How to Scale an Online Business Without Losing Relationships | RR359

Hi everyone. Welcome to the show. Today, I'm

joined by sigrin Good John stoyer, an award winning

business coach, entrepreneur and global leader in helping women

build scalable online businesses. Siegren is known for

her direct no nonsense approach and her mission to accelerate

gender equality through female entrepreneurship. And I hope in

this conversation, we're going to take a look at what really

takes to grow a successful business without losing the

personal connections that make it possible and meaningful, and

why relationships become even more important at scale. So

welcome to the show, and I'm sorry if I butchered your last

name, but I'm not going to say it again, so we're all good, but

I did learn something from asking you about it. So first of

all, welcome secret to the show. Thank you for having me. Janice,

it's a pleasure. I love how you just emailed me, I think, as I

recall, and you are Icelandic, living in Zurich part of the

time, and Reykjavik in the other part of the time, a world

traveler. Europeans tend to be more cosmopolitan than we North

Americans ever are. I think I'm going to ask you, How many

languages do you speak,

I speak fluently three and then I could

say that I also speak Danish besides Icelandic German and

English. But no, not really, yeah,

so Yeah, but see, that's two more than I speak. So

to start with, anyway, because we just don't have that same

need, I guess because we speak English, and everybody in Europe

that doesn't speak English as a first language always seems to

learn it. So, yeah, it's fascinates me anyway. All right,

to dig right in. I want to ask you, first of all that you have

about your bold mission around accelerating gender equality

through entrepreneurship, so let's get into what led you to

this work. Let's start there, yeah.

Well, I born, born and raised in

Iceland, and we have been leading in gender equality for

quite some time. The last 17 years, WEF has recognized us and

being number one, wow, not because we have achieved it.

It's because everyone else is worse. But I still grew up

feeling like I could do anything. I was raised in the

belief that girls women can do anything, so I was a bit shocked

around the age of 16, when I decided to do a course, my hobby

was sewing and knitting, because I got that from my grandmother

and mother, and I became very passionate about sewing, and by

the age of 16, I was very good at it. So I wanted to learn how

to make my own clothes, and for that, you need to learn how to

do a pattern. Yes, so I did a course at a dressmaker's home,

and we were about eight women, but I was 16. My parents had to

drive me there. You only get the driver's license with 17 in

Iceland. They drive me there and pick me up in the evening. But

the other women, they were in the 40s and 50s, and so we did

not have much in common except that hobby. And so middle of the

evening, if this was an evening course, we would take a break,

and they would drink their coffee, I would drink my Coca

Cola, and I listened to them, and what I heard shocked me,

because they shared about dreams that they had not made come

true, and then they started to share why they had not made

their dreams come true, and it was the typical things that we

still hear today. I got married, I had kids, I didn't have the

education, I didn't have the skills and and on and on. After

weeks, it turned me into a feminist. I really became super

passionate. I like I don't want to be like these women. I want

to make my dreams come true. So I took a few decisions. First of

all, I want to make my dreams come true. Second, I decided not

to have children. Now, I do believe women can have both,

yeah, but something was like I was just furious that society

held women back. What I mean? It's a combination what they

believe in, what society is reflecting back to them. I did

get bonus children, or my stepsons, and they're now 21 and

22 so I do think I did a good job. Okay, I do not regret

getting bonus children, but at the age of 16, this felt like a

very logical decision based on what I was

hearing, yeah, but a big one for a 16 year old.

Yeah, I was never into dolls. I mean, so

I think it was a combination of what I had played with I, you

know, my mom really wanted me to have dolls, and I could choose

anyone I wanted. And I was like, I want the black one there. It

was one black one out of hundreds. So I just and then I

started to play with the cars that my brother had. So I think

I was just never that type. Third decision was that I would

do something about it. You know, I didn't know what, but one day

I would do something about it, yeah, but these are actually

four decisions because I decided to follow my dreams. Yeah, no,

sorry. The fourth decision was I would never have a man stop me.

