Leonie Dawson's Blog, page 16

The Biggest Mistakes I’ve Made In My Business

Dearests,

Want to hear some of the most hilarious and heart-breaking mistakes in my business?

Including the pretty pony game that cost me… $100,000 in lost revenue?

(I’m not even joking!)

It is JUICY. And as the young ‘uns would say: it has the tea. The tea about me. And allll the mistakes I’ve made in my business… starting with last year (coz I made a lot) and then also the mistakes I’ve made while starting & growing my business.

All this and more in this vulnerable podcast episode.

Listen above, or subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, PocketCast (or wherever else you listen to podcasts!)

Why I’m making this podcast episode

When you see me, you probably see someone who is pretty successful. I mean… I’ve won major business awards, written globally best-selling books and created over $13m in 10 hours a week.

But you don’t always see my mistakes. Behind every single successful person who has created big things, there is a litany of stupid, heart-sinking and often funny mistakes made.

To be human is to make mistakes. To make big things is to fuck up even harder.

So I wanted to share with you some of my mistakes. To be transparent with you, and for you to know that you’ve got company when you do a whoopsy-doo!

Want to read instead?

Sure! I’ve got a dot point overview for you…. annnnnd a full transcript because I ACTUALLY HAVE MY SHIT TOGETHER TODAY. It’s a miiiiiracle!

The mistakes I made last year:I had a productivity slump post ADHD diagnosisNot taking my kids out of a school that was toxic and dysfunctional earlierGetting dopamine addicted to gaming instead of my businessDidn’t invest enough energy in masterminding and making sure I was spending time with people who pushed me to new levelsCreated courses that were requested instead of coming from meNot blogging and writing consistentlyNot fixing podcast recording issueGetting stuck with my formula of blog posts of monthly reviews instead of sharing longer, more heartfelt postsNot being an Ingrid the ImplementerDon’t feel like I’m a great manager. Don’t know how to set priorities longer than a week.I think I oversold and undercreated.Didn’t do as much copywriting myself.Didn’t take full ownership of my results.While growing my business, my mistakes were:Hiring a large team.Thinking I needed to do business like anyone else.Hiring a narcissist.Not paying enough attention to the bottom line.In the very early days of business, my mistakes were:Burning out.Not taking good care of myself or giving myself the conditions I need to thrive.Trying to be all the things in every area of my life. My husband having to sit me down and write that list.Things that were not a mistake:I’ve never regretted putting my kids and my husband and our life as our central priority. The business HAS to fit around us.I don’t regret not travelling, going to conferences or flying all over the place to go to events.I don’t regret not having a high paid 1:1 coach. Just doesn’t work for my personality.I’m grateful to build a life and business that works with my ADHD and Autism. It’s still a gift to have a sensitive nervous system and a high throttling brain.I’m grateful that I don’t have to pretend to be professional or polished. I’m glad I made the decision to share the hard times publicly. To talk about post natal depression, my neurodiversity, experiencing hyperemesis gravidarum, rightsizing my business and the difficult times of life. I’d choose to do that over and over again. Fuck professional.Overall:

Mistakes are normal part of business.

They are experiments that gave you useful information.

Often you don’t know what’s the right option for you until you try.

Important to forgive yourself, accept yourself and keep exploring anyway.

Full Transcript:

Today I think I’m gonna do something a little bit different, and this is probably gonna be maybe a longer and more emotional podcast. I wanted to share with you mistakes I’ve made in my business, and I’m gonna talk about the mistakes I made last year and mistakes I made I’ve made, you know six years ago. And mistakes that I made in the beginning of my business as well.

I feel like, one, it’s fun. It’s always fun to hear about other people’s mistakes. It makes you feel less alone. And it’s also just really useful maybe for you to see that mistakes are a part of this process and that you can still be successful even when you make mistakes and you can forgive yourself and give yourself acceptance and know that that’s part of being human as much as it pains any of us to, to think that. But making mistakes is part of being human.

So I think I made quite a lot of mistakes last year, and it was kind of like all internal mistakes. And I realized this, like as I was doing my kind of yearly planning, I was going through my goal workbooks and I was doing my reflection of 2022. And I just wasn’t happy with, it wasn’t just the results, but it was the way that I was feeling inside me. I just didn’t feel like I was on fire last year. I didn’t feel like I was on soul purpose. I just didn’t feel thrilled with the body of work that I’d created. And so I was looking into what mistakes I made that, you know, that got me there. So first and foremost I was psychiatrically diagnosed with ADHD about halfway through the year.

And I usually when you are diagnosed with a ADHD it’s to be expected, but you have a period where your symptoms are even more exacerbated because you become very aware of them. And you just have this kind of ADHD regression. And I did, I had a massive productivity slump because I was just constantly head fucking myself, just like, oh, is this my ADHD? And oh, my dopamine levels must be low. And you just start thinking so much about the ADHD instead of just like getting on cracking on and doing the fucking thing.

So I don’t wanna over-identify too much with the ADHD this this year. I just wanna be like, you know what, cool. And I actually know how to work around this in a lot of ways.I’ve been doing this all my life. I don’t need to head fuck myself over this. I am reading Peter Shaman’s book “Faster than Normal” at the moment, and I think that’s a really useful reframe for me because it looks at the ADHD brain as being  a real entrepreneurial gift, and it’s recognising that it works at a much faster, faster pace than others. I think when I was like reading a lot of books and articles about ADHD of course it goes into the challenges so much. And so then you kind of over-identify with the challenges. For me, I wanna stay focused on the blessings of it while still giving myself the support and resources to make things even better.

Another mistake I made personally was that my kids’ school started going through… well it’s always been very up and down while we’ve been there for four years, but particularly in the last six months, it was really in crisis mode. And it was very, very stressful for me and my husband as parents having kids to go to that school. And I just wish that we just fucked it off earlier. I really do because it crushed me. It really did. And oh, I feel teary still thinking about it just because I was gaslit so much by school administrators in terms of being like, okay, this is going on. This is not good. And they’re like, no, that’s not going on. No, it’s fine. Everything’s fine. Like, that’s fucking bullshit. You’re lying. You’re absolutely lying. And they completely were lying.

So that was really difficult. And it’s very difficult togo to a place every single day to drop off your children when you have no idea who is going to be there that day, who’s in charge, whether they’ve got their shit together or if anyone’s gonna have a fucking blow up that day. It’s so frustrating and so difficult. I’m not gonna say the school’s name publicly, but if you’re here on the Sunshine Coast and if you’d like to know where not to go feel free to email me because I will let you know.

So I wish we just pulled the pin earlier. I wish we’d gone, you know what, this is fucked. This is really fucked. And just left a lot quicker and pulled our kids out much, much sooner rather than hung out for as long as we did, waiting for the new year to start. So I know we did what we thought was best, but it was just an enormous energy suck. And I was going to therapy and all that kind of stuff, as soon as we left that school, I realised I actually don’t need to go to therapy anymore. There wasn’t anything wrong with me. I was just in a toxic situation, a very toxic situation, and it was emotionally and abusive and it’s such a head fuck. So I feel fucking great now. Now, my kids are at a new school and it’s different from where they were. We were in an alternative style school. But they’re in a new school. We are really happy with how it’s going so far, and praise beeee, may it continue to be low drama, low crazy, please.

Anyway, so that’s like a more personal thing, but it definitely made a massive fucking impact on me. And as a repercussion of that because I was so stressed out, I started seeking out other ways for me to relax and increase my dopamine and all that kind of stuff. And so I started playing an online game, and you all will fucking laugh at this… But I played a game called Star Stables, which is this horsey game. It’s an online game and it’s very popular with tween teen girls around the world, and you get to buy horses and you train them up and you do races, and then you do different activities and you you can buy different costumes for your horsey.

And anyway, I got, I played it with my kids for a couple of weeks, and then they lost interest. I did not, I kept hammering that shit hard and I was playing it you know, a couple of hours at least every night. And what I realized was that I was dopamine addicted to gaming instead of being dopamine addicted to my business. So I liked going up the levels in gaming, my horse is trained to level 15 ohhhh lahhhh deeeeee dahhhh! Instead of going, oh, I’ve accomplished that goal.

And so I was using Star stables as a stress relief instead of what I’ve usually done, which has used my business for stress relief. And I know that sounds funny, but my business has always been the place that I can really feel like I am in control of the universe in one very small way. And it’s brought me a lot of dopamine over the years. So whenever I’m stressed, I’m always like, Woohoo, this is so great. I get to like work on my business because that’s gonna give me dopamine hits and it’s gonna really thrill me. And so by getting more obsessed with the horsey levels instead of the business, I think it costs me about a hundred thousand dollars in revenue.

A hundred thousand dollars guys, a hundred thousand fucking dollars. I am screaming. I do wanna say here I’m enormously privileged because, you know, my business makes so much money that it’s not a crisis for me to like lose a hundred thousand dollars, but it still just makes me wince, right? Like, oh, sweet Jesus. So if you’ve ever made a mistake in your business, was it you playing ponies online, costing a hundred thousand dollars? Fuck, fuck fuck.

Anyway, it’s really funny. It’s really funny. And also like, oh no, I don’t like that.

And I realised aside from the money this doesn’t make me feel great. I don’t feel like I’m living my best life when I’m not creating. And instead I’m playing pretty pony games. I get that I was doing it in order to try and relieve some of the stress of school the school situation, but wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. enjoy that one. Guys enjoy. I remember going for a walk with my darling friend Maddy, and I told her how much star tables potentially cost me, and we were just screaming with laughter on the street, just screaming. And she’s like, Leonie HORSES. Hundred thousand dollars! We couldn’t breathe we were laughing so much.

Oh, good fun, good fun. Hey, everything is content. It really is. Now other mistakes I’ve made apart from the, the ponies… hey usually people get addicted to horses. The cost of money in other ways, right? Maybe a bit of gambling, or you just own horses and they just cost you a lot of money, right? But surely it doesn’t cost you a hundred thousand dollars, it’s six months . No, it’s fine, it’s fine. I love and accept myself.

