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