Ep 41 - "What I wish I knew when I started my business" - an interview with my client Fiona Brannigan

Episode Show Notes

Welcome along, everyone! I’m so excited to bring you this episode because I’m chatting with my lovely friend and client from the Accelerate Mastermind, Fiona Brannigan. We’re diving into Fiona’s journey from the NHS to running her own successful business, Inspirit Nutrition and Dietetic Consultancy. If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to step away from the healthcare system and build something of your own, this episode is for you.

Links mentioned in the episode:

WAIT LIST For Mindset For Business -a 12 week live programme:

Mindset Programme Waitlist: https://www.sarahalmondbushell.com/mindset-waitlist

Connect with me:

Website: https://www.sarahalmondbushell.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dietitiansinbusiness/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dietitiansinbusiness

Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/beyondtheclinicbusiness

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BeyondTheClinicPodcast

Episode transcription:

[00:00:00] Welcome to Beyond the Clinic, the podcast for health professionals ready to transform their expertise into innovative income streams that extend beyond the traditional clinic model. I'm Sarah Almond Bushell. I'm a registered dietitian and certified business coach and proud owner of two successful online businesses.

[00:00:20] I understand the leap from the security of a regular salary can feel intimidating because I've been there too. But it doesn't have to be scary and you do not have to do this alone. Here you'll learn tangible strategies to accelerate your business growth. So if you're dreaming of using your expertise to create impact and a life of freedom, then you're in the right place.

[00:00:45] Sarah Almond Bushell: Welcome along, everybody. I am really excited to bring this episode to you today because I am going to be talking to one of my friends and clients inside the Accelerate Mastermind. So welcome, Fiona. Do you want to start off by just telling everybody who you are? And what you do?

[00:01:05] Fiona Brannigan: Yes, sure, Sarah. Thanks for inviting me along today.

[00:01:08] Fiona Brannigan: So, my name's Fiona Brannigan and I'm a dietitian. My company is called Inspirit Nutrition and Dietetic Consultancy and I help over 50s manage their gut symptoms and chronic health conditions so they can get on with living a full and vibrant life without second guessing every bite that they take.

[00:01:28] Sarah Almond Bushell: Brilliant. I love it. I love it. Absolutely. And although you say over 50s, it's the slightly older over 50s, isn't it?

[00:01:36] Fiona Brannigan: Yes, it is. So it's really from 65. But nowadays, obviously, people that are 65 are quite often still working. So over 50s is a bit of a catch all for They're happy to be called over 50 rather than older adults or over 65s.

[00:01:54] Fiona Brannigan: Yeah.

[00:01:54] Sarah Almond Bushell: Yeah.

[00:01:55] Fiona Brannigan: Absolutely. Definitely.

[00:01:57] Sarah Almond Bushell: So we've been working together probably about seven months or so now, haven't we? Yes, yeah. So can you take me back to what life was like for you before we started working together? I would love to know what inspired you to start your own business and how did you feel in those beginning stages?

[00:02:17] Fiona Brannigan: Okay, so I set up my business in April, 2023. Gosh, yeah, 2023. And I came to setting up my business in a slightly different way to a lot of people. I had actually left my career in the NHS in December, 2022. I was a band seven. And I'd left it to be a full-time wife and mom. I'd come out of a career break after caring for my daughter that was unwell with.

[00:02:46] Fiona Brannigan: Quite a serious condition, but she got better and my mum was suffering from osteoarthritis and was needing a new hip and I knew that things were going to get a bit tricky, and I'm an only child, so everything was going to fall on me. So, and also you don't go through something like caring for a sick child without your whole kind of life, your thoughts about things, it just changes, it changes everything.

[00:03:10] Fiona Brannigan: So I left my job, but unfortunately my marriage ended in January 2023, unexpectedly. So, I just didn't want to return to the NHS, that would have been the easiest option for me. In terms of what would be the easiest, but it was certainly the most. Dare I say sensible to the term, but I just didn't want to, because I'd left to be around for my daughter, to be around for my mum.

[00:03:37] Fiona Brannigan: So I decided when I was able to make a decision, cause it took me a wee while to think about what was going to happen next. I thought I'll set up my own business because how difficult can that be? Because when I did my finances and worked out how much it would cost me, I had about an hour's commute and.

