google and investigate all the different steps of how this thing works and then I blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so in allocating time, so in my kind of chunks of time over the week, I was like, if I'm dealing, which I am at the moment upgrading systems, if I'm dealing with tech, anything, for me billing and booking at the moment and changing my software platforms, then what do I even call it? Tech troubleshooting, I have like on my calendar, a tech troubleshooting allocation of time, at least 45 minutes every week, some weeks I don't need it, but anticipating that that's how the task will be has just taken away all that angsty, stressy, resentful, why is it like this? It's always gonna be like this. And now I can just show up, I've made time for it, I show up, this is the process of it. And I don't know if I've fully got to pleasure level yet. But you know that it is possible. It is possible. I do, I do. But I've certainly got to acceptance level. Right, right, no, that's it. So that comes first, exactly. The lack of at least we have to stop resisting what the experience is. And then we might go, is there a way to find some playfulness to this? Is there a way to find some, yeah, like playfulness, I imagine with the texture of like playfulness is one aspect of it. Like, oh, look how that works or look how that didn't work. But the other aspect is like, it's like how like another take on it would be like, how might this be improving my concentration or my patience or something like, like some kind of like a more spiritual pleasure kind of thing. But, but yeah. Or brain one, like I do feel, I do get a little kick out of the achievement of problem solving. I'm quite a problem solving oriented person. So I do feel that. I'm like, yeah, I researched that. I figured that thing out. Yeah, exactly. That there is, there is definitely joy in the accomplishment. Yeah. So speaking of which accomplishment, let's talk about the, what you've seen in your business then, what has it become? What's become a functioning business that I live off. So I earn my entire income through the business now. Awesome. And yeah, which is really amazing. Like it's amazing to be at this level and to feel that and to be enjoying that. So in regards to the progress from the start, I think I had like maybe five clients or something in the beginning already. So I did a little, I had a few going, I'd never done a webinar. I didn't understand the practice of net caring as you've explained it and taught me. And over that time, so I had kind of on and off, just real basic level stuff. So I had on and off drip clients kind of coming in and I'm now on a solid, you know, 12 to 15 a week, which is about my maximum for one hour work. It's great, that is, that's more than most people. I mean, even, yeah, amazing. Yeah, so I'm really, really pleased with that. And I'm also, yeah, I mean, what to tell you, George? Is there like what specifically would be good for people to know? Yeah, there is so much we could talk about, but actually in the authentic outreach course, we will talk more about your referral process and how you have developed that out. But I do wanna, for this one though, I do wanna ask about your webinar process and what you've learned from that because I do encourage a lot of people to try what doing webinars. So tell us about that, like- It was huge. Okay, what have you learned from doing webinars? Are you doing free webinars? Tell us more about that. Yeah, so yeah, you and I were talking about this off air before we started. It was kind of a milestone for me in my business. I think that around that time, because when I decided to come into your programs was the time when I really decided, okay, I'm gonna really commit to business. I'm gonna try and like Peter out the part-time work and really go for it and give it everything I can. And I think that it was just a very natural thing that I had this really exciting idea. And you'd been talking about webinars, webinars, webinars, and I knew that eventually I also wanna kind of go towards group programs and delivering group stuff. So I was like, okay, a webinar is like a good little practice step of how do I put together content? How do I do a launch? If I'm offering it for free, it's low pressure. I'll give it a go. But I was still nervous as hell. Like the first time was all my tools. I had to like unpack my entire self-regulation toolkit and have it like present all the time. And my partner was, I was like, he was on speed dial, like, okay, I'm freaking out. I'm on the floor, like no one saw any of this, but you know, like I'm on the floor, I can't move. I don't wanna do this. I hate it, you know, those experiences. And yeah, and I prepped it. And for me, so this is around that same time. So I had, you know, only a few sporadic clients I had, as you also know, lost my entire social media platforms six months earlier. So I had kind of rebuilt a little bit. Because of the Facebook, as some of you might know, Facebook sometimes erroneously, sadly shuts down accounts. There was no reason for yours to be shut down. No, mine was hacked. Right, right, I'm sorry. Yours was hacked, right? Yours was hacked, which happens to a lot of people. And yeah, so you have to restart your whole social media presence. It's amazing. And I have to say, that's part of your learning. And it's like, because you know, well, because you practice self-regulation, emotional regulation, et cetera, the way I saw you recover from that was so remarkable compared to other people I've seen who have been, destroyed pretty much when that kind of stuff happens. And so you were able to recover. Now today, you've got your social media presence back and you've got your public business. Okay, so