Hello my friends. I have a very special guest for you today. She is the queen of authentic marketing. She is the author of The Fearless Marketing Bible for Life Coaches. She is your Korean mother. Today I am talking to Simone Seol. This is episode number 108. I am your host, Becca Pike, and it is time for your weekly dose of Hell Yes Coaching. Let’s go. 

Hey, guys. I’m Becca Pike and welcome to The Hell Yes Entrepreneur podcast, the number one show for entrepreneurs looking to create their first six-figure year. If you’ve got the drive and you know how to hustle but you’re not sure where to channel your energy, we’ve got the answers. Let’s dive into today’s show.

Simone: Oh, my God. You make me feel terrible. 

Becca: Why? Because I’m so pretty and charming?

Simone: And you’re on some kind of unholy contraption looking hot as fuck. I’m like ugh. 

Becca: In my trucker hat and no bra and wine. 

Simone: Very offensive. 

Becca: How are you? Look at you? Hi. 

Simone: Oh my gosh, I am good. A little crazy, but good.

Becca: What time is it there? 10:00 a.m.

Simone: It’s 8:40 a.m.

Becca: Oh, wow. So you’re like awake and caffeinated and fresh, and I’m like going down. I’m just drinking wine about to fall asleep. We’re on different levels.

Simone: No, I just woke up. We’re whatever. For us, it’s probably for the best if we’re both a little unhinged. So here we are.

Becca: Oh, no, we’re gonna stick our foot in our mouth.

Simone: Oh, no, unlike usual.

Becca: I don’t know. We’re gonna offend people.

Simone: Oh, no, we’re gonna say inappropriate things.

Becca: Oh, man. Hi, I miss you. I can’t wait to do this. 

Simone: I miss you too. Oh my gosh, I love watching you drop the file again and again.

Becca: I’ve been up in my ability to not give a fuck and say what I want to say, which took forever by the way. This is my theory. Even the most courageous people, they have to go through some sort of tunnel. Okay I can be very unhinged. I can say what I want to say when there’s a group of five, ten, 15, 20 people, but it took me a while to get to the point of like putting it out to the universe where thousands of people could see it.

Simone: Yeah, it’s a crucible. 

Becca: It’s interesting. 

Simone: Well, good for you. I’m glad for it. 

Becca: Thanks. Thanks.

Simone: It’s really coming through like just uncensored authenticity. I don’t know how I could contribute to your podcast, but we’ll see. 

Becca: Yeah, we’re about to find out. 

Simone: We’re about to find out.

Becca: Worst case scenario, we just scrap it. 

Simone: We won’t. 

Becca: No. It’s gonna be great. So are you fucking ready? 

Simone: I’m fucking ready. 

Becca: Let’s do it motherfuckers. All right, let’s get super professional. Hello, Simone. Welcome to the show. How are you doing?

Simone: I am doing just fantastic. Thank you so much for inviting me. Super honored. Let’s do this.

Becca: Yes. I’m excited to have you. Okay can you just give us a quick introduction? Who are you? Who is Simone?

Simone: Oh, my goodness. Well, I am a coach. I am known most widely, I guess, as a marketing teacher. I have written the Amazon bestseller Fearless Marketing Bible for Life Coaches. I host a podcast. I’m your Korean mom. If you follow me on Instagram, I say a lot of offensive things. That’s me.

Becca: Oh my god, I love it. Listen, I read your bible book. That’s the only Bible that I have read from front to back, and I loved it.

Simone: Thank you, ma’am.

Becca: It was amazing. You know what you are? You are just a like permission giving goddess. You just give permission. I think we need that so much. Like you’ve given me permission. You’ve given the world permission to just say what they want to say. Right? You’re known for like helping people get that through in their marketing. I love that.

Simone: Thank you so much. 

Becca: Yeah, you’re welcome. So can you give us a little backstory on how you even became a coach? When did you decide you wanted to help people?

Simone: I think I knew I wanted to help people ever since I realized that I’m really fucked up. I’m like I don’t know how to unfuck myself. In the process of trying to unfuck myself, which started in high school because that’s when I realized I was really fucked up. I was like oh, this is neat helping people not feel completely fucked up inside. So like so many people I thought actually become a therapist. Then I like looked into what that requires, and I was like no because it just seemed annoying. 

Then I really I fell in love with hypnosis, actually. I fell really deep in love with hypnosis. I found a teacher who teaches hypnosis and hypnosis based coaching. With whom, by the way, I’m currently offering a certification. We ended up teaming up after all these years, but that was like, I don’t know, like 15 years ago. Ever since then it filled me with so much, such a high and such a sense of purpose that I could help someone take down their suffering from a 10 to a two in a really short amount of time, and I’ve been hooked ever since.

