Episode #080: Creating Accessibility In Your Business with Anna HeardinLondon
Join me and my friend Anna for a conversation about accessibility in in business. From those with financial hardships, to those who need support in reading or viewing our information - how do we account for access in what we do?
Anna share's her business model and how she serves a breadth of socioeconomics by creating access in her programs!
When you tune in you're goin to learn:
How Anna's created her payment offerings to reach a wider audience, and how her payments shakeout with this structure.
Practical things you can do to create accessibility in the work that you do - even if you don't have the ability to adjust the prices right now.
The importance of working on continual improvement, not overnight access if you want to grow your business.
This episode is a bit different, but so important, and I hope you enjoy!
Links Mentioned:
From Anna
Anna on Instagram
Anna's Upcoming Spring Clean Your Brain Training
How to Make Time For Yourself
How to Feel Your Feelings
Body Image Workbook
Trudi Lebron's Work
From Zach
TheAdsBootcamp.com
TRANSCRIPT:
Zach:
This is Not Your Average Online Marketing Podcast episode number 80, and in this episode, we're talking to my friend Anna HeardinLondon, who's going to be sharing a little bit about access to your programs. Now, whether that be financial access, visual access or access for the impaired, this is a really important topic, and I'm excited to talk about it with you.
Hey, hey, hey, not-so-average marketer. Welcome to another episode of the podcast. Now, I'm really excited for this week because, usually, we talk really tactical stuff, and we're actually still going to talk some tactical stuff today, but it's going to be less about strategy and more about access.
I have a friend, Anna, who I actually had the pleasure of having photography, do photography for myself and my husband while we were in London. What was really cool is when we were in London, we got to talking to her about how she prices her programs to be able to be accessible for people in different walks of life. I'm so excited to bring this episode to you because I think this is a topic that's so important, and we don't talk about enough in terms of access to our programs and making our programs really accessible. So I won't drone on about what all that means. I would just encourage you to listen with an open heart and open mind, and be ready for something a little different on this week's episode. So without further ado, let's welcome Anna to the show.
Welcome, Anna HeardinLondon. Excited to have you here.
Anna HeardinLondon:
I'm so happy to be here. Thank you for inviting me, Zach.
Zach:
Absolutely. Well, I'm so excited to have you. For people who don't know, I'm going to gush for a second, you are one of the kindest, sweetest, most open-hearted people I know. We had the fortune of having ... My partner and I were photographed by you when we came to London in, gosh, it feels like forever ago, but 2023, really not that long ago. We were there in August of last year, and you showed us around this city, and you photographed us, and we ended up going to lunch and hanging out for the whole day. You are just such a sweet soul, and I'm so excited to have you on the podcast to talk about some really important stuff.
So I won't go on and on and talk over you because people are here to hear you, not me today. So tell us a little bit about yourself, about your business, what you do, and we'll go from there.
Anna HeardinLondon:
It was such a beautiful day. Thank you for us. You were very accommodating about the great British weather, I remember.
Zach:
A little rainy, but we made it, but we made it.
Anna HeardinLondon:
That summer. Yeah, thank you so much for inviting me. The majority of the work that I do and the majority of the work that we have connected not only just over photography is I'm a confidence coach. Quite a lot of the people that I work with are survivors of abuse. So I have a program which works with body confidence, with people trying to reclaim their bodies and their brains from having difficult histories. What I try and do is work on helping people try and reclaim their sense of agency over their life in any which way that that comes.
So I have a coaching program that I run, which is a beautiful mix of people who can afford to pay for it and people who are ... A lot of the people come from shelters or domestic violence services refer people to me. So it's a really beautiful mix where people learn from each other. I also have a whole massive workshop program that I run as a not-for-profit. My background, personally, is in circus. So the workshop program has an awful lot of very obvious analogies of people trying to reclaim their bodies after their bodies have been weaponized. So it might be trapeze for lifting people or taking safe risks or acrobatics for consensual touch and conversations about leaning and lifting and trusting each other. It could be dance classes that we have for social anxiety.
