Human First, Business Second

[Music] and we're live [Music] hello friend how are you oh i just wonder if my internet's still okay your internet is okay your internet is okay i can still see and hear you but the internet issues is a real thing i remember um at the beginning of lockdown we actually moved house because our internet was so terrible and when everything went online we had to move house but welcome so welcome back you're welcome so welcome back everyone to the get your together live show and today i am with one of my favorite people that i follow on linkedin in a very uncreepy way like i have definitely been following friend for some time um but i i'm really excited to be speaking speaking to fran about how she built up her business in 2019 how she's been able to take care of herself and you know the advice that she puts out it's not really advice but the things that she follows to take care of herself is completely reasonable it's completely sustainable unlike the motivational martins out there that we've seen all over linkedin you know wake up at 401 do a marathon before you start the day dress until you've earned 100k you know all that kind of shenanigans she doesn't give that you know so everybody please welcome friend from future cloud thank you hi thank you i'm just i've met i'm making sure because i want it on linkedin on my phone as well just so i can see any comments about i've just put high does that mean everyone everybody say i can see the high yeah so we're gonna if anyone that's a really good point so if anyone wants to join in the conversation if anyone wants to ask questions come and join us come join us but i can just see claire's commented after new ladies so it does work that's good it does work yeah no it is it is fun doing lives i really do enjoy it so um but thank you so much for taking out some time out of your busy schedule just talking about how busy you were to have a chat about yourself and you know how you keep motivated and all of that stuff so quick question so you started your business in 2019 but there was a journey before you started your business so how did you so what were you doing before 2019 so before 2019 i've been at my corporate job for about six years just over six years and so learning everything all to do with accountancy and learning all about the cloud solution so i worked in a very traditional practice that did things quite long-winded they're a big company that had different offices in different areas and they did dealt with audit which is for massive companies and i realized there's a bit of a market for the smaller businesses and startups and doing everything in the cloud and virtual and doing it on your phones i just just fell on it and i loved it so i learned all about that to start with but i was so scared to leave i remember going to see the director to give him my my resignation and i was literally shaking and welling open because it is scary especially for a woman with kids as well i think it's pressure you know yeah i remember when i quit my last job before i set up get your together and i was like i freaking loved what i did like i thought it was really good but i was so close to burning out again that i was just like i can't do this i just can't do this but i loved my manager and i was so nervous and it was scary i don't have kids but you've got that you've got your kids kids in there as well and so obviously with the i thought oh i can work what hours i want in a way when you work yourself you can do the school run and whatnot but it never works out that way and because i was so passionate about it i put so much effort into it but i still managed to schedule time to like train in the gym i still did that like five six times a week and you will get up earlier if you really want to do something not because a gurus told you to do it and that's the way to be successful just because if you need to make it fit for your lifestyle to make you happy and it will if you want to do it not because someone else has told you to do it think why you want to do it and that's how i got my head around still going to train some days i went to training and i felt almost like a zombie going if i'm if i'm honest i think yeah absolutely the first six months of the business because it grew rapidly a massive whirlwind of like not so much late nights because i don't believe in go to med at 12 1 in the morning and force yourself at seven six i'm not i never did any of that but it was long days up and down it was it was crazy but in a good way you know overwhelming not stressed overwhelmed yeah well i guess there's a difference between pressure and like good pressure and the pressure that pushes you out of that out of that zone i mean to be fair setting up your own business it doesn't matter if you grow quickly or don't there's that uncomfortable amount of pressure that you've got to kind of lean into that discomfort you've got to be able to manage that and be resilient in certain situations especially you know you feel like i always feel like sometimes with my business because it's growing pretty quickly too i feel like the fred flintstone on the in the car with the feet running and not going anywhere sometimes and you've got to make sure that everything that you're doing is you know proactive as well which can be really challenging and i know that leaning into that discomfort can be can be tough so you so you resigned from your job in 2019 no before that or in 2019 it was just the month before the company started yeah oh wow so did you have a lot of support from family in what respect like from like you know quitting job setting up the business like did you get a lot of like support going like you go girl like you go after it yes no they're probably more cautious than me anyway um okay they didn't encourage it but they supported you know the fact that i was going to do it they you know said go for it sort of thing yeah i can't remember i can't remember them not supporting it my mum's always you know she so from my background is that my mum was always the one that stayed at home with the kids while the man worked if that makes sense right yeah no to her it's probably a different world you know that i'm doing this and i didn't realize how well it was gonna going to go but i also knew that we had the best solution for businesses out there i knew that i was that passionate i knew it was gonna work i'd make it work i'd do