Becca: I love that. Let me just take a quick detour. Let’s talk about diagnosis just for a second. 

Simone: Oh, yeah. I’m in for it.

Becca:  So like, I feel like a lot of people, we don’t know much about hypnosis. In my mind, it is like in the movies. Like you’re laying down, they hypnotize you. They tell you whatever they want you, or what you want them to tell you. I don’t know. Whatever it is that you are wanting to absorb, they help facilitate that. Is that actually what it’s like?

Simone: That is actually what it’s like for a very, very small, well, I wouldn’t say very small. It’s for a small percentage of hypnotist who practice now because of what you just described is a really old school like white dude kind of hypnosis. I don’t necessarily mean that in the bad way, but that’s how classic hypnosis was taught and practiced for a long time. It still is. But to me, if you ask me, it’s a little bit of a relic. That’s not to say that it doesn’t work or that it’s bad. It works in a lot of cases. 

But what I was trained on, which is the what I’m teaching people now, is how to basically have the effect of hypnosis without actually making someone lie down. So we’re gonna go deep. That’s really a very fun thing to do put someone in a trance. A lot of really cool things you can do with the human mind that state. Life isn’t always conducive for that kind of thing, right? 

Sometimes we just need to be able to get the dramatic change on a just conversational level. Just you and I are talking. My teacher, Melissa, always says, and I think it’s brilliant that hypnosis, like any really effective communication, is hypnosis. So think about like hypnosis of political messaging, or the hypnosis of our default beliefs that I picked up from because our parents said so, and the magazines and TVs say so, right.

So we become hypnotized with these mass messages. We weren’t necessarily lying down with somebody whispering things in your ear creepily, necessarily. It’s just a really effective communication. We weren’t, for the most part. But so it’s basically how to get that hypnotic level of super effective communication fast. That’s sort of what we teach. It’s sort of like it’s grounded an understanding of the unconscious and everything, but it’s really fun if I can get you to lie down and close your eyes and go really deep. Don’t always have the time for it. 

Becca: So as you’re telling me this, there’s only one question that I’m dying to know. Do you fuck with psilocybin? Do you mess with psychedelics? Like, have you gone on these trips? Have you gone into your mind and experienced this on another level?

Simone: So I try to get into altered states however I can, mostly by getting drunk a lot. When I’m in California, you were supposed to laugh. That was supposed to be funny.

Becca: Oh, I thought it was, I thought you were an alcoholic. I was gonna be really nice to you.

Simone: That was a joke. I do like joking.

Becca: I’m just kidding. I know you’re not. I know you’re not an alcoholic. 

Simone: I live in Korea, where all drugs are extremely, extremely illegal. So whenever I go to California, I’m just always on weed gummies. But the answer is, I would love to try it, but I haven’t had a chance to actually. I think I would have had lots of chances if I lived in the U.S., but I don’t. I live in a country where all of that is extremely, extremely illegal. I would love to.

Becca: Okay so here’s the thing. So many people. Let’s talk about just psilocybin, just mushrooms. We could talk about all kinds of things, but just mushrooms. 

Simone: I’m jealous of people who’ve done it. I haven’t. I want to,

Becca: I just mushrooms with my mom on Mother’s Day. That’s how we bond. That’s how you know what kind of childhood I came from. So like psilocybin mushrooms. So many people do it “wrong”. You know what I mean? Like if you’ve ever talked to someone, and they’re like, “Yeah, I did mushrooms once in college. It was a terrible trip. It was awful.”

Then you go to find out that they like ate five entire heads of mushrooms, and then they were at a music festival. They were with a bunch of people they didn’t know, and they didn’t feel safe, and they felt terrible. It’s like well of course. That’s like saying I don’t like drinking, but then you go to find out that they drank nine bottles of vodka for their first time, right? You’re like an obviously.

Simone: In a sketchy bar. Yeah.

Becca: Yes. So if you do decide to do mushrooms, you do want to do it in a safe place. If you do want to come to Kentucky, I could like to set up quite a fun situation for you. But really the best way to do it if you want to do it in a therapeutic sense is to go somewhere safe by yourself with someone that you trust that is sober hanging out kind of at afar, and you actually close your eyes. You lay down, and you close your eyes. That way you can experience more internal instead of external. 

