Season Premiere Ep. 1
Date release: October 24, 2023
In this first solo episode of the On a Living Spree podcast, Tori Autumn shares some valuable insights into running a business and maintaining mental wellbeing. She emphasizes the importance of getting help with marketing tasks, even suggesting a one-month trial to see the impact it can have on your business.
She emphasizes the importance of getting help with marketing tasks and suggests trying a one-month trial to see the impact on your business.
Tori recommends Insight Timer, a free meditation app, to manage anxiety and depression, and the I Am app for daily affirmations.
Instead of therapy, Tori turns to book readings, group meditations, and gym workouts.
Tori encourages listening to your feelings and intuition, especially in personal relationships.
Despite the challenges, Tori has traveled, enjoyed great food, been kinder to her body, and laughed more.
Meditation, positive affirmations, and surrounding herself with positive people have helped Tori navigate through dark times.
Questions can be sent to support@heytoriautumn.com. Don't forget to share, rate, and review the On a Living Spree podcast on Apple Podcasts.
New episodes of the podcast are released every week.
Make sure to listen to the entire episode to get all the details, available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.
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You're listening to the On a Living Spree podcast with Tori Autumn, where we cover all things marketing related for small business owners and all things in between doing business as a human doing life. My business that started out as a self love coaching business quickly turned into a copywriting empire and I'm so excited to have a podcast series that combines both life and marketing together. Are you ready?
Welcome to the first official episode of the On a Living Spree podcast. So I'll tell you a little bit about me today as your host, Tori Autumn. Some of the most common questions I get about marketing. And of course, we're going to sprinkle in some little life advice. This is going to be so fun to dive into. I have a great lineup of guests coming up, but I want to just set the tone for what I envision this to be, and I'd love to, as always, hear your feedback on this.
I decided to create On a Living Spree podcast because I wanted to have a different form of medium to talk about marketing tips, to talk about business and to talk about life advice. It's kind of like listening to my weekly newsletters, but in an audio format. Fun fact about me when I was in college, I actually studied broadcast journalism in school and I had my own radio talk show called The Tea with Tori where I talked about celebrity gossip and I gave relationship advice at the end, which is hilarious to think about now because back then I thought I knew everything and there's some things that I've learned along the way when it came to love and relationship and dating and even being in the midst of the celebrity gossip and the drama, but I still knew very little back then and I've still learned so many lessons along the way so this is a nostalgic moment for me to even think about how life was in my teens to twenties now a decade later. One of the things that I get asked the most when it comes to marketing is how to put yourself out there. And I do have an upcoming episode that's totally dedicated about being visible and about being seen. So we'll dive into that a lot more in detail, but I'll tell you this, it is never going to stop being scary to put yourself out there, especially if you're an introvert, especially if you've gotten messages, whether it was from family, friends, society, coworkers that putting yourself out there does not feel safe to your body and to your mind, or that you have tried to put yourself out there, but you heard crickets or didn't get the exact feedback that you were hoping for. And so I want to just give you a big hug through this, I was going to say screen, but give you a big hug right now and tell you that you are not alone in feeling that way, for one, because I know that we hear a lot of stuff, you got to do it anyways, you got to put yourself out there, and yes, but there are different ways, there are different practices, there are different types of alternative ways that you can put yourself out there that don't have to be a s challenging as video may be for people, but also it can be very impactful.
For example, you can start a mini podcast series, or you can do blogging, or you can do a very intimate Zoom workshop where you just only allow eight to ten people in to learn something about your services and the skills that you have that you can help them with in their life or their business or both and make it a very exclusive thing that you're only doing a few times a year There are so many different ways, but I want to just start off by saying that getting started does help break the ice.
So even if it's something that's very small, like you write in a blog about your Why in your business or how you got started or three tips to master cooking healthy foods for your babies. Something like that to just let people know that you are not just a coach or a service provider, but you are an expert and the only way that you can show your expertise is by teaching something.
