Episode #23: 32 of my favourite things (for my 32nd birthday 🥳)
It’s (almost) my 32nd birthday! And to celebrate, I’m sharing 32 of my favourite (business and personal) things.
Tune in to hear me share my favourite business hires, podcasts, software/tools, mentors, TV shows and more as I celebrate another trip around the sun 🎉
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Eman Ismail: Hey, welcome to Mistakes That Made Me, the podcast that asks extraordinary business owners to share their biggest business mistake so you know what not to do on your road to success. Mistakes That Made Me is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.
I'm Eman Ismail, your host, and this episode is not an interview. Instead, I'm sharing 32 of my favourite things to celebrate my 32nd birthday.
So I should kind of start this off by just saying that I'm really not much of a birthday celebrator. I'm not that friend who'll be offended if you forgot my birthday, like I really don't care. It's always nice to get birthday texts, but I'm not that person. I don't expect gifts. I don't expect people to make a big hoo-ha. I don't expect that because it's my birthday, we need to spend the entire month celebrating.
I honestly for a long time didn't understand the hoo-ha around birthdays. I'm not a big celebrator of birthdays. But then I watched an episode of Gilmore Girls, which I absolutely love, and I've seen this episode multiple times, but I still remember the first time it made an impact on me, the specific line.
Rory has just made Logan's breakfast and just made a really big deal of his birthday. She's made him breakfast, she's brought it to his bed so he's having breakfast in bed. The whole thing is just like she's gone a little bit over the top for him, and he says—
Logan being Rory's boyfriend. You don't need to know all the characters, you don't need to know what's going on in the story, just know that it's Logan's birthday and Rory, his girlfriend, has made a big hoo-ha about it. And so Logan says, "Somebody's pretty into this whole birthday thing." And then Rory says, "Well, if by birthday thing you mean the celebration of the miracle of your birth, the anniversary of the day when this world went from being a world without Logan Huntzberger to a world with Logan Huntzberger, then yes, I'm pretty into it."
And that one line—and we all know if you watch Gilmore Girls, Gilmore Girls is just a masterpiece from start to finish, so every line is amazing in Gilmore Girls, but this one line specifically made me understand the relevance of birthdays and why it's special.
And so I guess I now—while I still don't do a whole lot, I now just take a moment to be thankful and I make a point of thanking God that I am here, that I am happy, that I am in the world. I know that a lot of people don't get to reach their next birthday and so I just kind of switched my attitude from being really completely different to at least just being grateful and expressing gratitude.
I don't expect everyone else to celebrate me, but I now like to celebrate myself. So I give myself the day off and I allow myself to just do something nice that's just for me. And so I'll be taking the day off and I might go for a massage. I have planned a dinner with my friends and I'm also going to be spending the night in a hotel by myself, which is exciting.
So that wasn't actually a birthday present. It was an Eid present because Eid just happened. However, I decided to make it coincide with my birthday so that I can have a night to myself in a hotel, how exciting. Okay, super excited about that.
So yeah, that's really the story of, I guess, the history of me and birthdays, right? I have decided to do this episode in a way that is basically sharing 32 of my favourite things, because by the time you listen to this, I'll be 32 years old, which is still crazy to me. By the way, I feel super young. Life starts when you're in your 30s, right? Except maybe if you have a baby at 22 like I did, but really, okay, life gets super enjoyable in your 30s, I feel like.
So I feel super young but also can't help but notice that I'm eight years away from 40, which is really just like wow because as a kid, I remember looking up at the 30-year-olds thinking, "Ugh, you're ancient." And now I'm one of those. Totally not ancient. We still have our entire lives ahead of us, and I will say that so far, this decade has been my favourite of them all.
If you follow me on social media, which you should be if you're not because you'll get to contribute to episodes like this. Find me on Instagram or LinkedIn. If you follow me on social media, you'll know that I actually asked for your input on what I should talk about as part of this my favourite things episode. So here's what I decided to do. And I did get a little bit of inspiration from someone else, so it totally wasn't just my idea. But I'm gonna talk about 32 of my favourite things, but I'm going to split that into eight categories. And in each category, I'll share four of my favourite things from that category.
So here are the categories of my favourite things. The first one, I've tried to keep it businessy but also fun. The first one, the first category is favourite hires that I've made, not people necessarily, but functions, I guess, things that I've paid for. The second category is my favourite business podcasts. The third is my favourite business tools/software. My fourth is my favourite business owners, then my favourite mentors, my favourite sources of inspiration, my favourite ways to decompress or unwind. And then finally, the eighth one, my favourite TV shows. So I'd bring it back to some fun, some lighthearted fun, at the end.
Also, thank you to the people who helped me come up with some of those ideas. Favourite mentors, favourite source of inspiration, favourite ways to decompress or unwind, those were all things that came from you, so thank you for contributing. Okay. Stay with me. We'll be right back after this short break. We're going to have so much fun with this episode, so stay tuned.
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Let's get started. First category, favourite hires. Okay. So I just hired someone to create a brand voice and messaging guide for me. Now, this kind of felt like a luxury before I did it. And now that I've done it, it's actually so crucial, just so foundational. I've been hiring people and working with people, hiring other writers, working with other writers, bringing them on projects with me for about a year and a half now. I guess I'm really blessed that I work with a bunch of really talented copywriters. So they didn't really need my brand voice and messaging guide. They just kind of got it.
But then I started working with someone who—I won't tell you who, but I started working with someone where it was just difficult for them to grasp my tone, to get me, to get what I'm about. And just so you know, it wasn't that I needed them to pretend to be me or anything. They weren't writing as me, but they were writing as part of my team. And it just felt so misaligned the way that they would communicate externally and even internally sometimes, honestly, but externally, because it just didn't sound like my brand. And at this point, I'm not even talking about me. I'm talking about my brand. It just didn't sound like my brand.
And so, it was very clear to me that something needed to be done. At the same time as realising this, I was also hiring a website agency to work on my new website— which I'll tell you a bit more about that in a second—and I realised it could be super helpful for them to also have my brand voice and messaging guide. And then I was also hiring a photographer. And although the photographer obviously is working on stuff visually, I figured, you know what? She could probably do with my brand voice and messaging guide as well because it's so much more than just about my brand voice.
