E8: Looks Like We’ve Got It All Together…LOL

Done is better than perfect...but let’s be honest, we’ve had a few bloopers getting here.

In this episode, we pull back the curtain on what it really looks like behind the scenes of running a business (and a podcast). Spoiler alert: there’s laughter, typos, missed trains, and a very fancy microphone that wasn’t actually switched on.

We’re sharing:

• The very real tech hiccup that kicked off today’s recording 🎙
• The Companies House fiasco that nearly broke us (and our email setup)
• Why planning is helpful…but winging it is inevitable
• A hilarious run-through of our favourite bloopers...from podcast chaos to typo disasters
• The message we tell our clients all the time: done is better than perfect

This episode is your permission slip to get messy, move forward, and laugh at yourself along the way. Because let’s be honest if we waited until everything was perfect, this podcast wouldn’t exist.

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Final Thought:

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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 Emmett, and my business bestie Leanne. Today we wanna really dive into how done is better than perfect. How on the outside it can often look like we are swimming, getting everything perfect, but actually on the inside we are making all of the balls ups along the way, and we're gonna do that by.

Sharing some of our bloopers because Leanne, we have a few, don't we? We certainly do. In fact, Emma, we've just had one, haven't we? Um, I have, um, I, I was, I was a little, um, didn't have the same microphone as you, and I had a bit of fomo, so I've bought myself a new microphone and chatting away and, but the microphone wasn't actually switched on, was it?

So that is definitely a case of all the gear and no freaking idea. Um, so that, that starts us off nicely for this, um, podcast, doesn't it? It absolutely does. And that was not planned. That was not planned. Leanne, bless her, thought she had got this really fancy microphone and sounded all different than she normally did, but she didn't.

But she does now. She absolutely does now. And I think the first blooper we ever had, and it's, it's when that happened, or the first one we remember. I think that was the moment where we thought we need to start recording some of this information to share with people, didn't we? And the first one was right back at the beginning when we were on a call, um, and we were, we were setting up the business.

We were, we were getting us registered and making ourselves all official with companies house, weren't we? We were, we were. And we had, we. We had actually done our homework on this though, hadn't we? The day before we checked everything was, you know, the name was available, the domain was available, and we were like, right, let's do this.

So we were on a Zoom call working through the, the form to register the business. No, I actually, we, we'd done it differently. We'd bought the domain. We'd bought the domain, we'd set the email up, that's, that's it. And then we said, right, let's do this. Let's register the business. And what happened, Emma? Oh my goodness.

Honestly, I wish we had recorded that Zoom because our faces must have been an absolute picture. So we bought the domain, we bought the email address. I think we've actually even set some of that stuff up apparent. We, we'd actually, we got the, we got it on the phones and everything. This email, we were all officially, we were dead excited.

Um, and then we went to company's house. We filled all the information in, everything that we need to fill in and sort of hit, we got to the point where it says, choose whether you are. Company name ends in limited, as in L-I-M-I-T-E-D, if I spelled that right, or limited LTD, wasn't it? We were like l, t, d, keep it short.

So we clicked that click send, sat there looking all grim and prim and proper and excited and it came up on the screen saying, taken somebody has already got this name. And we were like. We just, I think we froze. I think it was only, well, we literally just literal, literal froze. Um, in that moment thinking, we have really researched this.

We've Googled, we've looked on trademarks, we've done everything to make sure that nobody's got this. We've bought the domains.com and.co uk. Why is going on? And, and we calmed down a little bit, didn't we? And thought, right, okay. We need to start all over again. No, let's be a bit logical. Let's just try something.

So we changed the LTD to the full thing. And it worked okay. And we still to this day do not know what happened there. We haven't got a clue. That other name definitely does not exist, but oh my gosh, what a moment. It really was a moment and it, it was one of those, as you say that you wish you could catch on camera because.

Uh, we just froze. We just looked at the screen like, what, what on earth is going on? So, but as you say, it's those things that you will stay with you forever. And there have been, there have been a few, a few bloopers, um, along the way. Um, we had a blooper last week as well, didn't we? With our podcast? We did.

