Making $15k a month doing work she loves with Hayley Osborne

Hayley Osborne is a marketing expert and a private coaching client of mine. In today’s episode, we chat about how she called her service offering just to focus on work that she loves. And by doing this, she is actually making more money than ever, even with a brand new baby. This episode is a must listen if you don’t love all the services you offer, but are nervous about decreasing the breadth of your offering for fear your sales will decrease.

Hello and welcome to The Clare Wood Podcast, where myself and incredible guests share about money mindset, financial successes, and how to manage your money in a fun and practical way to create wealth and abundance in both your business and your life. I’m your host, Clare Wood, I’m a business coach and a money mentor. I strongly believe that money has the power to positively change the world. I can’t wait to help you transform your mindset around money, create a love of numbers and build the business of your dreams, so you can live a life of financial freedom, giving and global impact.

Clare Wood:

A big warm welcome to the podcast. Hayley Osborne, who is host of The Hayley Osborne Show and also the founder of Social Soul. She was an amazing client of mine up until she had her baby just recently, but we’ll dive right into that in the episode. A big warm welcome and it’s fantastic to have you here, Hayley.

Hayley Osborne:

Hi, Clare. Thank you so much for having me. I am so excited to be on your podcast show and I also am an avid listener. So this is huge for me.

Clare Wood:

Well, it’s great to have you here. And I may have taken over your intro a bit at the start there. I think I was a little bit too excited to have you on. Would you like to in your own words explain who you are, what it is that you do and how you help people?

Hayley Osborne:

Yes. I’m Hayley Osborne. I run a digital marketing agency called Social Soul and I help business owners and entrepreneurs with their social strategy and marketing strategy so that they can focus on the things they love. And I basically take the stress and the panic out for them.

Clare Wood:

Yeah, amazing. So maybe if we backtrack to the start of one way first connected. So you reached out to me, oh, gosh, it must’ve been a year ago now, I guess.

Hayley Osborne:

I think it was about a year ago I reached out to you. I basically got to a standstill in my business. I knew that I was having a baby, I knew that my business couldn’t progress the way it was going with me working ridiculous hours, knowing that I was pending having a baby. So I knew that something had to change and I had been following you for a while and it was literally the best decision that I ever made for my business. And I haven’t looked back, and I’ve had a baby, and I’m running a business and I’m doing all the things and I didn’t think I could and I couldn’t be prouder

Clare Wood:

I can’t wait to dive into all of this with you. It has been such an inspiration watching you step into motherhood whilst running a successful business and all of the other things you do, your health, your fitness, you’ve also recently moved house. This would be exhausting for a lot of people, but you are just an absolute powerhouse. But let’s go back a little bit to when you did reach out to me. So you mentioned that you weren’t about to have a baby at the time, you were pregnant and you were working a lot in your business, and what specifically made you sort of decide to reach out and get some help? 

Why Hayley invested in private coaching?

Hayley Osborne:

So pretty much I had a lot of social media management clients at the time. And as a lot of people know that can be such a laborious and also full on to have a big repertoire. There’s a lot of work involved and it’s also really under appreciated at times if you’re not working with the right people. So that’s kind of the rut that I had got myself into. And it wasn’t into listening to a couple of your podcasts, obviously, stalked you like crazy beforehand. And I got to the point where I was really at ends of exchanging that one-on-one and time for money situation and I needed to somehow diversify my business. And unfortunately, when you are on your own, working in a business, you don’t know what you don’t know. So being able to have somebody in your corner to ask the questions or ask you the questions that you didn’t know that you needed answering and getting you to feel uncomfortable to get comfortable was the biggest thing when reaching out to you.

You talk a lot about when you feel uncomfortable that’s when you reach your highest heights and that was humongous for me. So just thinking about the investment alone to work with a business coach is quite scary. But then when you think about the compounding effect that it has on your business in the long run is massive and it pays for itself over, and over, and over, and not just from dollars in the bank perspective, but also mental health perspective. Me having the portfolio I had was huge and I just knew that that wasn’t sustainable with a baby. And then again, you don’t know what you don’t know, with having someone in your corner to come on board and say, “Why don’t you do this? Why don’t you do that? What do you love? What don’t you love? Okay, you don’t love it, stop doing it.”