Oh, that's a big one, yeah.

Okay. I think for a woman that chose the

choice of a husband plays a crucial role and what is

possible for her later on, just having a husband that believes

in you and supports your dreams, however crazy they might seem,

has been really important to me. I got married quite late. Met my

husband. I was at 38 so yeah,

so you so you had that time to pave your way. You

went, you took a lot of school. I know that you Yes.

My mom is like, you don't need another

degree. And I'm like, Yes, I need another. You armed

yourself also on our sides, yeah.

Well, I was determined that I would take

care of myself. I never wanted to rely on someone. So I did

believe in love. I did not reject marriage or marriage,

because my my parents are my best role models. They got they

met when we're 13. Wow, turning 81 Yeah,

and it looked lovely. I saw a picture of them,

and, yeah, like healthy,

and so I had the best role model. So I

believed in love, but I want to make sure that it would not be a

love that would, then, you know, keep me in, stifle you, yeah,

and somewhat shape or form. But this is, this was a turning

point. And then, of course, for a while, I didn't do anything

special about the gender equality topic, but it

definitely guided me in terms of relationships, in terms of

decisions I was taking along the way. And I studied architecture.

It was my dream to become an architect, but then I realized I

didn't want it anymore. I still finished. So I'm a licensed

architect, but I decided to move into computer science, because

as I am approaching graduation and architecture, the virtual

world comes out. We can do vrlm, not just HTML, we can do VRM.

And I got totally fascinated about doing 3d worlds that you

could just walk in, I mean, virtually with an avatar. Yeah,

the whole thing never took off. I still today is not taking off,

but I was doing cutting edge things back in 9899 and I loved

it, but I realized what I was doing was not very practical,

but, you know, it led me to computer science and and then I

started to work in software companies. I was just a project

manager there, and then the dot came, boom came, and people let

go. And then I had to kind of RE, yeah, redesigned my job. So

I joined a business course for three months, evening course,

and there I created a business plan. And with the business

plan, I went to a company and said, hire me, because I didn't

dare to start a business yet.

So that wasn't in the in the worksheet, you never

thought of working for yourself.

I did not really see myself as an

entrepreneur. We hear these stories of people that were

selling when they were six, they were selling cards and stuff,

and I'm like, oh, okay, so then I'm not an entrepreneur, yeah,

yeah, yeah. And these are just beliefs. These are not facts,

right? Truth. It's just, it's you carry with you these

beliefs. So I was like, No, it and I felt was risky. Yeah, you

know, now I take much bigger and riskier decisions, but you

gotta, you gotta, first learn. You gotta. So I got that job,

and it turned out to be a blessing, working at the small

software company, because a year later, the company sold. There

is a businessman in Iceland that kind of owned a lot of

companies, and he decided to sell them only one go to another

business guy that owned a lot of companies. So for the next two

weeks, nobody contacted us. We were too small to be contacted.

They just focused on some big companies that needed to be.

Dealt with, and I started to have this crazy idea, I could

become a CEO. I had background, no business education, except

that, three month evening hours. But, you know, at first I was

just putting it away, and then it came back again and again.

And I think when you have a good idea and you're meant to do it,

it comes back to you, sure, at some point you have to act on

it. Of course, yeah. But so, you know, I ended up being a CEO,

and did

that 10 years. That was you developing what we

call, in the the best way to describe that is a Yiddish word,

chutzpah, when you had the chutzpah or the nerve to to to

do that, and that took you on a new path in a way, right?

Because you became the CEO. Yeah, yeah, interesting.

