Natasha Westover

Full transcript: Natasha Westover on London Real

1:13 This is London Real, I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Natasha Westover, recent graduate of our Business Accelerator. Welcome to the show. Thank you very much, it’s great to be here. Tell us about you. Where are you from, what do you do? Well, I’m from England, and I was brought up on the south coast by the beach, had a lovely childhood, and then I went to university just outside of London.

1:39 I did an accounting and finance degree, and that was it, my fate was sealed forevermore. I went straight into finance work, and that’s what I’ve been doing for the last 20 years. Okay, so wow, 20 years in finance. Yeah, but I took the management accounting, so working with companies and just seeing what information from a finance and accounting point of view a company would need that they would base their decisions on.

2:09 So I’ve got to know so many different types of companies and things like that. So accounting is the same, but actually getting to know businesses has been like the interest inside of it, and what led to my business idea on this accelerator. Okay, and so tell me what was going on with you, you know, personally and in your business externally, that made you seek out the accelerator? What was happening?

2:34 Oh, well, it was quite interesting actually, because I saw London Real and your webinars with Business Accelerator, and I was like, one day I’m going to do that. Then I knew it was this year, and then I saw your webinar, and my life was so packed. Because I track all my time, so I knew I was working just under 70 hours a week, I was travelling 20 hours a week, and so I didn’t have… even though you guys are saying it’s like one to four hours a week, I was like, I don’t know how to squeeze that in.

3:06 And I was already getting up at 4:00 a.m. to do my work. So I went to bed after your webinar and I could not sleep, and I said, oh, I think I need to sign up for this accelerator, and I think I signed up for it like 5:00 a.m. the next morning. So my plan was to bring my contracts to an end with what I was working on in September, and then if there was a cohort for Business Accelerator I’d do that one; that made more sense, then I’d have all the time in the world to spend on it.

3:42 But for whatever reason my brain was like, no, we’re doing it now. Wow. So I signed up in June and felt completely at peace with my decision, and then when we started the accelerator I felt less at peace. Good, and we’ll get to that. All right, so you couldn’t sleep that night. Why? What was rattling around in your brain after that webinar?

4:06 Because leading up to that day, trying to think of the dates now, I had decided to come out of the contracts I was in with my employer and clients, and I had decided at that point that towards the back end of this year, Q4, I’d return fully to my business and I’d do what I wanted to do, this idea that I came up with a couple of years ago.

4:31 And the Business Accelerator, because of what you guys were offering, how to put together an online product and how to get it out there in the world, it was completely aligned to my idea. And I think because I knew my contracts were coming to an end, I just got super excited about doing it now, and I really wanted to do it now.

4:58 And I knew from what I’d seen already, I’d followed quite a lot of London Real, and I knew just from the webinar how you had laid it out, that was what I needed, that it was so aligned to A, my logical brain, and B, what I wanted to achieve as this product and this offering. And I thought, if I really try and squeeze something out of this Business Accelerator, when it comes to September, October 2018, I’ll have the blueprint from London Real Business Accelerator and I’ll be able to start my business like that.

5:28 As opposed to finish those contracts and then do the accelerator and then do the business; that felt too far away that night. But a strong decision. A lot of people postpone, which honestly means they never actually do it, and that’s why I’m always telling people, pull the trigger. I would say, if you want something done, give it to a busy person like you, you know.

5:45 But people a lot of times just use it as a resistance and excuses. You know, I’ve heard it all: like, I have a baby, I got divorced, I got married. There’s always something that doesn’t let them do it, but it’s usually because they fear change, uncertainty, whatever that it’s going to bring. But you did the opposite: you went ahead, pulled the trigger, even though you had a crazy busy week, a crazy busy period in your life, and you were gonna end it.

6:11 Yep, but I knew, I felt like I had already waited, right? Because I don’t know how many years you guys have been doing the Business Accelerator; it’s not the first time I’d seen it advertised. Okay. And the idea for my Business Accelerator idea, what I worked on with you guys, I’d had that for maybe three years, so I was always ready, right?

6:36 And I was just saying, I know I won’t be able to do my best job at the Business Accelerator, ’cause I just won’t have the time, but I think they’ll push me hard enough for me to do enough so that I’ll come out with so many more skills than what I have beforehand, and I was ready for that. Okay, why London Real? Why trust us with your money, with your time, with your headspace?

