Tina Tower [00:00:00]:
Hi friends. Welcome to her Empire Builder show. I have a very special guest here for us today, the incredible Michelle Thousand. I have known Michelle for nearly 20 years. We have been on a couple of different retreats together and in and out like the Australian businesswomen circle is not that big and so we have crossed paths so many different times. Michelle is like human sunshine. I always, when I see her, think she is such a blend of powerful and feminine and soft and boundaried and just beautiful happiness, sunshine, appreciative of the world. Like one of those people that when you talk to them you just always feel great afterwards.

Main Episode

Tina Tower [00:00:46]:
And the conversations are just always so like I call delicious. You know, when you have conversations with someone, you're just like, they're delicious conversations. Michelle is an absolute powerhouse. She's an entrepreneur. She's a strategy strategist and storyteller with more than 20 years experience helping people turn their ideas into sustainable, soul aligned success. She's created over 150 digital marketing funnels, she's supported dozens of multimillion dollar launches and has helped attract over 250,000 people to events, courses and programs. Michelle has generated over $100 million in revenue across industries and she's done it all while staying true to her creative heart. She's also the co the Content Sells podcast, a coach inside her business marketing mastermind, and the author of the Creation Loop, her framework for doing your best creative work without burning out.

Tina Tower [00:01:43]:
So in this podcast we're going to be talking about the Creation Loop and really how to get your best creative work done in a way that is sustainable and in a way that both serves your clients and also fuels your life as well. Have fun. The fabulous Michelle Falzun. Welcome to her Empire Builder show.

Michelle Falzon [00:02:05]:
Oh, I thank you. The amazing Tina Tower. It's great to be here.

Tina Tower [00:02:08]:
I love it. We can just have a mutual fan club going on.

Michelle Falzon [00:02:11]:
Absolutely.

Tina Tower [00:02:12]:
So let's get straight into it. You, you I always know as the person behind the scenes. I have known you for many, many years. I think getting close to like 15, 20 years was the first time I met you in Suzy's Australian business Women's network. I always know you as like making all the pieces move and working with these incredible people behind the scenes. But now it feels like you're getting a little bit more in front of the scenes. So tell me what you've been up to and like where you're leading at the moment business wise.

Michelle Falzon [00:02:46]:
You're right about behind the scenes and I still love that work very much. I love Catalyzing people. So helping women in small business is one of the things that I do and I love doing that and working behind the scenes with them on strategy and those kinds of things. And I've also really loved playing with people who are playing a really big game, so world leading authors and coaches and speakers and people like that. And really being a thought partner for them, not only on their strategy, but on their core content, on their core kind of business model. And then how do we take that content and make it into a really profitable kind of customer journey and then how do we communicate that customer journey with the world? So that I have loved to doing and still plan on doing that, you know, and have been doing that for a really long time. But over the course of that period of time, there was a lot of output. You know, like people like me, the people that we get to work with, they're really powerful creators.

Michelle Falzon [00:03:40]:
And I had someone ask me one day, like, how do you do it? How do you keep this level of output, this level of quality and not sort of fall over? And it was a really great question that got asked several years ago actually. And I started really thinking about when are the times in my life when I have fallen over when I haven't been able to do the output, do my best work and when are the times that I have sustained that over a long period of time and what was the difference? And I thought of that one time in particular where I ended up in the fetal position in my walk in wardrobe. Everything was too much. I was in total overwhelm, I was in total burnout. And then I thought about the times when I was flying high, sustained over, you know, months and weeks and kind of almost magically creating these incredible pieces of work. What the heck was I doing differently? And it led me down this path of discovery. And over the period of about six months, I put together this framework. How when you're putting together a framework, I think it's got something to do with that.

Michelle Falzon [00:04:38]:
And then I think it's got something to do with that.

Tina Tower [00:04:39]:
And then you are so good at frameworks. This is your jam. I'm like, you're like, you know, when you put together a framework, I'm like, no, Michelle, most people don't put together frameworks. How you put together a framework.

Michelle Falzon [00:04:49]:
I do. I love frameworks. And I think that, you know, it's that imbuing a simple kind of concept with a lot of that deep complexity. But it's easy, it's portable, it's easy for somebody to grasp that's the way people can get into our world. That's the way people can arrive, and we can then give them deeper learning, deeper complex ideas. And so I just. I guess I applied what I've been applying to my clients, to myself, and I created this framework which is really all about creating without burnout. And I call it the Creation Loop.

