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This is a show for burnt-out fashion designers (and TDs, PDs, patternmakers and beyond) who want more flexibility while still doing work they love. As a freelance fashion designer, you can build your fashion career on your own terms. Freelancing in fashion is the only way to get freedom in your day (instead of being tied to a desk). Whether you want to earn extra money on the side, fund your fashion brand, or replace your salary, the FDGP podcast will help you get there. Listen in for actionable tips and strategies to kickstart or grow your career as a freelance fashion designer, build your confidence, and create the life you want. Hosted by $100k+ fashion freelancer Sew Heidi, the show features interviews and strategy sessions with successful freelance fashion designers from around the world who've ditched toxic fashion jobs and taken control of their own destinies. This is the only place to get REAL insights from REAL freelancers who have built REAL careers on their own terms. (Formerly the Successful Fashion Freelancer podcast.)
Heidi [00:00:00]:
We have a really special episode for you guys today. 1 of my students, Courtney Osborne, reached out to me and said, Heidi, can I interview you for the podcast? There's so many questions I would like to ask. So I said, sure. We talked to her so long, we split it into 2 episodes. This is part 1 of Courtney interviewing me. Here's her intro for the show.
Courtney Osborn [00:00:18]:
You guys are in for a treat. It hit me one morning that Heidi's listeners might enjoy learning more about her and hearing all about how she's built her business and how her mind works. We dive deep into her freelance experience, her trials that she created fast, and a bit about her mental space through it all. Just a disclaimer, there is some of the language in this episode, so we don't recommend listening where little ears may hear. Hi. Leo, hi. Were you thrown off when I was like, what if I interview you?
Heidi [00:00:49]:
Oddly, I wasn't thrown off. I wasn't sure what your big idea was gonna be, but your ideas don't throw me off anymore. And I'm so open to them. I loved this idea.
Courtney Osborn [00:00:59]:
I love that you aren't thrown off by me anymore. That's like a weird compliment.
Heidi [00:01:08]:
Yeah. It's funny. I also you were like, oh, and if you you don't have to say certain things, if you wanna, like, keep trade secrets. I'm like, I don't keep secrets. Like, I'm such it's like, blah, all the words. So, yeah, I don't have any secrets to keep.
Courtney Osborn [00:01:24]:
Yeah. When I said that, I was like, she's not gonna keep anything close to the chest, but I'm gonna say it anyways just in case, you know.
Heidi [00:01:29]:
Ask me the hard questions. Oh, and I
Courtney Osborn [00:01:33]:
I crowd sourced a little bit in, like, the 3 hours in between.
Heidi [00:01:37]:
Oh, my. Oh, my. You reached out to other fast folks and Yeah. Wow. Oh, I love that you did that. Oh, I all of a sudden just like, oh, okay. Pressure's on. Let's do this.
Courtney Osborn [00:01:52]:
So there are a few little silly ones in here, but and you'll know when they come up. But Okay. Okay. So to get started Yeah. I think most of your regular listeners obviously know at least a little bit about you, but let's start off with introducing yourself and get as personal as you feel comfortable with.
Heidi [00:02:09]:
Yeah. My name is Heidi. I go by So Heidi as many of, you guys might know. And my long story short in fashion was I I didn't go, to fashion school or anything like that because I always saw it as, like, trying to become a Hollywood actress. And it was, like, just something that, like, normal people don't do. And I came from a very business minded family. My dad was a business owner. He's retired now, but he's an entrepreneur and a business owner.
Heidi [00:02:36]:
And I I learned the basics of, like, how to run a machine, like, how to put thread in and, like, sew a stitch. In in high school, that was pretty much it. My mom taught me that. So I went to the University of Denver. I studied, marketing, Spanish, and graphic design. And for my senior thesis, I created a fashion collection because I was like, well, I can along with that, I can do a marketing plan so that, like, fulfill my marketing degree. I can do all the graphic design for it. I do the label and the logos and the hang tags and brochures and flyers and stuff.
Heidi [00:03:13]:
And so that was sort of the graphic design component. And then the exciting component for me was the fashion part of it. And then I graduated, and I did this whole collection for my thesis, and then I got a job as a receptionist. Womp womp. Which was so out of character, and I look back on that, and I'm like, I I still don't know what happened at that point in time in my life. I've always been a super go getter, super overachiever, like, type a. I mean, I got an academic scholarship for college. I graduated from college with honors, like, all these things, and then I got this job as a receptionist.