It’s like watching a movie play out. You’re watching your brain go through all of these thoughts that are extremely vivid and colorful. Every time I do it, I have almost like an awakening, like an experience that has made me realize something about myself. I think there’s drugs that take you out of your body, like drinking, and then there’s drugs that put you more into your body than when you’re sober, like mushrooms. If you ever want to come, let’s play. 

Simone: All right, Kentucky, getting on a plane. 

Becca: Mushrooms in Kentucky.

Simone: What you’re describing one, I would love to try mushrooms, but two, my teacher teaches us something called hypnopsychedelics, which is exactly what it sounds like. It’s basically she teaches you how to mimic the effects of psychedelics with just hypnosis. What you’re describing, it sounds very much like what I’ve experienced with that, and I’m sure it’s different too.

So I’m really curious. I just think that human consciousness is so fascinating. So the intersection between our spirits and our bodies and how certain substances play with those aspects. I think it’s all so fascinating.

Becca: One of the craziest experiences was, we were in Costa Rica one time, and my husband was doing a meditation. We were sober. We weren’t doing any drugs at all. He had these really strong visions that ended up like it just took over his emotional body. Like he ended up crying and just releasing. Basically, when he describes it, he says that he like saw a some type of god, some type of female God, goddess, and she told him that he was put on this earth to raise women and to be a man of women. We have a bunch of women in our family, a bunch of girls. 

Simone: Now resigned to my fate.

Becca: I know. So interestingly, he says, so he ended up, he’s done Ayahuasca three times. He said, each time he did ayahuasca, he was presented the same god. She came back and talked to him about his journey on planet Earth and how he’s doing with these women that he’s raising, apparently, including me. She talks to him about how he was put in my life to help me as well. Which is a hell yes, on my end. Like, it is very obvious what he does in my life. But isn’t that crazy? Isn’t that so interesting?

Simone: Yeah, I mean, it’s not crazy because I’m very useful, spiritual or something. Yeah, of course, it’s like that. But also, yes, it’s fucking crazy. That’s so sweet. I love for you guys. I feel like my Spirit Guides definitely pushed my husband to me to take care of me. I feel that very strongly too in a spiritual way. So awesome.

Becca: Yes. Last time she talked to him, I said did she say anything about all of our girls starting their periods and me going through menopause all at the exact same time? Because that’s coming up in like 10 years. So if she has any advice on that, that would be great. 

Simone: Poor guy. He’s going to need extra reinforcement. 

Becca: All right. So that was a small detour. Let’s go back. Obviously, you’re well known for your creativeness, your creative process, the way that you write creative marketing, creative copy. When did you realize that you were different than other people?

Simone: So, I never felt like I was, well okay. On the one level, I always felt a little bit different because I have ADHD and had known that since I was a little kid. So I had a sense that my brain works differently than everybody else. 

But in terms of marketing, in terms of how I carried myself through the world as an adult, it’s not something that I woke up to. It’s something that other people started telling me, and that I was really puzzled by, right. Because people would be like you’re so different. You’re so creative. You’re so authentic.

I’m like it’s not like I’m sitting here trying to be authentic. It’s not like I’m gonna be different and creative today. I just show up and do my thing. Other people keep telling me the same feedback again and again. So I got really curious about what am I doing differently? What is it like when other people say that’s so creative when I was just doing my thing being in my own brain? 

So I got really curious about that. I made it kind of like my life mission to deconstruct what my brain was doing automatically and teach it to other people. That’s how I make money, which sounds so crazy. So on the one hand, what I just said is true. On the other hand, it’s actually not the whole story because I wasn’t born having a lot of courage to have my own back. I wasn’t born, owning all the different parts of me, including the parts of me that are not necessarily awesome, right. 

That I had to really work on, and I worked on that very intensely most of my life. There were coaching and there and this and that, self-development. I learned not just like not hate on, but really truly own and claim and love and celebrate every part of me, including the parts of me that other people think are less than and think I should fix. So that I very much worked for. 

But even so I think there’s something about how my brain naturally works that makes me very bad at like censorship and self-editing and molding myself to fit someone else’s mold and following other people’s rules. There’s something in my body that that really, really resists that.

Becca: Did you find that in the beginning of your life, you did actually offend people? Like you had to work on your censorship, that you had to work on filtering so that you could function in society?

Simone: I was very good at it my whole life. My whole young life, and I thought that was my personality. Because I was so good at masking, right? Like my adolescence, as a child, I was just a child, a happy child, uncensored. But as an adolescent in my 20s I think I spent so much time and energy trying my best to fit in and trying my best to be cool. 

