Welcome to Take Control with Nicole, as business owners we experience first hand the fine line between our personal and business lives. During our conversations, we will look at simple hints and tips to create time, reduce overwhelm, and help you to navigate through your journey to where you want to be. If you’re looking for smarter ways to work, and create space and time freedom in your day, then you’re in the right place. All right, let’s go.

Nicole Smith

Hello, hello, and welcome to another episode of Take Control with Nicole. Today I am speaking with the fabulous Sam Bright, all about the magical world of Facebook ads. Sam is a certified Elite Ads Manager with a singular passion: elevating business women with life changing Facebook ad returns. With a decades-long career in finance under her belt, Sam turbocharges online businesses with smart, data-driven, sophisticated campaigns. Sam works with business owners and professionals to take the WTF out of Facebook advertising. Yes, we are a non swearing zone but we’ll see what happens, when she’s not eating ads for breakfast, Sam is a chook-loving, dahlia-growing, 80s-loving mum of three. She’s an enthusiastic supporter of women in business and she’s on a quest to make the internet a more positive, productive place. Well, there we go. That’s an introduction of all the words, how are you Sam? Welcome.

Sam Bright
I’m great. I nearly fell asleep during that, no.

Nicole Smith
Well, I’m so excited to have this conversation with you, Sam. And I would love to start with, tell us a bit about you. Because I know about you. You’ve been in my world for just over a year I think we worked out now.

Sam Bright
So I am obviously a Facebook ads manager now. And this business in its current form is just over two years old. Prior to that, most of my kind of recent life has been in the finance and banking industry. And so I was there for 14 years working for some of Australia’s biggest and smallest finance providers. And I decided I could do it better and so within that 14 year period, I also started, grew and sold my own finance business. And then all the things happened. And now I’m a Facebook Ads Manager.

Nicole Smith
I love it. As you know, and people here listening know, I’ve come from the finance world as well and it’s quite a different space than where you’re playing now. But I guess it’s come from if you think about it with finance, it’s the data and it’s the information and the, you know, all of those things that drive decision making, which is assuming a lot of what you do with with what you do with your clients campaigns and ads and all that.

Sam Bright
Yeah, so the simplest version is that, you know, when you work in a third party banking space, which is mortgage brokers and finance providers, so you’re giving advice, recommendations around debt, and your licence to do so. And you can do all that and manage your client expectations but you don’t own the bank. You’re not the financier, you don’t own the bank, so you can make the best recommendations and answer the questions of your clients from that space. It’s the same in Facebook land, I’m doing strategy, advice and advertising on a platform that I don’t own. So they’re are third party as well. So those two things are kind of similar.

Nicole Smith
Yeah. And understanding all those intricacies that I guess the normal, Joe Bloggs may not be aware of because we’re not always in that Facebook land, in the backend stuff as well so it’s great that you’re there and know all the bits and pieces and can structure those things to help us as business owners and professionals to actually understand what we need when we’re starting to look into Facebook ads and then also supporting us on the emotional roller coaster journey, which I imagine it can be sometimes.

Sam Bright
It’s like anything with a business when you’re investing, you know, funds and have an expected outcome. And again, that’s like in the finance world but I think the best thing to do there is to set really, really realistic expectations up front because I see that with a lot of clients where their impression is that ads don’t work when in fact their expectations weren’t in the right place before they started snd if they were they would see that they actually had a successful outcome based on what they could have hoped for, like their expectations might have been watching a business that’s much, much more mature with a bigger budget and a whole different campaign and what that level of success was versus what their business was. There’s a lot of mystic and a lot of smoke and mirrors around not just Facebook ads, I mean, like SEO and Google and there’s this mystic and in some places almost gatekeepers to the mystic, because that’s how people can continue to charge and not empower or educate and that’s kind of one of the things that I’m a bit like, you know, even if I’m not your service provider, I would like to make sure that you’re empowered enough to make decisions about a good service provider if we’ve come into contact.