Michelle Falzon [00:05:20]:
And so now I'm like, okay, I've sat on this for a while. I've shared it with all my clients. I've spoken about it sort of in my private mastermind groups, and different clients have asked me to present to their communities about it. And I'm like, okay, I really think I need to put this out there a bit more. So that's kind of the journey I'm on now. Stepping out from behind the scenes, as you said, and stepping in front of, okay, this is an idea. How do I put this out into the world? How am I going to brand myself? How am I going to communicate this? What is the business model for this? And all of those things are kind of what I'm working on right now.

Tina Tower [00:05:53]:
Yes, I love that. And welcome to the front of the world, because that's where you should be. So you touched on a little thing that I want to ask you a bit more about there in going, like, how do you sustain that creativity in such a busy world? And I know that before we hit record, I was going, today, my scheduling is just a little tight in terms of going straight in from one thing to another thing. And I find when I don't notice that I have scheduled myself too busy like that. It can really stifle that creativity. It's really hard, especially for business women who most people that are listening to our podcast are doing many things in their business. They're not just responsible for the marketing, but, you know, they're jumping from marketing to admin, to creating content, to doing all of the different areas of their business. What is your advice to people? To keep that creative spark and not, like, creatively burn out.

Tina Tower [00:06:47]:
When you are jumping from one thing to another, how do you schedule that? Do you have just blocked creative days with nothing else, or how do you work it in your life?

Michelle Falzon [00:06:56]:
It's such a great question. I feel like I could go 10 different ways.

Tina Tower [00:06:59]:
Yeah, right.

Michelle Falzon [00:07:00]:
I think the first big thing is really having a vision, really being clear what it is you want to create and who you want to create that for, and what is the game you're playing. And I talk a lot with a lot of my clients about this. Idea of the signal to noise ratio. And this was a ratio that was kind of developed to explain for sound engineers and people like that, how much noise was on the line. So if you imagine the old telephone lines, when you had a conversation and you could hear the person really clearly, that was very low noise, high signal ratio. Or those other times when you're on the phone and it was like all crackly and you could vaguely hear the person's voice. That's high noise, low signal. And so I think it's really important to know what is the signal, what is it that you like, what is the stuff that matters? And the rest is just noise.

Michelle Falzon [00:07:49]:
And it's okay to say no to the noise. It's okay to scale down the noise. It's okay to schedule the noise right out of your calendar. And so that's the first thing I think, being really clear about what is the game you want to play and who do you want to play it with? And that's your ideal client. That might be your business partners, that might be your team. Because we can bring people on and we know right away they're not the right person, but we keep them on for 12 more months until something terrible happens. Right. So signal keeping really clear.

Michelle Falzon [00:08:17]:
And I just, over the years have just become clearer and clearer on what signal and what's noise.

Tina Tower [00:08:23]:
Do you have a practice to check in with that, or you've just practiced it so much in your everyday life that that intuition really quite clear for you?

Michelle Falzon [00:08:31]:
I think it is practice, but there is actually a process that I learned. You know, I think we all want to take on mentors. We all want to learn. We all need to develop ourselves personally. Business is such a personal development exercise. And a mentor, right?

Tina Tower [00:08:47]:
Yeah.

Michelle Falzon [00:08:48]:
And a mentor of mine, William White Cloud, actually taught me a process about using my intuition to really tap into what I really want and to use my intuition to even decode that. So our intuition speaks to us in symbols. It speaks to us in feelings, in colors, in memories that spark up. And so I went through a process of really digging into what I really wanted, my heart's desire, from an intuitive perspective, not from a logic. You know, I think we can all write down our plans and come up with our logical, you know, kind of things that we really want. But if that's not our heart's desire, if there's not deep alignment. So intuition's a great way to get to that deeper alignment. And in that process, there were some symbolic things that I kept seeing over and over again.

Michelle Falzon [00:09:35]:
And I Decoded those symbolic things to really be the DNA of that signal that I was talking about. And so, for example, one of the things that I saw was I'm sitting on my farm right now. Right in front of me, right outside my office, is this big, beautiful tree. And every time I kind of would tune in, I would see this tree, long white table under the tree, lovely white tablecloth, flowers and people that come from all around the world talking and laughing and sharing food and ideas. And there was this sense of growth and sharing and abundance and lots of different people coming from lots of different places. And so that's kind of my land of plenty, if you like. And if you decode that for me, what I made up about that was that I like to be sitting around those tables, metaphorically as well as physically. And so right now I'm in my land of planning with you, Tina.

