Permission to Kick Ass

Figuring out what comes next on the road to success with Amy Singleton

• Angie Colee • Episode 170

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Rant alert: Amy Singleton is my guest today and we are both FIRED UP. Each of us comes from a background that doesn't necessarily lend itself to becoming a business owner, and we have strong opinions about what it takes to find success while staying true to yourself.  Prepare yourself for the audio equivalent of a really awesome roller coaster ride...

Can't-miss moments from this episode:

  • How in the world did Amy make the transition from pro nurse in the operating room during open heart surgery to owning a digital marketing agency?

  • All hail our Lord and Savior, Dolly Parton! She gets at least three separate callouts in this episode... including rants about roller coasters, how she was Amy's fake mom, and why she's my go-to example of "rich done right" 

  • When you're waiting for the other shoe to drop: Amy's surprising take on fear and the sneaky way it shows up to sabotage dreams  (plus her simple thought exercise to circumvent self-sabotage)...

  • How to work your way up with confidence and integrity when you’re brand new, especially as a creative freelancer (Amy gives you a step-by-step plan... it's AWESOME)...

  • "Why don't they just retire to the beach with their millions?" Amy and I rant about why money will NEVER be the end goal, and if you think it is your life might be in literal danger...

Amy's bio:

Amy Singleton is an entrepreneur based in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Originally a Registered Nurse, Amy’s own health forced her out of a career she loved. Looking for purpose in ALL the wrong places, she wound up alone & desperately suicidal. Amy now dedicates her life to helping others see HOPE & PURPOSE beyond their own failures. Too many people struggle to navigate their careers AND families without sacrificing professional or personal achievements. She uses stories, humor and practical insights to inspire women to carve their own path for success after failure. Whether we’ve failed ourselves, been failed by others, or been failed by our own bodies– there IS hope ahead when we CUT through the BS & dig into living our most authentic lives.

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Angie Colee:

Welcome to Permission to Kick Ass, the show that gives you a virtual seat at the bar for the real conversations that happen between entrepreneurs. I'm interviewing all kinds of business owners, from those just a few years into freelancing to CEOs helming nine-figure companies. If you've ever worried that everyone else just seems to get it and you're missing something or messing things up, this show is for you. I'm your host, Angie Coley, and let's get to it. And welcome back to Permission to Kick Ass With me today is my new friend, Amy Singleton. Say hi, Hi. I had the opportunity to be on Amy's podcast not too long ago and I have to tell you I'm very mad that I did not wear a tiara on that show. So I think the vibes today are going to be on Amy's podcast not too long ago, and I have to tell you I'm very mad that I did not wear a tiara on that show, so I think the vibes today are gonna be really, really awesome. That's right.

Amy Singleton:

That's right, we got our Queenly vibes. I love that you said hey, because a friend of mine, a fellow marketer, and I have this thing where we go hey girl, hey. Every time we see each other, each other, because it's like so gross that, like so many girls do that, we're just like hey girl, hey, hey boss lady, hey girl, hey, boss girl, hey, boss chick. But it's all in jest, of course.

Angie Colee:

I saw somebody unironically use I girl boss too hard, too close to the sun today in a thread and I was like, oh, I mean funny and also oh girl boss, no, um no you know what?

Amy Singleton:

I'm gonna stop calling me a girl. I'm 42.

Angie Colee:

I'm a grown ass woman. Thank you very much.

Amy Singleton:

I'm a grown ass woman. Thank you very much. Right, I get it.

Angie Colee:

It's not usually it's for the bad reasons, but still like oh yeah, it's super easy to get me up on my soapbox before I get all the way up there and start on a rant. Please tell us a little bit more about you and your business.

Amy Singleton:

Yeah Well, like she said, my name is Amy Singleton, I live in Oklahoma City, oklahoma, have my whole life and I own a digital marketing agency. We help people clarify and magnify their brand across the internet to turn their websites into lead generating machines. But I haven't always been that. I was a nurse. I've lived a million lives and now it's been a really, really wild ride to where we are now. But we are a full service digital marketing agency doing everything from branding, messaging websites and lead generation like SEO and paid advertising.

Angie Colee:

That's really awesome and well, I mean, you mentioned it, I was going to ask about it, but, like, let's jump right in Nursing to digital marketing. Tell me a little bit more about that journey.

Amy Singleton:

Yeah. So I would just like to go ahead and give everyone on your podcast permission to go ahead and kick ass and do what it was that their younger selves wanted to do. Okay, because this story is nothing but a series of Amy being too afraid and Amy putting limiting beliefs on herself. So it started off with me wanting to be well. As a little girl, I thought I was born for stages. I was born with a microphone in my hand. I wanted the attention. I wanted to lead people. I wanted to be the leader of the line, like whatever I could do and learn and lead and serve. I wanted to pass out the papers and you know I wanted to lead. I wanted, and you know I wanted to lead. I wanted to do everything and I wanted to be on a stage.