And the thing is I find that I was really scared to do things on my own, but then when you have the support of someone that’s walked in your shoes and done what you want to do and has provided you with the courage to do that, that is outside of your family or friendship group, an external person, that in and itself is massive. And yeah, I think Clare, you provided me with the courage to really go for what I wanted to and take the business to where it is now. I’ve got a lot of work to do still, but the different services that I have now overlaid into my business on top of what I do has given me the freedom to be able to choose the clients that I want to work with from a social media management perspective and has really taken the business to another level.

I’ve added layers into my business that I never had before, because I didn’t know that I needed them until I reached out and started working with you. So I hope that answers your question. That was a very long winded explanation from me, but it’s all true. And yeah, I’m in a really good place right now. And I get to be a mom, I get to run my business, I get to work with some of the best businesses in the country because I think it all comes down to mindset and having the confidence to go and get what you want.

Clare Wood:

Yeah, no, totally. Going back to the start, so you sort of touched on this already, when you first went to take that leap, Hayley worked as a private coaching client of mine, which, it’s a pretty big investment, did you have fears around taking that big leap and were there any sort of, especially last minute hesitations, when it actually came to signing the contract and paying the invoice?

Hayley’s fears about working with a private coach

Hayley Osborne:

There were here huge phase and obviously I spoke with my fiancé at the time and I’ve got a couple of family members that are in business and I sort of asked them as well. And I just knew that if I was to stay where I was, that was much more fearful than reaching out to take a chance to do something new. The fear was far greater to stay where I was, it was more excitement to achieve that next level of my business. Now, my business has transformed and changed since working with you. And I get to work with who I want, but also work a little bit more when I want, I’ve got more free time and flexibility and the business has gone from five figures to six figures very quickly and is growing every single month. And that is the difference.

Clare Wood:

Wow. And that’s a lot to do, especially for someone who has a very young baby. It’s just been amazing and so inspirational to watch. So if people are listening and wanting some advice around, I guess, how they can do the same in their own business, let’s have a little bit of a chat about your service offering when we first started working together. So you mentioned that you had social media clients and one of the first questions that I actually asked you is I was like, “What’s the big dream? What’s the big dream for your business?” And I think that’s when you had a bit of an aha moment. Wasn’t it?

Hayley Osborne:

Oh, 100%. And to also take a step back, I did leave this out, I had social media management clients, I had Facebook advertising clients, I was copywriting, I was sort of dabbling with Google Ads, I was trying to be the graphic designer, I was literally trying to do all the things and that results to none of the things. At the end of the day, that’s what I realized. And then when I really, I guess, niched down on what I was good at, so that was providing strategy, so digital strategy in terms of social media strategy and marketing strategy, that really helped my clients shine. And from there, once they have that in place that then rolls over to coaching, which is to activate that strategy because it can also be quite scary and that really lights me up. And I feel like when you do reach that nice point in your business, abundance creates abundance and the momentum is ridiculous. I hope that answers the question.

Clare Wood:

Yeah. And I work with lots of digital marketing agencies and a lot of digital business owners find themselves in this place a lot of marketers, because their clients are dictating to them what they want. And ultimately, and I think this is why I bang on about mindset so much because people will just stop doing it. But it’s not that simple because when someone wants to pay you money or they want your help, you end up getting pulled in all these different directions. So I remember in the early days with you, I was like, “What is it that you dream of? What do you love doing?” And that’s when we had the real aha that you were really passionate about marketing strategy. So we decided to put that offering into your product mix. I don’t know if you remember, but let’s go back and remember what it was like the very first time that you actually did a marketing strategy at a premium price point for a client. What was that like for you?

What was Hayley’s a-ha moment to niche her services?