Nicole Smith
Yeah, that’s a really good position to be in as well because, you know, you hear the stories, don’t you of you know, some service providers out there that do kind of keep it all in house and no, I’m not going to tell you my secret sauce. That’s a great name, I wonder where that comes from. Love it. But yeah, it’s great. We’ve gone off on talking land, why Facebook ads from finance?

Sam Bright
Yeah. So that’s the kind of all the things that happened in the middle, right. So when I sold my business, I was fortunate enough to not have to work for a little while and so I spent that time, really, really digging into the parts of my business that I loved. And the parts of the business that I didn’t love, and you know, I’m yet to see a business or role where you only do things that you like, so I wasn’t so naive to think that I could move into a space where I eliminated everything I hated. But the things I really enjoyed in my business were, I did my I taught myself Facebook ads, I did my own social media, I did end up getting help, as the business grew, I had a big say in the branding, I organised and ran a networking group for women in finance. I wrote a lot for finance magazines, and articles. So I did like that kind of PR stuff and I really loved that part of the business so I decided to kind of see what direction that would take me in. And at the same time, I was kind of asked to manage some organic social media accounts for some finance businesses and I thought, well, look, let’s just see where this takes me. I upskilled and then people started asking me about ads and I thought, well, I know how to do that, because I did it for myself and then it wasn’t until I actually went and learned and invested serious time and money into finding out how to run them properly. And I enjoyed it so much that the social media became a smaller part of my business and ads became the main focus. And it’s funny that, you know, a year or so on from that, socials is back in the business because Facebook ad customers have been asking me about it so that’s how I got to ads. So I’ve followed my nose as to what I enjoyed, and just tried to do more of that.

Nicole Smith
I think we’re all on that path to find things. You know, I’m very fortunate to be playing and dancing in a world that I love, utterly love and attracting humans that are really my people as well, like one of my fabulous clients at the moment, I was on one of their team calls and they started singing at me. And I’m like, yeah, you did, because they’re my people. Musical Theatre all the way. And it’s just those you know, when you find yourself in that spot where you just loving what you’re doing and you’re totally right, there’s always the parts of the business that don’t make a sparkler as much. But we need to know, as business owners, we own the whole thing. So it’s our responsibility to understand the things but if your core function is the bit that makes you happy, so good.

Sam Bright
To me, it’s a very linear process. But I can see from the outside looking in where it might be like, how did you move from this to that? And I can’t help but say, because I’ve had other businesses as well, and still own them, as you know, family, only the context changes, the overall business principles are the same. So there’s no real big leak, if that makes sense.

Nicole Smith
Yeah, so the what you’re doing and delivering changes, but the the way of running a business stays the same.

Sam Bright
Yeah, and the overriding principle is to be of the highest level of service I can so whether that’s in the finance industry, or as an ads manager, or in the other businesses that we own, it’s how do I serve at the highest level in this space, and the money always follows so those are like universal principles that, you know, always work.

Nicole Smith
Yeah. I love that. The ease of people business, isn’t it? You know, we’re all just humans and supporting other humans doing big things.

Sam Bright
I tell my kids that because they’re all adults. If you can work with people, you can do anything. If you can deal with people and I know that sounds simple, but you deal with people on a day to day basis. If you can deal with people, you can do anything.

Nicole Smith
Yeah, I totally agree with that. Very solid advice. I think I will start telling my seven and four year old that from this early age. Power making fabulous humans. Oh, goodness, well, some people will know a little bit about Facebook ads. Now, they may have had that pop up, “come and boost your post here”. And I know that’s not always the best way to go. Can you share with us a little bit more about what you do with your clients and how you support them?

