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Episode 189: The Magical Way To Grow Your Business with Sam Garcia
business magic
Episode 189

The Magical Way To Grow Your Business with Sam Garcia

Podcast Guest

Sam Garcia

Founder of Dirty Alchemy

Dirty Alchemy

"What you can realize — once you're in business for a longer period of time — is that business in and of itself is this playground to help your soul evolve."

What do you think of when you hear the word magic?

Maybe your mind conjures up the image of a David Blaine wannabe – asking you to pick a card, any card with a bit too much bravado in their voice.

Or perhaps you're transported to the wizarding world of Harry Potter – hearing Hermione correct Ron on the correct pronunciation of wingardium leviosa.

hermione business magic

And yet, for our guest on today's episode of the podcast, the word magic has a completely different meaning. For her, magic is a practice that you can use to grow your business.

Her name is Sam Garcia, and she's the founder of a marketing agency called Dirty Alchemy. She helps entrepreneurs, experts, and coaches grow their online businesses through both practical and mystical means. Sam is an expert in everything from launch strategy, funnel design, content marketing, copywriting, and more.

We're thrilled to share this episode with you today because Sam has a really interesting – and unconventional – approach to growing online businesses. As we hinted at earlier, Sam views the act of building your business as both a magical practice and a form of spiritual development.

We have an expansive yet practical conversation that touches on a lot of things we don't hear many entrepreneurs talk about, like:

  • What it means to externalize your energy as an entrepreneur
  • A process you can go through to meet the soul of your business
  • & How to tune into your emotions and nervous system for guidance

This is a really fun and engaging episode that we hope you enjoy as much as we did.

Highlights

2:05 Meet Sam Garcia!
4:43 What does "business as a magical practice" mean?
10:52 Externalizing your energy: how to think about building your business
20:11 Understanding the entrepreneur's nervous system
33:01 An unconventional copywriting tip that can help you captivate your readers
44:35 Practical advice on building your business from a marketing expert
49:06 Sam's parting words of wisdom for you

Full Transcript

Download Transcript

Eric: Hey Sam, welcome to the show.

Sam: Hi Eric. How are you doing?

Eric: I’m doing great. How are you doing?

Sam: I’m very good. I was going to say it was earlier than it was, but I’m realizing it’s 10:00 a.m., and I have no excuse to be tired right now.

Eric: I’m good at always finding excuses for that. So, I’m sure if we put our heads together, we could figure it out. But I really appreciate you coming on the show. And we were just chatting a little bit before this how I discovered you and one of these synchronicity things where in my Spotify, you were recommended as a podcast. And I saw you, and I was like, oh, I would really like to interview this person on my episode. Just the title of your podcast episode seemed very intriguing to me. So, before we dive into all these interesting things, can you just tell us a little bit about your background and give our listeners a high-level view of who you are and what you do?

Sam: Yeah, so I run a digital marketing agency, specifically working with spiritual entrepreneurs, usually authors or course creators and to get their big work out into the world and also do consulting. I came into the field just a little over a decade ago. There was a brand that I was in love with and I really wanted to work with them. And they had a marketing admin position, part-time marketing admin position open. I just applied for it and then eventually, over years and years of continuing to work with really cool companies, got to officially be agency status.

Eric: Now I love this term spiritual entrepreneur. And the reason I like it is because when you say it, it’s one of those things where you just kind of throw it around, oh, a spiritual entrepreneur. But the vibe of when you say it shows that there’s a lot packed into those two things for you. So, I wonder from your perspective, when you say that, what is a spiritual entrepreneur?

Sam: When I use it, I usually think of it as people who are using spirituality in their work, and they’re trying to not improve but change consciousness on the planet through the work that they put out into the world. People could also be a spiritual entrepreneur if they just happen to be an entrepreneur that is spiritual. But in this case, I’m talking about people whose businesses, there is this thread of spirituality that is within it.

Eric: That makes sense. And I think one of the things we talked about earlier was how you view business as a magical practice. Can you share a little bit more about this and how it impacts your own business and the work you do with clients?

Sam: Yeah. So, for people who are magical or spiritual, we often use our practices in order to boost our business. So, you meditate to be more proactive, or you do money spells to bring in new clients. But what you can realize once you’re in business and entrepreneurship for a longer period of time is that business in and of itself is this playground to help your soul evolve. So, some people say that relationships or love is this place where you really get to bump up against your edges and improve and evolve. And I completely agree as someone who has been with my husband and we’ve been in and out of crazy shit together. For sure, being in a relationship has that. But also, in entrepreneurship, in business, this is this place where you can really grow.