Hayley Osborne:

It felt amazing. And it actually felt like I had been, first of all, it’s a relief because that’s the groundwork, I guess, as a business owner that you need before you actually go on to do anything. If you have no strategy, you find yourself doing things for the sake of it and I felt like this was just happening time and time again. And it wasn’t until you pulled the bandana off of my eyes that I realized that that’s something, that number one, I’m good at. Number two, my clients and future clients have now benefited from the strategy and just the advice and guidance, because there’s a lot of things out there. The stats are that you should reach somebody 22 times as a business owner before they will even consider you not even in their repertoire, but just as a possible option for the future.

So 22 times is a lot of times. So if you are running your business and doing what you do in your zone of genius, how are you supposed to then think as a marketer to reach someone 22 times? And it’s probably even more now, but those stats are huge and hugely overwhelming. And what tends to happen is businesses just do nothing and they want to do all the things and then it’s just kind of random run in circles. So back to your question, Clare, the services now, so in terms of the marketing strategy, I have a marketing degree and I’m a marketer and brand manager by trade, I guess, so to speak before I ran Social Soul. So just discovering that that was something that I could actually get paid for was huge. And it’s having this value add or just adding the strategy onto my business model has changed it so much.

And I’ve worked with a lot of big brands over the years, and I feel like now I’m just starting to fly and get paid for something that I’m actually really good at. And I’m not afraid now to also… I’m not big-noting myself, or you’re beating your own chest and that’s really hard to admit and to say, because as females, you tend to downplay yourself a lot in all sorts of roles.

So I don’t know, it feels really good. I know I’m good at it, I know I get to help people, I know that businesses grow because of the strategy that I’ve put in place and my clients are happy and they’re happy to pay for it because they know that they get results. And the transformation that I’ve seen from working with my clients from the outset, through to coaching, to activation with their marketing and social media is huge.

Clare Wood:

I remember the first time that you had done a marketing strategy, and obviously it wasn’t the first time you’d done a marketing strategy, you did a lot of this in your past, but actually stepping into this role in your capacity as a business owner, and you were just buzzing. You were, “I can’t believe that I’m getting paid good money to do something that I absolutely love.” And then I remember you celebrating client wins with me and saying, “Look to feedback that I’m getting. I’m making such a difference in people’s lives.”

And isn’t it so funny how we all these limiting beliefs around how, and again, this is why mindset comes into play because we’re like, “I can’t get paid good money for doing something that I absolutely love. I can’t be able to help people and have a massive impact on their life and also get paid good money for it. Can I? Is this too good to be true?”

Hayley Osborne:

Yeah.

Clare Wood:

So maybe let’s share a few of your client wins. So what were some of the big ahas that your clients had from working with you and doing the strategy work, doing coaching in this space?

Hayley’s client wins after changing her services

Hayley Osborne:

Oh, look, I think it’s just in terms of especially marketing, positioning is everything. And a huge one that I recently worked on actually was a marketing strategy for a non-for-profit and that’s huge. And they came to me and said, “We need a marketing strategy, but we have no money.” So not money to spend on strategy, but no money to spend with Facebook advertising or anything else. So I had to come up with really, really clever ways and this really proved my worth as a marketer on how they could activate a strategy. So they have time, they have time to activate it, they have money to spend on it because they know that they need to raise awareness of the brand profile, but they had little budget to activate and put into other places. So that was massive. And yeah, that made me really think and doing that number one, it felt amazing.

Number two, I know that now I’m watching them fly, which is huge, but if I can do that for a non-for-profit with no money to spend on advertising, then if you have a little bit of a pool, the results are huge. And then another private client of mine, I wrote a social media strategy for him. So not a marketing strategy, just solely focused on social. And since the beginning of working with him, and then I followed on to coach him through that strategy, he has lit up the whole Instagram feed. He shines brighter and has a lot more confidence than what he did before he started working with me. His social media feed now has all the things. And say you’re running a accounting firm, marketing and social media is not your zone of genius and it’s not expected to be.

