Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Raina Willick. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Raina, appreciate you joining us today. What do you think Corporate America gets wrong in your industry? Any stories or anecdotes that illustrate why this matters?

Productivity is NOT one-dimensional. Corporate America thinks it is and small business owners unknowingly bring this approach to their own business, which sets them up for frustration, disappointment, and never feeling like they’re doing enough.

I frequently coach self-employed people who have left corporate America to start their own thing. They’d like more autonomy over some aspect of their work – the clients, the focus, their schedule, etc.

The irony is that the internalized work culture in corporate America prioritizing profitability as the noblest use of our time no matter what else is important, continues to haunt us.

For example, I have a client who’s a home organizer. She arrived at our recent session frustrated. “I’ve been doing this for 10 years, and I have so little to show for it!”.

When I asked what she meant, she told me she had lunch that week with another home organizer who started her business around the same time as my client. This person’s business had expanded and recorded significantly more annual revenue than my client.

She was frustrated and felt as if she was failing at her business by comparison.

I asked her what her goals were when she started her business.

They were:
Make enough money for ends to meet without stress
Do work she enjoyed
Have a flexible schedule around her (at the time) young family

I asked her if she had achieved those goals. Her face changed. She paused and said, “I hit it out of the park!”.

THAT was what peak productivity in business looked like for her, at that stage of life. She considered more than one metric. Once one of the metrics (money) was at enough point, she didn’t continue to optimize for it because it would have pushed out other important metrics in that season of her life.

Productivity is multi-faceted and personal.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Annual life reflection and planning are the single most valuable things you can do to consistently build the life you want.

I help clients look at the big picture, and then turn that into something practical and focused for daily decision-making to build a meaningful and joyful life.

We tend to do the next thing that life presents, that’s expected of us, or that’s easiest. When I was younger, most of the goals I set were external achievements I knew people would see as successful and respected. They weren’t always connected to what I deeply wanted, because I’m not sure I ever questioned why I wanted a particular thing or what was important about it to me. It was just the next thing to do in life to be seen as successful.

That was until, after 17 intense years, I was burnt out in my career as a critical care nurse. I began searching for a career coach to help me make a change.

Until I worked with a coach, I never asked myself internally difficult questions. It felt too big to say out loud the things I dreamed of. Too much to ask. Why should I be so b0ld to go for this life I imagined? To risk a change from the stability I built? My goals were always very practical and achievable. Just enough to challenge myself, but not always really connected to all I knew I might be capable of or what I was curious about or excited to pursue.

Working with a coach challenged me to see things in a new way and gave me the support to go for it and understand the risk was manageable.

I moved into the role of community management for online entrepreneur groups and loved it. It built on many skills I had been developing for years along with my healthcare career. Then I pursued in-depth training as a coach, eventually receiving multiple internationally recognized qualifications I hold today.

Coaching another human is a set of skills applied to bring out the best in someone while creating insights, new ideas, and perspectives that can be connected to actions to change life.

It’s not giving advice (that’s consulting) and it’s not just listening (that’s your best friend). T

As I worked in entrepreneur communities, I started to see business owners attempt to focus on too many things at once. Their business took over every aspect of their life. But it was hard to let things go and the reality is always there’s too much to do.

When I work with clients, I help them create a filter of personal values to use for prioritization. Finding which areas of life and business are most productive in this season for a whole, fulfilling life long term.

Life isn’t easy but in the end, the point is to enjoy it.

I help people figure out how to do that while running a profitable business and happy life.

How did you build your audience on social media?

Marketing and social media have always felt challenging to me. I struggled to be consistent, I didn’t enjoy it, and I had doubts it was helpful and not just adding to the internet noise. But something changed recently.

My husband and I started a YouTube channel (@baguettebound) and in four months it’s grown so quickly that we’ll reach monetization by the end of the month, posting only once a week.

Baguette Bound focuses on our life in France, with videos for those who might want to take an extended slow travel trip, sabbatical, or even move to France with their family.

Here’s what has felt different and that I would tell someone who might also be struggling with social:

1. Find something you feel so strongly needs to be out there and you know a particular audience needs, that you almost can’t HELP but make content on it.

There are so many things I want people to know, understand, see, or inform on this topic and I know from our own search before we moved that there aren’t a lot of good resources out there for non-retired people. So it finally feels easy and exciting to make content, because I really WANT the specific content to exist, and I feel purposeful in making it.

2. Find the medium you enjoy, and just focus on it. Let the rest go.

I didn’t realize it until I tried it, but I like long-form videos much better than anything else. So now I’m focusing on getting really good at ONE medium/platform. So the amount of energy I have for social media marketing feels more focused and like it’s more likely to move the needle.

So it feels like the new keys have been: Finding the content you really want to make, in the medium you enjoy, for an audience who’s looking for it.

At least for me, this has felt like the right combination to get traction in building the audience and be sustainable for me.

Has your business ever had a near-death moment? Would you mind sharing the story?

When we decided to move to France from the USA on a family adventure in August 2022, my business was still fairly young. I had consistent clients and momentum, but there were still a lot of ups and downs becoming established in my coaching niche.

Moving to France has been incredible – and hard. I didn’t realize until after we moved how much I depended on new clients finding me through my network, professional associations, and the freelance community management work I had done previously.

Being in a new country where I didn’t speak the language, I didn’t have the same kinds of professional relationships, and even participating online was super challenging with the time zone difference.

In addition, normal life felt so tiring some days. There was of course the administrative burden of visas, school enrollment, etc. but just going to the store to buy clothing detergent in boxes and brands you’ve never seen can be exhausting (is this actually fabric softener? Why is there a picture of a cat on here? Is this actually to bathe your pet?!?).

Over the months, as happy clients completed their work with me, I wasn’t signing new clients. Besides referrals, the marketing channels I had been relying on weren’t getting any attention and I could see it in my revenue.

I was questioning if we should go back to the US, if this was just going to be too hard to run my primarily US based business from France.

But we loved our life here in France and we weren’t ready to throw in the towel. So I hired a consultant to help me craft messaging I could begin to turn into more focused online marketing rather than relying as much live (time zone challenged) networking. I also started to look at how I could leverage my new unique position living in France to expand the business in a new way instead. My husband and I came up with the idea of Baguette Bound to leverage our experience in France as a why people could find me and I’ll begin hosting life planning retreats here in France this year.

Additionally, I created a virtual co-working space on Mondays (Waffles n’ Work) during hours I found manageable, and this way I could consistently keep up relationships with those in my network, even if I wasn’t able to attend other events due to time zone conflicts.

I’m still finding my way, re-inventing my business and how I operate it in a new country, but I’m excited about finding ways to marry the thing I found challenging initially into a feature that I’m building new offers on.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.rainawillick.com
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raina-willick/
• Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/@BaguetteBound

Image Credits
Raina Willick