Episode 107: Conversations Over Coffee - April 2022

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Coffee and Conversations – April 2022

Welcome back to our quarterly conversations over coffee episode! If you’re new to these, I’m pulling back the curtain on my life, businesses, and goals. These episodes are intended to feel like you and I are sitting down with a cup of coffee (or whatever your drink of choice is) and just chatting. So grab that drink of choice, listen in, and then send me a DM and share a bit about how your 2022 goals are going for you!

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

Check out the Year of Content Prompts
Learn more about Magical Escape Vacations
Magical Escape Vacations Tiktok
This week’s action step: Send me a DM and tell me about how your goals for 2022 are going!
This week’s book recommendation: American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins
Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield

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Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at hello@amandawarfield.com!

Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!

*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurate.

Welcome back to our quarterly conversations over coffee episode. If you’re new to these, I’m pulling back the curtains on my life, businesses and goals. These episodes are intended to feel like you and I are sitting down with a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choices and just chatting. So grab that drink of choice.

Listen in, and then send me a DM and share a little bit about how your 2022 goals are going for you.

So let’s start with a house update. Honestly, there’s not much to update here. I think the biggest thing that has happened is that we had a squirrel in the attic. I don’t remember if I shared about this in previous episodes, but we first discovered a squirrel in the attic last summer, like June, July 2021.

And honestly just kind of let it be, which is terrible. I know, I know, but we just let it be for a long time because. Too much to handle, to be quite honest. so it just lived in our attic, but then we realized there were multiple squirrels in the attic and it definitely got to the point where I was like, we have to take care of this.

So we called someone to come. Give a quote. They gave a quote. I husband was like, absolutely not. I can do this myself. learned how to motivate him, I guess, in this process. But he decided he was gonna handle it. He, we have a man, I don’t even know what it’s called this thing on our roof. That’s wooden. I think it like vents the attic, I assume as its purpose, I don’t really know to be honest, but it’s wooden and the squirrels had chewed through the wood to get inside the attic and that’s how they were getting in and out.

And so my husband gets this industrial strength, not chicken wire, but it’s the kind of like chicken wire, this metal netting. And he puts that up around it and he makes it so that the squirrels can get out, but not back in was the idea. Well, then we realized there were still one stuck up there that didn’t get out and couldn’t get out.

So then he, and it had started chewing on a different part of the wooden portion to try to get out. So we undid some of it. We chase it out. We think we never smelled anything dead. So I’m guessing it got out. And then he repatched it. Well, when he repatched it, he stapled it, staple, gunned it to part of the wood that had been chewed on on that.

Wasn’t super structurally sound. So within a couple of weeks, more squirrels moved back in, they had, they were able to get it off enough to get back in.

We discovered there’s another squirrel in the attic. Russell goes up there to try to, he takes the stuff off of the thing. Again, he goes up into the attic to try and chase it out. I’m on the phone with him. Watching the sea, when it leaves nothing ever comes out, nothing ever comes out. And then all of a sudden Russell kind of doesn’t scream, but like jumps almost.

And a squirrel was in the cage. The, the trap that we had set up there, mind you, we set this trap back in the summer. And the squirrels never, ever took the bait on it. Never. They never, like we put peanut butter in it and they didn’t care. This school did though. Got itself stuck in the trap. It was still alive.

Thank goodness. And he brings it downstairs, you know, we made sure there were no other squirrels in the attic. He re-does the metal netting around the whole. Ventilation things so they can’t get in, in any portion of it, make sure it’s much more structurally sound and we drive two miles out of town to go release the squirrel.

Obviously that’s the most exciting house update that I have for real. It was pretty wild. I would like to not have more squirrels in my attic though. So hopefully that this, this worked this time. We’ll see, it’s only been a week or two. And we haven’t had any extreme cold. That’s the other thing we kicked them out right before baby season.