Okay, other mistakes I made, I didn’t invest enough energy, and this has been for a few years, a few years now, I didn’t invest enough energy in masterminding and making sure that I was really spending time with people who pushed me to new levels. You know, just making it the new, like the normal to have people who are just making really big shit happen. And I now have that. I’ve got a local mastermind group, I love them to bits. It’s just such a beautiful thing. But I forgot to consciously create that over a few years.

Last year I also created “Get organised!” and “How to hire and manage a VA” and those who are really highly requested workshops, but, I created them because they were so highly requested instead of me having that big soul urge to make something and be like, oh, this is the vision, this is what I need to create. And putting it out there and like, that’s okay. Like sometimes business is just like a combination of those two things. My  business is definitely a better combination of those two things. But I don’t feel as great when I’m doing stuff that isn’t just like a direct download. It’s just a different energy. And I do want to try and stay more focused on creating courses that are just coming from me. It’s not to say that those courses aren’t super helpful and useful for people, just a different energy I noticed.

As well last year, I really didn’t blog and write consistently. And I don’t think that was helpful. You know, blogging and writing for me are the way that I connect with my soul and the divine and I feel like that’s a place I do my best work. I just don’t feel like I did that. So I wanna recommit to doing more and more this year.

All right. My husband has just come home from running an errand for me, so I’m gonna go kiss him and then I’ll come back and I’ll do some more talkie talkie.

Back again, sugar plums. Well, that was a long kiss… not in the way that you think. I ended up going grocery shopping afterwards and now I’m back here. Hooray. And oh my God, I’m so thrilled. My new MacBook Air just arrived while I was out, and I’m just so thrilled. I’ve been using the same kind of MacBook Air for over 10 years now. I had two because one was maybe eight years old or older, and then the other one was like six years old. Um, and I bought them specifically because I liked the setup of the keyboard. I get RSI really easily in my wrist, so there’s only certain very specific kind of laptop and keyboard that doesn’t give me rsi. And so such was my obsession that for a while there I couldn’t use the new MacBook laptops that were coming out because of the angle and the way the keys were formed and that kind of stuff.
I bought one MacBook Pro that I couldn’t use because it hurt my hands. So Chris got to inherit that one, and then I really needed another one. And I ended up going to a local computer store and seeing if they had any stock. And they actually had stock of like a two, three year old laptop, out the back that was a brand new unopened MacBook Air from the era that I wanted. So I ended up buying that like $2,000. Ayway, I’ve been hammering these laptops and um, they both shit their pants at the start of this year, one shit its pants completely and needed its battery replaced for like the third time. I’ve just like kept on replacing these phone batteries. I thought I’m just gonna have to put this one out to pasture. And the other one, as soon as I had a couple of tabs open, just started dying.

And so I thought, this is ridiculous. I just need to now upgrade to a new brand new spanking laptop. Thankfully they’ve changed the form and changed the keyboards back to something that I can use. So it’s just arrived. I’m very excited. I’m very finicky about the laptops I use and I did feel guilty about that for a while, and my husband was like, what are you talking about? Writers always have like this one fucking vintage typewriter that they could only write with, you know, or one type of pen or one type of paper. So it’s okay for you to be very finicky about the one tool of your craft. So I appreciated that.

I’m very thrilled to have a new MacBook Air and Long, may it live? Long, may it live. The one has already died is a running joke between me and my friend Tam because years ago when we were living in Canberra. She was visiting me and we were doing a live stream that went for hours and hours. I think I was running a launch for the academy. And we weren’t gonna stop live streaming until we hit a certain number of members. , I think we live streamed like four or five hours. We got beers at one point and went out to the garden and having a fabulous time on the live stream and knocked over a beer onto the laptop. And we thought that was the end of days for that laptop. And no, it’s kept on going.

And I think it actually improved. I think it improved the quality of it. I’m just joking. We did have to, years later we had to replace the keyboard, but I’ve always had such good traction with my Mac laptops. They just last me for a fucking age and I use them like workhorses. So anyway, that’s my very excited new laptop vibes update. Let’s get back into the content that I really want to talk to you about today, which is about mistakes that I’ve made. So the some more mistakes that I made last year was, and this is a very small one, but I think it’s important. So my whole ritual at that point was when I was in the car and I had something to say, I would pop my Anchor app on record and I’d shove it down the top of my overalls or whatever I was wearing and just talk into it while I was driving my car.

And I had to do a lot of driving at that point to do school run. So I always had plenty of opportunity to do that. And then at one point my app started malfunctioning and I would record a whole bunch of stuff and then it wouldn’t save. And it was so frustrating and I kept on happening over and over and over again. I’d finish the end of the drive, I’d press stop, I’d press save, it wouldn’t save, it just disappear. And I was like, well, fuck, I just spent all that time. And so I ended up repeating myself over and over again. It still wouldn’t save. And then I was always in a rush by the time I got to the end of the destination. And so I wouldn’t think to fix the app or troubleshoot what the issue was.

So, for a few months there, I didn’t really podcast purely just because I kept on having this app issue and my whole recording process was fucked. Looking back on it, I was like, probably could have spent a couple of minutes at home, sent myself a message like, fix that fucking app because do the podcast, actually publish the podcast. But I didn’t. Other issues I think I had was I started doing this tradition of monthly review posts about my business and my life, and it would include a lot of pitches and data or statistics, all that kind of stuff. And it was fun to start off with, but then it started feeling like a real chore and they were quite a lot of work to pull off and not just in a way where I can just like creative stream every thought that I had.

It was just that there’s lots of components to it. And so and so I started feeling hemmed in by that formula and I don’t do well with formulas and I don’t do well with the consistency of creating the same thing over and over again. I think part of the issue was is that usually I would like do a little write up about the things I’d done that month, and they were usually in dot point form. And so I would end up sharing things on there, like things I’ve done that ordinarily I would write a long blog post about that really went into the depth and the details and how it felt and all those experiences. But because I was doing this formula, then I would write this content that was just more dot point and I just don’t feel like I was my best creative work.

And it also just didn’t give me that like kind of spiritual high I get from really in depth long form writing about something. So I think doing away with doing the monthly review post at this point is a good idea just so I can try out a different form of creativity again, I think as well. Other issues that I did last year was I disobeyed my own advice and I wasn’t Ingrid the implementer. So if you’ve done any of my courses, you know that there’s three types of learners. There is Eleanor, the enthusiastic who signs up for a whole bunch of courses and books and programs and mentoring and whatever and then does absolutely fucking nothing with them. Then there is Ruby, the reader, who just buys it but then and reads it all but doesn’t actually do the homework.

And then there’s Ingrid the implementer who chooses to invest in a program, then goes through, does all the lessons, and does all the homework in the lessons and implements the ideas into their business. And, it’s a really important concept and a really important way to get the most amount of value out of like, you know, education and learning new shit. And I feel like I just, I slipped off upholding Ingrid the Implementer principles and I went more into kind of Ruby The reader, or sometimes I think Eleanor the Enthusiastic. I wasn’t too bad at just like buying a lot of shit and not using it. It was more just like reading and not doing anything with them. So I really wanna re recommit to being an Ingrid the Implementer with any learning that I do.

Last year I also just felt like I just wasn’t a great manager, but the thing is for me, it’s not what I’m born to do. It really isn’t. And I keep learning this lesson over and over again. It’s just not my jam. With the current team set up, it worked really well for a while. So I had a person doing customer service emails, and then I had an assistant who was my online business manager, and she was managing a lot of the sales and launches and stuff like that. And I realized like, I’m really not taking full ownership of my results. Something needed to change. In my yearly planning, I realised I think I need to actually go back to being my own online business manager again.

I still need a VA – just a part-time assistant who does all of the customer service emails and does all the tech background and stuff like that. But I really need to make sure that my fingers are all over the sales and marketing and copywriting, all that stuff. Most importantly, I need to make sure that I have full ownership of the results that I have because when you’ve got an online business manager, there’s a different kind of expectation usually. So I wasn’t sure how that would work out because I dearly love the assistants I have now and I didn’t wanna mess them up in any way. Then my primary assistant came to me and for health reasons, she needed to reduce her work intensity for six months.

And she that that would mean that she might need to quit, even though she didn’t wanna. And I was like, no, we can actually just like work this out because I am happy to step back into being up my own online business manager and launch manager, sales manager myself. So now they’re doing all the customer service and tech support and all that kind of stuff, and that’s great. And then I chatted with my customer service person and they were more than happy just to not be doing customer service anymore because they’ve got a whole bunch of other projects to work on instead in their own business. So it ended up just working out beautifully for everyone.

And I’m very, very grateful. I’m very grateful for my two assistants. They’ve worked with me for a long time now, and I just so appreciate that they are so empathetic, understanding, willing to have communication and feedback. The amount of people that I’ve hired who have fucking tantrums, like a toddler or refuse to just be just clearly communicate their needs or their concerns or their worries. It’s mind boggling. So the two that I have had been working with have just been incredible and I’m just so freaking grateful for them. So those are kind of the lessons of the last year for me in terms of the mistakes I made, the tweaks I wanted to make. I think in terms of historically the mistakes I’ve made in my business, there’s been some that I’ve just learned huge lessons from.

The first definitely is hiring a large team. So my business was growing and growing and growing, and the way that I thought I needed to deal with that growth was to, you know, hire more and more team. And along the way I realized that I hate that, I hate it. I hate managing staff. I do not like having a large team. I do not like managing people. And there’s just something about my brain that’s like, I inherently don’t understand most people. That’s likely because I’m autistic, so I never understand when people aren’t just straight with me and like, you know, empathetic and have clear communication. I don’t like dealing with people drama whatsoever. I joke but it’s not really a joke: I really do prefer to only work with neurodiverse people. Neurodiverse people only because I understand that my understand how their brain brain works and I understand that they will clearly communicate to me what they’re going through.