It was actually crazy one moment when I was like wait, that’s not even who I am. I’m not cool at all. I’m not nice. I built my whole personality around being nice, which was 100% a performance. I’m kind, but I’m not nice. I’m not sweet. I am a very earnest person. Like I am cringingly earnest. I’m not a cool person. I built this whole personality based on being cool. All of these things had to come down, and I had to work. and I had to drive that process. 

I think at the end of which I reached a level of really loving myself and being comfortable in my own skin, which is, I think, a big part of what feeds that whole being authentic and creative whatever thing.

Becca: So if you’re not just naturally nice or cool, what did you find that you are? What are you to your core?

Simone: I’m a paradox. I think so is everybody. Right? There are parts of me that are really ugly and dark and messy and selfish and destructive and callous and almost evil. There are all these parts of me that I think everybody also has, but they want to pretend like they’re not there. Or they just like push it down and like repress them. 

Becca: I don’t have any of those traits. 

Simone: Yeah, I can tell you’re the one. Or they keep trying to like improve those parts of them. They don’t need to be improved. They’re a part of who you are as human being. I think I am one time years ago, a client told me, “Simone, it just seems like you have like a direct line to your highest self all the time. Like, how do you do that?”

I remember telling them immediately I knew the answer why that was, why I always had a direct line to my higher self. It’s because I always also had a direct line to my lowest self, right. I was so good. Whatever, good is a weird word, but I was so like at peace with or willing to love myself, even with my lowest self. When you have that, it’s so easy to access your highest self because you’re not fighting against giant parts of yourself. You just have access to all of yourself. 

In that way, I’m a paradox. I think the more people, I always say, like learning how to be creative and authentic and marketing, it’s not about learning. It’s unlearning. It’s unlearning everything that made you feel like you had to hide who you are. It’s unlearning everything that made you feel like you have to perform instead of play. 

Unlearning everything that made you feel like you have to get an A on the test and get all the answers correctly. Instead, letting your just you know who you really are as a human being just be there instead of being the person who’s taking this test. Right?

So I think everyone is a really interesting paradox. I think if we unlearned enough to really play with that, and to share those parts of ourselves with others, not only would we live in a more interesting world, more diverse world, I think there would also be a lot less loneliness. Because loneliness, people think it comes from not being connected to others. That’s true, but I think in large part not being connected to others is a symptom of being really disconnected from ourselves. Right?

Like when we don’t know who we are or what we need, it’s really hard to reach for those with other people. So we can be surrounded by people but still be really lonely. So that’s another part of it too. That cultivating a connection with yourself that allows you to open up space to cultivate really intimate connection with other people, which again, other people are also this great paradox.

Becca: Yeah. So if someone’s listening to this right now, and they’re like really resonating with it, and they want to know what do you think is step one to unlearn a lot of the stuff we’ve learned? Just awareness?

Simone: Yeah, I think it’s hard to say step one, step two, right? Because everyone’s in such a different place. However, if I did have to say what step one is, I think it’s too far to try to like figure out who you really are in step one. I think it’s awareness, meaning, I’ll be more specific than that. 

I think we can think of it as like turning on a level of being aware of what’s happening in your body as you move through experiences, right? Like a lot of people, I’m sure you know very well with all of your backgrounds. We are like brains in a jar. We are like heads cut off from our bodies. In the subtlest moments that we totally ignore and gaslight our own body experiences to ourselves. 

So even if it’s something as mundane as you’re at a restaurant, and you’re trying to look at a menu and decide what you want. As you’re reading through all the menu items, just notice how each one feels in your body. Right? Chicken Caesar salad, how do I feel about that? Caprese salad? What’s like my body reaction to that? Where in my body am I reacting? What’s it like?

Oh this is a good one. Okay listen, I’m about to give you a social media meditation fucking practice. Okay so you open up your favorite social media app, you scroll your feed, and turn off your brain. I mean, you can’t turn off your brain, but just don’t worry about what your brain thinks. Don’t worry about what you think. Okay? Just scroll your feed. Notice how your body reacts to each thing you read, each picture you see, each video whatever. As you’re scrolling, just be curious about how your animal body reacts to each thing. 

If you want the advanced version of this assignment, just notice whose account or what kind of content makes your body tense up, right? Or pumps your body full of adrenaline, but not the fun kind of adrenaline, but like the anxious kind of adrenaline. What kind of stuff fills you with stress, and unfollow all of them.

Becca: I’ve been doing this for the last year. For the last year, I have been, every time I notice anything in my body. It is so funny that you’re saying this. Every time I notice anything in my body that isn’t absolute pleasantry, I unfollow them. It’s not the person. It’s almost never the person. Sometimes it is just, let’s say that it is someone that as soon as I see them, I realize that they see my content. I don’t like that they’re seeing my content because it’s so controversial. Now I have just a 1% teeny tiny little ounce of me that now wants to hold back because I saw their profile. 

