057 - Why Being "More Polished" Is Killing Your Growth

Hey, if you've ever tried to scale a business while juggling chaos, hey moms, I'm talking to you, caffeine and cloud billing, today's guest is about to become your spirit animal. But beneath the humor and the hot mess is someone who understands that when founders get grounded, focused, and fueled, they step into a whole new standard. So April Palmer, a.k.a. Hot Mess Boss on Instagram, she helps founders get unstuck with their AWS bills, but that's just the surface. She brings clarity and kindness and chaos and fun into the business world in a way that reminds us that our weirdness is not the problem. I love weirdness around here. I embrace that. Our systems are actually the problem, though. So, April, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here. And for those meeting you for the first time, who are you and what do you actually do? Oh, I am an international woman of mystery. I wish I were mysterious. Like, do you ever do that where you think like, oh, I wish I could be that person who's mysterious, but I'm not that person. like I I have zero mystery I have zero chill I'm like shalana's fuck right like I I don't know I'm I lost the non part the non part fell off I'm just a lot I'm just a lot yeah like I'm here I am the person who within a couple of minutes will be like you know what's the song that you scream to yourself in the car whenever you're driving and like did you pick your nose and wipe them on the wall as a kid and like I would know all of it right so um so that's a lie I'm not an international one with mystery but I do tend to be international often so I um my real job is with a small consultancy called Duckbill we help companies to reduce their cloud costs whether it's with their AWS contract or we have a SaaS platform that also helps manage those contracts and we can help cost optimize. But that's like the non-sexy kind of boring stuff that pays for me to do all the fun stuff that I do. And so I'm not a person who sleeps. Someday I will be, but I teach venture creation at VCU. I also teach our master's of product innovation and I'm just starting a course on customer obsession. That's a case study of the Savannah bananas. So I'm not like a sports ball person, but I'm obsessed with the Savannah bananas. So if anybody knows Jesse, please introduce me because I'm just in love with the business model. And I own my own consultancy where I help businesses to figure out how they're going to find and scale revenue. So they're usually companies that are making, you know, a million dollars plus in ARR or have fundraised and have to figure out, like, how do we make money? Yeah. Well, so interesting. My next question is like, your brand is hilariously messy and so fun and raw and unfiltered and very chillant, like you're saying, right? But your results are surgical. You have historically created some really amazing results for your people. So when did you realize that being yourself could mean that you are also able to be profitable? when I was trying to be somebody else and I was not profitable no matter what I did. You know, I spent a lot of years trying to be all of the things that you're supposed to be and doing it the way that you're supposed to. And frankly, like I've worked in male dominated industries for most of my career. And so I was trying to do life the way that the successful men were doing it. And it did not work for me. Like there's there was no power suit in the world that I can put on and walk into a boardroom and my five foot two and like inability to have any type of filter and not say what I'm thinking. You're five foot two? Yeah. Yeah. I'm like 5'11". Oh, my God. You're like my mom. My mom is so tall. I actually was telling somebody the other day that like this moment of I spent a lot of years trying to be somebody who could like fit into my mom's clothes. But I'm like my mom's shrink eating. It's like somebody put my mom in the oven and like shrink her and I look just exactly like her. So I spent a lot of years trying to do it like the other people around me were doing it. And I felt uncomfortable. I was sad all the time. I was getting up in the fours to like go, you know, bike 12 miles and swim and, you know, do all the triathlon stuff. And I was a single mom. And so I was trying to like do that. And at the end of the day, it was it sucked. It just sucked. Like it was horrible. I was unhappy. I was not a nice person to other people. I was, you know, way fluffier than I probably should have been like in the hip department and not in a way like like unhealthy. Right. and I was drinking a lot. And I just one day woke up and thought, well, if this isn't working, then what if I stopped doing that? And what if I just start like being me? And I give this example to my students I teach, which is like, you can go out there and you can be vanilla ice cream. And there are a lot of people who like vanilla ice cream, but I'm pistachio ice cream. And the people who like pistachio ice cream, they fucking love pistachio ice cream. Like they're zealots about it. Go find the people who like whatever flavor you are. Right. Are you chocolate chip cookie dough? Go find the