Leonie Dawson's Blog, page 44

Video: The Data I Track

Possum blossoms, 

Let’s talk about the data I use in my business to help fuel business and growth.

I talk about the what data is important, which questions to ask yourself and how to keep track of everything.

All you need to know is the stuff that’s gonna help you make the best business decisions for yourself!

Love always,  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The post Video: The Data I Track appeared first on Leonie Dawson | Shining Life + Biz.

Designer Shopping Spree Podcast

 

Treasures! 


 


I sat down with Sonja Landis from the Designer Shopping Spree Podcast and we talked the three Cs… 


 



Colour 
Creativity 
Composting 



 


Bloody delightful. 


 


Listen here !

Big love, 

 

 

The post Designer Shopping Spree Podcast appeared first on Leonie Dawson | Shining Life + Biz.

Video: Building Relationships Online!

Possum blossoms,

Today I want to share about how I build relationships online!

I’ve been building relationships online since 2001, so buckle up as we go down memory lane and discover how I’ve maintained relationships and built new ones over the years!

Love always,  

 

 

 

 

P.S. The Goal Getter collection is only available until JAN 15th 2021 Click HERE!

 

 

The post Video: Building Relationships Online! appeared first on Leonie Dawson | Shining Life + Biz.

Video: Finding Creativity During Burnout!

Babes!

Burnout is a very real thing, and a lot of creatives can attest to the nastiness of it.

It’s truly a sucky experience.

But! I’ve learnt that I can still be creative even when I’m burnt out.

Watch to find out how!

Love always,  

 

 

 

 

P.S. The Goal Getter collection is only available until JAN 15th 2021 Click HERE!

 

 

The post Video: Finding Creativity During Burnout! appeared first on Leonie Dawson | Shining Life + Biz.

The Great Annual Workbook Giveaway For Non Profits – 2021!

Hey loves,

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?

We’d love to donate the 2021 Goal Getter workbooks to you for using with your clients – as many as you’d like!

We can supply digital version of both 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. This year the workbooks are self-published! I am incredibly grateful that they are willing to carry this philanthropic tradition on!

But!!! (And this is SUUUPER important): you will only be able to apply until January 15th! 
The workbooks are going out of print so if you miss out on purchasing or applying for non-profit giveaway please don’t email in on Jan 16th asking for an exemption. Sozzzz.

 

Those donated workbooks have been used by over 400,000 (!!!!) souls around the planet who needed them, from organisations that included:

schools using them for teenage girls
women’s shelters in the United States
Indigenous Australian women’s services in Sydney, Australia
disadvantaged women advocacy services in Cambodia
animal sanctuary in the United Kingdom (used by their board to business plan their charity! Hooray!)
aged and elderly services in New York
cancer survivors in England
women’s charities in Zimbabwe.

The 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.

I got this heart-warming email from one of the case workers who used it:

“A few months ago I applied to use the Goal Getter workbooks in a community agency. I would like to share with you how the non profit organisation has used the workbook to support clients.

As you might know already our town had its biggest flood in history. There is a whole suburb that went under here and many other places were badly affected. Homes and business were so badly flooded that they won’t be rebuilt again. Many people have struggled after this natural disaster. After reading the offer for the use of the workbook I had a great idea to support women who had been affected by the floods by using this workbook. I went and developed a full day workshop based around the workbook.

As we are non profit organisation and are always needing funding to continue our work I put a proposal together and put it forward to 2 community groups that I thought might help. Zonta and Rotary inner wheel very generously donated money so we could print the book out for participants and funded lunch for the workshop. The workshop was free for all women who attended.

We set out to run 2 workshops, which ended up filling very quickly so we had to put on another one. 40 women in total have attended over 3 workshops and have worked through the workbooks. These workshops provided a space where these women could come together to share of their experiences of the floods and begin to imagine a brighter future for themselves and their families.

The women were all deeply grateful for the workbook and for your generosity to allow us to use them. The workbook was the perfect platform to help these women move from feeling helpless and overwhelmed to feeling empowered.

The feedback from the workshops has been very positive and we would like to continue our work throughout the year to support women who have been affected by the floods.”

This makes me weepy, to be honest. To think of the workbooks helping women in the floods… and now they will help those affected by the fires as well.

This year we want to help even MORE.

That kind of feedback is exactly why we offer this program – to make the workbooks available to ANY soul who needs them to help them create goals for their families, lives and businesses, and inspire them to reach them.

