The future of online business: BTS from our millionaire retreat

* Transcript created by AI – may contain errors or omissions from original podcast audio

Welcome to the Intentional Money Show, where we talk business growth, profitability, mindset, and building a wildly successful creative or digital business without sacrificing your life in the process.

I’m Clare Wood, business profit coach, speaker, author, and unapologetic believer that you can build wealth and freedom doing work you genuinely love. Each week on the podcast, we dive into the strategies and honest conversations that will help you scale sustainably, increase your profit, and build a business that actually feels good to run.

Let’s grow your profit.

Quick note before we dive in. Everything I share on this podcast is general in nature and does not take your personal circumstances into account. I’m not a licensed financial advisor and nothing you hear on this podcast should be taken as personalized financial, business, taxation, or investment advice.

Before you make any financial decisions, please seek guidance from your accountant or a qualified licensed financial advisor who understands your specific situation

hello, beautiful humans. Welcome back to the Intentional Money show. So to start today’s episode, I’ve got a bit of an announcement to make, which is about where this podcast and my business really is heading. So a bit of a backstory. If you’ve been listening to the podcast for a couple of years, you will know that about six months ago I did a bit of a pivot to expand what I am delivering in my business and talking about on the podcast into personal finance as well as business finance.

And I launched a membership and, really started to shift my business to be having more inclusive conversations about money. Not just for business, but also for households. And I really have loved the work. And at the same time, something hasn’t quite felt right since I expanded into this space.

And last week I went on a business retreat with a group of my incredible business friends some of the most extraordinary women in online business. Most of them are seven-figure female founders. So some of the people who were there, Brigit Esselmont, the founder of Biddy Tarot; Denise Duffield-Thomas; Leonie Dawson; Victoria Gibson; Tash Corbin; Emily Osmond; Carrie Rowett; Michelle from Eyes of Love Photography; Lucy Rewild; Amanda Rudsey; Rebecca Saunders.

Seriously, I it’s one of the smartest rooms that I have ever been in. And this is the third year we’ve been along for retreat together, a bunch of business friends who all have big dreams, and we cheer and support each other on. So anyway, over the week, I had a bit of a realization that there has been a bit of misalignment, in this new direction for me.

If I’m being honest, the thing that really lights me up is what I had been doing. Being a business coach, being teaching about profit, about business finances, helping people with their marketing, their messaging, building a team. And this is the work that I’m obsessed with. So I guess you could say it was a mistake or a failure, but I’m really embracing it.

I am so proud of myself for trying something new. And equally, I am now really lit up about going back to being focused on business owners. And so moving forward, this podcast is evolving back to its roots as a business focused show. You might have already noticed the last couple of episodes were all business focused as I was feeling this out.

So we’ll absolutely still keep talking about money, but the focus will be through the lens of entrepreneurship and building a business. So the timing of this has all just been really beautiful. And like I said, it was just such perfect timing that I was away on retreat as this was all starting to click together.

So the purpose of today’s podcast obviously I needed to tell you about the new direction, but the purpose of today’s episode of the podcast was that I actually wanted to, take you a little bit behind the scenes of what unfolded on this retreat and some of the ahas that we had I know that a few people had DM’d me and emailed me and said, “Oh my gosh, what an amazing room to be in.”

And truly it was. So let me share some of the lessons and takeaways from being there. Before I dive into that, I might set some context around how the retreat came about and what exactly we were doing. So this group of biz friends has evolved over a number of years. I met m- several of them. They were my mentors.

I paid many years ago to go to a retreat at Denise’s Rose Farm. It was actually the first one that she’d ever run. And there I met Emily Osmond and Tash Corbin, and we became really fabulous friends. I spoke at Tash Corbin’s conference, the Heart Centered Conference not last year, the year before, and got to meet some of the incredible humans in the room.

By the way, if you’re wanting to get out and about and get in the room, go to more events this year, make sure you check out the Heart Centered Conference. I will put a link in the bio. I’m unfortunately not going along myself this year, but I have been the last couple of years, and it’s such an inclusive and fun place to go to learn and just to get in the energy of other amazing business owners.

One of the things that I love so much about this conference is as part of the inclusion, there’s not these strict, you’ve got to have your hands on your knees staring at the front of the room. You’ll find people lounging around on beanbags people doing cross-stitch or coloring. A lot of entrepreneurs are neurodiverse, and this is a place where truly that is embraced rather than where they try and crush it.

So I’ll pop the link for that in the bio. Anyway, I’ve gone on a little bit of a segue there. I also was coached by Bridget Esselmont a couple of years ago, and she’s become a good friend of mine. Beautiful Kerri Rowett. These women have all come into, all… We’ve all crossed paths in various ways, shapes, and forms over the years, and Leonie Dawson was the one who has brought us all together into a chat group A couple of years ago, we decided to take the chat group, into real life and we had a retreat at the Gold Coast, which is where I live.

And we just had such a fabulous time that we decided to make it an annual thing. So this retreat just gone was our third retreat in a row. The format has changed each year, the attendees has changed a little bit each year, but one thing has remained true, which is that it is a ton of fun and also a really fabulous place to exchange ideas, get inspired, and really talk high-level business strategy.

The retreat we, we had a couple of spa days, we had a couple of meals out, but for the most part we were sitting around and talking about business. Talking about what we’re seeing, how we’re feeling, and what we think the future of the online world is. And I wanted to share with you some of the takeaways that were discussed in the room.