Simone: Exactly. You know what?

Becca: Unfollow.

Becca: Oh, my god, I wish everybody would do this. Right. It’s not even always, I mean, like what you just said. It’s not them. Like, I have unfollowed everyone that when I follow them, I automatically unconsciously, even if I try not to, start comparing my shit to their shit, right? Everybody who just triggers a thought in my head ooh that’s really smart. How come you would have never thought to say that? 

It’s not them. It’s my own crazy brain being like you’re an asshole and dumb compared to that person. I have to unfollow, in fact, and it’s nothing negative about them. In fact, it should be flattering for them, right? Their work inspires such envy in my system that I have to kind of like go on a fast for a little bad. Owning this is about me. 

I have told friends that I have unfollowed. Like, listen, it’s not you. It’s I feel like I can’t trust my own brain when I’m following you. Something to that effect. Like I’ve told that to friends I really love because I want them to know it’s not personal. But also don’t take this as like you do not have to explain your decision to everybody. 

In fact, like most people aren’t even going to know. Even if they do, who cares? They’re not going to pay your bills. They’re not going to sign your clients. They’re not going to be responsible for the legacy that you get to leave, the body of work you get to build. You’re responsible. So you’ve got to make decisions that serve you boo.

Becca: Tell it girl. Tell it. I know. I totally agree. I feel that way. I feel like Instagram, for instance, like that’s my platform that I like to be on the most, and it is strictly business. Like I will unfollow my best friend if I need to. I will unfollow everyone that I need to. The only thing that’s coming.

Simone: It doesn’t mean you don’t love them.

Becca: I know. The only thing that’s coming into this brain is nothing but juicy rainbows and people of support. If there’s anybody else.

Simone: Oh my gosh, I just came up with the best analogy. So imagine you have a physical store. Because Becca said my Instagram is my business right? So imagine you have a physical store. That’s your business. It’s a beautiful. Imagine whoever’s like thoughts you’re letting into your feed and influencing your energy. Imagine that that’s blasting the other speakers while the customers are wandering inside and just walking around all day long, right? 

So let’s say you’re looking at a whole bunch of people’s feed being like why can’t I be like that? Oh my god, that person has more success than me. I suck. I wonder what I can do to get more followers. What did they do? We started out the same place. How come they have more followers now? Oh, my god, look at their launch.

Imagine that all of those thoughts triggered by your feed are on speakers to your clients in your physical store all day long. You think that’s a metaphor? It’s not really a metaphor. That’s literally how energy works. What you’re thinking as a reaction to your feet is literally the vibes that your prospective clients are fucking getting. Be mindful of that, right? 

Becca: 100%. As opposed to like if the only thing that’s coming over the loudspeakers is your best friend that’s always cheering you on, your mom that supports you no matter what, all the coaches that just give you permission and make you excited about your job.

Simone: People who inspire you. Most important thing. Listen, it’s not people. There’s a very big difference between people who you think you can learn from, and people who you think you admire and who have really great ideas to share. Very huge fucking difference between that and people who make you feel more safe to be more of yourself. 

A lot of the times, the Venn diagram does not overlap. A lot of the times the very people you admire, the very people you think because it’s very important to learn from, are not the same people that make you feel safe to be more of yourself. So a lot of people make the mistake of following people that they think they should follow because they’re learning from them. They’re inspiring, and they have something to teach you. That’s all swell. That’s the wrong place to attune to.

Becca: Or they follow people that trigger them because they mistake it for being inspired. They think well, I want to follow this person because every time that she or he posts, it kicks my butt into gear into wanting to post because like they’re doing it, I need to do it. I need to keep following them. I need to keep. It’s just keeping up with the Joneses, but they’re mistaking it for motivation.

Simone: My friend if you have thoughts like that, one, I totally get it. It’s totally human. Secondly, I can tell you there’s better fuel for action than having comparisonitis against somebody kick your butt or needing to keep up with the Joneses. Kicking your butt like that works. I’m not going to tell you it doesn’t because obviously it works in some ways, but you can do better. You can have better fuel.

Becca: Yeah, better fuel. In my mind, you’ve always been a coach that like kind of pushes against the system. Right? You kind of pushed against the rules. 

Simone: Born an asshole. Can’t help it.