Michelle Falzon [00:10:26]:
We are sitting around that table sharing ideas and feeding each other and helping others, hopefully to do the same. And so I look for DNA in everything. The people that I work with, if I've got a new client, it doesn't matter how fantastic they are, if I get a great referral, if I get on the call with them and I think I can't sit around the table with this person, we can't share ideas, then I'm not doing it. I'm not going down that rabbit hole. And I guess that comes with experience, it comes with confidence, it comes with knowing. That might feel like a great short term solution, but long term, it's taking you further and further away from the signal into more noise.

Tina Tower [00:11:02]:
And so with that, you've obviously worked on your need of people pleasing all the time. Do you still come up against that?

Michelle Falzon [00:11:09]:
Oh, yeah, I would definitely. I'm dealing with something right now, a situation where I'm like, oh, this is just next level dealing with my people pleasing. You know, like, I think, I think we just have it and then it.

Tina Tower [00:11:20]:
Gives us a new level of it. And we're like, this is a test. How committed am I to boundaries?

Michelle Falzon [00:11:25]:
There we go. That's it, right? I think I've got. I've nailed some of the more kind of obvious ways that were showing up in my life. And then it just keeps showing up in newer, deeper, higher level ways. And so, yeah, I think people pleasing is a real thing. And I think for women, not to be too generalist, but I do think for women, you know, we are the nurturers. We have historically, generationally, over generations, been the people that saw the need and filled the need. And we were the ones eating the burnt toast and giving everybody else the rest of the good, the well cooked toast.

Michelle Falzon [00:11:57]:
And so a lot of our meaning, a lot of our sense of value has come from pleasing others. And you know, if you want to run a successful business, you've got to please your client, but not at the expense of your health, your sanity, your creativity, your potential and all those things. So they've just become more and more important to me.

Tina Tower [00:12:16]:
And I do think, I totally agree. It's an ongoing thing. I always think I've got those parts nailed and then something like a little bit swings out of whack and then I swing the pendulum again and go right, clear decks of everything and go back through my calendar and go on like a little life tidy up rampage of things. And then it's all in order and I'm like, ah, I can breathe again. I've cleared the decks of every. I went through this only a month ago and I cancelled two overseas trips and a few different product launches I was doing and I'm like, too much. But then I know now I've created the spaciousness again. And in that three to six months it'll creep back in again and I have to do it all again.

Tina Tower [00:12:52]:
Do you find that.

Michelle Falzon [00:12:53]:
Oh yeah, it's like laundry. The laundry. Like we never arrive at enlightenment. It's just a case of, okay, here I am today. Yeah, how am I showing up today? What do I need to relearn today? How do I, okay, oops, fell off the wagon there, let me get back on. And I think that's the other thing. It's about the big other side of that for me has been learning to be more compassionate with myself. And I think as a recovering perfectionist.

Michelle Falzon [00:13:21]:
Recovering perfectionist, people pleaser, tie back, personality, Aries. I really struggled when things weren't perfect. When I, you know, I did 99 things right and one thing wasn't right. I just fixate on the one thing that wasn't right. And again, this is a fast track to burnout. This is not acknowledging and celebrating ourselves, our progress. And progress is the thing that, that sense of progress is the most motivating thing that any of us can experience. We can do anything if we feel we're making progress.

Michelle Falzon [00:13:50]:
And so that's another personal development journey I've gone on really deliberately, consciously learning how to be more compassionate with myself. And it's a skill. And one of the most influential things that I learned, something I probably use every day, Tina, is a wonderful book called Radical Compassion by Tara Brach. Do you know Tara? Oh my gosh. She's just like a gift to this earth. Radical acceptance is radical compassion. This is radical.

Tina Tower [00:14:17]:
I've read radical acceptance, not radical compassion.

Michelle Falzon [00:14:20]:
Okay. She really taught me what compassion self compassion was. And she has this really simple four part process. She calls it rain, R, A, I, N. And it's simply recognize. So recognize I'm upset about that, or I'm trying to jump over too many hoops here to please these people or whatever it is. You just need to recognize in the moment. And then a is allow what a great idea that is.

Michelle Falzon [00:14:47]:
Because what happens is we tend to recognize, oh, I'm, I'm feeling anxious about this, or I'm feeling sad about that, or I'm feeling cranky about this. And then we want to quickly go to, well, you shouldn't be feeling that way. We rationalize it. But she just talks to us about allowing. Allow that. Okay, I recognize it. I allow it. And the I is investigate.