In fact, we've probably had lows with this broadcast when we we're, we're thinking about it. So Leanna don't think's hidden. The fact that, you know, she's not yet. You wouldn't know this from listening to her and seeing her on here, but she's not yet found her comfort zone when it comes to podcast recording.

Um, so we, we, we speak before we record them about what we're gonna talk about. We literally go off the cuff. There's no scripts or anything like that, but we just we're clear on what we're gonna talk about so Leanne can get herself into her comfort zone and find her flow, which she does literally after the first two seconds.

So we were recording, was it the first podcast? I think it was the first one. Yeah. So we're recording the first podcast. I'm, I've been doing this for a lot longer, so I'm, I'm in that comfort zone with it. So I do the introduction and we'd agreed that I was gonna open it with a specific question for Leanne, but no, Emma decides to ask her a completely different question, and Leanne just looked at me like, like, I'd, I'd got three heads and four, four extra sets of ears.

I dunno, do you have four sets of ears? I dunno where that came from. Um, and, and, and basically the answer response was. That's not the question you're supposed to be asking me. And then the fits of laughter. Yeah, and I, I think I literally felt like a rabbit in the headlights, like. No, and I'm just frozen.

No, nothing would, nothing would come out even though I was quite capable of answering the question that you'd asked me. But that was not the question that I was expecting. No. And to be fair, I think the question I asked you is probably an easier one than the one you were expecting. Yeah. Yeah. Was just one of those wasn't.

No, and I think you're definitely, I would say you're definitely keeping me on my toes and as you say, it's about, um, we always say to be curious and to experiment and. This is definitely an experiment and it is, yeah. Or the never a dull moment, but that's why we wanted to share some of this with you, to, we always say to our clients, that done is better than perfect and feel the fear and do it anyway.

And all of those, all of those sayings and, you know, the, the, the, the messy action. This has definitely been, um, messy action, hasn't it? Um, it absolutely has. And, and do you know what? We wouldn't be here today on, I don't know which episode this is now, but we wouldn't be here on this episode. Had we not made those mistakes along the way, had we not had those moments of.

Fits of laughter of, of, no, that's not right. We need to start again. You know, we wanted these, these podcast episodes to be real, didn't we? We didn't want them to be scripted or over edited or any of that stuff. We just wanted it to be that real, real conversation, which is exactly why we thought we'd sit here and say, you know what?

We have made a lot of mistakes along the way, but we learn from them. We adapt and we do things differently. And I think that's, that really is our key message for today, isn't it? It really is. And Asia, I think as well, for me, it's about not taking yourself too seriously. Yes. This is a serious business. You know, we we're, we're, we're professionals.

We're, we're committed to it. But it doesn't all have to be, I mean, look at us two talking about being, um, been serious. It, it. I think it's got to light you up. It's got to give you that fire in your belly. It's got to, you've got to be able to be yourself and have, have fun in the process. And you know, we've certainly had had a lot of fun as we've, we've gone along the way and, and if we just waited for that perfect moment, you just wouldn't get out of the starting blocks.

No. No, you wouldn't. You absolutely wouldn't. But I think it's key, isn't it? You've gotta enjoy yourself. You've gotta, you know, love what you're doing. You've got to be the real you. You've gotta have that real personality, that real, I don't know. I've cocked up and I'm, I'm fine. I'm owning that and I'm gonna move on and I'm gonna do things differently.

Um, I mean, me and Leanne, if you've been in our world for a while, or if you've ever had the pleasure of being in our company, when we're together, we literally are like. Laurel and Hardy, aren't we? Is, is that the right word to you? We literally are a comedy duo. Um, we think we are anyway. We think we are really, really funny.

Um, and that sort of links onto something that we weren't quite sure whether to share this or not, but I'm gonna share it anyway. And in the, the sense of open and honesty. And, and we've always said, haven't we jokingly that if anything happened to either of us, we need to get the other person's phone because we share some really funny stuff, don't we?