And I mean, if you’ve ever done an online launch, and I know your clients, your customers have memberships. So, they probably do online launches, and I’ve never seen a better place for you to really practice and evolve spiritually than how you actually hold yourself within these places. Because I remember one of my first launches I did for my business, it was a high-end mastermind group. And my goal was to get eight people in. And the launch was this. Usually, a launch is maybe two weeks or maybe a month if it’s really pushing it. And I ended up promoting for three straight months, and no one joined until the final two weeks before the program started. And I was horrible to myself. I was through that two-and-a-half-month period before someone ever joined. I was stressed out. I was not sleeping. I was making it mean things about myself.

And by the way, I did get to my goal of eight people before the program began. And I looked back on it and being like, wow, what if I just believed that it was going to happen and treated myself really well through the process? I probably would have the exact same result of my goal being hit, those eight people joining. And it wouldn’t have been this terrible experience for me. So just as an example of that.

Eric: But definitely having gone through that experience, so as part of what brings you to the place where you then can have the perspective to say, oh, could it be different?

Sam: Yeah, yeah, for sure. And this is where having mentorship really can come in of having people who’ve been through it before you, of hearing that story. If anyone hears this story, if you’re in the middle of a launch right now, and you think that beating yourself up is going to change anything, it doesn’t. It won’t. Instead, you can connect in with that future version of yourself and resource energy from them in order to help believe the process and not torture yourself throughout it.

Eric: Yeah, because you mentioned earlier how our businesses and relationships and things are actually things that are help us in our evolutionary path. And so, I think in all of these areas, relationship, entrepreneurship, anything where you have models of “people who have made it” that have succeeded, I think that sometimes people eagerly want to bypass the journey and just arrive at the success. And to me, what I’ve seen is that that becomes very detrimental and just the approach or the mindset of thinking that there’s a way to skip some work or some discomfort is in and of itself something that creates stress.

Sam: I remember there’s this one business owner, or I don’t know, personality, brand, face of a brand, her name’s Brooke Castillo. I don’t know how much she made in the last year, but she’s an eight-figure business, online business. So very successful in this realm. And I remember her classic question she asked, would you rather have a million dollars in your bank account or know how to make a million dollars? And she would always say, knowing how to make a million dollars, and going through however many years it took you to get there is so much more valuable than someone handing you a million dollars. Because whatever happens in life, if you do a bad investment, or your business is taken from you or whatever happens, you know how to do it again. And there’s so much power in that versus just winning the lottery or having an inheritance, which I mean great, let’s all have that too. But there’s so much more power in actually doing it yourself and going through and becoming the person who’s able to do that. Yeah.

Eric: Yeah, for sure. When you were saying that, it makes me think of, it’s consumption. We think of our capacity to eat a particular food, a quantity of that particular food, right? Say, you can eat a spoonful of peas or a cup of peas and that feels really good for you. But for some reason in some world, peas are this amazing thing and people really look up to them. And so, you really want to consume a pound of peas. Well, if you do that, you’re going to get sick. And it’s the same with money. It’s a form of energy that you have to develop and earn a capacity for what flows to you, and what shows up for you is what your capacity is.

And so, if people win the lottery, we don’t always hear good stories about people having windfalls of cash. A lot of people say they want that, but when it actually happens, it’s actually a misalignment with what their capacity is naturally. They didn’t attract that into their life in terms of, something that you’ve said about externalizing your energy. So, dovetailing that into this concept of externalizing your energy, can you explain what this is in your work and how you work with, guide clients through this concept?

Sam: Yeah, most people that I work with, they start off as a solopreneur and their business is growing or maybe they’re even the face of their brand. And it is so easy when you start a business from the ground up to pretty much consider your business as an extension of you. Money comes in, it’s my money. And everything that is happening in the business, I do it. So, it is this extension of yourself.

And when you actually want to grow a business that doesn’t require you to be chained to a desk, you need to start actually separating yourself from the business, even if it’s just in your own head. And if you can think of yourself as the CEO of your business or the owner of your business, and you start seeing your business as a separate entity, your business can actually grow faster and amass more power, more energy than if you just think of your business as an extension of yourself.

And I mean, the federal government already thinks this way. Your business probably has an EIN number where you have a social security number. It is the separate entity than you. And even if you happen to have any spiritual listeners, I’m not sure how this is going to be for people, but you can imagine this entity that does not have a human body or a meat suit encapsulating it. It has the capacity to build so much more power than just you can. Because sure, we are these infinite beings and can do all of these things, but also, we have this very real human body that needs to sleep and needs to eat and can’t work for a hundred hours a week for years on end, where your business can actually amass energy and be this container of energy so that it can grow. And as you actually start seeing this in your mind and start making systems and structures to support it, your business can grow faster than if you just think of your business as you.

Eric: When people start to work with you and they’re not familiar with the way that you visualize and have seen conceptually how people relate to their businesses, when they’re starting to work with you, what are the key areas where they struggle or obstacles that they face to moving into this new alignment?

