Founder of Booken Blend, Lisa Booth
“If you've tested it and there's momentum there, if you can, just jump, and don't torture yourself first.”
If you are joining me today at a time where you’ve been battling with a particularly frustrating business-building mindset, the one where you have a million things you want to accomplish, are unsure of exactly where to start, and have seemingly lost the creative and / or productive capability to make it happen – I see you!
And this chat will be exactly what you need.
Our guest today is Lisa Booth, Founder of Booken Blend, a business that is all about supporting individuals in the build of their passive, sustainable home – and there’s a beautiful synergy in the concept of building something sustainably that I want you to hold in the same space as your approach to building your business.
in this chat you’ll hear about:
Following an instinct, into an idea, into a business
Developing a business that allows you to do work that can make a real impact on your own life and the lives [and wellbeing] of others
The fear you experience when you start monetizing one of your passions
Testing your ideas before over-investing in them
Nurturing and genuinely serving your biggest fans
Why practice makes perfect really is the key in building your own thing
What it really feels like to pull the pin on a secure job for the insecurity of a growing business
Shifting your known identity from one thing to another
And knowing your creative limits on the days it doesn’t flow.
Imposter syndrome is something we hear about a lot, because it can affect us all – regardless of what qualifications we have or the amount of market testing we do before creating something, there will likely still be this little voice saying “who do you think you are to do this” – if that little voice is driving you nuts and you want to put it in the bin, you’re gonna love this chat.
Follow Lisa on IG @bookenblend
Check out the Booken Blend website and its wonderful resources at bookenblend.com
You can find the conversation transcript at unemployedandafraid.com.au/episodes.
And don’t forget to follow Unemployed & Afraid on IG , Threads and LinkedIn
And show your support for this independent podcast and small business by shouting your host a cuppa at buymeacoffee.com/unemployedpod
You can reach your host on email kim@unemployedandafraid.com.au on IG and on LinkedIn
Keep scrolling for the conversation transcript…
Welcome to Unemployed and Afraid, a podcast that explores the glorious mess of building your own business with the people doing it. I'm your host and fellow business builder Kim Kerton. Thank you for being here. Let's get into some good, honest small business chats. Hello, listener. Thank you for joining me here for Unemployed and Afraid, the small business podcast for the brave employed. And if you are joining me today at a time where you've been battling with a particularly frustrating business building mindset, the one where you have a million things you want to accomplish, are unsure of exactly where to start, and have seemingly lost the creative and or productive capability to make it happen. Well, I see you and you've hit play on a chat.
That will be exactly what you need. My guest today is Lisa Booth, founder of Booken Blend, a business that is all about supporting individuals in the build of their passive, sustainable home. And there's a beautiful synergy in the concept of building something sustainably that I want you to hold in the same space as your approach to building your business. Lisa says something about her particular zone of genius in this episode. She says that you don't have to do everything perfectly in a build or in a renovation. You can just do your best and that's okay, that's enough. Because collectively, if we all just do a little better, we can make a big impact. Do you see where I'm going here? I'd like us both to borrow that sentiment.
When it comes to building our businesses, you don't have to be perfect. You can just do your best for right now and let your best get better as you go along, as long as you just back yourself and keep going and doing your best. There is so much beauty in Lisa's story of building her business. In this chat you'll hear about following an instinct into an idea, into a business, developing a business that allows you to do work that can make a real impact on your own life and the lives and well being of others. The fear you experience when you start monetizing one of your passions, testing your ideas before overinvesting in them, nurturing and genuinely serving your biggest fans. Why practice makes perfect really is the key thing in building your business. What it really feels like to pull the pin on a secure job for the insecurity of growing your own thing, shifting your known identity from one thing to another, entirely new thing, and knowing your creative limits on the days when it doesn't flow. Impostor syndrome is something we hear about a lot.
