E1: Whatttt…We’ve got a podcast!

Welcome to the very first episode of Real Talk and a Slice of Cake with Emma & Leanne!

This is the place where strategy meets simplicity, and business gets served with a generous helping of honesty (and a side of cake… usually).

In this intro episode, we’re keeping it real, raw, and relatable. We’re not in a fancy podcast studio (Leanne’s in her office, Emma’s in her kitchen), and we’re not pretending to have it all figured out. What we do have is decades of business and corporate experience, a passion for helping others grow, and a big mission: to simplify the business journey.

We chat about:

• Why we created Simplify Business Success (or SBS as we like to call it)
• What’s often missing in the business world (spoiler: it’s clarity and all the pieces of the puzzle)
• How we met and discovered we’re weirdly in sync (three daughters, Diet Coke lovers, and August birthdays!)
• The real reason perfectionism is the ultimate progress-killer
• What you actually need (and don’t need) to start or grow your business

This isn’t about flashy jargon or selling you “the dream” – we’re bringing practical advice, personal stories, and a whole lot of humour to help you build success on your terms. Oh, and cake. Always cake.

If you enjoyed this episode, hit follow and leave us a review – it means the world and helps others find us too.

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Final Thought:

Hit Follow now and join us each week for the strategies, stories, and sanity-savers you actually need...served with a side of laughter and cake.

Transcript

Welcome to the Real Talk and a Slice of Cake Podcast with your favourite business besties, Emma & Leanne

No fluff. No jargon. Just straight-talking advice, smart strategies and a dash of mischief to keep things interesting.

If you’re starting or growing a business and feeling a bit overwhelmed don’t worry, we’ve got you.

Between us, we’ve built four successful businesses - and learned a lot the hard way.  Now we’re sharing what actually works… PLUS the stuff we wish someone had told us sooner.

From hobby to hustle, side gig to full-time business…you’ll get honest conversations, practical tips, and lots of laughs along the way.

So grab a brew, cut yourself a slice of your favourite cake, and let’s dive in!

Hello, and welcome to Real Talk and a slice of cake with me, Emma, and my business bestie, Leanne. We are super excited today. This is our first episode of this podcast, and I'm gonna be honest, we're a little bit nervous too because we are on a journey. We are right at the beginning of our journey.  So, Leanne, here we are. Are you as excited as me?

I'm very excited, Emma. And I actually can't believe we are finally here recording our podcast because when you talk about a journey, what a journey even that has been. We had this vision of a podcast studio. We wanted to be sat on it. I think it was a cream sofa, you know, looking all elegant and together and having a chat and a slice of cake. Um, and I'm in my office and you are? In my kitchen. I'm in my kitchen.

And I think the quick lesson, jumping into a quick lesson there is that we had started to to plan what this looked like and we were going into the loads and loads of detail Emma. And actually, we just need to get it done. We just need to get ourselves out of that starting block and and move forward. And I think for me, that's what Simplify Business Success, to be known as SBS, is all about. We can we can talk ourselves into things, out of things. Everything's got to be perfect. All the i's dotted, t's crossed. And actually, sometimes you just need to do the damn thing. So I'm gonna put you on the spot, Emma. Do you want to tell everybody a little bit about Simplify Business Success and why we how we got together and why we're here?

Do I want to? What if I say no? Of course, I'm not gonna say. I would absolutely love to share that with everybody. So Simplify Business Success really came from a point of me and Leanne having lots of discussions around I'm gonna say that we use the word gaps, things that we felt were constantly missing in this business world. So quite often, you you learn a little bit of something. So you learn something, and you get to the end of it. And thats, okay. So what else do I need to do? Or there's something missing. So what we wanted to create was a business that, in effect, removed that guesswork, took away the what if what if I need, which bits are missing. I described this earlier.

I'm gonna use this analogy whether you like it or not, Leanne, ever been a jigsaw puzzle. So what we want to do within SBS is be the full jigsaw puzzle. I don't know if you've ever done that, done a jigsaw puzzle, done it with the kids. You get to the end, and that one piece is missing. Frustrating as hell and really hard to fix. So what we wanna do is make sure that when you work with us, whether that's in free things, paid offers, whatever that is in, that you aren't gonna have that. You are gonna have all the pieces for your big jigsaw puzzle. We wanna be able to break things down. We don't wanna make things complicated. There's too much fancy language out there, and anybody that knows me knows that fancy language and Emma do not go together. It's got more than four syllables. I can't pronounce the damn word. Never mind understand what it means. So we wanna make things easy. We wanna take away that complicatedness. There’s a great word. And and what me and Leanne have is an absolute shared set of values. Our values could not be more aligned. We have things, and I'm sure you'll learn lots of those along the way, that we couldn't be further apart in. Leanne loves the great outdoors. Give her a horse and a dog and the outside. She is in her element. Me? Mm-mm. Give me the inside where it's warm and cozy. But do you know what? Some of that stuff is what makes us work so well, isn't it?