Sam Bright
Yeah, sure. So the strategy or solution that I provide depends on the client’s business goals. So it’s not a one size fits all. There might be strategies of this is how we audience build, and it looks like this for a small business and this for a big business, but we have to make sure that their ads aligned with their actual goals, because remember, ads are not a magic bullet. They’re one lever in a bigger marketing picture. So it’s like what other pieces of the puzzle do they have? How will this connect or support to that, and then the strategy falls out from there. So for smaller businesses, they have a basic marketing, you know, test panel at their fingertips with their Instagram or Facebook account, they can post organically and see how things go with their market, and then put ad spend behind things that are already proven, whether that’s just engagement, or sales or views, types of content that go well, organically tend to do well in an ad as well. So the way you’d support a new business would be about gaining that traction and using the stuff that’s working and put it getting it in front of a wider audience that looks like the audience that’s already consuming. Whatever it is they sell or provide for a larger business, it might be more like ongoing client attraction, or, you know, have you ever followed someone where you just feel like their ads everywhere, and it’s always different and you’re like “I’m seeing her again”, those kinds of strategies where we have different pieces of content and different relationship building content, popping in at different times during a call in a client or prospective clients feed, you know, for up to 180 days after they’ve jumped on one of your digital assets. And then of course, there’s the ads that everyone thinks is the only ad which is ‘buy my thing’ ads. But there’s all different other parts and so that’s a long answer to say, it depends on the business goal. And the biggest mistake I see is that people just run the ‘buy my thing’ ad. So if I wanted to go home with you, I would have to spend a little bit of time building rapport with my offer. Yeah, and so ads are no different. You can’t just go straight for the kill and especially not in 2022, like even just a couple of years ago, yeah, you could probably get away with that with a, you know, big enough ads spend. But now we need to show some content, show some engagement stuff, maybe show them a video. Now let’s give them a free download and then drop an offer. And you know, that might not all happen at once that could be part of it a staged build. And so a lot of people just see the buy my thing and think that had worked. No we were actually warming you up for 30 days before we dropped an offer in front of you.

Nicole Smith
That is that is something to really consider, isn’t it? Because it’s all part of that I call it open doors, but launch strategy, right? So bringing something out to the world or you wanting to encourage people to you know, come and work with you, you’ve got to have a connection coming back. Humans or humans. I know that one of our fabulous humans, Amy. She’s helped me with some ads and yeah, it was it was a brain tweaking to get understanding that first of all, audience, we need to actually, you know, nurture them and also train the ads to know who your audience are.

Sam Bright
No, that makes complete sense. Whatever, you know, there’s a million ways to explain how it works. But you know, in part of that time in finance, I was in business development and it was my job to do at least 15 face to face appointments with clients that week. And some of those were people that knew the brand I represented and some people were those who hated the brands are represented because their dollar My Account got shut down when they were in year one and they’ll never deal with that bank again. So you have to build rapport you have to find every in you can get to get in front of that person to pitch and I think with ads because they have been, now I’m doing air quotes here, easier, we could kind of skip some of that and go straight into the kill where now it’s almost like know that old school sales method is back, we have have to earn the right to make an offer. We have to give value, all those things you were taught in business development, or sales, you know how to do this stuff and so I just think we’re doing the same things humans have always done we just do it with ads now and in a digital form.

Nicole Smith
That’s so true. It is going going back back in the world of actually foot on pavement, you know, pick up call. I know even me, I know we’re not talking about phone calls but I still feel like, I don’t want to answer my phone.

Sam Bright
I don’t answer my phone.

Nicole Smith
Isn’t it strange? Because, you know, go back a few years well, that was the only option.

Sam Bright
Absolutely. That was the only option. Yeah, I am seeing visions of you know, 14 year old Sam waiting by the kitchen for that boy I seen at the beach today to give me a ring and like making sure no one touches the phone. So incase he rang, he was never gonna ring me like come on. Yeah, I am seeing visions of you know, 14 year old Sam waiting by the kitchen for that boy I seen at the beach today to give me a ring and like making sure no one touches the phone. So incase he rang, he was never gonna ring me like come on.

Nicole Smith
But you waited there, you were hoping and dreaming.

Sam Bright
I was hoping and then now I’m like, I don’t answer my phone.

Nicole Smith
I don’t know that number, if they leave a voice message, then I will get back to you. That’s how I work.

Sam Bright
My message says leave a text.

Nicole Smith
But they still comes back to as well like knowing how we like to communicate ourselves and how we work with people. Right? Yeah, boundaries

Sam Bright
And having other, obviously here I am as a business owner making fun of myself, but I clearly have other ways to contact people.