Amy Singleton:

I would regularly tell people that Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers were my real parents in front of my very ordinary real parents. So if that doesn't tell you like I would, I like to tell people I was born with a little too much spice for the Oklahoma gravy. And if you're not from the South and you don't know what white gravy is, it's just like flour and water and salt and pepper. I mean, it's like very little spice to it, okay, and I just thought it's been a little more like sriracha in that or something Right. But I let fear hold me back from that performance because I was an awkward child. I was heavy set, got made fun of a lot, got labeled too much a lot, you know all those things. So I then I was like I want to be a doctor. I got interested in medicine, like here's where a place I can serve and, and you know, be with people and love on people and still be smart and kind of perform a little bit, whatever. Uh, but I let fear hold me back from that Cause no one in my family had ever been to college like a doctor. Me are you kidding? I can't set for the MCAT, like I can't do that, like that's not for me. I'll be a nurse, I can be a nurse. And the high school sweetheart that I had married at the time I wanted to give him an opportunity to go to school, which he never took. Thanks a lot. But I thought you know this really selfish of me to go to college for 12 years and then be like, okay, sorry, you're 40. Go ahead and go to school. So, anyway, the way it all worked out, I went to nursing school and I loved it. I love nursing.

Amy Singleton:

I did open heart surgeries for over a decade, I learned neurosurgery, did lots of really intense things, and then a lot of things happened that kind of wrecked and destroyed my life, my own health, wrecked my nursing career and I had to retire, and that was back in 2012. So I wasn't working, I wasn't doing anything for several years. Fast forward through all of this awful, terrible depression and divorce and 150, 200 pound weight loss, like cancer, you name it. All these awful things happen Depression, alcoholism, got all over all these things and then I met my my now partner and husband, who was a serial entrepreneur he. I met him on a dating site, wildly, and it said he was one mile away from me, which was true, is his address was one mile away from me, but he was working eight hours away in his small business in Texas, and so he had had many small businesses before and I was starting to feel better.

Amy Singleton:

But my health had wrecked my nursing career. There was no, I have lupus and rheumatoid arthritis all kinds of health problems that weren't going to let me go back to that very physical job. So we were just brainstorming one day and he's like, okay, performance girl, okay, great communicator, okay, loving servant nurse who loves people in community and nonprofit and all these things with a good head on your shoulders. Let's see what you know, that, what I know. Where are those two things intersect from all his business ownership? And he, he's an operator, right, which is great for us, because I'm not, I'm like the dreamer, you know the visionary kind of person. But he was like you know who. I paid like a shitload of money to Marketers who promised me the world gave me butt kiss, like people who said they were going to build me a website and then I found out I didn't own it.

Amy Singleton:

People who said they were going to run Google ads and had never done it in their life. Like people calling me from out of town saying they're going to market my business, saying they're from Google Liars right, he's like. I've paid so much money to these people in all of my different businesses over the years. We can do better with your ethics, because we always joke that, like I, have these ridiculous ethics, which is really great to be in marketing because, trust me, it's very easy to skirt the line and not do the work. But I just couldn't do that and he had been the result of working with people that were, you know, like I wouldn't be so.

Amy Singleton:

Long story short, we started a marketing agency and we started acting like a local home advisor. I paid experts to teach me. I hired coaches. I did not go back to college and get a marketing degree. In fact, most of the CMOs and CEOs and business owners I work with lots of them have marketing degrees that are two, four, five, 10 years old and they're worthless. And they come to me now because we have put ourselves through what it took to learn how to do this right, and so we were operating like a local home advisor, and then eventually, that morphed into a traditional SEO and personal business branding agency. We partnered with Hype Digital about two years ago, and now we've been on the Inc 5000 list two years in a row. We're growing by leaps and bounds. We serve 600 clients coast to coast, and we've established them as the authority in their niche in their local space, with excellent digital marketing that just works.

Angie Colee:

Oh, that's fantastic. That's a really long answer to your question. Well, it's fantastic Like I'm always taking notes on these things and I've got so many things that I want to unpack. First of all, yes, like I know why we gelled so well now, because I was the same child growing up. I have always wanted to be on the stage. I've made the comment several times on this podcast. If you disagree, too bad, I have the microphone.

Amy Singleton:

Right and we have the crowns. Okay, did you bring your tiara this time? Okay, I did not Again.

Angie Colee:

Angie, it's in the other room. That's why I need to make a display here in the office. But I have quite a collection of tiaras that I just need to start randomly wearing because I can. That's right. I too feel like I was born for stages. Apparently, not a lot of people know that I used to have a blues band when I lived in San Francisco. I was the front woman on the stage. I will entertain.

Angie Colee:

So I think that that's that's really cool and I thought it was, and I have to pause here to say all hail our Lord and savior, dolly Parton. If you have shit to say about Dolly, don't say it to me, because I will not say it's us hell.

