😳 Start Your Own Business? Side Hustle? Launch Your Digital Course? Best Selling Author! #1 Ranked Podcast Host w/Teresa Heath-Wareing | Ep. 361

Jay Schwedelson: Welcome to Do This, Not That, the podcast for marketers. You'll walk away from each episode with actionable tips you can test immediately. You'll hear from the best minds in marketing who will share tactics, quick wins, and pitfalls to avoid. We'll also dig into life, pop culture, culture, and the chaos that is our everyday. I'm Jay Schwedelson. Let's do this, not that. We are back for do this, not that podcast presented by Marigold, and I have somebody I've wanted on the show for a very long time. She's very cool. So who's who's here? We have Teresa Heath-Wareing. Now if you're in The UK, you know who she is because she's like the the sixth spice girl. How many are there? Four or five? I don't know. But she's one of them. But what she is known for is really helping people to make their dreams come true from a business perspective, developing online businesses. She has courses of her own. She helps people. By the way, she has an awesome podcast. Her podcast, your dream business podcast, she may not even know this. I looked it up. It's ranked in the top 1% of all podcasts in the world. It is incredible. She's spoken everywhere, TEDx, all over. She's a big deal. And we're gonna break down today online businesses. Can you make your dreams come true? Teresa, welcome to the show.

Teresa Heath-Wareing: That was an amazing intro. Thank you, Jay. I appreciate it massively.

Jay Schwedelson: Well, it's all true. I'm excited you're here. Alright. So first off, before we get started, because I was trying to make sure I didn't butcher your name. I didn't let Teresa say my name. We got started. So now I wanna see

Teresa Heath-Wareing: Oh, no.

Jay Schwedelson: My name.

Teresa Heath-Wareing: No. If

Jay Schwedelson: you get it wrong, I'm ending this immediately.

Teresa Heath-Wareing: Alright. I'm a % gonna get it wrong. I literally went online and tried to rehearse it, and now my mind is can I blame the fact that I'm like a 40 year old woman and my mind

Jay Schwedelson: is like first name then? Just do my first name.

Teresa Heath-Wareing: Jay. I've got Jay. It. Perfect. I love

Jay Schwedelson: it. Okay.

Teresa Heath-Wareing: Love it.

Jay Schwedelson: I love it. I let you out easy. Alright.

Teresa Heath-Wareing: Thanks.

Jay Schwedelson: Before you normally we skip over the boring part of what's your origin story. How did you wind up doing all this? Cause who cares? But in your scenario, you have an inspiring story and it's also a story that I think leads into exactly what you do for a living. And everybody that's listening out there, you may be like, well, I don't want to start my own digital business. I don't even know what that means. But the truth of the matter is, a lot of people have side hustles now. And this is an incredible side hustle and we're going explore, is this for everyone? So Teresa, can you break down how did you become you?