My favorite workshop that we have that we've been doing over the last year is I had a clown teaching elders how to fall over safely. There's just loads of super beautiful things that we do to try and help people connect their physical wellbeing to their emotional wellbeing. One of the workshops that I then do as well as the confidence coaching is to do photo shoots predominantly for people who are very uncomfortable with their own body image and try and help them feel like they're the most incredible beautiful human in the world, which is quite often what I see when I look at people. So it's very easy for me to take photographs of that because I look at people with a lot of reverence and respect when they're in front of me, and that is very different quite often to how people talk to themselves in the mirror, and it's quite beautiful to be able to give people hard tangible evidence that the story that they're telling themselves isn't the only story. So that's what I do.
Zach:
I love it.
Anna HeardinLondon:
It's not even a nutshell, is it? In a massive Swiss roll.
Zach:
No, it's beautiful, and I love what you said. We got to experience your photography, and I'm happy to share that when you sent us our photos, it even came with this beautiful note about how to look at the photos and experience the photos. Those photos are all on our wall right now. They're like the first photos we finally hung up in our home, which we're now moving out of shortly, but you made it on the wall. You were one of the few photos that made it on the wall, and we love and adore those photos in large part because of that experience and how you made us feel.
I think one thing I'd love to kind of bring into the conversation because I know some people who listen to this show are probably like, "We don't talk about this stuff a lot." We talk about it maybe in undertones or in some of our content or if you're in the membership. You may have heard me talk about some of the things that are core to what we do or you may have seen me exhibiting some of what we're going to talk about today, hopefully, but the big thing that I love about what you do, and one of the reasons I wanted to have you on the show is that what you do is help people feel, I don't even want to say, confident, obviously, but I think visible is the word that's come up for me when I was thinking about having you on the show is that people often in our world, whether it be in a traditional sense or a nontraditional sense, don't feel like people see them or they experience the world differently.
You've done such a wonderful job. I'd love to maybe start with your pricing model. You kind of started to touch on that. I know that for you and for me, access is a huge piece of what we do. For us, it's creating a membership where people have been telling me ... I mean, we get testimonials where people are like, "You should raise your price," and I've really resisted that. We've only raised it once and that was because, basically, we have to afford to do it as it gets bigger and we need more support, but you have such a beautiful pricing model. I don't want to keep stammering on about it. Tell us a little bit about how you support people.
Anna HeardinLondon:
So with the coaching and the membership work that I do, I have a really, I call it specifically accessible pricing. So for the coaching program that I run, it is £127 a month if you can afford it full wage, no questions ask. There is a £47 a month option for people who need concessions and not able to afford the other option. Then there is the bursary option, which is a scholarship for people who sometimes I call it a hardship fund. I know there's lots of different words and connotations. I switch it up a bit to make people feel able to access it, but basically, it's free if you need it. So I offer all the work that I do is comes in at three price points. There's the price that you can afford it if you have a full wage, there's concessions, and it's free if you need it. Anyone who asks is able to get it for free.
The reason why I do it like that rather than just offering it all for free is because I really want to make the process of accessing my work part of the learning of understanding that sometimes when you ask for the good things, you can get them. I want that to a lesson in itself, not just that it's handed to you on a plate and you can pick it up and it doesn't have any value, but literally, just by the mere action of you asking, you can get nice things. So learning about that communication sort of maybe just slightly softening the edges of what can sometimes feel like quite a crunchy world out there, that actually there is beautiful stuff that can land on your lap just by opening your heart to the possibility that someone could give you this stuff for free.
What's super beautiful, I think, about this model for me is, firstly, that it massively undermines the capitalist idea that we must keep pushing our prices up and getting all of this money. I see that a lot in the coaching world. There's sort of, "Have you had a 10K month this month?" or these kind of talks about these huge big numbers. I think that the majority of people who I listen to, if I were to be able to say to them, "Anyone can come to my course and get it for free, they just need to ask," they would go, "That's not going to work as a business."
I can tell you from the people who come in my door is the majority of people who come to me, about a third of them pay on each price bracket. So I have about a third of the people pay the full fee, about a third of the people pay the concessions, and about a third of the people are on the bursaries. I think that the majority of people in my group get the most value out of the people who are on the bursaries. I think the people who pay full wage learn so much frankly from a lot of people that they may not normally come into contact with.