webinar, so tell us. Yes, yes, but it was so much part of it because it was like I was building, I was like kind of still, I was still that social media experience right at the beginning of kind of stepping into, okay, I'm going to go into online business properly now to lose it and then to start again, like was such a big lesson as well of detachment. And if you just keep solid, consistent, do the things, you can still make things work, right? Yeah. So I was like, oh, is anyone going to see it? Is anyone going to listen? Is anyone blah, blah, blah, blah, blah? But again, another lesson, you talk about how the idea or the content will be the most important thing and the most magnetic thing. And if the idea has resonance with people, they'll get it. And I felt like that's what happened. So I ended up with, I think for me, the numbers were really good at that point. I'd never done it. 20 people signed up, 14 people signed up on the day. Right, wow. And one person signed up as a client out of that. Great, yeah. Webinar, yeah, but it was, yeah, it was real. I was so happy with those results and the experience of doing it on the other side ended up being, again, that like, wow, I did this. I got through it. It's a really gentle way of learning all the other stuff as well. Like how do I set up a sales page? How do I set up the billing? How do I do a email sequence and all those things without feeling like I have to make it work? It's like that pressure. It's like, oh, I'll just kind of play here. And- I mean, it was a learning experience. I mean, I really encourage everyone, like if you, whatever launch you're doing, if it's the first time or if it's been a long time, chalk it up as a learning experience, like detach from the results and say, hey, I'm getting back into this and I'm gonna be learning a lot and through the process, which you did. And so now when you do the next webinar and the next webinar, it's like, oh yeah, I've done this before, you know? Well, I did. I think I ended up doing five last year. Yeah, amazing. That's more than most people. And so, and you got a client from that learning experience of doing the first webinar. So what can you tell folks who are wanting to do a webinar or preparing to do one? Like how might they prevent themselves from having the nervous feelings and things like that? Like what can you tell them to help? Well, I think you have to give yourself a lot of space when it's the first time. So to allow for those nervous feeling, like we can't necessarily prevent them, but we can work with them. So that's all the nervous system regulation stuff that I do. And most people will have some version of a practice that works for the key one though, that I'm gonna share that I just love is reminding people when the nerves come, this is our biological drive away from threat towards safety and protection. And if you can just go, thank you, nervous system for trying to keep me safe and connect to that beautiful protective intent that your body is engaging in in that moment, it just shifts everything. There's like this compassion, oh, thank you, body. Instead of body, you're betraying me. I've got these nerves, my hands are trembling and I can't do anything. It's like, oh, this feels vulnerable. It's like a threat. You wanted me to be safe. I've got the message. I'm gonna do it a different way. Let's take a breath and let's step forward into this. That one thing, like thank you, nervous system for keeping me safe is transformative. Absolutely. So I would say, yeah, do that as a mantra. Say that to yourself over and over again. Yeah, that's really good. Yeah, I was gonna say like, the term nervous system has bugged me for a long time. Like it makes me feel nervous just saying nervous system. It's like, can we say like emotional immune system or like protection system or like care system or something? Well, you know, actually there is a circuit in the brain called the care circuit. So there's like seven primary emotional circuits in the brain seeking care. There's a whole bunch of them. One of them is called care. Now there you go, there we go. Excellent, I love it. And so the webinars, when you did the webinar and you got the client like at the, like you were teaching something during the webinar. I mean, it was a topic based webinar. Yes. How did you transition into inviting them into your service? So the topic was embodied envisioning. So it was at the beginning of the year. And it was all about setting up goals using embodiment techniques, using somatic techniques. So basically learning how to check in with your body when you were testing out your goals. Is this the right goal for me or not? Basically teaching people how to systematize their intuition, you know, like understand the signals that the body was giving. So I taught people a whole bunch of techniques of how to do that and that the more regulated you are, the more yourself you are and you're not choosing your goals out of a reactive state, out of fear or people pleasing or whatever it is. So if you can come back to that regulated baseline and then begin to test out, how does my body respond to these different goals? You've got a bit more of an accurate read. However, if you've got trauma there, so you might find that, so this was how I made the link to deeper work, the invitation to deeper work for people. So if you're finding that you regulate, but it doesn't really work, like you can't get to calm, then maybe you're hitting a trauma bubble where it's just so stuck that you're not gonna be able to access either regulation or capacity to move forward in that particular area. And so then we need to do the deeper work, the inner child processes, the neurobiological resets, that kind of thing. And that was what I said. I was