So it’s okay to reach out and ask for help in this space because there’s so many things that are involved within social media, but just having the know-how to easily get from A to Z is number one. And secondly, aesthetics are everything and it’s the little things as well. So how you’re writing, I often like to use little different nuances within my coaching sessions as well and my strategy and I often talk, “Do you have the hook, line and sinker right?” And that’s an easy way to remember writing your hook, your insight and your call to action.

So you don’t know what you don’t know and at the end of the day, if it’s not your zone of genius, reach out and get help because there’s a pool of, I don’t even know the stats anymore, three point something billion people in this space and if you were to reach 0.0001% of the market, that’s a lot of people already. I hope that answers your question.

Clare Wood:

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that it was really, really cool watching you step into something that you were passionate about, watching you be able to help people. The next thing that we started to work on in terms of scaling your business was both looking at your team and the structure within your team, but also creating recurring revenue within your business, because you were doing these strategies, people were paying you good money for these strategies, but it was like one off session and then you’re constantly having to look for your next client. So do you mind maybe explaining a little bit more about what we did in the space of both your team and also in terms of creating recurring revenue streams?

How Hayley created recurring revenue streams

Hayley Osborne:

Yeah. So my team, I had an assistant who worked closely with me pre-COVID and then come COVID, it got less, and less and less. So basically I then bought her back into the business in a bit more capacity. And as a small business owner, it’s really hard to let go of things and trust somebody else to do them for you. And I think working with you, Clare gave me the confidence to be able to really understand that I’m not the only one that can do things and if I want to grow in my business, I have to let go of it and know and trust somebody else to do the job. So she’s now come back into my business. She’s still part-time but works more hours and I have relinquished roles and given her free reign to manage things.

So launching my podcast, The Hayley Osborne Show was huge and the amount of work that goes into that is a lot and the return is nothing. But I have now given up that to her to manage from A to Z, which is humongous for me. There’s a lot of other things that I have and one to also still outsource and I think you just have to have the confidence to be able to do it. So staffing is huge and there’ll be more changes this year as well, which I’m really excited about. The second thing is the recurring revenue piece, because that’s huge and I think that that is what helps to grow your numbers because not knowing where your next client is going to come from is scary. And just to have that comfort is something that I think all business owners look for.

So for me, that was coaching, so the mentoring piece. It was really hard for me at the beginning to figure out how I was going to convert people from a strategy to a reoccurring coaching client. And all in, number one, the confidence is huge and believing in yourself, and it doesn’t matter what anyone says. Those two and mindset, three, sorry, are the three big factors to changing up things and moving your business to where you want to go. But the other thing is, I guess, wording, the script, everything you helped me with when I speak to clients, to be able to move them on to coaching. Now, these things are hard to learn. So I guess if it wasn’t for you and your help to guide me and the right words to use and believe in myself that my product was worthy, that’s the magic. Do you believe in yourself? You’ve got a great product, and I guess that sums it up.

There’s a lot of self work here. Before we go on, I remember initially you said to me, “Hayley, I want you to start writing a daily diary. I want you to start meditating and I want you to write down your thoughts, ask yourself one question every day and answer it.” I was like, “I don’t know. This woo-woo stuff is not for me. I don’t know if I can do it. Here’s some questions, every day I want you to just spend five minutes meditating and write down something.” And I did. And it’s been such an… You can’t see me now because obviously we’re on a podcast, but I’m covering my eyes and opening them up again, but that’s been huge. It is a little woo-woo, but is next level amazing, Clare.

Clare Wood:

I just want to take a moment here to acknowledge you and I think it’s really easy to say, “It’s thanks to someone else. It’s thanks to a mentor. It’s thanks to a coach. It’s thanks to the program,” but the reality is, is that the work, the transformation always happens within. And I know that you’ll see this with your clients as well. And absolutely, you’re playing a supporting role, you’re bringing the horse to water, but at the end of the day, the transformation, the credit for what has changed in your business, sits with you. And I think that’s something that I really want to highlight to people is when you are going into a program, a coaching relationship, anything like that, you still have to take accountability. And I love to bring amazing clients like Hayley here on the show and I’ve bought many clients of mine on before, but I just want to acknowledge that it’s you that’s done the work.

