Susan Friedmann [00:00:00]:
Welcome to Book Marketing Mentors, the weekly podcast where you learn proven strategies, tools, ideas and tips from the masters. Every week I introduce you to a marketing master who will share their expertise to help you market and sell more books.Â
What if growing your author platform didn't have to mean hustle, burnout, or following formulas that don't fit you, but instead feel aligned, intuitive and sustainable authority? Well, today my special guest is Chelsea Fournier. Chelsea is a former lawyer turned Intuitive business mentor and strategist. She's the founder of the Rooted Method, a signature planning process that helps sensitive visionary entrepreneurs design businesses aligned with their lives and definition of success. Through her work at Intuitive Business by Design, Chelsea Empire's clients to honor their capacity, trust their intuition, create aligned strategy and build systems that support sustainable growth. And if you're wondering how to stay true to yourself while expanding your reach, you won't want to miss this conversation. Chelsey, it's an absolute pleasure to welcome you to the show.
Susan Friedmann [00:01:18]:
Thank you for being this week's guest, expert and mentor.
Chelsea Fournier [00:01:22]:
Thanks for having me, Susan. I love your show, so I'm honored to be here.
Susan Friedmann [00:01:27]:
Well, Chelsea, as you well know, you and I know how many authors feel really pressured to follow formulas that other people have put out that say, hey, you can be successful because I was successful, therefore you can be successful. And. And yet somehow that just doesn't feel authentic to them. How can sensitive authors just create success on their own terms without sort of feeling pressured to follow what other people say they should be doing?
Chelsea Fournier [00:02:06]:
I love this question and that you used the word should right at the end there. That's the pivotal, really interpretation. Right. When I work with clients, many of my clients are coaches and healers who also have a book, or many are just authors. I don't want to say just authors, but focusing on their authorship and then maybe spinning off other ways that people can engage with their brand or community. And it's so easy to get into comparisonitis. And there is so much noise in the online marketing and business building space that it almost feels like rebellion to admit what you want. Right? Like you and I were chatting, even just before the recording of this conversation, that neither of us desires to have a big empire, but it almost feels rebellious to admit that out loud.
Chelsea Fournier [00:02:57]:
And what I believe is that especially for authors where you are literally the only one who can share the story, whether it's fiction or nonfiction, the only one who can share exactly what you shared, how you shared it. And so why should you think that your success has to look exactly like Anybody else. Right. And even as life changes, there can be shifts to what your definition of success is. But it does take, I would say, an element of courage and bravery to stand up for what you want, as opposed to comparing yourself to what other people are saying is success and really trusting yourself. That's part of your intuition, trusting yourself of what that definition of success means and that it's allowed to change.
Susan Friedmann [00:03:45]:
Very much. So, yes, this comparative situs, yes, get my tongue around that one. But yes, comparing ourselves constantly with others. And I know when I started out in the speaking business, I always remember saying to one lady who I really admired and I thought, wow. And I said to her once, I said, when I grow up, I want to be like you. And she said, no, you want to be like you.
Chelsea Fournier [00:04:11]:
Oh, that's lovely. Because it is nice to have people who are in a similar lane as you that you feel like you could look up to. Right? To have that inspiration to show what's possible and especially when you are newer in business or maybe you were newer at the time in the speaking space to have that like, oh gosh, what I want is possible. But we can, I think, just very accidentally, unconsciously, unintentionally get into realizing that if you look at where you are today and could really honor that, maybe you are manifesting or focused on being two years ago. And it's easy to forget that, to say, if some of your listeners have recently published a book, maybe two years ago, they were really hoping that they could one day do that, right? And so now if you have the book out and how you're going to market it, it can be just easy to constantly fall into that. Instead of being super grateful for what you have done, honoring your unique process, and then looking forward to say, okay, now that I'm here, what are my next priorities? What are my next goals? And what is going to fit the capacity that I have? And that's really in my mind when I say that your definition of success often changes. For me, it's really being realistic about my capacity. And when I work with clients, for example, there's a woman who's in a group program that I run and just yesterday on a group call, she had worked through my rooted method and mapped out her 90 day plan of what she was going to be doing for marketing and launching a group program of her own.