Where I can’t work out neurotypical stuff, the subtlety and the insinuation that I should know something I haven’t been told something, I don’t get that at all. And so it was actually just heartbreaking and hugely stressful, for me to go through having a large team. The thing that I discovered is that when you have a large team, you have to work harder, not less, right? So I usually only work like 10 hours a week. That’s how I’ve always done it historically in my business. Because I was working full-time, then I had a baby, and then I had another baby, and that’s where I wanted to place my time was on my family. So that 10 hours a week is, that’s just carving out that amount of time away from my other commitments. When I had a a team, I noticed that I had to work even more hours.

I was up to 20, 25 hours and that still seems less than most people, which totally is. However, for somebody like me who’s autistic, I still had very small children at that point that I wanted to be around for, and I felt like I was missing out on a lot of parenting stuff. And my physical body actually just can’t cope with that many hours at a desk, because I have hypermobility and my bones dislocate quite easily. So for that range of factors, working more hours is just not in my plan. I also found that I might have been working more, but I was doing less of the important work, the important work for me. So I couldn’t create as much. It was actually very, very difficult for me to carve out time for me to actually do the creative work in my business.

And it even got to the point where I’d have to start doing it on weekends because my work week no longer meant that I could create, which is just insane, right? Like you create a business purely because you wanna create and then you’re back to this place again where you have to create only on weekends because your job is sucking the life outta you doing things that you don’t wanna do. So a large team is not for me. I don’t foresee in the future that I’ll ever go back to having more than one or two part-time assistants. It took a few years to right-size my business. When people would leave, I wouldn’t replace them. I unfortunately had to fire a few people for not being able to do their jobs.

It was just kind of like this natural attrition. I didn’t just go one day, oh, well, I’m just gonna blow this whole thing up. No, it was kind of a weaning down process, but I still remember crying to my accountant and just saying, I just thought (having a large team) was the right thing to do. And it sucked. It sucked so bad. I feel like I’ve just made the most enormous mistake in hiring a team and then going through this process now of my, of reducing my team size back again. And he said to me, Leonie, when you’re in a high growth business like yours, you only have two options. Well, you’ve got three. The first is you hire a large team in order to deal with that business growth. The second is that you outsource a lot of your stuff.

So you are effectively hiring other agencies with their own staff to do that work for you. Then thirdly you can throttle your business growth or streamline so excessively so that you don’t have to, um, do either of those options. And the only way that you find out which one is the right one for you is by testing and doing it. And he said like, I’ve just seen it so many times. There’s no one right way to grow a business. It’s to do with the personal makeup, the personality of the founder, whether one is going to work better for them or not, because one of them isn’t inherently better than the other. They both come with pros and cons. It’s just working out what the pro and con for you is. So for me, I ended up doing a little bit of the outsourcing thing in that for a while I worked with a publish publishing agency to print and publish my books instead.

Now I’m doing print on demand again so that I don’t have to have a huge team to deal with that print experience. And then I also did, streamline my business as well. So those nice to haves, I just didn’t do anymore. I think as well, a part of this is I thought I needed to do business like anyone else. And whenever I get into that mindset, it’s just not the right one for me. I need to accept that I do business in a way that’s custom fit for me and me alone. And that’s a beautiful thing. I can definitely like take inspiration and get ideas from how somebody else runs their business and I can test it and try it out and see if it works for me.

But there is no one right way to run a business. And I am 100% allowed to create a business that works beautifully for me and for my gifts and for what I want in my life.

Another mistake I made was hiring a person with narcissistic personality disorder. You don’t find out until it’s too late and they’ve already wreaked a huge amount of damage. I can’t remember a time where I was more fucked up by a person than being around a narcissist, just working with a narcissist. Seeing how personally devastating it was to me and to my confidence levels.

And that is with I have a beautiful husband who is not like that whatsoever. I have a really lovely home life. I have a very high level of self-confidence and you know, a really good understanding of my own self-worth in a lot of ways. And how completely that my self-worth and self-belief got decimated by being around a narcissist. And it made me hyper aware of the fact that if you are in a romantic relationship with a narcissist, that would be even more debilitating. I had a husband in the background saying: “This is not okay. That doesn’t feel right whatsoever. I’m not happy about this person.”

I had this sanity check going on for me and even still, I was really broken by it. And it took, it took a while to heal from that experience. Afterwards, I’m grateful to know now the signs of narcissistic abuse. I’m grateful because iI can usually see the signs in it much sooner. And I can also see like the characters in my history where narcissism was at at play as well. You know, it was often like the most challenging relationships that I’ve had. I had one romantic relationship like that. And family relationships or friendship relationships where things just felt really fucking off. It’s usually because of narcissistic personality disorder. If you haven’t already, it’s, it’s useful to have a look at a narcissistic personality disorder checklist just so that you can be aware of what that’s like, uh, in case you come across it.

Another mistake I made, and this was years ago, and my husband was my saving grace once more was I wasn’t paying enough attention to the bottom line in my business. I was looking at the revenue and not the profit margins. And so I thought I was doing awesome cuz look at my top line. And then, my husband was like, “Hey, I’m seeing that we aren’t actually moving the financial needle here whatsoever. What are we doing? What do we need to change? We need to change course.”

One thing I want you to know about me is that I am a wife whose opinions are not always easily changed. I’m very grateful that my husband is very strong within himself. And so when I give him kickback for something he’s told me, he’s like, “okay, I get that you’re upset, but I’m still gonna keep raising it with you anyway.” Like he’s not particularly concerned if I don’t take well to his feedback. He still says: “I still need to tell you anyway. I’m still gonna keep telling you because red flag, red flag, red flag.” I’m very grateful for his grace and understanding and how solid he is in himself and for him to go, “Hey, babes, love you. And you’re fucking this part up.”

I appreciate that. When I was brainstorming this topic, I realized there’s these different phases of my business and in the very, very early days of my business, I was making different mistakes. So in the very early days, I definitely struggled with burnout a lot more because I just was running at my goals and, um, without any sense of work-life balance or rest or anything like that. In one particularly memorable moment, I was still working full-time in the public service. My business had a huge growth phase and I realized the only way that I could deal with it was to sleep less. And so I was staying up till midnight every night working after I’d finished a whole day at work for the working in the government.

And then I started waking up at like 5:00 AM or whatever. And one particularly special day, I jumped outta bed, you know and said to myself “okay, I’ve got, I’m gonna go outside and meditate for 100 breaths first and that’s good self care. And I was just so exhausted and ran outside into the backyard and did my meditation and then went to stand up and I collapsed head first into the ground. And I remember laying there kind of laughing at myself because my arms wouldn’t move to pick myself back up. I was just so exhausted. I’d just taken everything out of my fuel tank. And I thought, “well, you know, you really wanted to get grounded this morning, Leonie. And here we are… very grounded. The ground is in your face. And after that I was like, you need to go back to bed.”

So I went back to back to bed and over a long period of time I learned one, I can’t do everything. Two, having a customer service VA is, is, is critical for me personally because otherwise I can’t manage. And I also need to have essential stop work times and make sure I’m getting more than enough sleep. For me personally, I need at least nine to 10 hours sleep a night in order to function that is on the higher side, likely because I’m autistic. But it’s just what I need. I need to give myself that if I want to carry on. And at that point as well, I really learned about the economic cost of burnout. And what that means is I was doing these huge stints of work with my business while still working full-time and then I would burn out colossally and then I’d have to take three months off from working so hard in my business.

And at the time I realized that, for me, if I was burnt out, it meant that I was losing about $5,000 a month in income. So that’s like $15,000 for 3 months. And so I realized that anything I could do that cost under $15,000 to prevent burnout was a good investment. $15,000 was gonna be the cost of every single burnout. And so I needed to look at how I could prevent that burnout from happening. And sometimes that meant investing in things like massages and self-care and days off and things like that. And then it was also like crafting containers around my life so I didn’t burn out and I start like I got better and better and better at knowing when the train of burnout was coming for me and working out what I needed to do, pump the brakes and cushioning myself.

So that didn’t happen. Or when it did happen, it’s gonna be for far less time. So those, that was a really huge mistake I was making in the early days, but I needed to learn that lesson. Another thing I did was I didn’t take good care of myself and I didn’t give myself the conditions I needed to thrive in the early days. For example, I became the solid breadwinner for our family and we had a baby and we bought a house that only had one bedroom. And I couldn’t work in the house because like baby just knew. I couldn’t record anything cuz if she heard me, she would wail to be with me, you know? So I was going to go work at cafes.

I was working up trees in the local park. I’m not even kidding, I was working up trees. I was living in a really hot and humid place and at one point I got stuck up the tree cause there was a snake up there and it was just some wild west fucking shit. And I was, I remember talking to my mentor, Hiro Boga about it at a time, and she’s like, “Leonie, like, how, how can you expect yourself to do your best work in these conditions? You need to get a place.” And so I felt like a huge step to go and hire an office and it, but the answer was in plain sight from our house. I could look across to this set of buildings. I went and talked to a real estate agent and they had spare offices there and they lent it to me for 50 bucks a week.

It was amazing. 50 bucks a week and it made a huge difference to my life. So often you need to craft containers to help you do your best work. It doesn’t have to be like the best of everything, but at the very least something that’s not going to like, endanger your health or prevent you from doing work. Which some of the things I was doing did.

The last thing I really remember was when I had my first baby. I was going through postnatal depression and anxiety and having just such a god awful time. And my husband, he said “come on, we’re we’re gonna go out for, to go have some lunch together.” So we took baby with us and um, I think she was about maybe nine months old by that point.

And I was just so fucked up. I was so fucked up and so depleted. And he brought out two pieces of paper and he said, “Okay, can you just write down on this piece of paper everything that you think you need to be doing right now and everything that’s really important of like everything that’s your job right now and I’ll write down the things that are important for me that to be doing right now.” And so I started writing and I just kept on writing and kept on writing, kept on writing and turned the piece of paper over and just kept on writing. And at a certain point he’s like, did you wanna stop? And I’m like, I don’t think I’ve got it all yet. And he’s like, “Look for the purposes of this exercise, you, let’s just say that that’s good enough”.

