Welcome to the UnCloned® Insider Audio Newsletter. My name is Audria Richmond and I am your marketing and launch strategist. I work directly with my clients to teach them how to build uncloned brands and launch profitable marketing campaigns. We are the brand that you come to when you want to become or remain the obvious choice of your industry. Hey, Uncloned Insiders.

How are you all today? Today is going to serve more like a diary entry. I asked maybe in November of last year inside of our community, what you all would like for me to discuss. And Cynthia question was, you know, is there a launch that you felt like you invested too much time in and didn't yield the results you expected? And I want to, I want to use that as my mental prompt, for today's audio newsletter, but I want to today's audio newsletter is about, is about the reality of change.

Change is inevitable. And if you are a business owner, you have experienced change in your business. We all have, right? You know, the algorithm is not pushing out our content like we would like, or is requiring more content pieces that need to be developed in order to be seen. It's just that everything requires more.

And if you are a person that values, you know, a balanced life where you don't want to give so much of yourself and you value your time, value, you know, white space on your calendar, you value, being able to breathe, then you probably don't like a lot of the things that's been happening online. Right. And there's a lot of changes that I have been dealing with. And so I'll start with the business in the business. I'm noticing a decline in hope.

I've said this before somewhere else. I don't know if it was written or whatnot, but it came top of mind because I was listening to, I forget the lady name. I think her name is done. I can't think of her last name, but she recently did an interview on complex and, she was talking about how she, she fears that black people in particularly are losing hope. And I actually agree with that thought.

And what I mean by that, by losing hope, I don't see the same ambitiousness in people anymore. I see a lot of people kind of shrinking and hiding more, including myself. I'm noticing that a lot of people are starting to not believe that their dreams can become a reality. Just a lot of fear, just a lot of doubt. And when you look up the word hopelessness, right?

Let's just define this. Hope love. Let's see hopeless definition. Let's look it up. Hopeless definition.

So this is what it means. It means feeling or causing despair about something like feeling inadequate feeling like what's the point? Like what is the point? Why should I do this? Right.

And so when you think about hopelessness and just like fear and all of those things, those things do not allow you to thrive from a place of, you know, peace, and excitement. It actually robs you of your joy and your ability to dream and believe that you can, when you are surrounded by nothing but negative content on social media, Even if you try to run away from it, because Lord knows I have tried to run away from it. Even if you look at your newsfeed, right? You see these recurring negative thoughts, these recurring negative feelings. And if you don't govern yourself, you would, you will fall in line with that same thing that's going on.

And so I would say that yes, there's new government. Yes. You know, there's a lot, lot of things going on with small business and all of these different things. But one thing I had to remind myself of recently is that you cannot lose your faith. You cannot lose your hope and you cannot become doubtful.

If you have to like, start to train your brain on what you won't tolerate anymore. Right. And I'm talking about really, really, really deep work. Like as soon as a negative thought comes in your brain, shut it down, like instantly. How can I shut down this negative thought instantly?

How do I not even allow this thought to turn into a conversation? I'm even starting to alter how I communicate with people. Like if I feel like someone about to say may not be favorable or may not be cool or whatever, it's like, I'm just not even going to talk about it. Even if I'm thinking about something that may be very well true, everything negative do not have to be verbalized. And I think, you know, as people, we want to be heard, we want to be seen, we want to be understood.

And whenever we can't communicate our feelings, then we feel some kind of way. But I don't think everything needs to be a social media post. And the reason I can say that is because I am one of those people who used to make everything a social media post and everything doesn't have to be a social media post. The other thing is when you think about change and the reality of change, you have to ask yourself instead of being frustrated that things aren't the way that it used to be, use these opportunities to innovate. What can you do differently?

Because that's something I've been thinking about. I don't personally like the fact that in order for me to get seen by new people and all of that stuff, I have to create content at a bandwidth that will make anybody be like to hell with this. So, so I'm just learning. I'm just learning that, excuse me, I'm just learning that. You know what?

I'm going do whatever it takes because I said I want it to be successful. I'm going do whatever it takes because that's what's required. And sometimes we don't want to do what's required because it puts us in our, our, you know, it puts us out of our comfort zone and you can't think about your comfort zone. You really can't, especially in business. And I know when you think about all the things that you don't want to do is probably the things that sabotaging your business.

When you start thinking about the things like that, when you start thinking about the things you don't want to do, right? You're like, oh, I don't want to create 10 reels. Well, how bad do you want to get seen by new people? I don't want to create content every day. Well, how do you plan to, you know, meet new people?

I don't want to run ads. Well, how do you plan on getting discovered by new people? I don't want to collaborate. I don't, you know, when you start looking at your list of things you don't want to do, I guarantee you the opposite of that thing is positive and it will create massive success for you. Okay.

And so that's something right now. I've experienced a lot of loss in the past five years and from, you know, my mother to, know, from my mother to family members, very close relatives, you know, just in the past five years, I've lost my sister-in-law, my mother, my other sister-in-law. I've lost, who else did I lose? My uncle, my auntie, I've lost a lot of people. And in addition to that, I've also lost parts of me that used to be a super excited and thrilled about certain things and certain projects.