Heidi [00:03:46]:
And I don't know if it's some weird comfort zone thing or something. But, anyways, I was stuck at that job for how long did I stay there? I don't know. Like, a year and a half or something. And I just kept sewing in the background and sewing and sewing and sewing, and I started doing, like, events and fairs and, like, selling my stuff. And, they were all doing very poorly. I sold, like, nothing at least. Like, I was setting up the booths at, like, farmers markets and, like, you know, I was living in Denver and it was, like, what is this? And then I finally found this event. It's called Fashion Denver, and I got a booth there.
Heidi [00:04:21]:
And in one weekend, I sold a ton of stuff and it made $2,000. And I was, like, oh, wait. Maybe I can do this. That was a huge turning point. I very responsibly quit my job because I made 2 grand. And, was like, I'm gonna do this fashion brand thing full time that fast forward that I was, like, getting really burnt out. It went fairly well. Like, in my 2nd year, I did over $40,000 in revenue.
Heidi [00:04:51]:
I was doing wholesale trade shows. I wound up having, like, a little jewelry and accessory line, and I had these girls, like, making the stuff for me, and I was selling wholesale to my biggest point I was in over 50 retailers. Some international, mostly in the states, but some international. And it was just a grind and a half, and I was like, I'm not designing. I'm not doing anything fun. Like, it's all business. It's all customer service. It's all packing and shipping and selling and selling and selling and selling.
Heidi [00:05:23]:
Like, the trade shows, you, like, schlep your stuff and you set up your booth and you get fucking sweaty and you sell for, like it's so much like selling and schmoozing and FaceTime and, I was a very different person then than I am now. I was a little bit more, like, introverted. I didn't have a stick of a skin. I didn't have as much confidence. Anyways, I was like, what am I doing? This is awful. I wound up randomly applying for this fashion design job that I found on Craigslist because, yes, this is back in 2007. And I got this job, and the reason they hired me was because they had seen all the stuff I had done with my own brand, and they saw that, like, I had an eye for fashion, but mainly was because I had graphic design skills or sorry. I had ill share skills from my graphic design thing.
Heidi [00:06:14]:
This is not a short version of my story either. Wow.
Courtney Osborn [00:06:16]:
I did not prefer a person.
Heidi [00:06:18]:
You're good. I'm enjoying it.
Courtney Osborn [00:06:19]:
People are gonna love it.
Heidi [00:06:20]:
So I got my first job because I was savvy on the computer. And that job taught me, like, everything I actually like, everything I it taught me all of the things about, like, how fashion is made in mass production and made at a factory overseas. Like, tech packs and lab dips and protos and fittings and all that type of thing, and line sheets and all that stuff. And so it was a great experience because I like dove in head first. I knew nothing. I didn't know what his tech pack was or anything, but they hired me. They're like, oh, you can just sketch all this stuff in Illustrator, and I sketch all this stuff. And then slowly, I think they definitely saw my drive, and my ambition and my work ethic, and they just kept giving me more and I was learning a lot.
Heidi [00:07:05]:
And then the financial crisis hit in 2008. It was a company of, like, 200 people and all of a sudden overnight was down to, like, 50. I was one of the, air quote, lucky people who was standing. And overnight, I, like, inherited the job. It was like 4 people and All that happened? Yeah. I think we all experienced that on some level. Or during COVID, I know people experience that. And it was awful.
Heidi [00:07:33]:
Even before the the the financial crisis, it was awful. It was a very toxic workplace. The owner was very stingy, extremely stingy. You know, she, like, drove her fancy car, and she would go out to her martini lunches and do all the things and super swanky. And, like, I was paid pennies. I made, like, 22,000 a year, and I worked, like, 60, 70 hour weeks. And I was promised a raise, and I never got. And it was just it was really, I learned a time, but it was also one of those jobs where I was, like, full anxiety all the time.
Heidi [00:08:10]:
So one day, I just up and quit without a plan. I was like, I'm gonna go do some freelancing and find clients. And, you know, I, like, reached out to my small network, which included, like, a couple of factories and not a ton of people. I mean, it was a small brand in Denver, Colorado. It just didn't know that many people. And for the 1st year, I literally made $0. I look back on it, and I'm like, I think I was oddly not, like, panically stressed. I'm not sure how.