whatever it takes to make it work still will absolutely no i think that i mean to be fair like you've like you said you've grown quite dramatically in what like two years so you've done really really well so here's the thing though this i'm always curious about this i'm always curious to find out how people sort of like it does take a different kind of person to be able to set up her own business i mean you've got two kids um i believe they're teenagers i see you pick them up and all that kind of stuff um it's got to be it's it's got to be you know you've got to be resilient and tough like where do you think you got that from like how do you think you built your resilience up i think it's come from the type of relationships i had so the father of my children maybe the friends around me how maybe even coming from my mum and dad how not to be if i'm honest you know i don't want to you know even when i was younger i i was brought up and they used to say oh you need to find a rich man you know that kind of um background and you used to sit funny with me and when i did have kids young and i felt like i had to rely on the partner who wasn't always very nice to me anyway and i i knew i was bright at school i knew i had more about me and i questioned how other people did their business or how they did things and i used to think i would never do it like that and and that's why i put it prompted me also to go back to studying when the children were so young but i never forget my ex saying what are you doing that for yeah it's gonna take you years to get anywhere with it sort of thing it's gonna take you more than five years like as if you shouldn't put the time in you know isn't that weird like why would someone turn around and say hey it's gonna take you five years so like why bother it's like well when i get into five years time i'm gonna have a different life so like it might take me a little bit longer to get there but does it really matter like most university degrees are like four years and you were like i i you know if you've if you're a young mom like why why not i know but it wasn't well obviously a lot of people want the money there and then but i was willing to be on your six pound an hour to go to to because i was at a reception job to then try and get the job that was there for six years which took me two years to get a job there to get the foot in the door and wow people aren't willing to sacrifice nights out new clothes um i was i i completely almost changed overnight i kept myself to myself and got my head down researched stuff looked into where i want to visualize a lot thought you know i want this kind of life and i actually can't believe it does work it does work but it doesn't happen overnight yeah exactly what you know claire's saying here it's just focusing on the next step right i think one of the biggest things that i've learned in you know in my business you know i've i've got a you know my background has always been nutrition but prior to that you know on a personal level i always suffered from anxiety and i was really stressed out and it came out in a lot of different ways whether it was eating disorders or health issues and things like that um you know and i think that a lot of that is a lot of people suffer from those things and a lot of us don't don't know right like we don't you know we don't we don't know what other people are going with but one of the things that i always when i started to like manage my anxiety and manage my stress it was focusing on what can i like bringing back everything to the present right like what can i do today that's going to help tomorrow not what's going to help for 10 years because that's great to know the direction you're going but it's all about what's the next step right you know like for me it's like how do i how can i get up the next day and do what i can do and i think you know that's something that you know i i've definitely learned and it's worth it right yeah 100 so i suffered an eating eating disorder started in 2011 and i know and it's a control thing for me so i was studying at the time kids were young the only thing i could control was food and it wasn't that i didn't eat i just restricted carbs i thought that's the way carbs ran a lot because stress you run don't you um and it just cracked up on me the more i was losing weight the more i was covering my body and i couldn't stop it it was almost like an obsession it was horrendous because i knew what i knew about eating disorders i'm quite bright does it matter does it does not matter i i was at school when so i was a teenager when my eating disorder developed i ended up in university studying nutrition of all things of course i did and i still suffered with that during university even when i set up my first business as a nutritionist helping people you know gain weight lose weight like helping them and i felt like such a hypocrite when i was when i was giving out that information but um yeah it lasted for seven years eating disorders are horrible so for me um my again mine was the control thing so i had didn't have a lot of control when i was 15 my parents had just split up there was so much going on in just a personal life and the one thing i could control with with my with was my diet and i think there's a lot of misconceptions with eating disorders i think a lot of people think that you want to lose weight and you want to be skinny it's like no it's just it was it's just a weird thing that you do it's not weird but it's something that you're controlling and you know i hated it like because people would always comment on a comment like oh one just go eat a burger or like while you're at the gym and it's like like i'm clearly suffering like yeah thoughts to yourself keep that as an inside voice you know like don't don't you know take that out but yeah so having an eating disorder i think that for me that was one of the toughest things that i had to overcome like that was that was something that was really challenging like how did you manage to overcome that for you so it took years i had to have therapy i saw someone that specialized in that kind of behaviors um talk about and i remember saying to her we're not really i know all this what we're talking about is i'm never going to get better i feel like i was planning my next week's meal what can i oh that's a social i'm not going to go out you know things like that i didn't really want to go out because