Amy Singleton:

No, you can get right up on out here with that shit.

Angie Colee:

Dolly is our queen okay, do not insult amy's mom I need to look that cheap, do not insult my mama, that's right we will go toe to toe.

Amy Singleton:

And, by the way, dolly, if you happen to be listening, we want you on our podcast right.

Angie Colee:

Come share your knowledge with us absolutely and dollywood has some of the best roller coasters out there for you coaster fiends. I freaking loved it. And there was another thing that you said which, well, I think this really ties to your career, but I've made the joke before, because I coach a lot of creatives copywriters, graphic designers, people that are trying to freelance their way into a more stable business and I tell them because everything feels life or death Like, remember, we're not actually saving lives. You actually used to save lives, but it's so funny how, in a business like this, it's like we're not actually cutting people open. There's no such thing as a copywriting emergency, there's only shitty planning.

Amy Singleton:

But I'm telling you this this entrepreneurship thing has been way more stressful than any OR situation I've ever been in. I'm not joking Like it will show you who you are. Being a business owner is a thousand percent a spiritual journey, if you are not ready to go on one. I highly suggest you keep your 9 to 5, ma'am, because it's hard shit, it's not easy. There is no rule book to how to do this shit at all. So glad that you said that.

Amy Singleton:

There was an SOP on how to do the thing at the hospital, Like I knew and as you get, of course there's things that scare the hell out of you. Lots of things did, but the more things times you do that, um, the better you get at it, and the more things that are thrown your way, the more you know. I had a young nurse trainee tell me one time I left the room to go get some supplies that we were out of in the room and something happened. And when she came back and she goes please, never, ever leave, ever again. I there's nothing that can happen in this room that you're not, that you don't know how to take care of. And I didn't know what to say when they asked me for this and I was like, girl, let's come with a few years of experience, that will come to you too. But the thing about that is when you're an entrepreneur or you're a new business owner, that's not a franchise owner. Okay, there's a difference.

Amy Singleton:

A franchise owner is an operator right Like they want to take a rule book and do it that way.

Angie Colee:

A hundred you do it that way.

Amy Singleton:

That's why McDonald's works.

Angie Colee:

Okay, you can't buy a.

Amy Singleton:

McDonald's and come and be like. You know what let's like. Put some coleslaw on the filet of fish. They're like hell. No, get out. You're not for us. You follow the book, yeah that's like entrepreneur light.

Amy Singleton:

Yeah, it's entrepreneur light. But when you are truly building something for yourself that's never been done before or that you've never done before, who's there to tell you what to do? Nobody. And if you graded yourself as if you were your employee in your consistency and the things that you're doing in order to learn those lessons that it takes like it took me to learn in the operating room Well you're, you're not going to probably make it Entrepreneurs, are it's re? It's really boring to scale a business.

Angie Colee:

It's really boring.

Amy Singleton:

It's a lot of doing the same exact thing over and over and over. It's not. There's not room for you know squirrel or FOMO or shiny object syndrome, as we like to call it. There's not room for that. You will not if you're bootstrapped and you're not sitting on a big fat wad of cash like good luck you know there's work to be done. And that's just hard.

Angie Colee:

Yeah, I mean, I feel like there's. There's no adult here, adult that's going to come in and tell you how to run your business right.

Angie Colee:

You just have to kind of figure that out, either through experimentation, yeah, or like hire a coach that can tell you how to get it done Uh, give you some tools and systems until you can build your own and get a feel for that. But yeah, I mean, I've quoted it before have you ever seen that show Working Moms? It's on Netflix. It's a comedy and it's kind of raunchy. But I love it because at one point there's this main character named Kate and she's running a PR firm and everything is going to hell and she's so scared that it's all about to fall apart. And she's lamenting this to her husband and he says no one is coming to save you.

Angie Colee:

And like that is such a mic drop moment, right, it feels like that's a gut punch. But she actually took that as good news. Like after a moment she sat with it and went like nobody's, nobody's coming to save me. Like I get to do whatever the hell I want to here and of course I'm not saying break laws or anything like that. Be ethical, have some integrity, Be above board, right, but you get to invent solutions to this because there is nobody bringing in a rule book and telling you you can't put coleslaw on your filet of fish.

Amy Singleton:

Just saying that's right, that's right, I love it, that's so good, oh yeah, and there's, you know.

Angie Colee:

Another interesting thing that you brought up was like self-limitations and people pleasing tendencies and how we tend to use other people's expectations to hold ourselves back because we think that that's the way to get what we want. Can you speak to that a little bit more? I know, I'm just like throwing it at you, but no, like man, that's, that's everything.