Heidi [00:08:43]:
And then things started picking up, and I built and I built and I built and I built a really solid freelance career. And then in 2013, I started teaching in person workshops for how to use Adobe Illustrator for fashion. And then in 2016, I took those online, and then those are doing really well. And then I introduced a bunch of more courses. And then fast forward to 2019 was when I officially stopped freelancing and went exclusively into successful fashion designer and doing the online business.
Courtney Osborn [00:09:18]:
So you are no longer freelancing at all? Mhmm. Do you ever wanna do a tech back again?
Heidi [00:09:23]:
Fuck. No. No. It's odd. Like, I look back at my time freelancing and I it was great. It was great. I had so much freedom and so much flexibility and I made really good money. I made upwards of 6 figures.
Heidi [00:09:38]:
And it worked comfortable hours, and I worked, you know, clients were good and stuff, but I it's funny. I was just commenting, on a podcast interview I did yesterday where I was interviewing somebody. And she was talking about how, you know, having your own business where you have a team and, like, of this caliber as opposed to being an individual freelancer is such a different ball of wax. There's so much more complexity. There's so many more moving pieces and parts. There's so much more liability. There's so much more pressure. And sometimes you're making less money.
Heidi [00:10:10]:
Like, there's years I've made less money in this business than I did as a freelancer. But I still would never give it up and I would never go back to freelancing. And it's interesting because it's almost like and this is at least for me. Even though my business is so much more complicated now, so much more liability, so much more overhead, more pressure. I have people that I have to pay on a regular basis. And at the end of the day, sometimes I'm not even taking home as much money. I like this. So it's like when you're working in a job, you're you're an employee.
Heidi [00:10:44]:
Right? And you're completely controlled by your employer. And then as a freelancer, you have a lot more freedom, but you still have air quote, like, all these little bosses. Right? These clients that you answer to. And, it's great. It's a it's a huge contrast to being an employee, but there's still this there still can feel like this dynamic of, like, you're answering to somebody else. And in my business now, I do not answer to anybody. Literally nobody. Well, disclaimer.
Heidi [00:11:15]:
I did just start doing brand partnerships, which in an interesting way is kind of like freelancing. Like, I have a client, and I have to answer them and stuff. And, it's it's been awesome, and I love it. And it's been a great way to diversify our income and revenue streams. But, I I like the absolute control that I have in this business. Outside the brand partnerships with the online business itself, with our courses, with our launches, with our events, with anything, like, I get a 100% control and I am very much a control freak. So it works real well. Yeah.
Heidi [00:11:56]:
I think it I have no desire to ever go back and do a tech pack or do a design or do anything on that level. Like, negative desire, actually.
Courtney Osborn [00:12:07]:
Well, I can definitely see just through, like, that story arc of, like, how much you have taken your history into what you do now. I mean, you live what you lived what you teach now.
Heidi [00:12:19]:
Mhmm.
Courtney Osborn [00:12:19]:
So, like, you it's proven. It's a proven concept. Mhmm. Yeah. It is. Yeah. I don't think as many people might fully realize that about you. Like, yes, you have people that you coach that, you know, have proven that your approach works, but, like, you also did it a 100%.
Heidi [00:12:39]:
Yeah. I did. It's interesting, though. Like, I continue to get savvier with marketing strategies for freelancing. Right? And, like, things and times change. Right? Like, there are strategies that I teach now that I wasn't using. Like, we're it's 2024 right now. Mhmm.
Heidi [00:13:02]:
So I left freelancing 5 years ago. And so arguably 10 years ago, let's say when I was in the middle of my freelance career or even 7, 8 years ago, whatever. Like their strategies I teach now that I definitely was never used in my freelance career because I didn't know any better. They maybe they tools didn't exist. I just wasn't as savvy. So, it's interesting because as a whole, yes, I did the thing that I teach, but it's also different now. So I'm very conscious to and I think that teaching in inside fast track turbo where I do hands on work, I'm also I follow a lot of other freelancers. I listen to various podcasts, outside of fashion on freelance strategy, and I'm always kinda staying up to date on, like, pricing.