Although I'll not convince anybody to get our jokes. No. And, um, I think what, what the, the funniest thing is that we can be having three. Separate conversations at the same time on three different platforms. So whether that's WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Instagram Messenger, all those reels, but we always, we always know what the other one's thinking, even if it's a, um, a part message.

So I don't think everybody is, is like this. And I'll do the same with my husband. And it's like, what are you, I'm halfway through a conversation and, and he just, he just can't, can't keep up. But yeah, some of our random. And I mean, random things on our phones. Yeah, you definitely would need to get a hold of my, of, of my phone before anyone else 'cause they would actually think, was she ever actually okay.

And you know what? You're okay to me. And that's what matters, isn't it? That is absolutely what matters. And I think another moment that's that I remember really well and sorry, I mean, I'm mean sharing mode here now on that, that gave us the giggles for ages. And I dunno if anybody else is even gonna find this funny, but can you remember when we're in the pot?

Quite a while ago doing, we were really, we were in real depths of something quite serious and businesslike, weren't we? And what happened? What happened was. This music started blaring through the speaker. We'd been in there all day, hadn't we? Yeah. And then it was just, I think it was October time, so the, it was go, it was going dark and I can't remember the song, but I do remember you head banging along.

I'm, I'm. It was a proper do, do, do. That song, wasn't it that kicked in. We was just like, yeah, okay. That's completely through us. Uh, completely, completely through us. 'cause I, I am a bugger for getting distracted very, very easily. And that music definitely distracted me in that moment. But Liam brought me back.

She brought me back. I did. She stopped laughing at my dancing. I always do. And I'm just sitting here now thinking about not wanting to pick on you, Emma, but I do think it has to be said that the majority of the bloopers. Kind of come from you, um, which you might want to just hide under the carpet. So I'm now wondering whether, do we talk a little bit about typos or train you?

You have, you choose which one and then I'll tell the story. Depends or train. I'm not really sure. 'cause either one makes me look really silly, doesn't it? So I don't hide the fact typing. Getting words right, spelling things correctly is my strong point. It absolutely isn't. I've put some corcus of typos out there.

Leanne normally rescues me quite quickly when they are really bad, and trust me, one particular one was really bad. Leanne rescued me quite quickly with that. But you know what, Leanne? I'm gonna challenge this because somebody told me that people who don't spot typos in either their own content or other people's content are actually clever.

So maybe I'm the clever one. So clever, but they do say clever people don't always have any common sense. So I guess that probably, um, probably works out quite well. Well the common sense definitely would make sense for me, wouldn't it? And as for the train, well that was a one-off. Okay. I told Leanne I never miss trains.

My husband is quite set in steel that you will never be late for a train. We missed a train once and it's like, that's it. We're never late. I'm normally about half an hour early at the train station. So I'd said to Leanne about this one particular train. I won't be late. I won't be late. I'll be there loads of time in advance.

Holy moly. I literally ran out to that station. Leanne was already on the train 'cause she gets on a couple of stations before me. I ran out into the station with my suitcase and my pink suitcase, of course, and all of this stuff as the train pulled off. Silly me. You did. Silly me did, but I got there, didn't I?

Definitely did. I drove on the next train and I still got there on time. So that's, that's the main thing, isn't it? But I think you're right. A lot of the bloopers do stem from me, but not, but not all. You didn't have your microphone on after all. I didn't have my microphone on. Just how good does it sound now?

I've got it on it sounds amazing. Absolutely amazing. Okay. Have we embarrassed me enough? It, this was never set out to embarrass you. I think what the, the purpose, the, the, the message to take away, let's, let's wrap this up a little bit now. Is that. Done is better than perfect. Just do it. Stop procrastinating.

Just get out there and do it. Anybody that is going to critique and have something to say about it, that's fine. They're sat in their comfort zone. You are pushing yourself out of your, your comfort zone. And there's always, there's always room for improvement and things will, can only get better. Hey, Emma.

Exactly. Exactly. So we'll love you and leave you. 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.

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

 See you next time!