Michelle Falzon [00:15:06]:
So, okay, I see why I'm feeling that way because that probably triggered me from that thing and where am I feeling this in my body and how am I showing up and just like really exploring it? And then N is nurture. And it's like, okay, I see that you feel that way and this is me talking to myself. I see that you feel that way and I, I get it. This ain't easy. And you know, maybe you just need to cut yourself a little bit of slack here or maybe you just need to step away from this for a minute or, you know, maybe you just need remember that time when you did get through this or whatever I need to sort of do to nurture myself in that moment. And I tell you what, it has been because it's a thing you can use right in that pointy moment when you're right there in it to work yourself through it. And now I can kind of run the rain process almost instantaneously, you know.

Tina Tower [00:15:57]:
Yeah. It does take practice. And it is. It's my favorite thing about getting older is more self compassion. Yeah. I was so hard on myself when I was younger and now I'm much nicer.

Michelle Falzon [00:16:07]:
Right. It's wonderful. It is. And there are so many gifts, I think, to getting older and being more experienced. You're absolutely right.

Tina Tower [00:16:14]:
Yeah. So with the creation loop, which is your new creation that you've got, how's it changed the way that you approach your work?

Michelle Falzon [00:16:22]:
Well, I guess I put together the framework really decoding how I work. And so when I look back I realize I've always naturally done this when I was thriving. And so now just being more conscious of it, the loop is really pretty straightforward. There's a few parts to it. There's saturate, which is the absorption phase. Right? You're like the sponge. You might be taking the client brief, you might be doing the research, you might be just absorbing some data or looking at the market or whatever it might be. And then what most people do is they saturate and then they jump straight to create.

Michelle Falzon [00:16:59]:
Oh, I've learned from Tina how to do social media. Let me go and jump straight into social media posts. Or I've taken the client brief. Let me just get straight into writing those emails or whatever it is. But there's a step in between that most of us miss. And this is the step that allows us to, A, do our best work, B, feel more connected, I believe, to that work, and feel like it is something that we're really bringing to the world. Which instead of just feeling like you're on the grind of saturate, create, saturate, create. Because what do we do after we create? We just go back to the next thing.

Michelle Falzon [00:17:28]:
Saturate, next thing, create, saturate, create. That's the burnout loop. Whereas this step in between, I call percolate. So we saturate, but before we jump into create, we allow space to just put it on the back burner. We've got all these phrases, let me sleep on it, let me put it on the back burner. A friend of mine says, I'm going to put that in my mental crock pot, you know, and coffee. You think about it percolating through the filters. And what happens when we percolate is, is we make these abstract connections, ideas that only you, Tina Tower, the amazing person you are with your life experience, can come up with.

Michelle Falzon [00:18:03]:
Because you've got all this stuff you've loaded into RAM and now let it, like, marinate around in there with all your unique skills, experience, ability, genius zones. And, I mean, there are so many examples of letting things go into our subconscious and turning them into major transformations. Like Mendeleev, who invented the or, you know, formulated the periodic table of elements. He knew there was a pattern in there somewhere. He struggled and struggled for weeks and weeks to figure this out. And then he fell asleep at his desk. And in the dream, the entire periodic table came to him. And sometimes we've got to just sort of consciously forget we've got to let things go in order for them to fully become what they need to become.

Michelle Falzon [00:18:44]:
And so there are many, many examples that I've found in my research of this percolate step being so vital. And then we move into create, but we're not. We don't then just go, saturate, create, saturate, percolate, create, then back to saturate. There are two other spaciousness steps that we miss out on. So after we've created, after we've put our thing into the world, how do we celebrate? How do we. And celebrate can be, I love popping a champagne cork or giving myself a spa day or whatever it might be. But it doesn't have to be that. It can just be simply acknowledging, like looking over that email you just wrote and going, that was a pretty good email.

Michelle Falzon [00:19:20]:
I'm getting the hang of this. Or acknowledging the. Your husband for. For taking care of the kids because it gave you that half a day to do that thing you needed to do, or whatever it might be how we celebrate and our body releases all of these wonderful chemicals that have us want to do that again. Even if the thing we just did failed that launch, failed that we had that film shoot, and you hate all the photos or whatever it is, Find something in that to celebrate so that your body, your own personal ecosystem can go, you know what? I can do that again. We can figure this out. I'm ready to go again. But there's one more step, and that is rejuvenate.

Michelle Falzon [00:20:00]:
How do we build in rest? How do we build in the things that rejuvenate us? And again, it doesn't have to be lying in a hammock on a tropical island. It might be going to a rave and dancing your absolute face off. That might be the thing that rejuvenates you. Or cleaning out your wardrobe or catching up with an old friend or going to a movie by yourself, whatever it is. How do you find that thing to rejuvenate you? And in my life, I look at this loop, this creation loop, and I can run it in a morning. I ran it this morning. I had up early. My clients are often in the US I had this great meeting with a client.