Becca: Just an asshole. We used to be in a mastermind together. I remember that was like one of my very first just thoughts of you is like oh, she’s a rule breaker. I like it. I like her. 

Simone: Cool.

Becca: Well, lots of little different things. I mean, nothing crazy, but just little things. I’ll never forget, you were the first person ever in my universe to do a secret offer. I could not believe it, Simone. I was like what? This bitch is fucking selling something that nobody knows what it is. They’re all buying at it.

But it was such a pivotal moment for me because it was one of those like oh shit. If you build enough trust, enough rapport, enough just internet friendship, love, all the things, people will buy shit without knowing. It like completely debunked this belief for me that your clients need to see your shit 16 times before they buy, and they need to like have a full sales page. They need to know all the details before they can fit. It debunked so much for me. 

So anyway, there are several other examples like that one where you just kind of pushed up against what I understood in the coaching world, and especially what we were taught in that specific corner of the universe.

Simone: I get told sometimes by people who are well meaning like you need to be very clear about what problem you solve, and you need to make your target demographic really specific in the end. I always think not if you’re me. Other people got to do that. I don’t got to do that. 

What I really mean by that is nobody got to do that if they’re doing what I’m doing, which is building real fucking relationships with people, and high quality relationships where it’s not a transactional relationship. You give me tit for tat. You give me a follow, I give you whatever the algorithm thinks I shouldn’t be performing. But real human fucking relationships where people come to really know you and respect you and trust you and vice versa.

You really fucking help people. Right? You do things that change people’s lives. It doesn’t even matter what niche it’s under. I’m not saying niche doesn’t matter, but it’s really more about the quality of relationships you build as a human being and how much people have a memory of you being an amazing presence in their lives. 

That’s the reason why I sell lots of things where people are like. I’m not even sure what this is, but I’m buying it because Simone’s selling it. Like they know that when they trust me, good things happen. That sounds kind of creepy somehow, but that’s just an effect of me just. 

Becca: It’s only weird if you make it.

Simone: Good things happen when you say yes to me. 

Becca: No eye contact.

So I always worked so, so hard. Like obsessed with the question of like how can I bring more to my people? How can I bring better to my people? How can I help somebody out there who’s suffering with this better or faster? I’m obsessed these quick questions. Becca, I know that you are too, which is why you’re successful. Being genuinely helpful and people trusting you. If you’re doing that, you can bypass a lot of “rules”.

Becca: So are you saying quality service is the top tier of sales? Mind blowing.

Simone: Mind blowing.

Becca: Yeah, that is mind blowing. 

Simone: Then a lot of people try to mess with marketing because they don’t have a quality service, or they’re in the process of developing it. They’re in the process of being able to offer.

Becca: Or they think they don’t have a quality service. That’s a big one too. 

Simone: Yes, they think they don’t have it, and they don’t own it. Boo, if you’re not owning the quality of your work, who’s gonna do it, right?

Becca: Or just thinking that the quality of service will come later, once you have more clients, but it’s a vicious cycle because it’s like you can’t get more clients until you own the service that you provide. You can’t really own it and feel confident in it until you choose to. So then you got these people in this like holding space where they’re waiting. They’re waiting for clients to come to feel good about their coaching, but it’s like not happening. 

Simone: I don’t want people to get discouraged. Like oh no, the reason that I need to get another training, whatever, blah, blah, blah. It’s wherever you are, you have something valuable to offer. Like even if all you did was sit there and really love someone and while you’re listening to them with love, that can be life changing. That can be healing. 

So no matter where you are, you don’t need to be fucking Tony Robbins or Becca Pike. Like, if you have good intentions and you have some skill, you can be really helpful. So that’s why I’m saying show up to all of this. Play with stuff, experiment, get fucking warm bodies in front of you, and practice doing your thing. Don’t do it with like oh my god, I have to be really good. I have to be high quality service. Is this high quality? Ugh. 

Don’t worry about that. I’m probably not that good compared to some people that I really look up to. But the reason that I know I’m doing it right is because, for the most part, I’m having a lot of fun. Wherever you are, you can be having fun with where you are. You having fun. You can’t shit on yourself and have fun, right? You can’t be minding other people’s thoughts, and be having fun. 

So if you can be in your element and having fun, that goes a really long way. That translates to confidence. That translates to, in a weird way, authority. People want to be around other people who are having fun. So whatever you are, the first order of business, get warm bodies in front of you and have fun with them doing the thing that you do. That’s so magnetic.

Becca: Or cold bodies. Either is fine. 

Simone: That works too depending on what you do.