I was lucky with the guy who, he was

not the main guy who had bought the business. He was like a part

owner, but he became my mentor. Okay, you know, I there's a part

of me that doesn't believe in luck. Maybe it's destiny. Who

knows what you want to call it. But suddenly I was there with a

small company, 15 people only, but it was had been losing money

for seven years, and I had never run a business before, but I

have common sense, so I'm like, the business cannot be losing

money. I have to turn it around. My mentor gave me some tips, but

he didn't, he didn't run the business. He knew nothing about

software. He was on retail, I mean, selling fruit and

vegetables. So he just was very good with numbers. But he says,

You need to turn this company around. And I'm like, okay,

okay. And so I took the binders from the, you know, from the

bookkeeping department, took with me home, and that was my

evening reading. Luckily, at the time, I was not married or in a

relationship, so I could dedicate myself 100% to this

task. And by looking through the books, I learned bookkeeping. I

discovered some assets that were not, you know, public. I

discovered, for instance, a massive voucher we had with a

media company, and I'm like, and then I went to my boss, I am,

you know, the owner of the business, and I said, Can you

turn this into cash? I mean, you have some connections that I

don't have. And he said, Great, he'll do that. So he was able to

turn some of it into cash. We owed so much money, they should

have closed us down and stuff, but we had a pension fund with a

bank and so and at the same time, my programmers were

working for the bank, so I had an idea. I called up the bank

and I said, I owe you some money. It was a different

department, so the department we were working for didn't know

about it, but I said, I explained the thing. I said, we

owe money. There. We are working for you over there. Can we make

a deal that I get half paid and half goes there, and we keep on

working together, and they agreed to it. And so I just

kept, yeah. It was even better that I was not business

educated, because I didn't know what was okay or not, yeah. And

I just kept on being creative, yeah, extending payment terms.

Or if I owed someone a lot of money and there were interest on

it, I'm like, if I pay today, will you have the interest go

away.

Yeah? So you were just you, you, it's sort of that

innocent, yeah, piece that gets you what you need to you're not

afraid to ask, because there's nothing to lose, really. You've

never had to experience it before. It's great. I love it,

yeah?

And so I while I'm doing this, I am my

computer science. I'm doing computer science on the side.

But of course, I take a bit of a break during this whole thing,

because this is a more than a full time job. I turn around, I

successfully turn the company around. And then my boss says,

Okay, I have another company for you, 75 employees, and I'm like,

that one was hopeless. I mean, I tried my best for a few months,

and I saw this was a big bite and it they had supply chain,

they had logistics, they had a retail store. It, it was much

more complicated than a simple software company. And at some

point, I said to my boss, this is not going to work out. And

well, or at least I'm not the right person for it, because it

felt way. I think they had waited way too long with the

whole thing so but I had done a good job with the other

business. He sent me back to that company. And I'm like,

going back to the small business, that feels a little

bit like a downgrade. But then I saw my chance. I said I would

like to have an MBA, and there's a great MBA in London, and he

was doing some business in London, so he was kind of open

to it. I'm like, This is my bonus for turning. Around the

other company so you're going to pay for it. Yeah? Good for you.

Fantastic. And before I started my MBA, I said, Oh, I have to

finish the computer science because I don't like unfinished

things. Yeah? And so I rushed through the summer finishing the

last subjects and my thesis. And wow, to grab to graduate just in

time for the other degree.

Well, you're obviously a lifelong learner,

and love to learn and be in those situations. So So when did

you leave to start your own business?

So I had met my husband in London, just

Lacher. I'm wrapping up my studies. He is Swiss British. We

speak English together. Yeah, both big German, and I decided

to to follow him to Switzerland. I had actually lived one year in

Zurich during my studies, and so it wasn't so, you know, foreign

to me. And I did get a job here after looking for a long time,

but then I got sick from that job, and I got neck pain. I

still have it today. This is 16 years later. I'm going through

some therapy to try to reduce the pain, but I didn't realize

right away that I was getting pain from that work. But in

hindsight, it was very clear the table was a bit higher and chair

a little bit lower, and I'm not the tallest, so that proportion,

they didn't work. So I was holding up my arm a bit. I mean,

just maybe even half a centimeter, a centimeter, yeah,

you do that for a year, and you work nine hours a day at a desk

with not much movement. And of course, I was also lazy doing

fitness myself. And ultimately, the pain is just gonna go. And

it goes into not just the neck, it went into the shoulder, into

my arm, into my ear. And worst thing is the headaches. I mean,

you can kind of live with some pain in your body, but the

headaches just at some point, I had headache, not just on Friday

or Thursday or Friday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. So

I was like, Oh, this is work related. And at some point, it

just didn't go away. So I was seven months on sick leave, and

I tried everything to figure out what this was my conclusion.

