What if Your Copywriter Became Your CEO with Claire Marshall

Claire: And it is not for somebody who cannot take pressure, who likes having a guidebook to things. So there, I mean, I think that there would be two different kinds of people.

Somebody who thinks it's very exciting that the world is their oyster, and somebody who is terrified that you know, that the world is their oyster. But I definitely, yeah, I would definitely liken my role with you to the world was my oyster.

Allan: Welcome to the Lean Marketing Podcast. I'm your host, Allan Dib. Today, I've got a very special ~and unusual~ guest. ~Normally we would have authors or someone in the marketing space, and we do have someone in the marketing space today. ~We have with me Claire Marshall. Now, Claire was the former CEO of my business.

This business, Lean Marketing. At the time it was called Successwise, and she was our very first CEO and I Thought it'd be fun to have her back on. Because one of the questions I continually get asked is, oh, wow.

So you don't run the day to day of the business. You've got someone in place who runs the day to day, and right now, we've [00:01:00] got our awesome CEO Anna who runs the day to day, but prior to that. It was Claire, and Claire was the very first one who was in this business. So welcome Claire. How are you?

Claire: I am good. Thank you so much, Allan for having me. I'm glad to be back.

Allan: Excellent.

Meet Claire Marshall: The Digital Nomad
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Allan: So we'll get into the CEO stuff in a minute, but ~you are a bit of an unusual person in that ~you are kind of a digital nomad. you very rarely in the one place. Tell us a little bit about your background and then we'll get into some of the work stuff.

Claire: Sure. So When I met you, which was about 10 years ago now, right?

Allan: Wow, that long.

Claire: Yeah, I think you and I met about 10 years ago. I was a digital nomad. I had left corporate roles in the US and had decided that I wanted to see the world. And I remember talking to you and you being like, you, lifestyle is my worst. you, like couldn't imagine moving around like I was. But around the time that I met you 10 years ago. Between then and now, I've. [00:02:00] spent time in over 75 countries and I just in the last couple of years have kind of slowed it down into more of a slow mad, I would say. And I now live on the west coast of Mexico where I am about half of the time.

So I'm still moving around quite a bit. But yeah, I really, it was important for me to have the role with Lean Marketing then, because it allowed me to work remotely and live in different countries and run the team remotely, which is still the case for my new

Allan: This was long before COVID, before remote work was a thing. Like it was pretty unusual at the time. I remember when I would tell people, well, our team is fully remote. We don't have an office, all of that sort of thing. So, now it's pretty commonplace, but one of the things I've noticed of some of the best people I've hired is they often have unusual backgrounds. They're usually into weird hobbies or they're usually into a lot of travel or they've traveled a lot and all of [00:03:00] those sorts of things. ~So, ~and I think that's because it takes agency to kind of say, Hey. You know what? I'm not gonna do just the normal nine to five that a lot of people are doing.

I'm not gonna sit in a cubicle all day. I am gonna travel. ~I'm gonna do~ I've noticed quite a few in my team are all scuba divers, right. Or scuba instructors. Um, And, you know, they've traveled extensively. They've done the nomad thing as well. So I think that opens up a person's mind to ideas that are outside the square and working in a way that's not conventional. So, I just thought that was an interesting commonality of a lot of the very, very best people that I've hired over the years.

The Journey from Copywriter to CEO
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Allan: So you didn't get hired though as CEO, right? You were just literally, I think, were you employee number one or did we have someone else?

You may have been number one,

Claire: come on Allan I was, yeah. I was the first employee. So when I met you, I think you had a virtual assistant in the Philippines, but I was the first I came on as your copywriter [00:04:00] about 10 years ago. It was actually almost exactly 10 years ago-ish.

Allan: Oh wow. Wow. That's crazy.

Claire: so it's our 10 year anniversary podcast.

Allan: And did I have the book out yet? No, I didn't have the book out yet.

Claire: You did have the book, and so I think my first task with you was to write blog posts about the book and to start to put like, chapters of the book and presentations. So it was kind of admin slash copywriting roles to start, but that didn't last for long.

Allan: Yeah. I, I don't hire these days, so like I said, I've got a CEO Anna does most of the hiring and firing and manages the team day to day. And as you also did prior to that. But when I did hire, one of the things I was always looking for was. Yes, I want to fill the current role, but also.