Michelle Falzon [00:20:33]:
We figured a bunch of stuff out. And so afterwards, I just. Between here and my house, walking back to the house, I celebrated that. I acknowledged myself, I acknowledged them. And then I had a cup of tea. I did a workout with my trainer. These are the things that rejuvenate me. And so we can run that loop in just, you know, a morning, or we can run it over a year.

Michelle Falzon [00:20:52]:
I've got friends who've used this process to write a book. So every 5,000 words, they run this process. And one friend, he, the first time he wrote a book, he couldn't even make it to his launch party. He was so exhausted, so burned out. The second book he wrote, I can.

Tina Tower [00:21:06]:
Understand that, writing a book, right?

Michelle Falzon [00:21:09]:
So here he is, he can't make the launch party because he's burned himself out. Second book, he lives in France, he's a best selling author. Second book, he followed this creation loop process and every 5,000 words he ran the loop. And so when he created 5,000 words, so he allowed space to percolate. So he wrote really great 5,000 words. And then he would take his wife out for dinner. He would do things to celebrate and acknowledge and then he'd have a rest and then he'd go the next 5,000 words. So not only did he finish with the best book he's ever written, was not exhausted.

Michelle Falzon [00:21:41]:
He totally rocked it at his launch party. The book was fantastic. And you know, the other side benefit was that when we do deep work, we tend to alienate the people around us. But he brought his closest person along, the ride with him. She felt included, she felt celebrated in the process because what would he do at dinner? He'd celebrate her, not just himself. And so the relationships that we have when we do hard things can also be preserved using this kind of approach. So it's kind of, for me, more embedded into the way I think about everything. There are times I've taken five years off Tina, for major rejuvenation and reinvention and renewal.

Michelle Falzon [00:22:18]:
So, you know, you can expand and contract this and different projects.

Tina Tower [00:22:20]:
I'm like, I want a whole podcast episode just on that.

Michelle Falzon [00:22:23]:
Michelle, come back and talk about that.

Tina Tower [00:22:25]:
Yeah, I mean, I love the process. And I think, do you see, because you obviously work with a ton of women, is there an area that people lack in the most or is it different for everyone? I would think so. Percolate is probably where I lack the most. I do rejuvenate well. I do rest well. I definitely celebrate a lot. Even in my book, I did everything words. A Malteser was like my.

Tina Tower [00:22:49]:
To keep me going. I'm like, good girl. Another one training a monkey. But the percolate, I go straight into, like you said, like that research area, straight into creation. Because I find the percolation really quite difficult. I just want to take the action straight away. And a couple of things that I've found really helpful for me in trying to do that, because you were talking about this process. So Michelle and I were on a hike together in New Zealand in February and Michelle was talking about this and I was going, yeah, I really could use a bit of that creation loop into my life.

Tina Tower [00:23:20]:
Like I. Because otherwise you do feel like you're on this constant. I mean, I would say creation loop, but the burnout loop in going just too fast with it. And there's a book called the Road Less Stupid that talks about thinking time and thinking questions. And I found that really helpful because I needed some structure to my percolate. I couldn't just. Just sit and think. And so I've started doing some actual questions on things.

Tina Tower [00:23:45]:
And also going for a walk has been major in me being able to go. Hang on before we just jump into action and go 70 million miles in the wrong direction. Do we want to think about it for a minute? For a. For a thing? But what do you say? Is there a common theme that most women are missing or is it something that is different for everyone?

Michelle Falzon [00:24:04]:
It's such a great question, Tina, because I think it is different for people. What I have observed though is exactly what you said. If you tend to be somebody who's really good at like the self care part of it, the rest and rejuvenation, you probably also tend to be good at celebrate. And so in the diagram that I have, it's like imagine a circular flow. We saturate at sort of midnight and create it sort of at 6. Then percolate is over on the, on the right hand side at three. And I've kind of drawn celebrate. So rejuvenate and celebrate at sort of, you know, 8 and 10.

Michelle Falzon [00:24:40]:
And I think they are on the same side together. And I find that, you know, a lot of women who are good at self care are also kind of good at celebration and celebrating and acknowledging. And there are still things to learn. Sometimes they're great at popping the champagne cork when it's all gone well, but not so good at when it's gone. Maybe how they didn't want it to go or they realize, oh, celebration can be acknowledgement. So there's always something in there, even if you're kind of good at it. And the same with rest and self care. You know, there's so much in there about reinvention as well and allowing space for something entirely new to come in before you jump back into this cycle that you might be very familiar with.