[00:03:56] Fiona Brannigan: What that would be. And I thought, can't be that hard. Surely must be people desperate to see a dietitian locally. I know there wasn't many people within my area. And I was really excited. I didn't think it was going to be any problems at all. It was going to be easy peasy and they would be. battering down my door to see me.

[00:04:16] Sarah Almond Bushell: So your inspiration, your motivation was really all about family, wasn't it? And being there for them when they needed you, which I think is a lot of, it's the same for a lot of us, isn't it? I know it was absolutely the same for me. I needed to be there for my kids because I just found that as they got older, they actually needed me more.

[00:04:35] Fiona Brannigan: Yes, yeah. My daughter's very musical, so she's, there's a lot of taxi services, backwards and forwards to do different things, and quite simply, I wouldn't be able to do that if, she wouldn't be able to have those opportunities if I was still working in the NHS.

[00:04:50] Sarah Almond Bushell: Yeah.

[00:04:51] Fiona Brannigan: So it was absolutely the right decision.

[00:04:53] Sarah Almond Bushell: Yeah, absolutely. So you said that when you got started, you were fairly confident that things were gonna work out well, that people would need to see a dietician, that you would be in demand. Was there any fears or any doubts or were you, you know, set that this was definitely the right thing to do?

[00:05:10] Fiona Brannigan: No, so I've thought about this and I can categorically hand on heart say nope, there was nothing.

[00:05:16] Fiona Brannigan: I was just really proud of myself that I had made that decision, that I had kind of almost fixed my own way out of a situation that I couldn't see a way out of. Yeah, there was absolutely none whatsoever. It was going to be amazing. It was going to be brilliant. I was going to be fully booked within the first six weeks.

[00:05:34] Fiona Brannigan: Yep.

[00:05:35] Sarah Almond Bushell: Awesome. I love it. There's nothing about, you know having that like positive mindset. I

[00:05:42] Fiona Brannigan: know. I know. Yeah, to me, life should be a bit like a Trolls film, all glitter and unicorns and pop songs.

[00:05:49] Sarah Almond Bushell: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what happened then? What happened when you got started? Tell us what, what came next.

[00:05:55] Fiona Brannigan: Yeah. So I got started and I registered with the BDA freelance directory. I paid to some local advertising. I. Went I nutritionist resource, and I got the kind of odd trickle of people coming through. Nothing major, but I was so excited about everything. And I just thought it would pick up momentum and it would get better and it, it didn't and I'd had a sort of part-time job working for someone that I knew in a shop.

[00:06:27] Fiona Brannigan: And that came to an end in October. And that was kind of October was when I really began to sort of take my business seriously and think, well, this is actually something I really need to work on. And I worked with a different business coach for a wee while who got me sorted in terms of automations and things like that, but it just wasn't quite enough.

[00:06:50] Fiona Brannigan: Yeah, so that's where I was to begin with and then I also decided the SEO is where I had to go And I just I kind of scrabbled around the internet and I compared myself to a lot of other Dietitians that were out there used to scrabble around Instagram and Facebook and Social, just LinkedIn and took advice.

[00:07:14] Fiona Brannigan: I did a lot of networking within business. I took a lot of advice from people that I met that way. And nothing was really working for me. And I was quite overwhelmed. I was quite stuck. And I kept myself really busy doing, looking back, not an awful lot.

[00:07:32] Sarah Almond Bushell: Yeah, it's interesting actually, cause I think once you start getting into business, you, that's exactly what you do.

[00:07:40] Sarah Almond Bushell: You take advice from all over the place. You go down rabbit holes, you learn new things, you do courses. And before you know it, you've got a million jobs to do. And actually none of them are really moving the needle for you. They're not really bringing in the clients, getting you the visibility, you know, doing all the things that you want.

[00:07:59] Sarah Almond Bushell: So I would love to dive into the whole mindset side of things, and I would love to understand you know, what, what mindset blocks or what things have got in your way. Whilst you've been developing your business and, is there anything that you think that, you know, where you might've gotten your own way, where you might've been holding yourself back?

[00:08:20] Sarah Almond Bushell: And I would love to know, you know, if anything like that has come up for you.