Where could this person go in the future? Because if someone could have leadership potential in the future, could be the other person who hires other people. So I call that a hire one to [00:05:00] hire 10, right? So, because I knew for sure my team was going to expand and I never had ideas of world domination for this business.

But I knew it was going to expand. I knew we were gonna do more and the book was doing well and all of those sorts of things. So I was trying to think a few steps ahead about, okay, great. I want to fill this copywriting role and I want to get someone into help me with their immediate need, but what could this person become?

And I think that's worked really well for me in this business and across multiple businesses as well. Really thinking forward just beyond the actual role that you're trying to fill.

Hiring for Attitude and Growth
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Claire: I was thinking about as you were talking earlier about some of the commonalities of the people on the team and myself. I think that something about traveling is that we're all very curious people and you've talked a lot about hiring for attitude and training for skill, and I don't know if that's still the case as the company has grown, but um, but definitely I think there's something about people who.

Yeah, are [00:06:00] curious and it also requires a lot of grit to move from place to place and continually kind of like reinvent yourself And I think there's a curious element that would make sense in terms of the kind of person that you want to hire that's going to grow within the company, that's going to connect with clients that yeah.

And especially in the marketing space, as things change, you really need people that are. Curious that are interested in marketing and Yeah,

Allan: And what's it like on the other side to be like, okay, I've never done this role before, or I'm moving into this other role that I, I have no idea how to do it or whatever. Like, what are you feeling from that side?

Claire: I think, you know, over our working relationship, which was eight years, I was thinking about this the other day. For me it was really fun. Like, I like being challenged and I think. The, my time at Lean Marketing was eight years worth of consistently having to [00:07:00] upskill. So it was like I never got to really be comfortable over a six month period in a role.

It was constantly learning new things. It was the copywriter to a marketing coach, to hiring other marketing coaches to Hiring other specific people to do marketing, to overseeing the books, to doing sales management, to doing partnerships, to being the CEO. So it was like a constant constantly moving target, but it meant that I got to take courses, meet really interesting people, and that I was constantly being educated, which I loved.

So I don't know if you saw that at the very beginning, that's a trait that I have, but, i, it was certainly dynamic. It was never boring, let's say.

Allan: And I really like investing in people and seeing people grow within the business, seeing someone move up within the business. And I like other people within the team seeing that there's opportunities for that. Now, there is a cost to that though, because As you, you [00:08:00] mentioned, I often hire for attitude rather than skills, which is great.

And it creates a really good culture. It means people see, hey, there's upward mobility There's a challenge in the role. I'm not just gonna be stuck in this one little role for the rest of my life, or as long as I, I stay in, in this business. But A lot of entrepreneurs are like, Hey.

Only hire people that have done this role successfully several times before. That way you can just drop them into the business and boom, they hit the ground running. Whereas when we are learning skills on the job, there's definitely a trial and error component. There's definitely, it definitely takes longer.

It's definitely harder. So you are learning skills. I'm sometimes getting frustrated that things aren't moving fast enough or whatever it is, so there is definitely a cost to it. I think the cost is probably worth it in most cases, unless it's a highly specialized role and in some of those cases, you do have to just get someone who's absolutely done it before and can hit the ground running.

[00:09:00] so there are pros and cons to kind of growing your own talent versus just getting someone in who, who's done it before and just dropping them right in.

Claire: Yeah, and I mean, I think attitude is so important there. You'd have to have somebody that really wanted to continue to learn things

Allan: we've had a few people who were a players in other organizations and they were not a players in our organization. So, what I learned from that was that a players are contextual. So meaning someone can be an a player in one organization, but not necessarily in yours for a variety of reasons.

Could be cultural, it could be maybe the skill alignment is not exact. Maybe just the way they work, the pace that they at which they work, or the type of team that they're used to working with is not a match for what you've got. So, we often categorize people as A players, B players, C players, but it is highly contextual to the job, to the role, to the business, to the [00:10:00] culture.

That's definitely a lesson I've learned.

