Episode #52 – The Journey to Entrepreneurship Via The Corporate Wowlr and Motherhood – with…

Podcast Introduction and Mission 0:00

Welcome to the Startup Support Surgery podcast, where we light the entrepreneurial spark in medics and healthcare professionals. Join me, Dr. Jo Watkins, GP, business coach and co-founder of The How People, on a journey to discover where your medical know-how meets the business world. This will help you find some clarity on how to balance work, passions and family so that you can gain more freedom and control over your life but also continue to help people, which is actually why most of us went into medicine to start with.

Embarking on this entrepreneurial adventure is not easy. It is a roller coaster of emotions, but it's hugely rewarding and exciting in the process. Drawing in on my 20 years of blending medicine and business as a GP, I am here to share experiences, insights and lessons. Expect lively chats, expert interviews and real life stories from medics who have taken their own path. Let's break free from traditional healthcare norms and explore more innovative ways of making a real difference to people's health and wellbeing, along with paving the way for a brighter future for us as healthcare professionals.

Oh, don't miss my free PDF called From Stethoscope to Startup, which is an 11-page guide in the show notes full of practical help and advice. This is your roadmap to kick-starting your journey with us. Enjoy the Show. Today's episode is the third in this special series which marks 50 episodes of the Startup Support Surgery podcast alongside International Women's Day. This series is about women building businesses in the middle of real life. not in perfect sterile conditions. And Sophie Griffiths is a brilliant example of that.

Sophie works with ambitious women who are very good at what they do, but whose businesses have reached that point where everything relies on effort,

Sophieu2019s Background and Corporate Career 2:00

energy, and constant output from them. What she helps people do is build something much more stable, a proper load-bearing offer that creates recurring revenue instead of constant launching and hustle. In this conversation, we talk about specificity. Why the more specific you are about the problem you solve, the easier it becomes for the right people to find you, which is something I go on and on about within my programs and within any webinars that you might have been to. We also talk visibility and that shift that many professionals experience when they move from systems where people come to them to running a business where they have to put themselves and their work out there into the world.

And this can feel really uncomfortable, but it's also when things start to grow. Sophie brings a really thoughtful perspective to this. She's practical, strategic, and very grounded in the reality of running business alongside family life. I think you're going to enjoy this one. Let's get into it. Sophie's random fact, I knew it was going to be about colour. And I always associate Sophie with leopard skin, but apparently she has a fully pink lounge. Is that correct? I do. That is 100% correct. The walls are pink and we have like a full built-in unit, like with our TV and everything, and that is then a different shade of pink.

Nice. So you were saying you're looking pink & red together yesterday. Yeah, one of my favourite outfits is like pink trousers. I had like a red jumper on and I am currently in my pod, which is my garden office, Which is also painted pink. Which I would say, like when I say pink, it sounds like you're kind of thinking like legally blonde, but actually it's more of like, a dusky vibe. You know, much classier. Yeah. And I'm a bit of a fuchsia and you know I've never really thought of myself as a pink girl, But all my slides are pink my tops are Pink.

Having is that vibrancy when you go to events as well, isn't it? No one's going to forget you. So you remember Sophie, the other one with the red trousers and the pink top. That's it. Exactly. Either that or leopard print trousers, one or the wonderful. Well, I'm really, really excited to have you here. Thank you so much for your time. Your time is precious. We have I can't remember where we first met, but we have worked together. I've been to your mastermind. You've helped me with Facebook ads, with the previous business.

I love everything you do. So it's a real honor to have you here. Thanks for your time, Sophie. Oh, I'm absolutely thrilled to be here! I am very excited. Wonderful. We're going to kick off. For those of people that don't know you, why don' you just take us back? Because I feel like I know the Sophie story, but for those people out there that are seeing you showing up online, doing all this amazing stuff, all the things that you've got to offer, why don't you just take us back to maybe like pre-business corporate Sophie and just talk us through a little bit about how you ended up where you are.

Yeah, okay, so I went to university, got a degree in psychology, and then decided to actually do anything with that. I was gonna have to do a lot more training, which I'm sure lots of your audience know about. And so, I decided that actually that wasn't really for me. So, went and got graduate job at British Airways. Spent the next eight years there. Like, always saw myself in the corporate world, like my dad works in London, my brother was in corporate. Well, it very much felt very familiar. but the next eight years like working my way up in British Airways like was became quite senior so I was the head of premium for Heathrow across terminal three and terminal five I had a team of like 350 like it was a really full on job I loved it like I love it.