But it’s also when it was very cold here, we were having like freezing rain and stuff like that. And so they were not happy. So hopefully they’ll stay out. We shall see. Other than that, though, honestly, we are working on getting started with a total backyard overhaul, but we’re like in the process of securing financing and that’s just a really long process.

So right now I don’t have any more updates, but hopefully by the next one, we will have more to share. that’s the whole house update business updates. I must split this into two for each business. So for Magical Escape Vacations, if there was a new name, you might’ve noticed that there is a new name happening, had to change the name. I am also working on getting the website up and running by the time this airs it should be live. So if you want to go check out magicalescapevacations.com. Love for you to go check it out. And the only other update with this one is that I’m running a Tik TOK experiment.

Currently, if you follow me on Instagram, you’ve probably seen me talking about this. I knew I needed to start when I first started this business in July. Very very into July also. I was like, I’m just going to be on Instagram. That is where I’m going to start. That’s where I’m going to try to build audience and clients and all of that fun stuff.

And then over time, I’ll add the email newsletter and the blog and the website. And things took off more than I expected them to. And so it’s just taken me a lot longer to get the website up and running. So I don’t have the blog and SEO happening yet working on that again, by the time this airs, it should be up The launch is planned for far before this. So we’ll see, we shall see. But at this point I am, fully booked out with clients as I’m recording this, which is amazing. I will be having the vast majority of my clients. So I’m recording this in February. By the time this airs in April, most of my clients will have had their trips, meaning that I’m going to need more clients.

I recognize that I also knew that leading up to the launch of my website, I wanted to try to expand my audience. So I decided let’s try Tik Tok So I starting February 1st. I have been posting twice a day, every day. Again, it is February 16th. I’m only 16 days into this experiment, but my audience is already above 400 followers.

It took me so long to do that on Instagram with my original business. And let me look, I’m not even sure if I have that many followers on my Magical Escapes Vacation, Instagram. I don’t think I do. I have 184. So Tik TOK is working. I’m definitely growing an audience there. We shall see if that translates to anything.

When the website actually launches, I’ve had quite a few people in my DMS because I’m Chronicle in all of this, through the content marketing, Amanda Warfield business. I had many people saying that they have seen people grow large audiences, but they haven’t actually seen it translate into clients or anything.

I will say that I have seen successful Product based businesses. One of my clients is a product based business and she , started the business and the Tik Tok in October, November, 2021. She shipping out hundreds and hundreds of orders. So yeah, it definitely works for product based businesses.

I don’t know about service-based businesses. So we shall see. I’ll keep you guys up there on that experiment, but if you want to go follow Magical Escape Vacations over on Tik TOK, you can kind of see for, see it play out for yourself in real time. If you’re over on Tik TOK, and then this business, the Amanda Warfield Chasing Simple business, honestly, not a ton happening right now.

I am really focused this year on. Visibility and a large focus. And I share it. I shared all of my goals in the very first episode of 2022. What episode number was that episode? 91. I share all of my goals. I share how my 2021 goals finished up and what my 2022 goals were. So if you haven’t listened to that and you enjoy these types of conversations over coffee episodes, go listen to that one.

But my whole, my big focus this year for this business is just visibility. I have. Gotten so many amazing opportunities for different collaborations this year. It’s just been a phenomenal. Already, and it’s, it’s only February which is crazy and it feels like it’s been much longer, but I’ve gotten a ton of great, really amazing things.

But the two that really stand out are that I, by the time this airs again, this will be over, but I’m going to be speaking at the reset conference. It’s a conference for photographers. And this year it’s in Lexington, Lexington, Kentucky. I’m going to have you speaking there in March. This is my first.

in-person conference speaking gig. I have had another in-person gig. I had one last in the last year for my first in-person one, but it was a local community like networking group. This is the first big conference that always speaking out. And I’m so excited for that. And then the other thing that I’m working on outside of visibility is just the summit, which again, by the time this airs will be over.