It is because it affects us all. Regardless of what qualifications we have, the amount of market testing we do before creating something, there will still likely be this little voice saying who do you think you are to do this? This could all go wrong. All of the other silly little things that these voices tell us that aren't true. And if that little voice is driving you nuts and you want to put it in the bin, you're going to love this chat. Let's get into it. I'm here with the brilliant Lisa Booth, founder of Booken Blend, a rapidly growing community of like minded people sharing stories of purposeful homes and online resources to make simple, sustainable home design accessible to all. It's a business built almost by accident after unprecedented interest in Lisa and her husband's selfdesigned and built passive inspired off grid home which prompted Lisa to found Booken Blend, which is now loved by over 70,000 people online. Through Booken Blend, Lisa shares the Simply Sustainable Build workshop, mini live workshops, keynote speaking and a very inspiring feed all to help the dreamers changemakers and sanctuary seekers pioneer a new generation of home.
Her business has been featured in the Herald Sun and Inside Out, whose editor, Eliza O'Hare, said it's a sincere and generous movement to help people into the homes they dream of and the community spirit behind it is simply heartwarming. Especially now. A mum of four and self described unlikely influencer, whose greatest hope is that the resources and stories they share make sustainable homes more accessible to people like her, you and me. And if we all build a little better, then collectively we significantly impact the health of this planet. As a certified B Corp and proud member of 1% for the Planet listener, I bet you feel this feel too. I cannot wait to hear your story of building Booken Blend. Lisa. Welcome to Unemployed and afraid.
Thank you, Kim. It's fabulous to be here.
I've got you while you're at the very top end of Australia in far North Queensland, in a beautiful caravan, exploring the world and enjoying the aircon while we get a chance to chat today. I'm so glad you're here.
Thank you. And it's amazing to be here in far North Queensland and seeing this country and running a business all at the same time.
I have so many questions about what the inside of your caravan looks like someday, but I will hold that and I will get into a fun one. To start us, how would your husband describe you?
He would probably describe me as bossy, passionate, loving and committed.
Very good traits for building a business. I think a little bit of passion with a little bit of bossiness gets a lot done in this gig.
Yes. Everyone should feel sorry for him, actually, because it does come out when I'm under pressure sometimes, so it's not the best side of me, put it that way.
I feel that. So take me way back before this period in your life, before Booken Blend, who were you?
I think, to be honest, for the last 20 years, I really have probably been a mum and even though I've done a lot of things in that 20 years, the thing that has taken up the most amount of brain space for me has been being a mum to my four kids. And it was a long 20 years to put your own thoughts and dreams and hopes to one side, but I think you do it without even realizing that you're doing it. But I think if you want to go to the nuts and bolts of it, I had a Bachelor of Agricultural Science that I got straight out of high school and I went off and worked in the fields of community sustainability projects and agriculture, environmental issues, all those kind of things. And then when I had my fourth child, Jeddah, I went back and did my postgrad in education and always with the view of hopefully going back and teaching in some indigenous communities one day, which we have just done on this trip. So I started teaching for a few years and just kind of got stuck in that system for about eight years. I loved every second of it. I loved the kids, and it was good to me for those years. But it's actually when Booken Blend started to take off, that was a little bit of a side gig.
And I was still teaching full time, still had four kids, still had a business with my husband as well. And it was almost a point of burnout and something had to give. So I gave up teaching two years ago and now Booken Blend is my full time gig.
I can't even imagine what it would have been like with that many buckets for your mind to be in. I just, on a smaller scale, run a few different projects and a few different kind of business work, streams side by side and sometimes I don't know where my head is at and I'll be like, Do I do that thing? What's this to do list shit? What do I do now? And so I can't even begin to liken that against a full time job, four children, a business starting to seed and something else with your husband, like, wow, your brain must have been ready to explode.
Yeah, but I think most of us have a lot going on and I don't think I realized how much I had going on until yeah, it probably all piled on top of me in the end. And it was my husband, everyone calls him Boots. It was him, really, that really prompted me to say, you're either going to have to jump all in with Booken Blend or back off with it. And once it came down to that, there was no real choice for me. I feel like I was already on the path with Booken Blend. That was almost unstoppable. So, yeah, it came as a sudden decision. When I walked into work one morning, I sat down in the principal's office and I said, I have to resign.
