Denise shows you how to flex your money manifestation muscles and up level your life and bank account. Sounds pretty good doesn’t it? You can find out more about the lucky bitch bootcamp over here.

I found about Denise Duffield-Thomas quite a few years ago and last year became a “Lucky Bitch” taking part in her amazing Money Bootcamp. The community that she has created within the bootcamp is one of the most supportive and engaged that I have ever seen. The woman is pure gold! But with a new baby (just check out Denise’s Instagram account to meet the gorgeous Willow!) and so much going on how does she manage to make it all work?

I recently got the opportunity to interview Denise to find out just that … Don’t even get me started how long I’ve been procrastinating on this interview, talk about an upper limit problem! (Side note: read the big leap it’s one of my top reading recommendations!)

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your business

I’m the CEO of www.LuckyBitch.com and I help entrepreneurial women release their money blocks so they can charge more, serve more and have way more fun in their business.

I’m Australian but have travelled all over the world and I don’t feel tethered to any particular country. I joke that I live on Facebook rather than in any one geographical area. My hubby is English and we have a new baby, Willow.

 

Why did you decide to work for yourself?

I have ALWAYS wanted to work for myself, before I even knew what that meant. When I was a kid, I had a dream of having my own office with a fancy typewriter. I also thought it meant wearing a suit with massive shoulder pads.

In reality, working for myself in 2014 means working between my phone, laptop and iMac, wearing yoga pants and sporting baby drool on my shoulders.

I’ve tried to live my life by three desires – freedom, adventure and abundance. No job could ever give me all three so I created it for myself.

What was your biggest fear (if any) that you had when starting your business?

I was always terrified that I wasn’t good enough, and that people would call me out for being a fraud.

But your dreams HAVE to be bigger than your fears. Each week, I put out a blog post that I was sure was terrible but I did it anyway because I knew it was a stepping stone. My first websites were pretty crap but again, I knew that I had to start before I was perfect, or I’d never start at all.

What does a typical day in your life/business look like?

I’m up early with the baby and if I’m lucky, my hubby takes her for a walk while I sleep in. Every morning without fail, I catch up on gossip on www.LaineyGossip.com before I do any work!

Then I check in with the members of my Lucky Bitch Money Bootcamp in our private Facebook group, to give some encouragement or advice. Sometimes I’m in my office at my big iMac, and other times I’m tapping away on my phone while I feed Willow. My phone is pretty indispensable these days for business. I use mainly Facebook, Instagram, Kindle and the Infusionsoft App.

Timezones are tricky as my Bootcampers are from all over the world. If I hang out in the group first thing, then it covers most timezones – afternoon in the States and late evening in the UK. It’s also a pretty active group, so they don’t rely on me to answer questions, they support each other, but I like to check in and say hi every day.

I have a part time Nanny who looks after Willow while I have Skype meetings with my assistant. Because my business is largely automated and my course is completely online, work these days means adding content to my social media queue, deciding yes/no on interview requests and planning ahead for blog content. I don’t get many emails because they route via my assistant – probably one of the most productive things I’ve done for my business. Once a week I’ll do the intro for our newsletter and send it to her with a picture.

Every day I track my income – one of the things I recommend my students do – as it gets me focused on doing income producing activities.

Lunch time I eat the same thing every day, homemade chicken and veg soup batch made by our Nanny – I used to be terrible at remembering to eat during the day, so it’s great for my productivity and energy. I also throw a meal in the slow cooker for dinner – I often freeze the ingredients in batches ready to go to save time.

In the afternoons, I play with Willow while property renovation shows play in the background (I’m considering building a property empire). My phone is handy to check Facebook. She’s not a great sleeper by herself during the day, so she might have an afternoon nap on me. It’s a good time to sit and think about my goals or new things I want to implement in my business. When I get a new idea for a blog post or book chapter, I’ll make a note on my phone.

Hubby comes home and I usually switch off work. If I spend too long at the computer at night, I can’t sleep. We usually have dinner and then start watching one of our TV series. We binge watch a new series every few weeks. We’re usually buggered by 9:30 and head to bed. Overnight when Willow is up for night feeds, I either play Candy Crush on my phone (to stay awake) or check in with my Bootcampers.

 

Do you have a five year plan for you business? If yes would you like to share?

It’s not set in stone, but I definitely have a long term business plan. When you know what’s coming in the future, it takes out all the pressure to do everything in one year – you know you have time to build and to compound your results.

This year has been all about setting up good systems and being inwardly focused. For example, my assistant now reads all of my email and we have set up responses to frequently asked questions. I’ve also batched video content six months in advance, so we have a system to take the raw video into blog content, and how that feeds into the newsletter. I wanted this year to be really stress-free but still profitable.

In fact, it’s been the most profitable yet because having a baby forced me to be way more productive and to put in place systems that I should have done anyway. I’ve become more of the CEO now.

Next year will be about reaching out and becoming more visible, and having a bigger outward focus. At the moment, my newsletter list goes out to over 23,000 women, but I want to expand that to 100,000 over the next two years. That’s going to mean uplevelling my image and branding.

Year 3 will be about creating more products or updating my current ones. Year 4 is going to be about writing new books. Year 5 – who knows at this stage?!

What are your top three tips for anyone wanting to start their own business?

 

Nobody can create your ideal life but you. Starting a business gives you the freedom and flexibility that you can’t find in the average job – and in terms of income – the sky is the limit.

Click to Tweet: Nobody can create your ideal life but you – #behindthescreens interview with @denisedt -http://snip.ly/To2b

1. Start now. The idea doesn’t have to be perfect. Most people have a starter business (or three).

2. Surround yourself with people who are heading in the same direction. Nobody can have an opinion on your business unless they are successful in the same area.

3. Spend some time working on your blocks – in particular your money blocks – at the same time as taking action towards your business. Fear is going to come up – it’s normal and inevitable as you do something different but focus on that big dream and don’t let anything derail you.

I would like to say a massive thank you to Denise for taking the time to share her thoughts on starting your own business and how she manages a full time “JOB” and her family.

If you’re keen to learn more about Denise’s Lucky Bitch money bootcamp be sure to click over to www.LuckyBitch.com

 

With big dreams & big action,