We are all students in life and we are also teachers of something and what you have learned through your experiences, through even trauma, through even your wins and accomplishments is never going to be the same as the next person, so we all have something that we can show one another, we can collaborate with. We can learn from each other. We can grow together and we can actually reach goals by implementing what we've been taught and what we taught ourselves. So I really encourage you today to start looking at yourself as an expert and I spent a lot of time as a copyright. I spent a lot of time trying to decide what am I going to call myself? What am I going to niche down? But I really spend so much time on the title, and not really identifying as an expert in something.
There's a slight difference in identifying as an expert in something than just giving yourself a title. For example, I am a caregiver, so I have an older mother. , and I also have an older dog. And they both have ongoing health challenges. And sometimes they're at the same time. And sometimes... It's one person I have to give a little bit more attention to. I sometimes call myself a caregiver, but really I am an expert in helping people and understanding what people may need even when they cannot express that.
So I've always had dogs my entire life. Well, my mom was pregnant with me, she got Fluffy. And Fluffy lived to be about 19 or 20 years old when I was 17. And then, now we have Sugar and so I only just went without maybe a couple of years without a dog, but yeah, nevertheless, Sugar is up in age, at the time of this recording, she'll be 11 in a few months, and she has about three or four different health issues going on, but I found that I always identified with the title Caregiver, but really what I do is I help people who may not know exactly how to express what they need.
I encourage you in terms of branding yourself and even if you had an idea on how you would like to pivot in your business, I would recommend that you look into what are people really coming to you for? What are you known as? What are you an expert in? That's the first thing. Another thing that I would like to share today is the power of one. So this is not a new idea. I'm pretty sure I've heard this from a marketing guru myself, but we sometimes think that if we don't get on that highly coveted podcast or website or get that, you know, keynote speaker position when it comes to an event that it's all or nothing, that we failed and I found along the way how important it is to tell people about your vision around you.
And it may just start with one person, but we are so powerful as a community, but we need to lean more into what that actually means and what we can do to help each other. And my first advice on how to go about that is join two different types of online communities. One online community is People who are in the same industry as you. So if you are a chef, if you are a copywriter, if you are a teacher, join a community of those folks, because they'll be able to tell you about people who are looking for your services. They'll be able to drop industry tips. They'll also be able to drop hacks. And also speaking engagements and just a lot of opportunities that you may not have known about.
Does it matter if they're free or paid? Well, there's obviously going to be a million more folks in the free group but less opportunity for you. So I would encourage you to join a paid one that has a definitive timeline, like maybe three months or six months at the minimum. The other type of group that I would encourage you to be in, so this is specifically to service providers listening, if you are in a group where your target audience is, it could be just a bigger group of business owners. If you are, for example, a chef to busy moms, you want to join a mom group. You want to join something that's adjacent to what you help. You want to get on podcasts that are talking about general business. You want to get into rooms where you become that one person in the room that can help everybody.
And that's actually one of the things that has helped me climb the ladder when it came to copyrighting pretty fast. So just a little bit of background about me. I've started my business in 2019 as a self love coach, and I've done all the things. I've joined so many masterminds and online groups, taken so many courses and done all my homework, build my email list, gotten in front of different audiences, gone on many telesummits, blah, blah, blah, you get it. So I won't say that I've done every single thing you could think of, but I've done most, I've done most things that we are generally told what to do in marketing, but I could not figure out how to make money.
And this issue really left me into debt. I had tens of thousands of dollars of debt I owe because of the mastermind and things that I've joined. But one thing that I really am grateful for is how much I Implemented what I learned and how much I still am very much a student of learning stuff. Even if the money didn't come right away, the lessons and the tips that I learned helped me be a smarter business owner and think in business and think about the things that I spend my time, my energy, my money, my focus on in a different way, and also I got to meet so many people along the way that probably helped more than anything because when I pivoted to copywriting in 2021, that group of people that I've learned along the way with these masterminds and programs, I kept in touch. I had virtual coffee chats with every now and then.