Claire: Something I was just thinking about as you were saying that is just that in working with you and I'm, I imagine Anna would agree that there was so much autonomy and that was really important to me. So you were overseeing things, but I did have a lot of autonomy to run things and hire and make decisions.

And so that was really important and I think if people are coming in from other cultures where they are, they do have somebody giving them a guidebook and telling them exactly what to do. That would feel different coming into Lean Marketing

Allan: We have a very autonomous culture. It's like, a lot of times I know entrepreneurs are real micromanagers. They're giving you every task, they're checking every little thing you clock in and clock off. Some people were even advising me, Hey, you should record people's screens to make sure they're working all the time and all that.

And that's the furthest thing in the world. I ever wanted to or ever want to do I wanna work with adults and I [00:11:00] want, you know, you're an adult. Everyone in the business is an adult and they, you know, presumably want to do a really good job and you want to give them the room to do that. So, I never wanted to, I don't think ever anyone would ever accuse me of being a micromanager.

In fact, probably the opposite. I'm

Claire: The opposite.

Yeah

Like Allan we gotta talk.

Allan: Yes.

Claire: Yeah.

Allan: and part of that was from my past experience. You know, I've worked under micromanagers in the past. You know, I haven't done many jobs and whenever I've had a job, it hasn't been for very long. But I remember working under micromanagers I'm like, this is the worst.

Like, you know, I know what I'm doing. I can do the job, I can do the thing, I can deliver the results. And having this person breathing down my neck it just makes the job a hundred times worse. Right, so it's not necessarily even about the thing that you do.

Claire: Well, I think I've taken that from you I just thinking back to 10 years ago, you would've given me like little projects more and more. It wasn't [00:12:00] like you were like, you know, here's access to my bank accounts. At the beginning, I mean, you know, It was tapered in terms of, and merit based, in terms of you know, the autonomy.

But I've, I feel like I've definitely tried to repeat that in what I'm doing now.

Challenges and Lessons in Leadership
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Allan: So what were some of your biggest lessons learned? I mean, you went, like you said, from employee number one doing a bit of copywriting on the side through to running a pretty substantial team and overseeing quite a lot of revenue and a lot of key relationships and partnerships and things like that.

So, we grew substantially from where we were at the time.

Claire: I remember, I actually remember the numbers, but Yeah, I think the revenue grew five times when I was there and it was just me when I started and I think there were 12 or 13 people when I left. Um,~ Oh my gosh~

Allan: ~Yeah. What did you learn? Like what were you what? What were some of your biggest takeaways?~

Claire: ~Oh my goodness. ~Well, as I'm setting a business up now, which is such an interesting place to be in, it's like I was, you know, we were consulting on marketing that whole time, and now to be in the business owner [00:13:00] seat it to be taking my own medicine is just, is really interesting because like all the things that we used to tell people, you know, I'm sure that are still being are still part of the. The Lean Marketing ethos. One would be that systems are super important. Like now I'm a solopreneur who's just hired my ~first time, first, ~first full-time employee, got a few vendors, but getting systems in place in terms of how we do content marketing. You know, my finances the operations, how we do onboarding.

Like, it's really important that she, my new employee, understands like exactly what she's doing on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. And that was something that we really a big part of the teaching when I was part of Lean Marketing we're systems in the backend. Because marketing is the sexy part.

And it's like, we want this, we want like, we want more leads and we want more sales. But the reality is that there's nuts and bolts that go behind it in terms of setting up systems to make sure that things can be [00:14:00] set up strategically and then be optimized over time. And in my mind, that's how marketing works.

It's not these big flashes of things. So that was like really hammered in, I think one, because we were teaching it, and two, because I was setting up the systems on the back end that I'm sure you guys have optimized, but like I set up all the beginning, you know, systems that we had at Lean Marketing.

I think there are some basic management things that really kind of got hammered in just around when you're working with a team to be really clear, to have things written to make sure that you're talking to your team like once or twice a week.

Not to just let people like, send something and let and assume that it's just gonna be run. I

Allan: Who, who,

Who would you recommend a role like that to, and who would you not recommend? Role like that too. Like there, so, you are obviously working autonomously. You're working remotely, and that's not always the case with a leadership position. Sometimes it's in an office, sometimes you're working [00:15:00] in a physical location or whatever.