So let me tell you a bit about what's actually inside. I won't tell you everything cause it's a 45-page doc. And I do just want to credit the copywriter who did this because she's amazing. She's called Natalie Gates. She's in Canada. Her website is nataliegates.ca. She's absolutely amazing. Honestly, she's one of the best hires that I have made. When I say hire, I mean she's not on my team or anything, she has her own business, I hired her to do this brand voice and messaging guide for me. And honestly, it was one of the best hires I've made in my five-and-a-half years of business. She is so good at what she does. Highly recommend her.
So she created this amazing 45-page brand voice and messaging guide, which clearly just so much work went into this. And when I tell you, she pulled what's in my mind out of my mind and into this doc, I can now send this to new team members who I'm onboarding. I can send this to the copywriters who are writing stuff for me as my brand. I just have this extremely valuable guide that helps everyone in my team just get on the same page, which I'm super excited about.
So Natalie created this guide, and it starts off by explaining my core messaging about Eman Copy Co—positioning, brand personality, industry stance, mission, brand promise, values, differentiators, our audience. We have two audiences, primary and secondary. Then voice guidelines. This is super interesting. Voice guidelines is things like tone and style, how to sound like my brand.
And bear in mind that we're not trying to sound like me. This is not just about me anymore. This is not about writing like Eman or sounding like Eman. This is about creating a brand personality, and honestly, a brand identity for Eman Copy Co, so that it's not just about me. So it really is about how to create Eman Copy Co's tone and style and what we want to sound like, the vibes we want to give off.
One of the things that I really like is trendsetters, not trend followers. This is one of the key elements of our brand identity. Trendsetters, not trend followers, clever thought leaders, unapologetically ourselves. We do it our own way, not how the world tells us to. Our goal is to set the conversation and shift perspectives while staying true to ourselves. That means we don't get caught up in online business fads or unfit expectations. How this comes through, we push against standard advice we disagree with. Depending on the topic, we can do it with a light-hearted but still passionate tone. And then she gives examples.
I just love it. So much work went into this, and I have to say, I also worked really hard on Natalie's brief and then she also did a really great job pulling this information from me and then codifying it for me in this guide. I'm just so passionate and I'm just so in love with this, and I just feel like this is a really—as you can probably hear, I'm super passionate about it, and this is going to be, I think, really great for the future of my business.
Things like tone and style as well. Something that we hit upon was opinionated but also Brits, passionate but polite, well thought out, kind, charming. We've got thoughts. We say what we say and we mean what we say. While our delivery is clear, we also tend to soften it a little. This is especially true in client and internal communication, but comes through in our marketing. This is the most relevant when we're saying something controversial or talking about how awesome we are. If you're writing something spicy, approach it confidently but politely.
There's just so much in this guide. I mean, that wasn't even half of it. She goes on to talk about one-liners, brand vocab, Eman, specifically me, Eman personality references, how to sound like Eman Copy Co, how not to sound like Eman Copy Co, internal communication, oh my God, grammar and style choices, services, origin story, but oh, just so much. So that was an amazing, amazing hire, and I'm very happy with that.
So next up, my next favourite hire, website agency. I hired a website agency. I did because although I love my current website—and if you've seen my current website, I hope you love it as well. This was a website that I created back in—I mean, I say I created. No, the people who created it, created it back in 2020—no, 2021. And I love my website currently. I wrote all the copy for it. I love it so much. It's got me a good number of clients in that I've had clients say to me, "Ah, this is specifically what I love most about your website. The copy was just spot on, made me really like you, made me want to get in touch."
And so I'm very proud of my current website. However, I'm very aware of the fact that when I did write the copy for this website, I had just really got into email strategy and I didn't feel like much of an email expert. Now that I've been doing this for—I've been in business for oh my gosh, nearly six years this year. In a few months, it'll be six years, but I've been an email expert, specifically, an email strategist for four years. And so I just know myself so much better now. I know the industry so much better. I know my ideal clients so much better.
And so I feel like the website that I have now got me to six figures, which is great and I'm so happy with, but I feel like it's done its job now and now it's time to move on to another website that's going to take me to mid-six figures and maybe seven, who knows? So yeah, I hired a website agency to do that for me. They're doing the copy, they're doing the design, and they're doing the build.
And I'm super excited about the fact that I don't have to write my own website because it would take me six months like it did the first time versus when I'm doing it for a client and it takes four weeks because of course it's so hard to prioritise what your business needs and it's hard to prioritise the stuff that you need to do for yourself, right? So I hired someone else to do it, and I'm so happy I did. So far, I'm loving the process. So we've just done the briefing. We've done our website strategy call, and my website copywriter, Christa, she is currently basically piecing this all together and figuring out the navigation of the website, how it's all going to work.
So yeah, it's been a great process so far, but we have so much to do still. Christa still has to write the copy. I believe the SEO research has been done by now. She still has to write the copy and then design it and build it too. I'm very excited about this project. And so hopefully in a few months you'll see my new website. And also, the podcast doesn't have much of a presence on my current website because it was just kind of limited in what I'm able to do with it right now. And so this new website will have its own dedicated space for the podcast and the podcast will hopefully really shine, which is exciting too.
Okay. Next favourite hire. I hired a photographer to do my new brand photos for my new website because I just thought at this point, if I'm getting a new website, there's no way I can have my photos from 2020 on my new website, the same 10 photos I've been recycling for four years. I'm done now. We're done. We're done. Thank you so much for serving your purpose. We are done.
So I hired an amazing photographer. Oh my God, she's amazing. Just so much thought went into it. Just so much effort, so much love went into this from choosing the locations—yes, multiple. She chose one location. I chose the other. From the brief process, the Pinterest boards. I even sent her the brand voice and messaging guide that Natalie did because, again, even though my photographer was doing visual stuff, I felt like it would really help her understand my brand, and it did. Natalie's that good. And we just had the best time.
She was so great at directing me, helping me figure out what to do, how to do it. We talked through props. I came prepared to these photo shoots with these two huge bags and like eight different outfits. Just so much thought and effort went into this and also investment as well.
And then, of course, once I invested in a photographer, I—something you should know about me is that I really struggle fashion-wise, okay? So if I didn't wear an abaya, which is the long Islamic dress that I wear, if I didn't wear that, and before I wore this, because I haven't always worn it, you would have seen me outside in just jeans and a hoodie. Nice jeans and a nice hoodie, but that's it. That's it.