Some essential admin notes:

Please note these are 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.
This is only for the LIFE and BIZ workbooks. It does NOT include any of the companion products.
You will only be able to apply until January 15th!
You can order them for as many clients as you like – the more the merrier!
The workbooks can be used with men, but the language and imagery is definitely orientated towards women.
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 registered non profit, YOU CAN ORDER WORKBOOKS HERE.

How To Apply

To apply for free workbooks for your non profit, COMPLETE THE APPLICATION BELOW!

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,

P.S. If you know of anyone (social workers or organisations) this could help, I would SO SO SO appreciate it if you could share it along!!!! Thank you so much for helping the world!

Not a not for profit but still need ’em? Order yours now before they go out of print on January 15th!

The post The Great Annual Workbook Giveaway For Non Profits – 2021! appeared first on Leonie Dawson | Shining Life + Biz.

100 Things I Made & Loved This Year

Dearests,

I always love when Austin Kleon writes his 100 Things list for the year. I thought I’d share mine too. 100 Things I made, did or appreciated in this, the oddest of years.

I’d like to preface this by saying: I don’t want you to look at my list and think “WTF? Is Leonie a Covid denier? Why is she still DOING THINGS OUT IN THE WORLD?” I am ridiculously lucky to live in Queensland, Australia which has pretty much eradicated Covid-19. We had a short, intense lockdown earlier in the year, maintained locked state borders and stopped international travel. It’s meant we’ve been able to return to a relatively normal life. I know this is not the case for most of the world, and acknowledge my deep privilege in this.

Want to listen to this as a podcast episode instead? SURE WHY NOT!

Righto… let’s ROLL!