[00:08:25] Fiona Brannigan: Yeah, so certainly the things that I've identified was visibility, about putting myself out there. And I can very clearly identify that that happened when I was at university. I had some really horrible feedback from a lecturer when I gave a presentation who told me I had to go for elocution lessons.

[00:08:48] Sarah Almond Bushell: Oh my word.

[00:08:50] Fiona Brannigan: Quite. And I had to go for elocution lessons and to consider lowering the tone of my voice because it was too high pitched.

[00:08:58] Sarah Almond Bushell: Okay. Hmm.

[00:08:59] Fiona Brannigan: Yeah. So that, that definitely one. So putting myself out there, the, the fear of, of doing something wrong and losing my registration and getting struck off and having to go and, you know, clean toilets or something, which sounds, when I say it out loud, sounds

[00:09:18] Fiona Brannigan: really ridiculous, but actually it was a genuine fear and also scarcity around money, about investing in money, about, you know, investing in the tech, because I genuinely thought, I thought I'll get, I paid for my freelance membership, I paid for my nutritionist resource, I paid for my Zoom, I got all the freebies I could.

[00:09:38] Fiona Brannigan: I'm still a bit of a freebie hunter generally in life, but, yeah, just the thought of spending money was, I just couldn't. Yeah, I just couldn't do it. I couldn't bring myself to do it.

[00:09:50] Sarah Almond Bushell: Yeah, yeah. So I think that's really interesting because from the conversations that I've had with lots of healthcare professionals over the years, it's the same three mindset things that come up time and time and time again.

[00:10:04] Sarah Almond Bushell: So there's that, definitely that visibility fear, the fear of putting yourself out there. And it's. I think it's great that you can link that back to something that happened. Definitely there's the money mindset thing. And I think we're, I think, you know, we are, most of us have come from the NHS where we've spent years, possibly even decades being told that we have to do more for less.

[00:10:28] Sarah Almond Bushell: And budget cuts and, you know I recorded a podcast episode recently where I was reflecting back on my time as a manager in the NHS and, and I wasn't even allowed to buy pens and notebooks for my department at the time. It was like, they had to be able to buy their own, which I didn't want them to do, so I bought them for them.

[00:10:48] Sarah Almond Bushell: So, but there is that scarcity, isn't there? There's that scarcity that's just with us the whole time. And then, yeah, the biggest fear I think is that fear of being struck off. And. Honestly, you know, I don't think I've ever spoken to another dietitian, bear in mind, you know, we're both dietitians who has not felt that fear at some point.

[00:11:11] Sarah Almond Bushell: And I remember for me, you know, when I was first starting my business, I was really frightened that I was actually going to say something and I was going to get it wrong because I probably hadn't read the latest paper on, you know, a topic that I dealt with. You know, all the time, but maybe something came out yesterday and I'd missed it.

[00:11:29] Sarah Almond Bushell: And my biggest fear was that another dietician was going to turn up, tell me I was wrong publicly, and then as a result of that, I was going to get struck off. And it took, well, it took quite a lot of mindset work to be able to get over that. And one of the things that I realized was I've been working for 22 years at that point.

[00:11:52] Sarah Almond Bushell: So if you just think, you know what, you, you've got a fair amount of experience here. And yes, absolutely. There will be people who know more than me. There's always going to be people who know more than me about certain things, but actually, You're in pretty safe hands with your own knowledge and you've just got to have that self belief.

[00:12:11] Fiona Brannigan: Yeah, I think that's really important, that self belief, and that was one of the things that I felt that you really helped me with, is you were like, you're a dietician, you know, you're the expert, you know more than the people that are coming to see you for help. Yeah, and that, that was a big, and just that that's been a massive difference that, that you've made for me, because I think as well, you know, the way I came to having my own business, I'd come through quite a rough patch and actually I had a lot of, of deep, I had quite a lot of self doubt, anyway, so that was a really helpful thing that you helped me with was, was making me realize that actually, you know, I had all that, knowledge and experience.

[00:12:55] Fiona Brannigan: I wasn't as, you know, Instagram worthy as some dietitians that you see out there. But actually I had something to contribute and there was people that would absolutely resonate with me and want to come work with me.

[00:13:09] Sarah Almond Bushell: Yeah, absolutely. And you know, there's enough work to go around. I'm a great believer that, you know, Okay.