And so I've never been someone really who dresses up or who feels comfortable dressing up. I love dressing up for a good wedding or something like that, or a good party, but it has to be for an occasion. I don't just like go around dressing up because I enjoy it. I actually despise clothes shopping. I despise shopping for clothes. I despise the whole thing and I despise just dressing up for no reason. I can't do it. Can't do it. So I thought, well, if I've invested this much in a photographer, oh my gosh, what am I going to wear? I was like, "Okay, I'm gonna have to hire a personal stylist now." [laughs] So I did.
I hired a virtual personal stylist. And oh my gosh, was it a fantastic experience. My personal stylist is someone called Maha, and she is someone who specialises in modest fashion for Muslims. So basically, she works with Muslim women who have very specific requirements around how they dress. And just so you know, what's interesting is that that doesn't mean one set thing. We don't all have one way of dressing.
So much of what we wear—okay, so the general requirement for those of us who do cover is that we're covered. How we cover— as in how Muslim women cover—differs from culture to culture and country to country. So you'll see Emiratis wearing the most just divine, gorgeous abayas and dresses. And then you'll see maybe Somalis wearing something completely different, a jilbab, which is more of like a one—it's one cover from your head to your toe or from your head to half your body. There are just so many different ways to cover.
So Maha helps you figure out what you feel comfortable with, and then she helps you look amazing in that. And so she had a whole process where we figured out what I feel good in, what my body shape is, the areas that I'm not too keen on, that I'm like, let's find a way to figure that section out, and she was just brilliant. This was all done virtually by the way.
And so basically, once we've done all the briefing, Maha sent over this virtual closet, and she'd picked out a bunch of looks for me. Oh my God, looks. This is not me. I don't say things like "looks", but we're gonna say it because that's what it was. It was a bunch of looks, and I got to choose which ones I wanted to go with. I chose eight different looks and then we went with that, and I wore them for my—Oh, God, first of all, what a nightmare it was trying to get them all to me, ordering them from all these different places. And it was also shoes as well.
So it was the outfits and then the corresponding head scarves for each of the outfits and then different shoes as well. I say shoes, I mean Converse because I was just like, "I am not a high heels person, Maha. I don't do high heels anymore. Not for me. Let's stick with the Converse." And she was like, "Great, let's do it."
So I went to the photoshoot with all these different things, these huge bags and these eight different outfits and two boxes of shoes. It was a lot. And then me and the photographer had an amazing time, and the photos I think turned out amazingly. Head over to my Instagram and check out one of my most recent Reels to check out the photos and the outfits. I mean, I think people liked it because last time I checked, I had 300, maybe 300 likes that Reel, which is a lot for me considering my follower size, and 3,500-ish views. I think that went down very well. I'm very happy with the photos.
Honestly, these hires that I've made, and these are all hires that I've made in the past few weeks. Okay, past couple of months, and then all the projects were really tight. And so it all happened all in the same amount of time. Best hires I've made in my business. I'm so excited about each and every one of them, and I'm excited for them all to come together because all of these things kind of supported one another and I made it happen so that they would work with one another, but it was four different people—actually more than four—working on these different things separately and trying to bring all those together so it felt and feels cohesive. That was a challenge, but I think we did it. The only thing left to see is if we can do it with the website.
Okay. Next category—favourite business podcasts. First podcast, BOSSY by Katie Gatti Tassin and Tara Reed, both of whom are highly established business owners. They are absolutely fantastic. And I think that these podcasts—well, this podcast specifically is a podcast that we really don't—I don't think we have anything like it. I really don't. This is two hugely successful businesswomen talking business. And I know it sounds like we have a lot of those podcasts, but I feel like the level of just amazingness that comes from these two business owners.
And also, the quality of the conversation, they're not talking about things that are—I guess it's that they're not talking about things that me and my friends would talk about because they're like multi-seven figure businesses running—Tara Reed runs Apps Without Code, so it's a tech company. Katie, also known as Money with Katie, runs a media company. And so two very different businesses. They just have the most amazing chemistry and they just are power women, and it's just so exciting to learn from these women and also to just be in the room with them while they're having conversations about business. I've been learning so much from them and I just really enjoy their conversations as well.
Next podcast, Creator Science by Jay Clouse. This is one of my favourite business podcasts. I really just love everything Jay Clouse puts out, quite frankly. I'm actually part of his membership, The Lab, but there are different tiers, I'm not on the high tier, I'm just on the basic tier, so I can get access to his workshops and courses because he is just brilliant. I really enjoy his content. His podcast interviews are just so beautifully produced. So much thought and time and, clearly, effort goes into it. And the content is always great. The guests are always great. And basically, Jay Clouse's Creator Science is all about helping you become a better creator. And it's for creators by a creator.
Next podcast I absolutely love is Billion Dollar Creator. Are you sensing a theme—creator? I'm definitely leaning into my creative side since I started this podcast. Well, the next podcast, the third one, is Billion Dollar Creator by Nathan Barry and Rachel Rodgers.
Okay, so the first thing I'm going to say is a lot of people get triggered by the title of this podcast, Billion Dollar Creator. Thing is, is I can maybe understand that if you are of the opinion of like, "Oh my God, I'm sick of talking about six figures and now it's seven figures and now it's eight figures and now it's billion. Now we have to make a billion dollars." No, no one's saying that. No one is saying that.
I love this podcast because they are breaking down the playbooks of different creators and business owners and how they've built their companies and their empires. So they break that down and then they talk about what they would do to take that business and just scale it as far as possible. And while my interest is not necessarily scaling my business, just so you know, it's so fascinating to hear them break businesses and companies down and different strategies down. And it's so fascinating to see how they would change a business or improve a business or bring something new to a business.
I really enjoy listening in to the strategic conversations like that. It just really opens up my mind to all the things that I don't know and all the things that I want to learn about business still. And obviously, we're having a different level of conversation when it's Nathan Barry, the founder of ConvertKit, and Rachel Rodgers. We Should All Be Millionaires, Rachel Rodgers. They're having totally different conversations than, again, the conversations that I would be having with my business friends. So, again, it feels like I'm in a room with people who are just a million times smarter than me. I want to learn from these people.