Then I got pregnant which was along a waited baby, so we've been trying to get pregnant for quite a long time, went off a mat leave and then as with probably a lot of corporate companies, British Airways, they used to like to reorganize, reorgs, quite lot and they had a re-org while I was off and basically all of like the senior team I worked with like moved on, moved off, left. And when I came to come back they basically said, I wanted to work part time. They said we don't think you can do this big job.

in four days a week so maybe it's best if you're made redundant because you know we can do that and that's fine and at the time I remember being like oh that really logical like okay yeah you what I don't want to do is come back feel like I can't do this job in four days and then end up leaving without the money, like may as well just take the mone while it's on offer. I think in hindsight and on reflection it was really quite traumatising, there was no one there to really advocate for me, I was in a space where I as a new mum, i was on maternity leave and someone telling me like I couldn't do my job in 4 days a week, it just really knocked my confidence and I you know hindsight's a wonderful thing, but it was really quite damaging to me, like it basically taught me I think underlying that I couldn't have success in what I saw at the time, and be a great mum, you, know, be present for my children.

So anyway, got the redundancy money, decided. At that time, I mean, this was only 2017 when this happened, it wasn't that long ago, but it was a lifetime ago in the online business world. Nobody worked from home really, Zoom wasn' really a thing. It was such a different world and when I looked at senior level jobs that were actually worthwhile in terms of salary, because if I was going to have to pay for my daughter to be in childcare full-time, Nothing was part-time. I was like, I don't want to go full- time into London, like with this long-awaited baby.

Like I want spend time with her. So I decided that the only way I'm going to get back to earning what I earning before was to like do it myself. And I sort of also convinced myself I think part of the confidence knock was that like I didn't really have any skills to offer. like i knew i was skilled, i know what's good at what i did at BA. But I like how do I turn it into like a a thing that people are going to buy online. So I decided to learn social media. And so I did a social-media course and from that point then started to work out how do I actually sell?

Like, yeah, how did I create packages?

Redundancy, Motherhood, and First Business Ideas 8:30

How did i build a website? I have an email list and I'm not afraid to admit that I was a really fast learner. Like I learned everything really first. I didn't learn how to make money fast. That took me a long time. Yeah, so at this point, there is full investment in the learning process of the skills to then be able to go and monetize that to create a business. So that honesty of, the fact that it takes time is really important. But did you pick social media because you had a passion for it or you could see a need for or was that an affinity or I know this is what's going to blow up now and I want to follow that?

Did you have that instinct? Yeah, I don't know. So I looked at it from the angle of, basically the jobs online that you could do as a mum working around your child. And there was things like franchises, like run, baby sensory. I guess there were all sorts of different things. A lot of people made their own products, you know, or make lip balms or whatever. I was like, I don't have any desire to do any of those. And then I came across a company called Digital Mums. Um, and they were really big at the time.

you can do social media for other people like you, can sell it as like management you. Can like and I just thought do you know what I mean I wasn't even on Instagram at the time like I. Wasn't a big social-media person at all I thought you-know-what that kind of appeals like running stuff on behalf of other. People like it kind-of appealed to my like creative and like more analytical side. So yeah, so that's kind of really what drew me to it. I never ever did social media management in the end. Um, I've never did it for people.

I mean, actually, I say that wheels weren't even a thing at that point, which I know makes me sound really old. They only came in 2020. So I decided from there to use my social media skills to the first thing I've decided to build was a like online membership for mums. like yeah bringing together trusted experts in an online platform to give mums access to like you know a breastfeeding expert and a sleep expert. I think very much the time I was in it like it very was like creating something that I wished I'd had.

I think it probably was the biggest mistake I made, or with that. It was a really, really great concept, but I built it before I knew if there was any demand, that if actually mums would pay for it or not. I spent huge amounts of time and energy and money building it without testing demand without building an audience, without actually like, you know, verifying if people were actually going to want this. And I tried to go for a high volume model straight away. And I was just like, yeah, because it's low cost.

