S2 E001 – Business Lessons From a Year of #RVLIFE

Welcome back…

Transcript:

Hey there, and welcome back to the Six Figure Sales Funnels podcast. I'm your host Dawn Marrs, and I am absolutely thrilled to be back with you after a somewhat long hiatus.

Before I get into it, I first wanna thank my incredible client, Amanda, for encouraging me to start recording new podcasts. I've had a couple of nudges over the last little while, but her kind words reminded me of the impact that this podcast has had on so many entrepreneurs. And I'm grateful for the opportunity to continue sharing valuable content with you. Now, I know it's been a while since my last episode, and there's a good reason for that in 2019.

I took a break from the podcast after having my son, and for those of you who have children, this is not gonna be a shock to you, but. Little did I know my life was about to change in ways that I could never have anticipated having kids is a trip, right? So from the pandemic to the loss of my father in the pandemic years the past couple of years have been filled with a lot of challenges, some heartbreak, and a lot of personal growth.

Separated

Now, today what I'm gonna do is just share my story with you and the lessons I've learned along the way. We've all been through a lot the last few years, and so maybe some of what I've learned is gonna resonate with you as well. So my baby was just six months old when the pandemic hit. I'm not sure if I've shared this before, but I was born in Canada, but I live in the United States.

I have dual citizenship, so I'm a Canadian and I'm also an American. I found myself separated from my entire family when the borders closed and there I was with a newborn to care for. Those of you who've had your mom around you, you know what it's like. I've had her around lately, which has been absolutely life-changing.

Anyways, my mom, who is my absolute best friend in life she had been there with us for the first six weeks of my son's life, helping us to navigate the newborn phase, and they had this incredible bond, right? It was clear right from the beginning, and it really, it broke my heart for us to be separated from her.

Cancer

Now around that same time, my father was diagnosed with stage four cancer, and due to travel restrictions and hospital mandates, I was unable to be with him in person. Yeah, so we had to say our goodbyes over FaceTime, which is the worst thing I've ever had to do in my entire life. My father's passing was incredibly difficult, but it also taught me some really valuable lessons if we can, grab a silver lining from some of these things.

RV Life, inspired by dad

A few years back before he got sick, my dad had decided to go into semi-retirement and live his dream of traveling in an RV. He absolutely loved it. He spent his winters in the southern states riding his electric fat tire bike on the beach. He loved it. He was so proud of it.

Inspired by his adventures I had always told him that I couldn't wait to retire and do the same thing. So when he got sick, he urged me not to wait too long to follow my heart and live my dreams. Amid the heartache and uncertainty of the pandemic, I decided to take his advice and embark on an adventure of my own. So I spent the better part of a year traveling the Southern US in an RV with my son.

We visited all the state parks. We met amazing people along the way, and I even got an electric bike with a baby seat so that we could explore more. We could go into these places where we would never have been able to go together, and it was just a beautiful experience during. Such a challenging time, and I'm so grateful that I followed my dad's advice.

Road trip

Now, when the border restrictions finally lifted, I road trip to my RV from Texas all the way to Canada, which is about 3000 miles or 5,000 kilometers, and we got to take in all the sites of our beautiful country and again, met so many incredible people along the journey. When I finally arrived back home, my mom was waiting at the end of the driveway with tears streaming down her face, overjoyed to be reunited with her only grandson after two years apart.

And I have to tell you, reconnecting with my family and my lifelong friends has been the key to my comeback and has been an absolute style for my soul. This is I don't know how to impress that upon you enough. Being separated from your community is really difficult. I know I'm there is somebody who knows exactly what I'm talking about.

You're probably feeling it just as deeply as I did. Now, I know that there's a good chance that you faced your own traumas and challenges during these last couple of years, and I send you a huge hug through. Through your earbuds, through your car speakers, wherever you're listening. These experiences really very deeply affected me and my ability to maintain the pace of work that I love.

I love working. I love my job, but as a result, the podcast had to take a backseat. There, just something had to give and it was the podcast. But today I'm here with you as a testament to resilience. I'm still here, and so are you. Maybe I had to put the podcast down for a little while, but life has gone on and the adversity that we've faced over the past few years has only made us stronger.

Now for me, these experiences have also underscored the power of automation to an even more profound level. Because despite pulling back on my working hours and literally living in an RV sometimes with terrible or no internet, I was still able to make sales and still able to bring in clients thanks to the power of sales funnels and marketing automation.

Now I feel like myself again, and I'm ready to dive back into my mission of providing entrepreneurs and small business owners with the strategy, tools, and mentoring they need to succeed with marketing automation. As I'm passionate about helping as many people as possible and truly believe that no entrepreneur or business owners should be held back by tech challenges or the false belief that they're tech challenged, which is way too common.

I want, I cannot impress this upon you enough, you're not tech challenged. We are all tech challenged. Tech is challenging. People like me who li live in the tech world, we spend all day with these problems. We just try to make them easier for other people. So you're not tech challenged. Tech is just challenging.

So now before I share all the amazing content coming up in the show, I'd really like to dive a little bit deeper into the lessons that I've learned during my time away from the podcast. Lesson one is embracing change and adaptability. The past few years have been a stark reminder that life is absolutely unpredictable.