Michelle Falzon [00:25:18]:
So there's always something deeper that we can learn. But I find most women who are good at rejuvenate are Good at celebrate, converse. And they have a bit of a blind spot around percolate. Conversely, the women who are great at percolate are often really not that switched on to celebrate and rejuvenate. And so I think you're really smart to give yourself some stretches because different personalities, you know, like the quick start personality gets the idea, wants to implement it right now. And so, yeah, your hand's going up. Right. And that's why that's a superpower.

Michelle Falzon [00:25:53]:
Right? It's a superpower of yours.

Tina Tower [00:25:55]:
You are in, in a lot of ways it's very much a superpower, but it is a, you know, I'm over committed.

Michelle Falzon [00:26:01]:
Right.

Tina Tower [00:26:02]:
Most of the time.

Michelle Falzon [00:26:03]:
Yeah. Which I think is the, you know, it. Because our life is an ecosystem. And that's what I think the whole creation loop is kind of acknowledging that we can't just be in create mode, we have to build these other things in. And I think regardless of whether you've got a blind spot around percolate or celebrate or rejuvenate, I think the important thing is just acknowledging that these are all part of the output. We live in a society that just seems to value output. Right. And so if you need to think of it this way to help you kind of rationalize why you need to stare out the window or go for a walk or get up from your desk and go and have a shower or do the washing up or whatever you need to do to create that percolation space or go to bed, or if you need to sort of, you know, help justifying why you're celebrating that thing that didn't hit your target, or why you can take that weekend off or have Wednesday morning where you don't book any calls, then think of it like this.

Michelle Falzon [00:26:58]:
Like if you want to create the things you want to create at that sort of creation step, they cannot be done simply by working your guts out. It cannot be done. It might work for a little while, and for some of us that are really resilient, it might work for quite some time. And then one day you wake up and you go, I hate my life, or I've got a health problem, or I'm like in real bad shape in my relationships or whatever it is. And life can give you little nudges and then eventually it hits you with a sledgehammer. When the ecosystem's out of balance and we want to avoid the sledgehammer, life can, can be. It's not always perfect. I mean, I still don't get it perfect.

Michelle Falzon [00:27:38]:
I still have days where I'm like, oh my God, I'm not going to be able to get all this done. And I'm feeling, you know, tired and burned out. But knowing that loop, like just having it there in my life, it's like I see I'm just not. I need to go to bed. I just need to just rest. I need to just stop because I'm sitting here in front of my computer. It's 11 o' clock at night. This is going to get no better.

Michelle Falzon [00:27:57]:
I've got to go to bed.

Tina Tower [00:27:58]:
Yeah, yeah. Nothing good happens after dark. No, there's no working in the dark time. How do you differentiate between the percolation and procrastination? Because I know that through, you know, you would see it all the time with the women that you work through with her business as well. In looking at that and going, I will work with women sometimes that, you know, they're coming to me, they're learning to put their programs out into the world. And six months later, they still haven't done their first launch yet.

Michelle Falzon [00:28:27]:
Yeah.

Tina Tower [00:28:28]:
And I would say that and go, that's too much percolation. But it's not percolation, it's really. So how would you describe that difference?

Michelle Falzon [00:28:36]:
Yeah, so insightful, that question. And I've spent a lot of time thinking about it and meditating on it and also going to create about it though I've got this wall here with my book sort of starting to be all laid out.

Tina Tower [00:28:49]:
And you include this part in the book.

Michelle Falzon [00:28:52]:
Yes, I will. I'm definitely going to do a bit.

Tina Tower [00:28:55]:
On procrastination because we don't want stuck in procrastination.

Michelle Falzon [00:28:58]:
Right. And so if you, if you think about that diagram as a circle, it's a flow, it must aim flow. And you think about a river. When a river stops flowing, what does it do? It stagnates. And so we cannot stay in any of these places. We can't stay in percolate. It does turn into procrastinate. You know, we can't stay in, celebrate.

Michelle Falzon [00:29:20]:
We just become completely hedonistic and, you know, celebrate stuff that, you know, we need to move on from. The same with rest, you know, like we can sometimes think, oh, I need to rest some more. No, we're actually still procrastinating. We're putting off the urge, the impulses that we're feeling, we're sort of pushing them to the side. I've got to just stay in bed one more day. And so it really comes back to a commitment to feeling when you are in flow. And when you are not, when you stagnated, when you've kind of got yourself into this comfy spot. Because we can also stay in saturate.