And then he got me to read out to him all of the things that I thought I needed to be doing. And some of those, like all important priorities that I thought were absolutely essential was I needed to become or an organic gardener with my own veggie patch that I harvested every single day and made three nutritious homemade meal meals from every single day for us. And if I didn’t, I was a massive failure. And this is coming from somebody who’s never gardened and never been interested in the kitchen whatsoever. I just had all these beliefs in my head of what it meant to be a good mom and a good person. And I was driving myself absolutely fucking insane. And so every time, I was eating food that I hadn’t made that wasn’t from the organic garden, which was 100% of the time, I felt enormously guilty.

So I read it all out to my husband and my husband. I just still remember his face and him just going, “honey, no wonder you are feeling so overwhelmed. You know, like that’s a lot, that is a lot to take on. And those are things that are not particularly that important, nor have they ever been that important to you. So they don’t need to be that important now.” And he showed me his list and all of his list was be a good husband, be a good dad, at the time he was studying at university. So he was doing that so that he was doing that as well. He said, “Leonie in all the time that I’ve loved you, what, what I know is important for you is, um, you wanna be a good partner, you wanna be a good mom, you want to make art and be a creative and you wanna run your business and that’s it.

Everything else is just gonna have to go fuck itself. Like the organic garden can go fuck itself and, um, the, the homemade meals, it doesn’t matter. She’s being fed. And if we buy that stuff from the supermarket, that is completely fine and it’s what we’ve been doing our whole lives anyway.” It was just a real permission to just take off a lot of stuff off my plate and just have permission, just don’t have to give a fuck about it anymore. So that was a very nice relief, to know that. So those are the things that I think historically I’ve made mistakes with. An when I think about the things that I don’t feel were ever mistakes, there’s quite, there’s quite a number. I have never, ever regretted putting my kids and my husband and our life together as a central priority.

The business has to fit around us, not the other way around. I also don’t regret not traveling, not going to conferences or flying all over the place to go to events or masterminds or whatever. I’ve lived a very home-based life for a very long time. I’ve gone to fuck all things and I’m very happy. I might have missed out on a lot of opportunities outside that could grow my business, but I don’t give a fuck because one, I like being at home. And two, I don’t wanna be away from my family really. So no thank you. I also don’t regret the fact that I haven’t really had like a very high paid one-to-one business coach. I had kind of like a spiritual mentor for many years with Hiro Boga. But in terms of, you know, those really high paid business coaching experiences, it’s not actually been for me.

I did it once 10 years ago and didn’t really get a huge amount out of it. What works for me and my personality and the way my brain works is to buy books and buy programs and be an autodidact and do it in my own time. It also works for me to be a part of kind of more group mastermind experiences. And sometimes those are formal and sometimes like informal and some of those are paid. I don’t have to have a one-to-one coach to succeed. It’s just not my personality. I’m also really grateful for having ADHD and autism. Sure comes with challenges like everything does, but it’s still a gift to have a sensitive nervous system and a brain that takes in a lot more detail than the average brain and a brain that also works at a very different speed.

Like I always talk about the fact that an ADHD brain is like a Ferrari brain. It can go amazing speeds, but it’s gonna need a lot more servicing and a whole team of support to keep it on the road, much more than your average Toyota Camry kind of brain. So I’m grateful that I’ve got it and I’m also grateful that I get to build a life and business around it as well.

I don’t regret the fact that I don’t have to pretend to be professional or polished in my business. I’m glad I made the decision to share about hard times publicly. To talk about postnatal depression, my neurodiversity, experiencing illnesses like hyperemesis gravidarum, about the experience of right-sizing my business and the difficult times in life and business. I would choose to do that over and over again because fuck being professional with all of this.

I just want you to know you’re like not alone in making mistakes. Mistakes are a really normal part of business. They are experiments that give you really useful information. Often you don’t know what the right option for you is until you try it and you’re like, oh, okay, no, I didn’t like that. No, that didn’t work. That sucked. And it’s not something that you have to take like personally and be feel, oh, in pain about like, you are less than for that. It’s just information.

You’re like, oh, okay, cheers. Thanks for that. Like, and now I do something different. So I think it’s useful. I wanna normalize the experience of making mistakes in business and for you to know that you can make mistakes like playing pretty ponies that cost you a hundred thousand dollars or hiring a sociopath . It’s just important to forgive yourself and accept yourself and just keep exploring anyway, keep turning up.

Just because you’ve made one mistake does not mean that you’re shit, that you’re doomed, that you are bad at business, that you’ve got bad intuition, you’re a bad judge of character. No, it’s just the normal experience of life and you’re doing really, really well and I’m really proud of you and all of us for continuing to be human and do the things.

Anyway, I love you so much. I hope this has been useful and, may we make mistakes graciously and gracefully and forgive ourselves and keep turning up.

Anyway, byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Want to listen as a podcast episode now you realise all the good bits you are missing?

Here you go my loves. Gosh I’m so helpful.

Listen above, or subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, PocketCast (or wherever else you listen to podcasts!)

Big hugs to you, my fellow mistake makers!

I hope this episode brought you comfort and calm… or at the very least a few giggles at some of my shenanigans!

Let’s keep making miracles happen together.

Big love,

Leonie Dawson is the global best-selling author of the My Brilliant Year goal workbooks, and founder of the Brilliant Biz & Life Academy. She’s also created $13m in 10 hours a week without ever nailing an elevator pitch or having to put a bra on to leave the house. Leonie likes long walks but only if she’s reading about other people doing them while she lies in bed. She also doesn’t know how to end sente

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Why I’m returning to social media

My loves,

Two years ago, I took a 21 day break from social media. I stopped using it personally and for business. It was so delicious for my creativity and brain chemistry, I decided to make it a permanent break. My bootiful business kept rolling in the cash without social media. I got so many questions about marketing without social media, I even made a course about it which has become hugely popular. I was a full convert, and I never intended to return.

And then, and then.

As I was doing my yearly planning, I kept getting this annoying, persistent soul nudge.

I needed to create in different mediums again.

Let me explain: I love writing. LOVE writing. It’s my life blood, my soul medicine, the thing that drives me most creatively. Thus why blogging has continued to be a love affair for me for 18 years.

But there’s other ways I love to create as well. And I’ve missed creating video and livestreams. I feel like I can bring a different kind of magic to them. It’s a different aspect to my personality. I feel a bit more serious when I write.

When I connect via video, people more easily feel my joy and irreverence. And as I was thinking of creating videos and livestreams, I realised it made the most sense for me to multi-purpose them across different platforms including some social media channels.

Craving Creativity + Freedom

My two highest values are Creativity and Freedom. And all of a sudden, I was feeling hemmed in by my own past decisions. I was wanting to create, share, connect and felt like I was cutting off my ability to choose the ways I wanted to express that.

Then I ran a beautiful in-person workshop. And it was my first in-person event in 5+ years. And golly gosh, it was just magic. To be able to hold people in my arms again like the hugger I am. To get to see their beauty, face-to-face. To get to hear their names and stories and fall in love with them.

And I realised I’d missed my connection with you all. I’d started feeling like I was shouting into an echo-ey void, when what fuels me is this relationship we have together. I want to do more live events. I can’t wait to see some of you at the Heart Centred Business Conference. And I want the ability to keep the conversation and connection going in whatever way that calls me.

I’ve been getting my head stuck up my own asshole

I also noticed how often on my sabbatical I’d done this:

I’d open Facebook once every few weeks to check on my kids’ school FB groups for photos and school announcements. And sometimes I’d see random posts and want to connect or help… but then feel self-conscious and feel like I couldn’t incase anyone saw me and I looked disingenuous. Basically, I was head-fucking myself on my own rules. Which isn’t conducive to Creativity and Freedom and Connection.

I felt really worried about appearing disingenuous for leaving social media only to return. Like the experiment had failed somehow. That I’d lied and my business wasn’t making money without it. That my course about non-social media marketing wasn’t valuable & useful.

I talked to business friends about it.

They gave such beautiful counsel.

Amanda Rootsey and Cass Deller, I’m so grateful to be so seen by you both. 

I talked to my husband (my chief counsel). He too was supportive. The message was clear:

Just do whatever feels right to YOU, Leonie. THAT is what makes the magic in your business and in your life.

So that’s what I’m going to do.

I don’t know exactly what or how I’m going to create or connect yet.

I just need to say it publicly. To give myself the freedom and permission to dream up new dreams. To play, explore, see what works for me and what doesn’t.

I’m still going to be making sure that I use social media intentionally and carefully so it doesn’t consume my time or inner peace (just like I teach in a module of Marketing Without Social Media).

How I will use social media intentionally:I won’t be downloading social media apps on my phone.I won’t be on ALL social media platforms doing ALL the things. I’ll test and explore and choose the platforms and content types that work best for ME. Everything else can go fuck itself.I won’t be endlessly scrolling other people’s social media in the mistaken belief that I’m “doing market research”.I will batch create & schedule content.I will measure & track to make sure I’m making maximum impact with minimum effort.I won’t spend my days on social media in the mistaken belief that’s my job.I will take complete social media breaks whenever I need.I’ll continue using BlockSite to keep social media websites blocked on my website, and only unblock when I have tasks to do on it. I’ll use a timer to do those tasks.I will continue to actively market outside of social media. I will not regard social media marketing as the most important or only method of marketing.I will concentrate my efforts on CREATING instead of CONSUMING content.I give myself complete permission to say fuck it all and burn it all down again at a moment’s notice.

And I will share everything I learn with you along the way.

I thought I’d pre-answer any questions you may have:

Q: Is it because of money? Did marketing without social media fail?

No. I’ve brought in over $2m in revenue since leaving social media. I could absolutely have continued without social media and had a thriving business.

Q: What social media platforms will you be using?

I’m not sure yet. I’ll let you know once I’ve played some more. I have been considering doing Q&A videos on Tiktok like Madeline Pendleton or Kc Davis. If you’re on TikTok, you can find me here. Who knows what could happen!