It's fine. Of course people are going to pay £27 a month. Like that's outrageously good value for the amount of experts you get access to. But at the time, I didn't fully understand like how, how I mean, all the memberships in particular are just incredibly audience hungry. You just need huge amounts of volume. I had no idea about ads.I was really quite scared of them at that time. so very quickly realized that this was not going to be a viable business. So what I actually did was then I teamed up with someone else and we created a, we evolved it.

I had the mum side experts, she had built a similar business but for women's health experts. So it was like a platform for like women's health physios and again, all the intimate sleep coaches, so all of the experts so that people within Surrey where we lived could find them. So we sort of merged our two ideas and created this like online women health platform, which did really well. We did much better, we built demand, We had 200 experts sign up for the launch. This is when I really realized that actually my expertise lies more in like mentoring and coaching and training.

And so we started then teaching the women's health business owners, because what we saw was they were really great at working with like mums, and like, you know, healing someone's like C-section scar. But what they weren't great was like at the social media, at their email, the website, SEO. So me and my business partner at that time created then like my first ever group program. It was my accelerator program that we did for six months with people. And that's kind of where that, where the kind-of business coaching started was there.

And now six years on, that has progressed through various iterations, hasn't it? You know, you are queen of Queen of new programs, queen of iterative processes, Queen Of Pivots. You know, you're not shy of trying something. How important is that in business? Like in early stage business, when people are coming into this world from a different world, so from healthcare or corporate or whatever, how important it is just to try stuff? Yeah, I mean, it's just so important. And I am someone like I'm your real classic, like high achiever Taipei eldest child.

I don't like failing. and I think what sometimes that turns into is real rigidity in like, i've got an idea and i'm just going to like go for it until and just just like keep the blinkers on until it works. for me it doesn't manifest in that way. It manifests in like I can see the bigger goal of where I'm going and I will not fail to get to that goal but I am willing to do whatever it takes to Get there and i'm willing To try things and fail and like the thing that I just repeat to myself over and over again is when I make a decision like it's just for now it is not forever and really trying to let go of that idea that like every decision is something that you're committing to forever more.

It's really not. Like, you know, it's like, okay, I'm going to do this program, i'm gonna get some people in, and iIm gonna run it for four months. And then if I decide to never run again, that's fine. I don't have to ever run. Again, It is just for now. it is not forever. Or it could be the thing that turns my business around, And it can be a staple that I am running ten years later. Both are fine, but you have try it to know whether it will be good or not, Yeah, absolutely. And I think coming back to something that you said earlier that's a sort of counter to that is if you are that rigidity around coming up with something, that was what you needed two years ago or three years or the time.

That's certainly something I've historically done without doing that piece of research, which is around, is there a demand for this? Are people happy to pay for it? And you've, you know, how do you balance these two things? One is, making sure there's a demand for it and the other is just getting on and doing it, and getting scrappy and out there.

Pivots, Testing Demand, and Finding Coaching 15:30

That's difficult balance, isn't it? Yeah, it's, a really difficult balanced. And I think what, if I look back at how I've kind of built the business over time, It's like, I'm not afraid to follow what people are telling me and how the, like how things are changing. So I won't kind of do something that's like totally different to what I've done before, but I'll like evolve and iterate. And it might be like, okay, you know, this group program actually isn't filling like it used to. Like I just shut down my mini mine program, which has been running for the last 18 months, has had 26 clients through, it's generated over 50K.

On the face of it, it's a really good program, but when I started running it there was a real desire I think from my clients to just have time, more of a mastermind style of like, I just want to come with my problem, you give me feedback, we'll move forward. Now in the online world people are being a lot more, thoughtful about what they invest in. They want much clearer ROI, they want a much more specific, tangible outcome. And so as that evolution's happened, it's like the program just isn't quite hitting like it used to.

And so I've shut it down. Well, I have wound it and I got a new program called Outrageous, which is, you know, it's four months. It's much more like time bound. it has a much specific outcome and it is selling much better. Even though it still to the same client and still with the premise. So it just evolving the offer rather than completely pivoting to suddenly like doing like I don't know. women's health or fitness or something like that. It's still the same clients on the journey, but just a slightly different offer.