Heidi [00:13:53]:
And it's to me, it's all it's all business stuff. And I what I realized in the long run is that I love business. I actually don't I don't love creative stuff nearly as much as I love business and marketing and sales and strategy and customer psychology. Like, that stuff is so fascinating to me and there and so I do still stay up to speed on all of that stuff. A lot of the strategies too, like, crossover stuff I do in the online business even though it's not freelancing, like, there's ways you cross that over into freelancing. It's not super black and white. There's a lot of gray area. Yeah.
Courtney Osborn [00:14:34]:
I can see that too. It's Yeah. I feel like you and I share a lot of, like, similar thought processes and, like, nerd out on a lot of the same things, and I really enjoy, like, just going back and forth with you sometimes about those things. But you just said something that made me think about one of my questions, and it was let me find it. I know you're, like, a really business kind of person. You already said that. Mhmm. And like how many different spinning plates do you typically have going at any given time?
Heidi [00:15:06]:
That's a great question, and it's changed a lot over the years. So, shall I tell you what I have spinning this month?
Courtney Osborn [00:15:15]:
Yeah. Let's hear it.
Heidi [00:15:16]:
It's a fuck ton. Let's see. We had our biggest launch event last week ever. We had 250 people come live, and I presented for essentially 8 hours in one way or another, which are 2 very exhausting days. We're currently testing a lot of stuff with our launch offer and trying to test ads through. So at this point in time, we are launching every single month. So I have another launch coming up at the end of this month. We won't promote it heavily to the email list or anything like that.
Heidi [00:15:45]:
It's exclusively, like, pushing through ads and trying to get cold traffic. And then I'll launch again in July. So we're launching every month right now, which is pretty exhausting. That entails a lot of creative, for the ads themselves. So so we're testing and we're pumping out a ton of different video styles for the ads and, different scripts and different things that we're testing in the actual creative. So I'm filming and editing the well, I'm not doing the editing. I have a small editing team, but, like, filming all these different creative and these different scripts and then testing and see, like, what works on an ad level. Also, I'm getting back on the YouTube train.
Heidi [00:16:27]:
So I've hired a team to, right. So, basically, we're taking all of our blog content and converting that into YouTube videos. So I have a team that's converting the content into YouTube scripts and then I film them. So tomorrow I'm filming 4 YouTube videos. So spinning that and then the goal is starting we'll get those published, I think starting in July and then going forward, we're gonna publish once a week. So once a month, I'll sit down and and film 4 videos. But outside of that, it's kind of out of my hands. The script writer does the writing, I give feedback and then I film and then I hand the files over and then they edit, they do the thumbnail, they do the title, like, they publish it.
Heidi [00:17:05]:
Like, files over, and then they edit. They do this thumbnail. They do the title. Like, they publish it. Like, it's pretty much I'm just proofing the script and doing the recording. Also in the middle of 2 brand partnerships right now. 1 is a market research, partnership. So we're helping them get insights from our audience that they need for their specific tool.
Heidi [00:17:28]:
Another one that already went live was with Newark. It's my second partnership with them. We just did a YouTube video, and we're also pushing content out on YouTube, shorts, as well as Instagram, as well as the email list. So that's up in the air right now. Recording podcast. This is my podcast week. I try to batch them in 1 week out of every quarter. This happens to be the week, so doing a bunch of podcast episodes this week.
Heidi [00:17:53]:
Content. We I have a content writer. She's actually in fashion as well. She's not trained as a writer. She's in fashion, which I felt was more important to hire someone in fashion than someone who's actually a writer. And we currently publish 4 blog 1 blog post a week. No. That's a lie.
Heidi [00:18:12]:
Hold on. Full. 3 blog posts a week. Let me rewind that. Yeah. Quite a bit. So she comes up with the topics and the ideas and does the keyword research, which I've taught her how to do a lot of that. I proof all of that.
Heidi [00:18:23]:
That's on a weekly basis. So on a weekly basis, she's, like, running new article ideas by me. I'm saying this looks good. This doesn't look good feedback, then she writes the content. We do use an AI tool to help us with the base, and then we do heavy, heavy editing. Sometimes I post on LinkedIn, and we use the con the comments on LinkedIn to create pieces of content. But she does all of that, and then she sends me the final articles for review, and then most of them are quite good. Sometimes I do some heavy editing and then back to her back and forth.