But there were potentially things that you loved about the role, things that were frustrating, things that were difficult. So Like, what were some of those things and who would, who do you think would thrive in a role like this?

Claire: Yeah. And we got that question a lot. Like once you started writing emails about the manager and herding cats and all of that, they're like, where can I find someone to run my company? You know?

Allan: right. So where can people find that person and how do they make it a success?

Claire: Well, some things that made this situation a success were that you gave me the autonomy and I am the kind of person who has always been a decision maker in my life. Something we learned when you and I were doing like profile reading I forget what kind of profile it was, but was that both of us are rebels.

So I don't like being told what to do. You don't like being told what to do so definitely I think I remember we both have rebel in our background, but it was important that I felt autonomous and it was important that it felt like a meritocracy. Like it felt like [00:16:00] you gave me a project, I did it well, and we leveled up.

For the type of person who wants to see 75 countries or be in 75 countries and like loves learning more and loves new languages and cultures and experiences. Work was also like that. It was also like you know, conquer one thing and move on to the next.

But I'm gonna come back to the word curiosity. Like I would want that, whoever you're interviewing seems hungry for something and that they have the opportunity within the business to do that, to move forward, to learn things, to grow.

Well, you know. There were really stressful parts, because you weren't in the day to day, it could often be very frustrating for me to know that like I had built this big ship and we're trying to move this ship that is like hard to move, right? It's like we've got 15 people trying to go in one direction and like we think we know what the goals are.

And then you would come in like all entrepreneurs do, and be like, I got a new idea. Let's change the name of the company. Let's like, you know, or [00:17:00] whatever. And we're like, ah. Like, no, there's like 20 projects running. Like we can't, like change all the material to, you know. So I think there were pros and cons to you not being on the ground as much in the company, so that it was hard for me to explain to you things that were going on when you wanted to make big changes.

I think back about like wanting to double revenue every year in a services business. Like that's a pretty tough thing to do, you know? And yeah, and as the company grew, it became harder to try to, you reach goals like that, where I would have to come back to you and say like, there's not hours in the day to, to do that.

But yeah, I mean, if you're looking for somebody like this it's somebody who is passionate, is curious, is intelligent not to,

Allan: Yeah.

Claire: and who's really capable and organized. And it is not for somebody who cannot take pressure, who likes having a guidebook [00:18:00] to things. So there, I mean, I think that there would be two different kinds of people.

Somebody who thinks it's very exciting that the world is their oyster, and somebody who is terrified that you know, that the world is their oyster. But I definitely, yeah, I would definitely liken my role with you to the world was my oyster.

Allan: one of the, the bad hires I've made, not just in this business but in prior businesses, was always seemed to be someone who was, who came from a very large corporate background where they rarely got their hands dirty, where they basically, essentially a middle manager delegating to their team or whatever.

And often that word come out. I mean, hopefully it comes out in the interview and you never hire them. But in some cases I did hire them and they turned out terrible because they were like, alright, great, well I'm here to manage or whatever. And. Really the role in a smaller business, I would say a business with under a hundred people is, Hey, [00:19:00] you've gotta get your hands dirty.

you've gotta lead by actually doing and being, being an implementer and someone who. You know, you see a gap, alright, great. I'm gonna fill that, I'm gonna solve that, I'm gonna, whatever. Whereas someone who's been working in a large corporate, maybe a mature business or whatever, a lot of their role is just to, you know, put the round thing in the round hole, the square thing in the square hole, do the paperwork, delegate, all that sort of stuff. And they've got large teams to do all of that. So that was something that was a bit of a learning experience for me in hiring people. So people who definitely did not work out in a small business.

I'm not saying that's always gonna be the case, but that was certainly my experience. I'm trying to do less of that kind of drive by management these days where I try just spring a big change on the team or whatever, because I know that is stressful and that can be something that puts things.

Out of order with the team because the team has priorities and things like that, and then suddenly something changes. I'm [00:20:00] not saying I'm perfect at that by any measure. I think the part of the CEO's job is to kind of mediate between the owners of the business and the people running the business and to, okay, well what's a priority?