And yeah, it was a really strange moment because I hadn't thought too much about it until that point. It happened very quickly.
Take me back a little way. I want to know about the seed of book and blend. So the thing that made this business idea start to form in your mind, so before it was out there and created and building to get you to that point of resigning, what prompted it? How did it start?
Well, in your bio, which made me so much more impressive than I am.
By the way, you are very impressive lady.
It was on one hand a little bit accidental in that the very beginnings of it weren't planned. So when we built our own off grid, passively designed home that I designed using everything I'd learned over those years where I was working in those fields of environment and sustainability and applied all these very simple principles to a house build so that the house would have basically no impact on the planet forever. Let's say it stands for another hundred years. We will have no bills and very little impact on the planet. Now, when I began sharing the house on this new app called Instagram that I knew nothing about and I also had a little bit of a passion for pretty pictures and photography. So it was a bit of a natural thing for me to play around on Instagram and share pictures of the build with our friends and family and because at the time we didn't know another soul that had built off grid or built a passive designed home. And so we were getting a lot of questions from our friends and family. So we thought, right, this is a good way to share it.
And pretty quickly we got the feeling that there were lots of other people out there that were interested as well. So I started to share more on Instagram and then more people came along and then it became quite an arduous task just dealing with the questions that I was getting smashed with online. Because so many people, I think, share a similar dream to what we shared, in that they would love to build a beautiful new family home. They want it to be beautiful and inviting and they want to be proud of it. But they also would like to have no bills, be thermally comfortable in their home forevermore and also do their little bit to tread a little bit lighter. And building a new home is the perfect opportunity to set yourself for a life where you do have very little impact on nature and the environment. And so because I think there was this shared dream with lots of people or there was a lot of interest, they really started smashing me with all sorts of questions and I would spend my evenings sitting on the couch after the kids went to bed just replying to people. And I suppose that's when the teacher kicked in in me.
And I just thought I can streamline this process by creating a few resources that people can download off a simple website and therefore I can direct everybody to this one place they could get 95% of the information they need. Luckily I had a son who's a software engineer who could kind of guide me a little bit through the process of setting up that simple website. And so we had all that information sitting there on the website for free. And that is still the guiding principle today of the business. And that is just to try and help people make this process of building a better house that's going to be better for the planet, just make it easy for them. Because if we make that easy for them, then we are going to speed up the world's transition to low impact homes and it's going to be better for everybody. So that principle that was there right at the very beginning is still the thing that guides me pretty much every day. Today I ask myself, is this next step, is this going to get us there faster? Are we going to make sustainable homes and builds the norm? If we go down this path, what will get us there quicker? That's generally what I do next.
I love to hear that, how it naturally started to evolve. I think if the thing that people ask you questions about in your life, if you get people in the DMs or even just in your friendship circle, how do you do this, how do you do that? That's often a spark or a seed, that there's something there and you have valuable information to share. Now how can you put it together? Which is I guess my next question about going from, okay, I've got all this information up here, all of the work that I've done building my own, now how do I put that into something for someone else? Now with your teacher background, I'm sure that lent you a few hints and tips. So I'd love to know a bit of what that process looked like and if there was anything that challenged you through that process.
Everything challenged me through that process. I feel this the first steps. I just created some downloads, some PDF downloads that would help people step through the process of designing their new build. But when it came time, I remember somebody said to me, you need to put a price on this so you can do this forever. You can't keep doing it for free. You can't work all day in your day job and then do this all night helping people. If you put a price on this incredibly valuable information that normally kind of sits locked away in a building designer or an architect's office, if you put a price on this, then you are going to be able to reach more people in the long term. And it was pretty incredible advice at the time.
But I remember the first time that I put a price on one of the resources and released it. I think it released at 06:00 that night on our website or something. And I announced it on Instagram to our very cool tribe that we have on there. And I physically thought I was going to vomit. I was shaking. I can't explain to you that adrenaline rush and not a good one, where I just was like, what am I doing? Nobody is going to want to purchase this information. This is ridiculous. And pretty much instantly, if you've got any listeners out there who have when they get an online purchase, they have the Cha Ching sound come through on their phone.