Chelsea Fournier [00:05:40]:
Then she has had some changes beyond her control. Her husband is having very intensive health needs. And so she's really shifted into being more of like solo parent role. That was completely Unexpected. Two weeks ago when she was mapping out her marketing plan, her capacity has drastically changed and it was beyond her control and she couldn't have predicted that. And so now being able to have some grace and, and self compassion to say okay, all of these activities that I thought I would be doing and she's actually working on a book of her own, is this going to be realistic? And especially if you're a solopreneur and you're juggling so many roles of maybe being focused on writing and marketing and branding and there's so many things that we do as front facing. Like when you're an author, you are the brand of your business and there's just so many pieces of it that really being honest, I think that's a big part of it. Being honest and vulnerable with yourself about what your capacity is currently and not some make believe version.
Susan Friedmann [00:06:43]:
Right.
Chelsea Fournier [00:06:43]:
It can be nice to think, oh I can still have as much time as I did 10 years ago before I had kids. Well, that might never come to be the same day to day that you had 10 years ago. And so really being honest about where.
Susan Friedmann [00:06:55]:
You'Re at now, Yes, I love that and I love the fact that things change and they change often unexpectedly and being able to pivot and yet be able to still do what you want to do. But as you said, you may have to restructure it a little bit differently and be true to yourself as to what is realistic in terms of what we can and maybe we can't do in the same way and as we used to do. We're all getting older and I suddenly feel I can't do what I did at the same pace as I did it 20 years ago and be the first to admit it, even though it sort of upsets me sometimes and I get into this should and I stop myself then I should be able to do this the way I used to do it. But no, that's not the case. So I need to adapt to do my work differently but yet and not beat myself up that oh my goodness, I can't do it to the same extent as I said, and the same volume and speed than I did, let's say 20 years ago. One of the things that you brought up was your rooted method and I'd love you to talk more about that and how that can potentially help our listeners moving forward with their plans and you know, what they want to do for themselves. So talk to us more about that rooted method.
Chelsea Fournier [00:08:31]:
Absolutely. Well, what I have found is that I self identify in many of these categories and many of my clients do as well. That similar to what you were just speaking about, things can happen beyond our control or seasons of life where we feel like it could be an excuse, right? It could be an excuse that your energy is slowing down or that you're neurodivergent or have chronic health issues or maybe you're in a deep season of mothering or even caregiving for parents. Right? Many of us have all of these different hats that we wear and I have found that I'm a high energy person. And if you're into human design, I'm a generator, I'm a doer. If we go on vacation, I want to have like activities that we're doing. I've always been that person that wants to get a lot done. It's just part of my nature.
Chelsea Fournier [00:09:18]:
But when I have had different seasons in postpartum or illness and had to really assess well, what can I get done that's going to allow me to still build momentum in growing my brand and seeing this play out. With so many clients over the years, I've developed this method that it's teaching you how to look at your business and your marketing and your energy output in 90 day cycles. In the actual method, R O O T E D. Right. Each letter stands for something and the first letter R is teaching you how to create a 90 day roadmap. And then it's looking at the other letters really look at different seasons of your business you might be in and what you would want to focus on. Are you more in a season of expansion? Do you have a book launch coming up and your 90 day cycle really needs to be focused on that? Or are you in a season where you need to be working on the back end of your business to make sure that when you do have speaking engagements or podcast guesting that you're building your email list to be able to engage those readers? Right. And so it really looks at mapping you through what are some of the options of where you might be in your business right now in this very season.
Chelsea Fournier [00:10:30]:
What I find, Susan, I'm sure you've experienced this is that as business owners, many of us are very creative and outside of the box thinkers and we can trick ourselves into overestimating what we can get done in a short period of time and then beat ourselves up that it doesn't happen. But what I have found is that we often underestimate what can be done over the course of time when 90 days of intentional action build upon 90 days, build upon 90 days. So if you can get this traction of creating a plan of your action, what are your priorities, goals, actions that only you can do in your zone of genius versus what actions could be automated, delegated, or even just back burnered. And I have a whole workshop and a whole method that walks people through this to whittle down what do they need to focus on for the next 90 days. And it's drastically different typically than their long to do list that isn't really categorized, isn't really organized, isn't helping them to be honest about their capacity or what their focus is. And I believe that discernment is such a power of being a business owner and it's not something we're necessarily taught. And this really teaches discernment and self leadership so that you know what you want to say yes to in this season and you also know what you want to say no to. And at the root, no pun intended, at the root of all of it, and the root of all my work is bringing intuition into the mix.