This is actually from a friend based in San Francisco. He

wanted to have a Skype call with me. We had Skype back then,

yeah, and and then typically, an American will ask, how are you

doing? And you're supposed to say, Fine, fine. Yeah. I'm like,

No, I'm not fine. I have this pain. And he's like, Oh, this is

RSI repetitive strain injury. Yeah, yeah, when you have this

monotone movements again and again, and especially if you

have my posture isn't the best I was. I was born with a

exaggerated S curve, so there's not much you can do except just

try to focus on your posture. But it happens also more to

people that are ambitious and focused, and you know, the eight

type of people. So you cannot just blame it on like my

employer, although they have a part in it with the long hours

and wrong office equipment, it's also me just being well you

weren't

aware of it because you weren't focused on

you. You're focused on what you're doing.

Yeah? So, yeah, gradually I became well

enough to do something I mean, to work again, even though the

pain is still there. And then I got a job that as a country

manager for Icelandic software company in Switzerland. And then

I got used to home office, and I loved it, long before covid. And

I was like, I am liking this. Even if I'm a social person, I

really

like just I felt that way too. For me, it was

covid that did that. But, yeah, totally Yeah.

But I had to drive to the customers

sometimes for an hour, and they were schools, and I had to do

some cold calling. So these two things, I was like, I'm getting

pain from the driving, and I really hate cold calling. Yeah,

it's not my thing. I don't want to, you know, convince anybody

of having a meeting with me. And, oh, really. So ultimately,

I suggested that they let me go, and then I was unemployed, and

then I went to the unemployment office and they said, You're

unemployable. So they actually suggested that I start a

business. It was not

you're too overqualified, probably for

anything.

I had started to think about it, but

they pushed me and said, We'll support you for four months.

Without you having to offer a job if you start your own

business. But after four months, we got all benefits. That's how

I started my business, more out of a need than desire. But

obviously, of course, happy

with doing it. You know, it's funny, because I

don't know if I just read it somewhere or heard somebody say

it, but probably it was on social media. But somebody was

asking, what's what do you think the average age of somebody is

that starts their own business, the entrepreneurial thing? And

the answer was, 42 Yeah, like in your 40s is when the most

success comes from being an entrepreneur and but I think

it's obviously there's more to it than that, because you have

to, you know, know what you're doing, or have the mindset and

the the you have to want to work, do your own thing,

because, like, I think It's a perfect time for one of my

daughters, who's having, really, she's finding a job because she

got laid off along about a year ago, but she doesn't feel, I

don't think, that she knows or wants to do her own thing, and

yet, she needs to have flexibility, because she has a

little girl that needs her. But you know, she needs to do

something. She needs to support herself, too. So it's just that

she needs the flexibility of working from home, which she did

with the other jobs that she's had. But doing it on your own is

a bit scary. Anyway, let's talk a bit about you've worked with

that, with women globally, 1000s of women who are starting their

own businesses, who want to scale their own their

businesses, they are working for themselves. What would you say

separates those who succeed from those who struggle when it comes

to growing their business, building relationships along the

way, all of the good stuff that it takes to to be successful,

I would say, well, first of all, you

need to have a positive attitude. You cannot be an

entrepreneur. I mean, I think it's, it's, it's kind of built

into the whole thing is that you, you got to believe the best

is going to happen. Otherwise you wouldn't start the journey.

So you shouldn't look at all the details. If you start to look at

all the details that lay ahead of you, you want to do a retreat

and not do it. So it's having a little bit. You know? What do

you call the rose

rose colored glasses? Yeah, colored glasses.

