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Ever have one of those moments where all the clarity you’ve been waiting for just comes together?

That happened to me last week.

I wrote this document called “Embodied Marketing 2.0” for my leadership team about the next phase of our growth… and honestly, it felt like puzzle pieces I’d been collecting for years finally came together.

In this episode, I’m sharing what’s in that document, my ongoing love-hate relationship with social media, and the coffee shop story that made me cry (in the best way).

Key Takeaways

• Why I’m rebuilding at 7-figures to get to 10 million—the “Embodied Marketing 2.0” vision that’s going to simplify how we operate and why sometimes you have to change what’s working to get to the next level
• The big AI changes I’m preparing for—why I think there are going to be massive shifts in digital products and how I’m preparing my business
• The coffee shop where it all started 8 years ago—going back to my corner table where I used to take calls in the parking lot and what Rosa the barista said that made me cry

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More ways Embodied Marketing can support you:

If you’re ready to hand off your entire marketing strategy (from funnels to ads to copy) and finally get the expert team you can trust, apply here and let’s talk: helpmystrategy.com

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READ THE EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Emily Hirsh: 

Hello everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. Welcome to the Friday afternoon after my workout. I literally still have charle my hands from the gym. It’s just, it’s gonna be part of the brand. We’re just going with it. My kids do CrossFit now too, and my gym is like five minutes or less from my studio, and so it’s worked out the last few weeks that while they’re at CrossFit class.

I can run over here and record and get an episode in and get back to pick them up in time. It feels very efficient. I figured Today I think I’m gonna do just a, a conversation with me podcast. I have a couple of points I wanna make, some things I wanna share and we’ll kinda just see where that goes.

’cause sometimes that’s fun. So let’s do an update. Let’s see, first of all, last week I. I did something really exciting, which is I wrote this document called Embodied Marketing 2.0 and it’s so good, and I wrote this letter to my leadership team about the last eight years. The lessons I’ve learned and basically this huge kind of revelation that I’ve had.

I’m not really ready to share all the details quite yet. I promise that I will. I’m not being, I’m not being like teasing you with that. It’s just we need to roll this out before I can really share it all. But I wrote this letter and then painted the vision. The vision for us to go from where we are to 10 million.

The changes we’re gonna make. And there are some pretty big shifts, not in terms of things that are gonna go away, but. Something new that we’re gonna bring in for this big shift. And it was really cool. It, it was, it was like, it was like a moment where all these pieces to the puzzle of clarity that I’ve probably been waiting for for years came together.

And, you know, when you have those moments and you’re like, oh duh. Like of course this is what I should do. It’s so obvious it’s right in front of my face. But it’s like all these things had to happen. Including, you know, mistakes and hurdles and challenges and resistance that you had to go against, and then it falls into place.

That’s what happened. And so my leadership team received it really well, and we are like full train ahead. I, I kind of talked in the podcast last week about how speed is so important and taking action with speed is so important, but. You can’t take action without clarity. And so if you don’t have clarity, you need to take the actions in order to get the clarity.

And so that’s what I did for a while. And then I, you know, clarity dropped in and we are like full speed ahead, executing at this point. So it’s super exciting. I’ll say, you know, one of the biggest things that I am planning for and why I feel that we need to make these pivots, ’cause I can share that is first of all.

I think there’s gonna be big, big shifts and changes in the digital industry in terms of digital products digital offers, and just digital brands in general. I think there’s gonna just be some big changes with AI that are coming and I’m always trying to, you know, kind of prepare us for that and get ahead of that.

No one can predict the future. And then second of all, I had this big. Epiphany around simplifying my operations and like it works what we have right now, but there is too much. Kind of starting over with each instance, so we can’t scale to the level and the speed that I wanna scale at. And I think we’ve been coming up against that a lot.

So I don’t know if that helps. I am gonna be doing a training in the coming weeks on the business model that I think every business should have in 2025, focusing on building a brand and the media and then how to position your offer. So it’s still powerful with ai. Basically what we’re doing and where the priorities and where our resources are going as a team.