Michelle Falzon [00:29:53]:
Think about all the people analysis, paralysis. Oh yeah, I just got to get one more degree. I've just got to read three more white papers. I've just got to do one more course. Like that can be the way we show up in saturate when we've stagnated. And so it's every single one of these points we can kind of wallow in. And that is not doing our best work. It is not.

Michelle Falzon [00:30:15]:
It's still a pathway to burnout, actually. I think because like if you research the death out of something, you kind of all your impetus or your energy or your creative spark kind of drains away and it's hard to move then into percolate. It's harder to move into create. Like I'm all for minimum viable products like MVPs. Get to create fast. So I'm not saying, you know, don't get stuff done, but allow space in there for percolation.

Tina Tower [00:30:45]:
Yeah.

Michelle Falzon [00:30:46]:
You know, and so I think every single part of that process we need to realize I'm wallowing here. I'm stagnated here in this spot. And I think that because, you know, I'm liking the rhyming of the. Of the ate on the end of all these words. What came to me as I really started to talk about this model was there's one overarching kind of idea and imagine it like a heart in the center of this circle. And that is resonate. If we're not doing work that we resonate with that is aligned with our vision, that's aligned with our heart's desire, our land of plenty. We will stagnate at some point in these processes because we're not truly resonating.

Michelle Falzon [00:31:26]:
And we can go into businesses or products or any kind of situation in our lives and we kind of open the door on it and we're not really resonating, but we try and force it anyway. And that's when we will often procrastinate. That's when we'll often find 10 reasons why that can't be done. So there's so much to this. And the other thing I wanted to say, just on Procrastination Nation and women in general, women tend to need to be about 85% certain of a thing before they'll do it. Guess how certain a guy needs to be in general, I'm talking in general.

Tina Tower [00:32:01]:
20, 15% yeah, it doesn't surprise me at all.

Michelle Falzon [00:32:06]:
Right, so we're going to have a lot of ducks in a row. We're going to do a huge amount of work to know that we're. If I'm putting this course out into the world, I want to know it's going to deliver the outcome. We're so conscientious, we're so like, like to the nth degree making it like perfect. Right. But that's so much energy we're using up, that's so much chance to stagnate. Right. Rather than like putting something basic out there, getting the feedback, tweaking it, making it better, etc.

Michelle Falzon [00:32:32]:
And so we as women need to let go of this feeling like we have to be perfect before we put anything out into the world. We've got to let go of that. We got to realize that we can be somewhat certain, put something out with the best intentions, learn from that, put something better out, learn from that, put something better out. And if we're running that through this creation loop, then we can also keep ourselves sane and out of hospitals and out of, you know, all the things that can create stress in our lives.

Tina Tower [00:33:02]:
100%. And I love the resonate part because I do think, you know, me personally at the moment making a big decision. I was talking to my best mate and saying to him, like, I don't know what to do, I think this would be good, but this way and that way. And he said to me, you know exactly what you want to do, but the difference is what you think you should do to what you actually resonate with. And just as you said that, I was like, that was exactly was the thing I thought I should be doing rather than the thing that I actually resonated with. So I found every reason to flip flop on it and to go back and forth to try and like give myself the chance to say no. But that part of me wanted to say yes. And that kind of brings me into my next question is how do you help women to build that trust with their natural creative rhythms, intuition, instead of pushing against them, which I see so many people do.

Tina Tower [00:33:51]:
People do so often.

Michelle Falzon [00:33:53]:
Great question. I think the first is becoming aware of it and really valuing intuition. I think women's intuition in particular has been derided and made feel small or not, like the real facts and the real data and, you know, those kinds of things. And you know, there are so many times I look back over my life that it was the intuitive decision I made. It was the decision, like you said, that I resonated with that turned out to just be this magical outcome I could not have even foreseen with my logical brain. And so I think the first thing is really declaring, hey, this is going on. We're all feeling this and we're all shying away from it, and actually, let's revalue it. And then when we look back over our lives, like anybody that's listening right now, as you think about the times in your life you followed, you can gut, you did the thing you resonated with, you trusted your intuition, you spoke up when you felt the need to say that thing.

Michelle Falzon [00:34:48]:
There are going to be things that come to mind for you right now. And just follow the trail of what happened as a result of those things. And I bet you it leads to magic. I bet you it leads to growth. I bet you it leads to something better than what you had before. And so just kind of tuning into that. Women often have had the experience of that, and then it's about, okay, now how do we apply it to our business? And I think the MVP idea, this minimum viable product, this, like, just check if something flies. It's a whole new way of thinking for all of us women who want to put, you know, we want to have our course completely built.