But that just takes so much, so much time, especially when. You’re doing it totally by yourself. You don’t have like an assistant or anything. There’s a lot that goes into it. So at that, those are really my two focuses right now is just visibility. Getting that summit up and going. I’m really excited for the speaker lineup, which again, if this it’s already passed, by the time you listened to this, you can go grab the presentations.

If you want head to Amandawarfield.com/summit, and you can grab all of the presentations and all the replays of those. The lineup is so good. I’m so excited about it. I cannot wait to announce it to everyone. It’s going to be really great, but those are my, those are really my only biz updates. I don’t have much more than that.

You know, new name, new website, Tik Tok experiment for Magical Escape Vacations, summit, and speaking. For, Amanda Warfield and I like it this way. I liked that I’m keeping things really low key this year. I shared again in episode 91, that one of my big goals this year was to shift my focus from work to myself.

And it has already, I mean, we’re a month and a half in and it’s just been, it’s been so great. So really excited about keeping things low, key, simple. And as far as a personal update goes on that I began by the time. That you listened to this I’ll have started therapy. That was something I really wanted to get into.

And I figured it would help with the shifting my not focusing so much on work all the time. And of course, just that literally everyone needs therapy. Right. So. my first appointment is next week. By the time you listen to this, I will be multiple appointments in really excited about that.

We also have taken our first trip of the year. We went up and visited some of Russell’s family in West Virginia and Ohio. Don’t recommend doing that in February. You’re not going to lie very cold, very, very cold. It’s not like twice we were there and I was just everyone. Well, the family that lived there was not happy about it.

I was not happy about it. Everyone else was very happy about it. It was gross. And by the time this airs we’ll have three more done. We’ve lots of travel plan for this year, which is really exciting. And I’ve also started learning to play the piano. This is something that I. Really looking back on my childhood, of course, as a kid, I would say I don’t have to learn that.

Like, all my friends are learning piano and I thought I was getting away with something. It turns out that as an adult, I regret that I never learned piano or any kind of instrument. So that was something I really want to do this year. Russell got me a keyboard multiple years ago and I just never.

I just been scared, I guess. I don’t know. Never really got into it, decided this was going to be the year I was practicing daily. I was seeing a lot of improvement, like learning a lot of really cool things. And then I developed carpal tunnel. So that has, it’s been like a week and a half since I’ve played.

Definitely hoping to get back into it. I don’t plan for this break to be forever, but I wanted to kind of give my wrist some time to heal for me to figure that out. And then I’m gonna go back into it with healthier playing habits, I guess. And then again, just much better boundaries with work-life balance in general, even though the summit hasn’t happened yet, The month before the summit is, is rough. It could be that things get crazier as we get closer to it, but I’ve already done so much of the work from hosting at once already that I’m hoping that that will continue, but you know, I haven’t been working on the weekends. I’ve been shutting off at the end of the day and not getting back on unless I have.

An event or a speaking gig. It’s been nice. So yeah, those are kind of all of my updates. I’ve been speaking for a long time now, but how’s updates, business updates, personal updates. I would love to know how things are going with your goals so far this year. So send me a DM. I’d love to hear about it. Let’s chat about where your goals are.

I share this, but I want this to be, I truly want it to be a conversation. I don’t just want to be talking at you. So send me DM let me know how your calls are going.

And then this week’s book recommendation is American Dirt by Janine Cummings.

So this, I have seen people talking about the book for ages and I just never picked it up. And I finally did. And it’s about a mother and a son who are trying to escape the cartel in Mexico after the cartel murdered their entire family. And they’re heading north to fleeing to America.

Not only that, I really enjoy seeing more about the perspective of those that do this, why they do it, what the journey is like for them, all that they’re risking and giving up. But this book is just so incredibly well-written, it’s, it’s one of those that you just can’t put it down type books. So not only is it very engaging as a reader, but it also, it really, for me, it really opened up

my perspective of things. So highly recommend American dirt by Janine Cummings and my friend until next time, I hope that you will go out and uncomplicate your life and biz.