Q: Are you going to be using social media personally again?

Undecided. I’ll test and see what feels right. It will need to be done in an intentional and constrained way to make sure it gives me joy and connection without losing hours to it. If it doesn’t feel good, it’s back on the fuck off list again.

So there you have it.

It’s always so funny when I make loud, public declarations… and then change my mind. Remember when I told the world I was only having one child? And then mere weeks later, having to be like LOLZ A BABY VISITED ME IN MY SLEEP I AM TOTALLY GOING TO GET PREGNANT AGAIN.

Or that time I grew a large team because that’s what I thought I should do, and then realising WRONG WAY GO BACK I HATE THIS SO MUCH. Or that time I closed down my beloved Academy, only to re-open it 4 years later.

I guess that’s the thing about sharing my journey publicly.

Nothing is set in stone. Journeys aren’t linear. They spiral and wind around. Opinions change as we do. Just as they should. What’s right for one moment in time isn’t right in another. What’s right for one soul isn’t right for another. And in the midst of it all, we can find grace. Grace for ourselves, and grace for each other.

I’m excited to see what’s next. All the Freedom + Creativity + Connection under the sun.

Thank you for sharing all of it with me.

All my love and gratitude,

 

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FREE goal workbooks for non profits!

Hey possums,

Are you a social worker or a part of a non profit organisation?

Does your organisation work with underprivileged or disadvantaged people?

Or do you know someone who is?

It’s that time of year again and we’d love to donate the digital My Brilliant Year workbooks to you for using with your clients – as many as you’d like!

We can supply both the digital Life and Business editions – whatever you feel would work for your clients!

Every single year since the beginning of the workbooks, we have been donating them to non profit organisations.

Sharing the workbooks is my way of being able to visit even more places, helping raise spirits and creating change in the world.

To Apply:

To apply for free workbooks for your clients, just fill out the form here!

If you’re eligible, there’ll be a link at the end of the form which will take you the checkout page with a 100%-off discount already applied!

Those donated workbooks have been used by over 200,000 (!!!!) souls around the planet who needed them, including:schools using them for teenage girlswomen’s shelters in the United StatesIndigenous Australian women’s services in Sydney, Australiadisadvantaged women advocacy services in Cambodiaanimal sanctuary in the United Kingdom (used by their board to business plan their charity! Hooray!)aged and elderly services in New Yorkcancer survivors in Englandwomen’s charities in ZimbabweThe feedback from the organisations has been really, really wonderful.

Organisations got a lot out of it, their clients got a lot out of it. Clients felt much more inspired, motivated and empowered after using them, and often requested more workshops to have accountability about following through on their goals over the year.

Some essential admin notes:Please note these are DIGITAL EBOOKS, not printed books. We’ll provide you with PDFs and a licence to print as many as you need. PDFs can be printed out or filled out electronically. You’ll also receive a short guide with instructions/suggestions on how to use the workbooks with clients.You can use them with as many clients as you like – the more the merrier!YES – if you’ve received them in past years, we’d be delighted to continue donating to you!This offer is ONLY for registered non profit organisations. This is not a workbook giveaway free for all. This is not for individuals. This is not for practitioners to giveaway to paying clients. This is only for registered non profit organisations. Please don’t apply unless you are one. Please do not waste my team’s time who could be helping real non profits. If you aren’t sure if you are one or not… you aren’t, so please don’t apply. (I’m sorry if this sounds snarky, but holy dooley we’ve seen some doozy requests over the years!)If you are not a non profit, YOU CAN ORDER WORKBOOKS HERE.
To apply for free workbooks for your non profit, COMPLETE THE APPLICATION HERE!

I’m SO delighted to work with even more organisations this year to help even more beautiful souls grow, evolve, dream, hope, transform + make their own miracles happen.

Together, we’ll change the world. I totally believe and know that with my whole heart.

Thank you so much for all the work you do.

big ole love

FREE GOODIES:

Newsletter with absoloodely everything I createWeekly love lettersPodcast: Leonie Dawson Refuses To Be CategorisedA library of free treasures

BOOKS:

My Brilliant Year workbooks for 2023 & beyond!Calm Christmas PlannerSalt: a hottttt romance novella (published under my pen name Lola Leigh)

COURSES:

The Brilliant Biz & Life AcademyHow to Hire & Train a VAGet Organised!Work Less, Earn MoreBehind The Scenes of a Multi-Millionaire’s Finances (only $7!)Sales StarMarketing Without Social MediaMoney, Manifesting & Multiple Streams of Income40 Days To A Finished Book40 Days To Create & Sell Your E-Course

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The Autism Unmasked Podcast

Hi loves!

Thrilled to share my first interview of 2023! I had the most delightful chat with Nicky from the Autism Unmasked podcast.

Press play below for a cheeky preview:

https://leoniedawson.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Nicky-Collins-Facebook-Post-3000-×-3000px-15.mp4

Here’s what marvellous Nicky had to say about the ep:

Today I talk to Leonie Dawson about their late autism and ADHD diagnosis. Leonie shares with me how she has achieved phenomenal success within her business without burning herself out or losing out on precious family time.

Ready to listen?

Just click HERE!

It’s an honour to share my story & Autism journey with you all.

Love always,

FREE GOODIES:

Newsletter with absoloodely everything I createWeekly love lettersPodcast: Leonie Dawson Refuses To Be CategorisedA library of free treasures

BOOKS:

My Brilliant Year workbooks for 2023 & beyond!Calm Christmas PlannerSalt: a hottttt romance novella (published under my pen name Lola Leigh)

COURSES:

The Brilliant Biz & Life AcademyHow to Hire & Train a VAGet Organised!Work Less, Earn MoreBehind The Scenes of a Multi-Millionaire’s Finances (only $7!)Sales StarMarketing Without Social MediaMoney, Manifesting & Multiple Streams of Income40 Days To A Finished Book40 Days To Create & Sell Your E-Course

The post The Autism Unmasked Podcast appeared first on Leonie Dawson | Goals, Marketing + Creativity For Glorious Humans.

Finding Peace

Dearests,

The day is born exactly how I like it: grey, overcast, a chance of rain. This is what I call perfect weather, especially during summer. Summer with its blinding brightness and heat and tourists. I prefer the days on the beach when it is wild and windswept and empty. I prefer non-summer weather, but more specifically subtropical non-summer. When the weather is mild but not cold. There’s a chance of rain and a cardigan and maybe just maybe I’ll wear closed in shoes. 9 months of the year it’s perfection here, for me. Today, blessedly, is a cardigan day. Maybe not out there racing about on heated concrete carparks, but here in my little nook, it is.

I started this year feeling too constrained by my office set up. When we bought this beautiful home, my desires for a separate office were at a low ebb. I’ve had them previously and found I didn’t often use them. So an office here for me was an afterthought. I thought I’d take up residence in the smallest room in the house, a desk crammed in beside a guest bed. After 6 months though, I realised it wasn’t enough. Especially when I had burgeoning dreams inside me to be more intentional and intense with my business this year. I stayed awake for a few hours one night worrying about it, wishing I’d made better choices.

But then the next day, a sweet miracle: my youngest kid sighed softly and said “I really wish my room was in here instead, Mummy.” I asked her why: she coveted its large, bright windows and closeness to her big sister. Her room was bigger but darker. We decided to sleep on it, but the next day the answer was obvious. We spent a day moving things around, and now we’re both blissfully happy in our new rooms. Her, looking out over the front garden and street with great gads of light. Me in my dark, comforting nook with its built in desk. Guest bed set up like a daybed. Lamps in each corner. Art and collages and statues and photos and notes to myself. Room for a reading corner: an old armchair, an antique sidetable we found in Tasmania, a chipped blue cupboard of books. I’m writing here now, surrounded by my favourite things. I am grateful.

Looking back over the last year, I don’t feel particularly proud of anything I’ve created. I don’t feel like I did my life’s work. I don’t like that feeling. And I know it was a rough year, full of personal calamities. A family member’s cancer diagnosis. Two depressive episodes. A difficult neighbour. Buying, moving and selling a house (despite it being a wonderful change, it was still an enormous transition). Having to talk to the police more times that I ever have before due to other people’s bad behaviour. My cousin’s death. An awful thing happening. Six months of mayhem at my kids’ school before we pulled them out. It was a lot. A lot of compound stress that is still finding its resolution.

A few weeks ago, I told my love that I still didn’t feel at peace over my cousin’s death. He listened and understood. “Maybe he’s not at peace yet, hon. Maybe it’s still finding its way home.” I nod, tears brimming. I just want him to be happy.

And then this tender miracle. I see a viral video on my cousin’s birthday. A bloke working on an oil rig, making videos about his hilarious co-worker. He’s got the same long, dyed green hair and wispy goatee and blue eyes as my cousin. Same nerdy sense of humour. And somehow, it brings me peace. Somewhere, somehow, out there in alternate reality, my cousin is happy. At peace on an oil rig. It makes no sense at all, but it makes all the sense in the world.

Here I am, on this cloudy day with my rainbow jumper on. Sitting surrounded by colour and beauty and quiet. Committing myself to writing more. Remembering that there’s something healing about this. This is the place where the world begins to make sense again.

Thank you for being here with me.

I love you,

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Leonie’s Best Books 2022

Precious humans,

It’s my favourite time of year. Not because of that whole Christmas thing, though that’s fine too. This is something better than that. I GET TO TALK ABOUT MY FAVOURITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR. *AND* IT IS WORKBOOK SEASON!

If you’ve been around these parts for any length of time, you’ll know this is an annual tradition I’ve been doing since 2012. You can find all the yearly book lists here.

As always, this is not a list of the best books published for the year – just the books I read in that year. As they say in High Fidelity, the records are organised autobiographically.

How many books I read in 2022

First up: the big question! How many books did I read this year?

This year I read just 150 books… nowhere near my personal 2019 record of 400 books. Totally fine especially considering I developed an eye condition that seriously curtailed a lot of my binge-reading habits.