[00:13:16] Sarah Almond Bushell: Yes, we have competitors, but there's actually enough work to go around and people will choose to work with you because of you. Yeah. So yeah, yeah, definitely. I totally resonate with what you're saying there. so I would love to know actually. Did you ever have any moments where you thought about chucking in the towel and thinking you know what this is too hard I'm gonna go back to the NHS

[00:13:40] Fiona Brannigan: No, I never thought about NHS, but I thought I might go and get a job at Aldi's

[00:13:44] Sarah Almond Bushell: Wow

[00:13:46] Fiona Brannigan: Yeah frequently actually, but there wasn't any one particular it's an on going It's an ongoing self chat that you have, well certainly for me that I have and it's very peaks and troughs because I think, you know, at the moment I'm still building my business so I do have peaks and troughs in the client's groups that have come in to work with me.

[00:14:09] Fiona Brannigan: So you have a really great month and it's like, this is amazing, and off you go and then you have a not so good month and you're like, oh, you know, and you've got to. You've got to manage that in, in your own head.

[00:14:23] Sarah Almond Bushell: Yeah. So what, what helps you keep going when you're having those doubts?

[00:14:29] Fiona Brannigan: What helps me keep going is my wife, which is my daughter.

[00:14:34] Sarah Almond Bushell: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:14:36] Fiona Brannigan: Oh, a bit emotional. Because she's also my biggest cheerleader.

[00:14:41] Sarah Almond Bushell: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:14:43] Fiona Brannigan: It's nice. My why is never having to ask for a day off again.

[00:14:48] Sarah Almond Bushell: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:14:49] Fiona Brannigan: That's a biggie. I, I really struggled with that. So, the team I worked with were amazing but I didn't work in, I hadn't, I have not worked in a dietetic department since 2003.

[00:15:00] Fiona Brannigan: I worked in a. Interdisciplinary team in the community and a lot of people had other, their, their husbands and I say husbands cause we were all women, their husbands quite often worked in things like the police force and the, and the fire brigade. So their annual leaves were set in stone. So you were having to make decisions about next, next summer holidays before Christmas.

[00:15:22] Fiona Brannigan: Like, yeah. And I hated that. Yeah. I hated that. And also looking at my numbers. So I'm a numbers person. So looking at how many, you know, inquiries you'd had, how many people you converted, how much money you had made, how many people you've got on your social media, kind of going back through your posts and seeing the interactions that you had.

[00:15:47] Fiona Brannigan: Yeah. I find that really helpful to see that. To look back to see how far I have come. Yeah.

[00:15:53] Sarah Almond Bushell: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a really important thing to do. I'm a numbers person as well. And one of the things I love about numbers is they don't lie. It's, you know, you can make evidence based decisions and we're all evidence based practitioners.

[00:16:07] Sarah Almond Bushell: So why not have an evidence based business as well? So I think it's really key to have that data and being able to look at it, interpret it, and, you know, really be able to see that you are making progress when you perhaps feel that you're not as making, much progress as you would like to make.

[00:16:25] Fiona Brannigan: Yeah, and I think for someone like me, that I, you know, said before, life should be like a Trolls film, I think for me it's also a bit grounding. Yeah. To see what the stats are saying, what people are resonating with, and, and Yeah, I find that really helpful. It does grind me quite a bit as well. Yeah. I also have, I also every night before I go to bed, I write down what I'm grateful for that day.

[00:16:50] Fiona Brannigan: Yeah. And that was something that we were introduced to when my daughter was unwell. And that's been really good as well. Because there's always something every day. It might be a new follower. It might be someone who commented on a post. It might be that someone should apply to your email address. It might be that you booked a new client.

[00:17:07] Fiona Brannigan: It might be a discovery call. But there's usually multiple things in a day. And at the end of the week, to go through that gratitude journal, at the end of the month when things are tough, you can look and see, see how much. How far you've come, and how much is positive there.

[00:17:23] Sarah Almond Bushell: Yeah,

[00:17:23] Sarah Almond Bushell: definitely.

[00:17:24] Sarah Almond Bushell: I love what you were saying there about gratitude. So, you know, I do the same actually. I do gratitude practice. The last thing I do before I go to sleep at night like literally as I'm lying in my bed with my eyes closed, my head on the pillow, it's the last thing that I do. Interestingly, it's the first thing I do when I wake up in the morning and there is a little bit of research that shows that what you think about as you're going to sleep is also what you think about when you wake up and I think that really sets your mindset up for positivity for the day ahead.