How do we put that into the context of what we are doing and kind of be that communicator between the team and the people who are kind of, the face of the business or running the bus or owning the business

Claire: I was like, and mediate. I did. And I know that, I know that Anna's doing quite a bit of mediating as well, I'm sure.

Allan: Totally, Totally. And I mean, we had

Claire: yeah. But that is the role, right? It's like, you know, you own the company and ultimately decisions are yours. but How, what you want. I mean, there's a constant back and forth in terms of what's possible, like with the resources, with the budget, with the team, and then what the owner wants to do.

So going back and forth there is an important part of the CEO's role.

Allan: And part of it is you've got to, like, as an entrepreneur, you've got to kind of temper [00:21:00] your need for novelty. Like entrepreneurs have a need for novelty. There's no two ways around it. Like, I'm attracted by the new thing, by the shiny thing, by the cool new thing. And, well, that's cool. And that sometimes leads to some innovation, some new products, ~some new,~ like literally that's my job is to come up with a new thing, like, you know, the new book, the new idea, the new whatever.

but also to temper that with, okay not throwing the team into chaos and not kind of like the Friday night slack message, Hey, we are changing this, that, or the other. And then yeah. Causing chaos within the team.

Claire: that just reminded me of when we first sold the certification, you were like we're launching a certification this week. I think. Like I was like, what? What is a certificate? Like certification and what I was just thinking back to decisions like that. But another thing that came up for me while you were talking was that I remember you, Anna, and I took a personality again, assessment of some kind and realized that we were all quick start.

So, and [00:22:00] another thing that's true about the three of us is that even though I was the CEO and Anna's now, the CEO Anna has also been an entrepreneur. Like her whole background leading up to working with Lean Marketing was running her own business. And I'm now running my own business and felt very much like an intrapreneur in the role.

You know, we all have that desire for novelty. And I mean, I think that's another way of putting what I said before, curiosity. But um, it would not work at all for me to be in a corporate setting and have my quick start, like, you know, get excited about something. Let's do it all right. Like we're launching a new program or whatever, and not be able to affect change in the way that I would want.

So I think that quick start. Yeah, but you also need, if you have three quick start people at the helm, you definitely need people that are not quick start, who are gonna like pick up the slack and like do the research and you know, and yeah, balance that out.

Allan: [00:23:00] I agree. Quick start, I think is the KOLBY test. So there, there's a Kolby personality test and I don't know, sometimes I feel like these personality tests are like a horoscope or whatever. They just tell you what you want to hear or whatever. But I don't know, maybe there, there's some merit in some of them.

I know we are now probably doing disc tests or something in the business, but like I said, it's a data point. I'm not sure how you know empirically accurate they

Claire: I would say that I do feel yeah, the three of us are different, but I know, especially you and I, and like I, I see it in myself all the time now in, in the last couple of years that I'm very quick start. I really, I know I get excited about things. I wanna move forward. I'm also, you know, very much novelty seeking.

And fortunately, when you're starting something new, almost everything is new and novel. And so I'm running into a lot of the same problems that I used to consult on, which are shiny new object, trying to focus, trying to like really [00:24:00] think about where revenue's coming from

Allan: The other thing is when the business is very small. Like a few people, two, three people. You can just say, Hey, let's launch this certification next week, or let's do the thing or whatever. Now we're at a business now, I think we're at around 20 people in the business. There's sales teams, there's marketing, there's you know, operations, there's coaching team, all of that sort of thing.

And so. It's not as easy to just say, Hey, let's launch this thing next week, or whatever. So you're now steering a ship with 20 people and some are rowing in this direction, some are rowing in that direction. And it's both a blessing and a curse, right? It's a curse because, hey, you can't just on Friday night have an idea and on Monday launch it where, which you can do with a tiny team of maybe 2, 3, 4 people or whatever.

Now you've got to have meetings, get people on board, have a strategy, have like, okay, a launch timeline or all of this sort of stuff. And so, if you are a small [00:25:00] team you do have a big advantage in that you can sometimes just have an idea and do it the next day, like, uh,

Claire: well, I was thinking about that would've happened maybe two years into me working with you and. Also due to the fact that I hadn't come from some big corporate background. I mean, I was always just like, sure, let's do it. You know, like initially, and then when we, when the company grew and we had more people, it was more complicated.

