Little look inside the Intro to our new book and Francesca and my story as to how it came about...
The Language that might Surprise you …
We use a few terms all of the time and this will come through in this book. It’s not rude or immature (even though it may seem that way if you don’t know us). There are a few terms we use all of the time that may need to be explain before you begin. Here are the four we always use and say:
SMASH IT – go out and do it. Do your best work no matter what.
SHUTTUPP – seriously, that is so cool, I can’t believe it, get out of here.
SEXY – something that will appeal to the market, great marketing copy.
BOOM! – and that’s it, winner.
If you want to see these terms in action, follow us on Facebook, look up videos on our YouTube channels or simply join us at a live event … It’s so much Fun!
Introduction
Francesca’s version …
And here we are Natasa Denman and I, Francesca Moi, co-writing a book … shutttuppp I can’t believe it!
What I love about Natasa is the fact that she is incredibly genuine and down to earth. Natasa grew a million dollar business from home with 3 kids and a husband … this woman is a machine and I haven’t met many people who can bring it like she does.
Once at a speaking gig, in a congress, to attract the attention of the public she started her speech singing the Australian National Anthem … like seriously? It was hilarious and she did get people’s attention!
Natasa is one of those real European types. She is very welcoming to her home and loves running workshops and events from her beautiful home in Melbourne. I certainly feel very lucky to have had the opportunity so early in my business to collaborate with Natasa. Since we have been collaborating a lot has changed in my business and simultaneously with our collaboration I have been implementing a lot of the strategies that you will learn in this book that took my business to well over 6 figures.
A lot of people say to Natasa and I that we are so lucky … as if we just sat down and magically filled up our events … well I can tell you there is no luck in what we have done. There are 3 Key steps we have followed:
- Have been consistent, and worked our butts off for a very long time, keep standing up after tough times and even when the events were not as booked up as we would have liked.
- Both Nat and I worked a lot on our mindset, and dealt with each and every fear that came up along the path of success.
- We have collaborated and surrounded ourselves with other people of influence.
Another common denominator of Nat and I is that we never give up and we don’t take no for an answer. In the past 6 months Nat and I travelled to each others city to work together on a couple of different projects, while also running our own events.
Once we came up with an idea on a Monday … well this is how it went … we were planning the week and Nat said to me, ‘What’s on this Friday, Francesca?’ And I said, ‘The Book Launch Nat.' Nat, with a very surprised face said, ‘That’s at night … what have we got planned for the morning?’ And I laughed and replied that no nothing was really on except preparing ourselves for our book launch with 100 plus attendees … and Natasa says super enthusiastic, ‘Let’s do a half-day workshop to raise more funds for our online course and the publishing of this book!’
I first thought she was joking but soon realised that she wasn’t kidding and so I said, ‘Yeah! Why not?’
We took a piece of paper and said, ‘Ok, what are we teaching? How much are we charging?’ And 10 minutes later we were promoting the workshop on all social medias … in only 4 days, and 4 fully packed days with other full on events, we managed to have 4 people LIVE and 10 people paid into Live streaming from various cities around Australia. We made an extra $1500 and counting from that strategy and have filmed half-day workshop that we can sell the footage from for a long time.
When Nat and I decide to do something we just don’t give up and we make it happen!
The strongest point in our business relationship is that we truly feel like we must have been sisters in another life as we are super connected and call each other sis. Her kids and her husband Stuart also consider me part of the family and I couldn’t be more proud to be the kids’ aunty!