Heidi [00:18:57]:
And so that's going on a weekly basis regularly, me proofing, and then then she sends those to someone else on my team who does the graphics, and then those get published. Shall I just open my Asana? Because I'm sure there's something that I forgot. Oh, yeah. Right. Running fast track turbo, and wrapping up the last round of fast track because I was working with some folks in fast track, and now we have that completely outsourced to a different coach, Allison. We have 3 new people starting turbo, so doing check ins, hands on check ins with students every Tuesday. Just finished doing that right before you and I hit record. So that's always floating.
Heidi [00:19:42]:
And then posting on LinkedIn every day. So I try to batch those every 2 weeks and, like, sit down and write. Although, I'm behind. I haven't posted yet today, and it's 12:30, which is very behind. I usually post at 6 AM every day. So that's okay. I'm letting myself be okay with that. Yeah.
Heidi [00:20:10]:
And then outside of launch events, which like I said, we do them essentially quarterly to the whole list, and then we're doing them monthly with ads. I do maintain a Tuesday email to my list every week. And I used to batch those, like, a month or 6 weeks in advance, and I started to feel like they didn't feel that authentic and they didn't feel that like, I didn't like the way they were feeling. And so I do try to write those in real time. Like, I try to write the email the Wednesday or Thursday before, and I try to make it something a little bit more topical or something more real time. Maybe, like, a story from my life that kind of parlays into freelancing or something like that or something that's actually going on. So that's another ongoing thing. So there's a lot.
Heidi [00:21:04]:
I feel overwhelmed just telling you all that, to be honest.
Courtney Osborn [00:21:09]:
Do you feel like Superwoman sometimes?
Heidi [00:21:13]:
No. Because what I've learned about myself over the last 5 years so I'm 42, and it wasn't until my late thirties that I about myself. But my zone of genius is getting shit done. I'm like, my superpower is, like, fucking crossing off that to do list and and getting stuff done. In conjunction with that, I've also done getting stuff done. In conjunction with that, I've also discovered that my zone of genius is, like, content. So writing per like and I know, like, I've got the writer our our writer who does the blog. But, like, writing the emails every week and writing the LinkedIn posts and, even proofing and and working with my writer to to do those 3 blog posts a week and and filming these videos for YouTube on a monthly basis now and, like, creating content is is a strength of mine.
Heidi [00:22:19]:
I don't it wasn't always. It's something I've built up a muscle and I've done a lot, but I can bust some of it out pretty quickly. So I think it's, you know, a little bit, like, leaning into what you're good at, what you really love too. That's the other thing. Like, I love I'm obsessed with my business. And I it never never feels like work. So Amazing. Yeah.
Heidi [00:22:53]:
Thank you. I get a lot done, but I also feel like I'm operating in my zone of genius and in my zone of excitement. I just love it so much. So yeah.
Courtney Osborn [00:23:06]:
There's so many things that you said that, like, I have, like, topics and questions on, but I'm gonna stick to this one. You told a story once, about how you kind of just, like, face your fears or, like, your where you see, like, weaknesses or opportunities head on, and you told the story about how you and your husband used to do YouTube videos. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Heidi [00:23:26]:
Oh. Oh. Yeah. I can. I have since, Oh, gosh. Some of them are actually, let me write. Most of them are so bad. So I this is back in probably 2017 ish.
Heidi [00:23:44]:
We had just we moved we were living in Denver. We had lived in New York City for 3 years, and I remember this I can I remember the conversation with my husband, and we were at our Denver house? So that's why I'm, like, maybe around that time. And I was giving a webinar, and I was fairly new to webinars. And, I was in the webinar presenting, like, some Adobe Illustrator stuff, and someone, like, asked this question in the chat, and it threw me really off. Like like, it just threw me really off. I I can't remember the context of the question or something, but it was, like, a question I wasn't expecting or I didn't know how to answer. And maybe maybe it was, like, a little confrontational or something. Not in that they were being mean, but there's that they were asking me a hard question.
Heidi [00:24:28]:
And I remember I was like, ugh. I literally, like, froze in this live event, and I made it through, but, like, through sheer panic. I mean, my whole body was like right? And so I finished that webinar, and I was commenting to my husband. I was like, and he goes, you need to you need to be better on the fly. Like, if you're gonna be giving these live trainings, you need to get better at, like, winging it on the fly. And so he had this idea that we would go live on YouTube every Monday night, and we brainstormed this, of course. We called it cooking digital fashion. And the reason so it was cooking digital fashion because it was on Monday nights, and we would usually do it, like, while we were we we the idea was to make it we wanted to feel very casual, like, happy hour or, like, just to hang out with friends.