Becca: It depends on what your goal is. Yeah, I remember when I first started, I remember not feeling a lot of pressure with my very first clients. Let’s say my first, I don’t know, 20 one on one clients. My first year of coaching. I remember just thinking okay Becca. You’ve built a business. You’re going to try to help this person build a business. 

If you suck ass, you can just give them their money back. Okay worst case scenario, worst case scenario, they hate it. I give them all their money back. So I remember I wouldn’t spend anyone’s money until their full like six months was over with me. 

Simone: Why doesn’t everybody do that? I wish everybody would do that. People have so much drama like well what if? What if I don’t live up to what they’re expecting? Then give them their money back. Like it’s that simple. 

Becca: Yeah, and move on. 

Simone: But then I don’t want to blah, blah, blah. It’s pretty easy to be in integrity. Like I hope it goes well. If it doesn’t, here’s your money back. That should relieve the pressure. Yeah.

Becca: I think I started my coaching business in a really privileged place in the sense that I had been owning a successful business for like four years. If someone came in to get a massage and they didn’t like it, we gave them a refund. Or if they had like some sort of bad experience or something happened, I stopped making it past wasn’t all a long time ago. Right? 

Simone: I mean you call it privilege. I’m sure there’s privilege too, but it’s not like you inherited a massage empire from your rich parents. You built that shit. Because you did, I think you had a really sensible business brain that a lot of people who are starting out, like me, didn’t. When you don’t have the first idea about how customer service works, when you don’t know. 

It’s hard to make decisions like that if you’re a total newbie. Like wait, I give them their money back? But what about my business? No, no, no. That kind of integrity, that kind of trust is what builds your business, right. I remember just thinking oh my gosh, so many of us have so much learn from Becca about how business and customer service and all this actually works in real life and not just in like a weird online silo. 

When you adhere to the universal principles of business. The reason I say universal is because business is just fuckin dealing with human beings and serving human beings. If you know how to do that, then you’re good wherever you go, whatever you try to sell. If you’re just starting out online entrepreneur, and if you just gave yourself grace as somebody who is starting from a different place, from someone like you who had already built an offline business, I think.

I don’t know, maybe this comes across as like discouraging because like oh, no, I don’t have no experience. But I don’t know. You don’t have to have Becca’s experience. You could just learn from someone like Becca when she says hey, it’s about integrity. Hey, it’s about making sure customers are happy. Hey, it’s about quality of service. You can just learn from someone like Becca and not have to repeat my mistakes.

Becca: Well, thank you. That is such a good point. There’s so much that happens in the online world that just doesn’t translate to the brick and mortar world at all. Like we’ve had brick and mortar businesses for since the dawn of time, right? Like cavemen were fucking selling their weaponry. Like, there’s been customer service around forever. 

This online world is this, it’s new. There’s this whole culture and these new worries and these new concerns. A lot of it is like people feeling like they’re selling themselves because there’s not a physical product, or there’s not a physical service. At Massage Strong, there’s a physical massage that is happening. This is the massage. This is what you’re buying. You’re not buying me. You’re not buying my ideas. You’re not buying my thoughts. You are buying my expertise, but you’re really just buying the massage. 

So you’re able to take that tangible thing and separate it from who you are as a human. I see that in the online world that is combobbled. It’s mixed up. It’s all whammy gammy. It’s all mixed in, and nobody knows how to separate it. That, to me, is one of the most interesting things.

When someone comes in, and they come into Massage Strong, and they say hey, how much is your massage? I’m like hey, it’s $90 an hour. They’re like cool, thanks. I’ll let you know. See later. Then they run out. I’m like cool. See you later. 

In the coaching world, I see these coaches. They’re like hey, hey, how much is your coaching? They’re like oh, it’s $100 an hour. Then they’re like okay cool. See you later. I’ll get back to you. Then it’s this spiral of they didn’t want my services. 

Simone: Why’d they never call? The rejections. 

Becca: Yes, I failed my consult. Like what? No, they just popped in and asked for your pricing. Just the way they would have.

Simone: It was the beginning of a building of a relationship, and you got to build relationships, and you’ve got to let people build relationships with you, which they fucking can’t if you’re always thinking that every interaction that doesn’t result in a sale is a fucking failure.

Becca: I remember when I came into the coaching industry, I thought to myself there was a lot of these fears and these worries that I didn’t have. I remember thinking am I supposed to have these? Am I missing something? Like do I need to like go back and get these fears and then try to work through them or something? I don’t understand.

Simone: You have so much to teach the online business world, and I’m really glad for people like you.

Becca: Thank you.

Simone: There should be more of us listening to people like you. People like you.