Michelle Falzon [00:35:22]:
We want to have every handout perfectly designed. And, you know, I have a lot of male clients as well as female clients, especially kind of at the, you know, playing really big games with, you know, millions of people on their databases. And I learned a lot from the guys on this, you know, like one client in particular. Several years ago, we had an idea for a product, and we put it out. The first version, we sold it, but it was a very low price. And it was him with a flip chart going live in a Facebook group.

Tina Tower [00:35:53]:
Wow.

Michelle Falzon [00:35:54]:
And he just talked through. We had bullet points of what we thought it would be. He talked it through. We learned so much from that. Like a whole giant piece that we had missed that we thought people understood. Like, we thought we would start at 1, but they actually needed us to start at negative 10. We needed to go way back to the beginning. And so that gave us all this intel to completely rethink the course.

Michelle Falzon [00:36:18]:
So then we put out another MVP version of the course where we'd taken that insight on board. And then we were like, now we're onto a winner. Now we're going to invest in better production values and getting scripts done and worksheets and all those things. And so just being prepared to test our ideas, to have our scientist Hat on to realize that I can just follow a concept and just see how it goes in the market. I think getting into learning by doing is the key.

Tina Tower [00:36:51]:
Yeah, I would 100% agree. I tell people all the time, start your first course, live. Because if spend all this money on creating it, making it beautiful, guaranteed, when the first people go through it, you'll want to change something.

Michelle Falzon [00:37:03]:
Yeah. And the last thing you want to do is change it after you've locked everything in with videos and hair and makeup and, you know, you just. You're just putting yourself into a really difficult position when you do that.

Tina Tower [00:37:13]:
Totally. So, last question for you, which is the question that I like to ask everybody at the end is with you, with your life now. So nothing to do with work. What does success look like for you? What is the life and the legacy that you're building?

Michelle Falzon [00:37:28]:
I love this question. I guess some of this is easy to say when you have a roof over your head and you've sort of achieved a certain amount of. Of, you know, kind of baseline, all the. All the things at the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy. Right. Food, shelter, and all of those things. So I acknowledge that. But for me, yesterday was my birthday, and it was a really simple day by choice.

Michelle Falzon [00:37:51]:
My family, I had calls from family and friends. My son was here, my husband was here. The day was full of so much love and freedom to just choose what I wanted to do. It wasn't to go out for a flashy meal or any of those things. I just chose what I wanted to choose. I did what I wanted to do. So for me, it's really about being able to do all the things that we strive for. And I love that.

Michelle Falzon [00:38:16]:
I love striving. I love achieving big things. But to do that, preserving our relationships, preserving our sense of self, working with people who lift us up and who we can lift up. So for me, it's all about. It all comes back to love. Really. Like, loving what I do, loving the people I'm doing it with, and being able to give and receive love. I mean, that's what it's all about for me and for all of us.

Tina Tower [00:38:43]:
I absolutely love that answer. And I can say, like, you. You embody that always. Like, one of my favorite memories with you is when we did our first retreat after Covid ended and we're all allowed out, and we went to Soma in Byron Bay, and everyone, oh, my gosh, Michelle wanted to see a koala in the wild. And every time there was a rustle in the tree, she was like a koala. Is that a koala? And it never was. It wasn't a koala until it was a koala. And it was still ages away.

Tina Tower [00:39:12]:
It wasn't even close. It was like way up in the top of the tree. And Michelle's there just crying in, like, appreciation of this koala who had come out to say hello to her. And then the entire time we're walking through New Zealand. Like, your appreciation for life, I think, is unparalleled to anybody that I've met. Where you're walking around a corner and you. And you're like, look at this leaf, Tina. Look at how beautiful this leaf is.

Tina Tower [00:39:36]:
I'm like, yes, Michelle, the leaf is. Look at this. Listen to the sound of the water. Isn't that delicious? Like, you just beautiful with how much you love and appreciate life. And it makes you such a beautiful human to be around. And I have no doubt that that is why you have been so successful and still feel that connection to yourself in there as well.

Michelle Falzon [00:39:56]:
You're a gift to the world, Tina. Thank you. And likewise, the work you're doing in the world and the way you're showing is a inspiration for me. But I know it's an inspiration for so many people. Just love you, Love your work.

Tina Tower [00:40:09]:
Thanks, my friend. We'll see you soon. And we'll link to all of Michelle's because the book is being written at the moment, but she has some different things about the creation loop so you can get that diagram and find out more about it and get on the wait list for when the book is finally going to come out. Thank you so much.

Michelle Falzon [00:40:24]:
Thank you, Tina.