AP 1178: How Do I Step Up and Become a Voice for the Community I Want to Lead?

AP 1179: How Do I Step Up and Become a Voice for the Community I Want to Lead?

Pat Flynn:
What's up, everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to episode 1,178 of AskPat 2.0. You're about to listen to a coaching call between myself and an entrepreneur, like you. And today, we're talking with Heba from Mommy's Happy Hour. She helps women with a lot of the craziness that happens in life with balancing career, raising a family, trying to do all that stuff at the same time. Heba is a voice for mommies out there, and she wants to be more of a voice. She wants to lead this community even more. She has a podcast, again, Mommy's Happy Hour, but she's struggling a little bit mainly with something that many of us struggle with. And that is how do we wrap our head around how to do this and who we are, and how do we put ourselves out there? How might we get some ideas to brand ourselves, to position ourselves out there in this world?

And this is exactly what we talk about today. I'm really excited to share this episode with you. Again, Heba is amazing, very inspirational. We did have some technical issues, so we did have to switch from one platform to another in the middle. So there might be a little bit of degradation in the audio quality in the middle. That has nothing to do with the content. It's just... It happens. So just keep that in mind, and I look forward to sharing it with you. So let's not wait any longer. Here is the episode. Let's do it.

Heba, welcome to the AskPat podcast. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Heba Shunbo:
Thanks for having me. I have to say that the reason why I launched my podcast was because of you.

Pat:
Oh, thank you. That's so good. What's the podcast? I'd love to know what the name of it is.

Heba:
It's called Mommy's Happy Hour. And I launched it finally, I went back and forth all of the first six months of 2020, and I watched all your tutorials, and finally, I was like, I wanted it to be perfect before I launched it. And I think it was one thing I watched... one video of yours, you were like, "It's never going to be perfect. Just figure it out. And then you get better as you go along."

And I really felt that was true. So I jumped off the deep end, and I did it, but I was really nervous because I've never done anything like it. It's gotten better so far. I've done 10 episodes. I basically launched it because I had my kids later on in life. So I had them at the age of 41. I had twins. And I remember in my deep, dark moments of my first year of motherhood, I really desperately needed to connect with other women that I can relate to. I did it for that reason, for my own therapy. But I knew that so many women would resonate with it because they don't really talk about things that are kind of painful or... A lot of subjects here are taboo.

Pat:
What an amazing service you're providing for other women who might be going through the same experience. That, plus the ability for you to connect. It just seems like it would be an absolute win for everybody. I know you're only 10 episodes in, but tell me about some of the great things that have happened so far since starting the show.

Heba:
I've had some great feedback. First of all, my own experience, like from episode one to episode 10, I feel a huge difference in my—in the way I let the conversation flow. Like the first two episodes, I had like 25 questions drafted per episode. So I kept on getting so sidetracked. I was like, "I just asked that question." It was really... It was quite bad. I was so embarrassed about this. But it's gotten better, I think relatively much better.

I'm so not into technology. I'm really technology challenged and social media challenged. So I'm launching a website, but I don't have... I have an Instagram account. It's really quite sad. 115 followers. So it's like, I'm thinking I want this to carry on because I want it to have legs. And I really do believe in the potential of it. I really enjoy having these guests on, I really enjoy connecting with them, talking about really interesting topics. But at the same time, I feel like there's a lot of expense going into it. Like, it's my time. And I've hired two girls that do the social media for me. And I pay for the editing because I outsourced that because I have other businesses going. So I don't have the time to do all of it. And I have like two toddler twins. And so it's really overwhelming for me.

Pat:
Yeah. I mean, we had kids one at a time and it was hard. I can't imagine two at the same time. So you're super. You're doing some incredible things. And I think it's, again, almost, it feels therapeutic to go and speak and have conversations and to potentially connect with people. I do want to give you some inspiration though, because one of my podcasting students, another woman in Australia, her name is Sophie Walker. She interviews women about their birthing stories. So women who are going through childbirth and who have just experienced it, and her podcast has exploded. It just shows you, and I'm proving to you, that there is a market, an understanding of a niche out there for other women who also feel alone or also are feeling—they want to talk about this with somebody, and you can be that voice.

And she's got millions of downloads now, but it didn't happen right away. It took some time. It took people, finding it, really resonating with it, loving it, then sharing it with their other friends. And that can't happen right away. That's something that we have to keep going for. And if you stop now, you're not giving yourself a chance to do that. Now, I didn't think you were going to stop. It's just, I know it can be hard and whatnot. Australian Birth Stories is absolutely incredible. And then to have what you're already getting, feedback and whatnot, from episode 10, that's a really good sign.