But yeah.

Allan: Okay. I'll double click on something that you said as an intrapreneur. and I very much think of our people that way because they're not running their own business, but they're also not just kind of a caged employee in a cubicle, right? So, we used to use the term free range, right?

So generally, they get to set their own hours. If they want to pick up their kids at a certain time, whatever, no one has to ask permission, Hey, can I leave? Can I come? Do I need to clock on to clock off? All of that sort of thing. So people are working pretty autonomously. They get to live an amazing [00:26:00] lifestyle.

So they get a lot of the benefits of being an entrepreneur, which is a lot of that freedom. Also, economic upside, like if the business does well. they're gonna do well as well. So there are a lot of the benefits of being an entrepreneur and then not a lot of the downsides, like you don't have the risk of downturns in the business and things like that.

You're gonna get paid what you get paid. Right. So, and I think it's a really good middle ground for people who are maybe not ready to run their own business or maybe want to do so in the future, but also don't want to just work for someone nine to five and hate their life and hate their job and all of that sort of thing.

So I think it's a very attractive middle ground for a lot of people.

Claire: Yeah. I definitely, thinking back on the, my eight years working with you, it was like business bootcamp every day. It was just practical learning every day. You know? I didn't get an MBAI thought about it. But

Allan: You gotta, you got a street, you got a [00:27:00] street. Smart MBA,

Claire: Exactly

Allan: Hey, it's Allan here, ready to dive deeper into today's marketing insights? Head over to lean marketing.com/podcast. To get a full summary of today's episode, including all of the resources mentioned, go to lean marketing.com/podcast. Now, back to the show.

Transitioning and Personal Growth
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Allan: what are you up to now?

Claire: yeah. So I left Successwise a little over two years ago and I basically, at that point, I realized that I had this very intense external journey, like back to the novelty and the curiosity and moving all around the world, and I knew that I needed to spend some time kind of going inward or that was something that was kind of like a growing request from inside and I knew that I wanted to take some time off.

I had talked to people around the world who had taken [00:28:00] sabbaticals and I felt like it was a good time for me to take some time off and just completely shut my computer. So when I first left Lean Marketing it, I didn't have another role lined up.

It wasn't like I was, headed into something specific, but I really wanted to take some time off and just think about what I wanted to do next. And I ended up first becoming a student of an organization in Australia. I'm always working with Australians. Um, Coincidentally, but yeah I became part of this program that taught me a form of meditation.

I had meditated before, but it had never worked. So a form of meditation that I could actually add as a daily practice. And then there were a lot of inner growth practices that helped me understand more about things that I had been trying to work through in therapy for many years. ~So, I don't know how deep we wanna go here about this,~ but basically.

In the few months after I left Successwise, I felt like I [00:29:00] had all of these light bulbs about why I am the way I am and I'd always been quite an anxious person. And so it felt like a lot of things I had like a lot of growth, inner growth moments. When I finally had a moment to not be like scaling a company and moving countries and, you know, so externally focused and it helped me so much that I decided to study further with the man who came up with this method in Australia.

And so I studied with him for a year and a half and since the beginning of this year, I've been teaching and facilitating programs that were similar to the program I went through a couple of years ago that helped me so much, and yeah, so I've been doing that since January. ~I can talk a little bit more about what it is, but.~

Allan: ~Please. I think it's fascinating.~ So you took time away for yourself. You wanted, I don't know would you, I dunno, would you call it a midlife crisis or something? Like that,

Claire: the age of how old was I? 39? [00:30:00] Um, No, I don't know about a midlife crisis. I mean, maybe I would say that, you know, I had been moving all around the world for 10 years. And I came back to California because I was gonna like try to be a normal person. Maybe that's the kind of people you're looking for, someone who wouldn't describe themselves as normal.

But I, I was like, okay, like I'm about to be 40. I would like a partner, like maybe I'd like a family. I'm gonna come back to the United States and like really try to, you know, attempt a normal life. And so I moved to Santa Barbara, California, which is beautiful place, but it's very expensive. And at the time it was like all of my energy was going into, I bought a nice new car.