So the mix of people who can afford things and who can afford to spend money on their self-care and people who are struggling to get by, there's so many interesting points of commonality where people are left in coaching sessions going, "Oh, wow, I thought if I had that thing or that thing worked out, I'd be happy, but I see you in this situation," and then we have, "That's the thing that I was dreaming of and you're still struggling with this." We reflect so much more life at each other because the group is so diverse.
One of the reasons why I wanted to come on the podcast, really, was to not just emphasize how important accessibility is from a political point of view, but also how much your group and how much people benefit when there are more people in the room from different backgrounds.
Zach:
I was so smitten when I heard about this idea. I think one thing that I would love to get your feedback on is when we've talked about your model or my model or other people's model, I think the biggest thing that I like people to know is that it's not about judgment. I don't think that you're coming on the show and I always like to, and feel free to be like, "No, I am," but I don't think you're coming on the show being like you need to offer scholarships, you need to do this, you need to do that. You have to find what works for you, but there's different levels and there's different markets and there's different people.
So for us, that access looks like, and I know we're going to talk more about different kinds of accessibility beyond just financial, but for us, it's like our free stuff is good. It sounds silly, but you can go download. We have this beautiful strategy in our membership that we have a full 90-minute video on and coaching and feedback or you can go get the exact same strategy as a PDF. Some people, that's enough, and if they want to learn more they can, but I think it's almost this idea for me that I've gotten from you is like we're not gatekeeping, right? There are things we, unfortunately or fortunately, depending on what camp you're in, live in a capitalist world and there are costs of living, and you do need to have a business that can sustain your life, but that doesn't mean you have to do it at the expense of other people.
Can you talk a little bit about how ... For someone who might be listening to this who's like maybe they're just getting started or they're at a point where they're not comfortable doing that because of internal or external factors, are there things that we can start doing with our pricing or our content to create more at least financial accessibility? I know we're going to talk about some other types of accessibility too, but financial accessibility.
Anna HeardinLondon:
I think for me, if you do have anything that is pre-recorded, so quite a lot of people lead in with a webinar that's recorded or you've got your lead magnets or things like that, I know lots of people have the general thought that like, "Oh, I don't want to give away too much for free. That will be undermining my product." I can say with my full chest and full transparency from the inside that once you've recorded that, you're not losing any money giving it away, you're really not. What you're doing is you are opening up your world, your possibility, your way of thinking to potentially a new market or new people.
I think that possibly the trust that you gain with being able to be open-hearted with your work like if you're doing this just to make money, completely cool for you, but I'm probably not speaking to you right now. If you're doing this because the work that you're doing lights up your soul, if whatever you are, your membership is on your theme, your product, if that runs in your veins, if that is your blood group, and you know that you are doing this work because you think that this is the answer to other people living kinder, calmer, less stressful lives, then why wouldn't you try and bring that work to as many people as possible?
So if you are, arguably, if you're being super cynical about it, you could say that it is just really like big end marketing, you're giving away a big thing that people can get a taster of what your coaching style is like or what your products like or how you teach things, but I think that your model is super brilliant as well because no matter what you're teaching, the ultimate message of everything that you give away is, "This is what it's like to work with Zach," and that is why all of the testimonials that I see come in on your newsletters or the things that you put out on the podcast or anything, I watch you having to dance away from the fact that 90% of your testimonials are like, "Zach's so wonderful. I love working with Zach." People want end results, but they adore you and they adore you because of your working style. If you want to have that kind of connection with people where people are buying from the stuff that is singing from your heart, open the gates.
Zach:
I love what you said, just to really highlight that, is if you're doing what you do because you genuinely love it and believe it can help people, that is the magic. Every webinar challenge, if you ever come to one, there's always this little slide. I may have changed it in the most recent one to be a little more fun, but basically I say, "I love digital marketing." I really do. I think some people, it's no judgment, it's just an observation in our space like do it because it's the easy way, like, "Oh, I can just teach people to make money. That's easy." It's an easy sell. Maybe it's not easy to actually do, but it's an easy sell because there's no, I don't want to say thought because that's not the word I'm looking for, but there's no gray area. It's like, "Yes, I help you make more money. No, I don't."