In terms of the Billion Dollar Creator name, this is not about how to create a billion dollars necessarily. What I have understood is that—well, just so you know, yes, they do talk about how would they take this business from a million to a billion. Yeah, they talk about that, but it's this whole premise, I feel—I wonder if Rachel Rodgers will ever be on the show to tell me if I'm right. But the premise of this podcast and the name of the podcast is really to challenge you to think bigger.
And I absolutely love that because that's absolutely what it's done for me. It's challenged me to think bigger and it's challenged me to stop thinking small and think about, okay, well, how could do this even better or bigger? And I know bigger isn't always necessarily the goal, but sometimes it is the goal.
Final favourite podcast, Growing Steady by Caroline and Jason Zook. So I had the pleasure of interviewing Caroline and Jason Zook, a married business duo, on this podcast. Go check out their episode in season 2. They are absolutely brilliant. I'm in their membership, Wandering Aimfully. Just so you know, I'm in quite a few memberships, but I'm not super active in all these memberships. I take what I need from each membership as I need it, versus being super active in all of them.
So yeah, Growing Steady by Caroline and Jason Zook, formerly, What Is It All For? They just recently rebranded, and I really love the new name, Growing Steady. They are just brilliant business owners. They're married. They're dynamic and their relationship is so amazing and interesting to watch and just observe and listen to. They work so well together. It's almost like they can just finish each other's sentences, but not in an annoying way 'cause for me, there's cute and then there's, you know, cute. But Jason and Caroline Zook finish each other's sentences, and it's just the most endearing thing. They just work so well together.
Their podcast is about how you can grow a steady business. So actually it's almost like the complete opposite of Billion Dollar Creator. This is not about making a billion dollars or thinking bigger necessarily. It's really about figuring out what you want and then finding a way to really get there, to reach your specific goal. And this is not about being bigger or making more money necessarily. It's about building a business that you really love being in and that serves the purpose that you need to be served. So yeah, those are my four favourite business podcasts right now.
Third category—favourite business tools and software. Again, I'm going to go straight to Loom, and I'm going to say Loom with the new AI feature because that AI feature is just chef's kiss. It's a little bit of extra money, you've got to pay a little bit more, but it is so worth it. So Loom is a tool, a video recording/screen recording tool that allows you to really just work asynchronously. I mean, I use Loom every single day in my business. I don't think there's a day that goes by that I have not used Loom. And I remember signing up for Loom in the pandemic, and I'm pretty sure since 2020 that I've used it every single day, every single day.
Now the plans are different now, I think. So on the free plan, you can only use it for up to five minutes. Your videos can only be up to five minutes long, I think, I believe, the last time I checked. But I have the paid plan. I also have the AI plan as well, which is honestly, it's just amazing. And I use it to replace meetings so that I'm not in meetings all the time and getting on calls because as a mum of two, that is not what I want to be doing. I need to minimise calls.
I'm using it to send my team members instructions. I'm using it for standard operating procedures. I'm showing them how to do stuff. I'm onboarding people with this. I am sending pitches with Loom—completely cold pitches, by the way. I just do so much with it. I've recorded my course on Loom, Like a Boss, actually. And I believe it can host videos as well. I upload videos on there as well. Honestly, it's just amazing. So Loom comes first when it comes to favourite business tools and software.
Next up, ConvertKit. Okay. I have to say that I am a paid partner of ConvertKit. So anytime I mention their name, I now have to state that and make a disclaimer, #ad. Okay. I don't know if I'm supposed to say that. It just says in my contract that I #ad, #paidpartner. I got a little bit nervous 'cause I just want to make sure that I'm saying everything correctly. Pretty sure I didn't have to say that 'cause this is not actually a #ad. I'm not trying to sell ConvertKit to you, but also I signed a contract that said I have to say #ad #paidpartner. So there we go. There's that done.
I just want to mention ConvertKit because I, again, use it a lot in my business. And I use it to send newsletters and emails to my subscribers. And I absolutely love it because emails make me a lot of money in launches, passively with digital products, weekly, on a weekly basis now. And also, my course, Like a Boss also literally as a service provider. I finally cracked how to sell my high-ticket services through my newsletter, which honestly is something I struggled with. I work mostly with course creators and coaches and digital product makers, membership makers, that kind of thing. So give me a digital product to sell on email, and I'm just like, "Yes, absolutely."
And what I think is harder is to sell high-ticket services through your newsletter, through your emails, but I have finally started doing that. I feel like I've cracked it. My most recent success with this is I landed a client who was on my newsletter, who'd been on it for a while, who'd been kind of following me for a while and through a range of different trigger automations and that kind of thing and follow-ups, I landed this client. She's amazing. And it was a $16,000 project in the end.
So yes. Yes for email marketing. Yes for ConvertKit. I highly recommend it. I've used a bunch of other email service providers. I've used MailChimp and ActiveCampaign, and ConvertKit is definitely my favourite.
Okay, Calendly is the next one. Absolutely love Calendly. We'll never leave Calendly no matter how many times people tell me that Google has a free appointment setter. Whatever. Let's not compare apples and oranges. There's Google's free appointment setter or whatever it is, and then there's Calendly. I totally understand that not everyone needs all the bells and whistles for Calendly. I get that. The bells and whistles are really, really great.
Also, I love the CEO of Calendly. I love his story. I listened to his story on How I Built This with Guy Raz, and his story is just fascinating. He's actually a actual child prodigy. He was genuinely a child genius. And he's African as well, which I always love. I love to support my fellow Africans. And he went to the US to study and then ended up building this amazing tech company, which is Calendly. And I just feel such affinity to his story that I could never leave Calendly at this point. And I will never leave it for TidyCal or anything else and all the other tools that everyone talks about.
And I find that really interesting because it just shows you the importance of a great founder story or a great brand story and just the importance of the know, like, and trust factor because I could be paying a lot less somewhere else, but I really love what I know of the CEO and I really love the tools and its features. I mean, I could go into the specific features that I love with Calendly, but I won't do that because that would be very nerdy of me. I mean, I am a nerd, so that's okay.