Amy Singleton:

And you can, really, you can only hear so many of those quotes before you want to puke, Like, like. If you knew how little people were thinking about you, then you wouldn't think about them at all. That's fine, you can say all of that, but truly it's from within yourself and what I have learned more than anything is that I used to think it. See someone put it to me like this one time it's not what I think of me and it's not what you think of me, it's what I think you think of me that counts Right.

Amy Singleton:

So, like I placed all these limiting beliefs on myself. Like I'm middle class, I'm just from Oklahoma, no one in my family has gone to college. And like these aren't expectations that my family's put on me. Like they want me to do more, be more, all of these things, even if they may not necessarily understand the journey that I'm on, because we're really on very different paths at this point. But it was me saying those things to me going well, you know, my sister would be mad if I got you know, if I had a successful business. Well, no, she wouldn't Like. Why do you think that? Do you have? You know, and I read it in a book that, like the fear about shining those around you, like is a real but it's an internal fear.

Amy Singleton:

It's not something that someone else has placed on me. Now there are lots of instances where people have been told you're worthless, You'll never amount to anything, All of those kinds of things. Sure, I was not. I was not in a situation like that. I think I was in a situation where it was like it was just kind of expected of me to do the next best thing, Like it was not. They were not going to help me move to Nashville or like go to LA or you know what I mean.

Amy Singleton:

Like that wasn't in the cards, but I wasn't ever told I couldn't do anything, just directly like that. It was beliefs that I have heaped upon myself over the years and, like you said, like no one's coming to save me, but also who's going to stop me? Yes, oh, my gosh, I love that I'm going to stop me because I'm terrified of you. Know, whenever you grow up and I, this is not me, this is from the podcast or something I think, probably Mel Robbins or some genius, but they're like when you're always waiting for the other shoe to drop, like when you grow up in, you know, maybe a traumatic situation or in a very financially destitute situation, or maybe not knowing where the next meal is coming from God forbid. But when you're always, or you're always, in trouble for something, you're always this weird expectation You're always waiting for the other shoe to drop. So when something good happens, you're like, oh, hold on, you know something's wrong here. And you have to ask yourself, like the question am I open to having more success in my life? Am I?

Amy Singleton:

even open to the possibility that I could achieve that, Because I can tell you everybody's looking for that 5K month, 10K month, 20K month, 100K month. You're, you're every I mean if you're in the marketing world, especially like there's guys in Lambos and you're searching for the next thing. But ultimately you have to be willing, because that's what I was going to say Whenever you're, you have to be willing to go to that next level, because if you make that $20,000 sale, then what, oh my God, Okay Well, are you going to sabotage yourself from getting to that next level? Probably, Unless you are capable of, you know, in the right place. Like no amount of money, no achieving of goals is going to make you whole.

Angie Colee:

Like. That's why I said at the beginning it's such a spiritual journey to try and navigate this path. It's very strange. It's been fascinating to me on this journey how much of it is personal development more so than business skills. Like if, if anything, the platform that I'm building is you're creative, so what? Build a fucking business, because nobody can stop you. You don't have to be a starving artist. You can figure out who you serve and charge what you want. It's just going to be a growth journey of figuring out how to match what you want to make with the value you can add, with the people who will pay your prices. Like that's the exploration.

Angie Colee:

And all of that is rooted in belief. I've used like a corny phrase before, like in order to achieve it, you have to believe it. Right? Sing song I'm a copywriter, right, but it's true. Because if you don't believe on some level, if you have those stories in your head and I had a similar story too, I'm from South Texas, starving artists, right? Nobody in my family has started a business. My parents were truck drivers growing up.

Angie Colee:

How do I do all of this? All I know how to do is be a student, right? If I have those limitations, if I believe, here's one story that I would like to die in a fire. You have to work hard in order to succeed. Yes, and please divorce the idea of how much you make and how fast and how far you can go from. I have to work 24-7, because if I take my eye off the ball for even a second, everything will fall apart.

Angie Colee:

That garbage has gotten so ingrained. I call it hustle and grind culture, because you are grinding yourself down, and I am pro-h, by the way, I am pro work hard, but I really just want to destroy this idea of if, if I'm not. I talked to a client earlier today who told me we're operating on three hours of sleep right now. It's okay, it's only for the next week. And I was just like what? First of all, if I get three hours of sleep, run, run screaming for the hills because I am a completely different person if I am not sleeping well and I will bite your head off Absolutely, but it just.

Angie Colee:

It does not compute to me to work yourself to the bone like that, to where you can't even enjoy what you're building, Didn't we? Didn't we leave the job and stop working for the man and give them the middle finger so that we could actually do what the hell we wanted to and enjoy our life while we've got it?

Amy Singleton:

No, and you're 100% right, and usually when they're doing those things burning the midnight oil they're not even doing money generating activities, they're just doing busy things.