With something like self-care or breath work or what we call softer skills, it's harder to communicate that. I always share that because I truly believe because of the things I share, because of the way I present myself, because ... I won't have a video of this, but if you were watching this video, you would know I have the RuPaul drag queen little people on my back shelf, and I have the Trixie Mattel cosmetics, and when you come to my webinars before they start, we listen to Taylor Swift music. Those things that I communicate and share are who I am, and I think I'm attracting people with the values that I have.
So I sincerely and truly believe that there was a gap in the market that people couldn't access the level of information that I give away at what I like to think is a very accessible price for a business owner who's at early stages, but I know I can help, and I'm coming from that place. I think that that's what you're saying. So no matter what you guys do, if you're listening to this, it's like when you truly believe in your work, you don't have to gatekeep. I don't feel bad or judged by my audience ever because I'll talk about something on the podcast and then I have a deeper dive in the membership. It's not deeper dive in the sense it's like, "Oh, here's the," my least favorite thing, "the what, but not the how." I'll be like, "Here's some of the how," and I really go even more how in the membership.
It's always an access to more, and I would love to throw this out there, then I'm going to give it back to Anna, but we also are really mindful in our membership. People reach out to us with ... We're not a corporation. Most of us are not a corporation, and we don't have to have strict rigid rules that need to be followed for the continuity of the corporation. So when people reach out to us, we had someone reach out to us, without being super specific, basically had a medical emergency, and they were like, "I'm so sorry. I need to cancel my membership," and we were like, "We're going to cancel your membership, and based on the way you're saying this, it sounds like you haven't been in there for the last month, and that's because of something out of your control. We'd also like to refund you for the last month."
That takes processing fees and money out of my pocket. I'm not sharing this to look like a saint. I'm sharing this because these are things we can do. It might feel scary, it might bring up that part of lack of us that's like, "Oh, I'm losing money," but you're gaining and it even feels bad saying it because you're gaining loyalty, but that's not why we're doing it. I think that that's what I'm getting from you, Anna, is we're not doing this for the exchange of loyalty or connection. We're doing it because Anna is a good human. We want to be good humans to other good humans.
So I'd love for you to talk a little bit about ... We've talked a little bit about financial, but you do some other really cool stuff in your personal work and in your online work for access. Can you talk to us a little bit about for you what access looks like and how that functions throughout the breadth of your work beyond just financial access?
Anna HeardinLondon:
Yeah, and also, just to touch back on financial for two seconds just because I'm sure that there is someone listening to this thinking about this. It's like, "Well, if you're giving your stuff away for free or you're giving it discounted or Zach's refunding for that thing, doesn't this cause people who've paid full amount to get their backs up?" In my personal experience, no, quite simply. One of the main reasons is, and this isn't an angle that I would necessarily put things across on, but it's definitely something that I've heard as feedback is quite a lot often, many people feel very hesitant about giving to charities because they don't know where the money's going to, they don't don't know what's going to happen to it. They have a lot of thoughts about the bigger organized charities and not being able to see their direct response, I guess, not being able to see where their money's going.
Whereas when they know that they can see that paying a full price is supporting someone who may not otherwise be able to afford it join the thing, they can feel like they are part of creating this community and part of co-creating this accessible space themselves. I have never had anybody approach me and say, "This isn't fair."
Zach:
Never. I've never had that experience.
Anna HeardinLondon:
So I just wanted to address that because I'm sure that people who haven't come across this might think that, but you actually asked me about something completely different. I think it was probably about general accessibility, right?
Zach:
Yeah, just talk to us about how you've built accessibility into the breath of your work. I'd love to just dialogue about how we are attempting to do the same. The one thing that I want to do is just put a big asterisk on this conversation. I think you'll appreciate this, Anna, is that everybody has different abilities, disabilities, access, abilities, and inabilities. I just want to set the blanket statement that is like I'm not claiming to know everything. I don't think we're sitting here being like, "Oh, we know everything about access and financial access and accessibility and dynamics and social dynamics, and we are trying to create a good human to human experience." So anyone listening, I think, and I just want to throw this out there because I think it is important that we understand that we can't always experience life through someone else's lens, but what the conversation we're trying to have today is not, "Oh, we know that this is helping." What we're saying is this is what we're observing and this is how we're doing the work that we know we can do or think we can do or hope we can do.