The final favourite business tool software that I'm going to share is ManyChat. ManyChat allows you to create automation triggers for your Instagram and Facebook. I think it's for both. It's for Meta. But how I use it is basically people will—I'll share a post or a Reel on Instagram, and then I'll say, "Oh, comment. Dream Team if you're interested in working with me," and then someone will comment Dream Team, or whatever else, or rules, and then basically that word triggers something to happen in the DMs, usually for me.
So it's basically creating funnels on your Instagram, automated funnels. And it's amazing because I have been able to get so many new subscribers moved from my Instagram over to my email newsletter because of ManyChat. I have been able to really just handle leads better because I have automation to help me. It's absolutely fantastic. So I would highly recommend ManyChat, explore it if you haven't. It's so fun as well.
There are a few things that I don't love about it. You have to be really careful about the trigger words that you choose because if you choose something that people use all the time, people will start getting triggered messages in their DMs when they didn't really want it, they were just using a normal word. So you have to be really specific about the words that you choose. That's been a little bit difficult, but I guess that's a my fault thing rather than a ManyChat thing.
Next up, favourite business owners.
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Jay Clouse. Actually, this is not in any order. There is a bunch of amazing business owners that I'm about to share. So first up is Jay Clouse. He is absolutely brilliant. Everything I said about his company and his podcast is the same, it's the same for him. Basically, he is so smart. He's been working on this for a really long time, but I believe he really started to see huge success in 2020. So it's been a short amount of time really. And it's been just really great to watch his business journey. He shares so much.
It's part of the reason I'm in his membership, The Lab, because he does these monthly retros where he goes over how his month's been and just really shares a lot of information and detail about what's going on inside his business. He has 50K months and talks about his goals being like 80K a month. And while that isn't necessarily my goal, I just love being around people who normalise those numbers for me, just normalise it.
I think a few years ago I could never have imagined that I'd have $25,000, $26,000 months. And so, I'm like, "Well, if that's possible, who knows what else is possible? I just want to be around people who make me feel like those numbers are not out of reach, that it's totally possible, and that it's just totally normal. So yes, Jay Clouse. I just love his newsletter. I love his podcast. I love his membership. I pretty much love everything that he puts out. That's why he's on there.
Next up is Katie Gatti Tassin. She's also known as Money with Katie. Money with Katie is basically a media company. She has podcasts, she has a blog, she has a newsletter that has like 140,000 or 170,000 subscribers. And Money with—well, I was gonna call her Money with Katie. The brand is called Money with Katie, but Katie herself—first of all, I've actually spoken to her and she is just so lovely. She's so lovely and just so smart. And it was funny, actually. It's one of those calls where I was like, "Oh my God, I love this person so much." I feel actually a little bit sick before I got on the call, but she was so lovely. So it went great.
Now, Katie was just a business owner, like me and you, and then what happened was Morning Brew decided to buy her company. Well, they offered to buy her company. And so she went ahead with that deal. Morning Brew actually bought her business, her company, and they own the brand Money with Katie. And as you can imagine, there'll be a lot of pluses that come with being acquired by Morning Brew in terms of just resources and the access that you now have to things.
So, Katie is now an employee of Morning Brew, but she runs Money with Katie like it's hers. She also has a book coming out that's being traditionally published so she's been also sharing her journey around that, so that's been really interesting, too. So yeah, podcast, blog, newsletter, book coming out. And the way that her business is structured is just super interesting because yeah, it was her business, it got acquired by Morning Brew, she's now an employee of Morning Brew, but it's still hers. She runs—I mean, I don't know. Is it hers? I don't know the details, but she runs it. It's still her name on the door, and she has her own team as well, which is super cool.
So this is the same Katie that I mentioned under favourite podcasts who has also the BOSSY podcast. I will say her other podcast, Money with Katie, is also brilliant. And I should also mention that Katie is a personal finance expert with definitely a feminist twist. And she is just for women and yeah, she's just brilliant.
Next favourite business owner. I'm going to say Rachel Rodgers. I love me some Rachel Rodgers. I think she's fabulous. She's brilliant. I understand that sometimes there are conversations that happen around super wealthy coaches specifically and business owners, but I really enjoy the content of Rachel Rodgers that I consume. I've never joined any of her programs or anything like that, so I have no experience with those, but I have read her book, which I thought was brilliant. And I just absolutely loved her podcast, which she's stopped doing, but I do listen to Billion Dollar Creator with Nathan Barry, which she does now.
I just love her. And it's also really inspiring for me to see a Black, wealthy, female business owner. I absolutely love it. And also she's a mother of four, and I'm just like, yeah, okay, these are the role models I need. I need the mother of four role model. I do, I really need that because some days this is just so hard and I'm here with my two, you know. And just seeing what she's been able to achieve and how she shows up. And she's just so unapologetically herself. I will say as well, her other podcast with her business besties, it's called The Most. That's also really fun to listen to.
Okay, next up—Oh, final favourite business owner. And by the way, there was so many other people I could have mentioned, but I just don't have time to mention everyone. So anyway, final favourite business owner, Ellen Yin. Ellen Yin has a podcast called Cubicle to CEO. I've actually featured on that podcast, so go check out that episode if you are interested in hearing me talk about how to nail your niche.
Now, I love Ellen Yin because, again, actually she runs a media company. I feel like in another world, maybe in the future, I don't know, media company would definitely be my thing. I love it. So, yeah, I mean, Ellen, same with Katie, she has the podcast, newsletter, she has—wait, podcast, newsletter, blog, and also, I will add brand deals and sponsorships and stuff like that. Katie also has that too.
And so, yeah, it's really interesting to watch and understand the structure of her business, based on what she shares anyway. So I just love seeing what she does. And she's also a really, really lovely, lovely business owner. Again, she's so smart, so kind as well. Like I said, I was on her podcast and she was just brilliant.
And one thing as well I will say about Ellen is when I was on her podcast, going through that experience as a podcast guest, that onboarding and interview and offboarding, it was truly magnificent. I can't think of any other way to describe it. It was truly magnificent and it taught me so much. I thought my onboarding stuff was great for my guests, honestly. And I've been complimented on my onboarding, offboarding, whole guest experience for the podcast.
Also, my clients too, like customer service is—that whole servicing systems, processes, onboarding, offboarding, that is what I live for, you know? And I thought mine was pretty good. And then I went through Ellen's, and I was like, "Oh, wow." So yeah, I love that. I learned so much from her just being a podcast guest. So that just tells you how smart she is.