Heidi [00:25:28]:
We didn't want it to feel, like, structured Heidi teaching at the begin at the front of this at the on the podium or something. Right? And so we thought, let's do it over drinks and maybe, like, light appetizers and maybe we can, like, cook and just talk and have it be really casual. So we, like, set up these camp and then digital fashion because I was it was mostly around illustrator and, like, tech packs and that kind of thing. And this is before I was teaching freelancing. And so, his idea behind it was, like, you just need to practice. Like, you need to practice being live on camera a lot. And then, when you go live on YouTube, there's chat and people can comment and stuff. And so it's like a way for me to practice, like, fielding random questions.
Heidi [00:26:12]:
And so we did these videos. This was before I had a son, and so, you know, it was a lot easier to fit into life. And we did them for I'd have to look back maybe, like, 6 months, maybe even a year. I don't know if we do it that long. Every Monday night went live, and I got a lot better. It was an amazing way to practice. I look back and some of them were super cringeworthy, but that's okay. People came.
Heidi [00:26:44]:
I was always so worried. I was like, oh my gosh. What if nobody comes? But, you know, I think at at any given time, there were at least maybe 5 to 10 people in the room. So there's always, like, a little crowd. And I did my best to promote them, but also, like, not bug my email list of, like, every Monday. Hey, guys. I'm live. I'm live.
Heidi [00:27:01]:
I'm live. Right? And this was, you know, must have been before, like, Instagram lives and that sort of thing. Right? And so, yeah, we I I just I got good. It was it was a muscle that was really weak, and I recognized that during that moment of panic in that webinar. And so he really pushed I didn't wanna do it. I had a tremendous amount of resistance. I was like, oh, he's fired. He's really good at pushing me, across my boundaries and making he knows.
Heidi [00:27:30]:
He I mean, we've been together for over 20 years, and he knows as soon as he says something that is, like, making me uncomfortable, he can, like, read it in my body. And he's like, oh, okay. We gotta work on this.
Courtney Osborn [00:27:45]:
That was I love that you have that. That is beautiful.
Heidi [00:27:48]:
Yeah.
Courtney Osborn [00:27:48]:
And I love that you have that support system that is, like, helping you grow and pushing you. And Yeah. Not everyone has that. That's pretty great.
Heidi [00:27:55]:
Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. It's it's I feel very lucky too.
Courtney Osborn [00:27:59]:
Do you have other people in your circle and, like, your support system that really help push you or, like, lift you up or or any of those things?
Heidi [00:28:08]:
Mhmm. Yeah. My husband is for sure one. My dad and mom are really big ones. My dad was an entrepreneur himself and, I mean, he was in a very different business than than what I do. But, he I've I've I've called him at 7 AM, snot nosed, ugly face crying.
Courtney Osborn [00:28:31]:
Nobody bought. The lunch
Heidi [00:28:34]:
is going so bad. You know, and and he is just the best. And my mom is, like, my biggest cheerleader ever. Outside of that, I I have some business friends that are, like, paramount support, who also run online businesses, and they know like, they understand the nuances and how many moving pieces and parts go into a launch. It's insane behind the scenes. And they're great just to, again, support network, helping you when you feel like things are getting really hard, bouncing ideas off of, getting inspiration, things they do that, like, oh, that works really well. Like, okay, interesting. I wonder how we could try that in our business.
Heidi [00:29:28]:
Britney who's she's, like, literally half of my being in the business, and I, we have a meeting every Monday, and it's scheduled for 30 minutes. And I'm like, we and and I I it always goes for, like, an hour, hour and a half, and I'm like, we should just schedule this longer. But, I'm like, convinced we can do it in 30 minutes, and and we get through those calls. And she's really good, person to bounce off of, and and she has no background in fashion nor background in online business, but I joke to her that sometimes she's like my business therapist. And then another woman on my team, Stacy, who has a tremendous background in online business and ads and selling and stuff. And, she helps keep me level headed. She helps me fight off panic moments. I still have panic moments for sure.