The one thing I will say about Anna that I am currently working on is that Anna is receptive to everything. Somebody will go, "I wouldn't say that," or, "That's not really the right way to say that," or, "That doesn't really serve in the way you think it is," and you have always, just from my observation of you online, in the wild of working with you, of being with you is that you always go, "Tell me more about that." It's always this inquisitive place, and I think that all of us can have that. So I just wanted to throw that out there as the disclaimer, and I'd love for you to share anything you're thinking too.
Anna HeardinLondon:
I recently heard the beautiful definition from Trudi LeBron. I don't know if you've come across Trudi. Trudi runs the equity-centered coaching collective. I probably should know the actual title of that [inaudible 00:22:42] but I was trying to do a plug badly there, but I heard the really articulate definition that the difference between calling out and calling in, and calling in being like, "Hey, can we talk about what other people might be feeling about this, how other people might receive this, how I receive this," and calling out is like, "That's got to stop immediately."
The difference between that is a really important one to get right. I think quite a lot of people when they ... It's very easy when you are on the receiving end of someone going, "We don't use that word anymore," or, "Could we do something a bit?" to be super defensive because none of us want to be the bad guy. None of us want to be the, "I didn't mean to hurt anybody," like it's so easy to go into that place.
Just referencing what you were saying there about us not being any kind of authority on any of this stuff, like where I stand on it is I am constantly learning, and the moment that I stop being in a place of learning, I know that I'm in trouble. What all of my learning in terms of accessibility, in fact, all of my learning in regards to human interactions is based on this really, really key premise that if someone tells me that something that I'm doing is causing them suffering, I'm going to stop doing it. I don't need to understand why.
I think that was something that it took me years to learn that because I think with our education system and quite a lot of ways that we are taught about things as in the West is very much, "I need to understand it and then I will stop doing it." I don't need to understand. I don't need to understand why it hurt you if I slammed the car door on you. I'm not going to do it again. That sounds like a very easy analogy, but if you then take it through to something really emotive for a lot of people like trans rights, people may not understand the wise and wherefore. It may seem very new gender terms, things that they may feel very a bit uncomfortable or unfamiliar or not have personal experience of. I don't think that matters in terms of just stripping it down to, is it kind, and if it's not kind, we don't need to be defending ourselves about why we have a freedom of speech to be unkind.
So taking that kind of stance of going, "It doesn't matter if I understand it or not. I'm going to try and be as respectful and kind to you as possible." So along those lines, if for example someone who is visually impaired has said at some point in history to me, I can't remember if it's actually happened, I'm going to presume that it has, "Can you please put some alt tags on your images?" Like for sure, I'm going to spend time doing that. Going through your website and putting alt tags on all of your images, absolutely that is going to take time out of your day that you may not consider it to be earning, but that is presuming that none of your target audience have visual impairments. If you're not doing that stuff, you're not making your work accessible to those people.
I know we've talked briefly on stuff before about technology making accessibility a lot more easy to access, whether it is on transcripts or whether it's on software. AI is booming, all of this stuff to be a lot more easy to grab, but that doesn't necessarily mean things like the contrast between colors on a website, for example, being easier to read or just ... For me, I'm very clear when I open my work up to people, when I am initially introducing people, even with people that we have on calls every week, I ask their pronouns because not only do I want people who ... Everybody in that room might be cisgender, but if I am asking people every week to do that, what I'm doing is normalizing that behavior that I say, "I'm Anna, she/her," then that means that if anybody has a pronoun which does not necessarily visually match with how other people might read them or they might present as, then they're not going to feel like they're the odd one out because it's just normal, we just do that here.
Also not assuming that everybody is going to be who they are, the same person that they were when I first met them. There are a huge amount of presumptions about stuff that is ... I feel like a dinosaur in this sort of area already, but what I am open to doing is learning and listening. So it's being constantly responsive to ever-growing language and fighting against that internal urge to be like, "But that wasn't how it was when I learned it," and thinking that, "My way's the right way," because of course it isn't. We make all of this stuff up and we are constantly making it up all the time. I think it's so important to center the people who are in marginalized identities, the language that they're using, the things that they're asking for and be as responsive to that as possible because then you create the safe spaces for people of many more diverse backgrounds to be able to come to your work.