Next category—favourite mentors. This was a hard one because I've had lots of mentors. So just because I don't mention someone, I just want you to know, it doesn't mean that I don't love them as a mentor or they weren't a great mentor. It just means that I could only choose four.
And so first favourite mentors I went with is Prerna and Mayank. Prerna and Mayank are a married duo. They run a copywriting agency called Content Bistro, and I joined their six-month mastermind early last year. Was it last year? Can you believe it was last year? That's insane. For a second I thought it was this year, but it really was last year from January to June.
And I just loved learning from them. They are fantastic. They are so smart. They work so well together. They are both the brains of the business, but Prerna is the face and brains of the business, you know, for everyone to see. And then Mayank is the brains of the business behind the scenes as well. And they work really well together. They are parents, so for me, they were perfect mentors in that they were parents, they were running an agency, which I loved to see and I want to understand more of.
And also, they are in India, which was really important for me in picking them as mentors because I've had a lot of mentors from the US, and I love my American mentors, don't get me wrong, but I think I realised at that point that I'd never had a mentor who wasn't white, and my industry anyway is very white and there aren't many—honestly, there isn't a lot of diversity, quite frankly. I think the diversity that we do have, people experience a lot of discrimination, especially in terms of if English isn't their first or native language, they'll experience a lot of discrimination, a lot of stereotyping, a lot of prejudice. It can be difficult.
And I realised that I have a lot of challenges and internal and external conversations that happen for me as a business owner that sometimes are very difficult to explain to people who just don't have this lived experience, who just can't get it. As much as they want to get it and as much as they really try to get it, they can't understand because they haven't lived it.
And so for me, having mentors who live in India, who weren't necessarily in the West, in the US, in the UK, who weren't white, who were Indian, it was really important to me to experience that because there are so many just nuances to being a Black business owner. Sometimes I don't want to talk about it, I just need the person to understand.
Mai-kee Tsang talks about this beautifully in her episode. I'm finding it difficult to communicate this, but Mai-kee Tsang talks about it in her episode, where she talks about the fact that sometimes it's difficult for coaches and your mentors to create a safe space for you. They'll accidentally create an unsafe environment for you, completely accidentally, simply because they just have no idea of what your experience is like, of what it's like to basically just walk the world in your shoes, walk through the world in your shoes.
So learning from Mayank and Prerna and seeing their success and seeing their wealth, it was all brilliant for me. And just to be very clear, like I said, all my coaches have been white and it's not a thing, right? I've loved all my coaches and I can genuinely say that all my coaches have been amazing, all my mentors have been amazing to me, and I've loved every single one of them and learning under every single one of them, but it was also shocking to me that I'd never had a non-white coach. That was shocking. And so it was like, okay, well, let me go fix that and add some diversity to this mix. So there we go.
Next up, Tasha Booth. Tasha Booth is a new mentor of mine, actually. She's a seven-figure, Black agency owner. And I say Black because, again, it's super important for me to be able to see someone who looks like me just doing amazing stuff in the business world, you know? And so I've really loved learning from Tasha. I'm in her membership. I told you I'm in a few memberships. I'm in her membership. I'm really enjoying it. I'm very new to it. Really, I've been in it for a month and a half, but I'm just really enjoying learning from her. And I know I have so much more to learn from her, which is exciting.
Next up for favourite mentors, Amy Posner. Amy Posner is also a copywriter. I will say, by the way, Tasha Booth is not a copywriter. Her experience, I believe, is in business operations, that kind of thing. So I love learning from a non-copywriter as well. But Amy Posner is a copywriter, but she coaches I think creative freelancers or just freelancers in general now, so she works with more than just copywriters now.
But Amy I think will always be a special mentor for me because I started working with Amy, I joined her mastermind in 2021. And it's so funny 'cause we had our first call together and we made a whole plan for the year of 2021. And she was like, right, this is what I want to do. This is the plan. So, great. We were done. And then I think it was the next day I found out I was pregnant.
And just to be clear, my youngest son was a very welcome accident. So he wasn't planned. He was not planned. And we made this whole plan for 2021. And I think the next day, I called her. She was one of the first people that found out I was pregnant. I spoke to her and was like, "Hey, Amy, so you know that 2021 plan that we did yesterday? Yeah, we're just gonna have to just throw that in the bin and start again because I'm pregnant." [laughs] She's like, "Well, congratulations! Okay. We'll figure it out." And so we redid the whole 2021 plan. And yeah, we did figure it out.
And my goal then with Amy became to be able to set myself up with a nice, lengthy, financially comfortable maternity leave. And Amy's guidance and Amy's coaching helped me do that. And so I will be forever grateful. She will always have a special place in my heart. She's also just a really fantastic coach. So empathetic, so kind. I will say she's also someone who made me feel very welcome and safe in her community. She was very understanding of some of the challenges that I experience as a Muslim, Black woman in business. And she was very open and willing to have those conversations with me, which is always great.
And then finally, my final favourite mentor, who's not actually my final favourite mentor 'cause I do have lots of favourite mentors, but Belinda Weaver. Belinda Weaver, who's also been on the show. Oh, by the way, Amy Posner has been on this show too, with Kirsty Fanton, so go check out her episode. But Belinda Weaver, her episode on Mistakes That Made Me—which was episode 2 of season 1, I believe, yes, episode 2—is still a fan favourite to this day. Nearly, I wanna say, two years later. So go listen to that episode.
But Belinda was my first ever coach. So Belinda has my heart and will always have my heart. And Belinda started off as my first ever coach and is now a friend, which has just been so nice to experience that relationship go from—Oh, someone who, by the way, I was absolutely fangirling because I was listening to her podcast before I became a business owner. And it was Belinda's podcast that helped encourage me to quit my full-time job, that gave me the confidence to quit my full-time job and start my own business. And then I immediately joined her coaching membership. This was back in 2018 now. And I mean, the rest is history.
So I went from fangirling her, completely fangirling her, to being coached under her, to just working with her for years—I worked with her for a number of years as my coach—to now being friends. And so it's just a beautiful relationship. And she's the coach that I will always recommend to people who come to me and say—especially people who are new to the copywriting world. I'm like, "Oh, Belinda will give you all the foundations." I specifically don't work with service providers who are new to business, but Belinda does, and she is fantastic. She's fantastic at what she does. So that's the first person I'll point people to.