And those were the first people who either bought my copywriting services or referred me to people. And then the other thing I want to do is - that feeling of looking out for one another without having to heavily discount yourself because I was a brand new copywriter in 2021. I did my own referral program where if someone referred me, I would give them 10 percent off the services rendered.
So if the service. was 1500, the person who referred me would get $150. That spread like wildfire considering that I had a bunch of online friends And there were so many people who could need different forms of copywriting in which I started out with social media writing. So the caption writing for LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, website copywriting, any type of emails, sales pages, so just an array of different writing services and offered as many types of content writing as I could. Also in blogs, too - can't leave that one out.
And this was before I knew about ChatGPT. So I was a very busy lady, but I had lots of connections. I utilized them. I became a resource for them, which is my other marketing tip that I want to give. It's going back to the expert thing, but in a different way. If you do not feel because of imposter syndrome, or maybe you are really just new and you still have a lot of learning to do, but if you do not yet feel like you are an expert in your field, it's okay.
The best part about learning stuff is that we now get to teach it to other people, and we also get to be a resource to another person. When I first started off with copywriting, and I didn't know much, I was sharing other copywriters' stuff, information, captions, graphics, whatever, emails, I was sharing it on social media. I was sharing it via email because I wanted to be resourceful. When I look at all of the big copywriting agencies, as well as copywriters who are in that six figure range, the seven figure range, they are constantly being a resource. So even if they're not constantly pushing out content, they are finding ways to let people know about other different copywriters or other experts or this workshop is coming out about how to have powerful subject lines. And I would share all that stuff. I'm learning how to tweak stuff and do it my way. I'm learning how, Oh, this actually works for my client. My client got this results. Let me try this. I'm doing, I have three spots where I can help you with just your website hompage, DM me if you want me to help you with that in exchange for a case study. I'm getting more comfortable with sharing stuff and putting stuff out there and then asking people, can I work with them?
So in exchange for a case study, now I have results and now I feel more confident charging my price, which is another thing. A lot of different masterminds and industries will tell you that you need to come right out the bat, charging 10, 000 or charging a number that feels very uncomfortable for you.
And I have mixed feelings about that. I think that we should always check inventory and see if something feels too comfortable for us in terms of charging our worth. Yes, you should definitely charge a little bit more than that because most of the time, especially women, we are discounting how much time it may take us to do. We are discounting the customization that we're giving in this package. There's so many different factors, right?
So, yes, you should charge a little bit more. Especially with more case studies or testimonials with more credibility, with more experience, with different types of content in learning information that you are giving to your clients. Definitely charge more.
However, if this is your third month in business. And you are still trying to register your business on the legal side, and you are one person operating business, and you are just absorbing knowledge and information at a speed of light. And you feel like you really want to charge 10, 000. Don't do it. Because who is going to believe it if you do not believe that price? Who's going to believe it? If you can answer people's objections, if you've gone through many case scenarios, and you can prove that your services are really resourceful, definitely charge it. But if you don't feel it yet, it's okay. It's okay.
So those are just some few marketing tips that I want to share with you. And in terms of for the last quarter of the year, now that we are In our fourth quarter, I definitely want to end the year with some more tips, but I'll just share with you what my thoughts are for the beginning of the quarter.
And that is to find something fun to do that you can add into your marketing that just breaks up. It's like a pattern that just breaks up what people assume that you're going to already do.
So for example, I've never done a podcast about business and I'm really excited about it. But this is something that is different than what I usually do, and who knows how the feedback will happen, but it allows me to be really creative. It allows me to experiment in a different territory and to see, do I like this? Do I not like this? Do I want to try something else? And ultimately, It lets me explore a different part of myself that wanted to do business a different way, but didn't have the time or didn't have the resources or got overwhelmed at the different processes.