Becca: People like me. I have one more question for you. Are you ready? 

Simone: Yes. 

Becca: Okay, so anybody that follows you, we all know. You’re obviously successful in the coaching world, right? So in your coaching career, you’re doing it. But there has to have been some sort of like there’s been dark times or hard times in your journey that you look back on, and you’re just like oh shit. That was like the biggest learning experience. What can you give us, what can you give my audience, something to chew on, something that you’ve learned that maybe if you can articulate it well enough, they won’t have to learn it themselves?

Simone: Ooh, hmm. Okay so what I had in mind when you first started talking is a little different from what you ended with because I think no matter what I share about what I fucked up and how you cannot avoid making the same mistakes. I think at the end of the day, there’s no avoiding going through the dark night of the fucked up soul yourself off. So I’m going to answer it a little bit differently. I hope it’s okay. 

Who I am as an entrepreneur, as a coach, as a thinker, as a teacher is directly shaped by how I crawled out of deep, deep dark holes that I experienced in my life. Many of which I created for myself, right. I’m talking about like whole fucking life implosion after divorce. I’m talking about catatonic depression. I’m talking about actual alcoholism. I’m talking about just having a relationship with myself that was like 98% shame and hatred, and real world events intersecting with that. 

How I rolled out of those experiences, I use the word crawl on purpose because it wasn’t like triumphantly doing a five step process to fix my life. It was messy, and I was low on the ground, man. I think if we’re all being honest, unfortunately on planet Earth, we don’t really get to escape experiences like that. Hopefully, they’re not happening all the time, but they happen. 

I think when I see my clients, they start their businesses, everything’s going great. Boom, suddenly something really horrible happens that knocks them upside down. I don’t know about other businesses, but in coaching and self, anything that has to do with healing, this kind of stuff, it’s not a block in your road. It’s not a curse. It’s something that the universe has given you so that you can, oh my gosh, this sounds so corny. 

But like, what you do to move through that and how you rise from that is very literally going to be the material with which you make your name in the world. Like, there’s no way I could be doing any of what I’m doing, talking about any of the things that I could be talking about, if I didn’t have face to faces with the scariest shit that I didn’t want to have happen in my life. 

One of like the worst loneliness and anger at myself, like all of these things, gave me such an intimate experience of what it is to be human. From that, I developed, because I had no choice because otherwise I was gonna fucking kill myself. I developed a body of work that has depth. I developed the way of relating to people that my clients recognize as she’s human, and she gives a shit. I’m like how could I not? Because I’ve been there. You know what I mean? 

So now, in retrospect, it’s a lot easier for me to look back and say I’m grateful that happened. I’m not glad that happened, but I’m so grateful for how that made me who I am. So I know that nowadays, especially, a lot of people are going through shit. Right? Please know, I’m not in any way trying to gaslight you into being happy about it. I’m not saying you should just power through it. I’m not saying those things. 

I’m saying it’s not the universe fucking you in the ass. It might feel like it, but there are things happening. There’s an alchemy happening in the background of your consciousness as it intersects with the universe somehow where you’re being prepared, you’re being made, you’re being shaped to be something amazing that you can’t even begin to imagine yet. There is something magical happening in the dark, messy soup of it all. 

I feel like I got here way, way long to get here. But trust that. Please trust that. There’s something else at the end of this tunnel. When you get there, you’re not gonna be glad for what happened, but you’re gonna be like I see now. I see why it happened so that I could become this person who can do this thing for other people. 

So I can’t make the shitty parts go away, but I hope that what I just said helps you to move through it with a little bit more belief and a little bit more. I don’t know, whatever it takes to get you through. You’re going to be okay.

Becca: Thank you, Simone. You are wise. You are love. You are everything. You are the queen. The queen have permission and grace and love and authenticity. I am so happy to have had you on, and I love you so much.

Simone: I love you too. I’m truly honored to be here. Thank you for an awesome chat as always, and I will see you in Kentucky next with some mushrooms.

Becca: Oh my god. Okay, how can my people find you? They just listened to your podcast. They’re like this is the fucking queen. How do they find you?

Simone: Yeah, you can find my podcast I’m Your Korean Mom, that’s what it’s called.

Becca: By the way, amazing.

Simone: But you’re like what the fuck is that about? I have like almost 300 episodes. There’s like basically any topic on marketing that you’re wondering about, I probably have it covered. You can follow me on Instagram, Simone.Grace.Seol. 

Becca: Love it. All right, thank you for coming on. I will see you soon. 

Simone: Thank you. All right. Bye. 

Becca: Bye.

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