So it's like pivots like, that feel like they're an evolution and you kind of are what clients want. I think it is just really useful to understand that all the time. Yeah. And it was that experimental approach, isn't it? Like not being afraid of getting it wrong, being like somebody asked me on a webinar the other day, you know, How do I have, you know, it's almost like, how do i go about pivoting my, my niche? How'd I go? And you've just got to be brave and get out there and explain and talk. You know?

There's no, You're not, It's not an embarrassment to have done something. And then two years later, wanting to do something else like that is, look at my journey, Look at Sophie's journey. Look everybody out that I signpost my clients to, have all had. this iterative experimental process. So that's brilliant. Thank you for sharing that. Well, I'd love to ask you a bit about like life and business. You had a long way to child, you've gone on to have another little girl, and you talk quite openly about, don't know if it's one or both of them, having additional needs and recognizing some of the stuff in yourself.

Your family is pivotal to what you do now, isn't it? How hard has it been to build a business around a young family? Yeah, no, I mean, it has been incredibly challenging at times. So I, as I kind of explained, so I had Eliza, who's my eldest. I already had her and then I tried to start my business and from the point of already having children. And so the goal initially for those first few years was just literally like build something that I could do in her naps that i could Do you know the weekends when my husband was home when My mum could have her for a few hours And I got sort of two or three years in and it was a real crossroads point of like if I i'm not earning good money right now if i want to earn good Money I'm going to have to make some changes here and stop doing this for the family and start doing it for myself.

Because I felt for my specific situation, I feel really, to be honest, like I was backed into doing my own business. Like it was never my dream to being an entrepreneur. I never had a side hustle. It wasn't my dreams and I really felt like forced into it. And I've really resented it quite a long time. So I had to get to a point where I have make a decision like, OK, this business is a priority. As I said earlier, I ran the business with a business partner, and that business came to an end in COVID for various reasons.

And that was when I had my second baby. So, Otterly, she was born in August of COVID. At that point, that businesses had wound down. I've had a baby, so it's kind of a maternity leave as much as you are when you run your own business. I had to make a decision around like, okay, what's next? So that's when I trained as an ads manager. And initially, again, I was really focused on how do I keep this really like not overwhelming. So I did ads management, which was very much like you do the work and then you have like one call a month with a client.

I have four or five clients, so very, very little touch points in terms of like Zoom calls and stuff. And it worked really well. I was really lonely. Um, I felt really like isolated. And these, even the calls with clients, you know, they were nice, but they're literally just an hour talking about ads. Like I just felt even I'm part of some online memberships. So I didn't feel like I really was part. of anything. so I went back to my roots and that's when I started doing training and group programs and stuff.

And that's really when the business started to pick up. But that also was the point where I started find the balance between home life. So before, the whole business had revolved around prioritizing my home. At this point, I was like, actually, i'm doing this for me now. I want this to be a priority. i don't want to just always be the default parent. Like, want some support in growing this if we're going to do it. And I think probably from like two or three years there, we found it really, really hard.

It consumed like my mind all the time, growing an audience, being on Instagram, filling group programs. Like it just felt like such a pressure and such, a lot. And it really kind of, like you say, both my girls, so my eldest is nine and my youngest is five. My eldest has autism and ADHD and the youngest we think probably has ADHD. I have ADHD, and was diagnosed in 2022. So I've kind of been through that process as well of understanding myself and this like... real hyper focus. And I really used work actually to regulate myself.

So I find work. I know that sounds ridiculous. Yeah, I found work like if I'm stressed or like dysregulated, the feeling like the home is feeling really overwhelming. Like my default is to work, like I will literally bury myself in like, oh, just needs to do this Instagram post, or I need to some emails or,

Family Life, Neurodiversity, and Burnout 22:00

productive and that I'm really good at and I really enjoy. And it was really challenging when we didn't know that my daughters were neurodivergent. There was lots of big emotions. You know, we went through periods where they were starting school and, you know it, was challenging and the whole family was like, quite dysregulated a lot of the time. And the business really thrived on that, if I'm honest, because the more the home was dysregulated the, more I worked and the better I didn't work, the I felt about myself, but the disconnected from the family I fell.