i think i was changing a different path anyway but i didn't think it linked food it's talking to the right person it's it's all to do with your mindset and working on you that's how you get better but you've got to want to get better yeah no i absolutely agree so if anyone's watching this and wants to sort of like add into this or ask any questions because i think to be fair i think there's not enough people talking about eating disorders and i do think that they're it's really misunderstood so if you have any questions like i'm super happy to answer them um so please just feel free to just ask us anything or just join in the conversation i know there's a few people a few people here so thomas has joined thomas gray from the usa i know thomas hi thomas so i think there's you know just join in everyone i think that there's something that um it's a good conversation to have so i think um you know eating disorders are something like i said really misunderstood so i i'm it's good for for people especially for women to talk about them a little bit more i know guys suffer from as well but yeah i mean it takes years i think that's the biggest thing where i learnt with my disorder was i i had it for seven years on and off oh seven years and it went unchecked it was you know i it took a lot of it took a lot of energy and i remember like i don't know if you experienced this as well but the internal chatter that i had like the voices that you hear like not not saying that i was like psychotic anything but the internal chatter that everyone has yeah it was so loud and to get that that voice to start getting loaded because it takes time to lower that voice it's like you know every week it might lower that death you know decibel kind of situation but it's something that's really like it takes time like did you notice that as well i can't remember that whole moment of that disappearing as such because i don't have any of that voice now obviously we all have our thoughts and stuff but mine are really good good thoughts because i your stuff on linkedin is amazing like your ability to get up and go for your exercise your walking talks that you talk about like make sure you're getting a good night's sleep like for somebody that's got kids like i don't have children but i can relate to setting up a business and i can relate to you know making sure that i'm exercising and dieting and sleeping i mean it's part of my business if i didn't it would be pretty bad um but like how do you get that internal chatter to like how did you transition that so what i used to do when the kids were little obviously go to a gym so i'd used to do the homework out so i don't know if anyone's heard of davina mccall which i'm sure they have she used to do all the dvds one new one every year i used to buy it i used to do it at home i used to get up early and get it done even if i had a bad night's sleep because i felt like it gave me the energy but then you sleep better the next night because you are exhausted until you just settle into a routine and nothing was stopping me but when i got better from the eating problem it was a i see it as a good thing now because i learned so much about nutrition what not to do you know i've developed it's all about being strong and i only started training in the gym in 2016 so it's not that long ago so i was like what am i now 36 so i can't even do the maths not an accountant five years ago and the strength weights give your body and the way they shape you so much better than any running cardio does and i i eat so many calories now i'm 2000 i think honestly i think that so my background as a nutritionist there is so many um there are so many misconceptions in the in the diet and exercise world it actually does my head in like i get really frustrated with some of the silly things that come out like for instance carbs are bad it's like no brad carbs are just fine just eat your carbs they're completely fine like you know fats bad for you no it's not fat's actually really good for you just eat your fat my friend like it's going to be really good for your immunity it's really good for your metabolism it's really good for brain health all that kind of stuff right you need all of those things again with protein it all comes down to obviously making sure that what you're putting in its energy and energy out and that's not the same for everyone like you can take two people we could weigh the exact same amount like we could yeah but the amount of calories that you can eat and the amount of calories that i can eat could they could differ because yeah exercise levels but also just our genetics and things like that but it always does come down to calories in calories out but the amount of calories that we have to have in have to match what we're doing right and i'm not a big fan of calorie counting and it will come back from you know my eating disorder days and those types of things like i have an idea of how much i eat but i think the thing is it's it's understanding that all food's good like it's not it's not necessarily it's all it's all bad so oh recovering slimming world member claire i hate slimming world like i don't use hate in like a lot of work like in a lot of sentences but i will say slimming world like a heart ah yeah but i like the slimming world recipes so diet coke chicken is amazing i like cooked chicken and claire i know you're gonna know what i'm going on about with diet coke chicken it is amazing and it is it's so low not not low calorie but it's nutritious and it is low calorie high protein if you want to get in your calorie deficit but that's the thing right like i think with the slimming world i'm not a big fan of replacement meals i'm good with real food like you give me real food any day like i'm cool with that like i'm okay with with with what you do with all that kind of stuff so we need to come back a little bit so you were you were suffering from an eating disorder which does come with a lot of negative mental chatter like if it's horrible um so then so now you're into this really positive mindset where it's like you know what i'm going to get up in the morning i'm going to exercise i'm going to i'm going to do all my stuff like how did you how did you transition into that was it like a slow process or is it something that you woke up one day and you're like that's it i'm going to the gym that's it i'm just going to i'm going to do this because you and