Sam: I feel like the biggest struggle here is around letting go of control, especially if you started your business and it’s starting to grow a lot more. Bringing in, there’s the people factor and the control factor. And what’s really interesting is the Harvard Business Review did a study, I think it was 2015, and they were just looking at a bunch of different CEOs, so CEOs of businesses. And they’re trying to learn just different things about CEOs. And they found that there were two different types of CEOs. There were CEO managers and CEO visionaries. So, these two different classifications of CEOs, and for their studies, they found out that the businesses that were the most productive were run by visionary CEOs, not manager CEOs.

And the businesses that were the most profitable, so they had their largest profit margins, were also run by visionary CEOs. You can think of this like a CEO who’s actually involved in the day to day and managing things and managing people, they actually have less productive, less profitable businesses than these visionary CEOs that are kind of, in our heads or from media or collective consciousness, whatever, of what we think of as a CEO of this visionary higher up, in the C-suite, in the higher levels of the building, whatever. The people who could actually get out of the day to day and let go of control and set up the structures and the people in their business to take over and actually run the business for them, have better businesses.

So, to answer your question, letting go of control and trusting your team are huge barriers. But once you actually unlock that, that is actually the answer, the key to more productive, profitable businesses.

Eric: Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Leveraging the power of community, other people’s energy input. Yeah, it’s definitely something I can relate to in my own journey. And it felt like from my perspective looking back, that there is a natural point in the business where it actually asks you to do that. It’s almost is like the growth cycle of a business is something similar to a plant, and it goes through different phases. And at different phases, it requires different levels of nourishment from different types. In the beginning, the roots require from the earth a lot. And then but as it builds more leaves, those leaves collect sunlight and it can utilize the sunlight.

So, I’m just envisioning that team members are leaves. There’s the main part of the business, this trunk and root system, but it’s leveraging. It’s using this technology of a leaf to gather more energy so that it can then collectively, that entity can then continue its growth.

Sam: And if we’re playing with time, which we ultimately have to do within a business, just realizing that okay, let’s say you have a 40-hour work week as the standard, you just having other people within your business amplifies time and exponentially. Suddenly, if you have one other person in your business, it goes from a 40-hour work week to an 80-hour work week, 80 hours of time that your business owns, not you. And then as you keep amplifying out that time piece, it’s so huge.

And I have so many good examples of this during the pandemic where I work with a lot of women. And I mean, having babies is a big part in going on maternity leave if you’re a business owner is a big deal, because you actually have to structure this in and think about it. And one of my clients, it was before the pandemic, so it was 2019. She had her first kid. She just physically didn’t have as much capacity to work and had to go off on maternity leave to look after her child. And her business finally crossed over from the multiple six figure to the seven-figure mark during that.

And another business owner, another woman, she had to homeschool her two kids during the pandemic because the school system wasn’t great around her. So, she had this serious time limit constraint. There just weren’t enough hours. So, she had to delegate more. She had to rely more on her team. She couldn’t micromanage as much as she was compulsively doing. And same thing, she was at multiple six figures, high multiple six figures for years. And then she very easily crossed that seven-figure mark when that time restraint came in.

So, just reflecting back that so many business owners have this really hard time letting go of control. It’s almost like you have this adult child that you know needs to move out of your basement, and maybe you desperately want them to move out of your basement, but you’re still keeping them in your basement and giving them an allowance and all the things. When really in order for it to thrive, you need to… and the metaphor here of course is with your business being this adult child that needs to move out, and you need to let go of it. And we play this huge role of our holding on.

Eric: Yeah. And while you’re talking, it’s making me think about somatic experiencing. One idea, there is this tracking to charge. When you feel, when you’re confronted with something in the world that you feel a sensation in your body response to that, it’s usually a constriction of some kind. And the natural trauma cycle within the body is to constrict and then expand and release.

And so, when you were talking about that, I was thinking, yeah, expansion, growth, success, the things that we work for. When they actually come and all the times they’ve come for me, it’s not usually a pleasant experience in a hundred percent. You envision it a while back when you were shooting for it that, oh, I want to shoot for this and when I get there, it’s going to be great. But ultimately, success is the thing that happens at the end of growth. And growth and expansion can be uncomfortable.

So, when I hear you talking about this, I’m feeling that what’s actually happening is we’re resisting our own growth because it’s new territory. It’s something we’re not familiar with, sensations, either physically within ourselves or stuff happening within our business world, that we’re not used to. And yeah, it can be a very understandable response to turn away from that and be like, oh this is scary. I want to go back to what’s familiar. This is contradiction that happens because you actually want the thing, there’s a sense that it shouldn’t feel scary, but often it does.