Angie Colee:

Stuff that and the interesting thing about that like I've done plenty of busy work in my life too, and when I look back on it with a sense of curiosity, with a sense of openness as to what's going on, nine times out of 10, I'm avoiding doing something that is scary and uncomfortable and is going to push me to the next phase of growth. I'm just feeling, because I'm a builder by nature, I feel best when I'm just creating shit. Actually, you might find this interesting. I fell into that trap last year where I had kind of a challenging year like a lot of people in 2023. And for a minute I was like I'm done with marketing. Done, absolutely done. I'm going to burn it all down, all these relationships and stuff I've built, and I'm going to pivot hard into leadership.

Angie Colee:

I did that for probably like two months where I'm like yep, I am Angie, I I've run so many creative teams. I know a lot about leadership by now, especially as it pertains to creative teams. We're going to build a platform on that. Thankfully, I had a mentor in my life who challenged me and was like are you sure you're done with marketing? Cause you just seem like a natural born marketer and like you're having trouble leaving it behind. Maybe you're not as done with it as you think.

Amy Singleton:

What was the? What was the thing? What was the push? Was it just the burnout of other things in your life making you think you needed to go a different direction?

Angie Colee:

I think it was a little bit of that Like and I think a little bit of slipping into that builder mode, Like it felt good to build something from the ground up. Yeah, Some burnout. You got bored. Yeah, I got bored. I think I lost a little faith in myself too when I had a hard year. Like all of us take confidence hits from time to time. I've talked to so many people in bumps in the roads that so many of us have. They're coming. Hopefully they're small when you get to them and they're not going to launch your car flying over the roundabout or anything like that.

Angie Colee:

But if anything, you know, amy and I are here to show you that when you hit the bumps in the road, maybe pull off to the side and make sure your tires aren't going to explode and then keep going. There's more to this, yeah, definitely. I wanted to circle back to something else that you talked about. Your husband mentioned integrity, ethics these people that had taken him for a ride so many times with a good marketing message. Ethics and integrity are super important to me too. I actually had a former boss kind of give me some grief. I contracted with his company and I was the head of the copywriting team for another company and every once in a while we would run promos for the same thing, and so the contract guy. I would say I need to recuse myself from this discussion because I don't want even a hint of I'm taking strategies from one and giving to another.

Angie Colee:

And he would say you are so funny because that company is so much bigger than us. It's not like we could even compete. And I said it's not about that. To me it's like I don't want anybody thinking that they're getting shafted, that they're getting an unfair advantage, that you know I'm trying to line my own pockets at the expense of the people that I work with. So you know, maybe it's extreme for me to recuse myself and say I'm not even going to listen in on this conversation, but that's what I need to feel good about what I'm delivering and you've got a team that's going to help you with that particular campaign. You know that I'm not going to participate in that one. Keep the lines clean, says me.

Amy Singleton:

That's right. Me too. Well, we're the same way. Marketing on the internet is a zero-sum game. Seo is a zero-sum game, so I will not. I mean, there's only so many spots on the top page of Google, right? So there's not a world in which I take on two HVAC contractors in the same market.

Angie Colee:

There's not a world where I do that.

Amy Singleton:

There might be a world where I maybe like run Google ads for one and do SEO for the other if they both are not doing the other service. But I would never pit my own client, like at that point it's like okay, well, who's getting the better content, who's getting the better links, who's getting the better service, who has the better user experience, you know, and that that just becomes absolutely not like I will have an HVAC contractor in every market in the United States. Great, let's dominate this crap. But you know I'm not going to take on two clients in the same niche in the same city. That's completely unethical.

Angie Colee:

And lots of people will do it. I love that too, and I find it interesting the exploration of the ethics when you're on the beginning stages of the journey, because I do believe that you absolutely can get paid to learn on the job, but that you should also be upfront about where you are and how you think you can help people Right, like I know just based on what I was listening, I suspect, what your husband was dealing with with people that were on the beginning stages of their journey and they're to quote my very feisty grandmother they're writing checks. Their ass can't cash.

Amy Singleton:

That's right. I love that yeah. I think it was a combination of those and the big name companies that have lost all customers. It's like there was nothing in between.

Angie Colee:

That's what we set out.

Amy Singleton:

We want to be that in between the local, like we get it kind of um people for sure.

Angie Colee:

Talk about your differentiating factor. I think like we get in our heads too much with business sometimes. Uh, I know I've spoken to some people on the earlier stage of their journey who think things like well, but I need to have this new, revolutionary idea. I've got to be doing something completely different. Like they look at the Elon Musks of the world and think that unless they are doing that, they can't do business. And that's not necessarily. That's not even remotely true.

Amy Singleton:

No, and what you said just a few minutes ago, like I definitely want to come back to that, because you say be honest about where you are right when you're first starting out. If you're a freelancer which I know a lot of your listeners are freelance graphic designer, freelance web designer Great, that's awesome. You have a skill to offer. However, if you are brand new in that, please do not represent yourself like an expert. Not only is that going to continue to cause you anxiety and imposter syndrome because it's not imposter syndrome, you're a beginner.