Pretty much instantly, the cha Ching started coming through on the phone and I almost fell off the chair. And to this day, when the phone goes cha ching, all my kids will all echo cha ching in the base, like a family celebration. But that process was really difficult because you're asking people to pay for something that you hope they value, you value. But it really made me feel very vulnerable when I did. And from there it's grown. So now we have turned that information into workshops where people could come to our house for the day and learn how to go through that design and build process. We also now have filmed that last year, and it's all available online because we would run a workshop and it would sell out in five minutes online. And so we just couldn't reach enough people.
So we made the decision to film it so that people could do it from anywhere, all over the world. But it hasn't stopped people flying. We have had people fly to Victoria to do our workshops from every state except the Northern Territory, I think, in Australia. And it just floors me to this day that I ever doubted myself. And the process in saying that every single time I release something, I still go through that sick feeling.
I think that's such an important point to make, that even now, with all that success, that nervous feeling still comes in, I think, for anything we do in business, when you put yourself out there for potential rejection. And the irony is, I'd like to as somebody who's listening to your story and not attached, not in the family, not in the business, the funny thing about it is nobody would know if nobody bought your online offering, right? No one knows. But still, it still doesn't stop us freaking out and feeling exposed and feeling vulnerable regardless of that. So I can completely understand it. It is quite nice to hear that that still happens because I think so many of us want to put these offerings and these resources out there and are seeking that validation through purchase and through people getting around it through something big happening. It's like I even remember when I released this pod, I was like, okay, the pod's out there now happen, everything happen. And it's like, oh, it might be a few here, a few there, a few things here, and it builds over time, but I think so many of us put something out there with such passion and energy behind it that feel a little bit anxious about what happens next. I'm really curious about your approach to release and whether or not it's changed.
So when you went live with that first course, saying, hey, here's this new release, you can go online and you can purchase it. What you did in terms of marketing it out to your audience and what your audience response was like if there was any pre promote of that at.
That stage, I think I've only ever released things that are quite tried and tested. I'd like to say I'm not a huge risk taker, but that's a bit of a stupid thing to say when I'm out running this business on my own, obviously, with my husband's support. But I am, I think, what they call a solopreneur these days. So, Glenn, I think by testing things first, you have a pretty good understanding of what's going to perform well, even though it doesn't stop you feeling sick when you do release it. So, for example, when I released that first offering, I had been offering a version of it for free and it had been getting a lot of traction, so I already knew there was interest in it. It was just then putting a price on it. For example, when I released the workshops, I thought, right, I can just release one and see what happens. And that went really well.
So then I knew I could invest a lot more time and energy into the resources and into the presentation that goes along with it. So I never jumped into anything without testing at first, I suppose. And there's a lot of ways that you can do that, testing, even using your social media. So, you know, the topics that you talk about that get a lot of traction and that get a lot of interest, well, they're going to be, I suppose, the places that you should start. So if I would get a question that was around the same topic ten or 20 times, I would then create a resource or a journal entry on the website to direct people to. So there's lots of ways of doing these little tests without committing yourself fully, sir. And that's always how this business has progressed. It's almost like test and then jump, test and then jump.
And I haven't committed big resources into anything before. It's really proved itself. But as far as how do I get the message out there, it has all been instagram social media. And again, the topics that get a lot of interest, you can then build on those, you can do lots of little teasers online and say, well, I'm thinking about doing this. If I do this, would you be interested? And you can get a bit of a gauge that way. And our book and blend. Tribe loves having input. They're so helpful.
They'll let me know if I ask some questions about if I should do something a certain way, they will tell me. And I use them as my guide because they're my audience and they're the people that I'm helping. So there's no use me creating resources or workshops that won't help them.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. What did you find the most effective way of building up your Instagram audience but more specifically building that engaged Instagram audience?
Yeah, I'll be forever grateful for the Booken Blend Tribe. They're the only reason that I even have a business. Booken Blend is their business, really. I think being I don't want to say the word genuine because that's just wanky. Sharing a bit of warts and all in our home, in our life makes us relatable. But we're relatable because we're really normal. We're really average. There's nothing special about us whatsoever.