Nicole Smith
Fabulous. So I guess with Facebook ads as well, getting those things out there, do you find that some of your clients have, they’re either really excited to go right on in and maybe spend the big bucks, whatever it might be aligned with the strategy, or are people quite reserved and hesitant to sort of make that investment in when they’re doing new strategies, or I guess it changes per client?

Sam Bright
And I think the maturity of my business could also be tracked alongside where the customers are at in their own business. So you know, starting in ads, I used to work with a lot of smaller businesses that potentially had a lot smaller budgets, whereas now a couple of years on, the companies I’m working with pretty much are already spending, it’s just who’s managing it and what strategy they use. But even the big spends, they all manage them differently, some really, really want a lot of data, and they want to be really hands on, and some are just like, just make it work. And I think that could be like if we just take the subject of Facebook ads off the table that could go back to how we run our businesses as a whole. If you’re really keen, you know, if you’re that kind of move fast break things person, you know, you’re gonna have a different attitude to investing, whether it’s ads or any kind of tech or bringing on new staff or any kind of capital investment, or whether you’re more conservative and you like to plan out things and have a measured approach, ads are going to be no different. They’re going to have that same. So these days, I have a lot less conversations around why people should do ads. These days, it’s much more on how we’re going to do it, and what strategy will work and sometimes, because I do do some mentoring as part of a mastermind group for someone, and sometimes the answer is that ads are not going to work in your business. And I always think because I’m a business owner, too. I’m not just a Facebook Ads Manager, I’m a business owner, I need someone to tell me that this won’t work for you, rather than yeah, and I spend my money and go, huh and that comes back to that expectation setting as well, you know, that I was talking about the beginning, if ads were never gonna give you the result that you needed, and they are, they can be predictable, then knowing that up front is much more helpful.

Nicole Smith
It’s all about the numbers, isn’t it? I remember, you know, it’s you want to get this, we’ve got to look at this and this is what your expected spend is going to be and having someone to lay that out basically saying this isn’t going to be a viable option for you right now, maybe these are some techniques or ways of doing things that can lead you up to that if you want to try out in the future.

Sam Bright
Being ads ready is a big thing. And I think to people who think that ads, Facebook ads don’t work anymore, or you know, some of those opinions that I say floated around, that could be one of the reasons why they weren’t ads ready as a business or they weren’t prepared to put the time and money into the other pieces of the puzzle. So if you’re building lead gen, get collecting email addresses in response to, you know, giving a download, let’s say, then you have to have a nice tight email sequence to follow that. That’s got nothing to do with the ads, but it definitely will support it. Because we can be bringing you as many leads as we can but if you’re not nurturing that email or doing those other activities it’s kind of finort.

Nicole Smith
Yeah, that’s true. It’s funny, I just think about some of the things that I’ve created, and I neglect to talk about them. I don’t tell people about them very frequently, then I’m like, oh, why isn’t my email is growing? And I’m like, oh, that probably is because I’m not talking about the things so yeah. Realisation love it. I am, when you were talking about the two different camps, I’m kind of that person that’s, let’s trial it, test it, see how it goes, you know? And I know that that’s what I have done with ads and, yeah, well, we were successful in the campaign that we did, which was great, which gives me evidence that when I’m ready to do that again, and I’ve got another year or so under my belt of humans following me connecting engagement, all that things that it’s going to, again, be a different but positive experience.

Sam Bright
Running ads is also about buying data. And especially for a newer business, because it gives you some data points where you can say it costs me this amount of money to reach these people, it cost me this amount of money to get a result and this is the percentage of people who went on to do something. And so it gives you a little bit more confidence of knowing, like you said, when you’re ready to do that, again, that you’ve got some benchmarks to work with the platform does cost go up and down during the year depending on how many people are advertising, but it gives you a benchmark.

Nicole Smith
And it’s with any decision making. We had a fabulous human in my members lounge, Jason, who is all about data and decision making, and he did a session for us the other week. And, but you know, understanding your decision making ways of making decisions, words are not a thing today, Sam, as you can tell.

Sam Bright
I think we’re both on the same wavelength, because I’m feeling it too.