How Nat and I met
I love stories, I love knowing the real reasons why two people have met and why. So let me tell you how Nat and I met … I was running my business and I was finding that inviting people of influence as a guest speaker at my meet ups and empowering events was a genius idea, as it would bring more people to my events and it would give me a chance to start a relationship and collaboration with the guest speaker itself and it would give me the chance to be exposed to the guest speaker and show them what my events are about and what I am about as at each event I always start with an ice breaker game and my 15 minutes of magic …
In saying all this I was on the hunt for another successful business owner who had a big network and was seen as a person of influence in his/her niche … I was already a member of Ultimate Business Support Facebook Group Nat owns, and I remember seeing often this Natasa Denman lady so I decide to send her a Facebook friend request. After a few months in late July 2015, Nat sent me a Facebook message asking for the reason why I was contacting her. We started chatting and soon enough Nat told me that she was flying up the following week to the Gold Coast and we could catch up for a coffee.
Nat did her own research and noticed that I was running events and had already a big following. She knew the power of connecting with someone who has a big network. I knew how important it is to fill up your time as much as possible when you are travelling interstate so I offered Nat to speak at my event! Nat asked, ‘Oh great yes, I’d love to be a speaker, when is your next event though? I am up there only for 3 days and have already other speaking gigs lined up.’ And I said with confidence, ‘I don’t have an event planned for next week but I will organise one for you!’
Now I don’t know if you have ever run an event but usually people don’t pull off an event in 10 days. Usually people need 4-6 weeks to promote and organise an event to ensure it’s not going to be a disaster with no one showing up. So Natasa was confused and unsure of how I was going to do this in only 10 days. I started to freak out thinking that she was going to expect over 100 people in the room, and if that was the case I wasn’t going to be able to pull it off in 10 days. So I asked her, ‘How many people would you like to be attending?’ Nat said, ‘Oh as I am already in the Gold Coast, I am happy with 10-15 people.’ I was holding my breath as I was hoping on a number lower then 30. In 10 days I didn’t think I would have had the time to promote that much so relieved I said, ‘Oh Natasa, I will definitely get 20-25 people for you next week. How about the 4th August 2015?’ Nat said, ‘Great I am free that night!’
At the event we had 28 people attending, Nat and I found out that we are very similar in energy and together we ran a very fun and successful event. [Bv1] The attendees loved the night and from there Nat and I connected on Skype a few times to see how we could collaborate as our target market was exactly the same: Nat teaches business owners how to write a book in 48 hours and I teach business owners how to create a powerful and profitable following by starting a community (using Meet Up and Facebook) BOOM … we have a joint venture and help each other promote our workshops.
The more we connected on Skype the more we realised that we were very similar and our work ethics were totally matching and we started to organise a real joint venture and started to travel interstate to work together. It has been such an amazing collaboration and as I mentioned before we are sisters and love spending time together and working together!
It’s funny how things happen sometimes. One day Nat and I were chatting on her sofa, that’s where the best ideas came to us, and we started to talk about me writing my first book. I used to call my training Meetup Mastery but I really wanted to change the name as the course itself was already a lot more than meetups. I was actually teaching people how to create a following. Nat all of a sudden said, ‘You should call your book FOLLOW ME!’ OMG I loved it, perfect name. So I decided to go along to Natasa’s amazing Ultimate 48 Hour Author retreat in November 2015 to write my first book. I have dreamed about writing a book since I was a little girl and now it was really happening. Just 9 weeks later in early February 2016, I was holding my book and posted on Facebook a live video of me getting the delivery of my books and opening the boxes. It got over 1500 views in only a few weeks and I sold over 100 copies of my book instantly! I was so excited and humbled by people’s excitement around my book.
But let me back track to the couch conversation with Nat. After she came up with the wonderful Follow Me name. I started to say, yes, yes it’s perfect. People ask me all the time how I put bums on seats so quickly and that’s what I wanted to name my course but one of my first mentors suggested that it was not a good catchy name, so I dropped it. Nat couldn’t believe her ears as she was already planning to write a book about Bums on Seats too. She said, ‘We should co-write a book sis! Bums on Seats!’
I loved the idea of co-writing a book with Nat, so I said, ‘Let’s make it a real project and record an online training with it and let’s do a luxury retreat at the end of the year 2016 … BOOM!’
Nat and I got very excited about this idea and started to plan and decide when we were going to do this and how.