Well, that's why they call entrepreneurs the visionaries,

right? It's the big picture.

Yeah, yeah. So we see the big picture.

It's good to ignore the details, because if you know all the

details, you're not going to start Okay, fair enough. So,

yeah, it's having a little bit this, not Pollyanna mindset, but

mindset always having the glass half full. There's a solution to

every problem. I mean, business is a series of problems that you

just look at positively rather than seeing it as a negative.

Okay, okay, I would say that that's, that's, that's the first

thing, and the second thing is perseverance. I mean, this is

not a sprint, it is this long game. And if one way doesn't

work, then you try another way, and then you try another way.

And the sad thing is, people come in, like all excited,

sometimes into a program and want to learn how to do this,

but then something doesn't work out. And instead of picking

themselves up and trying it again, or trying a different

method. They blame the program or the coach or just like, I'm

like, I'm not cut out for this, right?

Can you tell anyone

can do it if they have the stamina?

So can you tell when, when? Well, I guess you

probably don't do you do people just sign up for your courses

and then you see them when they're already in. But can you

tell who you think is going to make it through and who isn't,

pretty quickly?

Well, yeah, definitely, it's an

attitude thing. I mean, sometimes I come to a call and

there's a lot of women, sometimes I run calls, and

there's 100 women on a call, and yeah, I look at their faces, and

I see someone that's just smiling. They're eager, excited.

They just want to know what to do next. I'm like, This person

is going to make it because they're just, they're in a

positive mindset, and they're, they're they're willing to

learn, and then they're eager to know what's next, versus someone

who looks at everything critical and try to find flaws in your

teachings. I mean,

they're not going to make it. Yeah, no, that's, I

can see that. So you're you're saying something, though, that

makes me think, I don't know where I read it about you, that

you studied Tony Robbins. And there was somebody else who was

the other one.

I am a Dale Carnegie certified

trainer as well. Oh, are you okay? Cool, okay,

yeah. And all of those thought leaders back in the day that

were teaching us about that positive thinking and about

being the best we can be, and so on. Did you ever hear of Jim

Rohn? Yes, he was, oh, he was, like, amazing. And he was Tony

Robbins mentor, I think. And that's, yeah, yeah. So people

that work on themselves and grow, you know, with personal

self help and personal development. I think that's

where a lot of I interview a lot of people. And I think those

that are self employed and successful entrepreneurs, they

seem to have worked on themselves.

Yeah, right, yeah. Because if you also

want to have relationship which clients are relationship like

you need to build a relationship to someone who's not a client,

and then they become a client. And if you want them to repeat

clients, you need to have those good relationships. And a part

of it is like knowing yourself and then knowing how other

people behave. And for me, this started back when I became a

CEO. The first time, I was a bit nervous. Suddenly, I was the

boss of the my peers, yeah. And I saw a big ad from Dale

Carnegie, want to build your self confidence. And I'm like,

yay. Then I had some friends like, build self confidence.

They didn't see anything wrong with my confidence, but I felt I

needed to grow into, you know, into a leader, which, yeah, I

have not learned to do yet. And you know, many things that are

so helpful from that Dale Carnegie experience, but a

person's name is the most beautiful word they hear, like,

I'm sure you heard that. Plus, if you talk to someone and you

just ask them a lot of question, and then the other person will

say, Oh, it was so great to talk to you today, you realize that

you were not talking at all. You just ask questions.

I talk about you do when you're I know, yeah, I

talk about that all the time. When I'm talking about

networking, right? If someone leaves that conversation and

says, You are so fun to talk to, and they you've said nothing,

then you've done your job because you wanted them talking

about themselves, and they love to do that. So true. I love the

Dale Carnegie Carnegie thing too. And, and, and that brings

me to actually talking about names right? It's like, like, I

struggled with your last name, and I wanted to get it right,

but you gave me the story behind it, and that actually helped. I

have to say it did help. But just being, you know, so

mentioning somebody's name in a sentence when you just meet them

shows it helps you remember their name, but it also shows

you know. So there's things you can do to make people feel more

comfortable along that name thing. So that's great. Sigrin,

yeah. So you're you, your approach is often described as

tough love. How does that actually strengthen

relationships with your clients?