Nicole Smith
We’ll come back, we’ll come back in the center. So thanks for dealing with us today fabulous humans listening. Anyway, data in business, whatever you’re making decisions on, if it’s ads, if it’s what tech you’re going to buy, is it time to bring on a human to support you, either in the admin or with your client work. If you know the numbers, then it’s so much easier, isn’t it to make decisions.

Sam Bright
And that doesn’t discount, if I could just add my own personal view on this, that doesn’t discount, sometimes I’ll get a get a gut feel. And I’ll get a vibe that I have to do something like based on what I’m kind of, you know, feeling in the business, but I’ll go check the data for the final decision. So I’ll let the intuition guide sometimes the like, oh, I need to go and dig into that a bit further, because I’ve got a feeling that happened before. And then let the data prove me right or wrong and have the confidence in knowing like, okay, know, that says this. So I kind of use both of those strengths.

Nicole Smith
And I should have just listened to old mate gut at the start.

Sam Bright
I’m just gonna laugh at that. It’s so current and so relevant. It’s funny.

Nicole Smith
It’s yeah, I’m gonna just give ourselves a good old hug and a high five. Yep, you know, for next time potentially. But you know, you’re fabulous.

Just interrupting this episode for one little message. If you have been listening and love what you hear and want to come in and connect, we have a Take Control with Nicole Facebook community, right over there on Facebook, that I would love to invite you to come and join us. We are a supportive community. We are looking to really take action in our businesses and change the way or evolve the way we’re working right now. So I invite you to get home on over and join our community and connect with us all. Community is the essence of everything, your business, being able to really build those relationships that you can nurture, and grow and support and celebrate each other are how fabulous, I hope to see you over there. Pop on over to Facebook. Take Control with Nicole. See you soon.

I’d love to know, because I know you’ve had businesses for a while and very successful ones at that. What are your sort of tips and tricks if people are either starting a business or early days in a business, or I don’t know, even are about to create those things and not talk about it and plan and open doors soon, were like, do you have anything that’s kind of like just yelling out at you to share with us?

Sam Bright
God, I have done it the hard way, I’ve run I’ve started a business the hard way and I’ve started a business where I felt this one was easier. And the biggest one thing that stands out to me is, in my first business, I had to do everything myself. And whilst that taught me, I’m really grateful for the skills I learned. And it taught me so much, and helps me make good choices around providers and services. It took longer than it should have. So when I started this business, I surrounded myself with people who could help me and I paid them to do that, from the very first time I could. And it went fast. And I’m not saying I made the decision with right people, I’ve got some really crap business advice from people that I paid. And I’ve had some excellent advice, and probably everything in between, and you kind of move on, you know, as your business grows, you need someone who’s two steps ahead of you, rather than you kind of can outgrow some of these places that, you know, specialists as well. And I invested, you know, in getting people to build things and design things for me, just because I know how to create something I learned doesn’t mean I have to. And I know I that’s a really privileged way to say things because it’s like, I know what it’s like to be a business owner and go, but I don’t have the money to invest to help, you know, I can hear them yelling at the podcast speaker going, I don’t have that money to invest in someone to help me if I did, I wouldn’t need their help, because I’ve yelled that to podcasts myself. And all I can say is this time, I just went so conservative on everything so I had money to invest in people to help me because I knew if I knew what to do, I would find out the how and that was probably the biggest, single biggest change and our accountant, because we have an accountant for our group of companies that does tax planning, and he’s a genius, lovely guy. And he was looking at my numbers the other day, and he was like, do you know how much you spent on coaching this year? I was like, Yeah, did you see I’ve also doubled my revenue. And he was like, okay, Sam but did you see how much you spent on… yes, Craig, I’ve see. Thank you.

Nicole Smith
You made a really good point there. It’s it’s about surrounding yourself with the right people in the right moments of business as well. I know that, you know, will be gosh, three years in January since I started The Artisans, which is super exciting. But I’ve definitely seen iterations of the support and the humans that I’ve needed and sometimes I’ve got this whole thing of, but they’re lovely people, da da da. You don’t have to disconnect fully. But you just know who to listen to and retain and put into action.