then you saw the benefits right so i used to train probably three times a week when i was doing it from home so that's building up to my five six times a week in the gym i'll tell you the honest truth the only reason why i started in the gym training was one i've always loved the idea of strong women so as a kid i was obsessed with tomb raider long craft i was obsessed with she-ra the pink power ranger i loved all thin films women they're strong and i loved looking at strong women and thinking i wish i could do that instead of just wishing for it i just went for it i'll tell you something now going into a gym so scary i didn't the machines look like i don't know what i didn't know what i was doing but i had to have a pt and i invested in me and i'll tell you something my son was going through um hodgkin's lymphoma which is cancer of the lymph nodes at the time yeah so i whoever has stories that say i can't i can't i've got time i've got kids and you've got to kind of be selfish so he was going through a rough time but i needed the time because he still went to school to build me and it honestly it worked to treat it as crazy as it sounds it won't treat you so five years ago your son gets diagnosed with with lymphatic cancer node cancer part of me and you're like i still have to go to the gym i have to do that that would crush a lot of people and i think that there is a resilience there's a resilience there so how old was your son then he was six and then by the time he was seven so we got 27th birthday was six and he was diagnosed in the may and then by the october he was in remission so in the same year and it was a high cure rate yeah he was fantastic you know kids are resilient and i do believe it's the people around him that kind of had that positive lie and i made it almost sound like to him i'm just going for a dental checkup come on we're going again um and just kept beating around him you know he changed through the steroids he put on quite a bit of weight um but you still need to be strong for you because if you're not strong for you how can you be strong for them and it gave me a focus because it was a completely new scary thing it almost felt like i was a warrior getting through it and if i could took my son in the gym with me i would have done wow i actually really love that i think um you know one of the biggest one of the biggest um things that people tell me is that they don't have time to go exercise they don't have time to go to the gym um and they they can't possibly like they can't possibly um you know get through it and that those types of things they're they're some of the things that i get told a lot and in my head even if you just go for like 30 minutes a day or you do a homework out for 30 minutes or even if it's just something like there's so much research coming in about the whole you know like the the um endorphins and all the neurotransmitters that are all there for for mental health and that mental resilience so here's something else that's really interesting is that exercise and when you do hard exercise or like high intense interval training or you know weight training and things like that you actually do release a like a protein in the brain that actually helps increase resilience it's called bdnf which is brain-derived neurotrophic factor there you go hey that's why we're here we're all here to learn something new yeah but that that protein is actually directly um showing to actually help increase neural pathways in the brain so it actually helps you take on challenges physically and mentally so one of the biggest things when i'm hearing from you is that you know you've had a lot of challenges like you've had a lot of you know you had the kids when you were young um you had you know you had kids when you were young when it was a time when a lot of probably were a lot of your friends having kids at the same time no yeah so you were having like kids i don't know you and i around the same age so i actually like all my friends were kind of the same right so you you took on a challenge you had kids when you were young that's challenging enough anyway and then your your son um getting sick having the eating disorder you're really leaning into that that discomfort and these challenges and so i would imagine that you're you're very resilient and you're really good at it but it's interesting that you then use the exercise probably you didn't even know about the bdnf right you didn't know that that was a positive thing to actually help with that resilience piece but it sounds like you know you do have those moments where you're like okay i'm just gonna battle this i'm a warrior i'm gonna be the pink power ranger and i'm just gonna go for it yeah i'll tell you something if i actually got cancer myself i will do everything i can to make me fit and healthy i'd probably go in the gym if i can and do like guidance if you've got the energy i've seen it people do it i've seen people going through that and coming out the other side or after they've got cancer and they're the strongest they've ever been because they feel right i'm gonna do something for me and when they strengthen me up and it does something like a shark can change your whole life yeah in a different direction but i've always been to health and fitness and obviously that was always there anyway but i was scared to go to a gym and so don't know what made me just try it i think i read up on stuff and thought you know what this is going to help me mentally as well because you need it yeah i i've always been into health and exercise and nutrition obviously i started nutrition at university um but i've always been into the fitness stuff you know i used to do crossfit um i used to yeah i i'm kind of competitive so like i don't mean to be competitive but like i like to beat people so yeah you know dan brown so dan brown and i were doing a fitness nice thing last feb and i was like my goal was just to make him cry because i wanted to beat him um so i am competitive so crossfit was something that was quite like natural for me to do yeah you know i've done strength training and i've done all that kind of stuff and i do think that there's an element where i know i'm at my best when i exercise and don't get me wrong i find ways to find excuses like trust me i still i i this is actually something i do want to ask you because i do get that voice in my head where i was like you know what i really