Salome Schillack (00:00):

Welcome to episode number 73 and welcome to October. I have decided that the last quarter of 2020 is going to just be the zero width of January, 2021. For three months, every single day will be the zero width of January, 2021. I don't know about you, but I am ready to put this year behind me and to move forward. And in today's episode, I'll share with you why and how you can do it, too. So stay tuned.

Giving up your time and freedom to make money is so 2009. Hi, I'm your host Salome Schillack And I help online course creators launch, grow and scale their businesses with Facebook and Instagram ads. So that they can make more money and have an even bigger impact in the world. If you're ready to be inspired, to dream bigger, launch sooner and grow your online business faster. Then tune in because you are ready to shine and this is The Shine Show.

One of the most reliable ways that I have grown the Facebook Ads Agency that I manage and run is by traveling to the US for online marketing conferences. I've often told the story of how I did the first of many trips to San Diego for Amy Porterfield's Entrepreneur Experience event. Where I signed up four clients, I came home and I quit my job, and was finally successfully able to work for myself. In 2018, I traveled to the US for events six times. And I want to also add that at the time I lived in Perth, which is the most isolated city in the world. And it took me 30 hours to go door to door from my house in Perth to my Airbnb in San Diego. But I did it because it worked. It's the power of proximity.

Having an online business is really awesome, but magic happens when we all come together in the same room and we get to know each other and talk to each other. So when COVID hit, I realized quite soon that my travels will be impacted. What I didn't think would happen is that it would come to an absolute grinding halt. At the moment in Queensland, the State that I live in here in Australia, we did not have many COVID cases. We have gone days without any new transmissions and if you go to a shopping center, you won't even know that there is a pandemic on the loose. My kids were only ever out of school for about six weeks and we are touch wood, safe from the virus. And that's because our state borders have been shut for months. No one could come in and no one can go out. So no virus, but also no travel.

When I realized that I will not be able to travel possibly the government is saying until 2023, I did go into a little bit of a panic. What I told myself back in March when all this started unfolding was that, if I cannot travel, then my business will not survive this pandemic. Luckily, I already had the launch for A-Lister on the cards and we had our first successful launch in March, just as everything was beginning to shut down. What followed between March and now has been for me, an absolute mad, sometimes desperate, I'll admit, hustle. To get A-Lister and the Launch Lounge up and running so that I can cushion the blow of not being able to travel and get clients for the agency.

Now, the reason I tell you this is because I've just come back from two weeks vacation. And I only started seeing this clearly when I started relaxing while I was on holidays. During the month of August, after we finished the Launch Lounge launch, my brain went into complete shutdown for about a month. I was really only going through the motions, I couldn't focus and I couldn't concentrate. I couldn't plan anything or think anything through most days. We were preparing for the DCI Affiliate launch and I couldn't string two ideas together for that promotion. It wasn't for my amazing team who stepped up and created emails, social media content, and ads, I would have been completely paralyzed and unable to put one foot in front of the other one.

I didn't understand what was happening to me until my friend Donna shared an article with me while I was on holiday about how that paralysis is a completely normal after effect of this massive hustle to survive that I went into when COVID started unfolding. What I've always known about myself is that I am very, very good at springing into action when there's a threat. I'm the person who stays calm and gets things done. I'm the person who makes plans and starts to create new ways to solve old problems. I am very creative and very productive and focused when my back is to a wall. But that energy burst can only last a short time and then I'm depleted and I start to shut down.

I always knew that I'm great in a high-pressure environment. What I never realized or saw in my own behavior was the shutdown and the complete paralysis that follows. It took me to go on holiday and totally relax for two weeks and let my body and my brain heal in order to see it for what it was. That is one thing that I wanted to share with you on this episode, quite vulnerably, that I realized in the last couple of weeks. There's a reason I'm sharing this with you, so just hang on.

I also want to share another story with you about something that happened while we were on holiday. The State that I live in, Queensland, and is unable to leave is possibly one of the most beautiful places on earth. I live in Brisbane, which is in Queensland in Australia, and we have the Great Barrier Reef and we have the Daintree Forest, which is the oldest rainforest in the world. So my family and I flew about two and a half hours North of Brisbane to a place called Port Douglas, which is right next to the rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef. And I imagine it looks a lot like what I've seen Hawaii looks like, I've never been to Hawaii, but I can see that it would kind of look the same. Picture white beaches for miles with palm trees, turquoise water with turtle swimming in it and mountains of green lush forest in the background. Every tourists dream.