It's being brutally honest when they need

it without being rude. I mean, it's on the verge of like, Am I

hurting the person and

but it's what they need to hear in that moment, versus everybody

else saying,

Oh, this is going to be fine. And that's not what they need to

hear to change their life. And that's what I try to do all the

time. So I say it's one of my values, tough love. And I

remember when I was at this second company trying to do the

turnaround that didn't work out was someone said to me, You're

tough but fair. And I'm like, that's good. I think that's a

compliment. I mean,

yeah, yeah. So it's a calculated risk, but, but

it, it's also a sign of a good entrepreneur. I mean, you have

to take those you're taking risks. Is easier as an

entrepreneur. I don't know if it's easier, no, that's the

wrong term, but you're willing to do it. You're willing to take

the risk, and that's with your client, to push them along, to

see the value of of not listening to what they want to

hear, but isn't going to help them, right? So, yeah,

that's one beautiful example from a long

term client. She's also Icelandic, and she also has

blonde hair. And sometimes people think we're sisters, but

we're we've even checked. The DNA database. Oh, wow. Okay, and

she had been a client for a couple of years, and she's

originally a veterinarian dog behaviorist, and so she had this

membership and online courses around for dog parents. And I

always felt she was just not really taking off. We talk about

scaling, and, you know, that's my motto. Like, yes, women grow.

And she was somehow just stuck in the low figures. And I was

like, at some point, on a coaching call with with other

women. So not, not on, I said to her, I think if you were really

passionate about what you do, you would be more successful

and, you know, and there's also some other context around this,

but it was, there's something was off, yeah, yeah. She was

just not, I mean, she was doing it, and then she tells me later

on, C thought that she had to do this for the rest of her life,

because it's what she studied. Yeah. See, didn't think she

could do something else. It did obviously, you know, I think she

broke a bit down. But see, see, respected it, and she agreed,

but I didn't see her two weeks, and then she came back and she

said I took two weeks off from this program to get my thoughts

together. And I was at home looking around my bookshelf. She

had a small bookshelf. I've been to her home. It's a tiny home in

Italy, most of the books were about how to be an author, oh,

how to write fiction and how to self publish. And, yes, there

were some dog books there too, yeah. But she suddenly had like,

epiphany,

oh, my goodness, yeah.

And she had written one book and self

published it, but not more. Yeah, I was not educated at all,

but she said, I'm going to be a book coach. And so she redid my

programs with this approach, yeah, and now she's finally

crossing the six figures, finally, finally

interesting, but she was educated, and from a

child right through to getting this degree to be a

veterinarian, and she thought she had to be that all her life.

Yeah, that interesting. Yeah. And today, of course, we don't

have to. Nobody stays with anything for any length of time.

It seems right, you can do

whatever you want, as long as you maybe

are not a doctor or, yeah, engineer that builds building. I

mean, there, there has to be, but you don't need a degree to

be a book coach. And if you're honest about your background, if

you say I have written a published a book, you don't say

I've written 10 books, and you've only written I mean, if

you're, if you're truly honest about your experience, I think

anyone can do anything.

Yeah, I think that's really interesting. I

often want wish that I had learned business skills in

school. I learned to be a teacher, because that was what I

wanted to do when I was in school, and I always wanted to

be a teacher, so I taught school. I taught school for 14

years, but then I didn't like the politics that was happening

around being a teacher, and I left. And I did some corporate

training for a while, but then I wanted to do something, but I

didn't know what I wanted to do. And I took, like you took a

three month course. I took, like, a two week course on how

to start your own business, because that's all I qualified

for. I didn't qualify from, like, leaving a job because I'd

been a contractor as as a corporate trainer. So that's how

I sort of started on my own, and I didn't know what I was doing,

and I, I wish I had, because it like, it's, you say it's never

too late, but I'm, I'm kind of on the other end of it. Now I

don't excuse me one second. There we go. So you know, it's

just, I wish that one of my daughters is very

entrepreneurial and the other one isn't, but the one that is

is now into corporate America, and it's like it's killing her.