And I'm really excited about this. I don't have any goal in mind other to just have fun with this podcast. Okay. And it wouldn't be On A Living Spree if I didn't drop some gems about balance in life and business from my perspective.
So I want to always give advice and always put that disclaimer as this is work for me. This is in my opinion, this is from my experience. This is what works best for me because I am an African American woman who lives in Washington, D. C., in a very urban city, and I have grown up in this city all my life. Well, I graduated from Penn State University, so I lived in Pennsylvania for four years. But my experiences, my tips, my life perspective will always be just a little different than someone who didn't grow up or didn't, you know, attend the same school or work the same jobs as me.
And that's okay. We're all on our different journey, and this is something I tell myself when I get into comparisonitis, looking at other people's timelines, like, oh, they got married, they had a baby at this, and I'm this age and didn't happen for me yet, blah, blah, blah.
So I just want to, you know, tell you that. And keep that in mind as you hear any advice from me or frankly, anybody else. I feel like this has been my best year in business. And this has also been the most life changing year for me so far.
Let's start with the business part. The most life changing part for my business had to come with having an assistant who, and not just an assistant who's a VA who can check emails for me, which is great, but I mean, someone who really can assist me get to the next level in a way that masterminds and business programs could not do.
My cousin said the other day that people can help you, but you have to save yourself. And I go back and forth on whether I agree with that, whether I like saying that, how that feels for me, but what I will say is if I can interpret that for myself, it's that joining any program or you know, anything is great, but it alone cannot do the work for you. You know what I mean? It can't just like be a magical pill.
So I knew that being in those programs, it's going to help me, but I need someone to keep me really accountable in marketing my business. So I hired Daya in November, 2022. And I want to say within two months of hiring her, actually within a month and a half of hiring her, I got onto the Goal Digger podcast. I wrote the podcast outreach email and Daya pressed sent. I actually wrote that email January 2022. So I let it just sit around for a year, but I told her that was one of the main reasons I wanted to hire her. So January 2023. She sent out that podcast email from my email account. Well, actually she sent it in December and I got a response back in January. I got on the podcast early February, came out later February and my whole business changed how much I was bringing in, the type of clients I was working with.
I had brand deals with Target, T Mobile, Starbucks, just really having a lot of different types of companies and people to write for. I've written for spas, I've written for different nonprofits, I've written for the National Association of Black Veterinarians, the list goes on and on, and even TV stations, C SPAN. So I'm really, really fortunate to have that one podcast take all for my business.
And at the same time, I was going through deep depression. I've gained so much weight outside of business. Business was thriving. Life was turning me up. I was going through a deep, deep depression. And I was struggling with being single, being very overweight, being, um, TMI, but having some severe gut health issues, not really going to the bathroom regularly. I was dealing with a lot, and also being a caregiver, and also have to smile because I'm getting just like overstimulated by my phone with DMs, emails, texts, calls, like what you're on the Goal Digger podcast, which was amazing, but behind the scenes, I was really suffering.
And so there were a few things that I had to change. Not just get out of depression, because sometimes we think that's all it is. Oh, just depressed. We just need to stop being depressed. No, there were things that actually really had to change in my life. And if I did not have an assistant named Daya, it would have been really hard for me to address a lot of other things going on.
So I got help. And I want you to think about if you ever find yourself saying you cannot afford a VA or you cannot afford to get someone to help with the marketing on your team, think about like what is it really costing you and not in just some, you know life coaching way. Like, what is this costing you?
Cause I am a former self love coach. I trained as a life coach, but like also thinking about what could change for me if I just had someone help me press send on these emails or what could change for me if I had someone create all the visuals for my social media and I just write the captions or I even use chat GPT to write the captions, what could really change for me?
A lot.
And so I highly encourage you to think about the marketing part of your business and how much you can really set aside or budget to even do a one month trial to get some help and see how that feels. The other thing is when it comes to life, I found a few things that really, really helped me this year.