Sam: One of my mentors in the energetic space, she always said that you actually need to take care of your nervous system and take care of your body more so when things are going really well than when things are going bad. Because we turn to, oh I got to eat really healthy right now because I’m so stressed out and I don’t want to get sick. When we’re trying to get to that next level of growth, you taking care of yourself when things are good are so important because I mean, our body’s built for homeostasis, right? It just wants to bring us back to wherever our set point is.

So yes, that big growth, however many more followers, that big visibility, that next level of income, it is actually taking you out of homeostasis. So, your body is seeing it as a threat. So, taking care of yourself during those times is so important. So yeah, thank you for bringing that up.

Eric: Yeah. And something I see a lot of entrepreneurs and business owners encounter in their journeys is entwining their personal identity with their business and not actually reflecting on it. I totally did this, I do this, and I catch myself doing it. And sometimes it feels like the right thing to do and sometimes it doesn’t. It’s like this kind of schizophrenic thing. From your perspective, how do you see this show up, and how do you coach your clients through that?

Sam: I mean, just like what you’re saying and what we’ve talked about of when you start your business and especially when you’re the face of the business, and you started on as this baby that you are taking care of, you need to actually start seeing your business as a separate entity. Because my clients are always super spiritual, we will actually do a meeting the soul of your business meditation of go into a trans state and meet the soul of your business. So, anyone who is open to stuff like that, I highly recommend trying that out.

So, taking yourself into self-hypnosis or into a trance state and inviting in the soul of your business. And not only does this help you separate the identities out, but this can actually be an ally for you. Some people say that the soul of your business chose you to channel its mission into the world. That’s different than your sole purpose is your business. No. Your business is a separate entity than you, chose you to channel its mission into the world. And you creating that structure and separating it out and being in alliance with it is incredibly powerful. And you separating that out is that key part.

Eric: It’s a really beautiful thing to reflect on. And I want to ask clarification on this because I know it’s really hard to talk about these things because we’re using words, right? But you’re trying to point to something and reference something that is more of an innate natural process of some kind, and there’s a particular vocabulary. Now many people have different vocabularies they like. So, I would like to try and help people recognize that even if they’re not familiar with the terminology you’re using, that this is something they’re familiar with and they’ve probably experienced.

In my mind, when you were talking about that, I was thinking about Steve Jobs and Apple and really, any major successful business person who’s become a personality and gets interviewed. And somebody asks them, how did this, the idea, first come to you to start this business? And they’ll tell some story about when it first arrived. And I mean, that they didn’t necessarily intentionally say, I’m going to go into a trans state and open myself up to get this vision to then guide me on my business. But that’s what it was, right?

Sam: So, this could actually be an empowering thing where a lot of people, as they grow their business, it can feel like they’re putting themselves into a box of the face that I put onto the world for my business. Suddenly, I should cut off these other aspects of my personality. When really, if you can think of as we’re externalizing the energy of reputation of it’s not you, it’s not you, your reputation, we’re actually addressing the reputation of your brand. This is what branding is.

And putting that onto your business, you can be this weird multidimensional person, with you suck at doing dishes and you hate meeting strangers, and someone else grocery shops, whatever, these things that you wouldn’t want to actually put out into the world as the CEO or the founder of your business. That’s okay because we’ve actually separated out your personality and reputation and realize that your business is responsible for having its own reputation and its own brand.

Eric: Another thing that came to me while you were talking about that is this idea of alignment. It’s been my experience that people who say they want to start a business, sometimes that’s not exactly what they should do or what they actually want to do.

So, is there something that you do in your practice with your clients where you actually first even assess like, okay, are we in the right place? Do you always a hundred percent believe when somebody comes to you and says, I want to start a business that does dot dot dot, that that’s exactly what’s in alignment with them, what they should be doing and what would be ultimately successful for them and who they are?

Sam: Yeah. So, I honestly don’t work with new businesses or businesses that aren’t established yet. I work with people with established businesses, but this problem does come up with them too where especially right now, we’re recording during a clip season, which is highly charged time astrologically and collectively. And I feel like every person I talk to wants to burn down their business right now or their relationship. Everyone just wants to get rid of their business. And what I always come back to is alignment doesn’t mean if it’s not aligned, we drop it. It can be a 1% change that takes you back into alignment or a 20% change. So, just because things don’t feel right now or aligned with what you want to be doing in the world, doesn’t mean that some very simple changes couldn’t happen.

And especially if you’re willing to blow up your business right now, you have nothing to lose. So, the thing that you desperately want to do in your business right now that you couldn’t do because of whatever restraints you have in your head around why you should be doing that, you’re willing to get rid of it. So, why not just try the things that you are so afraid of doing or the changes you are so afraid to make to try and get that 20%, 10%, 1% back into alignment?