like, if you've done this, you enjoy this style of work, and I can't even remember how I worded it, but you know. And yeah, you wanna go deeper. But it was that concept that I had explained that if it's not working, this is why that kind of got people's attention. Like I know they were like, yes, I know that experience and I wanna fix it, I understand it. Really good, really insightful. Yeah, just one second here. So when you made that imitation, you know, I imagine, you know, you, of course, you did it in your gentle way and you invited them in. Did you then send an email afterwards also with that invitation? Oh, did you send the recording? Like what was the, what was your process for that? Yeah, yeah. So I followed the free to attend pay for the recording and people that were there got it free if they filled out the feedback form straight away. Yes. So most of them did that. And then, so in that gentle invitation, I had put my Calendly link into the chat. So I think somebody just signed up straight away. She was like, I'll just look in. And then I sent people that had given me the feedback. Yeah, so just again, those gentle like reinforcements. Here's the recording. It was great to have you thanks for feedback. If you decide you want to book in or whatever I said, here's the link. And then I don't think, I did send an email out to my main list as well, offering the paid version if people wanted to buy it that hadn't attended. And I don't think I put a call to action for booking in that one. Right, right. Yeah, yeah. And of course we don't, just for those who are going to apply this later, we don't really expect the paid recording to be like a big selling thing. Yeah, you might get an occasional person buying here and there, but it is a product that you could sell later or give as a bonus as another product, as a part of another product. And it does work. I did a guest one on someone else's. Yeah. And she emailed it out. I emailed it out to my list and a couple of people as a result of watching it. I loved what you said Mira came and did a discovery call with me. There we go. Yeah. It still can be quite fruitful. Okay, very good. Well, let's begin to wrap up. So since we're going to talk to you a couple of times this year, what would you like to celebrate is when we talk next time? Like if you can imagine what's a focus that you're going to have in the next few months, what are you going to be working on and developing so that the next time we talk we'll be able to check in on that thing. Which putting you on the spot here. It's sort of is, but I'm just trying to decide which things are going to be the most relevant. Yeah. Because essentially the next quarter is really about stabilizing the volume of clients I now have. So maintaining my net caring practice or AKA networking and so just keeping my systems going, keeping this level of clients going, checking in with how my energy levels are going at servicing that level of clients having uni back in. I'm also teaching three... Starting your university in a month and a half I guess, right? Yeah, yeah. And then I'm also, I'm shifting, I teach three yoga classes a week as well. And I'm shifting one of those classes to be a trauma sensitive specific class that will be blended online in person from a local studio here. Okay. So that would probably be, and then I'm also launching some collaborations with a psychologist here to do some mood and movement regulation, movement and mood regulation workshops. So I guess in three months, if I've coped with all of that and it's all going well, I'd like the classes to have, eight to 10 people at least in them, sustain the 12 to 15 one on ones. And then what I'd like to come from my collaboration with that psychology clinic, I'd like to also add in a few corporates. So I'm doing a training for his staff as well first. So I'd like to do more of that, like a two hour training, embodiment training, I call it embodied leadership when it's done within the organization. So I'd like to be delivering one of those a month, 12 to 15 clients a week, three yoga classes a week with eight to 10 students in it, and surviving university. The university. With joyful productivity. With joyful, yeah. So what I'll celebrate the most, George, is if you can be like Mira, you're actually happy talking about university in this session. I'll know, I'll know. No, you're actually here. Congratulations. And you're smiling, that's great. Lots of progress right there. Yeah, yeah, that's good. Okay. No, it's great to say it out loud, and I'm really, I will rewatch this and see what I said next time we do it. Exactly, and those who are watching this and listening can follow up with you or to watch the next one and then see how it went. Feel free to be my accountability buddies. I welcome it, I welcome it. Awesome. Where can people follow your journey, just your work, your content? What would you like if you gave like one or two most important things? So most important for content, the concepts around embodiment and emotional regulation is Facebook and Instagram. If you want to see a beautiful, and then YouTube is where I post a lot of the yoga stuff. Okay, cool. And Facebook would be the Facebook business page, yeah. Yep. Okay, great. And Facebook, Facebook, Facebook and Instagram for the, for the inviting stuff. And then the YT for the yoga. Yeah, I put like, I load up free yoga class recordings on there. That's amazing, amazing. Thank you so much, Mira, for doing this and for all that you do to support your clients and your colleagues and folks in the community. So yeah, thank you. Well, that's like 100% back at you. Thank you. Well, yeah, I'm grateful to have to be able to enjoy the journey with people like you. So yeah, thanks. Thanks, George.