So that’s one big update. I also wanna share I have shared on the podcast before how I really struggle with this balance of social media consuming being online. And being able to unplug from it. And like my love hate relationship for social media and I, I find that I’m either like deleted off my phone and I’m fully good and I can be much more present or I don’t have a balance.

And I especially find that at the end of the day of a work day where my brain has gone into work mode, I have a really hard time. It is transitioning and I’ve always been like that. I’ve always struggled with it lately. And in the last year, having my workout be that time has worked really well. ’cause it’s like I have my whole work chunk.

I go to the gym, I, I decompress, I work out, and then I’m able to go home. And so I have that like thing in the middle. So that works really well. But I still was finding myself if having that urge to just get on social media or like check notifications and messages, it’s like, it’s the pace. It’s the pace at which my brain is moving.

So if I get science sciencey with it, it’s that my brain’s in like mega alpha state, it’s fast paced. And then when I come be with my kids, like I need to slow that pace down, but I don’t wanna slow that pace down. So I have resistance to it. And so I find myself struggling to be present because it’s too slow for me, it’s too boring for my brain, it’s not stimulating enough.

So the last two weeks. And this is what I did and it’s working. It’s working really well. And it’s so crazy because you sound like an addict when you say this. Like that’s how addicting just your phone can be. But I have this little. Tool called a brick. It’s literally like a square brick and you can set it, you tap your phone on it and you can have all these different settings where like when you tap your phone, it locks out certain apps.

And so I have this setting that’s called No Noise, and it basically locks everything on my phone, but like the necessities, so text message, if I wanna Google, you know, look at my kids’ sports schedules. Simple stuff that I like might need and it locks everything else out. So what I’ve been doing is I’ll brick my phone when I go to bed at night.

I sleep with my phone outside of my bedroom, and I leave it bricked until I start work because that took away any chance that I was gonna look at it in the morning when I went to go do my meditation or my, I’m getting my kids ready for school. It took away any chance that that would happen. ’cause what would happen is I’d be like, don’t look at your phone in the morning before you meditate or don’t look at the phone right after your meditation.

How frustrating I would get. I’d come out of a meditation and the first thing my brain wants to do is like, oh, let me check this message and let me go over to Instagram. Like, no, we just had an hour long meditation, like chill, stay in that mode. So now it’s locked. I can’t do it. I come outta my meditation and my phone’s all locked and it stays locked.

I drive my kids to school. It stays locked when I’m driving them to their farm school a few days a week. And then when I work, I can unb brick it by then. I’m working. I’m busy, I’m stimulated. I don’t care about it as much. Then I leave it unbred all day ’cause I might need it for work and social media. And then I brick it again when I get home from the gym until I put my youngest to sleep.

And here’s where I feel like I did a good job this time. Of not trying to fight it too hard. So every night I lay with my 5-year-old, he’s still like my baby and he wants to be laid with until he falls asleep. And you know what, I’m just gonna let him do it until he tells me that he doesn’t wanna anymore.

But after we do lately it’s been, he wants to watch a magic video. My kids are super into magic, but a story, read a book, whatever. And I talk to him for a minute. We do tell me about your day. And he like recaps his day. After we do that, I’m just laying there. Okay, so. I used to have this really unrealistic expectation of just lay there, like lay there in the dark and do nothing, or, you know, be on your phone and do something productive.

Read a good book or listen to an audible. The problem is I’m done for the day. Like my brain is fried, so the only thing I wanna do is numb out. Like, that’s the truth. And so I don’t really watch tv. For me, sometimes scrolling it’s, it, it does give me that like entertainment. Whether it’s healthy or not?

Probably not. Okay. I’d argue that TV is better than scrolling Instagram, but you know what? It’s what I do and I kept, I see my friend’s stuff and you know, see inspirational stuff and so like there’s a positive to it. So instead of resisting that this time around with my overhaul of my plan, I was like, okay, you’re allowed to do that.