One other thing with this point is realizing that your business doesn’t have to be your sole purpose. And we all go through these phases. The business that you started in your 20s might not be the same business that you want to be running in your 30s. And maybe that does mean getting rid of the business, but it could mean selling it. It could mean being the owner while someone else is the CEO. So, just because things don’t feel like they’re in alignment anymore, doesn’t mean that there aren’t changes that you can make or you can’t still be profiting from it.

But to scoot back to your original point or question was, which was around I want to start a business, but what are the questions to ask before you get into it? Things I would ask is, can you imagine yourself doing this 10 years from now? Is this something you could actually imagine? It doesn’t matter if you actually are or not, of course things will change over the next 10 years. But you actually seeing yourself still doing this business 10 years from now is a great indicator that you’re moving in the right direction. And so many entrepreneurs are highly creative and neurodiverse, and so many entrepreneurs have ADHD. It’s so normal in this space.

So, not creating offers or new businesses on a whim is an important piece. Yes, you can follow the charge of your excitement and passion, but coming back to that question of could you see yourself still running this program or this offer 10 years from now is a great thing to ask. Because just because it’s in front of you, and you’re excited about it today, or someone’s willing to pay you money, doesn’t mean that you have to do it.

Eric: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. By the sound of it, we serve very similar type of entrepreneur. And what are these specific things that you help your clients with? What recommendations do you have for listeners around your areas of expertise such as, for example, copywriting, funnel building, social media?

For me personally, I’ve had to learn not to be scared of the disconnect between the logical application of tools to do the business. So, like copywriting, funnel building, da, da, da, da, da, and staying in touch with where’s my excitement here? Energetically, what am I interested in? Where’s my energy flowing? So, how do we maintain a balance between these things?

Sam: It is so nuanced. I will try my best here, but not all things are going to apply to all people. If you already have an established business and you have an established audience and people love working with you, that’s very different than someone who’s just starting out. And you have to take care of your nervous system of just being seen it all and wondering what your peers from college or your ex-boyfriend is going to think about you. It’s like it’s just a very different place to be and different recommendations.

Where if you’re in the more beginning stages, sticking to one thing and talking about it over and over and over and over and over again is actually important. Where some people are like, oh, I’m going to be so annoying if I talk about my offer every single day. When if you look at statistics, if you look at marketing statistics, people are more willing to purchase things that they’re familiar with. Just it’s a really basic marketing statistic. So, there’s this familiarity piece. So, you talking about something over and over again and sticking to it for longer than even feels comfortable is an important part.

Where people who have this more established audience and they have this track record and they have the testimonials and they have past buyers, it is a little easier to follow that passion and that spark and that desire because you already have people willing to buy from you, especially if you gave them good results in the past.

Eric: Yeah. And it’s bringing back into mind that whole analogy of the seed sprouting. It’s a very different process of just germination. And then before there’s anything above ground that’s such a different Alchemy going on there than when stuff starts happening above ground, because the ball’s got, you got it rolling. And beginnings can be challenging.

And I agree with you that repetition, consistency, showing up because the thing, the challenge about the beginnings is you have no context, perception to have any insight into what you’re doing or if it’s going anywhere. You kind of have to have that blind faith in the beginning that you believe in something and you care about it. So, just do that. And when you’re feeling something new that may be comfortable or uncomfortable, that’s just part of the process. Keep going.

Sam: Yeah, my own business growth was something that I’m like, I wish everyone could do what I did where I sold high end from the beginning of packages and marketing retainers and stuff like that. So, I didn’t have to build an audience and had a lot of cash flow growing up to just building my business. And then once I was ready to actually start building an audience, there was so much more sufficiency and safety in it because I wasn’t relying on having to build an audience at the same time as building cash flow. So, that’s a little something there, where realize that if you are worrying about money at the same time as you are terrified to be visible on the internet, you could absolutely do it, full faith in you. It can be a little harder and it’s stressful on your nervous system.

But I do want to go back to what you had asked, which was around general recommendations around different areas that I work in. So, I am a rapid fire. I’m a Gemini rising so I can kind of be all over the place and be rapid fire. So, I’m here for this. For copywriting, I think your greatest superpower is being in tune with your emotions. Most people I know are not in tune with their emotions at all and they’re completely unwilling to feel their emotions. But when you can actually use your body as this tuning fork of feeling and feeling sensations, suddenly when you’re writing and when you’re reading and when you’re editing, you can actually feel how your readers are going to read.

So, if you’re tuning, if you’re writing a sales page and you start tuning out, you’re like, oh, I should just probably delete that section or something needs to change here, versus if you’re captivated by your own writing and you’re channeling this energy while you’re actually writing, there is total biological reasons why this work. First of all, human brains were evolved from around the campfire. We’re all storytellers. So, you actually learning how to write stories and channel emotions into those stories is going to make your writing more powerful.