Okay. Next category—favourite sources of inspiration. This was one that someone requested, as was favourite mentors, actually, but favourite sources of inspiration. Newsletters is the first one I'm going to say. I have an entire inbox that is dedicated just to newsletters and me signing up for newsletters. I love reading people's emails and I'm just experiencing good email and bad email. As an email strategist, I feel like that's not a huge shock.
Next up, shows are a huge source of inspiration for me, honestly. Shows, films, that kind of thing. Popular culture, quite frankly, because it gives me just things to think about. It gives me material for my social content, for my emails. And honestly, I just enjoy, I enjoy kind of being up to date with popular culture.
I will say there's a few things I will not get myself into. Downton Abbey is one, I will not do it. I won't get myself into Downton Abbey because I know that if I start, I'll love it and I'll get hooked. And I don't have time to get hooked onto something that has a million seasons. Same with Game of Thrones, haven't touched Game of Thrones. Never will, I hope. And then there's another one, there's another one, there's another one that everyone goes on about—Oh, yeah, Love is Blind and all that stuff, I will never because yeah, I just don't have time to get hooked on shows that have loads of seasons. I just can't do it. So there are some things that I stay away from, but other things I'll dive right into.
Another favourite source of inspiration is the gym. I mean, okay, so I haven't been to the gym in a little while, I'll be honest with you, but that's because we've just had so much sickness in our household and I've just been exhausted for months. But when I'm feeling not this exhausted, the gym is definitely a source of inspiration for me because it allows me to just be completely mindful.
When you are focusing on working out and just on your body, specifically strength training as well with weights and stuff, when you're focusing on that, you don't have time to think about work and think about other stuff. So that's been really great for me. And there was a period of time where it was essential. It was actually my therapist—I was doing therapy a couple of years ago for a few years. My therapist recommended that I try, as well as therapy, that I go to the gym, basically, to help me with my anxiety and at the time depression as well. And so I did.
She prescribed the gym to me. She prescribed working out. And so as much as I took going to her seriously, I also took going to the gym super seriously. And she was right. It was life-changing. The physical benefits of just being in the best shape of my life, that was just a bonus. It really helped with my mental health. And so I'm hoping that I can get back to that level of just enjoying the gym and loving the gym and definitely have more ideas when I come out of the gym. I will also say actually showers too. That's an unofficial extra one, bonus fave. But yeah, shower is definitely a source of inspiration for me.
And finally, the final favourite source of inspiration is life, honestly, like observing and listening just in life. I'm a storyteller. I live to tell stories. I love to tell stories, but that means that I have to pay attention to what's going on around me. I always wondered why I was that person in the cafe who has to sit by the window or at a restaurant, I have to sit by the window. I have to be able to look outside and see what's going on. I have to be able to watch people. As people would walk past me, and still, I do this, I'm making up stories about them in my head.
I just find it amazing that they've entered my life for just those few seconds as they walk past and I will likely never see them again. But for those few seconds, they were part of my life. And I'm the main character of my life and I'm a side character, non-character in theirs, and they are a side character, non-character in mine. I've always just found it so fascinating. And so life, generally, the happenings of life, the ups and downs of life, just observing and listening to life around me is definitely a source of inspiration.
Okay, we're on the second to last fave category. So the seventh category is my favourite ways to decompress and unwind. Okay. So the first one has to be going for a walk. I love a good walk. If I can be in nature for that walk, that is the best, the best thing I can do for myself. I try to break up my day. If I'm picking up the kids from school, I will try to stop work just a little bit early so that I can go for a walk before I pick them up to kind of transition from work to parent mode.
And I'll do the same in the mornings as well. So in the morning, if I drop them off in the morning, I will try to have a walk before I sit down at my desk and start working because, again, it helps with that transition, but also it's a really nice way to just decompress and unwind, especially in the spring and the summer when the weather's really lovely.
My second favourite way to decompress or unwind—I actually kind of mentioned this one already—is a hotel staycation. So I actually don't travel anywhere. I stay in my city. Occasionally, I will pick a hotel in the same city as me and I will stay in the hotel for a night and just have some alone time. As much as I love my kids, this one is without the kids. Last time, I just had a really great, relaxing time. I ate way too much food, way too much junk, I stayed up a little bit too late, but then slept through the entire night for the first time in years, and it was just glorious, so that's definitely something that I'm gonna keep doing.
The third favourite way of mine to decompress or unwind is to go for massages. So interestingly, this is—you know what? No, I've always been a fan of massages. In college, back when I was like 16, 17, I used to celebrate finishing my exams with a massage. People must've just thought I was just literally crazy. Like, what are you doing, Eman? You're 16 years old. But I knew the value of a good massage at 16.
And so, I mean, I've always been going for massages. I think my mum is probably the reason for that. My mum loves a good massage too. And it was also, again, my therapist who— when she suggested me working out and getting a gym membership and going to the gym more, she also suggested going for more massages like going for a massage a month type of thing because, again, while she really prescribed the gym to me for the physical benefits—and when I say physical benefits, I mean the release of anxiety and actually depression. She suggested I go for massages to, again, physically release the tension, the anxiety in my body, physically. And so I did that as she prescribed, and that really helps as well.
And I've always just kept it. I've always just kept it. And so occasionally, I'll go for massages. I mean, ideally, I'd go once a month, but I really don't go once a month. I would say I probably go once a quarter. And I do want to increase that because I want more massages. I'll probably go for a massage very soon.
And my final thing, I wish I had a better one for decompressing and unwinding, but honestly, just watching Netflix. Watching a show on Netflix, that is, for me, a nice way to unwind. I enjoy it. Sometimes I feel a little bit guilty afterwards, but also, I just mostly enjoy it.
Okay, we're finally on the final category of my favourite things, and I decided to move away from business for this one so that you could just get to know me a little bit more. So I'm gonna talk about my four favourite TV shows, but the first one might surprise you. Actually, maybe it won't. I don't know. But I mean, it's in Spanish. It's not in English. Maybe that's why I think it's going to surprise you. My favourite TV show is La Reina del Sur. I hope I said that right. I'm not a Spanish speaker. But La Reina del Sur, Queen of the South.