can't be bothered today yeah i do get that okay yeah so tell me how you get out of that because you know i think that i look at you and sometimes i'm like do you ever have those like i think people have said this about me it's like do you ever think that i won't do that it's like oh no i do get that voice in my head but how do you overcome yours i just i just straight away say to myself you'll feel good after that's it get up and do it yeah it's like you're gonna feel good after yeah because uh you don't regret a workout you regret not doing it so many people said i wish i'd they see my post they'll wish i should have just exercised this morning to talk myself out of it that's something that you know what like i was doing that for a little bit like i actually got into a bit of a bad habit um i think it was in between the lockdowns i think it was a couple of weeks before we went into lockdown i don't even know which lockdown it was it was one of the locked downs i don't remember um where i kind of got a little bit lazy going into the gym and i think here's the thing if you do not have time to go to the gym do a home workout there are so many really good like high intense interval training sessions you can do just on youtube and it's going to make you feel so much better like you don't have to go to the gym for an hour you don't have to do that if you don't want to but you're right you always you never regret a workout you always regret not working out and i think that that's something that's huge and you always feel better for it like this morning i had no time like i was really busy i've been in back-to-back meetings and i've got back-to-back meetings after this so i was like all right cool i have like a quick 20 minutes i'll do a 10-minute workout or a 15-minute workout and just to get that that blood flow going and that um to get those endorphins going so i felt a bit more energetic because i was feeling a bit tired and that's the other thing right like i do what you do if i haven't slept well the night before i will still do something some type of exercise because i know it's going to make me feel better for the day so i'm going to have more energy for the day and then that night i know i'm going to sleep a bit better even if it's just going for a really long walk or whatever it is that's it i love my walking now i can't believe i didn't have a step count before i only bought this but i don't know six months ago with that not even that i don't think and i'd love it i didn't realize how many steps i didn't do i know i'm actually wanting to get one myself i want to get the fitbit one because it's got the stress the stress um stress monitor one i want to get that one because that's obviously yeah i don't ever want to look at that it's a that would be a negative thing for me i think because you reckon it'll put pressure on you so i'm interested because i'm super curious about analytics about how much i'm sleeping how much rest i've gotten because like i'm one of those people so i think you could be similar just like correct me if i'm wrong i'm one of those people that half the time i have to rain myself in like i have to rain myself in because i'll burn out like i've burnt out twice in my life um i always go if i'm into something i'm really into it so i will naturally want to work really hard i'll naturally do a lot of stuff so but that's how i burnt out so when i was 26 i could barely walk up and down stairs because i was burnt um so for me i want to know like i'm just curious about that stress element like but you think i'd stress you you do you think it would stress you out i don't think so i started looking at the sleep pattern and i soon gave up because it's another to the real thing and i think why am i looking at that because it's pressure on your best to get the seven to eight hours the more you're relaxed about it the better i'm sleeping now interesting it's so true your body will get back into it even if you have six hours one night you'll get back into it but you don't want to be sleeping in it's just having that bit of routine so i'm pretty good with being able to look at i've had a bad night's sleep i don't really care catch up the next day because i used to be an insomniac so i actually think for me i've kind of gotten used to like i understand that i will get back into it so when i got out of being an insomniac which was in my early 20s because i was around the same time i had my eating disorder they kind of went hand in hand um once i got over that like i kind of got to the point where i'm like ah sometimes you're gonna you're gonna have a shitty night's sleep it's just the way of the world right um you're not gonna be able to always have a great night's sleep but it's what you do the next day and i always know i'm gonna have a good night's sleep the night after that so i think for me if you're hyper focused on it's giving you stress then don't get the fitbit that's going to focus on your stress levels and the sleep quality but if you can do it like i'm just curious for that like that's what i want but how many of you out there that are watching this do like watch your steps you know you focus on focus on that because that's something that i'm always curious about i think a lot of people have got like little pedometers and stuff yeah she agrees that if we focus our attention on something we notice we notice it more and we can end up thinking there is something wrong yeah so she's like um i had i had sleep anxiety it was so disruptive i became obsessed so i like i actually completely relate with this because i um like i said i had an insomnia so like i insomnia for years and i you would i remember watching the clock being like okay i've only had like you know two hours sleep or i've only had one hour before i go to sleep now then i'll only have had like three hours sleep and it was really stressful right so i definitely um i can relate to that so completely all right so let's um let's have a bit of a chat so now you've got these really positive things that you put on linkedin which i it's a breath of fresh air because my god is there some crap out there on linkedin especially with the whole i call them motivational mountains i'm like oh come on boar off the motorbike i don't really see too many of that anymore suppose yeah i don't i don't know enough with good people there you know linkedin feed surrounded with all the right people but you know you