Amy Singleton:

But guess what happens when you say, hey, I'm, when you're a very new beginner, like, you've only built websites for, like your mom and them, like you need to be like. Hey, I'm a beginner in website design, I'd love to give you a website If you'll let me host it for you for 50 bucks a month. Maybe make a little bit of you know, long-term recurring revenue, which you'll finally learn is what you really want to get in the end. But like say that you will be astonished at the increase in your confidence. You're no longer an imposter. You're just saying, hey, look, I'm a beginner, I want to do this, I'm brand new, I'll do it for free. And then you build 20 websites or 15 websites and you say, hey, I'm kind of an intermediate learner or I I'm, I'm getting you know, I've got some, some websites. I got 20 websites under my. I'll build one for you for a thousand dollars, Cause everyone else is charging five, I'll do it for a thousand.

Amy Singleton:

I'm still learning. You can look at what I've done, but I'm still learning.

Amy Singleton:

Then your confidence builds and then by the time you've built a hundred websites, you're like hey man, my websites are 10, come or don't, like. Then you actually have the confidence to know, because so many people start out thinking that they have to be where someone else is on the escalator. Well, the escalator is just moving. It's like that thing at the airport. It's a band, right, it's like a band saw. Okay, for my contractor it's a band saw. You get on it and like you go, and then everybody's just on the same. We're just at different places on it.

Angie Colee:

Someone's going to be ahead of you.

Amy Singleton:

Someone's going to be behind. We're all experiencing these same things.

Angie Colee:

That's especially rampant in my industry. Direct response copywriting is my background. The super sales-oriented people were tracking how each step of this process, where people drop off, how each thing affects the sale, and the people that are new in the industry come in promising things that they can't possibly deliver because they don't have the full context yet. And they do it because they think they have to be someone like me, someone like Amy, who has years of experience, in order to be quote unquote competitive. You know how you can be competitive by owning exactly where you are. Just like Amy said, I'm at the beginning stages of building this business, but here's what I've built so far. I'd love to offer you this really awesome deal and we could work together to build you something. You get a great deal. I'm an aspiring rockstar. Like let's work together and that's the thing that I would highlight too Like there's no shame in beginning.

Angie Colee:

There are people that can only afford beginners. There are people that love to nurture beginners and give you more confidence. There's a lot of reasons why somebody would hire a beginning stage anything, and you do not have to be further than you are. There are people that can start with you, that can grow with you and give you that experience to keep going, keep growing. That's right, absolutely.

Amy Singleton:

It's a journey. Go on it together.

Angie Colee:

There's another thing that I really wanted to circle back on, because it took me a while to recognize this for what it was and to start unpacking it, and it was that fear of success that you brought up. Can you speak to that a little bit more?

Amy Singleton:

Well, you know, I just think a lot of times, especially when we're starting out, you know we have, we have doubt in our product, we have doubt. I mean, we have doubt in every single area of our life. Yeah, I think that whenever you come from a background like you and I have you know we've never experienced success and and, honestly, you know, it took me a while to even define what. What is success? What does success even look like? You know, what does that mean to me?

Amy Singleton:

Does it mean a hundred thousand dollars every month in the top line of the bank, you know. Get to that and see how happy you are. And then then you're going to be asking what's my new definition of success, right? So, like, you kind of have to redefine this definition of success over and over again, as you, a lot of people will, will relate it back to like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right, like, once you have your basic needs met, then you're looking for that next level of fulfillment or that next level of success. So I think, in order to not have the fear of success, you can't tie your success to the financial or to the, to the accolades or to all the trophies you see in my background. You can't tie the success to your client counter, any of those things Like, because once you do and you obtain that, then you're like what else, what else, what else?

Amy Singleton:

And it gets kind of scary because, you're like well, now I'm succeeding, but I'm not happy. And what is success? I don't know. John Maxwell is a personal mentor to our mastermind group of about 25 people and we get to meet with him on a monthly basis him and Mark Cole, who's his CEO of Maxwell Leadership, and John it's been incredible, but he, john says his personal definition of success is that those who are closest to him will love and respect him the most. Yeah, that's a freaking mouthful right there, I mean, that's an absolute mouthful.

Amy Singleton:

This is a man who is millions of dollars and spoke in front of millions of people's leaders to countries. In fact, after our call last week, mark and him were going to speak to the leaders of the foreign affairs for the united states in dc talking about the wall and all of these things like and they were talking about courageous leadership. And I'm just like, if that man's definition of success is that and he wishes he had defined that much sooner in his life then then why not now? Why not redefine our own version of what does success really mean? And then chase after that? And when you chase after that and put your purpose in the very center of that, all those other things that you're worried about will come along. It is so hard to believe when you're first starting out but that's the truth of it all behind it.