In December 2015 and January 2016 we both wrote our chapters and in February we finalised the book. We locked in some dates for recording and I found a great videographer to put the bums on seats online course together for us!
So on the 8th February 2016 Nat and I reunited and started to plan our amazing online course and on the 9th Feb we had a crew of 3 producers who come to Natasa’s studio in Melbourne to record the 12 weeks online program Bums On Seats.
It was a huge project as we had to record twelve 30-minute videos together and ensure we covered everything we wanted to say in 30 minutes. The producers were a little worried that we would not be able to record the 30 minutes without breaks or mistakes or cuts but as soon as they said, ‘Bums on seats, cut 1, Mark’ we were rolling and pretending to be LIVE and we just didn’t stop for the 30-minute sessions. We did it we rolled out the whole 12 chapters in a day. It was an intense day but as we love what we do we just kept going!
We did stop once as we were getting tired and we couldn’t stop laughing when one of the crew started snoring behind the camera. It was hilarious and we just couldn’t help ourselves!
Nat and I loved the recording day and they were very proud of us, we just match and work super well together, we could follow each other’s conversations and flow from one subject to another. BOOM, SHUTTTUPP we did it!
As we were rolling we did have a few breaks and in one of them we did a LIVE Facebook post and we came up with an idea of a competition and we invited our followers to guess what time we were going to finish recording and the winner would win the first copy of the online program Bums on Seats! That was a super smart way to start selling the book to all the people who participated in the competition, as obviously they are interested in the program. That’s why they joined the competition! Nat and I have a very creative way to sell our programs and to advertise them, we always do it by having fun and people buy more if they feel we are having fun and we are not hard selling to them!
Nat’s take on Francesca
Everything Francesca shared is true to the word so I won’t repeat the stories. All I want to share is the stuff that I have learnt and noticed on this journey Francesca and I are on. One thing that stuck out to me was the ability and courage Francesca had in outsourcing the stuff she was not an expert in doing so she can focus on the things that got her the best results. As a result, she helped me find a Virtual Assistant from the Philippines with her connections. This has been so freeing in my being able to also do the high quality business activities.
I have been in business coming up to 6 years now and never outsourced any admin work, which I sometimes had my dear husband do on my behalf. I did outsource but again not to the best person as Stuart is now better utilised in customer service and the more face-to-face stuff we deliver. I love that I took the leap and then worked out the how with getting the Virtual Assistant. I know Francesca has two and an Executive Assistant that is with her now. This is something I admire, as the responsibility of having employees is huge.
I love Francesca’s ability to think very quickly and resolve roadblocks and challenges that arise very frequently in running events. You must think quickly on your feet and find alternative paths. She is super quick and always in solution mode. This is a skill that has gotten us through many moments where we could have easily said – it can’t be done or there is no other way. I work similarly to her, but her speed it something I admire in this aspect.
My final reason in wanting to write this book and create the other products around Bums on Seats is because I have never come across anyone in these past 6 years in business that put so much effort and focus in filling events and making sure people were having a great time every time. In collaborations things can be one sided often and this is an area I have had this experience on many occasions until I met Francesca. She has helped me so much in the past 8 months around building up my brand in Queensland and doubling the sizes of my events up there. Vice versa, I have been able to give back and help out with my network down here in Melbourne.
What are you going to get from this book?
You are going to learn how Nat and I creatively fill up our public events. We don’t do just one thing. We actually do a lot more and in this book we show you what we do and how we do it. The Bums on Seats online program goes into even more detail and of course more interaction as you get to spend 12 half hours with us laughing, teaching and giving you clear steps on how to put bums on seats.
At the end of each chapter of this book you will get 3 take-aways for you to do and put in practice. So make sure you do the homework and not just read the book!
Enjoy the book and we hope to see you at the online course or at any of our courses or events. We both travel interstate a lot to the major capital cities in Australia so check us out and come along!
Love Nat x