Heidi [00:30:26]:
I still have, you know, meltdowns. I still have moments where I literally, like, my body is overcome with the emotion of, like, shut it all down. This fucking sucks. Nobody wants what I have to sell. Why am I doing this? What is the point? Nobody cares. I'll just go find a job. Those moments are fewer and farther in between as time goes on, and they their duration is much shorter. Like, I I I in the earlier days of my online business, I might feel like that for, like, 2 or 3 days.
Heidi [00:31:09]:
And now if something goes poorly, I'm over it within a couple hours. You know? It definitely takes over me, and I'm like, all the feels, here they are. And then I can get myself grounded and it's I think, again, it's a muscle I've built up to, like, any of these solo ventures, whether it's, a freelance business, whether it's running an online business like I do in selling courses, anything you do on your own, your fashion a fashion brand, the amount of roller coaster moments is is nonstop. The highs are really, really high. We just had a great launch last week. We had some fails. Some stuff did not go very well. Some stuff went really well.
Heidi [00:31:56]:
Revenue wise, we we did really well. We didn't quite hit our stretch goal, but we did really well. And that feels amazing, but then the lows can also feel really low. And, I did also work with a therapist for a year who, she specializes in working with online business owners and course creators. And she understands the launch model, and she understands, like, there's this this roller coaster of of revenue as well. Right? You launch and, like, you get all these sales and this money, and then it you go down and or if the launch doesn't go very well. Right? It's, it's not this, like, stable business model necessarily. And we do have things built into our business that are a little bit more stable stable revenue generators, but it's a serious roller coaster.
Heidi [00:32:42]:
So I worked with her for a year. It was very expensive. It was $250 an hour, and I met with her 1 hour every week. So it's a $1,000 a month. But it I really she helped me, like, one of the things that I didn't love, about the emotional side of my business was well, it was actually that. It was how emotionally attached I was to the business, and how much these ups and downs in the business affected my emotions. Like, how the highs did make me feel really happy and, like, really joyous. But then the lows also made me feel, like, really low, and I was like, I would like to work on detaching my emotions a little bit more from the outcome.
Heidi [00:33:28]:
And I don't think I'll ever fully be detached. I think that's impossible. And I I would argue, and I've had this conversation with another business friend of mine. I would argue that if you're fully detached, like, I think your outcome and your results are gonna be different because you're gonna you're gonna try in different ways whether that's harder or not as hard. I don't know. But, you know, we're emotional human beings at the end of the day. And and so there's going to be some attachment, but but that's I mean, that's something I've been working on for years. And, you know, I invested a lot of time and money with her and did some really fucking painful shit with her.
Heidi [00:34:08]:
Like, you know, I I know you've done therapy and and I think a lot of people listening probably have, and I think you get the most out of it when you go in. You're like, oh, let's like, I was like, I want I want it to be paid. I told her, I was like, I don't wanna just, like, do superficial stuff. I go, I want you to, like, scratch at that wound and pour salt on it because we gotta make this thing heal. And so, yeah, we got we got real uncomfortable. So, yeah, I have a huge support network, and, I mean, you can't you cannot do it in a vacuum by yourself. You cannot. The lows are especially at the beginning, the lows are so low when you fail, which you will, you will over and over and over and over, that you it is I think it's pretty virtually impossible to pick keep picking yourself up after those fails, if you don't have some people to help you.
Courtney Osborn [00:35:08]:
Yeah. That's something I feel like I was lucky to learn early on just through joining your program, and joining the community. Because, like, as soon as I found those people that became my support system, I started leaning on them almost immediately, and it was like, it's it's a game changer. Mhmm. Because you're not as fashion focused, are there things that you still love about fashion?
Heidi [00:35:38]:
It's a great question. And I've I've thought about this a lot over the years. I it's funny. So I don't I don't watch the runway. I don't get fashion magazines. We just moved, and oddly enough, whoever lives here before us, like, we're still getting their magazines. And we'd literally a bazaar is sitting on my kitchen counter right now. I don't even I have I don't have I have no interest in even flip through it.
Heidi [00:36:10]:
And we got a Vogue last week, and, like, my husband looked through it more to be like, oh, look at the pretty ladies in here. And, like, I I I don't, I don't follow fashion from, like, any type of design or creative perspective anymore. I don't really have an interest in that. If I look back at my fashion career, I was air quote a designer. But what I enjoyed more about working in fashion than the design aspect and where I think I was stronger than the design aspect was, the logistics, like sourcing and managing production and, like, juggling all those moving pieces and parts. Like, I clearly, I thrive on having a ton of plates in the air, and I enjoyed that part of the process more than I enjoyed. And I was better at that part of the process than I was at the creative component. So I always say, like, if I could do my fashion career over, I would I I actually think I would go into, like, pattern making, like, super technical, like, just numbers and science behind, like, fit and all that kind of stuff.