6:54 I was trying to think how I came across London Real, and it must have just been scrolling on YouTube. I think that’s how I found you; that was a few years ago. And then on my commute I would just listen to the podcasts, and the trust built up over time. And then when I started, I remember you launching the Academy and then some of the courses, and I was thinking, I’m not so sure, you know, what this is all about. Like, I didn’t know enough.

7:27 But it just was the perfect storm this year, because part of what I wanted to do in my finance business is to create time in my actual working life, true time where I would be doing courses and progressing for myself, so I had more to offer my clients. And when I started thinking about what do I want, where do I want to go with my learning, and what do I want to be able to offer my clients, it just seemed to fit with the Business Accelerator.

7:52 How you could achieve so much in eight weeks, I liked that pace, and how you were held accountable for it. The accountability was a big word for me, and I was like, right, let’s see if they can hold even a really massively busy person accountable, because if I’m going to do it, I’m going to need something like that. I had already bought little courses online where it’s just on demand, but I hadn’t actioned a lot of that.

8:25 Okay, well, I want to hear about this. So you pull the trigger, I drop you in this Facebook group, you got all these people from around the world, you’ve got video modules, you got two live calls per week, you had an accountability doc, you got to upload vlogs and all sorts of other things. What are the first two weeks like? Really overwhelming, sometimes in a fun way, sometimes in a like, this is so hard, what have I done?

8:52 And also just like, there’s so many new faces, there’s so many new businesses, so you get to know people, their business ideas. That Facebook feed felt like it was a train going at a hundred miles an hour, and I was struggling to even figure out what people were doing, so it felt like… Students. Yeah, videos and vlogs. I felt like a lot of information.

9:18 But at the same time, I had never videoed myself doing, like, the intro video where you have to talk about yourself. I talk about finance, but I had never put together anything that was a minute or two minutes on just me, and it forced me to do that, like, in the first week. And then it was like, yeah, what was I worried about? You know, so you push through even some of the initial fear right from the word go, and I was like, okay, this is gonna be tough.

9:52 And how was the accountability process? Because I think that’s our USP. I don’t think anyone does accountability like us. There’s a lot of on-demand courses, watch them when you have time, which basically means give us your money because you’re never gonna get anything back. Drives me crazy, I don’t teach those. But, you know, the accountability sometimes can be difficult for people; sometimes it’s also good.

10:16 How did you find that document where every one of your assignments was tracked by all the other students and the team leaders and me, and we can literally see how everyone’s performing in real time? Yeah, I found it… I felt like there was a light shining on me and my work that I hadn’t really felt anywhere else for a long time. I hadn’t thought how a simple spreadsheet would make a grown woman feel like they should do stuff, so it’s very funny. Spoken like a true spreadsheet lover yourself, I’m sure.

10:57 Yeah, I said, I need to get my team on this. But I think the accountability, I think it’s an attraction for people, and I think you guys see accountability through to a different level than I was expecting. Okay. So you guys are on us going, you have to do this, you have to do that. Throughout the course I remember Chris Albert, my team leader, like, messaging, telling me stuff about my website: change this, Natasha; change that, Natasha; do this.

11:19 And I was like, okay, I’ve only just learned how to put a website together, but okay. So it was like, yeah, I’m not going to be invisible here, and it took me a really short space of time to realize there’s nowhere to hide. Okay, and that was good. Absolutely. Okay, then you actually, you’re forced to do something and you’re forced to perform, and you get to know yourself whether you like it or not, and you get to know what you like and what you don’t like.

11:53 What did you struggle with the most? What was the hardest module? Probably the more techie stuff, for putting the website together, and just like phoning GoDaddy all the time going, please help me with my website, and realizing that even trying to explain some technical stuff over the phone to my website provider, I was terrible explaining it, so they were terrible at helping me. And so it took a while for me to find my pace of that.

12:23 But saying that, I’m so glad I did it, because I’m embarrassed to say I had my website for two years and I did not put my website together. I didn’t do anything online, I just carried on doing my business, and it was only when I signed up for the Business Accelerator, two years into my business, that I actually even had a landing page.

12:45 So I didn’t enjoy the technical stuff, and then there were a few problems like my autoresponder and things like that. I realized I didn’t enjoy that, but I quite enjoyed the videos and things like that, with webinars and things like that, that other people in the course didn’t really enjoy.

13:09 Yeah, I like to push people to do the technical stuff, because now you know how to do it, which means some tech expert isn’t going to charge you thousands of pounds to do something that you know you can do. It just helps with the smell test on everything, and the truth is websites and email are not going away anytime soon. So the more you know, it just makes you more nimble. But I know it’s resistance for some people.