And you had mentioned your Instagram having only 115 people. That's 115 women, or men and women, who are following you. If you put them all in a room, it feels a little different when they're in a physical room versus just online. Those are real human beings. And at this point, when you're at the start of your journey, I would recommend... This is what I recommend for everybody who is literally in the first part of their journey, is to anybody who follows you, try to connect with them. Send them a direct message and ask them what they're struggling with and ask them what they might need help with. And even if that's messy, even if it's just a quick little message, those little connections can inspire what you talk about in the next episodes. That will give you a realization that those people are real humans.

I would honestly much rather have a smaller number of people who I can have conversations with than millions of people who... I wouldn't even be able to chat with most of them. I hope that just reframes a little bit of perhaps the messy middle that you're going through right now, but how important that is and the opportunity that you have.

Heba:
Yeah, I know. I guess I get impatient at times, and I'm always comparing. I think it's maybe normal. I'm like, "How do these people have like tens of thousands of followers?" And I'm doing it out of passion, but at the same time, I feel like I probably need to be more realistic about it as well.

Pat:
It can be hard. The comparison game is definitely something that can put us in a dark hole sometimes because we might have better information. We might be more passionate. Yet, somebody else seems to be getting all the glory, and that can be very disheartening at times. But the other thing to know, and trust me, I've gone through this as well, especially as somebody who's very competitive—I don't know about you, but I'm a very competitive person. So I do have to try to not see what other people are doing as "them versus me." I want to use that as inspiration and motivation for "me versus me." Meaning, how am I better in this episode than I was in the last episode? And how was I better today than I was last week, than I was last month, than I was last year?

And trying to just outdo myself versus outdo others. And you've kind of mentioned this already. You're already referencing your first episode and how maybe not so great that was, and how much better you are already. So you're going in the right path. It's just, it's definitely about a little bit of macro patience, as we call it. It's like micro hustle. You've got to work hard on these things, but it's macro patience for the results. So you're not alone in feeling that, and I'm just giving you, essentially, permission to keep going without worrying about getting a ton of results yet. But you're doing the right things.

Heba:
Okay. Is there anything in particular... Is there any advice that you can give starting out in terms of... I don't know what I'm supposed to be targeting.

Pat:
Well, a lot of it has to do with your goals, and you've shared some of that already. You want to be a voice for women out there. You want to be communicating with them, and both for yourself and for them. So to me, it's about reach, and it's about exposure. Let's get more women to find you. Let's get your voice out there in front of more people. And sometimes when you're podcasting or you're running your own social media channels, it can sound like you're shouting and nobody's listening. Right? I don't know if it feels like that to you, but sometimes it can definitely feel like that. But if you put yourself in the right places, sometimes when you shout, there's people there to listen. And so what I'm trying to get at is, yes, social media can be helpful. Yes, social media can work. But some of the best ways to grow your audience would be to actually get in front of audiences that already exist.

And it would be really amazing for you to use this incredible story of you as a 41-year-old mom of twins, which is not common. You probably have so much wisdom and knowledge to share that you've shared it on your show and you should continue to share it on your show because that's your home. That's where you want to bring people toward. But I can imagine you being an amazing guest on other people's podcasts, other mom podcasts, other family-related podcasts. Just talk about what life is like now and how things have been flipped upside down, if you will, but also how you're managing this, how you're fighting through it, and how beautiful and a blessing it can be too. That story would inspire others, I'm sure. Trying to find other women who have podcasts and connecting with them could be a new type of relationship that you could start to build that could really help you get that voice out there.

Heba:
Yeah, that's true actually. I didn't think about that. I'm always thinking about who can I bring on that's inspiring that I think can inspire other women, but I never thought about being on other people's podcasts. But it's true. I've got so much to share. I did struggle with infertility for so many years. And so when women—a lot of women come to me and they ask me. And here, infertility is very taboo. When they ask me, it's like... And they're like having trouble, it's been two years. I'm like, "I've had that for 10 years. So don't worry about it. You'll get pregnant, just stick with it. Just think positive." But yeah, here, it was quite difficult because when I was more vocal about it, and everybody's like, "You shouldn't be talking about that." Why?