Number one, Insight Timer. I am an avid believer in meditating. I'm actually going to have one of these On A Living Spree podcast episodes dedicated to some affirmation and a quick meditation for business owners, which I'm really excited about. I can't keep secrets, obviously, but I just had to share that with you. But insight timer is a free app that helps with meditations, calming anxiety, depression, literally anything that you can think of, this app has a meditation for it and they do have a paid trial, but I used the free one and it's amazing.
The other one is I have an app called the I Am, and it gives me multiple daily affirmations that are positive, and it just keeps my mind flowing. Now, that is a paid app, but just this read positive stuff every time I pick up my phone that pops up on my home screen has done a lot for me.
Another thing is I decided to not go to therapy this year, which is insane to think about because I've been in therapy since I was nine or 10 years old, on and off. So to, you know, to take a break from therapy and to actually do book readings and listening to meditation and doing guided meditations with groups of people and going to the gym as my therapy has helped. Will I ever go back to therapy? Yes. But I had a really bad experience earlier this year and, and then I had another bad experience at a different organization that I don't think is necessarily with the people, but it just, both places were not for me. And so it was just kind of like my own golden sign to take a break from it.
I also love to work out, actually, I won't say I love to work out, but I also love how I feel after I work out. And one thing that I learned about that is, people who work out every day don't really feel motivated every day to work out. They may feel it's a discipline thing. One final thing that I'll leave you with: there are people in our lives, and there are things, whether they are our habits or they are our daily routines that are telltale signs of things that need to change, and they either make us feel really good about what we're doing or not that good about life.
Before you go to any tarot card reader, you can always pretty much answer most questions about your decision based on how you feel. And if you are, for example, in a friendship where you always feel like you are giving more than what you're getting, you are always showing up for that person, but they're not showing up for you. After you communicate that, of course, with that person, the way you feel about yourself and about that person and about the actual relationship is always going to be your guide on what you should do.
And I started listening to my feelings and my intuition more than I ever had. And I slowed down in a lot of ways with life and business, but I also had the most lived experiences of my life this year. I've traveled a lot. I've eaten in so many great places. I've been kinder to my body. I got my gut health back on track. I'm exercising. I laugh more this year than I ever have in my life.
And this has also been a complete shit show and at times really putting me in dark places, but I found different ways to meditate, to surround myself in positive affirmations, to surround myself around positive people has been the top tier thing that has saved both me and my business. And of course, as I mentioned, and I will continue to mention when people say, but I can't afford help. Maybe you can at least put a hundred to two hundred dollars aside and try out a VA as a trial to see if you feel any difference.
Okay. So I want to thank you so much for listening to this first solo episode of the On a Living Spree podcast, where we'll deliver a new episode every week. And I am so excited to hear your feedback. If there were any tips you were hoping to hear, please send any questions to support@heytoriautumn.com. Thank you so much for listening.
And there you have it. Thanks for listening to the On a Living Spree podcast. If you like this show, make sure you share, rate, and review on the Apple Podcast so that other beautiful humans get to follow along and know that they're not alone.
About Tori Autumn
Tori Autumn is a conversion copywriter committed to helping conscious entrepreneurs grow an impactful business through sharing their heartfelt messaging.
With over 8 years in journalism and persuasive writing, she has worked with many women entrepreneurs to launch, create and sell services via emails, websites, and sales pages-- some resulting in $100K and close to a million-dollar launches, just to name a few!
She has spoken on The Copywriter Club Podcast, the Goal Digger Podcast with Jenna Kutcher, and is a sought-after speaker in private groups on all things copy, marketing, PR outreach, and visibility in business.
On a Living Spree: Achieving Business-Life Balance in the Modern Era is a podcast hosted by Tori Autumn! Every week, Tori brings you an up close and personal look at how successful people balance their business and home lives. You'll hear inspiring stories from top entrepreneurs about their journey to success while learning valuable tips to help you achieve a healthy balance in your life. Feel inspired, get motivated, and be ready to take on the world with new insights from On a Living Spree!