And then it was like this time, probably about this, time last year. And over those periods, like I definitely had periods where I felt really quite burnt out. If anyone follows me on Instagram, you will sometimes see me referring to like the Christmas where i broke my nose. I was trying to reply to an email on my phone. Again, totally, it totally was over Christmas. Everyone was very dysregulated. This was before we really understood how to help my daughters regulate more. And I was trying to tidy the lounge and I tripped over a bag and because my hands were on my phone, I smacked my nose into the door frame.

And honestly, I was really traumatized by it. I kept re-feeling it for months and stuff. It was very traumatic on my body. And it really taught me at that point that, A, needed to look after myself, but also I had to stop working for a few weeks. Even though I'm doing really well at this point, bringing in 10K months from the outside, it looked great. I stopped for those few weeks and it really massively impacted the business for the next six months almost while I tried to build up the rhythm again.

That taught me a lot of lessons. Then last February, my husband whose job has supported me as I've grown the businesses throughout, his job was changing and getting a little more stressful. The children were really dysregulated. We were just really feeling it as a family and we went away last I think we just, you know, has been realizing something has to change. And I, think you, know there's two options we could have gone down here. The first was that actually I could, have made the business smaller.

So I couldn't have said, okay, I'm gonna work school hours again, they're not gonna go to any before and after school clubs there. I will make myself and my business, smaller to fit what the girls need. and he would have had to then to balance out the revenue I was then bringing in, would've had, to go for like a sort of director level role. knowing that he's already stressed, like that would have been more stressed but it would've given us the income we needed. Actually what we decided was that actually what were going to do is I was going continue to grow the business because ultimately that's where I think long term financial security for us sits, is like my business.

And he originally decided he was going to hand his notice in, but they actually created a part-time role for him. So he took the kind of reduction and his view was very much like, I had done everything over the last, like, it would have been about, what, six and a half years, seven years to allow him to grow his career and, you know, do basically whatever he needed to do with work. It was kind of my time. And actually, I'm the ambitious one between the two of us. Like, he's not that bothered. I am the one that's, chomping at the bit to work, and this is hilarious, but I don't know how many people will resonate with this or not, when I was stressed I would sit there and work If he's stressed, if it's dysregulated, I will find him cleaning the shower.

I kid you not. When he is stressed he will clean. And when I'm stressed I'll work. So actually he now works 9.30 to 2.35 days a week. And so he's the one that sorts the kids out, that makes dinner for when I finish work, who holds a lot of the, like, he does all the cleaning, does the washing. I'm the ones that does finances. But what it's done is allowed us to, I still don't work full time, but it has given us that, capacity to be able to breathe and the kids are much more regulated for it and I've done a huge amount of work on how do I make sure that I'm regulated in the business and intentional and have a team and support and design offers that aren't just focused on revenue, they're actually focused how I want to like actually live my life as well.

Like I want to go for a dog walk in the morning, I wanna go to my exercise classes. I won't have Fridays with no meetings like so I can go out if I wanted to. And then it's like, okay, how do I create a business that then allows me to do that and brings me in to the revenue I one? Because for me, it is about that long-term financial security as much as it about my long term health. Yeah, I love that. Thank you for being so honest and for sharing some of that vulnerability, because I know there's a lot of people who are listening to this who.

Are trying to kind of hold it all together at the moment, maybe in that like beginning stage of building a business while continuing with the day jobs. with partners working, kids all over the place, that dysregulated environment that you talk about. And I've certainly gone down many, many rabbit holes like this before myself. I think that permission to actually take that step back and say, okay, what kind of life do we actually want to live? We want one parent to be around before and after work.

It's okay for the one that wants to work to the work and the ones that like cleaning the shower to do that. Doesn't matter what that looks like. You know, we can build a business that works for the life, because actually, otherwise, business does creep into every waking moment, particularly for people like you and me who thrive on what we do. It's actually really hard, isn't it, to put those boundaries into place? And it's something that you learn over time, and you kind of recognize in yourself when it...

I mean, I find it a set out with good intentions, I find myself like, oh, I'm going off script a little bit here and I need to pull myself back. And you must work with lots of other people for whom this is a familiar story, Yeah, so much. And I think so often, like, you know, we build businesses and we like follow, We see what other people are doing and think, oh, that's working. Like, I'm going to like do that without really assessing whether what they're doing is what we want to do. I have almost all my clients in my mastermind run memberships.