actually do put out realistic sustainable advice well not advice it's not and you don't necessarily give advice you're actually just saying hey this is what i'm doing it's quite possible and something that i'm always talking to especially small businesses right i think you know i put out a poll this morning which was you know if you're feeling stressed overwhelmed or you feel busy you know what are the three things that you drop off which is diet sleep or exercise or all of the above and so many people like they're pretty much equal like everyone's just like oh yeah i dropped my diet or yeah i don't really like i sacrifice my sleep or i don't exercise because it's you know i'm too busy to exercise i'm too i'll get a good night's sleep on the weekend or whatever it is but you don't do that you actually like wake up and you're like i've gone for my morning walk i've done my morning exercise um at the moment you're doing a no sugar thing or you've sort of at the moment i have had sugar so last night listen to this stuff the stress i walked to the office to do my facebook live and someone had bought us chocolates to say thank you for getting her out of some rubbish like work for her and i thought you know what i'm gonna have a couple of them and then when i got back i opened a bag of cadbury nipples and i just thought no it's fine so we all do it don't worry the diet but i i'm really good 70 of the time anyway so i'm pretty i'm trying to just let go of it really being a big factor to be fair though look i think that when it comes to the diet element there's it you've got to have balance right you've got to be able to eat what you want like in a certain like in a certain um in a certain you know with a good relationship claire i think you actually mentioned it before um you were saying that you know we're kind of all intuitive about what we want to eat and when we want to start and stop and things like that some people are better at it than others obviously but i think that um you know for you it's like you can sit there and say let me i guarantee you like i'm not going to eat sugar for this month and then within the next day you're just like i really want some sugar like you would probably you're probably going to eat more of it if you're trying to like say you can't have it right yes it's like you turn into a child it's like you tell a child you can't have that and all that one is that we never get out of there we never get out of that it's about balance so i'm not gonna go mad on on it every single day for a long long time but at christmas i'm literally first december i'm like a monster and then january i was amazing but then feb came this year i was rubbish again but to be honest in the grand scheme of things what in our heads that we think we're eating that bad we're not because we're so trained to eat well it's like small habits so to me compared to somebody else that eats differently like more bread and whatever else i'm actually all right and i've not really gained that much weight probably not a bit but nothing major yeah so i think that the i mean to be fair it's natural to be gaining weight like you know you gain weight you're going to lose it there is a balance where you know i i always sit between like three to four kilos like i'll fluctuate between those they and i just don't care it is what it is like i'm the same as you the minute christmas tips like i don't really care i'm just gonna eat whatever i want like i know that i know that i'll get back on like i'll start again in january because i feel so crappy that i'm just like oh i've gotta i better get back onto eating healthy and it's not necessarily a diet it's just what i do normally right it's like what's normally in the house and i don't like i'm not somebody that craves a lot of like salty and sweet foods but i always have chocolate in the house like i've always got dark chocolate i have dark chocolate every day and that's something that i'm just like that's great that's delicious i call it mouth seafood because whenever whenever my fiance is eating it it sounds like there's a little mice in the kitchen i'm like how do you feel have you got a messy fruit um but yeah it's it's it's when you actually say you can't have something that's when when it becomes a huge a huge issue and i think that one thing that i would tell people when it comes to the diet it's not necessarily like it's not necessarily about what you're eating and things like that it's how you're eating in the relationship you have with that that food right it's your relationship with food it's not necessarily what you're eating yeah and a lot of it's enough heads yeah and like you know there is that whole movement of intuitive eating and being able to tap into your own intuitive eating is important it can take time though it can take time to get to that intuitive eating speaking from somebody that um has had an eating disorder and i did fitness modeling as well which that i don't know how i like it's interesting so people have asked me about that like or you know we get an eating disorder was that not just another eating disorder yeah kinda yeah when i get eating disorders and bodybuilding for even if you're the bigger and stronger muscle it's a disorder because you're very restricted with what you can eat and can't eat yeah spotted aren't you with what food you're having yeah i've got to say i loved the challenge of it because again yeah yeah but i i will never do it again like i'll never i'll never do that again i've got asked to do it for like my friend turned into a pt and she says oh do a bodybuilding show i'll do it with you you'd be amazing out here no jimmy fair it's it's it's it's tough one right like i like i loved the challenge but i didn't love the um i didn't love the restriction of it all it kind of brought back um you know some bad memories but anyway so so now that your business are you launched until i'm just gonna bring it back to the business like in 2019 you launched you had had you ever really run a business before or was it just something like you know i want to run my own business i'm going to go get it i never haven't oh well i had sorry in 2017 i took up body shop from home so you know have you heard of albarn and all that type of stuff yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah but it wasn't i didn't do it too i did it just for a short period of time so just before christmas i aimed it for five months