Sam Bright
It’s so true. And if I could just digress for a minute, my youngest child is 18 so he finished school last year and he went straight into a law degree and was working for a law firm but after a couple of months, he said, mum I cannot do this for the next 10 years. This is not what I thought it was going to be like. And so you know, he’s had some time, he’s worked a casual job. He’s thinking about what he wants to do. And he’s thinking about being an apprentice Barber. And I was like, well, you know, we’ll talk about it. And he said, so do I choose someone local, a business to work in because it’s convenient or do I choose a business that I’m going to travel to? And I was like, dude, in my life, I’ve only ever taken advice from people who have what I want. And if they don’t have what I want, it’s really lovely that they share their experiences with me, but I’m not going to follow one piece of information they give me. And the next part of that is never get your eyebrows done by someone with bad eyebrows, right? It’s the same thing. So like, if you want a small, tiny suburban business, then go with the local one. If you want a business that you could potentially have multi sites and have products and training, then go find a business that’s doing that. And that’s the advice, I’ve given it to my own kid.

Nicole Smith
It’s so important to like, absorb that information as well, because I think especially in the business world, and the online business, online, there’s a lot of loud voices on this online space but that doesn’t mean they have what I want. That’s it, you know, and or if it’s actually transparent, either, you know, that’s the thing. It’s like, I am a fabulous human, I’m like, you probably are, but what does your business actually look like, behind the curtains? That’s what we need to know. Right? You know, business is exciting and fun, but challenging? And, you know, just be real, be a real human.

Sam Bright
That would be my, that was a very long answer to what advice I would give people who are looking at starting or just starting out.

Nicole Smith
Yeah, I love it. Very, very solid advice. I think that’s going to be the quote. I love it. Amazing, amazing. Anything else you’d like to share with us about business, ads, humans?

Sam Bright
I think to one of the talking points were touching on earlier about, I only listened to people over the life that I want and things like that. Just to go back into that point is that having people who have like looking for people who have what you want doesn’t always mean scaling to seven figures and spending a million dollars on ads and moving into this space, if it doesn’t feel like it’s for you. And so I talked about, you know, ads need to align with a business goal. And I think that’s kind of overarching, you know, spending on advertising needs to match with your goals. And your goals need to match with where you’re comfortable at. So whether it’s ads or you know, any other part of your business, it’s got to come back to what you want, and what feels comfortable for you. And as the outcome you’re looking for not some Instagram worthy ideal that were sold in this space. And so asking a few questions when you’re hot. Like if you’re looking at ads, asking questions, what is a predictable outcome for this? Or, you know, what can I get for what I’m spending? And how will you manage these kinds of things? And just making sure all those details add up to what, what you want?

Nicole Smith
Yeah, I talk about building big, but that big, looks different for everyody and embrace that, you know, we’re all at different stages of life as well, you know, I’ve got two young kids. So what does bigger look for me now versus big in a few years time? It might be completely different having people like you to help guide with those answers of those questions, you know, is Is this the right path for us right now? Because it can feel it can be easy just to be caught up in this stuff and think I just need to run ads, or I just need to hire a VA or I just need to, you know, this coach is on here telling me that I should write a book and it’s not one size fits all. And life is busy enough as it is, without trying to do all the things you know, be selective, whether you invest your energy and time, you know, and then you’ll discover where you actually want to be as well.

Sam Bright
Definitely and know exactly what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.

Nicole Smith
Fabulous, Sam. Well, unless you’ve got any pearls of wisdom to share us.

Sam Bright
Well, I think I’ve you know, I think I’ve met the quota.

Nicole Smith
Drop them, drop them. I love it. No, it’s just been fabulous. And you know, having having a chat with you because I’ve obviously been a part of your business journey and it’s just been a grow path. It’s just been wonderful though to a your brand is just amazing. So if you’re listening and you’re like, what is Nicole talking about? Pop on over to Instagram, we’re going to share your handles and things in a minute and I’ll put them in the show notes just go over and have a look because they just makes me smile every time I see your Instagram.