13:23 And yeah, we asked you to create a website and landing page and an email autoresponder in a week, because we got big things to do, and I have people that have spent three years on that and spent a lot of money, a lot of money, and sometimes they have these websites that don’t do anything. And then a week later they got one that’s converting on emails, and they’re like, what was I thinking? I hear that all the time, so thank you for powering through that.

13:49 What was the community like? Like, who are these people, what are they like, how did you feel about people you never met getting in your biz? You know, what was going on? I felt like one of the geeks on the course, because my product is accounting and finance training, and then I was looking at other people in the course and they had, like, really cool things.

14:12 So I quite enjoyed the community, because it was a break from… I work, I spend my time working with businesses and I spend my time working on finance for businesses. So actually on the course, because there’s such a variety of different people, different businesses, different backgrounds, different abilities, I actually got into it. So I went from not really using Facebook to checking Facebook whenever I could to keep up with the group and see what was going on, and you want to be part of it.

14:44 And I do feel like I was way behind a lot of other people. I would try and comment and watch people’s videos and give some constructive feedback and things like that, but I could see other people were on there all the time; I didn’t have that capacity. But I actually enjoyed being part of the online community, and because of the team structure and things like that, I think you’re compelled to, like, get on there and see what everyone’s doing and try and help out where you can.

15:16 What was your best moment on the course, something you’re most proud of? I think, I mean, just getting through it. It was insane, because at some points I think I sat on the calls, like, crying, going, oh my goodness, I’m so tired. Not in a bad way, but in a, you know, there’s a lot on, and I just want to do really well and I want to get the most out of it.

15:34 But probably my best moment is the fact that I’ve taken an idea that’s just been in my mind for three years, and I actually have something to show for it now. I have a product, it is there. And you managed to do that in eight weeks. Less than eight weeks, and that to me is the thing that’s totally transformed where I start my business again. That’s just amazing progress.

16:10 Most people walk around most of their lives with that business idea in their head, and then I hear people all the time: I had the idea for Uber. And it’s like, did you? And it’s like, everyone has these ideas and they never road-test them. And the truth is, you probably felt this maybe in the first two weeks, is that oftentimes your idea is just not right the first few iterations, and it can be really ego-destroying when someone just smashes it in front of you.

16:34 But we’re trying to make sure it gets better so it can be tough enough to exist in the real world. But once you go through that process, it’s very transformational. It also builds a lot of self-esteem, and you’re like, wow, I really have something unique. And you do have something unique, because you have a digital product that can scale. Absolutely.

16:50 So people, you know, if I can teach you how to sell one, I can teach you how to sell 10, I can teach you how to sell 10,000, and most people think I’m crazy. Like, you know, if I can teach you how to make a thousand dollars online, I can teach you how to make a hundred thousand. Most people think that’s kind of crazy, but it’s not, you know. No, because for my business, how it was working, my business is kind of broken into different sections.

17:14 One being finance support, where I would do the finance for your business; one being consultancy, where I’ll help you figure out what finance support you need; coaching is something people come to me for all the time. And then I had this idea about educational financial training videos, which is why it was aligned to the Business Accelerator. It was the bit that I’d left to one side, but actually now that I have it, it’s the bit that I can give to people straight away.

17:45 And then go, now tell me if you need coaching or consultancy or for me to do your accounts, or based on what you’ve just bought here, can you do it yourself? And that was becoming more and more apparent in my business. Actually, I was going over the same things; I’ve spent 20 years answering the same finance questions. So I kind of was good with… I’ve got a good version of a business here, I’ve got a good business idea, because people have been employing me for 20 years to do it.

18:08 But how do I make it into this product that I can scale, and that is a gateway to introducing the rest of my business? And I really think it’s valuable and useful to people, and that’s why I chose Business Accelerator, because it just had everything that was this one part of my business that I neglected, but that would take all elements of my business up to this new level. So I think, you know, in eight weeks to be able to say something like that is pretty incredible.

18:40 It is incredible, it is. And you know, it’s just what you’re talking about, because most of your life you’ve traded your time for money, and like you said, you’ve explained the same thing to probably hundreds of people with businesses that looked alike, and it’s like, wow, if I could have just trained a robot to do this, I can make money while I sleep, which is basically what you’re doing with a digital program.

