[00:00:00] Emma: A lot of people ask me about Thriving Women. I thought I would peel back the curtain today and share why I started Thriving Women what it's meant to those who have been in it and also what's next but if all you take is how to make a great program, that's awesome. I started Thriving Women because I wanted a group of likeminded people like me to play with.
[00:00:43] I wanted coaching, I wanted connection and I wanted community and I wish I had had All of that with like minded women. When I had started my own business, I also think business is lonely, right? Put your hands up if you're a little bit lonely in business, especially now that a lot of us are working from home.
[00:01:01] I love working from home. Don't get me wrong, but I still need the interaction of other people, especially like minded women. More heads are better than one. More heads are great for more, creative idea making, for problem solving, for cheerleading, for butt kicking for all the things. I just think there is so much power in a community.
[00:01:26] I made so many mistakes when I first went into business. I picked the wrong suppliers. I picked the wrong people to support me. The wrong choices on all the things, and I wish someone had said to me, don't worry, Emma, I've got your back. Here's a list of all the things that you need to know. He's a great lawyer.
[00:01:45] He's a great accountant. He's a great bookkeeper. Oh man, I wish I had had all those things. That's what we give our Thriving Women It's amazing. When I put the bones of Thriving Women program together, I looked at the program and as I teach in Revenue Raiser, I looked at the program and I went, do I love it?
[00:02:05] What else can I put in there that would be packet full of value that would make people just go, yes, it's a no brainer. And so I worked and worked on it, put the bones of it together. I started asking women about it. Uh, and then I started getting women going, Oh, this sounds amazing. This sounds so exciting.
[00:02:19] And I was like, hell yeah, I'd buy this. as you've heard me say before, if you're not convicted in your own offer or your own service, you need to stack it with more value. And so once I had it ready to go, I'm like, okay, I can go talk to people about this. And I thought, actually, I'm not going to put any more work into this until I have 10 people enrolled in the program, because if you're anything like me, you can map out beautiful offer or a beautiful service and then no one buys it.
[00:02:45] So I was putting the bones together and. building the plane as I was flying it, so to speak, something weird then happened. I spoke and I got 10 people. I'm like, holy dooly. I got to put some more meat to this. So then I sat down and I went, okay, what does this program actually look like? What are the bits in it?
[00:03:04] what are the micro detail to it? What are my surprise and delights going to be? What do I want to teach? What do I want people to know all the things? My first piece of advice for anyone who is listening, just get the bones of it. Make sure you love it. Make sure you do your research into your target market or the audience to make sure that they're going to buy it before you do anything else with it.
[00:03:29] The amount of people that I see who have a beautiful webpage, a beautiful offer and no one to buy it because they haven't done their research is insane. There's been a lot of evolution to Thriving Women, the Thriving Women program over the years. And I keep telling people we're in our 5th year. Ah, BS, we're not in our 5th year.
[00:03:47] We're about to head our 7th year. I had no idea. And so there's been evolution that's required. Year 1, it was really a basic version. Year 2 was a basic plus a bit more. and COVID struck. So that was fun. So we moved it online. year three, COVID was still in town. So we did a little bit of face to face and a bit online.
[00:04:06] Year four, we kind of added some retreats in. We did go get a days. We did all the events so that we stacked it with much more value. Year six, which has been this year. We added three tiers in. So before year six, it took me five years to make sure that I was like, right, I'm onto something. And year six, we went, nope, we're going to give three different tiers to people because that's what people wanted.
[00:04:32] And it's really interesting to me. So some people will come for the community. Some people come for the coaching. Some people come for the results. Some people come for success. Some people come for their version of success. some people just come to check it out, right? I've got people that have been in Thriving Year for their first time this year, and I've got people that have been in for their fourth year.
[00:04:51] Amazing that they keep coming back. And so we decided to do three tiers this year. It's been an interesting experiment for me. There's still things to, to iron out. We've got to Get rid of some tweaks. And it is still Melbourne based. I tried to do a version of it in Western Australia.
[00:05:09] And for anyone who's listening from Perth, it failed dismally. there just was not enough to keep it going in Western Australia. So. Maybe it would be different now. I don't travel very well, so we made the decision not to do anything in Western Australia and just to keep it Melbourne based for the time being.
[00:05:28] Year seven. Which is next year. We've added one more tier. You're hearing it here If you are listening to this, I have not announced this yet, and I don't plan to announce it in real life until Day with the Queen, which is September 6th. We have added a national online element to it, but you can also
[00:05:49] add on the retreats. The reason I've done this is because I've been listening to people. who have kids at home, the kids are sick, which means you can't come to events, et cetera, et cetera. I've been listening to my remote and my regional clients who don't necessarily want to travel all the time.