Zach:
Yeah, I think that what you're saying is so important for people to understand. There's also this kind of subconversation that's happening without happening, which is if you're listening to this and you just directly are like, "That makes no sense," guess what? You're not going to buy from us, and guess what? That's fine. I don't mean that in a negative or derogatory or exclusionary way. It's from a place of you have to stand in line with your values. I share, when we share our membership, we talk about our values. We don't lead. We actually have a slide in our most recent webinar that before we even talk about what's inside, we say, "This is what we believe in and this is what we stand for."
Honestly, that could stand to be a little more attuned to this conversation than it is, but even the way that people talk, behave, and act often gives us clues into how they think, believe, and behave in my experience. So when you have these conversations, when we talk about these things, when we're verbal about these things, even if we don't do it perfectly or right, we're not only attracting people who align with us, we're pushing away the people that aren't willing to have these conversations.
I know that there's big conversations about division, and it's us versus them. I think you said it so beautifully, and I just want to highlight this is that we're not trying to call people out. We're just trying to have conversations with people willing to have the conversation. I think the more that we see natural social evolution is like we're seeing more people willing to have these conversations, and it's going to get to a point, hopefully. That's my big dream is that it gets to a point where we have these conversations, and people are just, "Hey, I didn't know that. Thank you for telling me."
It's not hard to say that. I know that I had said something I don't even remember what to be completely candid, but I said something. I had an in-person day in the UK and you photographed for us and the photographs came out beautiful, by the way, but you had said, "Hey, by the way, you had said something during your presentation and it was something that I would be mindful of saying going forward." I know what it was, and you said, "We don't use the ..." I don't know if you shouldn't use the term, it's something I'm learning, but you said, "We really should refer to developing nations is the term that we should use," and I said, "I didn't know that. Now I do."
The thing is it's not, and I love that you said that, it's not hard to just go, "I didn't know that. Thank you." I think that that is the big conversation that we're having today on top of everything is like, can you get to a place where you don't have to know why, you don't have to understand, you don't have to get it to just go, "Hey, that person, group, society, whatever, doesn't engage with this dialogue, context, whatever, or needs this context, content or access, and it's something I'm going to do my best to achieve"?
Anna HeardinLondon:
Just to really prefix that, just like I really love what you were saying there, and I just want to highlight something you said at the beginning, which was like, "If you don't understand this, you're not our people." I sure feel like, just to take that from a slightly different angle, if you don't understand it, I am so happy to have these conversations with you. You might be my people, but if you are listening to what I'm saying here and going, "I don't think trans women are women," my group is not your group. I don't want the people in my group to have to be worrying about you being able to challenge them on their identity. So if you oppose what I'm saying, my spaces are not the learning spaces for you, but if you don't understand what we're talking about, that is something I'm so open to having the conversations about, which is just ever so slightly different.
Zach:
Yeah, no, I love that. I love that. I think that such a great example of that kind of in the breadth of the world is even like ... I'm pretty transparent about this. For those who don't know, I have a husband, and I know that growing up that was very ... I grew up in the late '90s, early 2000s, and that was very not even taboo. It wasn't nearly as bad as it was prior, not that that matters, and I know that I watch people who are like, "We don't do that, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's wrong, that's immoral, that's whatever." Then I've seen a lot of people I grew up with whose parents' family felt that way. Then when you have a child that is of a different sexual identity than heteronormative, they're like, "Oh, it's just different."
I've seen, it's not even acceptance. I don't think that that's even the word I'm looking for. It's a change in the narrative, not just socially, but in your social unit. It's like when you experience that, it's a conversation that's no longer nebulous, and I've seen that. We see that happen time and time again. So I love that you brought this up because when you said that, that really clicked for me as like I'm always willing to have the conversation. It's the people who are just opposed to it because they haven't experienced it. It's like I can't go into your brain and change who you are, but if you're just on this line of, "I don't get it," always have the conversation because-
Anna HeardinLondon:
In fact, you and I have even had this ... I don't know if you remember, but we were on a call one time and you with all of your beautiful fitness training background made some reference which conflated weight and health, and I was all up in your DMs being like, "Zach, no," and you were like, "I'm going to go and read some studies on that, Anna, but I think this right now," and we had a little chat while the webinar was still going on. It's like I feel comfortable enough in your sphere to be able to go like, "Dude, come on, fatphobia is not cool," and you're like, "No, no, this is about health," and to be able to engage in that conversation. I think creating spaces where you can have those conversations is what safeguards your people and enables you to create the kind of spaces where people feel safe to learn.