And this is not standard copyrighting advice. This is the slightly higher-level weirdo version of copywriting. Because yes, you talking like yourself, talking you would talk is an important thing. That’s a standard copywriting advice. You channeling your emotions so that people can feel it when they’re reading it. That’s a more advanced technique that anyone can tune into.

Other general advice I give for people in the online space in using online marketing is to build a house where you own the land. And maybe you guys have talked about this before where if you are… this is a metaphor, in case it’s not clear…

Eric: I was a little confused because we were talking about how you were literally just doing that. I was like, wait, so I need to go buy some land in Hawaii and build a house. All right, I’ll do it.

Sam: Yes, you do. This is my advice for everyone. In marketing, the big thing right now and in the last few years has been social media, where people can go viral and people can build this massive audience on social media. And also, time and time again, people are given examples of how unsafe it is to have your entire marketing plan on land that you don’t own. Because with social media, you don’t have to pay to be on it, right? I mean that’s a huge asset. There’s no barrier to entry. But if you think about it a little more, you realize if I’m not paying for this, then I’m actually the product.

So, I forget what year it was, maybe it was 2005 or 2015, but Facebook, it used to be something where people spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to build up their Facebook business page audience to get more likes, to get more followers. And it worked really well. The algorithm at the time made it that whoever your followers were would see your posts. So, it was just a great idea to buy a bunch of followers on Facebook and buy a bunch of likes. And then overnight, the algorithm changed and all the money that they spent was essentially put down the drain because the algorithm changed so that it didn’t matter how many followers you had. Business pages pretty much got zero views. This was not a slow change. This was an overnight change.

And then anyone who’s been marketing on Instagram over the last 12 months can feel this very strongly because suddenly where it was a platform where you would share beautiful pictures and posts, now unless you’re essentially creating TikTok videos or videos in general or anything under 15 seconds, they get zero views. They get no views at all. And even a few years ago with Instagram, it used to be as soon as you posted, anyone that followed you could see it. Where now, it’s this echo chamber where it depends on what they’re viewing and whatever. It doesn’t matter if they follow you or not.

So, the metaphor of building a house on land that you own is you don’t own social media. You are never going to be in control of the algorithm. You are going to have to pay attention to it for as long as you’re on it. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use it. You should absolutely use it. It’s a great free tool, but you don’t want to build your house on it.

Things like email marketing, and every year people say email marketing is dead. Someone new is saying email marketing is dead. But if you actually look at the statistics, the place where most people purchase and the place with the highest return on investment is actually email marketing. So, you building your email list for decades now, like literal decades, it has been the best marketing tool you could use.

Having a website that people view is a very smart idea. So, this is where SEO or search engine optimization is a very, very smart idea. Where instead, most of my clients are marketing on Instagram. They desperately want to get off and this is where, because of the algorithm, because of how much you have to do, you have to post on stories multiple times a day and you have to make these little stupid videos multiple times a week over and over. It is this constant cycle.

Something like search engine optimization, which is essentially creating pieces of content that people would search for on the most basic level, it makes it so that your website gets traffic. This is a house that you own, your website is land that you own. Your email list is land that you own. It is going to make your business so much more stable, and it’s going to make you so much more sane.

Eric: And have sane people follow you. Because the thing is about that behavior of oh, three stories a day and all this stuff, the people who have the attention span that pay attention to those things are a different vibration of the people who maybe you want to be working with.

Sam: That’s such a good point. Some outliers would be where Instagram and Facebook and TikTok are engagement social media. Things like YouTube and Pinterest are search engine, social media. There’s still a social media platform, but their algorithm’s a little different. So, it can be a safer place if you are still drawn in on social media. Where Google literally owns YouTube, so YouTube and Pinterest, they both work search engines. So, you create content that people would search for, and it’s not something where you’re constantly have to be in front of people and engaging in the new stuff, in the flashy and whatever.

Another one of example of land that you own would be a podcast, like we’re here, right? People will subscribe to your RSS feed. And yes, there’s a bit of a game for people to find new podcasts, but you actually having that RSS feed that is a podcast is essentially land that you own, so.

Eric: Yeah, that’s great. Thank you so much.

Dismount 10 out of 10. A vision that I was getting while you were talking about that was, because the question is I think that for me anyway, it’s important that I have some of my heart in my business, some of my passion, some of my enthusiasm. And I know that if I start feeling, and this has happened to me a number of times over the decade I’ve been doing my business, if I start feeling like there’s some trend that I need to jump on in order to do dot, dot, dot, that actually disconnects me from the reason why I started the journey in the first place. And it’s essential. It’s not like that I shouldn’t do those things and that shouldn’t be done.