Teresa Heath-Wareing: Okay, I'm gonna keep it as short and succinct as I can be, which is not easy. So basically, I did a degree in marketing. I spent ten years in marketing, working for other companies. I headed up corporate marketing at Land Rover, I did teeny tiny marketing where I did it all and I loved it and I was a great employee, I never had any intention to work for myself, have my own business and I joke that I went through a kind of early midlife crisis. So, I was about early 30s and I just was going through a divorce and I had a four year old daughter and I was head of marketing for an agency and I loved it and I was good at it and I knew marketing inside out. I thought to myself, I need to change the role. Things weren't great, it was fine, but I was like, I'm gonna move, I'm gonna get a different job. So I handed my notice in and I gave them eight weeks notice and I was thinking to myself, I'm gonna find another job in eight weeks easy. I am good at what I do. Like, I have a lot of marketing experience, I've done some good marketing jobs. Forgetting that I live in Shropshire and it's fairly rural ish and we just don't have massive businesses in and around here. So it was like I basically thought to myself, okay, well what other options have I got? And it was like my boss at the time said, can leave. Because in my head, I had this thought of, Well, what if I did this myself? I'd just worked at this agency, I'd bought in all this business, what if I did my own company or did marketing consultancy? She asked me to leave, I had one week in which well, in which I was being paid and then my money stopped. I had no savings, I had no partner, I joked that I had no other money coming in, like I have parents but not rich ones, no one could subsidize me and I had to bring in £1,500 a month just to keep the roof over my head and keep my daughter and I with heat and electric and that sort of thing. And I had no choice, I had to go out there and hustle. So within one week, I had a brand. Luckily I was in this industry, so I had some friends who could whip me up a brand and a website and I just went out and I just started offering marketing consultancies. And I like, I'm not a massive fan of the hustle thing, but I hustled, I had to, I had no choice. It was either that or I lose my house. I just started putting myself out there and someone said to me, would you do social media for me? I was like, yeah, okay. Gave them a price and they were like, yeah, fine. Didn't even think about it and I was like, god, what if I could get eight more people to do this? That would be my salary. So, started off as that and then wanted to make sure I was really good, because even though I had a degree in marketing and I'd worked ten years, I felt like I needed more training, which is ridiculous. I started finding the online space, right? So I remember Mari Smith back in the day, I was on a webinar and Mari was teaching Facebook and I was like, okay, I'm gonna learn about this. I remember Mari saying my name and my husband being like, What was that? She's in another country and she's saying your name. Because it was just such a weird concept. I thought this online thing's really cool and it was back in the day where it was like, hey, online business is super easy, you put up a course, people buy it, you end up being really rich and I was like, maybe this is where I should be doing it. Also, at this point, because by now I'd met my now husband and my daughter was still little and I was like, I haven't just got one client, I've got 18 clients, and it was killing me. I was trying to do all this stuff, I'd been picked up for speaking, I was getting flown to The States to speak, the clients were getting upset, and I was like, what if I did this online thing? What if I put it all in? I started consulting other people to help them with their launches and then eventually created my own thing and sat on it for twelve months. I basically created a course and didn't sell it for twelve months because I was so terrified that what if I sold it and no one bought it? What if the person who teaches how to do launches can't do her own launch? What if someone actually buys it and goes it's terrible and doesn't like what they've got? And then eventually I got some coaching and I got a bit of help and I got over myself and I said to my husband, can I fire all my clients? And I built a 6 figure agency by this point and he was very kind or deluded and went, yes, that's fine. And I fired my clients and went all in on the online stuff.

Jay Schwedelson: Wow. That's very brave. Might have been stupid, but it worked out.

Teresa Heath-Wareing: I won't say So

Jay Schwedelson: all right. I have a bunch of questions about that, but the first one is, can you define when you say an online course that you made an online course and other people have online courses, what? Because a lot people out there are like, wait a minute, I know a lot about photography. I'm really good at making salad. I like hiking. I can make a course about this. What does it mean to make an online course and sell an online course?

Teresa Heath-Wareing: So for me, the online course that I created was actually to do with content creation because I'd done a lot of stuff in the social media space. So created, so basically I put all my knowledge into a course. So if someone would pay me to go and train their team or speak to them about something and tell them how to do it, I poured all that into a course where basically it was videos, it was text, it was like this is what you do. And it wasn't massive, it wasn't huge, it was like fairly smallish, but it was a really good succinct course of this is how you do it. Basically, I'd created that and I just hadn't sold it. I just hadn't told anybody about it. I hadn't actually gone, hey everyone, I've got this course and actually attempted to sell it. So it's all one thing doing it and then it's a whole and it's like they are almost two different types of skill sets. Like you need the skill set of I know what I'm talking about. And I think this is a big thing with the online industry where if you're coming from a I have an expertise and I am really good at this and I want to be able to help more people at a different price point and share my knowledge further, then brilliant. I think the problem, not even the problem, but one of the issues comes where people go, Hey, this online thing looks really cool. I could probably whip up a course and sell it. And then they're just trying to find a reason to sell a course rather than going, I'm really good at this thing. I already have a proven business helping someone with it. Now I want to take it online.