[00:17:55] Fiona Brannigan: Oh, that's interesting. I tend to do mine when I've kind of sat down for the night, you know, the dog's had his last walk, the kitchen's tidy. I sit down, I do my gratitude journal then.

[00:18:05] Sarah Almond Bushell: Yeah.

[00:18:06] Fiona Brannigan: I might, I might. Change and try and do it a little bit later.

[00:18:09] Sarah Almond Bushell: Have a go, see if it makes a difference. You never know, you never know.

[00:18:12] Sarah Almond Bushell: Yeah. Yeah. So I think tied into what we're talking about here is a question that I ask everybody who interview on the podcast, really, you know, what, what keeps you motivated, what keeps you focused?

[00:18:25] Fiona Brannigan: Having a structure and a plan for me is really important because I've, I've had that kind of no man's land pecking around of trying to find something to fill my days with. Sometimes I was going out for lunches and things as well to try and do that. So every week I plan, so I have a kind of theme for, for the first, for the kind of next three months.

[00:18:50] Fiona Brannigan: So every quarter I've got a theme. So for example, this, this time. January to January, February, March, I have my themes visibility to get my visibility out. And that's something that we've discussed. That's kind of the next step of my journey to get my visibility out there. And then it's, what am I going to do every month for that?

[00:19:10] Fiona Brannigan: So rather than every six weeks, I find every month just works better for me every month. And then I break it down to every week and every day. And then every Sunday I plan my week. Look at what's in my diary, what clients I'm seeing, what other things I've got going on, and then I plan out every single day what I'm going to do.

[00:19:27] Fiona Brannigan: My top three things. Yeah. And I write it down and I take it off. Yeah. And that keeps me motivated because I'm not sitting at my desk every day thinking, what am I going to do?

[00:19:38] Sarah Almond Bushell: Yeah.

[00:19:38] Fiona Brannigan: Yeah. Yeah. I've already got a plan. I don't need to think about

[00:19:41] Sarah Almond Bushell: it. I've already done the thinking. Yeah, I'm going to send you a gold star because that is absolutely definitely the right thing to be doing.

[00:19:49] Sarah Almond Bushell: It's how you make progress. It really is because you have these big overarching goals that you're just breaking down and turning into actionable steps. Like, and I love the fact that you say you can, you just tick them off. So they're tick off able tasks. So things that you have control over. So often I'll see people say like, I want to.

[00:20:09] Sarah Almond Bushell: Get another thousand followers on Instagram, but actually algorithm for Instagram. So it's actually a task that might not be something that you have much control over achieving. So if you've got these things that you're working on that are actually. Within your gift, you can go and do something and come back and tick that off the list to move you forward.

[00:20:32] Sarah Almond Bushell: That will absolutely, you know, that's definitely the way for, for your business to move forward. So I absolutely love that. That's brilliant. Gold star for you.

[00:20:42] Sarah Almond Bushell: Oh, awesome. Okay. So I've got a question for you now. What do you wish you knew? Or what do you wish someone had told you before you started your business?

[00:20:53] Fiona Brannigan: I wish someone had told me to keep hold of all the email addresses, to start building my email list as soon as I could. Cause I was really late to build my email list. I never really started building it till I started working with you. And what I now know, having only recently started sending out regular emails, is the people that open, the people that reply, the people that respond are my previous clients.

[00:21:23] Fiona Brannigan: Mm hmm. And actually that's, you need to, you know, you need to be front and foremost in people's minds. So you're hoping, your hope is that in some room, somewhere, your name's being spoken about when you're not there, that, you know, to keep that and I really wish, because I think of all, how much bigger my email list would be if I'd.

[00:21:43] Fiona Brannigan: If I'd kept all those email addresses.

[00:21:45] Sarah Almond Bushell: Yeah. Yeah. You're absolutely right. And your previous clients are always your hottest leads and they will come back to you in the future, you know, when they need help. But yeah, you're right. You know, I think if there's one sort of fundamental part of business. If there's a piece of advice I would have to give anyone, it's grow a new email list.