I, yeah, was like thinking about what it would cost to buy a house in Santa Barbara and everything that I was doing was. I guess in hindsight for values that no longer feel relevant, like I wanted to be rich, I was like, I don't know, doing all the [00:31:00] latest beauty trends, going to Barry's bootcamp every day, like really trying to be like the ideal partner to find, you know, a husband and yeah, and you know, really wanted to make a lot of money and so I had some big light bulbs around that.

I would never be rich enough like. Me trying to be more rich was not gonna ultimately make me content. And same thing about trying to be beautiful, like it feels embarrassing to admit all of this now, but that was where my energy was being poured at the time. And so, midlife crisis ish, you know, when you're like, oh my God, all of my head space and energy is being poured into these things that I realize

don't actually have much to do with fulfillment

From my perspective. So that was a, those were big light bulbs around two years ago, and I was like, all right, I gotta do something different because~ I mean, I don't know, this is a business podcast where people are like working on growing their businesses but yeah,~ I think that I wanted to feel more [00:32:00] peaceful internally and I knew that the way that I was living at the time was not the path to that.

And so I didn't know what was the path, but I knew that I wanted to stop what was going on and think about how I wanted to live the rest of my life.

Allan: Yeah, so you talk about like, I mean we, we've chatted about your meditation practice and course, and things like that, and.

Exploring Meditation and Inner Growth
---

Allan: It's almost like a hybrid between not just meditation, but also like a therapy component to it. Although I don't think you'd call yourself a therapist or a claim to be one.

But there's definitely a component of going back and kind of looking through what drives you essentially.

Claire: exactly. Yeah. So I wouldn't call my, I'm not a therapist, but for me, over my life I had five or so one-on-one talk therapists and you know, there's a full gamut of therapy. But in my experience. It was just like Groundhog Day. I would show up at the [00:33:00] therapist. You know, it was usually a Zoom call and I had the same problem every time, and my problem was in my dating life.

And so that's a whole story. I don't know if we wanna dig in

Allan: you know, at, at least you're not saying, you know, uh, being a CEO at Lean Marketing drove you to therapy. Uh, Although maybe,

Claire: can say that. Yeah. Although, like, work in the way that I was working with you was a big distraction. It meant that I was working 50 or more hours a week, and it was like, so like, you know, you're just like a hamster on a treadmill. And you're not, you don't have time to really reflect on what's going on and.

Who you are and what sort of things drive you. And like in my case, like I said, I was coming back to the United States and wanted to attempt a normal life and wanted to date, but I had all of these unresolved challenges in me. And I knew that I was the problem.

Like I knew it wasn't the people that I was dating. I knew that it was me, you know, choosing people and, I wanted to have the head space to [00:34:00] address what had been long-term challenges for me in my personal life. And the work that I came upon with ended up being way more effective than any of the therapy I had ever done.

And because it's cuts to the core of what the deep. The core issues are of the things that drive behavior patterns and your reactions and things. I wanted to be able to help people in the same way. I feel like if I had this sort of help when I was 25, I could have avoided so much anguish in my life.

And, you know, I'm glad that I came upon it at the age of 40, but I wanna help other people address some of their biggest issues. So that they don't have to like suffer and live, live with them for the rest of their lives.

Allan: That's awesome. And so, is the program that you that you deliver now, it's about kind of, recognizing some of those patterns and then, and then what? So.

Claire: yeah, the beginning of it [00:35:00] is, some people come in saying that they don't have problems. so when we start working with people we are starting to define different things that are kind of like the biggest challenges in different people's lives that are often relational.

So something with your mother, something with your boss, something with your partner, your child. And we look at patterns of things where you get the most triggered from things. And so that's where we start is where. you yourself have a sensitivity to something that's happening in your life and we start there and then from there we're going into, well, why does that thing specifically trigger you and where did that sensitivity come from?

So we are digging back into things from childhood and adolescence, and then there's often a lot of light bulbs that are going off for people. but it's not just that. And I think that in my experience with one-on-one talk therapy, we might uncover things that I [00:36:00] didn't know. You know, like we talked a lot about my relationship with my mom.

But it, we didn't heal it. It's like we didn't take the next step to make it such that my behavior and the situations that I found myself in were any different. So we would talk about it. We would say, Hey, Claire has this problem. Okay, well, you know, she had some, you know, this and that with her mom and dad.