Jay Schwedelson: So if I'm listening to this and I don't have a course yet and I have a regular, let's say marketing job and I'm like, well, this sounds great to me because I've always had a passion for, let's say photography, making that up. Okay? But I don't want to give up my my day job because I need that to really pay the bills. But I would love to have a course on this thing. Manage everybody's expectations. How much time and money legit, like ballpark, even though we were off script, probably aren't don't wanna answer this, but too bad. How much time and money does it really take to get a course off the ground? Because you got a day job. A lot of people have day jobs.

Teresa Heath-Wareing: Mhmm.

Jay Schwedelson: And then how much time and money does it take to actually turn it into something that's not just a piece of garbage that makes no money, that just costs money?

Teresa Heath-Wareing: Yeah. So let's ignore the fact of like there are lots of people out there helping you do this and you could pay for courses and coaching and all that sort of stuff. Just the systems, you are going to need something in order to actually put it out there. So you're gonna need to record something potentially, you're gonna need to create something. You can do that fairly cheap. There's Canva and there's online things that you can just use to record yourself. It's not that actually now is a fairly low barrier to entry. Even some of the tech, so I happen to use Kajabi, but you don't even have to do that. You could effectively have a community in a WhatsApp group and then do it through a Google Drive. That actually doesn't have to take a lot. The thing for me is the time and effort you need to put into growing an audience, right? Because it comes back to, and this is why I love your stuff, the email list is like the most important thing. If you have no audience, you don't have an online business. It is, and I hate saying it's a numbers game because it makes me sound like I don't care about the people and I genuinely do, but if you don't have an audience, you don't have an online business. So it's not like, the whole point of having an online business is it's one to many. It's one to a larger number, but if you don't have that larger number to begin with, or you don't have an audience, then that's what's going to be hard. And I think what happens is people put more time and effort into creating the thing than they do into building the audience. Whereas I've had people come to me and work with me that have huge audiences and creating something for them, oh man, easy. Give me someone with a massive audience any day and I can help them create something and they could sell it easily. It's the person who has all the passion and all the thing and they create the thing and they love it and they spend all the time and they make it beautiful and they do all these things but they have no audience, it's literally gonna do nothing. Like, if you've got no one to buy it, it's the equivalent of having a billboard in the desert. It's not going to work.

Jay Schwedelson: Well, think this is very sobering. I think it's very important because you're a % right. Even see that with podcasts. Right? I make the best episodes, the best content, but you have no one to tell about it. Nobody's going listen. No one's gonna find it. It's a lot of effort for like crickets. So are you saying if you have no audience that a digital course, creating one, an online business is not for you? Or are you saying the first step is go ahead and somehow build that audience. And by the way, how do you build that audience? How do you do that? So