And therefore, if we can do something like build our family home this way in a really affordable way, then so can everybody else. So admittedly, our Instagram is a lot more polished these days than it was. I've never deleted anything. So you can scroll right back to the beginning and see where we start and how started and how we've evolved, particularly in probably the images that we share because practice makes perfect. And even though I always loved taking photos, I've gotten better and better as I've had to do it more to share our story. So I think that's why we have such an engaged audience because a lot of them have been with us for a long time. They've seen us evolve and progress. They cheer us on every step of the way.
And I think everybody has some very similar values that hang around in Booken Blend because most of us there have a shared sense of wanting to do the right thing for the planet. And I think it's also important that we have normalized, that you don't have to do everything perfectly in a build or in a renovation. You can just do your best and that's okay, that's enough. Because collectively, if we all just do a little bit better when we build or renovate, then collectively we make a big impact. And I think there's that shared sense amongst the Booken Blend Tribe that we're all in this together and I certainly hope that's what comes through. But in all honesty, none of us know what we're doing on Instagram. If someone tells you they know what they're doing on Instagram, you can probably call them out because honestly, I have no clue sometimes what works, what doesn't. I make a deal with myself that I just show up as me as long as something feels good in my gut when I share it, that aligns with my values and that it's what I am genuinely passionate about and really fired up about in that moment, then I share it.
If not, I don't go there. Which is why we do absolutely zero sponsored post collaborations, anything like that, that is a great option for lots of other people and lots of other businesses. And I'm not dissing that at all. It's just not for us. It just does not sit right with me and never has. So I just decided I'm not doing it.
Absolutely. Fair enough. And I think you've really pulled out a I'm going to call it a cultural tone that gets me really inspired. I'm a strategy nerd, so I love to look at these sorts of shifts and insights and just kind of vibes around culture and what people are needing as opposed to trends and that sort of area. And I think for a very long time there's been this shift away from highly aspirational content and really perfected executions of a life in digital four to that more relatable, messy, real, authentic showing up in digital realms. And I think if you can strike the right balance between a little bit aspirational, like just a little bit inspiring or aspirational, but filled with a huge quantity of relatability and vulnerability and all of those good abilities that we can put in there. You hit a little bit of a sweet spot for the socials and for building audience and for building engagement as well. And I do you do it really, really well because to land on your feed, it's like gorgeous, everything looks super beautiful, it's lovely.
But then as you start to get into it, it's like, oh, there's like, real people here. This is a real and this is a very authentic place. These are normal people. It's a really nice place to be. And I think that aspirational that shift away from aspirational, rather, is sort of like what makes me really happy. Because I've said it a million times. But I started this pod because I got so sick of all the stories of the big Australian founders, in particular in my circle of pods that I was listening to, that are here's how I did $100,000 in five minutes, and here's how I sold out in 45 seconds. And these big household names that are so aspirational, it feels so hard to join them on the journey and to feel like you could actually get to those levels too.
It just feels like too much of a leap. So that's why we have these conversations. So we're a little bit more in the value, a little bit more in the authenticity, as opposed to the PR headlines. And yeah, so I think you've just shared a lot of really aspirational advice there with the audience in a very real way, because, yeah, showing up as we are is just like, just the best thing ever. I want to go back to, I guess, the UB that was sitting in the principal's office, which sounds like a scary place to be, but I know that in context to what you were doing, it makes perfect sense. But sitting there on the cusp of taking on this challenge full time. And I will assume at this stage you've probably seen a little bit of financial return from the early offerings that you had there, moving into that then full time and thinking about how you will continue to support yourself financially and see the business grow financially. How has that journey evolved for you in terms of what you put out there and your commercial modeling around it?