But at this stage, I have enough experience to discern between, okay, yes, that’s something that will be useful to me. It’s something I should spend my time on, this technology, this tool. But when I was starting off or at some other times, it’s not so easy to discern. And the challenge is, I think, just visualizing this, you want to cross this. There’s these two land masses in a space between you want to build a bridge between them, that’s your passion, that’s your vision. And you’re walking up to it. You can see it in your head, that bridge. But as you’re walking up, there’s all these stalls of people trying to sell you things and tell you, oh, hey, that’s not going to work. You need to do it this way. Oh, you’re going to need this special wood or you’re going to need this special rope. And I think some of these people have very convincing voices and you could lose your own compass. You could get discouraged and think, oh, I do need to do that.

So, does this make sense to you what I’m talking about? And if so, how do you navigate that with people you’re working with? When do you trust and just do you, whatever that is, and in time it will come, or yes, this is a shortcut, this is a strategy, this is a tool that will absolutely lines and will help you go forward, and it’s not just like a flash in the pan?

Sam: So, I like to think that most people are purchasing energy. When they’re buying from you, they’re trying to buy your energy, which is a great thing that you can completely be in control of. In your example of there’s two mountains and you’re walking a bridge from one mountain to the next, and you see these carts next to you of people trying to sell you things, which are the ideas of how you should run your business, realize that you’ve just put yourself into the consumer state. Instead of you being this beacon of energy that people want to buy from, you are becoming the consumer that is buying from someone else’s energy.

So, realize when you’re passing by those carts and you’re like, oh yeah, I want that thing, you’re just trying to buy certainty. You’re just trying to buy whatever or peace or excitement or whatever energy that they’re putting out. It actually has nothing to do with what they’re selling.

There’s a million ways to be successful in business, a million. There is no one right way. And you can a hundred percent go and be like, you know what? I feel really connected. I see their testimonials and their case studies and I like how their business runs and I like their profit margins and yes, I want to follow their formula. Great, go do it. Follow that intuition, but also realize that you are in that consumer state and you are purchasing their energy, when you can also simply be the beacon of the energy of I am super excited and passionate about Instagram right now, and I’m going to go and light my beacon over there because that’s where my excitement and passion lies. Beautiful. People will buy from you. Massive problem that people do is they’re going to buy from every single cart that they see, where people who’ve been in business and they haven’t gotten to the level of revenue that they want to be at and they just keep on buying online courses.

Eric: Right. And I think an even more insidious and more even insidious scenario is you’re not looking at the carts aren’t the thing, the vendors aren’t the thing that distracts you. It’s the other people who are also building bridges to those mountains and you’re like, oh, that’s how that person did it. I want to do it like that person. And then you just try and copy that person how they did it, people you look up to, businesses you look up to. So, what about that scenario?

Sam: Be really careful if you are emulating very successful businesses because different strategies work at different phases. So, if you’re like, I really love Steve Jobs and Apple and you go and recreate similar type website, it’s not going to work. They have brand recognition. You see the apple or you see the person dancing with the background, you know. Or the Nike Swoop, these are businesses that have been in business forever and they have made so much money. They have so much brand recognition. It’s like part of our consciousness as a collective.

You can’t copy them. Go and copy what they were doing however many decades ago when they were just getting started. You don’t want to cut. You can learn and be inspired by businesses like that, but don’t straight up cookie cutter follow them because it’s not going to help you at all.

Eric: It is really challenging though. People should know. These siren calls are very challenging to ignore on the path because we’re talking about business, but the reason it’s such a powerful tool is it’s no different than areas of life in school. What are the popular kids wearing? I want to be seen. I want to find my voice. I see that person found their voice and they have people around them who admire them. That’s the way. But this is all about finding out who we are, and it’s not meant to be anything. It’s not meant to be easy. It’s not meant to be hard. It’s not meant to last five years or 10 years or any amount of time. It’s not meant to yield a certain amount of money.

Kind of like what you said, is people are wanting to engage with our energy. And it goes back to what you said, the power of when you’re copywriting, to get in touch with your emotions. The more that we get to more know ourselves, the more that naturally we’ll be sharing ourselves regardless of what we do. And that’s what people want to connect with, that authenticity. And the only way to get that is to actually go on our individual journeys, face the thing, the challenges that come up in our lives, sit with ourselves, do a meditation, and tune into those smaller voices that those stars within that only show up when we let the sun go down and turn all the screens off for a little bit.

So, entrepreneurship is the modern-day journey of the warrior, I think. But people don’t understand that, right? Because all they want is they just want the acclaim and the things that the person gets at the end of the journey and to skip the whole journey part. And that’s where your prime father for any of those vendors trying to sell you something or emulation because you’re not following your own compass.