But I don't have a membership because I didn't want a low ticket offer that for me means like constantly filling it. You know people leaving, people joining. For me that is really dysregulating. What I would much prefer is I have a mastermind that is a minimum of six months and you know I can have ten people in it and that brings me in like six figures a year. like that's i want that kind of i realize i think when i break my nose that it's that future locked-in revenue that is so important for my nervous system so that i'm not starting each month being like right well you know i've got a grand locked in um so if i wanna hit 5k i need to bring another 4k in or if I want to hit 10k I've gotta bring in another 9k and then getting to the end of the month and being, like oh i did it yay well done me and, then it going to, the first month of being like, I need to hustle, to shift this, be proactive, like be visible.

I talk a lot to my clients about how can we design offers to bring, the whole thing that I do is all about feeling safe. How can you design to feel safe? How do we create stability for ourselves so that we can then test on top? You might not want to do for me, let's say ads management forever. But if I have three contracts that I know are long term, bringing in let say 3k a month, actually fine then if I want to launch a group program and it does well great and if it doesn't okay that's fine because I've still got my 3k it's when I see people like what I did you know try and start a membership with no you no long-term stability no safety no offer that is going to give them that financial stability like that that when it becomes really really challenging on your nervous system and feels really consuming because you're like if i don't make this launch work I'm not going to bring in any money.

And then that, and then like, that is either really challenging financially, or it's just hugely demotivating.

Designing Offers for Stability and Specificity 31:00

Like I put in all that time and effort. I mean, I used to say this all the time to my husband, like I'd be getting a better like wage per hour working at Tesco's. Absolutely. Yeah. and I think that's a challenge that I have with certainly helping clients at that beginning stage, because know what you're talking about here are offers for those of you that are sort of early on you talking, about that building that audience and and making offers to help them with various services that you might be offering whether it be one-to-one or group programs or memberships but that first piece of wanting to you know thinking that the answer is offering something that doesn't cost very much to lots of people is so much harder when you start off than offering one-to-one support to one or two people, isn't it?

It's that concept. And I think it would be really helpful for you to imagine for a minute those people that you used to work with, those sort of healthcare professionals or wellness professionals going out there and starting out What would be your kind of the first things that you do? Because I often talk to people about obviously establishing who they want to help and then growing that audience before you offer something to them. Is that the sort of pattern that would take or is there any sort top tips that we would give somebody starting out?

Yeah, why you and why them? So, and like, I'm really specifically, like the more specific you can be, the better. So it's not, especially in how the online business world has progressed in the recent years. Like there's so many more people online since COVID, whether they work in person or whether work online, you know, there is just a lot more competition. I used to work with physios and you know someone who can say like I'm a women's health physio who specializes in c-section support is going to be incredibly busy because everyone whose friend says to them like oh you're no I am fine but like my c section scar is really sore.

Oh Sophie does that, Sophie is the person who's like brilliant with you, oh I have amazing story blah blah. a physio who is like oh yeah I do a bit of women's health but I can also help you if you've got a back problem and oh you know I like men's running injuries too like I'll see anyone even to the point of being like, oh I'm a specialist in like like back sores, like it's still, it has to be so specific, to make sure that people really resonate with you. You want to think about if someone said their specific problem in a room, would people go, oh, that's Sophie, she does that.

I know with absolute confidence she's a specialist in that, so I think getting really specific and then working out how you are going to find, how are people gonna find you? Are you gonna be on social media? Are you, I mean, there's three core ways that you build an audience. There's, you either buy it. So you run ads, You either borrow it, so you go on other people and go like, and other peoples world. They go and people's podcasts and that sort of thing, or you built your own. And I think the reality is when you're starting your business.

It's very hard. You don't really want to run ads because you don' really know what works yet and you're just going to waste money. you can't borrow other people's because your not known enough for you to be valuable enough almost for someone to bring you into their world. There's definitely opportunities I think around collaboration and other building their businesses up. I used to do a lot of like, I did a whole live series called Tuesday Tips on Instagram for like six months and I just invited other ppl on who had similar audiences to me.

so in that way kind of borrowing other people's audiences but orchestrating it myself rather than waiting to be invited and then I think building your own and just being really really focused on who that is and I then think the other big thing that I used to see which I don't know if it'll be a thing for your audience or not but is creating packages not trying to sell like one-off things or you know single sessions or You know it's a similar thing with like the C, let's just take the c-section one instead of saying like oh yeah it 65 pounds a session you know come back again if it hurts.