We’re gonna leave that in. Okay? So brick your phone from when you get home until when you put William to bed. And then when you’re putting him to bed, as long as you’ve done your initial connection with him, you can go on your phone. I, I feel like a child, but anyways, it is completely working and this is like the best I’ve done ever with having Instagram on my phone and social media on my phone and having balance.

And then the other thing is if I feel like it’s getting that, like dopamine addiction is getting. Hi, I will just delete it for the weekend. And it’s like the reset that always works for me is take it off, reset completely for two full days and I’m good to go. So if those tips help you, if you’re like, this is not what I’m into then sorry.

But I really feel like as entrepreneurs we, we have to do intentional things to keep our brain clear, and especially in. Th this digital world, like there’s so much noise and it can take away tremendously from your creativity, from your clarity, from your inspiration, from your passion. And I think it’s really important to put steps in place to make sure that’s not happening.

So that’s working really well for me. All right. Let me regroup where I wanna take this.

Next life update. I’ll share kind of a special story. If you were following me on Instagram last week, you saw, but this one was really special. So I did a VIP day with Mallory, who is one of our top clients. She’s been to all my retreats. I feature her sometimes on my webinars. So you may have heard of Mallory.

She’s amazing. And. She had a VIP day and so my family lives close to her and we planned it where I’d fly out, we’d do our VIP day, we would do our VIP day and I could stay with my family and it was perfect. So I got to go stay with my brother, do my VIP day with Mallory. And what was really special was one of the days we met at a coffee shop.

And that coffee shop was where I literally grew my business. We lived about a mile away from that coffee shop in Santa Rosa, California, and my youngest, or my oldest was six months old at the time when we moved there into that house, and I had just started my business and I would go there every morning when they opened at 8:00 AM.

And my husband would take Oliver and I would have three and a half hours to work because then it was his nap time and I breastfed him and I put him to sleep. And I worked there every single day, like for. Over a year, every single day I was in that coffee shop, I would go take calls in the car because it was too loud in the coffee shop.

So I’d go take calls in the car and I would do Facebook live in the car. Like Facebook Live had just come out and was the popular thing. And I, I didn’t have a brand yet. Like I hadn’t built myself with content, but I would go live on Facebook. I, they’re still somewhere you could, if you really wanna stalk me, like they’re on my.

Facebook page somewhere. My Facebook live’s from the car. It’s a parking lot of this coffee shop. And so when I walked in that coffee shop, I hadn’t been in there in a long time. And I told this to Mallory and I actually got emotional during and after because I was like, if you would have sat me down, you know, eight years ago and said, Emily, in eight years you’re gonna be back in this coffee shop.

You are gonna be with a client who has spent tens of thousands of dollars with your company, with you to leverage your expertise, to leverage your skills, to help her grow her business to a million dollars from six, literally 10 x her business. You’re gonna have a client and you’re gonna meet her here.

And you’re gonna have hosted retreats in Costa Rica. In Alaska. You’re gonna be traveling with your family for a month during the summer, and you’re gonna have built a multimillion dollar empire with 18 employees that runs itself, and you’re making an impact on thousands of people. If you would’ve sat me down that Emily, I would’ve believed you.

I would’ve been like, that’s insane. I couldn’t even dream that big back then. It because I couldn’t imagine it. Like there’s no way I could have even conjured up that dream because it was so big compared to what I had at the time, which at the time it was making 18, $20 an hour virtual assistant, like learning.

I was learning all this marketing stuff through working with clients, and I hadn’t even started to pivot to just marketing yet when I was working in that coffee shop. And so I got emotional because I was like, first of all. I walk in that coffee shop and the smells and, and just the energy of it, and I can put myself back to being with that version of me.

And I have so much respect for her and so much gratitude. Like I hustled so hard and I worked so hard, and I think it’s important to remember that because. Having that, that gratitude for what it took to get to where you are today is really important. And then the second thing is this, if there is no way I could have imagined that eight years later I would be where I am, then I don’t need to know what the next eight to 10 years looks like.

I actually don’t want to know. And I think as I, as I reflected on this and I did a post on Instagram is like, I think that’s the whole point. It’s. Work as hard as you possibly can and do the work. Show up, push your comfort zone. Dream the big dreams, and imagine that anything is possible and be delusional to that, but then surrender the rest.