A lot of people get given the tools and they don’t take it, they don’t run with it. They go, “Oh yes, I’m going to increase my prices, or add a digital product, or build out my team.” They in theory want to do it and they don’t actually take action. So I want to take my hat off to you because that’s the hard stuff and ultimately, that always sits with the person doing the work. So full credit to you for that and it’s been an honor watching your journey. So you’ve spoken a little bit about the podcast. When you were telling me about it, I was like, “Hayley, you’re about to have my baby. Is this something that you really want to take on?” And you’re like, “Yes, full steam ahead.” So I was like, “Okay, it’s your business, you make the calls.” Tell us a little bit about The Hayley Osborne Show and how that’s progressing along.

Why Hayley created a podcast for her business

Hayley Osborne:

So The Hayley Osborne Show is something that I had wanted to do forever, I just didn’t have the confidence to do it. And yes, I launched a podcast at 39 weeks pregnant. Crazy, looking back, but I did it. And I remember you saying to me, “Hayley, you realize that you’re going to launch this podcast next Tuesday. Are you sure you’re ready for it? You could give birth at any time?” And I said, “Yes, yes, I’m ready. I’m ready. I’m ready.” “Hayley, do you realize that it’s going to take you, you’re going to need to be available for at least X amount of time to be able to launch this podcast while you are in launch mode? Do you have everything ready?” “Yes, Clare. Yes, I’m planned, I’m planned, I’m planned.” Launching that podcast at that moment in time in my pregnancy was the best thing that I ever did.

I knew that I had to do it before I gave birth. I knew that by launching the podcast, it would give me the confidence to do so much more in my business, especially post-birth. It also gave me, I think the confidence to be able to reach out to people that I considered to be out of reach to interview in my podcast. Now, these women that I have interviewed and that I will continue to interview are all achieving wonderful things within their business, book authors, multiple seven figure business owners, and just really pushing the limits to what can be achieved in business. And to realize that these awesome figures are actually within reach and are not unattainable, they’re real people, it’s just been such an amazing journey and just to learn people’s stories and it’s been great and it’s been great for my confidence as well and it’s actually made me a better speaker. So yeah, it’s been a good journey.

Clare Wood:

It’s been amazing to watch you launch this. And I’d also love to chat about your transition into motherhood, because a lot of the work that we were doing together, I was watching your pregnancy progress further and further along, your tummy tell was getting bigger every call, you were standing up was showing me that thump, and a lot of what I was saying too is, “You don’t know how it’s going to be.” So I was sort of prepping you for, “You might need a chunk of time off. You might want to take a chunk of time off. You might not ever want to come back.” And you were pretty headstrong throughout that, you knew exactly what you wanted. And I’d love to ask you now that you’ve got your beautiful little boy, how you are feeling about motherhood, about how you navigated through that period of time. And if you’ve got any advice for people who are listening who perhaps are either thinking about having a baby or are pregnant at the moment?

How Hayley navigated business and motherhood

Hayley Osborne:

Yeah. So look, I’m not going to lie, it was like somebody had put a paper bag over my head for at least six weeks after giving birth. So I feel that you do need to allow yourself time to welcome the new person into your life and your family and it changes the whole household dynamic. But one thing that I have found really, really similar about being a new mum, I absolutely give so much time to my little one and he comes first and the business comes second. But being a business owner requires you to be nimble, requires you to be reactive, requires you to pick yourself up off of the floor when you’re having a bad day and just get back on to doing things and just being nimble. And honestly, having a baby is the same. He does his own thing, he rules the shots. So he eats, sleeps, wakes up, whenever he wants, he calls it.