100 Things I Did & Made & Loved This Year

Wrote an erotic romantic novella
Kept my kids’ mental and emotional health as my #1 focus during quarantine schooling
Wrote a massive resource post on how to homeschool for those who are quarantine schooling
Drove a boat for the first time
Read 130 books
Got officially diagnosed as being on the Autistic Spectrum
Created 3 new products for the 2021 Goal Getter workbook & planner range
Fell in love with Maleny
Decluttered my home (it’s like an onion… so many decluttering layers!)
Started developing a minimalist capsule wardrobe
Launched a podcast & recorded 60+ episodes
Created “Soul Care For Uncertain Times” e-course
Donated $25,000 to Australian Wildlife Conservancy
Ran live rounds of Money, Book & E-Course e-courses
Was interviewed on 38 podcasts
Fell in love with digital illustration on my iPad
Did over 40 portraits
Learned how to bake bread
Walked around a historic town by myself, took photos of all the architecture & then drew them at home.
Sent horrifically funny cards to my dear friends to cheer them up during lockdown…
Got my very first speeding ticket (7 kms over the speed limit! OOOOOOOOH MAAAAAAAAAA!)
Making fires in our fire pit with my Dad while he visited
Started to grow a quarantine vegetable garden which was promptly eaten by water rats. I’ve now converted to using a VegePod.
Did a Press Publish every Day experiment
Gave over 200 scholarships to frontline healthcare workers
Gave over 166 scholarships to BIPOC
Read a lot of books in the bath.
Adjusted to having both my kids in school for the first time in 10 years
Made a “$10 Million In 10 Hours A Week Productivity Hacks” cheatsheet
Did a ceremony at the river to honour my grandfather’s death, and donated to charities in his name.
Went away to a hotel for a night by myself for my birthday
Took my daughter to a sacred tween circle to prepare her for her initiation into womanhood
Continued to fail at having an appropriate elevator pitch for the 16th year running.
Made friends with pelicans
Won three business awards
Ended up in hospital with an allergic reaction (not sure to what… cauliflower? Insect bites?)
Started making videos with ridiculous hats because I hated the idea of looking fancy on camera… a box full of hats though? SIGN ME UP.
Had my assistant evolve into an online business manager and start working 20 hours a week for me
Went to the beach on an amazing wash up day – so much coral & sealife to inspect!
Built a trampoline that had been in storage for 2 years. Really enjoyed the process, as evidenced here.
Created the free Quarantine Planner
Saw my own books in a bookstore for the first time
Helped people to write to their ministers about the climate crisis
Watched my kids perform in their first musical theatre performance
Was obsessed by Daryl Braithwaite’s Love Songs
Continued my sacred tradition of forcing my family into tacky tourist photos
Had a quick chat with business owners about anti-racism
Did the Gruffalo augmented reality adventure at the Ginger Factory
Had my 20 year school reunion via Zoom (because… 2020 OF COURSE WE DID)
Continued my long-running photographic series called “My Father Asleep On My Couch Before 8pm”. Whenever he visits, I get to add to my collection, and it thrills me greatly. I’ve even enlisted mutual friends to contribute to the series… wherever he goes, WE WILL DOCUMENT HIS COUCH NAPS.
Obsessively watched “Farmer Wants A Wife”, complete with live group text messages with addicted friends.
Finally burning those fancy candles I bought 7 years ago.
Dislocated my hips & had a prolapsed disc – all from walking. WALKING. W A L K I N G. I swear to fucking god. It took me five months to recover, and got suuuuuper close with my osteopath. Hypermobility is no joke!
I replaced my 17-year old chipboard bookshelf in my office with a combo bookcase/cupboard unit from IKEA. Did you know that if you put shit BEHIND doors, instead of falling out of a bookcase, it looks, like, WAY TIDIER? REVELATION!
Bought a Dyson cordless stick vacuum and it changed my fucking life. I’m not even kidding. It’s how vacuums should have been invented all along. You can tell I’m officially middle aged because I’m talking about this, and I DO NOT CARE. IT REALLY DID CHANGE MY LIFE.
Discovered a full lunch box that was left in a school bag over quarantine… for FOUR MONTHS. FOUR MONTHS. It smelled like an unholy exorcism, remedied only by removing not only the lunch box but the entire school bag itself to the trash bin.
Still can’t believe it’s 2020 and I have to talk about Nazis, but here we are.
Bought an electric drum kit and a ukelele during quarantine. I thought I’d get into it, but I, in fact, did not. My kids did however, and that thrills me!
Took my tween to get her ears pierced for the first time. It was a rite of passage. I can’t quite believe I have a tween. Like they sing in Mamma Mia… she’s slipping through my fingers all the time.
Moved all my superannuation & stocks into ethical investments. Honestly, it was the best thing I did all year.
Demolitioned the half wall around our verandah – just me, a sledgehammer & a skip. I have never felt so powerful!
Got a “lash lift” and honestly… I’m pretty stoked with it. Usually I’m not really into girly shit, but on this occasion? OH YES.
Spent some amusing quarantine time pretending to be an ant.
Reading new books from The Storey Treehouse & Bad Guys series to my kids.
Ate a lot of lemon & coconut slice while drinking chai tea & reading a book at River Read.
Made an enormous amount of apple crumble to eat with cream.
Did a podcast episode about how to write a best-selling book.
Did Pilates classes via Zoom.
Witnessed an enormous butterfly migration. It was the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen, and lasted for weeks. I will always remember in the early days of quarantine, going for a bicycle ride with my kids with butterflies flying beside us the whole way.
Had an awesome bushwalk with Chris at Noosa Spit and got lost. It was magical.
Made a poster inspired by Austin Kleon’s “Keep Going”
Celebrated my birthday by going to the library, power reading through a pile of books & making illustrated notes about them.
Was so grateful to Melbournians & Victorians for undergoing the longest quarantine in the world to keep Australia safe.
Changed the name of my yearly planners
Committing to using the art supplies I had already, instead of buying more.
Spending an inordinate amount of time looking at the river – either by myself, with Chris or while the kids played.
Having a Zoom dinner with some of my favourite friends.
Created a cheatsheet on surviving 2020 financially
Still waiting for that post-pandemic orgy to happen… keep me posted!
Staying married & in love for 19 years.
Shared a huge 2020 Business Update.
Getting a letter in the mail from one of my nearest and dearests with seeds from her garden.
Getting obsessed by playing Yahtzee.
Had Thai takeout on the river regularly with girlfriends (once it was safe to do so).
Listening to Chat 10 Looks 3 podcasts.
Had a panic attack in the grass, or as my husband calls it “Gathering content for her next social media post.” (This still makes me snort out my nose laughing, BTW. Also, I don’t think I need to clarify, but I will anyway: my bloke is super supportive and understanding of my mental health. He also happens to have an uncanny ability to drop exquisitely funny one-liners).
My 10 year old starting to beat me at Chess.
Daily river walks with my love.
Danced on a lot of coaching calls this year.
Created a “Retire At 45 Plan“
Created an absolutely enormous podcast episode about my life & business journey. ALL THE THINGS!
Got full-blown obsessed with the TV shows Alone, Ted Lasso & Long Way Up.
Did e-courses with Katie Chappell, Ericka Hart, Tara Brach, Rachel Cargle, Annie Liebovitz and Louise O’Reilly.
Getting to watch Further Back In Time For Dinner. This series is incredible!
Talking to my longest-serving friends. The older I get, the more important they become.
Aztec smoothies from Raw Energy.
Having a daily accountability buddy.
Getting to love my kids, exactly as they are.
This song, and this video, and this sentiment.
Survived a pandemic (HIGH FIVES!)