Like don’t be tied to, it has to go this way because back then, you know, if I was tied to like, this is how I have to build my business, I probably wouldn’t have built this business. Instead, I started following what was working. I started following the threads and the momentum and just working really hard.

And then over time, this is what built, but it was really cool. And I went back the next day after Mallory and I met, and the barista who was there eight years ago was there. And she looked at me and she did this like double take and I said. You know, hi. And I said, you remember me? And she said, yeah, you used to work right over there every single day.

Like, how are you? Do you live here? And I was like, no, I don’t live here. You know, I’m visiting. And I told her, you know, this is where it all started. Like this is a really special place. And I said, I took that business that I was building here, and I’ve impacted thousands of people. I’ve made millions of dollars.

I’ve got a whole team, three kids. I showed her pictures of my kids and she looked at me and she’s like, you don’t look stressed. You look so good. You look happy. And I said, Rosa, I built a dream. And, and she’s like, well, don’t forget about me. You know, it was just like such a special moment. And I share that because I shared it on Instagram and I got so many messages from people emotional back saying, you know, thank you for sharing this because I am currently where you are.

Where eight years ago, I’m in the beginning stages. I’m still building the dream, and you know what, I’m still building the dream too, because your dream grows. But I am in the place where I’m having to believe in something that I haven’t created yet. And sometimes that’s really challenging. And so I share this because if that is you, I am telling you this is the formula.

Show up every single day. Do the work, do the best work that you can think you can do. The most focused, the most strategic. Follow what works. Be open to possibilities and also be delusional. I, I had just, I shared a post last week too that I love. That was like, every successful people I know, they’re delusional because people who go create the extraordinary, who go create the impossible that they don’t that, like you’re not, look, you’re not looking at things through a normal lens.

You’re delusional to reality. You’re not in a bad way. You’re delusional to what is possible. And so be delusional to that dream, the big dreams, and then also do the work and then surrender it. Because if you do that, like anything can happen, you don’t even need to know what it’s gonna be, but success, whatever your definition of success, it will happen.

So that was really cool because I had this just like this moment for myself of gratitude because to be honest, I never stopped to appreciate that. You know, back then I was massively in survival mode. I mean, you look at me now and I’m so healthy and I work out all the time, like I wasn’t, health was a value for me back then.

And we ate pretty healthy. ’cause that was a value of my husband and mine. But I never worked out, I didn’t eat enough food. I was working so hard. I’d forget to eat. I’d just down a bag of chips, like I was staying up till midnight. Working, getting up early. I’d work ’cause I’d worked that three and a half hours at the coffee shop.

And then I’d. Put Oliver down, I’d work a little more and then I’d be with him until his bedtime I’d switch and Peter would work, and then I’d work when I put him to bed until like midnight and I’d work late. And so I wasn’t sleeping good, like I wasn’t healthy. And I think, you know, having that phase and, and so I didn’t appreciate what was happening back then.

It was survival to make enough money to pay the bills, to just build and then. Over time, obviously I built and I could get help and you know, slowly my lifestyle improved to what it is today, which is the healthiest and fittest I’ve ever been. But I haven’t spent a lot of time going back and appreciating that version of me.

And I just really, like, I had a moment in my car after two of like if you would’ve sat me down, you know, eight years ago and told me this, I wouldn’t have even believed it. Like, holy shit, the difference of my life and who I am in eight years. Incredible. And it was cool because in Mallory we redid her webinar together.

We like went through every single slide and overhauled her webinar. And this was a webinar that has made a million dollars, but she hasn’t redone it in like three years. And so she had, you just, it was just so special. Like she had cute things from the first time she did her webinar, like little notes to herself.

And I got to witness that while she’s in this coffee shop with me, where I built my business so special. So. Those are some updates. The last thing I want to share as a, I guess, piece of advice that is relevant and I, I shared this on my mastermind call and I think as I was thinking about what I wanted to record today, this came forward and I always follow that.