Teresa Heath-Wareing: it's not that I wouldn't do the course if you don't have an audience. I would just be very realistic that the chances of you selling it, full stop, or to many people is gonna be low. I would start, so if you have a passion in something, I would start by creating content about that thing. So if you love photography, then start an Instagram account about photography. If you love, so I'm a bit of a weirdo geek that I love home studying stuff, like I grow my own vegetables, I'm obsessed. Like, and one day, if I ever have time, I might start up an Instagram account about me growing vegetables and talking about it. So if you can start to create an audience about that, then that's kind of one of the first things I would do. Like if you have the passion to create content with no expectation, then that is a really good place to start because if you've created a course and you're trying to fight really hard to sell it, that's gonna be impossible. Whereas if you have the passion to just show up and create content because you love it, then brilliant. The next step is becoming a go to person in your industry. In an ideal world, the people who are the most successful in the online space, and it can be any online space. I have got tutors, I've got nutritionists, I've got people who are artists, I've got all sorts of businesses. But it's they are the go to people. They are the people that when someone's looking for a speaker, someone's looking for a podcast guest, someone's looking for someone to write an article or interview, they're the people they think of. So that has been very strategic for me and I don't think I knew how strategic I was being in the early days, but now it's strategic. So it is really strategic of how many podcasts can I get on? How many stages can I speak on? How do I put myself first? One of the things I did when I started my podcast, my very first guest, so I did 20 episodes solo, 20 ish episodes solo, my very first guest was Pat Flynn. And people are like, how the hell? And then my second guest was Amy Portfield. And people are like, how the hell when you have no guest experience? My podcast was tiny. Like, how did you get them? I busted my backside. I actually you won't lose. I sent them a video message Instagram. Now I had already met Pat, I'd spoke at an event that he'd spoke at, so he at least knew who I was. And again, I had met Amy once at an event, she was speaking, I was just a guest, but I went and said hi. I sent them a video message on Instagram saying that I wanted to meet them for a coffee and could I take them for a coffee and I am going to fly 5,500 miles to take them for a coffee, will you meet me? Well, they kind of couldn't say no, could they? Because like if someone's willing to fly to the other side of the world. So I did and the idea was I would just meet them, I'd have a coffee, I would because I just thought I'd really like to sit and have a conversation with them. And then if it went well, when I came back to The UK, I would ask them to be on the podcast. As it was, both of them, I met them separately, almost verbatim, they talked about the podcast, asked how I was getting on with it, said am I gonna do interviews? And I said I am, but I'm really nervous about reaching out. And both of them said completely separately, if I'm on your list, I'll do it. And that's how they were my first two guests. They're like, you've gotta do some things that kind of step you out of your comfort zone because then once I got them, well, the rest is history. Like it was easy because I had the two biggest people in my space. So you've gotta be, you've gotta really have some, I guess guts really, but just to put yourself out there and you've got to go look, I know what I'm talking about even when it's scary to do that.

Jay Schwedelson: I will tell you, I couldn't agree more. The number one lesson I think in business is getting comfortable being uncomfortable. And I'm the same way. I believe everybody is reachable. I believe there's not a human being on earth. When I had less than 500 connections, I was like, I'm going to connect with everybody, meet them, talk to them. I don't care what it takes. And to your point, it. And it doesn't even matter if you want to start a digital course or if you want to get a promotion, you want to get a new job, you want to get a girlfriend or a boyfriend or whatever you're into. You got to walk up to that person. You got to do the thing. So I love that. I love that vibe. I have one other question before we wrap up here. When you talk about audience, you you talk about an email list, I get that. Is building up a social media following the equivalent of building an audience or is that really not gonna do it?

Jay Schwedelson: No, it's good. It's good to be a I love it and I think that's super, super important. That's why I love your stuff and that's why everybody needs to go and follow you. A few things. Teresa's podcast, I'm gonna put in the show notes. It is awesome. Your dream business podcast. You need to follow it, listen to it. I'm not just saying that. It's legit great. Teresa, where else can people follow you? We'll put in the show notes and find you and all that stuff.

Teresa Heath-Wareing: Thank you. So having a name like Teresa Heath-Wareing, as you will well know, when you have an unusual name, you're easy to find. So you can go to tresethwareing.com and find out more there. And in terms of social media, my most favorite of all the least is Instagram. So if you're on there, please come and give me a follow.

Jay Schwedelson: Alright. I'm gonna spell it for everybody. It's Teresa, t e r e s a space Heath-Wareing W A R E I n g. We'll put it in the show notes. You are awesome. You are the fifth Spice Girl or sixth. I don't know which one, but I appreciate you being here.

Teresa Heath-Wareing: Thank you so much, Jay. It's been a pleasure to be on.

Jay Schwedelson: You did it. You made it to the end. Nice. But the party's not over. Subscribe to make sure you get the latest episode each week for more actionable tips and a little chaos from today's top marketer. And hook us up with a five star review if this wasn't the worst podcast of all time. Lastly, if you want access to the best virtual marketing events that are also 100% free, visit guruevents.com so you could hear from the world's top marketers like Damon John, Martha Stewart, and me.guruevents.com. Check it out.