And La Reina del Sur is a telenovela about a woman called Teresa Mendoza and she is just the average woman who gets caught up in basically drug cartels and this is—wow, I think there are 60 episodes—it might even be 68 for some of them—in each season, and then I believe there are three seasons. First of all, this was a big thing, I believe, I believe in—Yeah, I know this was a huge show in South America, but obviously, I'm not in South America, so I have no clue.
The show started a long time ago. Let me just search this. La Reina del Sur season 1. Okay, yeah, 2011. 2011. We're now in 2024, and season 3 just came out not long ago. Season 3—Oh, wait. Yeah. Season 3 came out in 2023. So this is a very long series, a lot of episodes, 60 episodes in each season. Each of those are an hour long, generally. It's the best thing I've ever watched on TV. It is the best thing I've ever watched on TV.
And let me tell you how I started watching it because it's really funny. It happened totally accidentally. So I saw my mum watching The Queen of the South, which is the American version of this. And I saw her watching, and I was like, "Oh, this looks all right. Let me check it out." So I check it out on my Netflix and I search Queen of the South and then end up watching the first six episodes of season 1. And bear in mind that this is all in Spanish. And also bear in mind that this, at this point, is quite a very interesting, shall we say, style, like weird camera stuff's going on, a little bit cheesy in the best of ways.
And I'm watching this thing and I'm thinking, I'm six hours into it now, and I'm thinking, I can't imagine my mum watching this. This doesn't feel like something she generally usually watch, simply because it's in Spanish and it's not in English. I feel like my mum isn't a big watcher of international kind of stuff in different languages. I don't know. Or maybe I just don't know my mum at all I don't know. But I did wonder why she never mentioned the entire thing was in Spanish.
So I contact my mum and I'm like, "Hey, just want to check. La Reina del Sur, is it? Are we watching the same thing? Because this is in Spanish and I'm watching English subtitles trying to keep up," and she's like, "No, I'm watching—Queen of the South is in English." So I go back to Netflix, turns out there's Queen of the South in English, which is the American version, and there's La Reina del Sur, which is the original telenovela, all in Spanish, English subtitles. I was like, "Oh, okay." Well, it was too late because I was already six hours into it and super invested.
Actually, what I did was I went to watch Queen of the South first, finished Queen of the South, which was also really great, then went back to La Reina del Sur and realised, oh my gosh, La Reina del Sur is a million times better.
Also, shout out to Neil, fellow copywriter, who's on my newsletter, who—when I was talking, back in my maternity leave mode, when I was on maternity leave, I had plenty of time, so this is when I got into La Reina del Sur and was watching 60-episode seasons. Neil emailed me back on my newsletter because I had mentioned on my newsletter that I was watching this, and he was like, "Oh my gosh, it's brilliant. Season 3 is coming out soon. You need to keep watching. It gets better and better and better." I was like, first of all, how exciting that I had someone else to talk about it with because literally nobody I know has watched La Reina del Sur except Neil.
After I finished La Reina del Sur, I was like, "Right, mother, you need to watch this." Thankfully got my mum hooked on it, so I finally had someone to talk to about this thing. I'm obsessed with Teresa Mendoza and the whole just situation. Anyway, love, love. That's it. I love.
Next up, Gilmore Girls. I already mentioned Gilmore Girls. I love me some Rory and Lorelai. I really do. I love them so much. I've watched Gilmore Girls more times than I could possibly, possibly tell you. And I've been watching it since I was a young teenager. I remember coming home and watching it in the afternoon as a teen. I mean, it's just been in my life for so long at this point and really love it. Really frustrated. I was very annoyed with, A Year in the Life. The sequel, for anyone who doesn't know. Yeah, that wasn't fun. But I mean, I will never say no to more Rory and Lorelai. So there we go.
Gilmore Girls is about a mum and a daughter and just their amazing relationship, their amazing close relationship. I think one of the reasons I love Gilmore Girls so much is because it reminds me of my relationship with my mum, and with Lorelai and Rory and it just being them two, it was just me and my mum. My mum was a single mum and raised me basically by herself. And I never cease to be amazed by single mothers. And their relationship definitely reminds me of my relationship with my mum.
And also just so much about it. The writing is brilliant, the characters are brilliant. Also recently found out that there are podcasts about Gilmore Girls, so definitely gonna be listening to some of those. Oh, God, I just realised, talking of podcasts about shows, I feel like The Office needs a special mention and also Breaking Bad as well. But let me not go there because I could forever just keep adding shows to this.
But the next one on the list is Grey's Anatomy. And I love Grey's Anatomy so much. I actually just don't have the words. I actually don't have the words. Again, I've watched it more times than I could possibly count. Shonda Rhimes is just something else. She's amazing. And so that's it. Literally, I don't have the words for Grey's Anatomy. I don't have the words.
And then Scandal, also one under Shonda Rhimes' production. I love me some Olivia Pope as well. Often think, what would Olivia Pope do before she turns a little callous and evil towards the end? She got back on track, but there was a moment there where it was looking a bit iffy. But Scandal is basically about a crisis communications agency. They probably get a little bit too big for their boots and they are in the political world. And I mean, there's a whole bunch of other stuff going on with Olivia Pope and the president, but we won't talk about that because I am team Jake and Olivia forever, and you will never convince me otherwise.
Also Gilmore Girls, team Jess, always, always, always. We can argue about that later. That's it. That's all I'm going to say. Love Scandal. It was a great show that got me through the hardest, hardest parts of my studies.
Okay. That's everything. Those are 32 of my favourite things for my 32nd birthday. I hope you enjoyed just diving through all these favourites with me. I really enjoyed going through this. Also, I just about hit my target for the length of this episode, I was hoping it'd come in at an hour, or at an hour and 15 minutes. It's okay. I did my best. I hope you enjoyed it.
Let me know on social media if you did enjoy this. Give the episode a screenshot and tag me @emancopyco or Eman Ismail on LinkedIn. I'd love to know how you found it. And if you found or discovered anything interesting that you're going to try out, watch, listen to, anyone new that you're going to follow, would love to hear from you. Thanks so much for listening, and I will see you or speak to you soon.