And but it was still Groundhog Day for me. Like nothing. There might've been some insights, but nothing materially changed. And I think that since I've been doing this work, things have drastically changed for me internally and in how I approach relationships.

Allan: Well, I've definitely seen the change in you for sure. Um, you, You are less anxious and I don't know, maybe that's because you're not working for me anymore, who know?

Claire: because I'm not talking to you every day now.

Allan: Exactly. but yeah, I've definitely, in all seriousness, I've seen change in you. So obviously the program's had some good positive effect on you.

I've [00:37:00] definitely gotten massive benefit anytime I've taken time off from the business from the day to day, especially when it's paired with travel you generally get time to think, to reflect, to figure out what what's important, all of those sorts of things. And you know, I think I probably have a different mode of personal development.

I heard a guy and I definitely connected with me where he was saying, you can do all of these things. You can figure out what triggers you, why triggers you, why your mom did this, and all of that. And then based on that. You can change. And he said, or you can just cut to the chase and just change.

Just like, Hey you can say, Hey, I procrastinate because you know, I had this trauma. My mom did this, or my father did this, or whatever, and so now I understand it and so I'm not gonna procrastinate anymore. Or you can just say, Hey. It's not gonna procrastinate anymore and cut to the chase and just do the thing, the thing that you're supposed to be doing.

So that definitely resonated with me. But like I said, I don't [00:38:00] think that path is for everyone necessarily, and a lot of people

Claire: I was like, that is such an Allan Dib response

I would just say like, you know, for people listening, like if that works for you, good on you. And if you still find yourself in patterns of behavior that are not serving you, give me a call. You can. Yeah. But you know, maybe we've got a lot of people like Allan Dib that are listening.

Allan: I think there's multiple ways to be right,

Claire: You're right Allan and like, just for everyone listening like this, what you're hearing right now is typical of how our conversations used to go as well. Like we can agree to disagree but yeah, what you just said I have had a lot of people ask me about planning for sabbatical and taking time off, which is not something that's part of American culture for sure, and probably not really part of Australian culture. A little bit more so in Europe. But there are definitely places outside the United States that do [00:39:00] value, you know, in France taking the full month of August off. You know, most American companies offer two weeks of vacation, which means that you can like go to a few weddings and go home for Christmas and that's it, you know?

And in terms of like for creativity, for understanding who you really are and what you want and what your values are and things like that you need space and people change and evolve. And so, I feel like I wanna start a PSA, and I know I'm in a very fortunate position to be able to take months off.

But I couldn't say enough about how, how useful. I think that taking months off, like three months off is either between roles or, I don't know. Some companies offer

Allan: Yeah.

Claire: longer sabbaticals,

Allan: Mm. Very cool. Very cool.

Conclusion and Final Thoughts
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Allan: All right, well, um, where do people find out more about your program? If someone wants to kind of in behind the scenes of their trauma and understand it well, and do some of the work that you've [00:40:00] done. Where does someone find out about that?

Claire: Yeah, you can find me@deprogram.co. So that's the website or on Instagram I post a lot there about upcoming programs, so that's just@dprogram.co. And I was gonna joke again that like if it doesn't work for you that you have a problem and you just think to change it and it works, but

Allan: Well, well, yeah. If you wanna investigate your trauma, go see Claire. If you just wanna kick up the backside, go to Lean Marketing.com and we'll help you there as well. Excellent. Having you on Claire, and you were an integral part of our success. I, you know, remember all the work that we did very positively. So, and I appreciate your contribution.

Claire: Well, likewise, Allan I feel fortunate that I got to be in Business Bootcamp with you for eight years and have certainly learned so much from you and yeah, I'm really glad that we're still friends, so.

Allan: Awesome. Awesome. Well, thanks for being on and we'll talk again soon.

[00:41:00] Thanks for tuning in to the Lean Marketing Podcast. This podcast is sponsored by the Lean Marketing Accelerator. Wanna take control of your marketing and see real results with the Accelerator. You get proven strategies, tools, and personalized support to scale your business. Visit lean marketing.com/accelerator to learn how we can help you get bigger results with less marketing.

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