Zach:
Yeah, and I think that is, if I could put one big overarching message, that's what it is. It's just creating a space for conversations. I don't think that either of us is sitting here being like, "You have to agree to all of this 24/7 100% or you are not our people." I think, again, the nice thing about having Anna here is that she'll go, "No, I don't think that," and I love it is I think the big conversation is just be open to hear, listen, learn, and go, "Maybe, maybe not," but you create that space for the conversation and to allow people to exist in whatever form that may be, whether that is visually impaired, physically impaired. If someone in a group is saying, "I have this, that means this. Can you this?" that we go, "I'm going to try." I don't think ... Go ahead.
Anna HeardinLondon:
I ask people their access needs on sign up, "Is there anything you would like to tell me? Is there anything you need in order to be able to make working with me easier?" That's on my intake forms.
Zach:
I love that.
Anna HeardinLondon:
I think that it is so important, and pronouns as well. I think for me, just what you were saying there about it being not thinking that we've got it right, I approach all of this stuff that everyone who comes into my sphere, anyone who I think is in my little galaxy that could be a potential client or otherwise is teaching me as much about how I can create a kind of more fair, more equitable, more loving, caring, compassionate world as much as I am teaching them about the coaching and the stuff that I know.
Everything that I'm teaching through my membership through my portal is my specialism, which is being a militant fat feminist who's disabled and wants more people to feel more welcome in the world, but what they're teaching me is about their personal experience and how can I build more of a world in my personal sphere that aligns with the politics of kindness that I really try and center in my world.
Zach:
Yeah, I love that. I could talk forever, but just for time, as we wrap up, I'd love for you to just touch on because I know for me what came up when I started doing more, I don't even want to say work because I feel like everyone's like, "I'm listening, I'm doing the work," but when I started really leaning into this conversation and being more receptive to conversations because, honestly, I was very closed off to a lot of these things five, six years ago, and I think part of that is having been closeted for 20 years. That'll really change your view on the world and acceptance, but as I've started to hear more of these conversations and do my best to be more receptive to things, the one thing that has always come up for me, and I'd love for you to touch on this maybe from your experience, is that I feel like, "Oh, my gosh, I've got to do all these things now." Like I'm listening to this and I'm like, "I've got to update my intake forms and I've got to add alt text, everything, and I've got to go check my website for this and I've got to do that," and it's like, "If I'm not doing this, then ..."
I think my people in my experience that I attract internalize a lot of this and it's like, "If I'm not doing 100 out of 100, I am doing a bad job." What would you say to someone who's like ... How do you even start to tackle, come to terms with the fact that, A, do you have to do it all, or B, what if you can't do it all or it's not possible within your time parameters? We don't all have the same 24 hours. It's like I'm trying to get this business off the ground, I just need to get the sale, and now you're saying like, "Go update your intake form." What is your advice to people who are feeling like the elephant is just too big to take the first bite, for lack of a better way to put it.
Anna HeardinLondon:
You can't get it right. You can't get it right. You're not going to do all the stuff, so just park that because that's boring and unachievable. So what can you do? When you were saying what steps can you take, like my first thought, because you've taught me some stuff about marketing, was that I have a course called How to Make Time for Yourself, which is my low ticket offer that you taught me to sell. I also have a course called How to Feel Big Feelings Without Feeling like Shit, which is probably also relevant to some people who have sat here thinking a lot of things about what some of the stuff that I'm seeing or some of the stuff that we're talking about. Those big emotions if you want to learn how to deal with them, I've got a cracking little course on that, but I think that the idea, as with everything else with your business, frankly, if you have this, you can very easily get yourself lost in, "I need to do all of the things," and that will not only prevent you from taking action, but I would go so far as to say that'll probably end you up in bankruptcy.