and in that time i made thousands of sales and i mean ridiculous but i was savvy with it so i went to ha that parties and did the parts at home i didn't like doing it though i didn't like going into people's homes and not knowing where i'd end up i didn't like that bit so i didn't do it for long i was good at it i love body shop products um but yeah i was like top seller very quickly i could have had a team so six people joined in the five months um i brought it to newark where i live so you know it's still going now where this you know people joined on i did make a noise of it to be honest and i was very savvy like with the way the business was and how to grow a business so i do think that had some element of help in but to me i know i just know how to grow businesses and what they need to do and i put all the theories that i said i was going to do in videos and prove it with future cloud so hang on a second so you hadn't really you run like the body shop business the body at shop at home which i know that there's you know i've heard of that before which is really cool i just do think that gives you a really good base so you went and researched how to grow a business what to do and then was just like i'm going to go do this and just implemented everything that you learned yeah i think i learned from people over the years it didn't happen in a couple of months it's over the years so i asked so many questions in my job how did they do that what were they doing that for what if they did this and just really thought about it and to be honest a lot of it's to do the finance function you know if you don't know what the numbers are what's happening how are you ever going to grow and also with the fact that my business partner was very hot on doing a forecast and we worked together on that and you visualize your numbers it honestly so for example we did our forecast for uh to march 2020 from april when we started a year later we checked it out and to the actuals to the forecast it's probably a grand out that's how close we were to our forecast we were shocked and that's insane this is it honestly she looked at me and was like really how that's weird i was like i know it's not always going to happen i bet that was just it's just a one-off but how weird is that it's not like we did because some people might put oil grow by 200 a month obviously we didn't do it like that one month was better than the other months probably yeah how it kind of did happen like that and everything i said like we wanted another office by that time and maybe another employee by that time it does kind of go in place because you're planning you've got a plan well you've got the direction right so here's what i always say to like i'm i'm not so much outcome focused i'm process driven so like when what you're like it sounds like you know where you're going you know the outcome that you've got but you've seemed to know that the process that you need to execute to make sure that you're going to get there and charlotte's good at the process as well she's probably more process driven and i'm probably more the creative forward thinker of the business yeah okay okay so you match really well right oh no honestly it's brilliant she has to bring me in though yeah that's my that's wolver for me so wolver who's my um fiance and business partner he um he has to reign a lot i'm always like i've got a great idea he's like you've got 10 right now why don't you focus on one so let's create that so um no i can understand that so when it comes to getting clients and things like that i know you've been very you've had a lot of success over on linkedin and and this is what i love about your linkedin you don't talk about business you you just talk about human first yeah but how have you how have you built your business so quickly i did a lot of networking before the business even started locally so i was willing to put myself out there so a lot of local people know who i am what i'm about so that very much helped that took years it's very uncomfortable networking i don't even like the word um so that helped and then obviously on linkedin my very first video went out in march 2019 so i think it actually went out just before the company had set up officially with charlotte or it might have gone out the week after where i was just saying i've gone self-employed this is what i'm gonna do to grow this this is what i think you should do to grow a business and grow who you are and i said the steps i was going to take and then it went out enough quite a few people watching not masses and then i just kind of gave weekly updates from there on and that's and did you do that through linkedin and and email lists like is that how you did it as well on facebook yeah some it's not really on facebook either so now it's just linkedin on the journey israel i post on my instagram my personal some fitness stuff and the odd you know business stuff and then facebook is yeah business bits but nothing nothing like linkedin yeah okay so i mean to be fair your linkedin is like that's why i i reached out to you because you really do focus on the human element i freaking love your videos they're hilarious everyone this morning about coffee was very very funny if you haven't gone and seen it go check it actually for anyone that's watching i want to know you the most awkward networking event that you've ever gone to because oh my god there is so many things that happen in networking events and that it is uncomfortable right like you've got to go in there you've got to meet people and then people are just selling at you straight away and you're just like i'm just so different i'm so different no i'm i'm the same i'm i go into networking events i'm katie first and get your together a second and that's just it's not a it's not a part of me like it's yeah let's meet as a human first yeah and then let's chat business because that's how i that's how i personally like to do things because it doesn't yeah it's just too transactional and it's not that relationship building and i'm guessing with your business it has to be relationship building right like you have to have the relationships there because people are trusting you with their finances right like can you trust us and i want the thing is we shout about business because we know we'll do a good job to our best of ability obviously we're going to make mistakes we might get something wrong we might quote