We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Samantha Riley. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Samantha below.
Samantha, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard
The industry standard for business coaches is to take clients through a session or a training, and then the client goes and implements, or tries to implement, what they learned.
We noticed that there was a large number of coaches and consultants who were trying to launch and grow their business were failing due to not understanding how to implement what they’d learned.
They either didn’t understand the tech, didn’t have the time to implement, or they didn’t know how to explain what they needed to a freelancer.
We wanted our clients to have the greatest chance of success, so we have an implementation team of Genies who grant our clients wishes by taking design, website, automation and content creation tasks off their hands.
Samantha, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I’ve just celebrated my 30th anniversary in business. I left the corporate world when I had two toddlers at home, and I wanted to spend more time with them.
The very first question I asked myself was, “what sort of business could I start?” As I’d been involved in dancing since I was 6 years old, it made total sense to me to open a dance studio. And twelve months later I opened a dancewear store. I’m very proud to have built a 7-figure business before I was 30.
I spent 20 years in the dance industry, before also going down the fitness & wellness route.
As part of this business, I was hosting health & wellness retreats where our attendees took the time out with us to focus on their health and wellness, and the life they were creating. One of the questions that came up time and time again was, “I don’t want to have a job. Can you help me start a business?”
I loved business so much that I made the switch to working with folks to help them start an online coaching business. Why online coaching? Because remember the question I first asked myself before I opened my first business? Well, it was the wrong question. The question I should have asked myself was, “What sort of business could I start that supports the lifestyle I want to be living?”
Now I work with people to position themselves as the unapologetic leader in their industry, and create a business and a life they love.
One of my superpowers in business is that I’m always asking myself what I could do to make things better – I’m not happy with the status quo. One of the problems I was seeing was that there is such a high failure rate for coaches because they get caught up trying to implement the tech, and didn’t know how. So I created an experiment – I asked 10 of my clients if they would like to have access to my team to help them with things like design work, web tasks, setting up automations, and basic video and admin. It was a hit!
Now all our clients not only have access to our coaching, they also have access to our team of Genies who grant wishes to them every single day and help them implement so they can stay in their zone of genius.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
We spend all of our childhood asking, and being asked… how?
But as business owners, asking this question is one the biggest thing that holds us hostage.
“How do I find new clients?”
“How can I find the time when I’m already so busy?”
“How can I add a new offer?”
It’s a very unresourceful question, because we don’t know how – otherwise we’d be already doing it!
Instead I’ve learnt to ask resourceful questions like what, when, where, why and who.
“What if we could do it this way instead? What would be different?”
“When could we start this new project?”
“Why don’t we try doing it this way and see what happens?”
And my all time favourite, who.
Who do we know who has successfully done this before?
Who could we connect with?
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
There are always points of business growth that are very hard to overcome – like there’s a glass ceiling that you have to break through. These points usually come at certain revenue numbers (these numbers are different for different industries).
As much as it’s exciting to reach new revenue levels, these new levels always come with challenges.
New systems and processes could be needed or current ones break down, payroll goes up, the team can be resistant to do new things as the needs of the business change.
This can be hard to navigate as it feels like a daily battle to keep clients and team happy, and to keep the business moving forward.
This is the time to ensure you have a coach or mentor to support you, and help you to see what you can’t see. The faster you can transform to your new “normal”, the easier it will be.
I also make sure that I have a self-care practise that is top priority during these times. Making sure I get to bed at a reasonable hour, eating a healthy and nutricious diet, and exercising multiple times per week are non-negotiables for me to have the resilience to show up and make hard decisions during the stressful times.
Little things like taking time out to go for a walk, listening to a podcast, journalling or meditating are great, as well as the little treats like going for a pedicure or getting a massage.
It’s impossible to get be resilient and have your head in the sand at the same time. So these little self-care rituals make it just a little easier to show up when it feels like everything is breaking.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://samanthariley.global/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesamriley/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/samriley
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samriley/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamriley
Image Credits
Paula Brennan Photography