Heidi [00:37:26]:
I think it's really fascinating. And I'm I'm in numbers and spreadsheet nerd. And so I think, you know, definitely technical leaning slash pattern making, I feel like would be. So no. I don't I don't really follow fashion anymore. Am I still into it? So I'll tell you a funny story. We just moved as as some of you might know. About 2 months ago, we moved from the mountains in Colorado to Virginia Beach.
Heidi [00:37:51]:
And we were living in Colorado. It was it was a little bit remote, and I got really, like, sloppy with my attire. And there was many days where, like, I wouldn't even leave the house. I really didn't like to take my son to childcare, which was, like, half a mile away in our neighborhood at this other mountain house. And, both my husband and I see and we talked about this. Like, we got really lazy in our appearances, and and I don't I I I don't think it was actually the best. And so we've moved here to Virginia Beach now. We're living amongst civilization, and I even just, like, going to the beach, or we went to this big festival at the beach this weekend and, I, like, wanted to look cute.
Heidi [00:38:39]:
And I was, like, put my cute little denim romper on and I so I still, like, I still wanna look good in clothes and I still care about what I wear. I did put it it it did put I did put on pause for a while when we were living remotely, in ways that I think ultimately didn't make me feel very good about myself or my body. You know? But it's funny, like, I pack. You know, we we got rid of a lot of this stuff when we we moved and and now we're here and I'm I'm still slowly, like, putting stuff in the donate pile of my clothes. I'm like, I brought that from the mountains and I'm like, I don't think I'm ever gonna wear that here. It's just too frumpy. Like, it's not really cute. So so yeah.
Heidi [00:39:21]:
But disclaimer, I literally buy pretty much everything I own at the thrift store.
Courtney Osborn [00:39:26]:
I love that. Yeah. I can I can appreciate that? Yeah. I I know we're, I think, almost out of time.
Heidi [00:39:35]:
Yeah. Do you have
Courtney Osborn [00:39:35]:
more time to keep talking? Yeah.
Heidi [00:39:37]:
Yeah. Okay. Let me just display calendar, but I'm pretty sure we can go, I have plenty of time. Yeah.
Courtney Osborn [00:39:43]:
Okay. I was like, we can do this for a whole another hour. This could be
Heidi [00:39:47]:
a 2 part episode. Yeah. It could be, honestly. Yeah.
Courtney Osborn [00:39:52]:
Okay. So kind of playing off of that. Oh my gosh. Where did my question go? I'm trying not to focus on these questions because I wanna be in the moment with you, but I also have, like, I literally have 2 and a half pages of questions.
Heidi [00:40:07]:
Can I give you a pro interviewing tip only because I've done over 200 interviews and I learned this early on? So and this is what works for me. But when I was first starting to interview people on the podcast, I was doing my own editing. And so after I would record, then I would listen to the episode and I would, like, make notes of any edits. And what I was noticing when I was listening to the interviews, and I wait I used to go in with a list of questions. And when I was listening to the interviews, I was like, oh, wait. The guest, like, said something really awesome, and I didn't latch on to it because I was so focused on getting to the next question. And so now I do not prepare questions. I just go and I, like, just show up and I let the converse I, it's a lot about how I talk about customer research.
Heidi [00:40:53]:
I go, you wanna lead with curiosity. You wanna just, like, they say something, you're like, oh, dig a little deeper to that. Like, what piques your curiosity and kind of dig into that? So I'm not here to tell you how to run the interview because you're the interview. I'm the guest, but or interview WER. I'm the e. So so I'll let you run it how you want, but, I am No. If you listen back to this, you might have some regrets about not digging into things that came up that piqued your curiosity. That's what
Courtney Osborn [00:41:22]:
I'm saying. A 100%. And I also feel like I wanna take notes as you're talking because there's so many things that you are saying that I'm, like, I wanna ask more about, and then by the time we're done, like, I've forgotten all of them. So I'm gonna start doing that, and I appreciate the feedback. Yeah. Yeah.