So the first thing, the big elephant in the room that we can no longer ignore is AI. AI is fundamentally changing the way that business is done, and it’s changing the way that people are creating content, consuming content. And the way that people are building trust is also changing Now, some people in the room were a bit anti-AI.

I’m… There’s certainly some parts of AI that I am not a fan of, and then there’s other parts of AI that I think are fabulous, and I can really see the potential that this new tool has. So what were the big things that we were talking about in the room? I guess some of the fear that was being discussed is that people are using their ability to actually be using their brain, and I know that when I first was diving into AI, I was certainly finding it’s easier just to go and look it up than to actually try and think something through.

I was using AI quite a lot for coming up with my content ideas, and while it still plays a role for me, I’ve realised that actually a lot of my best ideas just come from me. So at this point in time I think that the humanness is outperforming the computers at this point in time. Who knows what the future holds?

So for all of us identifying that AI is changing the online world, we were talking about, well, what does this mean? Because back in the glory day of of online courses and teaching information was the key. We were selling information. In saying that as well, you’re s- you’re selling frameworks.

What we all agreed on is that AI can absolutely replicate information. However, AI cannot replicate humanness. And one of the things is that all these fabulous AI tools cannot capture your energy, your lived experience, your perspective, and your ability to build human-to-human relationships with your potential clients.

So this is what we were all deeply aligned on. The future belongs to brands. So to strong personal brands or, it doesn’t have to be a personal brand, but to strong brands and genuine human connection So what does this mean for your business? You need to be super, super clear about what your brand is, what you represent, who you are, and you need to be bringing the humans behind the brand to the forefront.

Something that I realised me reflecting on my own content and the way that I’ve been showing up, many years ago I used to be bringing people on the journey, telling them about my life and my perceptions and my perspective on things. And lately I’ve fallen a little bit away from that.

I’ve been really in the space of add value, show up sell. And I think that the future of successful brands is really those that are unique, that are distinct, and that people really connect with. So I’m really on a mission now to bring more of me back into the Clare Wood brand because I know that people aren’t hiring me as a coach for information.

They are hiring me as a mentor because of my energy, because of my opinions, because of the way that I teach. And I know that one of the things that people have said to me many times over the years, I take confusing finance accounting stuff and make it into easy to understand language. And I genuinely care about people.

I care about my clients and I know that they feel that and can see that. And so I’m gonna be leaning more into me, and I would encourage you to do some work and really dive into what is my brand? Who are we? Who am I? What do we represent? And how can you b- bring more of that into your business through your marketing, your messaging, and through your actual client experiences?

In terms of what this means for me personally, I’m gonna be leaning really into high touch coaching and boutique experiences If I’m being honest, this has always been my favorite thing to do. If you’ve ever been in my world, you’ll know this. I’m one of those coaches that loves to be enmeshed with my clients’ businesses.

I sign up to their email lists. I’m following them on social media. I am genuinely wanting to be a silent business partner, cheering them on, keeping them accountable, and really being there in a very high level of support way. So you’ll see me talk more about that in my marketing, my messaging. And also one of the things that I wanna start doing is creating more of that human-to-human experience.

You might remember was that last year or the year before? I did a tour of Australia. Gosh, that was fun. I… There’s something about being in a room with people, actually hugging, connecting, eyeballing each other, and I wanna be doing more of that, both in a one-to-one capacity, I’ve got my beautiful strategy and VIP days that I do but also bringing groups of people together.

So I’ll be sharing more about what that looks like over time. The cool thing about your creating your unique brand is that the biggest transformations will happen for your clients when they are deeply supported. They don’t want information anymore. They wanna feel like they’ve got someone in their corner.

So perhaps you run a digital marketing agency. How are you actually being there, being part of your client’s team? Saying, “I wanna be here. I wanna support you.” W- what does that look like in a day and age where computers are able to do more and more?

As much as there are challenges that lie ahead with AI, there are a lot of really bloody exciting things for the future. Now, if you have ever wanted to work with me as a business coach, now is an awesome time because I have pulled together some new really cool packages where, like I said, there’s a lot of support and a lot of one-to-one contact with me.

So if you wanna find out more, you can click on the link for the show notes for today’s episode. I’m actually currently offering a complimentary 30-minute business profit audit, which is a great place for us to get started together. So it costs you nothing, and it’s a great way for you to see the work that we could do together.

The last one I did, she said, “Oh my goodness, this has been so helpful. I would love to work with you as my mentor.” So you can grab the profit audit or find out more about working with me in the link for the show notes for today’s episode. So yeah, the future of online business, I believe, is all about branding and messaging.

So I would really encourage and empower you to lean into that. If you’ve got any questions that you wanted to ask about the retreat or any other conversations that you wanted to have with me about the future of AI, reach out on Instagram. I’m @clare_wood_coach. I really do love to chat to you, and I wanna be having human-to-human connection, so please reach out and say hello.

Thanks so much for tuning into The Intentional Money Show, and I hope you’re as excited about this new direction for the podcast as I am. Have a fabulous week, and I’ll chat to you again next week.

Thank you so much for tuning in to today’s episode of The Intentional Money Show. If this episode resonated, take a screenshot, share it on Instagram, and tag me so I can say a big thank you.

And if you’re ready for more profit, come find me on Instagram at clare_wood_coach. That’s C-L-A-R-E underscore wood underscore coach. Thanks so much for tuning into the podcast, and I’ll chat to you again next week.

* Transcript created by AI – may contain errors or omissions from original podcast audio