19:03 It’s also, like you said, a great lead gen, because people can buy that, and the ones that need more can come and pay you more money for these other services. So, you know, it sounds like you’ve grasped the concepts here really well, and again, these are timeless concepts we’re teaching you. Again, I want to teach you how to catch a fish; I don’t want to give you the fish. And so these fundamentals won’t change.

19:25 And that was very aligned to my business, because you guys were teaching us to do that, whereas I think the finance support, or my finance training videos, they’re quite generic, because I’ve not worked in one industry and I’ve not worked for one type of business, but yet the finance questions are still the same. So I’m answering these generic finance questions, really practical things to help people.

19:49 Whereas I could see that there was the gap in the market with that, and I could recognize it when I saw the Business Accelerator, what you were trying to do, and I want to do that from a finance point of view for companies out there, because I think this holds them back. And the way you guys can see how this would hold someone like me back, and what your offer fills, that gap, I can see exactly the same with this finance training: that it holds people back, and it’s not necessary.

20:13 What does your business look like in one year? What does your life look like, based on where you want your business to be? Because, you know, 70-hour weeks, okay, that’s a little crazy, and maybe, you know, entrepreneurship has a bit of that, but like, where do you want to be a year from now, and what does this business look like?

20:38 One of the major things I needed was to not be based in one location, so that was the major driver behind some of my decisions prior to the Business Accelerator. It was just, I can’t be in London all the time, I’m based in London. I need to be able to travel, I want to spend more time with my family who live on the south coast, and I just want to be location-free.

21:00 So that was the major driver for me even making the decisions about bringing some of my contracts and clients to an end, and I wanted the fun of finally putting something together that was this idea that’s been bubbling away. But what I see in a year is that I’m probably working just as hard, because I do love working a lot, and I love finance and I love getting to know businesses, but location-free, and also a bit more of a balance in my personal life between my health and fitness and work.

21:33 But also using what I have to just grow my collateral, grow my understanding, and just spend more time with businesses and trying to understand what business owners like yourself, what else do you need, and do I have it, and if I don’t have it, can I go away and learn it? Because I love the flow of just sitting down and talking about businesses.

21:57 And yeah, for me it’s based on numbers, but it always starts with the numbers, and I’m always referring it back to the numbers, or trying to understand your business, and then I’ll try and give you some numbers that help show the story of your business, and really that’s what I want to do. But there is potential to grow my business, and I’ve been growing it steadily for the last couple of years.

22:19 And now I’ve reached a point where I have a certain amount of income and I’m good, and I can take some more time out and take some more risk, as it were, and try these videos, these training videos, and try different things in my business. And that’s really… I want to have that freedom, and now’s the perfect time for me to do that.

22:43 Tell me about you as a person. If we walked out on the street right now and bumped into Natasha who didn’t take this course, how is she different than you? I think before the course I was working probably too hard on the wrong things. So I had an idea of what sort of clients I wanted and things like that, but I wasn’t making much of an effort to reach that, and I think I was full of ideas but not able to get them out.

23:20 I was getting quite stuck with that, with a let’s just get through the next deadline at work, and let’s not worry about the fact that I have these creative ideas about a business that I’d like to execute on one day. And I think the Business Accelerator was a bit of… it just, like, flooded over me.

23:42 And I started with this small idea about training videos, that I can see people have been asking me to do that in real life, and now I might… well, there’s lots of other things that I could do. So it’s unleashed the sort of creative business mind again, and I’ve quite enjoyed that transition of just head down working to looking up and going, oh, what else can I do to add value?

24:06 Yeah, your customers will always tell you the products they need; you just have to listen to them. You know, it took me years to create the Academy because I wasn’t listening. The viewers said, we want more, we want you to teach us. I said, no, I’m too busy broadcasting. So you’re learning that also the purpose of a product is to solve a problem, period, and as long as you understand that mentality, like you said, you want to go and talk to those businesses: what are your other problems, how can I help? That’s the best way to build a business, to start with a conversation.

24:31 I think I’ve got just full-on working, and now I’m able to take a step back, and that transition happened throughout the course, and then I was like, I’ve got all these other ideas that have just been suppressed for so long. Well, look, you’ve got lifetime access to the course. I highly recommend at some point going back from the start, because everything will look kind of different, and just revisiting these points again.

24:54 These are timeless fundamentals and will not change, and the better you know them… I’m still relearning these things even at London Real. And so the better you learn them, the more success you’ll get. And you’ve got the community as well, which, again, you’ll see these people doing great things. You’ll probably even go into business with some of them in some capacity in the next five years, you know.