WHAT FORMAT I CONSUMED BOOKS IN

Before developing my eye condition, I was reading majority Kindle with some paperback.

Post-eye condition, I haven’t been able to read books on Kindle or trade paperbacks (the smaller size). Instead I’m subsisting on larger sized paperbacks and large print books. The large print books are way more difficult to source & are heaps more $$$. I know my love has bought me a Kindle Oasis for Christmas. It has a larger screen and amber coloured light. I’m hoping it will give me a digital reading option again.

RIGHTO! THAT’S ENOUGH PRE-AMBLE! ON WITH THE GREAT BOOKS!Non Fiction

The School by Brandon James Murray

The heartbreaking and tender stories of a classroom by an Australian teacher.

White Tears, Brown Scars by Ruby Hamad 

Anti-racist education by an Australian journalist.

The Life-Changing Magic of a Little Bit of Mess by Kerri Sackville

I love a good “fuck cleaning!” book. Bahahahahah!

Strap on a Pair: A Middle-Aged, Middle-Management, Middle-Class Moms Quest for Something More by Abby Lou Walker

Love this business memoir by my mate Abby from Vivian Lou.

Break the Internet: In Pursuit of Influence by Olivia Yallop 

One of my favourite books of the YEAR. If you’re in online business it’s a fascinating read!

You Can Buy Happiness (and It’s Cheap): How One Woman Radically Simplified Her Life and How You Can Too by Tammy Strobel

A wee tome on life & financial simplicity!

All of This: A Memoir of Death and Desire by Rebecca Woolf

I’ve followed Bec’s blog for… 12 years? More?

Her latest memoir on losing her husband and grieving a complicated relationship is brutally honest and tender.

Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs by Beth Ann Fennelly

This book made me vacillate between sniggering hard and gasping in shock. A work of art.

Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May

This was another of my very favourite books of the year. I’m a new Katherine May convert, and I’ve bought and pre-ordered her other books. I love the quiet and thoughtful way she writes.

Ken Done Art Design Life by Ken Done
I love Ken Done’s positivity, colour and long-lived creative career. I so enjoyed this collection of art and essays! He has continued to innovate and is so committed to his family. It’s a beautiful thing.

Graphic Novels & Memoirs

Come Home, Indio by Jim Terry

Haunting graphic novel memoir by a Native American cartoonist.

Everything is an Emergency by Jason Adam Katzenstein

Graphic novel memoir by a person with OCD.

How To Have Feminist Sex: A Fairly Graphic Guide by Flo Perry

Got some huge insights out of this. Totally worth it. And am keeping for when my kids become teens.

A Bathroom Book for People Not Pooping or Peeing but Using the Bathroom as an Escape

Short and ridiculously funny… made me snort out my nose.

They Called Us Enemy by George Takei

Graphic novel on George Takei’s childhood. I had no idea about that part in history where in the US, they arrested Japanese-American residents and put them in concentration camps for years! An important read.

Kimiko Does Cancer: A Graphic Memoir by Kimiko Tobimatsu

Thoughtful, beautiful graphic memoir on a young queer person dealing with cancer.

Go to Sleep (I Miss You): Cartoons from the Fog of New Parenthood by Lucy Knisley

I adore all of Lucy’s books, and I just INHALED this one. Would make a beautiful gift for new mamas too.

Dear Sophie, Love Sophie: A Graphic Memoir in Diaries, Letters, & Lists by Sophie Lucido Johnson

A poetic series of letters from a woman written to her younger self.

How to Do Hard Things: Actual Real Life Advice, on Friends, Love, Career, Wellbeing, Mindset, and More by Veronica Dearly

This was 10/10 adorable.

Succulent Wild Woman (25th Anniversary Edition): Dancing with Your Wonder-full Self by SARK

I first read this book 20 years ago and it was one of the most life-changing turning points of my life. I still adore SARK’s work, she has been an enormous inspiration to me.

HIGHLY RECOMMEND!

Amongst the Liberal Elite: The Road Trip Exploring Societal Inequities Solidified by Trump by Elly Lonon

This made me both snort with laugher and grimace in self-recognition. A VERY tongue in cheek graphic novel about a white liberal couple.

Audiobooks

Rich As Fuck by Amanda Frances.

I listened to this as an audiobook and holy shitter, it was PHENOMENAL. Absolutely adored it.

Full disclosure though: I have tried her courses & can’t recommend them for a few reasons. I really wanted to love them, and didn’t. But holy dinger this book is still fantastic though!

We Should All Be Millionaires: A Woman’s Guide to Earning More, Building Wealth, and Gaining Economic Power by Rachel Rodgers

Useful resource on wealth building.

Midlife and the Great Unknown: Finding Courage and Clarity Through Poetry by David Whyte

Could listen to this bloke read the phone book, but pair it with his magic stories and poems and you reach a certain kind of nirvana.

Bodhisattva Mind: Teachings to Cultivate Courage and Awareness in the Midst of Suffering by Pema Chödrön

Listened to the whole thing in 10 minute sections while doing enforced meditation (i.e. hot compresses for my beleaguered eyes.) Pema is good medicine for the soul.

Autism & ADHD

Different, Not Less: A neurodivergent’s guide to embracing your true self and finding your happily ever after by Chloé Hayden

I love Chloé’s bright sparkling ASD spirit and am so grateful she’s in the world!

Button Pusher by Tyler Page

A graphic memoir about Tyler’s childhood diagnosis of ADHD.

Sensory: Life on the Spectrum by Schnumn

An anthology of comics created by Autistic peeps.

LGBTQIA+ Studies

Fine: A Comic About Gender by Rhea Ewing

Part memoir, part comic interview series about gender.

A Quick & Easy Guide to Asexuality by Molly Muldoon & Will Hernandez

Don’t understand asexuality? This is the place to begin!

Welcome to St. Hell: My Trans Teen Misadventure by Lewis Hancox

Graphic memoir of a trans teen.

The New Queer Conscience by Adam Eli & Ashley Lukashevsky

I’ve followed Adam’s work for years. I so appreciate his message!

Romance

The No-Show by Beth O’Leary

I’m still chasing the high from Beth’s first book The Flat Share, but this one was pretty wonderful too.

Romancing the Duke & How to Catch a Wild Viscount by Tessa Dare

These ones are re-reads. Tessa is my comfort read.

The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood

I went on an Ali Hazelwood BENDER this year… starting with this one and continuing with even more hot nerdy romance:

Under One Roof (The STEMinist Novellas, #1) Stuck with You (The STEMinist Novellas, #2)  Below Zero  (The STEMinist Novellas, #3)  

The Wedding Date by Jasmine Guillory

All her romances are top notch!

I went on a Cat Sebastian BENDER, and I regret nothing. She is the Queen of queer Regency romance!

A Delicate Deception Two Rogues Make A Right A Duke In Disguise The Ruin of a Rake

One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston

Surreal, dreamy LGBTQIA+ romance.

The Charm Offensive by Alison Cochrun

Scrumptious gay romance.

The Cheat Sheet by Sarah Adams.

Hot. Would have been hotter if there it was more body diverse, but sure.

The Kiss Quotient – by Helen Hoang

Re-read this bish TWICE this year. One of my favourite neurodiverse romances.

More re-reading of some favourites – and two of the Bridgerton series – Romancing Mister Bridgerton and The Viscount Who Loved Me.

Kid’s Books

Billy and the Minpins by Roald Dahl & Quentin Blake

Re-read it to the kids. Still adore it wildly, still cry on the last page.

I started reading David Walliams books to the kids and we got very into it. We tore through The World’s Worst Parents and Gangsta Granny, and quickly ordered more!

And of course…

Where would I be without the gifts I made myself 13 years ago that change my life year after year?

The life & business goals workbooks are my dream come true… that helps birth even more dreams come true. I’m grateful that 500,000 other gorgeous humans have found the same in them!

Sending you SO much book love!

Here’s to another miraculous year of books.

Love,
Your resident book whore…

Plan for an incredible year in 2023
with my powerful, proven goals planners!

Grab your workbooks for 2023 today!

 

The post Leonie’s Best Books 2022 appeared first on Leonie Dawson | Goals, Marketing + Creativity For Glorious Humans.

How I Plan Million Dollar Years

Love bugs,

Today I’m going to be sharing with you exactly how I creatively plan million dollar years & the three tools I use to do that!

Everything I cover in the video:The statistics that changed my life!My number one tool that I absolutely cannot live withoutHow I use journalling in my life & bizMessy bullet journalling!A look into my to-do lists & habit trackersWhy I use two different types of calendarsThe software I use in my biz to keep us on track

Just press play!

Ready for the bestest news of the year?!

You can order your My Brilliant Year workbooks (formerly known as the Goal Getter workbooks) right now!

They’re my number one tool for planning million dollar years. I’ve been using them consistently for 14 years now (!!!). It’s something I use religiously – and I’m constantly amazed when I review each year’s at just how many of my dreams and goals came true.

Over the last 14 years, hundreds of thousands of women have used these workbooks with the most amazing results. It’s the best planning tool available to help you make your next 12 months an absolutely incredible year!

It uses simple yet powerful techniques to help you not only dream your biggest dream and set your goals, but to actually MAKE THEM HAPPEN too.

At the end of the day the tools don’t matter, you do.

As much as we planner groupies love all the tools, stationery & journals, all that really matters is you.

Experiment and see what works for YOU. For your life, your brain, your sanity & your productivity.

And if you were looking for a sign?

Yes. You should go make that thing. Stop scrolling & go make some magical stuff. The world is waiting for you.

All this planning stuff is to help you bring the richness & beauty inside you out into the world so you can make miracles happen.

I can’t wait to see what you create next!