Absolutely. And, of course, you know, we have to mention, Emma, our shared love of cake. Although at the minute, I know you're on a fitness drive, you're eating your, um, yogurt and chi chai chai seeds? Some kind of seeds this morning. And I am definitely, um, on a on a on a be good streak at the minute because I've got my daughter's wedding coming up. So, um, but, yeah, the cake definitely brings us together. And I think, actually, can you remember, Emma, that first time we met two years ago, and, we'd had a, we'd had a quick conflag via email, and we'd had, um, a call on Zoom where I was being very professional, obviously. Um, and then we, we met for the first time and as, as the day went on, there were things like, um, we were talking about, oh, you've got three daughters. I've got three daughters. Um, I've got a daughter called Charlotte. You've got a daughter called Charlotte. And and I think we both got August birthdays. Diet Coke? Are you a are you a Leo or a Virgo? I'm a Virgo. Because I'm a Leo. Oh, I'm a Leo. Okay. I'm on the cusp. Diet Coke. Yeah. We don't drink tea and coffee. And so it went on and on and on. And, um, I think that's where, you know, we've really formed such a strong bond and relationship, but we are, like you said, also very, very different. But I think our journeys as well, you've, you were in corporate. I was in corporate for a very, very long time.

You're really old. I'm really old. Actually, Emma is older than me. But I think what we bring is, what I hope we bring, is all of that experience and so much experience. So we worked it out, it's six decades. Six decades. That is absolutely crazy. Crazy. Crazy. We're not always able to have six decades worth of experience. But do you know what? That makes us realize how much experience we have got when you say it like that, doesn't it? It really does. But I think as well, you know, I came out of corporate not thinking, oh, I know everything, but actually, that journey, the last two years for me makes me realize that, okay, you can have all of that experience as well, but there are still things to to learn. And I think we are still close enough to the start of the, I can't say it, entrepreneurial journey as well, that we we can bring those those real gold moments and and we are going to keep it real. We say say it how it is, as you say, if it's got more of more than four syllables syllabuses? Syllables. Um, so that's what I I I want to be able to meet people where they're at, understand where they want to go, and not make them feel like any question's silly or that they should know things. That's really important to me. 

Exactly that. And I think I think we we often think things are needed to launch a business, to grow a business, to make a business successful. Whereas, actually, what we wanna show you is what is actually needed at different stages of your business. Because, yes, there are things that you need to do, but the way that you do them, how that you do them is completely different for every single person. You certainly don't need, you know, the big fancy, Leanne's gonna laugh here, big fancy all singing or dancing website to launch your business to actually get it started. You you don't need that for day one. Some people, they need they need that for themselves, but you don't actually need that. You might need something, but it might not be investing, you know, five-ten thousand pounds in a big fancy website. So I think we want to really, Leanne said it, meet people where they're at and actually to show you what you actually need versus what you think you might need and to make sure that you've got everything you need to complete that journey. So if you wanna set up a a lead magnet, a freebie, something that's gonna bring leads into your business, then we wanna show you every stage of that process, not just give you part of that journey. And it's all new, isn't it? You know, we are on this journey ourselves. So Simplified Business Success, or SBS as we like to call it, isn't there yet. We haven't got all of these things in place for ourselves, and and that's why we wanted to start this podcast now before we had it all because it's real at the moment. We're raw. We're right in that journey. So we wanna take you on that journey with us because we think you can learn from what we are doing. You can learn from watching us. We will share our mistakes. We will share our, let's say, boo boo moments, and there's gonna be plenty of those that we're gonna share through the podcast. We're gonna share it all with you because we believe that will help you to grow your business, but we're gonna keep it simple. And I promise we're gonna keep it fun. And we're gonna bring the cake, but not today. Hey, Leanne. No, we've really messed up with that, haven't we, in that, um, neither of us have got cake. But I did raid the chocolate box earlier, and I have brought a token chocolate bar, um, just to to to to, um, to the party, but I'm not gonna eat it, Emma, because I'm being really good. Yeah. I don't have a token twirl because if there's a twirl in my drawer, it would be in my mouth by now. I don't have that willpower to be able to hold it and not eat it. Um, so, yeah, no twirl here. But, yeah, we're gonna bring the cake as well because we love cake, and life's more fun with cake.

So I think that's pretty much what we wanted to share with you today. We just really wanted to give you a little bit of information about our business, Simplify Business Success, and a little bit more of an understanding of who me and Leanne are, the the type of conversations that we are gonna have. We're gonna keep it real. We're gonna keep it raw. We're gonna keep it simple. Um, and none of our episodes are gonna be super long because we're not into adding fluff for fluff's sake. Is that everything we want you to cover?

I absolutely think it is. I just want to also share that we will be sharing our experiences as well. And I smiled, Emma, when you said about the website because, you know, guilty as charged here. Um, but I think that is part of the journey. You know, we want to be we want to be real. I can't we said the word real so many times, but having people that are going from that got that idea, that spark of a business idea that are still in corporate, you know, they've not got away yet. And how that actually feels to be able to bring that real example of that lived example and help people along on that journey to get to where they want to be. So I am really excited and I can't wait to get stuck in. 

Me too. But anyway, we're gonna love you and leave you for this week. So thank you for listening. We will see you next time.

That’s it for today’s slice of real talk…we hope you’re walking away with something you can actually use.

If you liked what you heard, hit follow, leave a review, or share it with a fellow business bestie.  

And if you’re craving more cake and conversation, come hang out with us on Instagram @simplifybusinesssuccess

Thanks for tuning in and remember, no fluff, no jargon…just real talk.

See you next time!