It's like okay I recommend six sessions and we need to do them weekly and then we'll review at that point and it might require another six session. Like that's how you're going to start to build up the revenue rather than just like waiting for people to buy things individually from you. Absolutely. Some absolute gold in there. You know, these are the three ways of building your audience. you buy your audiences with paid ads, you borrow and collaborate with people, or you build your own. And that building, your, own bit is the brave committing to a group of people.

and I always say to people that you're not tied into that group for people for the rest of your life, but that, group, of, people who, for example, have had c-sections, perfect example want an expert. They don't want any old physio and they don t care whether that physo lives in an island in Indonesia or whether the physios live in Surbiton. It doesn't matter. they want the expert who is the best person for the job. And I think that's where this online world, and you know, you and I have both been in this world for a long time.

It has just blown up, hasn't it? I mean, the Zoom of 2000 is very different from the situation now. And you've got to cut through all of that noise, which takes bravery, takes guts, it takes experiments, It takes all the stuff that we've talked about, doesn't to be able to do that. yeah 100% it's i always used to say like particularly at the beginning but even now i mean mindset is huge but i used say at at beginning like it felt like the most exposing thing i had ever done in my life i use to saying to my husband like i don't see that every you know email you send at work or like you when something's gone wrong or not at like there's no like public shame you don t nobody's having to post it over instagram i'm having post you know, I'm having to put myself out there, and having say I am selling something, having tell the world what price I was charging.

It just felt so exposing and like, this is just so challenging. And just on that speciality piece, last week was half term for the kids and I booked in, had to wait eight weeks for an appointment I booked in with a cranial osteopath who specializes in nervous system regulation for children with neurodiversity, right, and adults as well, but specifically she works with lot of children. She has a brilliant Instagram that literally has like video after video of her working with these children, I drove over an hour with two children to have these appointments.

despite there being plenty of perfectly good cranial osteopaths, osteopaths you know who live locally to me, not one of them on their websites references neurodiversity, autism, ADHD. I'm sure they'd be able to help but she is so specific on her area of expertise that I spent quite a lot more money than I would have if I'd gone locally and basically took the girls on a three-hour round trip to go to this person. Like that's how much I think when you're being specific.

Audience Building and Final Takeaways 38:30

I Think so many people are worried about yeah, but what if Joe with the back pain Doesn't come and see me and it's like yeah But other people will move hell and high water to get to you if you are the specialist and I just really holding on to that as well. Yeah and sitting with that with that discomfort of the complete opposite of being in an NHS, having an NHS waiting room full of people that are desperate to see you, who have every problem under the sun, and 50% of them have been turned away by a receptionist before they've even come into the room.

So it's a stark contrast shift for most of most the medics, certainly that I work with, find this piece difficult. And I know it is not just meds. People in the corporate sector, anybody that runs their own business finds this concept uncomfortable. until they have seen, and that's a brilliant example of your, the C-section and the cranial osteopath. I love it, I could talk to you forever. Just think you're wonderful, really do. And I, you know, are a brillant example, of building a business that works for your life, prioritizing the needs of you kids, your husband, building something really amazing.

How do people find out more about you? I mean, probably the best place is Instagram because that's where I live. And my handle is Sophie Griffiths Co. Brilliant. Sophie, thank you so much for your time and I look forward to seeing you soon. You're welcome. Thank you. So much. I hope this episode has sparked some new ideas or challenged your thinking. Transitioning from medicine to business is not easy. It's about adapting our skills while embracing the unknowns of entrepreneurship. or just shoot me an email at joe at bendylegs.com for support.

And don't forget to grab the free PDF from the show notes from stethoscope to startup, which is your go-to guide and resource for diving into entrepreneurship. Many thanks for tuning in. I will see you next time. Thanks for spending your precious time with me. This has been a Monkey Pants Productions Podcast.