Sending you so much love,

Order the My Brilliant Year workbooks to plan for an incredible 2023 in life + biz

FREE GOODIES:

Weekly love lettersPodcast: Leonie Dawson Refuses To Be CategorisedA library of free treasures

BOOKS:

My Brilliant Year goal workbooks for 2023 & beyond!Calm Christmas PlannerSalt: a hottttt romance novella (published under my pen name Lola Leigh)

COURSES:

The Brilliant Biz & Life Academy (get ALL my offerings at a wildly affordable price!)Sales StarMarketing Without Social MediaMoney, Manifesting & Multiple Streams of Income40 Days To A Finished Book40 Days To Create & Sell Your E-CourseGet Organised!Work Less, Earn MoreHow To Hire & Manage A VABehind The Scenes of a Multi-Millionaire’s Finances (only $7!)

The post How I Plan Million Dollar Years appeared first on Leonie Dawson | Goals, Marketing + Creativity For Glorious Humans.

50 Things I Did, Created & Loved In 2022

Dearests,

I always love when Austin Kleon writes his 100 Things list for the year. I shared my list in 2020, then in 2021. Now here we are again. A tradition.

This time, I’m just doing 50. Thine eyes are a bit dodgy of late, so I won’t push them. Just write, press publish, crawl up into bed.

I’m ridiculously grateful for ALL of this.

Want to listen to this as a podcast?

Listen above, or subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, PocketCast (or wherever else you listen to podcasts!)

50 Things I Did, Loved, Experienced This Year…Started the year on holidays in Hervey Bay. It was just gorgeous to have a true summer holiday. We raced barefoot after the ice cream truck and spent hours in the pool. It was perfection. And definitely an inspiration for us to start thinking about buying a home with a pool!Loved it so much that we went back to Hervey Bay for another holiday for Easter. We’ve never really taken regular holidays before, but have started getting good at it now!Read 150 books. Roundup post of my favourites coming soon!Rebirthed the Brilliant Biz & Life Academy so I could go back to giving away ALL my courses & workbooks for a ridiculously affordable price.Ran a small group coaching program for the first time in a decade.Had lunch with Brigit Esselmont, Tash Corbin & Emma Vaiga-Malta. It was my first time meeting Tash in person after being friends online for YEARS and it was friend-love at first sight. Now enjoy her being referenced henceforth throughout this list because over this year she’s become one of my dearest mates.Got flooded in again.Purchased a new home to be closer to schools & the ocean again. Sold our acreage. It was a 10/10 move.Made a video meditation to honour leaving our acreage property.Moved Chris’ parents into our investment property in the same suburb as our new home. Another 10/10 decision. It’s been wonderful to have them close by!Adored the movie Encanto. The colours! The songs! The message! Everything!I was psychiatrically diagnosed with ADHD.Grieved the loss of my cousin & processed the shock of an awful thing.Much of this year was spent coping with the difficult news of a family member’s cancer diagnosis & the subsequent emotional fallout. Gosh it’s been a lot. I can’t say much more as it’s not my story to tell, but it’s been rough on multiple fronts.Created Get Organised in 21 Days course.Went to dinner with some local business goddesses – some I’d already met, some who were new to me. It was like magic happening right there. We knew instantly we wanted to stay in the room together, and become a mastermind. Since that glorious dinner we’ve had a spa afternoon, had a full day business brainstorming session and done a women’s circle together. I can’t wait to see their faces again. I’m so in love with Tash Corbin, Brigit Esselmont, Cass Deller, Madison Beaufort, Claire Riley and Amanda Rootsey. Our connection has been one of the biggest highlights of my year, and I can’t wait for what’s next.Made a poster on 8 ways to increase sales.Celebrated 12 months off social media. It’s now been almost 2 years as I type this!Did a Healthy Habits reset.I’ve swam more in 2022 than I have in years. Buying a home with a pool was a brilliant decision. Even today, one kid their friend over so they spent most of the day frolicking like mermaids. We notice how much bigger our kids smiles are when they are in water. And the same goes for us.
After 4 years here on the Sunny Coast, my friend group is deepening and consolidating and it’s the most glorious thing. Like watching a field burst into wildflowers. And when I see them, somehow we always end up falling into the nearest body of water. It makes this mermaid heart of mine very happy.Made a free monthly goals business worksheet.Had tea & cake with Viv Guy!Recorded 19 podcast episodes of Leonie Dawson Refuses to Be Categorised. The most popular episode was me answering your Business & Marketing questions!Earlier in the year, we thought we were losing our 17 year old doggy Angel. But nope, she just had a bit of an upset belly, and after having explosive diarrhoea in our vet’s face, she was right as rain! After having her for 14 years, she is still obsessed by my husband (understandably) and only barely tolerates other humans or animals. We joke that my husband is HER support animal… she doesn’t cope without him.Created How To Hire & Manage A VA workshop.Had a mother-daughter spa date with my darling Madi. She’s one of my very favourite people on the planet. We met 3 years ago and we just can’t get enough of each other. Being around Madi is screeching when we laugh, big bosomy hugs and telling the truth. (Also, if you’re ever at Eumundi markets, find Madi’s art stall! She’s wildly talented. And she even has a print dedicated to my boobs!)Ran a live round of Marketing Without Social Media.Went through an absolute shitshow of 6 months at my kids’ school. It’s hard to communicate just how brutally stressful and debilitating it has been. It’s one thing to go through something personally, but when it involves your kids it’s a whole other level of awful. I’m so very much looking forward to a fresh start for them next year at a new school.Made a poster about acting on inspiration.Binged season 2 of Bridgerton. This year’s season wasn’t anywhere near as porny as season 1 and that was disappointing… still, I have high hopes for season 3, and I do love me a regency romance!Had to take an enforced screen sabbatical after developing an eye condition.Made an illustrated zine on being officially middle aged.Hired a house on a river for a family summer holiday with Chris’ parents. It was gorgeously fun!Taskmaster continues to be my very favourite TV show. I can talk for days how good it is and how often I can descend into scream laughing from it.My wee family got obsessed by Ryan Trahan’s challenge to travel across America on a penny. Funny, interesting & heart warming!Developed plantar fascitis. Added a podiatrist to my rolodex of humans I need to not be in pain. Craig is another 10/10 healer hottie (in a respectful, consensual way again). Got myself some custom orthotics & became an aficionado of sexy orthotic shoes. #canyoutelliammiddleagedAlso got obsessed by playing Star Stables. Nothing says fun like a digital world where you ride around on pretty ponies collecting stars for pony outfits. I started playing it with my kids, but they got bored and I stay addicted for another 6 months. #woopsMade a poster for things US friends can do to support abortion rights.Favourite meal: Hard to choose between a feast from Happy Days Diner in Maryborough or a German feast from The Bavarian.Favourite drink: stayed the same as last year, I reckon. Passionfruit bubble tea with tapioca & rainbow jelly.Favourite exercise: pilates session at Noosa Flow followed by tea and cake at River Read.Had the BEST 40th birthday! Went away with my darling friends Madi, Tash, Jody & Bron to a historic chalet in the mountains. I still can barely process how magnificent it was. Time with women is deeply healing.Who cares about Wordle… when you can play HEARDLE! This one is especially fun when you’re married to a musical savant.Became the proud owner of a Roborock S7 MaxV Ultra. I went from not having any kind of robot vac to the top of the line robot vac/mop/self cleaning station… and I couldn’t be happier. It’s like having a cleaner without having to deal with another person’s energy! Plus I don’t have to remember to do anything for it… it’s smart enough to do it all itself with minimal input from me. It’s the ultimate ADHD hack!Started seeing a clinical psychologist. Dr Anita is a 10/10 babe (in a totally respectful, professional way of course bahahahahaha).My old cubicle boss Lil & her family came to stay for a holiday… it was the most brilliant time. I love that our friendship of two has now expanded to a friendship group of 8 – our husbands and kids all get along like a house on fire too. It’s such a rare thing, and I’m so grateful.Hand-made an illustrated zine on creativity.Became OBSESSED with playing the Monopoly Deal card game. Even just writing this makes me want to play it. I’ve inflicted this obsession on my family, my parents-in-law, my friends. Anyone who I can con into being a captive player, really. Ha!Got a prescription for CBD oil (through Montu) to help treat my ASD symptoms. It has been LIFE CHANGING. Over and over again. I couldn’t be more grateful. My brain is so much less on fire on CBD oil. It really has been a miracle for me.I also got to see my mermaid sister and talented author friend Kaylia Dunstan after 3 years apart. We’ve been friends for 18 or so years now, and have had so many magical and hilarious adventures together.
“Remember that time we went swimming naked in that river?”
“I wasn’t naked, but you were. Wasn’t that at the Murrumbidgee?”
“Oh. No, that was another time we went swimming and I got naked! Ha ha! I was thinking of that time we went swimming down at that other river!”
“At that reiki weekend we did? The creek at Gini’s farm?”
“Ha! Oh… No, but I was naked then too! No I was thinking of that OTHER river near Weston we were doing a women’s circle at, and decided to go  swimming and I got naked and some kayakers went past.”
HO HO HO. BRILLIANT.

And that’s the perfect way to finish.

Breast wishes,

Order your goal planners for 2023 today!

The post 50 Things I Did, Created & Loved In 2022 appeared first on Leonie Dawson | Goals, Marketing + Creativity For Glorious Humans.

Your BIZ & LIFE workbooks are finally HERE!

Darlinghearts,

Consider me absolutely THRILLED to finally be able to tell you that the new(ish) My Brilliant Year Workbook Collection is available!

I just got my own copies in the mail, and I couldn’t be MORE in love!

It’s so funny… it’s been 14 years since I made these babies, but my love and excitement for me to actually use them MYSELF doesn’t ever go away. I can’t wait to dive into my 2023 life & biz planning!

Over the last 14 years, over 500,000 people have used these workbooks with the most amazing results.

The My Brilliant Year workbooks use simple yet powerful techniques to help you not only dream your biggest dream and set your goals, but to actually MAKE THEM HAPPEN too.

Many miracles have been made from using these workbooks. These workbooks are something I use religiously – and I’m constantly amazed when I review each year’s at just how many of my dreams and goals came true.

They’re the best planning tool available to help you make your next 12 months an absolutely incredible year!