Pat:
That's another part of the story, right? It would probably help other women go, "Wow. Well, if you were able to do it, then I can do it." Which is probably the kind of feeling that you want. And maybe this combination of inspiring people on your show, but then you inspiring people on other shows... Maybe there's a collaboration you can do. Maybe you find another woman who has a podcast, and you be a guest on her show to talk about your story with her women. And then you bring her on your show to have her tell her story to your women.

And the cool thing is... I know it might seem... And this is where my head often goes sometimes. It's like, "Oh, but I only have hundreds of listeners. They have thousands. Why would they want me on their show?" Because it doesn't have to do... The numbers don't matter. You have this experience and knowledge that can help their audience. That's the value that you have to offer them, not the numbers and any of that stuff. You have something that other people don't, and that's your advantage. That's your unique selling proposition, if you will.

Heba:
I also wrote a book and I kind of just launched it in bookstores. And it's about that. It's the same title as the podcast. And it's about first year of motherhood.

Pat:
What's it called?

Heba:
Mommy's Happy Hour as well.

Pat:
Oh, it's the same as the podcast. Beautiful. Is that on Amazon in case people want to check it out?

Heba:
No, I actually will upload it onto Amazon soon, I think probably in the next couple of weeks. I just need to kind of do a few more edits at the end. And yeah, I should get that done.

Pat:
Does that point to the podcast as well? In case Amazon feeds it to a lot of people. Can you bring people from the book to the podcast?

Heba:
Yes.

Pat:
Good. I was hoping for that answer. So that's excellent. It sounds like you have a lot of the pieces. We just need to, number one, find out where we can go to share more of this information in front of people and audiences that already exist, which we've talked about. Number two, a little bit of patience as well. You can go with that. But again, for me, especially when I teach a lot of other people who are just starting out, try to go to the individuals. When you see the individuals and how you are affecting them, it doesn't matter how big the numbers are because it's working. You feel, and you see, and you can hear the stories of your story helping and affecting others. Then you almost don't care about the numbers anymore.

And the funny thing that happens is when you stop caring about the numbers and you just want to—

Heba:
That's when it grows.

Pat:
Exactly. Exactly. So that's good. With the book, I think that's a great idea. That is an amazing way to start a conversation with somebody about being on their podcast. Because a lot of people love to bring authors on their podcast, and you are an author, and you can use that as part of the pitch as well.

Heba:
Okay. Sounds good. I'll look into that. That's for sure very interesting. That'll be fun.

Pat:
What else is on your mind?

Heba:
That's it. I kind of wanted to like... I don't know. I can't think of anything else.

Pat:
So we just got right to it. I love it. Well, I look forward to seeing what you do with the show and the book. And again, Mommy's Happy Hour, and we'll look for that on Apple and Google and all the places.

Heba:
It's on all of them. It's on Spotify, Google, Apple, all of them.

Pat:
Perfect. Well, thank you so, so much. We'll add—

Heba:
No, thank you. Really, honestly. It was—

Pat:
Oh, you're welcome.

Heba:
For like months, I listened to your tutorials and I was like, "I have to do it." And so I did it.

Pat:
Well, you are an action taker. I'm sure great things are going to happen. Thank you for what you do and what you are doing, and best of luck to you.

Heba:
Thank you so much.

Pat:
Thank you.

All right. I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Heba. You can find her again at Mommy's Happy Hour. And Heba, thank you so much for coming on and being vulnerable and sharing your inner thoughts and what you had been struggling with. And hopefully this has helped you. I'm looking forward to seeing how your podcast does. And again, thank you so much for letting the audience know that, in fact, it was myself who helped you and inspired you to start your show and well done. Keep up the great work.

For those of you listening, thank you so much for listening all the way through. I appreciate you. If you don't mind, just for one minute, if you haven't done so already, thank you to those of you who already did, but leave a quick review on Apple Podcasts. It goes a very long way. And if you would like to get coached here on AskPat, just like Heba and every single person here has so far, you can just go to AskPat.com, and you can also see the archive of episodes there. But you'll find the application button to send us a little note, a little voicemail, and we'll do our best to pick and choose from a few.

We can't get to everybody, but the show wouldn't exist without you. So please submit your inquiry there. Again, AskPat.com. Thank you so much. Please subscribe so you don't miss next week's great episode, and we'll see you then. Cheers. Take care. Thanks so much. And as always, Team Flynn for the win.

Thanks for listening to AskPat at AskPat.com. I'm your host, Pat Flynn. Our senior producer is Sara Jane Hess, our series producer is David Grabowski, and our executive producer is Matt Gartland. AskPat is a production of SPI Media. We'll catch you in the next session.