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve, and the Wild Bushman Dad arrives again.

And soon, I’ll slip into that patch of time where I don’t remember what day it is. I’ll just eat, talk shit, play board games, let the rhythms of family swallow me whole, etch time out to work on my 2021 goals.

It’s been a momentous year, one we will always remember.

May next year birth new possibilities, healing & repair.

I’m here for you, chanting your name, cheering you on.

All my love,

 

The post 100 Things I Made & Loved This Year appeared first on Leonie Dawson | Shining Life + Biz.

Day 11: Freedom

Blossoms,

I’ve been chippering away at various pieces: a list of 100 things I’ve done in 2020, doing my review of 2020 workbooks (and sharing in my Instagram stories as I go) and illustrating a PDF about creating e-courses.

I’ve been creating every day, which is that whole point of this Press Publish Every Day experiment. But still, I have missed these daily, ambling check-ins. So here I am.

It’s the last few days before Christmas, and I am sliding into home base, totally organised. Fuck, the sense of contentment I have about it is BEYOND.

My kid is on a rampage reading all of Raina Taigmeier’s books. I love when my kids fall in book love. It makes me remember my own childhood book binges – they are some of my favourite memories. (And if you know of books similar to Raina’s please hit us up – we are quickly running out of supplies!)

Tomorrow we’ll go grocery shopping for fresh fruit & veges, and I’ll do a bit of cleaning. I might even go crazy and mop some damn floors! Seriously, my executive functioning is pretty… functioning at the moment! I am very impressed with myself!

Then Thursday, I will do some Christmas Day food prep with my 10yo helping in the kitchen. Wild Bushman Dad will arrive to spend Christmas with us. The kids will construct a gingerbread house. And I’ll wrap my Dad’s Christmas presents for him, because he has managed to live 60+ years without wrapping shit, and he’s not going to start now.

I’ve promised myself that I can map out 2021 in my calendar & planner after Boxing Day. I think I’m looking forward to it the most out of anything. WHO HAVE I EVEN BECOME.

Bushman will hang out for a few days, and we’ll do the usual: play endless board games, eat, talk shit. It’s a solid plan for a Christmas, really.

+

It’s the next day.

We’ve done the grocery shopping, which felt awkward and stressful. Australia has been mostly COVID-free for a while now, but there’s been an outbreak in Sydney. My state has begun locking borders again, but I know there are a LOT of Sydney peeps who made a mad dash across the border to the Sunshine Coast where I’m at. I didn’t love the crowded shops, and I didn’t love when the (otherwise lovely) older lady behind me told me her family were from Sydney and were part of the mass exodus to come visit her. They’d taken tests, and were negative, but I felt like I was holding my breath. Let’s see if the Sydney diaspora creates an outbreak. If it does, GOODBYE WORLD! I SHALL RETREAT TO MY HERMIT CAVE ONCE MORE!

I also saw some douche canoe wearing a Trump t-shirt at the grocery store.

I wrote about it on social media:

I saw someone today at the grocery store who was wearing a Trump shirt, and it made me viscerally wince. For a moment there, I felt unsafe. Because right there, in that one shirt, I knew at his core he did not believe in my humanity as a woman. He did not believe in the humanity of BIPOC, or LGBTQIA+ people or people who did not subscribe to some fucked up, gun toting version of Christianity. He only believed in the supremacy of white, straight, cis men, and was emboldened to share this openly.

And all of this, in a T-shirt, and my resultant grief and sadness and anger… it made me realise how difficult it must be to live in the US right now. How everyday, you see people wearing these emblems, proud to share that they don’t believe in your humanity, or anybody else’s. It must feel traumatic, over and over.

And I wanted you to know that I love you and see you and support your humanity. Now and always.

Love, Leonie.

What is fascinating is: on Instagram, whenever I write political posts, it’s relatively quiet and chill and peeps just saying “yep. totally.” But Facebook? Fuuuuuck me. The Trumpettes come out SWINGING. I would say 2/3rds of the comments have needed to be deleted and banned. Some telling me to shut the fuck up, some arguing the case that being a Trump supporter doesn’t make you racist, sexist or homophobic.