Sam Bright
That’s all good humans. Excellent branding designer, a great website designer, you know, people who could translate what I had in my head into like manifested into a theme. And just like what you did with my ClickUp, you talk my mess of my brain god, I’m embarrassed about those early conversations we had but you took the mess out of my brain and built it into something that is now business supports five people so you know if this is going back to the good humans points, yeah. Surround yourself with just good old humans and seems beautiful.

Nicole Smith
Well, I think we may have answered your first question, but are you ready for the three questions that we got? Okay, what is your go to app that creates ease in your day? Yeah, you answered already.

Sam Bright
Got to be ClickUp. I have posted videos of Dolly Parton singing, I will always love you and dedicated it to ClickUp.

Nicole Smith
Yes, absolutely it is. Don’t be swayed from this opinion. Love, it. It’s just whenever everyone’s like which project management tool should be used? I’m like, well, there are lots of choices. But do you know about ClickUp? Oh, again, this might have already answered the question. Are you online, paper or hybrid to do lists lover?

Sam Bright
Well, I try and be super disciplined. Because clickup is our Bible in the business. It’s the one source of truth. If it’s not in, click up, it’s not going to happen or didn’t. Yeah. And but if you looked in my office right now, on the floor, there are bits of paper with scribble. And so I’m just gonna say it’s part of my artistic process. Yeah, I love it. Creativity, creativity and business. Something I talk about all the time, there is this beautiful alignment with it, creativity can mean all sorts of things. But what I do I feel is a creative process what you do as well as a creative process, it’s bringing in all the all the parts and weaving them together to make the thing. And however you can get that creativity out is the perfect way to do it. Yeah, so it’s just moving from a solopreneur into someone with a team, it just doesn’t work when it exists in your head or on a piece of paper on the floor. The next part of that is it needs to be put somewhere that can be easily shared and understood. So everyone can see your vision, not just the dogs that are asleep next to the piece of paper on the floor.

Nicole Smith
I love it. Creativity, creativity and business. Something I talk about all the time, there is this beautiful alignment with it, creativity can mean all sorts of things. But what I do I feel is, a creative process what you do as well as a creative process, it’s bringing in all the parts and weaving them together to make the thing. And however you can get that creativity out is the perfect way to do it.

Sam Bright
Yeah, so it’s just moving from a solopreneur into someone with a team, it just doesn’t work when it exists in your head or on a piece of paper on the floor. The next part of that is it needs to be put somewhere that can be easily shared and understood. So everyone can see your vision, not just the dogs that are asleep next to the piece of paper on the floor.

Nicole Smith
I saw on your stories, just before you had the two pups. If I looked down over them at my desk, I don’t know if you know I’ve got a dog, you might have seen him on socials, Emmett the Groodle he’s nine months. He’s beautiful, but he’s a lot.

Sam Bright
Puppies are like babies.

Nicole Smith
Yeah, it’s beautiful. A great advice there with the team as well like that transition between just you as a solo human. And in those early days, when you are you have a little bit more capacity on, you know, in your world. That’s a great time to start building those foundations.

Sam Bright
Oh, my, I’m so glad I got you in when I did it. This is one of those intuitive things like I’m gonna need this and, you know, it’s an investment in your business. And you know, you could justify all the reasons not to do it but then what came the year after you build that, I don’t know how many times I’ve gone god, I’m glad I did that. Because there’s no way I would be able to do this now.

Nicole Smith
Singing inside, makes me so happy. That’s just like, amazing. Okay. Oh, what would you do if you created more space in your world?