And now I find myself asking myself, is it worth it? It doesn't matter what it is. It could be like, I'm about to do this lunch. Is it worth it? Oh, I'm a, I'm going to create this thing.

Is it worth it? Because I'm a firm believer that if you're going to spend time creating anything, it should be stuff that you love. It should be things that light you up. And I know everything we have to do. We're not going to be excited about or lit about or love, but I do believe that if you're going to wake up every day and hustle and fight and grind, and grow something amazing, you need to make sure that it's something that you could see yourself doing.

And I've had to recalibrate in a lot of ways. And one of the, one of the ways that calibration looked like is that, you know, it looked like me getting out of coaching. Like, yes, we're going to continue to offer coaching as a company, but Ardrea Richmond will not be coaching anymore. Right. Like I'm just, I'm over it.

You know, I've, I feel like I've had my fair share of people who don't listen. I've had my fair share of people who don't take the time that I'm giving to them seriously. And I've wasted more time with a lot of people who just weren't serious about their goals, their dreams, and their desires. And I have allowed that to really take a, do a number on me. It's done a number on my mental.

It's done a number on my health, you know? I recently had a health situation happen where I had to go to the doctor and like really learn about a lot of things. And I'm still getting a lot of lab work back and all of those things. And a lot of this stuff is stress. It's stress of trying to serve people and show up for people.

And sometimes it's not always met with a thank you or appreciation. And I'm learning that I have to emotionally detach from the unwilling and I have to redesign my business and create offers. That's more in alignment with what protects my soul and coaching does not protect my soul. It just doesn't. I think at one point I absolutely loved it, but I need a break from it.

I'm not saying that I'm completely out of the game, but as of now, no, I'm good. I'm so good. I'm actually, getting a desire to want to create more and make things like help people create assets, whether it's a coaching program, a podcast, a course, a magazine, a book, a card deck. I want to get into the creation space again. And so we're actually in the process of developing, a new agency where we're going to help people develop assets because I need to break away from the teaching and the teaching, teaching, teaching, teaching, And I want to get back into the doing and getting shit done and not letting things be belabored on a, to do list for years and years and years on, on it.

And so I need to get back close to the work, because I'm not used to working in a container where no output is happening. And so that's, you know, when you think about change, that's what change look like. It looks like reevaluating how you like to work. It looks like reevaluating how you like to show up. It looks like reevaluating what you like to sell and all of those things.

And, for the first time in a long time, my revenue was down and I can say that because I'm not, I know I can rise it back up if I choose to. Right. But I needed to allow myself a break. That means that the revenue was going to decline. That means that the sales were going to start decreasing and I'll feel no kind of way because at some point I used to try to like, you know, I needed to make sure my revenue was here and here and here, but on the inside, I'm, I'm, I'm not, you know, I'm, I'm feeling some kind of way and my feelings is hurt and all of these things, all this mental, emotional stuff.

Right. And so when you think about the reality of change, you have to evaluate everything. And that's what I did. I was like, what's what lights me up now? What do I get excited about?

What, what, what makes me feel like, okay, this is worth it. And I have to tell you, I have some clients who are in the, the school community who show up every day, who contribute, who share their wins and you know who you are. Thank you. Cause you all listened to this audio newsletter. Thank you for showing up in the community.

Thank you for continuing to support the business. Thank you for buying a ticket to Unclone Brand Live. I see you. I need it now more than ever, right? Like to see you all show up in that way because I need to be reaffirmed that, you know, this is, this is the work I supposed to be doing.

So no, I'm not going out of business. And I don't plan on, you know, not serving people. It's just going to look different. It's going to look like courses. It's going to look like workshops.

It's going to look like intensives. That's what it's going to look like for me going forward. And so if, when we do reintroduce coaching, I will not be coaching our unclone experts and unclone marketing pros will be doing that. So, yeah, so there's that. The other thing I wanted to share about change and the reality of change is that do not let change make you bitter.

Do not let change make you shrink. Do not let change make you doubt, doubtful and helpless and hopeless. Like know that you have more control than you give yourself credit for and that every day you get to try again, every second you get to try again, every moment you get to try again, do not let the reality of change make you question if your dreams are real because your dreams are real. The desires of your heart is real. The things that you want are real.

And the moment that you allow change to self sabotage, what you need to be focused on. That's when, as people will say, the devil has won and the devil can't win because when you have God on your side, when you have God in you, you understand that you will never be forgotten and you will never be left to the side. Right. And so I know this is more on the motivational side, I guess, and more personal for me, but I love being transparent. I don't ever want to put on a facade.

Like everything is all, you know, gravy when it's not because I do believe that there's a lot of people who, you know, it's their right to disclose what they want to share and not disclose what they don't want to share. But I don't feel like a lot of leaders are being real about what it takes to lead or what it takes to show up or what it takes to create and make and be something. And so I pray that you found value in today's audio newsletter. As always, I would love to know your feedback, your biggest takeaway inside of our community. If you're not a part of our community, you can visit www.group.

And if you haven't gotten your tickets yet to Unclone Brand Live, you can head over to Unclone live until next time y'all let's go live an unclone life and build an unclone brand.