25:17 Yeah, I can totally see the potential in the community, and also just the excitement of seeing people who have been so generous towards my business ideas, and being like commenting and viewing my stuff, and I get finance isn’t for everyone and it’s not the most exciting thing, and the fact that people just took the time and did that, and now I get to see their journey and see how we can, like, interact going forward.

25:41 It is… I think we’re all just really excited and just, like, on the start line going, right, how are we gonna do this? Yeah, and you’ll feel it at dinner tonight with everybody. It’s like everyone’s vibrating; you can see that the future is bright. That’s the most simple way to say it. And if you bump into ten people on the street right now, we probably wouldn’t even find one that would tell you the future is bright.

26:04 So yeah, again, you are the average of the five people, or thirty or hundred people, you spend the most time with. Being around the energy, it’s hard to quantify what that’s really worth: people that are positive, that believe in you, that not only want you to succeed, they expect you to succeed. Yeah, and that’s a nice group to be in. Really, I did feel that escalate as the course was going on, and that expectation, for sure.

26:27 And it’s like, God, I’m kind of behind on a couple of things, I need to up my game, and you can feel that on the course, but it’s a really supportive group. And the last call is just… you know, you’ve probably seen this time and time again, that last call, like, no one wants to leave the meeting. It’s like, we’ll stay on here and hang out a bit longer, because it’s just that feeling of, oh, I’m not gonna be with you guys again.

26:57 And they’re people I’ve never met. We’re gonna meet them tonight; they’ll be like old friends. It’s fun, it’s fun. Yeah, I’m looking forward to it. Yeah. What would you say to someone who was kind of like you were before you pulled the trigger, like, you know, been thinking about it, not sure if it’s the right thing to do? What would you tell someone who is on the edge whether to take this course?

27:13 I would say have a really good look at what you think you want to achieve in life and what you want to achieve with your business, and is it aligned to the Business Accelerator? It was obvious for me, and I think it’s obvious for most people. I think the answer, you’re thinking about doing the Business Accelerator because what you’re thinking about doing is aligned to what you guys are offering.

27:37 And if you feel it’s aligned, I would say don’t wait. Don’t have a sleepless night and get up at 5 a.m. and pull the trigger; just go ahead and do it. Because in eight weeks I didn’t do everything perfectly, and I didn’t even do everything, but I did what I could when I could. I was really spurred on by you guys at London Real, but also the community, and I got so much done in eight weeks.

28:02 I’m now leaving on, like, this brand new level of competency on things I never knew even existed in a business, my autoresponder and stuff like that. And it’s just, you just get to this level that you just don’t know is available to you. So I would say, I think if it’s aligned and if you’re thinking about it, then why not?

28:27 And you’re working 70-hour weeks and you still pulled the trigger. That’s what I love. I’m gonna be talking about you in the future, because, you know, everyone always has an excuse about time, and it’s just like, again, like you said, it’s eight weeks, and this is a fundamental… and you made it happen. So yeah, I think it’s time and money that hold people back.

28:49 And I just say, I reached the point three years ago where I said money is never going to be the… you will never hear from me “I can’t afford something”. I don’t say those words anymore. And I spent three years paying off every bit of personal debt I had. There’s no credit cards, there’s no loan, there’s no mortgage, there’s nothing. And I reached that point where I was like, money is never going to hold me back.

29:12 And I think there’s so much out there about how to get money together. I mean, I write about it on my blog, and I just think it’s so super easy. When you start taking little strides towards it, you’ll find the money. So I would say, don’t let money hold you back. If anything, think how you can be more creative with your own personal money, and if it’s time, just set the alarm clock an hour earlier.

29:41 Amen. I love that, your refreshing look at money; your relationship with money is really on point. I wish more people would do that as well, but unfortunately a lot of people are in this weird scarcity mentality, and that, added on, means they don’t actually invest in something that can change their future. So thank you for saying these words. I hope they resonate with other people.

29:57 Natasha, it’s been amazing having you on the course. Welcome to the family. I think, you know, you’re with us now; you’ve got access to all these materials and all these people for life. So, you know, we’re watching you. I’m expecting really big things from you now, and to deliver. Good, so make us proud. And, you know, thank you for being a part of this whole experience.

30:19 Oh, you’re very welcome. Thank you so much for you and your team, amazing team. Can’t recommend it highly enough, it’s awesome. Thank you so much. All right, thank you.