So there was someone on my mastermind call who I resonate with a lot in the sense that she. Is used to getting results in getting success through force. Like it has to be hard, it has to be like, I grinded it out and I forced myself and like it was painful for me to have success and I was coaching her on the call and, and we were kind of going deep and I said to her, you know, what’s coming through for me is that success.

You believe success can only be had through force. And what would it look like if you could create success through ease and flow? And her immediate response was, well, I don’t think that is the case, because I used to meditate and I used to do all these things that were more relaxing, and that actually was a distraction for me when I did that, when I prioritized that so heavily.

And I said, wait a second though. Forcing yourself to meditate, forcing yourself to do relaxing things is not ease. And so I thought this was a really interesting differentiation to share because I have learned this lesson. Like I thought everything had to be hard, everything had to be accomplished through like grind it out, you know, equivalent to my workout.

So like every workout being you’re on the floor, dying after, that’s not how it is. That’s not even a good training strategy. With business. It’s like, it, it, it doesn’t have to be like that where everything is so hard. Now, that doesn’t mean that sometimes it’s not challenging or uncomfortable or that you have to put in hard work.

There’s a difference between force and ease, and they’re not the same thing as hard and easy. Okay? When you’re forcing something, it’s like you’re trying to shove. Something huge in a tiny hole and it’s never gonna fit, but you’re just, you just keep going and you just keep. Forcing it and you know, beating yourself up over it and going nowhere with it, versus when you find ease, it, it, there’s a flow to it and it happens naturally.

And I’m not saying every moment of every day is gonna be like that. I think that’s something I’ve learned of, like that confusion of like, okay, well what about when a team member quit or this happens? Like, yeah, there’s challenges that you get to overcome. That’s the human experience. We get to overcome constant challenges, but that doesn’t mean the solution to those challenges can’t be found in flow and with a lack of resistance.

And so when I coach someone, I often ask them like, what is the solution that feels the least resistant in your body and feels like I can do that? I might be uncomfortable, it might be new, I might question some things, but like I can do that. Give, it gives me like that little bit of electricity, that little bit of buzz.

And so for this individual that I was coaching, I said, I want you to sit on, like if you were to build your business, if, if your goal was to get X amount of sales, which it is, and you had to do it in a way that was filled with ease, like you set yourself up every day where you were not. Struggling and trying to trudge up a hill and like go through all these challenges because that’s what you, your system believes is the only way to create success.

What would that look like? And part of that is allowing yourself to take messy action and to kind of follow and like not have the perfect plan and not overthink it. And so that connected with her and I, I think that’s a misunderstanding today because there’s like these two sides to the coin of you’re either.

And you’re feminine and like manifesting and everything is so easy and I never work. Or you’re like fricking grind and hustle and you know, kill yourself over here, you know, pushing so hard and there’s like these two sides and there isn’t that middle gray, which the middle gray is. I find the ease, I find the answers that have the least resistance.

I, I find the path that allows me to be in my strength. That allows me to be in flow state, and that doesn’t mean it’s abstract of challenges. That doesn’t mean that I don’t work hard. That doesn’t mean I don’t have a season where I’m working more. You know? I think where we get in trouble is where we put labels on everything.

It’s like, this is right and this is wrong, but I do believe that there’s a lot of power in finding that flow, finding that natural ease, and that again, doesn’t even mean that you don’t face challenges. You can face challenges with ease actually, and you can find the answer that has the most amount of ease in it in your business.

So hopefully that was helpful. I was maybe a little all over the place today, guys, but I just felt like chatting with you. Let me know if you like these episodes. Actually send me a message and go, I hated this episode, Emily. I like it when you stick to one topic or two, you know, points. But sometimes I just wanna like talk about a few things, but they’re not long enough for a whole episode.

And also I don’t, I literally sat down and was like, we’ll see where this goes, because I just, you know, I enjoy that connection with you guys and being able to share what’s on my heart, what’s happening in my life, what’s on my mind. So send me a message if you enjoyed today’s episode. Thank you so much for tuning in, and I’ll talk to you next time.