Soulful MBA Podcast

Today’s episode features an interview with Jess Frank, who serves as the Program Director for Yoga Behind Bars (or YBB for short). YBB is a Washington State-based nonprofit that has been sharing trauma-informed yoga and meditation with thousands of incarcerated youth and adults since 2008. Starting this month, September 2018, the organization’s comprehensive trauma-informed training will be available online for the very first time. (Full Disclosure: YBB is working with us via Namastream to host this program and we’re so humbled that Jess and her team have chosen to use our platform).

Jess’s passion for providing transformative opportunities to incarcerated people sparked at the start of her career and has only grown since she became a YBB instructor nearly 5 years ago. As a program coordinator for the Post Prison Education Program and University Beyond Bars, Jess became both intimately acquainted with the challenges facing people in the criminal justice system and deeply inspired by the dedication of the students. As YBB’s program director, Jess co-facilitates trauma-informed trainings, manages and mentors volunteers, oversees program creation and growth, and conducts site visits and evaluations. Jess shared with us that the highlight of her week is teaching yoga to 25 students at the men’s prison in Monroe, Washington.

Connect with Yoga Behind Bars: YBB / YBB Online

Joy: deflect judgement with self loveHustle: movement, being in the body

“Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer. Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance and a lack of harmony and proportion is more readily seen.” - Leonardo da Vinci

In this episode, we interview Namastream client, Kate Case. At the intersection of Eastern wisdom and Western science, Kate's body of work combines twenty years of experience as a professional yoga therapist, yoga teacher, Thai massage therapist, Eastern medicine (Chinese medicine and Ayurveda) practitioner, women’s wellness leader, women’s moon circle facilitator, and eastern energy anatomy expert.

Kate is a Nature-based Yogini, Moon Maven, Ritual Queen, Anatomy Geek, and Hormone Whisperer specializing in women's health, cycles, rhythms, body wisdom, and soulful integration.

You can learn more about Kate’s company, SHE Collective (the “SHE” stands for soulful, holistic, and embodied) here and her Ritual Box subscription here.

Connect with Kate: www.shecollective.ca / www.ritualbox.ca / Instagram

Other Mentions: The Great Work of Your Life by Stephen Cope

Joy: Red Hot and Holy: A Heretic's Love Story, NatureHustle: High Speed Internet, Journal

Today’s episode is Part 2 of our quick overview of online challenges. (You can listen to Part 1 here.) Offering a challenge can work wonders for your email list, but only if that challenge truly appeals to your audience. You’ll want to be strategic at every step in the process.

Here are our tips for creating a successful email-based online challenge:

Find out what your audience wants. If you offer a 10-day core strength challenge but your readers are more interested in meditation, you’ll get far fewer new subscribers. Utilize polls, track your own stats to see which articles and other content users are reading, and start conversations on Facebook to test the waters before settling on a topic.

Make sure your challenge is unique. OK, it doesn’t have to be one-of-a-kind, but it certainly can’t be dime-a-dozen! Pick an angle, add a twist, and find a way to customize your offering.

Keep it short and make it doable. Length is key. Too short and you don’t get bankable buy-in from new readers, too long and participants lose interest. Most experts recommend seven to 10 days for an online challenge. Make your challenge meaty, but not overwhelming (aim for participant actions steps that take under 10-15 minutes per day).

Promote, promote, promote. Buy Facebook ads, post promos to Instagram, start a challenge-specific pin board, create a series of YouTube videos, post daily reminders to your blog, or commit to a daily Facebook Live broadcast. Tell everyone everywhere about the stellar challenge you’ve created, and (gently) nudge them to sign up.

Incorporate interactivity. It may be tempting to write every word of your content challenge ahead of time and then step back and watch it all unfold, but resist the urge to remove yourself. Online challenges that include a social or interactive component are far more popular and effective.

Don’t forget to follow up! Hopefully your challenge doubled or tripled your list, but don’t just congratulate yourself and move on. As we mentioned earlier, these folks are now primed to buy from you, so consider offering challenge participants a deal on one of your products or classes. If nothing else, prep and send a quick poll to find out what worked and what didn’t so you can tweak the challenge for its next round.

“When perfectionism is driving us, shame is always riding shotgun and fear is the backseat driver.” - Brené Brown‏

In this episode, we discuss the ways that perfectionism holds us back in our businesses. We often see perfectionism used as an excuse for procrastination or as a reason to hold ourselves back once we’ve reached a certain level of success.

Here are the 7 perfectionistic tendencies we’ve identified in our own business and with our clients. Listen in to hear how we address each one.

1. You procrastinate until the stars align.
2. You often spend copious amounts of time just to perfect something that just isn't that important.
3. You have an all-or-nothing approach.
4. Inflexibility. You have a very specific manner in which things should be done.
5. Intolerance for mistakes. You are extremely hard on yourself.
6. You focus on the destination, rather than the journey. It’s all about the end result.
7. Your success is never good enough.

Joy: Why Brené Brown Says Perfectionism Is a 20-Ton ShieldHustle: Lighting Kit, Ring Light

A strong public persona (or voice) is an important component of any modern business. In this episode, we dive into the four elements that we’ve identified as being important to sharing your voice online:

1. Messenger (identify WHO is the best person to be promoting your brand or product in any given scenario)
2. Timing (you want to be really careful about promoting yourself too soon or too often)
3. Message (master the art of copywriting, learn to write how you speak, tailor your message to the person who will be receiving it, practice being public with your voice consistently)
4. Medium (you want to hone in on one medium first — writing, video, audio, maybe take a cue from whatever medium you’ll be using for your paid programs)

Other Mentions:

Hemingway AppDragon Dictation

Joy:

George Lakoff || Idea Framing, Metaphors, and Your Brain (video)

Hustle:

Word HippoOneLook Reverse Dictionary33 Unusual Tips to Being a Better WriterPanabee