Now, because of COVID, we knew that things would be a little bit different on holiday. Social distancing in restaurant means they get booked out faster, so we have to book an advanced. Not a big problem, but still an adjustment. What I wasn't quite prepared for was the massive economic impact COVID had on these small communities that rely so heavily on tourists, not just from Melbourne and Sydney, but from all over the world, to come this time of year and spend their money. On the first day, we went for a walk up the main road and it struck me how many of the shops in the main road had closed. Then a few days later, my daughter wanted her haircut, so I called the first hairdresser that came up on Google. And when I called her to make an appointment, she said she had shut her salon and she's now only doing hair for weddings.

We did a lot of fun activities and every time I was struck by how incredibly grateful people were when we booked these activities. One day I had to be on a call with the students from the Launch Lounge, so my husband decided to take the girls deep sea fishing, an adventure that none of them have had before. We had a magazine lying in the Airbnb where we were staying and we called one of the advertisers. When I told the lady who picked up that we were looking to go on a fishing trip, she was so grateful. It took me by surprise how surprised she was that I'm even calling. She said she'll have to call me back because she was going to have to see if she can find a skipper to take us or to take my husband and the girls. And the owner ended up taking them out and they had the most fun day.

But this reaction of hers was the most curious thing at first. And then everywhere we went and everywhere we booked something or spent money on a touristy thing, people were so grateful and happy and kind. And the service was out of this world. And then it hit me like a ton of bricks, my 2020 hustle has been the biggest privilege of my life. Here is an entire community that thrives on other people traveling. They have no COVID-19, but the people that used to spend money when they visited had dried up completely overnight. Some people lost their shops, some people lost their jobs, everybody overnight lost their biggest source of income, tourists.

And the difference between what I perceived as a loss, having lost the freedom to travel overseas and get clients, suddenly massively piled in comparison to what they had lost. Because I could very quickly pull together an offer and use ads to sell it online to people who live anywhere in the world. Gave me a tremendous feeling of gratitude for the industry that I work in, and that I have the skills and the knowledge to sell the one thing the virus cannot take away from us. And that is our ability to sell our ideas to a mass market online.

What I really want to leave you with today is, if you're selling online courses or you have an online membership, or you're just at the start of learning how to create and sell your knowledge. You are already a thousand steps ahead of the scores of people who do not have the ability to influence where their next customer is coming from. I want to challenge you to sit down and see the things we have that we can appreciate. Whether it is your first 100 social media followers, the mobile phone that has a camera on that you can record yourself on, or your laptop, even if it is a hundred years old. If you have any one of those things, you have the means to thrive despite the economic impact this virus is having on the world.

And here is what I would love to ask you. I want to tell you that nothing, nothing gave me more joy than spending money at the local restaurant, or buying a dress from the local shop, or taking my kids snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef. And every time I would spend money in my heart of hearts, I would say, "Thank you." I would say thank you to myself for selling my courses and thank you to my students for investing in me. Because if I did not sell those courses, if I did not charge for them, if I did not sell as hard as I could for as long as I could. I would not be empowered to put back money into my local economy and to save the jobs of the people who works for me.

We have the world at our feet, we have online businesses. We can put our ads in front of people who are suffering, and we can put our ads in thriving communities, and we can reach hundreds and thousands and thousands and hundreds more of people online. And because we are so lucky, we have these audiences at scale, we have to sell to them. We have to sell as much as we can because we have an opportunity that local businesses do not have. And then we can go out to our local areas and put back what they do not have the power to put back without customers walking into their shops. And that is how we start to rebuild the economy, that is how we shift our thinking away from this, "I don't want to sell because the world is doing it tough right now." To, "I have a responsibility as someone with access to thousands, upon thousands, upon thousands of people all over the world to sell to anyone who wants to buy. And then go out and support my local friends."

So I decided that October, November, and December as the zero rest of January, 2021. I'm leaving 2020 behind and I'm taking the rest of this year to create all of the systems and to build the support into my business to enable me to scale massively in 2021. Because I will take up arms, I will answer the call, I will reach hundreds of thousands of people and sell my courses unapologetically to anyone who's ready to learn from me. I will back myself more, I will need less permission and I will show up each day, starting from a place of tremendous gratitude that I know how to sell information.

And in 2021, I will aim to do as much as I can to help my local economy recover. And I can't wait for all that delicious food and spa days. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Send me a DM on Instagram, I'm at Salome.Schillack and tell me, how will you sell more in 2021? And how will you be supporting your local economy? Have a lovely day. Bye.

Thank you so much for listening. If you had fun, please come back next week and remember to hit that subscribe button so you never miss a thing.