Chelsea Fournier [00:12:03]:
Because the clarity that comes from spending time in the beginning of any planning to get really honest and that deep connection to your intuition and to what your authentic path is, as opposed to just logging into a workshop and doing what a coach says you should be doing, that might not feel right for you. Really. The rooted method is teaching these skills and helping you to flex the muscle of self leadership so that you can have 90 day periods of time that build and really create momentum. And especially for authors, I've heard you say before, you know, how long should I be marketing my book, Susan? Well, as long as you want to be making any sales. I heard you say this allows you to have sustainable plans of what it's going to look like to be showing up in different parts of your business, different focus areas, and not beating yourself up for not being able to do everything at once. Because we can't.
Susan Friedmann [00:12:58]:
Yes. I love the fact that you talked about the different seasons. I had a mentor once who talked about literally looking at your business in terms of our seasons of the year, that springtime, that we're planting the seeds, summer we're nurturing them, helping them grow, fall is the harvest and then winter and is the hibernation. But yet still looking at what's the plan for when we're going to start again in the springtime. I see your 90 day plan sort of following a little bit of that cycle based on nature. And nature is sort of intuitive. It's the most natural thing for us to be doing. So when we're looking at a rooted system, too.
Susan Friedmann [00:13:53]:
We're looking at something that's natural. Now, I wanted to go into this whole idea of intuition and listening to ourselves, because sometimes we feel we should do something one way and yet we decide to go in another direction.
Chelsea Fournier [00:14:12]:
Yeah.
Susan Friedmann [00:14:12]:
And then in hindsight, you're like, I wish I had followed my intuition first time around. How can we prevent that second guessing ourself?
Chelsea Fournier [00:14:25]:
Oh, this is like my life's work and the soapbox I stand on of how hard it feels to second guess yourself. Like, that is a really crummy feeling to be standing on the other side of a decision, but still like one foot straddling backwards and debating whether you made the right decision. It takes so much energy, and it can really slow us down, especially as creatives. Right. You know, it's easy for me to say what is working now, you know, what's going well. Susan. But, I mean, I've been there. I've been in a career when I was a lawyer where I was so disconnected from my body, from my intuition, from my authentic voice.
Chelsea Fournier [00:15:05]:
And it cost me greatly in health and in relationships. And so a little over a decade ago, when I really shifted into doing more of the work that I do, it's been, I would say, a deconditioning, almost an unmasking of what used to serve me very well in another season of success, preparing for a closing or writing a contract for a client, I couldn't just say, oh, well, I intuitively think you should do it this way. I had to have cost benefit analysis and risk assessments. Right. And many of us are conditioned, Whether it's because of your career or education or how your family, culture, society, we are conditioned to make decisions in a way that we can, quote, unquote, show our work.
Susan Friedmann [00:15:50]:
Right.
Chelsea Fournier [00:15:50]:
What's the data? Show me the proof. Why are you making it a certain way? And it became really an experiment for me to explore what does it look like to stack decisions on top of one another that feel good for me, I did go through a big phase of being into human design and becoming trained in that space. And then that led me into more spiritual development, development and intuitive development. But when I was first learning about human design, the crux that I took away was that we all have an aligned way to make decisions. And whether it's that framework or archetype or others, for me, why are we ignoring how our body feels when you perhaps receive an invitation for a speaking engagement and you just feel like it's not aligned or you want to Say no. Well, why? You know, it could be resistance. There's lots of mindset coaches that will talk to you about overcoming resistance, but if you reflect on it, maybe you say yes and then you have a bad experience, or maybe they don't market it the way they promised they would. It feels like a waste of time.
Chelsea Fournier [00:16:51]:
Right? You can look back and see that perhaps when you've ignored those pings or those nudges that maybe it didn't go the way that you wanted. So one of the things that I encourage people to do, and I have a free app that helps you to track this, is to track your intuitive pings over the course of 14 days and when you did and did not pay attention to them, and something that one of my intuitive mentors had me do, and I was shocked how many times, you know, even if it's just in an intuitive pain to slow down, and I don't slow down and I'm rushing to get out the door. And then if you've ever had that time where, like, your sweater hooks on the door and then you drop your tea or, you know, like, stub your toe, we receive these little signs, these little pings throughout any given day. We all have the ability to hear them and we all have the ability to rush right by them. And so one thing I always encourage people to do is have whatever you track, I think you tend to focus on more. And so whether it's a little notebook or an app or just something to pay attention if you feel like you desire more alignment, if you want to feel more authentic in how you are showing up in business, paying attention to, are you receiving signs and ignoring them or are you following? Oh, this felt good. I. I really, you know, maybe someone sees a podcast opportunity being posted in a Facebook group and feels drawn to the host and sends the application and, oh, I'm taking those actions that came into my field and they start to stack.