Sam: Another thing that has come up a lot recently is… that feels relevant for the vendor, in this vendor metaphor, it is completely and totally fine and beautiful to build a lifestyle business. Where instead of you’re trying to get 2, 7, 8 plus figures and have this global brand and all these things, instead, just have a very simple business that provides you the lifestyle that you want to be living. And for most people, it’s going to be, your salary is 10 to 20 grand a month for most people. And you building a business that gives you that and doesn’t cause you a lot of stress and is not something you have to spend decades building, that is a beautiful goal. And I don’t think enough people talk about it. Everyone’s talking about the flashy cars and the bigger and the better and the all of things, which is just, I mean, a byproduct of a consumerism. So, I’m just going to throw that little tidbit in the ring, especially for your audience.

Eric: Absolutely. And fact, the matter is too, is everything is a lifestyle business, but some are chosen consciously and some are unconsciously chosen.

Sam: Yeah. A conscious lifestyle business.

Eric: Yeah. A conscious business. Yeah. When we do the businesses, we live it for sure, for better or worse. This has been really great. I so appreciate you sharing all of this with us and with me. Before we wrap up, do you have any additional parting words of wisdom from your journey that you’d like to share with our audience? Just something that comes to mind.

Sam: The thing that comes to mind is that your business and your path of entrepreneurship can be exactly… and we’ve mentioned this a few times today, but it can be this way that you are excavating your true authentic self from you, and you’re putting yourself in the ring over and over again to show up and show up and show up more and more and more like yourself. And you don’t have to do that. Of course, we can put this alter ego forward and be safe and there’s nothing wrong with that. But there is such value and beauty in using this opportunity to really get to know yourself and to really show yourself to the world. And really, the coolest, most successful businesses I’ve seen have business owners that are doing that.

Eric: Yep. Have you read The Alchemist before?

Sam: Yeah.

Eric: So, the end of the book, this isn’t a spoil alert. The end of the book where he finally arrives at the pyramid, well, I guess it’s a spoiler. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. It’s a great book.

Sam: You should read that one.

Eric: Yeah, it’s amazing. It’s a really good book. The instruction was, when you come to tears, that’s the place where your heart is, right? And I feel like that’s a great meditation to do, bringing to tears is a welling up of energy. It’s this tapping into this internal hidden pristine spring within us that when we put our awareness and attention on it, that just the energy just flows up through the heart and up to the eyes. And that’s the gift that we all have to offer.

And to me, that scene in that book where they say that, I feel like that’s one of the messages about it. It’s like your true treasure is where your heart, which is synonymous with what your gifts are and what you have to offer. We could do a whole another podcast or probably a whole show of podcasts on all the ways that we can be seduced out of not doing that, and from fear, trauma, other thing, why we’re not connecting with our truth. But ultimately, when we do that, things come to us of their own accord. So, do that. Well.

Sam: I’d go read the book. Yeah.

Eric: Yeah. Well, thank you so much for coming on today, Sam. Where can our listeners learn more about you?

Sam: Yeah, I mean, you can go listen, your next episode that you listen on your docket could be an episode of business as a magical practice, which is the name of my podcast. Website is thedirtyalchemy.com. And if you want a really great freebie on how to structure and write a sales page that spell binds your customers and make them want to throw money at you quickly, you can go to learn.thedirtyalchemy.com/spellbinding, which is a mouthful.

Eric: Yeah. And we’ll put it in the show notes.

Sam: Yeah, that’s a freebie that you guys can grab, that people have used to build some pretty epic sales pages. So, it’s just a gift for all of you.

Eric: Awesome. Thank you so much, Sam. Well, it’s been great chatting with you. Best of luck with your move to the new land and the building of the new homestead.

Sam: Awesome. Thank you. And thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. This has been really fun.

Eric: My pleasure.

OUTRO:

Thank you so much for listening to my entire conversation with Sam.

I hope you’re walking away with a refreshed and inspired view about what’s possible for your life and business.

Many thanks to Sam for coming on the show and sharing so freely from her wisdom and experience.

If you’d like to get links to all the resources we mentioned, head on over to SubscriptionEntrepreneur.com/189.

There you’ll also find the complete show notes and a downloadable transcript of our conversation.

If you enjoyed this episode and would like to hear more engaging interviews with successful entrepreneurs, experts, and authors, be sure to subscribe to our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, or Stitcher.

We have a growing library of engaging episodes with many more to come.

Thanks for being here and we’ll see you next time!

Thanks for Listening!

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of our podcast. We hope you enjoyed our conversation with Sam and are walking away with new ideas and inspiration you can use to grow your membership or subscription business.

As you listened to this episode, did any lightbulbs go off in your head? Did any questions come up that you’d like to ask us? Leave us a comment below and join in on our discussion. We’d love to hear from you.


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