It's killing her. She works all the time. It's so hard. She's

had two businesses of her own, but now she's back working, you

know, and learning to be a she's a VP of Business Development and

Marketing and a company, and she's learning to be a leader,

you know. But it's killing her along the way, I see it. But

anyway, so, so what are some practical ways? And look, I'm

looking at the time, what are some practical ways

entrepreneurs can scale their business without losing the

human touch. Because it's, for me, all about that. This is a

very important question right now.

Yes, we have AI.

Okay, yes. And I know you're into that, and I did

want to touch on that a little bit. So, yeah,

yeah, yeah. So when you talk about

risks before, I just decided to close my programs and start

fresh. Oh, wow, yeah, first of May and this year, yeah, okay,

so the reason is, AI, I don't think we can teach in the way

we've been teaching. I mean, what typical online course, if

someone wants to, you know, be successful online, what I teach

them to do is to have a free four week. Course, okay, because

you you can validate it, and there's not so much risk. I

mean, the people haven't paid you money, so in case you don't

deliver, you know it's it was free all along. And you build

your list and and then I teach them to do a celebration call

after the four weeks, and there you present the next program,

and that's paid. So this is, this is a process I call

kickstart. Okay, now I have been asking myself the last two

years, what, where, where are we going with AI, and what happens

to courses? I do think people still want to learn from human

beings, and it's going to be more important than ever that we

strengthen relationships, also to friends and family and and

because there's going to be so much flood of AI. I mean, you

can barely scroll through social media right now, and everybody

is somehow AI. And so I think we're going to lean more into

being as human as possible. We're going to use AI to run our

businesses, but we have to, you know, strengthen relationships.

So if they have gotten lost on along the way, this is where we

need to come back in. So I've had conversation with my

clients, telling them that I'm closing the program and bringing

in AI, and they definitely gave me all the feedback I needed to

hear is that they value the human element. They love also. I

mean, they need mindset. They say they need that. They doubt

themselves. They have insecurities, imposter syndrome,

all the things that makes them procrastinate and not do the

work and accountability. So these are super important. So

you can have AI as much as you want, but humans don't change

that fast. And I actually think after covid, we haven't fully

come back to ourselves. I noticed that with events that I

go to, they are not as full as before. When I own events, I get

less people showing up, but I do think AI will push us back to

being more human and wanting to meet people and build those

relationships.

That's fascinating, but let me just

clarify something. When you said you did your your previous

process was you teach to do a four week free program, is that,

like, once a week, an hour or two hours a week. It's not like

full blown four weeks. It's just over.

Yeah, okay, so, and that process still

works in the AI world, except you you want to do things live,

yes? So the way I'm changing, personally, my program, instead

of pre recording videos and you go on platform and watch it,

yeah, typical online training, yeah, I'm going more to live

workshops. Okay, that's more the human element, live

in person, or live on Zoom.

Or, well, it's still online, okay, okay,

got it, yeah, yeah, yeah. So my four week process, or, let's

say, the kickstart process. It starts with you knowing what you

want to do, then picking a small example. So if we bring back

this client that went from the dog doing dog parenting to book

coaching, see was helping dog parents have good relationships

with their dogs, and then you have to pick a little problem

that you could solve in two hours, and that is a four week

course, got it? Yeah? So the two hours you teach half an hour

each week, because people don't have the stamina for long,

right? Sessions, right? So more than half an hour, especially if

it's a free course, even if it's a paid program, I would say half

an hour is more than enough. And then have a Q and A call as well

in the same week. So Monday, new module, 30 minutes, Thursday, q

and a call and that that. And then you have a community. So

that

builds the trust. It, yeah, that builds the trust,

yeah, okay.