[00:22:06] Sarah Almond Bushell: It really is. You know, people say the money is in the list and it is so true. And I think I've found that with the, with my other business, the children's nutritionist. Now that I'm dedicating so much time into my business coaching business, I spend one day a month in the children's nutritionist. And, and the sole purpose of what I do in that day in the month is grow my email list because the rest is all set up on automation.

[00:22:32] Sarah Almond Bushell: I've got it so that the rest of it, you know, just takes care of itself. And, and what's funny actually is, you know, when I, when I first decided I was going to take my private practice seriously, and it's a private practice that I'd had, you know, for 20 odd years at that point, it was just something I did on the side.

[00:22:50] Sarah Almond Bushell: But when I decided I was going to take it seriously back in 2018, the first thing I learned. Was about email marketing. And I think that was just, I don't know whether it was luck or serendipity or what, but that was just like the thing that got me started and from there, you know, then I went into SEO because I wanted to learn how to get people onto the email list and look, you know, different ways of getting traffic to actually.

[00:23:17] Sarah Almond Bushell: Sign up for my freebies and join my email list. And there's some people on my list who are still there, who still open my emails, you know, what, seven years on. So it is really, really, really powerful.

[00:23:30] Fiona Brannigan: Yeah, it is. Cause I think when you begin to go into social media, I think there's an expectation that that's where all the magic happens.

[00:23:40] Fiona Brannigan: And certainly I feel for me, potentially my client group, I don't necessarily. On social media or they're not as engaged the younger population, but also they're not yours. The algorithms change, the reach changes, everything's in a constant flux and it is a challenge to kind of keep up to date with all of that as well, which is why having a business coach is amazing because they, they tell you.

[00:24:05] Fiona Brannigan: What to do. Tell you when

[00:24:07] Sarah Almond Bushell: things change. Yeah. Yeah, you're right. You know, people will always have a social media account, an Instagram account, Facebook account before they'll start an email list. And yet the people who follow them on there. And not there's, you know, some of us might be old enough to remember MySpace, which was a, was a social media channel that no longer exists.

[00:24:30] Sarah Almond Bushell: And, you know, people who built their businesses based on social and that disappeared, lost entire businesses. Same thing's happening with SEO. You know, I had a huge, huge amount of traffic visiting my website through SEO. And then over the last 18 months or so, there's been that many changes with the Google algorithms that my traffic has absolutely tanked.

[00:24:54] Sarah Almond Bushell: But if I didn't have my email list, I wouldn't be able to make any money in that business. So I think it's really important to own your audience get them, you know, absolutely use social media. Use SEO to get people to download your lead magnet so that they become your, your subscribers on your email list.

[00:25:14] Sarah Almond Bushell: And that's where you nurture them and build the relationships and deepen the connection. And, and that's when they start to love you. So when you do have an offer that you want to present to them, they're primed and they're ready to buy. Brilliant. Sorry, off on a rant again there. Oh, okay. So what's been your biggest aha moment when it's come to running your business?

[00:25:38] Fiona Brannigan: My biggest aha moment has been people buy what they want, not what they need.

[00:25:44] Sarah Almond Bushell: Mm hmm. Yeah. You've heard me say that a few times.

[00:25:49] Fiona Brannigan: once or twice. And it's, it's so true because we know, we know as health professionals, we have a Or we, or we think we know as health professionals what people need, but sometimes giving them what they want and then, then realizing that it's not working, and then they're more likely to, to, to come in and work with you.

[00:26:18] Fiona Brannigan: You know, not come and work with you, but then we'll like to get right into your way of thinking if it's, if it's not working for them. But yeah, that's been, and that's always what you think. And the other one is, it's got to be a bleeding neck problem, not a stubbed toe problem. Yeah, yeah. So they're kind of two phrases that you see all the time, and they really stick there in my mind when I'm thinking about something, and I go, is this a stubbed toe problem?

[00:26:41] Fiona Brannigan: Absolutely.

[00:26:43] Sarah Almond Bushell: Yeah,

[00:26:43] Fiona Brannigan: yeah,

[00:26:44] Sarah Almond Bushell: you're right. You know, so that's not my phrase. It's a phrase by a guy called Perry Marshall, who, yeah, yeah. But he, he said, you know, first of all, people never buy what they need. They'll only ever buy what they want. So you've got to sell them what they want and then give them what they need.