Well, if I go back to sitting in the principal's office, I think it's important yet to say that I was absolutely shitting myself. Not because I was in the principal's office, but because I struggled so much to actually pull the pin and jump into this. This is the thing that keeps me up at night. It's the thing I want to do when I get a few spare minutes. And yet to jump from this safe, secure role that I had, and I also loved it in teaching into the unknown was I've just never stopped being surprised at how difficult that was for me to pull that pin. And I don't know if that's because we start to get an idea about who we are and what we are. So for me, I live in a very tiny town. Our little community has 367 people in Kai Valley, but I then worked in the nearby local town as a teacher.
I was known of that. I was known as the mum to my four children. And I liked that safety, of knowing that the money would come in every week and those kind of things. And you're right, I had tested, like I said, these resources, and I had put I think it was the middle school holidays, and I took that two weeks to release my first paid offering, popped it out there. And I think in the first month after releasing that first paid offering, I had earned more than half my teaching wage for the year. And there was no sign of this stopping. And I knew then that there was huge potential. But it then took me another four months to actually get to that point where I was sitting in the principal's office resigning.
And I had all the evidence. I am a bit of a number, I'm a spreadsheet nerd. I had all the evidence in front of me, and yet I still could not bring myself to resign from my safe job and go out into this big, bad world of business. And in some ways, I think it was who the hell do I think I am to think that I can be sitting here at my kitchen bench with a laptop. And take on this huge job. Someone has to be out there saying we need to build these houses better. And who did I think I was? I'm just a mum in Kai Valley, which is ridiculous because I do actually have quite a lot of qualifications in this arena. But I don't know, it's just about backing oneself and I just would like to say it to anybody out there.
If you've tested it, there's some momentum there, things are good if you can just jump and don't torture yourself. Don't torture yourself first, just get it done.
Wonderful advice. And yes, I couldn't agree more with you and I couldn't agree more with the feeling that I think is so global with us as business owners in that we get that I mean, impostor syndrome almost doesn't represent it well enough. It's exactly what you said. Who do I think I am to be able to do this and do it really well? That's something that we all need to battle through and I think so many of us feel that and I think it's because we don't often enough see ourselves in the business owners that are out know. Back to my point on who we hear from and how it's presented and how Aspirational and High know, when I'm seeing the head of Canva as a billionaire, I'm like cute. I'm like not that and I can't imagine being that, but who's to say I couldn't be that? So, yeah, we just don't see ourselves enough in that. But there is absolutely no reason we don't all have the absolute right to stand on our own 2ft as successful business owners, putting something we're passionate about into the world. Like, we all deserve that opportunity.
So I agree with you about jumping 2ft in diving. I love that you point out that, get the numbers and the feedback about it and then do it. Because I'm like quite the opposite. I'm like, it's going to figure it out and it's a toxic trait of mine that I need to work on. But I have the opposite, which is like if I test this, I'll lose my nerve. So I'm just going to go for it and hope for the best, which is probably why I'm about to launch my 7th business.
But sometimes you just have to jump in. And that certainly is a lot of how this business has gone is saying yes and then working out how to make that happen. Sometimes I trick myself and I announce something online, it's coming and I say, it's coming in two weeks, which means I have no option but to work out how I'm going to do that in the next two weeks. But the other thing I think I struggled with back then was that whole I can't release these things or ask people to pay for these things until they're perfect. And I have really had to embrace that done is better than perfect. And I have to tell myself that daily because otherwise I would never release anything. And I find people are so forgiving if you are open and honest and ask for feedback, which is what I do constantly. And that's where the gold is because, for example, I don't let people leave a workshop, I trap them there until they fill out quite a comprehensive feedback form because I need to know how I can make that better for the next person.
And like I said, people are very, very forgiving. And they often think something is absolutely fantastic where you have stared at this thing that you've created for probably hundreds, if not thousands of hours when it comes to a workshop. And you probably hate it by the time you release it. Whatever that your baby is that you're releasing. But yeah, you've got to remember that they're seeing it the first time.
Oh God, it's so true. I've had this experience with so many things from podcast episodes, the podcast itself, to ceramics when I was doing that and I'd put pieces out there and I was just like, what do you mean you like this? I hate it. You just stand at it for so long. So totally understands that feeling. On the topic of feedback, which fantastic lesson for all of us about asking for feedback as often as possible, have you ever I should ask have you ever had any negative feedback and how have you dealt with it?