Angie Colee:

Oh, yes, I love that you talked about getting specific with whatever success means to you, because it looks different to everybody. But I know, depending on what ads you're being served right now, it might sound something like $10,000 a month, right, but most of us set our sights on that and that we think that we are dealing with a fear of failure. Right, we assume that people are going to find us out. They're going to find out I'm a fraud. At any given moment, I'm going to screw something up, I'm going to like, and of course, that's all going to happen. Spoiler alert it's going to happen and you will survive, it's okay. But what you're really dealing with is a fear of success, and so you're just unconsciously short circuiting every step forward that you make because you don't believe. Circling back to that belief again, right, you don't believe that you can have that success, or you're afraid, like Amy and I were talking about that, once you get to a certain level of success, you're going to lose everybody that you love because they're going to think. You love because they're going to think. And this is me just speaking to my own experience.

Angie Colee:

But once I articulated that voice. Once I understood what was happening, it sounded a lot like you're too big for your britches. You forgot where you came from. Rich people are bad and have screwed us over. Like who are you to go out there and do this thing? How dare you? And once I realized that was what was happening, I was like oh, I love how we're going around in circles here. I can be Dolly Parton. I can aspire to be like her and be somebody that is sassy, wealthy, creative, having a hell of a lot of fun and doing so much good in the world. There is nothing out there that can stop me, and I believe that is possible. Yes, yes, I believe that's possible.

Amy Singleton:

For all of us, I know.

Angie Colee:

Now he's going to think we had a clip. I know that that might seem, you know, like highbrow or fantasy or whatever you want to ascribe to it, but ask yourself if that's your limiting brain afraid of getting hurt on the way to success. If you are listening to what I say and you have a gut instinct of no, she doesn't know what she's talking about. Maybe think on it. Maybe just let that seed sit there in the darkness and germinate for a little while. I think I think you'll come around if you really examine those fears instead of shutting them down. Yeah, I agree.

Angie Colee:

And there was something else that you talked about, like crossing the finish line. I love that. I love that because there are a lot of finish lines Like, say, you've examined your, your relationship with fear, you've decided you can succeed and you've hit that first 10,000, 20,000, $50,000 a month. Right now, what's right the final finish line is, is the final finish line Right? So you're going to have to get used to the fact of like, well, I hit that goal, now what I've spent so much of my energy, so much of my focus trying to get here.

Angie Colee:

Now what? Oh my gosh.

Amy Singleton:

Yeah, have you. Uh, have you read Matthew Perry's new book?

Angie Colee:

No, not new.

Amy Singleton:

His book, his autobiography, heart-wrenching, came out right before he died. Yeah, rip, he was talking about standing, you know, on his LA like beautiful whatever beach front house and just being so unfulfilled and just still having a hole.

Angie Colee:

And we have to examine our motivations and why we're doing the things like are you chasing clout because you're trying to impress people, or you're trying to fill a hole? All of this circles back to this being a journey of self-development. Right, You're going to? Sell services to people that need them, products to people that need them. But also, you're going to have to really know yourself as a person.

Amy Singleton:

Yeah, absolutely. And on the note of it never ending like the end, there's no finish line, right? I used to ask myself, like people like Dolly Parton or anyone that's older, like, why do they keep like they are a billionaire? Like, why do they keep going? Why does Cher keep singing? Why does Tina keep going? Like, why do these people keep on at? Why does Reese Witherspoon keep doing all the things she does?

Amy Singleton:

Like another one of my Southern belle people like doing amazing things. But the thing is like when you get, once you get past that I'm going to make it to my tent 20,000 a month, this month, this month once you get past all those like hierarchy of needs type goals, you quit asking yourself, like now what? And you start asking yourself now what? Like, what do I get to do now? I used to think why don't they just go and retire on the beach and, like live their life with their billions of dollars?

Amy Singleton:

It's because they've got a purpose, they've got a stirring in their soul that moves them to do things that's more than graphic design and more than websites and more than SEO. I mean those things provide for my family. But those aren't the things that move me. The things that move me are seeing women like find their purpose and business owners get freedom and go to the lake on the weekend instead of doing their own blog posting or trying their best to do it Like. That's what gives me freedom and hope. And giving hope to others who have failed in every myriad way in their lives and business, personal, whatever. Giving hope and purpose to those people because of all that shit I've been through in my personal life, foremost more than business, which has also not been fun or pretty a lot of the time, but that hope is what moves me, that's what gets me out of bed every day is being able to share that purpose, that we're not on this life to freaking, wake up and go to work and pay bills and die Shit.

Amy Singleton:

If that's all it is like, end it now Like I'm overdue for my you know, like grave, but it is not. It's not about that man. It's not about those tiny needs. It's about serving others and connecting with people and creating a relationship and lifting others up. My god, this place is a hard enough.