Chelsea Fournier [00:18:17]:
It can be about paying attention more to how things feel in your body. It could be a little bit more complex to learning, like how to use a pendulum or Oracle cards or muscle testing to help with your decisions. But it could just be as simple as bringing more awareness to, are you listening? Are you listening to what's coming in?
Susan Friedmann [00:18:37]:
That awareness factor is so important because you start thinking about something and then all of a sudden you see something being advertised. You hear about something, you read about something, and you're like, wow, all of this is coming to me and it's that awareness building. It feels like maybe there's A message here that I need to. And then I love that slowing down when you feel you have to rush, rush, rush. Especially when you're in the car, you know, you're like, oh, I've got to get to a beating. Okay, If I'm a minute late, if I'm two minutes late, it's better than getting a speeding ticket.
Chelsea Fournier [00:19:21]:
Yeah, exactly. It's perhaps simpler to think about how you could bring intuition into your day to day. Maybe having little small rituals of slowing down could be having a crystal at the door that you touch on the way in or out of your home or in or out of your office. Office. I teach a lot of energetic hygiene for people to think about how they're clearing their energy after doing a live video with someone or showing up on a zoom. Right. How to be more in your sovereign energy. Because many creatives are also empaths or some version of just feeling like they are highly sensitive.
Chelsea Fournier [00:19:54]:
There's a lot of absorbing that can go on, especially as you're marketing yourself and getting positive or negative comments. Right. Maybe you go talk about your book on a TikTok and there's all these comments that come in. Right. It's so hard to just protect yourself and having little rituals throughout your day. But then really the bridge that I offer is helping people to think about how do you bring all of that into your business? I call it inviting your intuition to hold a seat in the boardroom of your business to help you, to guide you in those decisions. Because Susan, we got a lot of decisions to make every single day about how we're going to spend our time, how we'll spend our resources, what we say yes or no to as a business owner. And the more you can have that deep trust about your process, your process of decision making, then you're so much less likely to have that second guessing, the doubt and you're able to just move.
Chelsea Fournier [00:20:51]:
And if making intuitively based decisions does not mean it's always going to be right, but when something doesn't go as you planned and you can more often look back and if you trusted your process, see the lessons as opposed to spiraling into beating yourself up, maybe you invested in some kind of a sponsorship to get your book out to an event and you look back and it felt like a full body. Yes. It felt like an intuitive. Yes. You used your Oracle cards and maybe it just didn't really bring the results that you wanted. But because you trusted your process, it's easier to non emotionally look for the why. And maybe by Being at that event and paying for that sponsorship. You met one person at that event, maybe you wouldn't have gone to that event otherwise.
Chelsea Fournier [00:21:38]:
And that one person becomes an expander of your brand, maybe even six months from now. It allows you to trust more about how you make decisions instead of feeling like you are controlling. Right. Some of us want to just control things going well and going well fast. But what I have found is this kind of journey of surrender and journey of exploring what it looks like to really trust myself has A, allowed momentum to happen so much more quickly, and B, for me to have a more objective look back on how things are going without it feeling so. So personal, if that makes sense.
Susan Friedmann [00:22:15]:
Yes. So much of it is planting seeds, and not all the seeds nurture and develop into anything. But I feel as long as you're planting those seeds, some will and some won't. And some may take a few weeks, some may take a few months, some may even take a few years. I mean, I've gotten business from people who I met several years ago.
Chelsea Fournier [00:22:44]:
Yeah.
Susan Friedmann [00:22:44]:
And at that time, they weren't ready or we weren't ready for each other. But then situations changed and they say, I'm ready for you now, but I didn't know that at the time. And you never know that. But as long as you are out there planting the seeds, doing podcasts, doing articles, doing blog posts, networking, whatever it is, those are seeds.
Chelsea Fournier [00:23:16]:
Absolutely. Something that I work a lot with clients on. A lot of the people that I work with aren't against social media, but they know that they can only put so much energy and time into social media because it disappears so quickly. A lot of times there's discernment required of where should I be putting my energy. You know, even just some of the examples that you just said, should I be writing articles? Should I be blogging? Should I be on other people's podcasts? Should I have my own podcast? Should I be on YouTube? There's so many options of how you can be successful to grow a brand and to grow a following of readers and the community these days. And I really believe that the more we can be intuitive into what plays to our strengths. I was connecting with a woman who I work with, and she actually does not feel aligned to be on social media because she works in teen and young adult mental health. And she's like, I can't be part of the problem.