You're going to go and have to go and get a job. If you just think you have to do all the things all of the time, that is the quickest way to fail I know. The way to be able to get stuff done and get stuff out there is to be willing to do and commit to doing one tiny thing a day. So it could be that you have an email that you send to yourself that gets snoozed every day, that you update one alt tag on one image on your website every day until they're all done. Maybe it might be that you start looking into different types of software that do transcripts for things. Maybe it is if you are holding a live event, that you make sure that the venue that you're doing it in has wheelchair access. Maybe it is opening up your weekly group meetings and asking people if there's anything that they need to share about their access.
Breaking it down into those small chunks and the key thing being actually do it, that is the way to victory, but also with the sound knowledge that we're never going to get it right because we are not in all of these demographics, we need to keep listening to people who are in marginalized identities about what they need, and that is going to be ever evolving as we all change. Also, just making sure that as much as we can and with as much dedication and kindness to ourselves and compassion to ourselves as we can to just try and leave the judgment at home of just like you're going to want to be defensive. You're going to be like, "I've done so much stuff. I've tried," and also go like, "We're going to be learning the whole time."
Hopefully with all the best will in the world, most of us are going to live to an age where we're going to need all of this stuff. Hopefully, all along the way as we are aging and getting these decrepit bodies that are falling apart left, right, and center, and needing more and more of these things that we have been putting into place, we will have been building a world along the way that makes it more accessible, more gentle for us when we get to a point where our needs don't work anymore.
Zach:
Love that. Before we put a beautiful bow on this episode, where can people connect with you? Tell us a little bit about your podcast, anything you have coming up. I think there are going to be a lot of people listening to this that love this conversation and want to go even deeper with the beautiful Anna.
Anna HeardinLondon:
Thank you. I have a little taste session coming up at the end of the month. We are now in April when we're recording this, so that's going to be the 28th, 29th, 30th of April. It's all online. It's called Spring Clean for Your Brain for people who've got a few dusty corners of their mind that are causing them allergies and it is on Home, Hope, and Happiness, so some nice things to anchor us into as we come out of spring. Well, we're coming out of spring here, wherever you are in the world. The membership is selfcareschool.co.uk. One of my favorite places if you just like an English girl swearing quite a lot, I like to think of myself as one of the sweariest Buddhists that people might come across, my podcast is Spam Filter for Your Brain and my remit of my ... You can start anywhere, but Podcast Number One is all about how I said I wasn't going to start a podcast and how angry it's made me that I'm actually having to do it. My aim for my podcast is to try and keep each episode under five minutes because I don't believe that the world needs another long podcast, even though I would love speaking to you. For someone who can't shut up, a five-minute podcast feels like a real momentous achievement.
Zach:
It's an incredible-
Anna HeardinLondon:
Of course, there are beautiful, incredible humans like Zach and his beautiful husband over on my Instagram where you can see lots of the people that I work with and lots of people that I do the workshop with and my Instagram is HeardinLondon, and you can just see loads of the phenomenal humans that I work with and the photography stuff.
Zach:
Awesome. Well, Anna, thank you so much for being here. We really appreciate you. I'll wrap this up with some links to our show notes. We'll get everybody linked up with a little wrap up, but for now, Anna, thank you so much for being here.
Anna HeardinLondon:
It's such a delight to hang out. Thank you, Zach.
Zach:
All right, marketers. So I hope you got massive value out of this episode, and I am going to link up all of Anna's links and information over at heartsoulhustle.com/nyap080. Again, that's heartsoulhustle.com/nyap080 for Not Your Average Podcast episode number 80. We'll link up all her details, all her content. The biggest thing I want to offer you is this. If you enjoyed this episode and you really took something away from it, I'm so happy. If you are feeling from this place of like, "I don't know what to do," or, "I don't want to be wrong," or, "I don't want to make mistakes," or, "I want to get it all right," the good news is you can't. You can't get it all right 100% of the time, but if you take one thing away from this episode, I hope it's this. Just be open to learn, open to have conversations, open to dialogue, and open to learning from people in different positions than you. So I hope you got mad value from this episode. I had such a pleasure of a time speaking with Anna. I hope you get value from it, and until next week, stay not so average.