Lessons Learned

Our businesses, just like our personal lives, are not immune to unexpected challenges and changes. One of the most important lessons I've learned is the value of adaptability. As entrepreneurs, we need to be flexible and open to change, whether it's pivoting our business model, reevaluating our goals, or adjusting our strategies.

Embracing change and being adaptable will not only help us survive, but thrive in the face of uncertainty. Lesson two, is self-care and setting boundaries. During this time, I learned the importance of self-care and setting boundaries, which I had honestly never paid much attention to before. But with a newborn baby and very shortly after a broken heart, I needed to prioritize my well-being and create space for healing.

This meant being honest with myself about what I could handle and setting boundaries to protect my energy. As business owners, it's essential to prioritize self-care and set boundaries so that we can continue to show up for ourselves, for our families, our businesses, our communities, and the people who rely on us.

Lesson three is the power of community. Being separated from my family and going through such a challenging time made me realize the importance of community. I always knew it was important, but man, when you lose it I can't even tell you what that was like for me. Connecting with others who understand our struggles and can offer support is so important.

I'm really grateful for the community that we've built around Mars marketing and the podcast, and I encourage all of you to reach out and engage and support each other as we continue to grow and learn together. Lesson four is recognizing our strengths. So finally, this is the last one. This experience really taught me to recognize my strengths and the power of resilience.

As entrepreneurs, we often face obstacles that feel insurmountable, but we have the ability to overcome them and come out even stronger on the other side. Now, a couple of other things that have come up for me since I'm clearly in a sharing mood today, juggling motherhood and entrepreneurship.

Yeah, like I said, kids are a trip, right? Becoming a mom while running a business has been a really challenging but rewarding experience. It taught me to be more intentional with my time and to delegate tasks that don't require my direct attention. I've also become more empathetic, be toward other working parents.

I always was empathetic, but man, when you're doing it yourself, it's a whole nother ballgame, and I'm really committed to creating an even more supportive environment for them in my business. So if that's you, Come on in, let's do it together. All right, and last, just a note about overcoming tech challenges, because this keeps coming up in so many of the conversations I have now.

As somebody who's built a career around helping others overcome tech challenges, I've had my fair share of frustrating moments like I live in frustrating moments, just being completely honest. However, these experiences have only reinforced my belief in the power of perseverance and in problem-solving.

It's crucial that we face our tech challenges head-on and not let them hold us back from achieving our goals. Okay, I just wanted to put that out there. Don't let tech hold you back. If you need help, reach out. There is somebody who can help. There is somebody who knows how to do it. If you don't know how to do it, find somebody who does.

But don't stay too far out of your zone of genius for too long. Okay. Okay, so now that I've covered all of these lessons and I've shared everything that I possibly could with you about my personal life, at least for now I'd like to discuss what you can expect from the podcast moving forward because I promise it's not gonna be a lot of mushy personal stories.

Upcoming shows…

At least not mine. Okay. Maybe we'll have some interviews that they get a little bit personal and a little mushy, but it's not gonna be me. I'm gonna go back into being an introvert in my emotional closet after this episode. So as we move forward, you can expect an incredible lineup of new episodes, including How to Run Facebook Ads without Feeling Overwhelmed or Losing Your Shirt.

That's gonna be a great episode. I'm gonna show you a simple way to calculate how much revenue your sales funnel's gonna bring in before you actually launch it. I'm gonna show you how to write a follow-up series. It actually gets clients booking calls and buying your programs. I'm gonna show you how to use AI to 10 x your productivity.

This one's gonna be really cool. If you've been using any of the AI tools, I've got some prompts that you can use that are absolutely like, give you such good outputs. Excited to show you that.

And here are some additional exciting topics that I'm gonna be covering. Hopefully, you find them exciting too. We're gonna be talking about leveraging the power of storytelling in your marketing strategy. We're gonna be identifying and overcoming the most common sales funnel roadblocks, and effective time management strategies for busy entrepreneurs.

I'll also be inviting some amazing guest experts to share their insights, experiences, advice, all that good stuff on various aspects of running a successful business. Overall, it's just gonna be an amazing place to learn and grow your business. Figure out what's working now, and hopefully inspire you to push through the barriers and challenges that hold you back.

Now, before we wrap up, I wanna remind you that as entrepreneurs and small business owners, we are an incredibly important part of our communities, and we've got to stick together. We've weathered a storm for sure, and we're more resilient than ever. So let's continue to support one another as we work towards achieving incredible things with the power of automation and sales funnels.

Thank you so much for joining me today and for your continued support. I am so incredibly grateful to have you on this journey with me.

Join the Community

 I encourage you to connect with our community, share your experiences, and engage in conversations that'll help you grow personally and professionally. You can find us on social media by joining our Facebook group at MarrsMarketing.com/community.

Or you can visit our website to access valuable resources and connect with like-minded entrepreneurs. Remember, you are not alone. We are here to support, uplift and empower each other as we navigate the ever-evolving landscape of entrepreneurship. Together, we're gonna continue to learn, adapt, and make a meaningful impact on the world through our businesses.

In closing, I just wanna express my deep gratitude for those of you who have, stuck around. If you've still got me, if you're still listening here and you got me in your earbuds, if you're driving in the car and you still had the Six Figure Sales Funnels podcast on your phone I just wanted to let you know I'm really excited to be back and I can't wait to share more valuable content with you.

So until next time, this is Dawn Marrs signing off. Take care and keep making a difference.