I have to say, we are so ridiculously lucky online. We do not seem to get any negativity. I do not know how or why. And I do get this question a bit. People do say to me, why is there no negativity or trolling or anything for you guys online? And I'm not sure if it's something to do with the tone we set on the page. And also the tribe that has gathered there are just also like I said, there's a lot of similarities between people and I just don't know if because we're quite positive and try to focus on the good things or the solutions to things rather than dwelling on because we could all for example, I spend a fair bit of space in that climate change space, which, if you can spend time there and get pretty depressed pretty quickly or you can focus on the things that you can do. And I think that tone that we try and bring through on our socials matches the tone in our life. We try to be respectful and kind to every human being we come across ever.
And we are that same way inclined online and therefore we just don't seem to that's the only answer I can kind of give you because I could safely say I've had maybe four or five, just not trolley comments, but slightly negative comments online in what, seven years.
I mean, it's wonderful to hear and I think it goes back to that authenticity. But also, isn't it funny how we remember, even if it's only like four or five slightly barely negative things and they're just implanted in our brain forever from that point? What challenges you the most at the moment with being in business for yourself now that you've grown and got a little bit of structure behind you?
Doing this on my own is really tough at times. I bounce a lot of stuff off boots and he gets pretty sick of that pretty quick, actually. But it's time for me to find some mentors and some other people that I can bounce stuff off. And I need to now invest the time and energy in doing that. It's creeping out to be my next step, really, because you can drive yourself insane, absolutely insane. I think I could speed this up a lot more just bouncing ideas off people because you go down rabbit holes, you think, right, this is the next thing I need to do, and you find out it's not. And probably just a conversation with someone a little bit in the know would help. So it is lonely sitting at your desk by yourself all day every day working towards this goal.
It's also wonderful. It's incredible. It's very freeing to be able to work when you feel like working and not work when you don't feel like working. And on that note, I have come to accept that I maybe am a little bit of a creative person. I saw myself as the scientist, the science brain, and not really creative. But this business is so closely tied to my creativity that it's not funny. And creativity, you don't just wake up every day and overflow with creativity. It doesn't happen that way.
And I've learned to respect that. Some days I'll sit down to work and there's nothing. And so I might just completely abort mission that day and go off and do something for the family or they'll do the grocery shopping or whatever and just not even bother. And then I realize there's days where you cannot dot me. I will still be in my office at 01:00 a.m. Still going, because I'm completely consumed with an idea of getting something finished. That has been hard because I think we all expect ourselves to be productive all the time, particularly when we run our own business. And there's this mindset where I think if I don't work, then we don't have the income coming in and then, oh, we're all going to starve and die.
Which is not the case at all. But for some reason I think productivity has just snuck in there as something that I feel good about. And I don't know if that's because I was stuck in fast forward for 20 years and I really need to work on that and really respect those cycles of creativity and yeah, just back off sometimes.
Wonderful advice for me to hear because when you've got something brewing, you've got something building. The business is kind of happening. You also feel like everything is really important. Like, okay, today I need to sit down for 10 hours and I need to put out a few press features or I need to do this and I need to do that and it's like everything becomes really important. You almost want to see yourself as highly productive, highly on, focused and creative through any day. Like the day that suits, look, I've got a free day, I'm going to sit down and do this thing today. But I agree with you, so often it doesn't happen and it's good advice to step away from it and go and do something else. That's something I don't do often enough.
You'll find me just almost sitting there, like rocking back and forth. Like, I need to be focused, I need to do better here. I've lost a whole day. But, yes, if you give yourself that break, you might come back into the desk the next day with so much creativity. It happens in like 45 minutes, it just all pours out.
That is so true. And zooming out from that is this trip. So I'm currently working from a caravan as we travel around Australia. Now, I am not working many hours. A know, we made the commitment that we're going to travel. I'll keep things ticking over. But this year is about us having experiences also going out there and meeting some of these wonderful book and blend tribe and sharing their homes and stories. And that's even being tricky for me to just sit back and just try and live in the moment and enjoy this trip and these incredible experiences we're having rather than, like you said, grinding stuff out all the time.