Chelsea Fournier [00:24:12]:
Part of the problem is them being on social media too much. We really talked about, she struggles with tech. She does not like having a lot of backend stuff to manage. It's not her strength. And so we talked about getting her on other people's podcasts. There is a strategic element of these decisions, right? Of making sure that she's not creating something that's going to be too overwhelming for her. But intuitively, another business coach might tell her, well, you have to be on social media. I'm sorry, that's just the way that it is now.
Chelsea Fournier [00:24:42]:
And I'm here just listening to her. And we did what I call a business soul scan, where I do an energy reading, where I actually channel a conversation between you as the business owner and the energetic imprint of your business. And we have this conversation of like, what do we collectively we being you and your business, what do we want? And after that conversation, she finally released the kind of self imposed pressure and guilt that she was feeling for not wanting to be on social media, but it just doesn't feel right for her. So now instead we just need to look at, okay, if all of the intuition and all of the clarity when you get honest says you don't want to be on social media, okay, great, what's our plan forward? What are we going to be doing instead? And so then exploring some of these other strategies, giving her options so that then she can tap into her intuition on which one or two of the options can she do within her current capacity, because she runs both an in person and an online aspect of her brand. And so she does have to use that discernment of what can I do in the next 90 days of pitching myself for podcasts, getting my speaking materials together, thinking about what my goals are? It's hard to do that as a big project and launch a YouTube channel at the very same time. Again, coming back to those seasons and this cycling the discernment allows you to go deeper on something that feels intuitively right for how your message and your community is meant to be matched. Because we could be on every platform, Susan, every single day, but how exhausted would we be?
Susan Friedmann [00:26:16]:
I don't think it serves a purpose. And that self imposed pressure that really is a killer any event. This is a great segue, Chelsea, for you to tell our listeners how they can find out more about this incredible service that you offer. All the fun things that you talked about, I love all the different things. Talk to us more about that.
Chelsea Fournier [00:26:40]:
The umbrella of my work is through Intuitive Business by design and my website is intuitivebusinessbydesign. And I have a beautiful resources shop that we are creating that has the Intuition tracker app and freebies and even some workshops. And sometimes people just kind of like to jump in and get a little bit of a taste. For those who want some one on one support, I do offer business soul scans where we do that energetic reading and that can just be a one off, a little gift to yourself to really gain that clarity before you start making big decisions. It can be great before a launch, great before a rebrand. And I also host VIP days as well as group support in my rooted community where we actually walk through the rooted method together. I'm just really committed to helping people who have a big message to bring out to the world to make it less overwhelming and to feel like they're creating sustainable success. And one of my gifts that I wanted to mention to your listeners is a beautiful guide that I created called The Three Simple Ways to Use Intuition in Your Business Decisions
Chelsea Fournier [00:27:46]:
And it walks you through. There's video tutorials, it's very simple to walk through and it gives you very specific and tangible steps of what you can do. The feedback that I've gotten is that people after they download it, even within a day or two, are realizing, oh, this doesn't have to be as complicated as I thought to start really calling in my intuition and feeling more aligned. So it's a great starter point. If this is something that you are curious about.
Susan Friedmann [00:28:12]:
Beautiful. And I'm sure there's several listeners who you've piqued their interest. So any event, as you know, we always have our guests. Leave our listeners with a golden nugget. What's yours?
Chelsea Fournier [00:28:28]:
If you're listening right now and to any degree you feel overwhelmed or disconnected from your purpose, I just want you to know that you're not behind, you're not broken, and you're definitely not alone. And that the universe does have your back.
Susan Friedmann [00:28:42]:
Beautiful. The universe does have your back. It certainly does. And you need to tune in and listen to that as well. Chelsea, you've been amazing. Thank you so much for sharing all this great information, this wisdom and listeners download the gift. I'm going to put that in the show notes for you because I know you can get a lot of great information from Chelsea. So thank you.
Susan Friedmann [00:29:14]:
And listeners, if your book isn't selling the way you want it or expect it to, let's you and I jump on a quick call together to brainstorm ways to ramp up those sales. Because you've invested a whole lot of time, money and energy and it's time that you got the return you were hoping for. Go to bookmarketingbrainstorm.com to schedule your free call. And in the meantime, I hope this powerful interview sparks some ideas you can use to sell more books. Until next week, here's wishing you much book and author marketing success.
Here's how to connect with Chelsea and download her free listener gift:
3 Simple Ways to Use Intuition in Your Business Decisions
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