And I just don’t get the disconnect, you know?

If you voted for Trump, you voted for someone who is harmful to women, BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ people. He is outwardly verbally abusive to them. He supports laws that harm them. He emboldens alt-right hate groups to be violent towards them. There’s no ifs or buts here. You can’t be a Trump supporter and claim to be anti-racist and fighting for equality for all people. It’s mathematically impossible.

Anyways, I was surprised that I even get Trumpettes on my social media now. I thought I’d scared them off long ago. But still, they keep coming out of the woodwork. I think part of it is that on Facebook, a lot of people re-share the post as a way of expressing or validating their own opinion, so I get all these rando racist relatives from their pages, instead of my own people.

Either way, I’ll keep turning up, keep talking, and keep banning.

+

I was talking to my mate Katie last night. We were bemoaning the loss of blog world 2004-2014. It was a bloody great decade of writing and creating and reading. I felt so lucky to get to deep dives into people’s stories through their blogs, in a way I never experience on social media. Social media is just so shallow and short and impenetrable… no way to experience that same deep dive.

Do you still read old school blogs? I do. I wish more people were writing them. Let me know your favourite blogs to read so I can add them to my list! I use Bloglovin’ to keep up with all of mine.

As we were talking about it, I mentioned my dogs to Katie. Katie asked to know more, so I found an old blog post I wrote about my beloved Charlie. Then, I re-read it, and was overcome with tears of sadness, and tears of gladness that I had recorded that special time. And I realised: that’s why I’m doing this Press Publish Every Day experiment. To get into the habit of writing these longer letters again. To share my heart in this medium that feels most truthful to me. And to let you experience the gift of a deep-dive into someone else’s life too.

+

I’ve realised that this is probably my last proper work session for a week or so. Wild Bushman Dad arrives tomorrow, and I’ll be deep in food prep for Christmas. Then, the days when I have no idea what day of the week it is, when napping and board games and talking shit are my highest priority.

But I might want to write. Let’s see.

+

I hope the holidays ahead for you are gentle, dear penpal.

I am sending you love, as always.

Love,

Leonie

The post Day 11: Freedom appeared first on Leonie Dawson | Shining Life + Biz.

Video: Pricing Your Products & Services!

Babes!

Let’s talk about how to decide on pricing for your business!

This is a topic that causes a lot of angst, so let’s get stuck into it!

So here’s the thing. There’s no such thing as a better business model in terms of pricing.

Instead, it’s more about which is the better one for YOU and your target market. For me personally, I’ve played around with lots of different pricing models, and time and time again I’ve returned to lower prices.

This is because I like helping a lot more people without them having to take out loans or go into debt.

I have friends who charge a lot higher in their businesses and all that means is it’s a different business model!

So have play around, to figure out what feels great for you and your customers!

And every time you increase your prices you need to make sure you’re marketing even more powerfully to prove that higher value to your customers. (But you’ll need to market at any price anyway.)

Get experimenting, and see what works for you!

Love always,  

 

 

 

 

P.S. The Goal Getter collection is only available until JAN 15th 2021 Click HERE!

 

 

The post Video: Pricing Your Products & Services! appeared first on Leonie Dawson | Shining Life + Biz.

Podcast: I Interview My Assistant Zita

Hellooo Leonie’s delightful audience!

You asked and you shall received!



As mentioned I (Zita) am writing up the show notes for this one!



Leonie asked me some hella good questions, including:



Best part of working with her


Hardest part of working with her


What advice I have for anyone looking to start as a VA and/or OBM



You’ll also get a behind-the-scenes peek into Leonie’s business!



And if you’d like to see more of what I’m up to you can check out my Instagram and Etsy!



This was a super fun episode, and I’m chuffed Leonie wanted to interview me!

Video: Mastering My To Do List

Lovely ones!

How do I overcome my to do list?

1. I adhere to Pareto’s Principle

2. Ask myself “does it REALLY need to be done?”

3. Can the task be automated, systemated or outsourced?

4. Set your daily, weekly and monthly priorities for biz and life

5. Use your Goal Getter workbooks!

Let’s make magic happen!

Love always,  

 

 

 

 

P.S. The Goal Getter collection is only available until JAN 15th 2021 Click HERE!

 

 

The post Video: Mastering My To Do List appeared first on Leonie Dawson | Shining Life + Biz.