Sam Bright
So this is a really good question. So I’m going to try and answer it briefly. But I’ve decided to be 100% transparent, I love that creating space in my world is no longer a wishlist item. Because based on my past experience, I have experienced burnout twice. I made myself mentally unwell, and I made myself physically unwell and I still have those hangovers of the physical burnout today, and I haven’t been in the finance space now for four years. So there’s no badge of honour to push yourself past where you you can physically go when you’re working. And I think there’s a little bit of maturity, you know, I’m 47 now, and I think a little bit of that has come into play. And I now know myself enough to say the quality of work, if I push past this point is going to suffer, the communications with my clients are going to suffer, and I am going to physically suffer. So creating space in my world, the amount of hours I work per week, someone else would look at and think that I’m not productive enough. But I think I’m winning, because I can do all this and not have to work 100 hours a week to do it. And so creating space is essential for well being because I will not be able to operate at the level I’m operating at if I don’t have some space. And so I don’t know if I’ve interpreted that question correctly, but I’m just like, creating space is essential, and that’s thinking space, but sometimes I just have to sit back and go, Why is this not hitting where I want and I need to physically walk around the backyard and talk to my chickens and then come back and do it and when you’re out over capacity, you don’t have that space. So that’s why the work product suffers because you’re moving from task to task instead of serving at that highest level that you could for your client. So basically, my business is essential. It says it’s as valuable to me as revenue.

Nicole Smith
Yeah. I love that. That’s just so beautiful to hear and to be able to share that and other people hear this and see that it’s possible. Because I know especially when you first start, you feel that you’ve got to over deliver, over service, give, give, give, do, do work all the hours. I don’t know if you’ve felt it this year, but this year in particular, has just felt like everyone’s been pushing, pushing, pushing.

Sam Bright
Absolutely. It was just a couple of months ago, it was like almost at peak and I, you know, had a poopoo moment it went, that’s it. Shut everything.

Nicole Smith
For people who know me, in my personal world, I was the human that was, things are in the diary and they’re organised and they’re planned and they’re, like, months, you know. And over the last month or so, I’ve just had this epiphany of what’s the worst that can happen? If it was not planned, like, had my daughter’s birthday and my birthday, and I literally was organising things like the day the week of, you know, just chuck it in and see what happens and both of them were beautiful. And what actually was the most fabulous experience is that I was so present and enjoying, there was no worries, like, you know, can I bring this chair in? Knock your socks off, I don’t mind what happens just like, let go and enjoy and I think that is the the key of all of this is creating a world, a business, a life that you can actually be present in and enjoy.

Sam Bright
This is my life and I have this business. And so it’s not about just getting through my tasks to the end of the day. It’s actually like living my life whilst I’m running a business and, you know, in this online world is there’s this whole, like, you know, get up at 4am and do this and do that and do 3000 client calls before 9am. And, and I just sit back and go, I mean, if you can do that, good on you. That’s amazing. If I was to do that, I wouldn’t have a business for much longer, because, you know, I’d be checking out as I’d be burnt out again. My adrenals I think they’ve just get so many hours out of them in your life.

Nicole Smith
Amazing. Oh, thank you very much for sharing that. It was a beautiful moment to share and so valid for where I am as well writing my shift and journey of discovery that I’ve been doing over the last six months. So thank you. Well, Sam, where can they find you? Because they need you in everyone’s world.

Sam Bright
Ads for Breakfast is where you can find me because I eat them for breakfast.

adsforbreakfast.com.au and so everything is all there. And you can follow me on Instagram is probably where all the action happens. Or well, let’s just say where someone asked me about my social media strategy the other day and I said whatever I want, whenever I feel like posting. But I think that’s where the authenticity comes from. So come and check out everything over there and yeah, the branding. I have to give her a shout out by the awesome Laura from the Design Room. She’s done two brands for me now she’s about to do a third.

Nicole Smith
I’ll be keeping my eyes posted for that one. How fun. That’s exciting. Awesome. Well go over say hi. Connect. All the details, as always will be in the show notes. Thank you so much. It’s been a long overdue conversation. It’s been just so beautiful to catch up and see how you’re going.

Sam Bright
Thank you for having me on.

Well, everybody who’s out there listening I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day and enjoy creating space and time freedom bye now. Well, there we go.
Thank you so much for joining me today. It’s been such a pleasure having you on board. Have we connected on social jazz? If not, please come on over. Say hi, I’m on all the platforms at the artisan solutions. So I’d really look forward to seeing you over there. And if you enjoy today’s episode, don’t forget to tag me and I’d love it if you could leave a review. And of course, share this with others so others can come and join us next time. All right, that everyone have a fabulous rest of the week and until next time, see you then.