wrong but i'm willing to say oh i've even done a video and said how you know a client in the beginning pulled the wood roll over our eyes you know tried something on and you do you learn you can't be too soft in business and also if the your pricing's wrong redo it if you lose them that's okay you're a little bit more plenty more fish in the sea yeah i actually like i actually i completely agree with that i'm one of those people that um like i will give everything a go like my business from when it was day one to what it is right now is completely different because it's evolved and my messaging is very similar but the way i message is is completely it's completely um it's completely different like i remember when i first set up my business because i talked to people about stress and anxiety and the impact it has on the body and the mind right yeah um and i remember i had business coaches i had people telling me like oh i don't call you don't call your business get your together and i was like really like oh it's too aggressive it's too aggressive and i like i didn't actually take that advice i kind of was just like you know what i was a bit hesitant and then i just owned it and the minute i owned it it was completely fine but do it like it's a hot the mistakes element right you're going to make mistakes just be okay with that you're going to make mistakes but just know you're not a failure like just because you've made a mistake or you failed that time don't create that into a narrative like oh i'm a failure and i'm those types of things no you just failed so before we close off like i want to see if there's any questions from the from the audience or anything like that if there's if there's anything you want to ask fran myself anything like that i just want to try them in the conversation do that because we'll be finishing up in a couple of minutes um so basically fry onions your chicken add in peppers and mushrooms then add what was it and a stock cute chicken stock cube with 200 ml water five uh six tablespoons of pasata with onions and garlic and some tomato puree and then a whole diet can of coke 330 ml and then let it simmer until it goes sticky i think that's all of it steady you can google it diet coke chicken it's there's brilliant off you go go go um okay so what's next what's next for for your future cloud what's next so we're taking on another employee um so that make a seven team of seven which is fantastic in two years um that is really we're having a kickstart person start with us as well so we've got another potential employee so like an apprentice that'll make us eight for six months and then see if we take them on as apprentice barry said or look and then yeah we're just growing the team growing our clients growing our businesses helping our clients making sure they're all okay um adding services where we can and that's that's about it basically i love it i love how much you've grown in the last two years i mean it's like anything setting a business up is incredibly stressful it takes a lot of determination it takes a lot of grip like grit i think you actually put up a place the other day it's like you have to be you have to be a graft you have to be grafting every day right like you've got to be building that business it doesn't mean you have to be doing that every single day you don't have to like you have to be doing it every single day but like you know you don't have to work 20 hours a day to make a successful business you can you just got to be working on it even if it's just tiny little bits every single day it's going to help you and even if it's not you know even if it's taking years to do it so worthwhile and i think that you're from what i'm hearing from you you've you've been on this path to get here for an awfully long time you know you go back in your early 20s when you wanted to go to university to study to be an accountant you took that risk and it's taken you you know like what 10 15 years yeah you get where you are right now and you started because you knew that there was going to be a solution to where you were going to go and obviously taking some twists and turns you've had some you've had some pretty big hurdles to overcome a lot a lot of things going on sorry like i take my hat off to you so my last question i've got two questions for you my second to last question is are you going back home to the gym on april 12th yes yes that's the first thing that you're doing look at those biceps they don't even need to train do they so i had these years ago i think it's from carrying the kids i'm not talking with my shoulders everyone's like you got nice shoulders i was like yeah i have not i just yeah um you've got epic shoulders too i will say that so to finish off i ask every single person this question um if there is one thing that you would leave people that will help somebody get their together either literally or figuratively what would be that one thing one thing don't set you up don't snooze your alarm don't snooze your alarm stop snoozing literally five six years ago and i thought you're not controlling me anymore and if the more you snooze the more you get lazy and i felt that helped me so it takes a while to get out the habit but you feel better for it yeah i've never been a snoozer so i've always been confused when people snore yourself but i'm a morning person so i wake up and i'm like good morning world what am i going to accomplish today i do think you could be a morning person you want to be that's true it is a mindset thing like but i've always been like i've never i've i've never snoozed which is always good so thank you so much claire i'm glad you enjoyed this conversation um where can people find you where can people find a bit more information about future cloud obviously claire's tagged me on the comments um future clouds on instagram and facebook under future cloud or future cloud accounts so acc um i'm on instagram franbella.84 if you want to get into the fitness stuff i post that's it i recommend that i recommend it and if you haven't followed brown already follow her now because her morning posts just get you set up for the day um all right everyone thank you so much for getting engaged really appreciate it and thank you so much fran for spending nearly an hour chatting with me i really appreciate it very welcome all right bye everyone

2021-03-28 02:30

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