And what it's shown me, we're now nine months in and we'll be home in three months time. And what it's shown me is that you can still be successful. Things can still grow without you having to be completely consumed by it all the time. I'm not growing at the rate I was when I was working on it full time at home, but it's still happening and it's still going to be there when we get home in three months time and I wind things up again. And what a lesson. And I'm so glad to have learnt it now, fairly early on in the business, we're only two years into the business. It's almost two years to the day, I think, since I released the first paid offering. And, yeah, I'm learning to not have to smash myself around the head all the time with everything I need to be doing.
Just chill out a bit.
I love that. It's brilliant advice. Where do you hope to see your business grow to in the short and.
Medium term, more long term, we can't stop until every single house that gets built in this country, probably worldwide, gets built with some more consideration for how it will impact the planet. So we need to take sustainable builds and simple scientific principles that can be applied in building and renovating to make a house use a lot less energy and therefore less impact on the planet. We need to take that from this lovely little niche place that it sits in at the moment and everyone thinks it's really expensive and hard to do. That is all complete bullshit. It's really simple and easy to do. It's principles that have been around for thousands and thousands of years. We can't stop until it becomes the norm that it's just mainstream that you build your house considering these things. And so the business can't stop until that happens.
So we need to reach a lot of people. And I don't mind if that's through all our free content because that's really important that we share a lot of this content for free on the socials, on the website. I don't mind if the business reaches those goals through some of that free content or by paid content. Either way, we just need to continue telling the stories and the ripple effect will continue to grow. So that was a zoom out, zoom in. There's some things I would like to do. I would like to release a book that will help people step through this process. There's another couple of exciting kind of it things going on.
So there's a lot to do and there's a lot of people to reach. And that's, I suppose, again, how I make the decisions about what to do in the next in our business is how can we just help more people? Let's just help more people.
And that's just such a brilliant reason to be in business. No matter what. The thing is that you're doing or the thing is that your business is built around, if you can provide value to people, if you can make their lives a little bit better, and most certainly if we can make the lives of the planet a little bit better, there is no better reason for being in business. I love those goals and I hope that we have a publisher listening who just heard that last part because I can see a book in your future very soon and I would be very much lining up to buy that. That is such a gift to give your story to me, to the listener and the things that you've said along the way, I know are going to be so valuable no matter where the business owner is, who's listening in their mind, whether they've just started, are thinking about starting, are scaling up, are going large. There's so much value in there, particularly around seeing yourself as the business owner you aspire to be already and knowing that you can step into that position. And it's just such a gift to share your story with people, to inspire people to keep going and build better homes for the planet in return. What can the listener and I do to support you?
They can just come and join the tribe at Bookandblend and they can go and have a poke around on the website, which is Bookandblend.com as well. But really what they can do is chat to their friends, their mums, their dads, anyone they know who is building or renovating their home. Chat to them and ask, have you considered applying some passive principles that will make your home perform really well without using lots of energy? And start the conversations. And if you know people that are doing it, share their story and let me know so I can share their story. So, yeah, just have the conversations.
Awesome. I'm going to make sure to have the link to your website, your Instagram and all of the goodies in the show notes so that listener yes, go get around that, have those conversations and share the stories with Lisa. It has been such a pleasure to connect with you today, Lisa, all the way in northern Queensland from your glorious caravan. I am so glad we made the time to do this and am so grateful to you for sharing your story with me today.
Thank you for being here with me. Thank you. Kim, one quick thing.
If you're hearing this, you've listened all the way through. Hopefully that means you really like this podcast because it's pretty generous to give up 40, OD minutes of your time for it. If that is the case, please leave the show a star rating and a review. It helps me reach so many more people who might also listen all the way through and get some benefit and some support out of it. Not to mention it puts a real spring in my step to read them. Thank you for listening to Unemployed and Afraid, the podcast for Small business Builders with your host, me, Kim Kerton. If you love it, you can set thanks with a star rating and a review. And, of course, join the community on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and LinkedIn.
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