[00:27:04] Sarah Almond Bushell: Yeah. And yeah, the whole thing about the stubbed toe problem versus a bleeding neck means, you know, they'll pay for, to get their bleeding neck fixed because they're not going to survive very long without it, but they're not going to pay for a stubbed toe because it's. inconvenient and it's a bit annoying and whatever, but it's not enough to stop them from, from doing what they're doing.

[00:27:26] Sarah Almond Bushell: So when we're thinking about our services and what we want to do in order to help people, it has to be a bleeding neck problem, not a stubbed toe. I didn't realize I say the same things over and over. So thank you for that.

[00:27:39] Fiona Brannigan: It's all right. I think these things are really important when you're thinking about offers or you're thinking about.

[00:27:44] Fiona Brannigan: Where you want your business to go or that kind of thing. It's actually to have those things in your mind and kind of have them as a benchmark almost as to, well, where does this match up in this? And you think, well, actually, no, you know. Yeah, that's a stub toe problem. That's a, that's a bleeding neck problem.

[00:28:01] Fiona Brannigan: Yeah. Yeah,

[00:28:02] Sarah Almond Bushell: absolutely. Oh, brilliant. Thank you for that. So my final question for you then is if you could give one tip to someone who's just starting out in business or someone who's listening right now, what would it be?

[00:28:17] Fiona Brannigan: For, for me, I would say that everything you want is on the other side of fear. Mm hmm.

[00:28:25] Fiona Brannigan: That, that fear really holds you back and, and everyone talks about taking a leap, which for me just sounds like the scariest thing. To me, a leap, it's like going from one side to the other and there's nothing in the middle and that really, that analogy really freaks me out basically.

[00:28:42] Fiona Brannigan: I just think of fear as a door, you just open it, you walk through it and you shut it behind you and you're in a new space and you just keep going forward.

[00:28:52] Sarah Almond Bushell: Yeah. Yeah. I think that was definitely a phrase that I heard banded around a lot when I was first starting out in business that, you know, success is on the other side of fear.

[00:29:03] Sarah Almond Bushell: And it is just about, if you find something a little bit uncomfortable leaning into it. And giving it a go anyway and just see what happens. And it's so true because that's when the results happen. That's when you start to see personal growth as well as business growth. And I think it, I think you then evolve into like the next level version of yourself as a result of that.

[00:29:28] Sarah Almond Bushell: Yeah.

[00:29:29] Fiona Brannigan: Yeah, absolutely. There was a quote and I meant to write, I meant to write it down and I didn't because I probably looked at it. But I should have been on my phone when I should have been sleeping, to be honest with you. And it was something about if it makes you feel uncomfortable, you probably should be doing it.

[00:29:44] Sarah Almond Bushell: Yeah.

[00:29:45] Sarah Almond Bushell: Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Amazing, Fiona. Thank you so much for your time today. I've really enjoyed having this conversation. Where's the best place for people to find you if they want to get in touch and see what you're up to?

[00:30:00] Fiona Brannigan: Sure. So I'm probably My biggest following is on Facebook, so it's at InSpirit Nutrition Dietetic Consultancy.

[00:30:11] Fiona Brannigan: You'll also find a link to that on my personal account, which is Fiona Brannigan. And then on Instagram, I'm at Fiona underscore InSpirit Diet.

[00:30:22] Sarah Almond Bushell: Awesome. And I'll put all of those links in the show notes as well for people. Thank you very much. Brilliant. Thank you so much for your time today. Thank you for having me.

[00:30:30] Sarah Almond Bushell: Bye for now. Bye.

[00:30:33] Sarah Almond Bushell: That's it for another week. Thank you so much for joining me as we explore the abundance of strategies to help you recapture that feeling of possibility and excitement as you drive your business forwards and beyond the clinic room. If you found today's episode inspirational, then don't forget to like and subscribe to the show to stay in the loop for more valuable advice that I'm going to be sharing each week.

[00:31:01] Sarah Almond Bushell: If you want to be the first to hear about new episode releases, news and ways that I can support your business growth, then please don't forget to check out the links in the show notes. And you can also connect with me from there. Don't keep me a secret, I would be delighted if you left a review and shared this podcast with your colleagues.

[00:31:22] Sarah Almond Bushell: Until next time, bye for now.