Here’s me very excitedly opening my copies! UNBOXING TIME!

📣 Here’s what’s new:
I’ve changed the names. Again. Ha! I think this is the sixth name I’ve used on these babies since I started them in 2009? I always want them to feel like a good energetic fit for where I am now.New covers. I’m back to a bright & colourful goddess on the cover instead of a person-free cover. It just didn’t feel right for me. I get that this kind of cover might repel most blokes, but they just aren’t my target market. I adore my non-binary & women-centric community & want to shout about it from the rooftops!Better print & page quality. I wasn’t 100% happy with last year’s print run so we found a better printer option! Hooray! I just got my advance copy, and I’m SO in love and can’t wait to start planning 2023!❌ What hasn’t changed:

The insides are pretty much unchanged. After 14 years of making updates or complete revisions, there’s not much I want to change!

 

💻  Already bought the digital workbooks before?

If you have already bought digital Goal Getter workbooks in the last year, you get the updated My Brilliant Year digital workbooks FREE! You can find them already updated in your Leonie Course Library.

 

🦄  Already a Brilliant Biz & Life Academy member?

If you’re a Brilliant Biz & Life Academy member, you get both Life & Biz digital workbooks FREE with your membership. HOORAY! You can find them already updated in your Leonie Course Library.

 

💰 Want to save a WHOPPING 97% OFF????

Become a Brilliant Biz & Life Academy member today & not only will you get both Life & Biz digital workbooks FREE, but you’ll also get over $1,700 of my courses, coaching, books & live trainings… all at under $100 buckeroos! I know! BEST DEAL OF THE MILLLLLLLENIUM!

I’m over the moon that I get to share these with you.

I created these workbooks for myself first and foremost… and they have created huge results for me.

The fact that they’ve gone out into the world now, and helped 500,000+ other gorgeous souls to do the same is the best side effect ever.

Make sure you order ASAP to avoid shipping delays!

Shipping is still pretty wonky worldwide, so make sure you order your goals workbooks today so we can get cracking on planning in January together!

With love to you and your wildest dreams,

Order the My Brilliant Year workbooks to plan for an incredible 2023 in life + biz!

FREE GOODIES:

Weekly love lettersPodcast: Leonie Dawson Refuses To Be CategorisedA library of free treasures

BOOKS:

My Brilliant Year goal workbooks for 2023 & beyond!Calm Christmas PlannerSalt: a hottttt romance novella (published under my pen name Lola Leigh)

COURSES:

The Brilliant Biz & Life Academy (get ALL my offerings at a wildly affordable price!)Sales StarMarketing Without Social MediaMoney, Manifesting & Multiple Streams of Income40 Days To A Finished Book40 Days To Create & Sell Your E-CourseGet Organised!Work Less, Earn MoreHow To Hire & Manage A VABehind The Scenes of a Multi-Millionaire’s Finances (only $7!)

The post Your BIZ & LIFE workbooks are finally HERE! appeared first on Leonie Dawson | Goals, Marketing + Creativity For Glorious Humans.

Summer Holiday Memories & My Fit Gurl Summer

My loves,

We just returned home from a week’s holiday. 

Got home, put the washing on, ate some sushi, opened mail, started to unpack. Little Kid ran outside to quickly say hello to her neighbour friend. And now we’re all sprawled out in beds having midday siestas.

And I am here, writing to you. Because all the words are reckless and wild inside me, and I don’t want to forget the moments. Want to wrangle them down here. Make an altar for them.

And I am here, writing to you because somehow I feel changed from being away. Full of vim and vigour and wanting to change my life. Does anyone else get that way? Go away, return home to a life that doesn’t quite fit anymore? Of not wanting to fall asleep, not wanting to go back to old habits. Wanting to harness all that clarity and make it into change. I’ll try to write down that fire too, try to remember what it was that the days of sun and light brought out in me. Try to turn the fire into momentum.

But firstly, the memories made.

We stayed in a holiday home on a canal only half an hour south of here. We haven’t stayed in a canal or river house before and it was divine. It had a pool, a wee private beach, a boat shed loaded with kayaks and its own jetty. It was magical. (And actually cheaper than just going to a hotel!)

Chris’ parents joined us, as did our everpresent elderly Maltese Shitzu. Angel is now a grand old 17 years of age and continues to be obsessed by my husband whilst only mildly tolerating me/the rest of the planet. Chris spent most of his holiday time alternating between taking care of Angel’s high needs, making sure his parents were comfortable and occasionally looking out the window to see me and the kids yahoo-ing by the river. We joke that Chris is Angel’s support animal – she doesn’t cope well with life without him. Nobody else will do. I get it, babes.

Things I want to remember:

Kayaking with the kids on the river. How my little kid decides she’s no longer afraid of boats when kayaks can be this fun. How my big kid took to kayaking like a duck to water. I love kayaking too. I love that I can share this joy with her.

How every day there, my big kid’s favourite time of day is when we sneak away together to go for a kayak down the river. Watch the world glide by, paddle by paddle. Together.

Chris’ smile when he’s in the pool with the kids. How much they light up around him.

Sitting on the dock in the twilight with my big kid, watching a storm roll in.

Eating like queens. A German banquet one day for lunch, including an unbelievably delicious (but atrociously named) pork knuckle. Daily bubble tea, delivered. Roti and Malaysian curry. Woodfired pizza with potato and rosemary. Pretzels with salted caramel sauce.

Yoga on the dock at the sunset. The fruit bats flying overhead. The gold light dripping all over the water around me.

A raucous card game of Monopoly Deal with five of us playing. I couldn’t be more obsessed by this game.

My kids jumping off the jetty, legs akimbo. Water and sun and gladness.

My little kid in an enormous hammock chair, bubble tea in hand, overlooking the river, living her best life.

Going to the aquarium. Getting a photo with an enormous seal named Groucho who huffed in my ear.

So many happy hours spent looking at the river, playing in the river and swimming in the pool while looking at the river. That river was our lifeblood and our joy. Chris’ parents even spotted dolphins in there (while we, ironically, were at Sea Life).

The kids would disappear off to the dock just to watch the water, the light, the wildlife. They spotted so many sting rays, fish, bats, birds. They say it was one of their favourite things.

When we leave, me and the kids go to get frozen yogurt for the drive home. Beside us in the carpark, we overhear a bunch of blokes talking. One of them says to another in the most Australian way possible: “You know Kelly? (a pause while he tries valiantly to remember her full name) Kelly… Bloody… Johnson?” Immediately, me and the kids freeze and stare at each other with wide, thrilled eyes. I don’t know why it delights us so much, but it does. Kelly… Kelly… Bloody… Johnson is our new favourite name, and we call everybody and everything it, including dogs we pass. I despair that Chris hasn’t shared the moment with us, but when we recount it to him at home, he is completely on board. Kelly… Kelly… Bloody… Johnson… is our new favourite thing. Kelly… Kelly… Bloody… Johnson… whoever you are, wherever you are out in this bright wide world, you have brought us much gladness today.

Memories, done. The fire of transformation, next.

I want to get fitter. Not in a lose weight, look better kind of way. More of a “Oh fuck, my back and neck are constantly displacing from hypermobility and I am spending so much of my time in pain and it’s restricting my ability to do so much physically and I really want to have more adventures and less pain and I think that means I need to have much more functional strength than I do” kind of way.

I’ve been doing 1:1 pilates once a week for 18 months, and it’s been hugely helpful… but I think I need to kick it up a lot more notches.

There’s still so much I want to be able to see and do in the world. So many holidays I want to have, places I want to see. And I need to be able to do it without my back shitting itself.

I think I need to have a Fit Gurl Summer.

I think I need to work out how to make that happen.

A little while later…

My loves,

It’s now 10 days later. And that fire of transformation? It’s staying with me. What a blessing.

I made up some colourful posters to help me stay inspired and on track.

BEHOLD! My Fit Gurl Summer posters!

This one is a tracker.

Everyday I colour in when I’ve done some form of movement. It doesn’t matter if some days are small (i.e. 15 minutes of yoga). It’s just helping me to do SOMETHING every day.

Beside the tracker, I keep a menu of possibilities. I don’t have to do them all. Just some ideas & inspiration for when I don’t have any. I also got the kids to brainstorm with me of activities they’d like to do with me these holidays as well.

I’m so in love with these ding dang posters. Honestly, paper + coloured pens can pretty much cure everything.

Already, it’s making more memories.

Last week, I went for a walk at sunset with my darling Madi. We got accidentally stuck in a gated estate as the stars came out, and screamed laughing when we thought we were being attacked by a lizard.

Then yesterday & today, I went to the beach with my beloveds. The weather is cool and windy, and the waves were tumbletorn. There were no sunbakers today. Just the most determined of walkers, and the great shimmering expanse of sea. The kids ran wild, and I could not keep the smile from my face. It was perfect.

I’m so grateful for all of this.

The magic memories. The light on my kids faces, the scratch of my husband’s beard when I kiss him. How good it feels to see and do new things.

And so I stretch my limbs and pull at my muscles. Because yes, to all of this. With a great gasping inhales. More of this beautiful life, just as it is.

All my love,

FREE GOODIES:

Weekly love lettersPodcast: Leonie Dawson Refuses To Be CategorisedA library of free treasures

BOOKS:

My Brilliant Year goal workbooks for 2023 & beyond!Calm Christmas PlannerSalt: a hottttt romance novella (published under my pen name Lola Leigh)

COURSES:

The Brilliant Biz & Life Academy (get ALL my offerings at a wildly affordable price!)Sales StarMarketing Without Social MediaMoney, Manifesting & Multiple Streams of Income40 Days To A Finished Book40 Days To Create & Sell Your E-CourseGet Organised!Work Less, Earn MoreHow To Hire & Manage A VABehind The Scenes of a Multi-Millionaire’s Finances (only $7!)

The post Summer Holiday Memories & My Fit Gurl Summer appeared first on Leonie Dawson | Goals, Marketing + Creativity For Glorious Humans.