[00:06:06] And so I have put a national tier into Thriving Women for 2025. You won't even be able to see it anyway yet. But when it comes out, you'll be able to take a look. I'm really excited about this. For me, what it means to be a thriving woman. is someone who's paying attention to every single part of their life.
[00:06:29] Yeah. Not just their business, every single part of their life. They realize that life works in seasons. And we were talking about this the other day. Sometimes the season is all about the germs, right? Sometimes that's the season that we're in. And so it's hard for us to get stuff done. Sometimes. You can only do what you can do because you have kids home or aging parents or things happen in life.
[00:06:54] And so my business kind of ebbs and flows based on what's happening in our lives at any given point in time. There have been some amazing results in the community. with numbers like 156 percent increase, 307 percent increase women taking their businesses from a one woman show to managing 12 people.
[00:07:15] Others who are super happy to stay as a one woman show. But we'll have built in the flexibility throughout their years. Others who've come fresh out of corporate and have managed to build a beautiful business and revenue of about $300k and they're like, I'm happy with that. Collaboration with other thriving women.
[00:07:34] Books have been written, increased confidence in themselves and in their pricing. There's so many beautiful things that have come out of thriving women. I could not be more grateful. To be really honest with you, but there's one thing. There's one thing that everyone comes back to time and again. And the one thing is community.
[00:07:56] We as human beings crave community. There is a loneliness epidemic happening across the globe. So anything I can do to help bring people together in a community, I will. I don't always get it right. we learn as we go. But my intention is to build a beautiful community.
[00:08:14] And one of our participants this year told me that what sets this program apart is the community She also said that she has connected with not only driven and inspiring, but also incredibly kind and supportive women. Isn't that amazing? Being part of this network has enriched her often lonely experience of being a small business owner, giving you the feeling that you've got a team around you, even though they might just be a virtual team.
[00:08:43] Another one of my thriving women said that "the power of the right network is not comparable." Her quote was "95 percent of your success is about the people you surround yourself with And the Thriving Women community is full of like minded women who support and encourage you towards your goals." Isn't that incredible?
[00:09:04] It's an incredible community. And when people say, what's Thriving Women like, often I have to say, it's magic. because I don't always know, I can't always articulate what Thriving Women is about. Yes, we run retreats. Yes, we have workshops. Yes, we have masterclasses. Yes, we have surprise and delights, but above all, we have this beautiful community of women that come together and have each other's back.
[00:09:27] They cheerlead each other on, they hold each other to account, and they just want to be better. Whatever better looks like for them. At the end of the day, someone said to me, how do you measure success? How I measure success is that when someone leaves our community, As they do, they leave the community, but they stay in touch with others.
[00:09:47] That is. A beautiful measure of success to me. They stay connected. Sometimes I'll walk into a room six years later, and I'll go thriving women, thriving women, thriving women, thriving women. And it's not even my event. And I just think that's so cool. It's so cool to have the ripple effect that you can create, uh, through a program like Thriving Women.
[00:10:10] Now, even if you're not in Thriving Women, that's not really the point here. The point is that you can. still thrive without having to be in the thriving movement program, right? Thriving to me is just about flourishing or blooming where you are and making sure that you've got good support networks, maybe making sure that you're learning, making sure that you're growing and making sure that you don't get stale Each year I ask myself, what do we need to do differently? What do we need to chop? Cause you need to sometimes give a haircut to things. What do we need to add in? What do we need to pull out? What are the things that people are finding valuable and what does that actually look like? And so with that in mind, I have just finished creating the 2025 version of Thriving Women.
[00:10:52] We've taken some stuff out, we've added some stuff in, and, um, I think people are really going to like the mix of things that we have. It's just a beautiful community. That's a little bit about the Thriving Women gang. I love the Thriving Women gang. Every single year I say I love the Thriving Women gang and I love it because it's a beautiful culture and it's a beautiful group of just inspiring women. And when we hang out together, yes, we get results and yes, there's serious work, but there's also love and compassion and understanding. And at the end of the day, I think that's what we're all about. Making sure that we're just cheerleading.
[00:11:32] Because the world has enough critics. They don't need any more. So regardless of whether you're a thriving woman or you want to be a thriving woman, I hope that you have learned something about putting an offer together, not stressing about it, but putting it out there, doing your research. And also, I hope you found a community.
[00:11:47] I would love to hear of any other communities that you're in, because I think the more communities we have, the less loneliness we're going to feel. Until next time, I'll see you soon.