Angie Colee:

It's hard enough, right there's more than enough for all of us, but, like part of capitalistic culture likes to convince us that everything is scarce, there's not enough. We're all in competition, I say bullshit, um, and there may be some instances where that's true. Right, there are no absolutes, but by and large, we can create infinite pie. We're not all competing for slices of the ever diminishing pie, right.

Amy Singleton:

That's right. Luckily, not everybody likes cherry pie. Some people like apple.

Angie Colee:

You don't want them in your cherry pie if they don't like it anyway get them out Right, and maybe some people want a pizza pie because they're not a fan of sweets.

Amy Singleton:

So like there's all kinds of opportunities. Yep We'll work for pizza.

Angie Colee:

Yes, well, there was something cool that, like this. This sparked something in one of my myriad self discovery journeys, right Digging deeper into why I do things and don't do things and what I was scared of and how I was holding myself back. That thing that you mentioned of like they have done enough, why aren't they just retiring to the beach? I think there are so many people that are operating under that assumption and it's very capitalistic. Right, I've done enough. Let me go be for a little while. We're swinging this pendulum wildly in the other direction. But, yes, and as much as I like to remind people, you're a human being, not a human doing. Remember that you are not your work.

Angie Colee:

There's more to this, but. I think there's a reason why, when people retire, when they finally cross that finish line into retirement, there's I mean, I don't have the statistics on the top of my head, but there is an alarmingly high number of people who leave this planet before their time right, if you know what I'm saying because once they stop the work, they have lost their entire identity.

Amy Singleton:

My 60 year old uncle passed away on Friday less than a year after his wife died. After his wife died, he retired and moved in by himself and died within a year.

Angie Colee:

Oh, my gosh, you are absolutely right, and that was a very timely message.

Amy Singleton:

And it's okay. I mean it's tough for my grandma. That's her son and stuff. That's my uncle. But more than that, more than his health, you know issues that he had this, the broken heart was so evident in that and it's he quit moving, quit moving and quit having purpose it's so imperative, that purpose.

Angie Colee:

I love that you said that and I just want to circle that, highlight it, put it in a flashing sign above my head, like we need a purpose and if you haven't found yours yet, that's okay. That's exactly why you're here to experiment and try again and fail and get up and meet cool people like Amy who show you. Put on, put it on your tarp. It's a little crooked. Here's the tiara.

Amy Singleton:

Let me fix it for you. Let's keep going. Right, it's a little crooked. Here's the TR. Let me fix it for you.

Angie Colee:

Let's keep going Right. It's a balance. It's always going to be a balance. Being and doing are both important to this journey.

Amy Singleton:

I'd like to just say to you on on the topic of purpose. I know we're about out of time, but you know, my mindset coach a long time ago encouraged me to not just state that something was my purpose. When I say my purpose, which I have on a plaque over here on my wall, something was my purpose. When I say my purpose, which I have on a plaque over here on my wall, I say my commitment is because it's kind of like having this ethereal like for all my purposes over here, but no, my commitment, the thing that gets me up, the thing that I'm committed to, is bringing hope and purpose to people who have failed.

Amy Singleton:

That's it every day and I can do that purpose whether I'm in this office, whether I'm in the airport, whether I get thrown in jail which he used to joke with me like Amy, you're voted most likely to go to prison but even there you can bring hope and purpose to people. It's okay, like when you get that in your head, like retiring to the beach. Maybe you do go with your wad of cash to the beach, but guess what? You're going to find their purpose and people and you're going to start doing again and being and doing at the same time Cause I love what you said we're human beings that are also doing a little bit right, but you got to remember to be and be in that purpose and be in that commitment every day and you will have success.

Angie Colee:

That is the perfect, perfect way to wrap it up, just like such an aspirational high level note Right. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I've loved every second of this. Please tell us more about your business and how we can work with you.

Amy Singleton:

Absolutely so. Our business is Hype Digital. We're here in Oklahoma. You can find everything about me, my podcast, our services at Hype. Excuse me, you can find everything about me, our services, our podcast and more at amysingletonnet. Please head over there and connect with me If you'd like a free audit of your website. There's a form at the bottom there and you can fill in your information. I'll have my team go over and just do a quick two to three minute video showing you areas of opportunity that you can do today to improve your website.

Angie Colee:

Awesome. I'm going to make sure that there are clickable links in the show notes for anybody that wants to take you up on that. Take her up on that. Okay, do it. It's such a generous offer. Thank you so much for being on the show and we're gonna have to do this again. I had so much fun. Absolutely, that's all for now. If you want to keep that kick ass energy high, please take a minute to share this episode with someone that might need a high octane dose of you can do it. Don't forget to rate, review and subscribe to the Permission to Kick Ass podcast on Apple Podcasts, spotify and wherever you stream your podcasts. I'm your host, angie Coley, and I'm here rooting for you. Thanks for listening and let's go kick some ass.