Because you want to give people

assignments, simple tasks to do, because it takes at least 21

days to change the behavior. So if you want the dog to stop

barking, for instance, I mean, it's not going to happen

instantly in a session. So you give people tasks every week,

and they start to see the progress. There's no

transformation happening, right? And when we feel transformation,

there's a trust to the person that helped us have this

transformation, and so we want to work with that person. It's

no manipulation, it's just how we work. I mean, right? If

someone has helped me, I want to kind of give back. It's a rep,

right?

Reciprocity, yeah, reciprocity, yeah, yeah.

And so you would rather work with someone

and pay them for the next program, then go

just find someone else, yeah, yeah. I love it. So

I know that you're now you're teaching people. I know we have

to go. I have to it's gone longer than than one should, and

I so enjoying talking to you. I may have to have you back to

learn more about how you're dealing with the AI, because I

know you're now teaching people how to build their own bots and

their own agents now. Yeah, so, and what do you have a favorite

platform of choice? Oh, you built one on your own website.

Didn't you your own?

Well, I was using chat DP from the

moment it came out in December 22 all the way up to February

this year. Okay, what happened in February is that all the AI

models updated and got vastly more powerful, and now you can

have agents and all that stuff, and you can create your

marketing team. And I was working with chatty P I was

working on some documents, and it started lecturing me, oh, and

you can't do this, and you can't do that. And after a few rounds,

few days, I was really sick and tired of it, and I went over to

Claude, which I had tried out, but was not using extensively.

And this was very funny. I told Claude that I had been working

on this document, and Claude just said to me, Sigrun, you've

been thinking about this for a week now, just send out the

email. You are tough love. I like it. Yes, it was treating me

exactly like i Yes, treat my clients. Yeah, tell them. Tell

them honestly what they should do and don't bump around. I love

it.

So I'm about to go over to Claude and test it

out, because I haven't had time yet, but I've been wanting to,

but it's, it's scary because you have to figure out how to get

all your your thinking over there, like, you know,

it's easy. Claude even has a URL, I think,

import memory. So force less import memory, and it tells you

exactly what to do to get your memory from another AI tool over

love it.

Okay, that's my next job. So thank you. Thank

you. I think we have to stop because it's been such a long

conversation, but I'm definitely excited about it. It was

amazing, and that just from you reaching out to me and us having

a short conversation last week. I love it. Thank you so much,

inspiring and interesting, and I really appreciate your

perspective on, you know, building a successful business

while staying grounded in relationships, because that, to

me, is so important. Your we didn't get into this, but as

much as I think we should have, but that's why I said maybe next

time about the empowering women to build million dollar online

businesses women, it's about, you know, you had a post the

other day, which I loved, and it said female entrepreneur, and

you crossed out the word female, and like, why do we have to say

that? And I love that conversation, and I think we

should have one in the future about that, because it's still

happening right. It's still happening right.

Ai women are falling behind there too,

which is yes, that's why my mission is shifting. Yes,

business and AI and I see

that, yes, amazing. So people can find you

at sea grant.com Correct.

Sigrun.com is my website, but Oh, right for

your listener,

yes, please tell it's sigrun.com

forward, slash the name of this podcast.

Right? Relationships rule and your book

is there. I think, yes, yeah, you can get

my book kick start your online business

that describes the kicks process in detail, and that's for free.

That's amazing listening to this podcast. Thank

you so much. And to my listeners, I encourage you to go

there and do that, because sigrin is a wealth of

information, and she is just amazing, and it's a different.

Perspective, talking to someone from Europe, not North America.

And I love it, but yet it's so worldwide. The whole thing is

just, you know, nothing really different about it. And yet

there is, I don't know, but anyway, thank you again for

being here. Thank you for your insights and your wisdom. And to

my audience, please, please let us know if you enjoyed this,

this podcast, and we'll have her come back and remember to stay

connected and be remembered. Thank you.