So I feel like having a business has prepared me to be a mum as well in some regards. So it’s very similar and I’ve been really, really lucky. I know that not everyone has this luck, but he does actually sleep through the night and has been doing it since he was nine weeks old. So I have a sound mind. But you know what? I had said to myself from the beginning, “If he doesn’t sleep well, I will sleep when he sleeps and when he’s awake, I will do that.” And I generally survive off of about six hours sleep anyway. So I had told myself, “You know what? I’m going to be okay.” And I think the more I reassured myself that a business and a baby is going to work, the more that I believed it.

And you know what? I’ve come out the other end, it was not easy, but it is definitely achievable. And I will say, I also have the support of my fiancé as well. He’s a hands-on dad, so I’m really lucky in that regard. But it’s been wonderful. And I honestly couldn’t see myself having a corporate day job still and a baby, because what this has allowed me to do is he will still be in my care after 12 months time and I won’t have to go back to a corporate day job because I’ve built the business around my life, not the other way around. So yeah, I feel really lucky to be in this position. And it’s almost like I knew this was going to happen without actually knowing. Does that make sense? It’s almost like I subconsciously built Social Soul knowing that this was how I was going to enter motherhood. So I’ve been really lucky, but I will say it hasn’t come without hard work.

Clare Wood:

Ah, it’s just amazing. And you’re totally right. So much of it is just your mindset and how you think about how can I do this, how can I navigate through this time. My second son was born while I was running my business and I was itching to get back. I love helping people, I love what I do so for me it was just finding the balance of how to juggle the baby and the business and that’s going to look really different for everyone so it’s about finding what works for you. And I totally agree, one thing I always remind myself is that my kids are always so much better off than they would have been if I was in my old corporate role. Even if sometimes that means that I have to work at night or on the weekend, things are going to pop up. It by far compensates what life would have looked like if I wasn’t running my own business.

Just on that note so you’ve got your beautiful little bubba, where is your business tracking now?

Hayley Osborne:

So, I currently have got some amazing clients onboard, in teams of I still look after social media management but it has given me the confidence to choose who I work with. So, that’s where the business is, I do currently have social media strategy and marketing strategy clients. The business is moving towards creating a digital product now because I have a lot of things coming to me in my inbox. You know, Hayley we can’t afford to work with you but when are you doing this or when are you doing that. So there’s just been a lot of chatter around that, I’ve got a lot of golden nuggets I would love to share. So that’s where I would like to take it moving forward. Obviously, the podcast is still going to stay and I’ve always had in the back of my mind, and I will do it I just don’t know when is a membership. So that’s where the business is moving forward because marketing is multi-faceted, it’s huge, it’s changing by the day and to be able to teach that to many business owners and have them achieve actionable results, over time I think is my next goal and it’s really achievable. I absolutely can’t wait, I’m so excited.

Clare Wood:

Amazing! Well it’s been such an honour being part of your journey and I’m excited you are coming back on and coaching again with me now which will be amazing to help you into the next transition and journey and honestly watching Hayley navigate through motherhood and not only doing that but continuing to grow her business, she has had her biggest months ever since having her baby which has just been incredible, has to so inspiring to watch. So thank you so much for joining us here today Hayley. If you want to connect with Hayley, if you want her help to uplevel your marketing you can find out more about her in the show notes for today’s episode and I’ll also pop a link to her podcast as well.  

Hayley thanks so much for joining me today.

Hayley Osborne:

Thanks, Clare

Clare Wood

Thank you so much for tuning in today. If you enjoyed today’s episode and think that your audience will benefit from it, I’d be so grateful if you can please share it with your audience on either social media or on your email list and make sure that you don’t forget to tag me so I can say a special thank you for taking the time to do so. Have an amazing week and I look forward to chatting to you again next week.

Thanks so much for listening. If you loved this episode, please share it with your audience and don’t forget to tag me on Instagram @clare_wood_coach. And also, make sure you hit subscribe so you never miss an episode. Have an abundant week, and I look forward to talking to you again next week.