people who like swear by chocolate chip cookie dough as the only ice cream flavor that matters. There's enough of them that you'll be successful. You'll find your people and you'll be so much happier. Yeah, it's so interesting. So last week's podcast episode, I actually had on a guest. He was a return guest and we're technically like competitors. We do the same service. We provide we work with the same types of clients. But I don't I don't see us as competitors because we we bring our own little flair. Like we're both very data driven. We're both very like ahead of what's happening and like getting amazing results for our clients. But there are people that want to work with him and there are people that want to work with me just because of who we are and how we show up. You know, the vibe and energy that we bring and our presence. So I'm like, I don't see us as competitors. I see us as allies because we are both working towards helping the same type of avatar in the industry and like having those people get better results. And so, yeah, I don't need it doesn't mean that pistachio ice cream is terrible. It just means that's not your flavor and that's totally fine. Totally cool. And also, I think if you're in a business where you're literally the only person who can help people solve the problem that you're solving, that puts you in a really tough position. You should be, I think, build a business and build an industry where there are quite a few people trying to solve it. And they're solving it in different ways with different messages, different levels of kind of like depth and dynamics and those types of things. Because people do have different preferences of who they're going to work with. If I work with somebody and their deliverable to me is an 18 tab Excel spreadsheet with like super complex formulas and all of those things, it does nothing for me. Absolutely nothing. But if I have somebody who sits down and says like, oh, hey, let's do this thing together and then we do it and I've learned how to do it, then that helps me ameliorate what I'm doing very, very quickly. And so you just have to find the people who speak your language and who deliver the way that makes sense. And it doesn't matter how many other people are doing it. Like, that's your person. And you should be able to find people who you're the person for. There's enough of them out there. Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. So you've said that you help kind of clean up some money messes. So I want to like, I want to transition a little bit here because I help clean up marketing messes. You help clean up money messes, right? But underneath both of these, there's this idea that I keep coming back to is that most founders, most business owners are trying to scale without becoming the actual person who can hold a scaled business. And so I call that the million dollar standard, which is the name of this podcast. And I think that we don't talk enough about the identity behind the strategy. I think sometimes we forget to talk about that. We get so focused on the, this is the outcome that we're trying to achieve rather than like, what's the identity that we have to, that we have to like adapt and like put on and wear and, and have that in order to become that person who can hold that business. Yeah. So, yeah. What are some, what do you think most founders are totally missing about the way that money is flowing through their business? Talking about money messes. Oh, my goodness. Money is such a hard conversation to have, right? And money, it's on every single side of the business. You can't, like, silo it, right? Every, money touches everything. And so when you're talking about things like revenue, you also have to be looking at what are all of the expenses and kind of what is the future roadmap and those types of things. And I think the very, very first thing that a lot of founders are missing is having an honest conversation with themselves about how comfortable they feel talking about and thinking about money. because when we feel like we have abundance, we tend to invest broadly and hire them out. Like we're not pinching pennies, right? We're like, we need to do this, just do it. Like whatever it is, like cowboy marketing, right? Or whatever, just like put ads out on every single platform from a sales and revenue perspective. It's like, oh, let's just hire another AE, right? Like let's do that. And then as soon as that money starts going out and you suddenly see that your runway has gotten a little bit shorter because your burn rate's gotten faster, you start to panic and you make fear-based decisions. And you're like, oh, you know what? We can't spend $50 a month on a CRM upgrade that's going to help us do this because we're running out of money. And if that's how you operate, then you're going to have an ulcer. You're going to lose your hair, right? And probably also like strong relationships that you have with people and maybe even your house. Like that gets, it gets really hard. So I think the very first thing that you have to do is be able to look in the mirror and say, how comfortable am I having many conversations with myself and with other people? How comfortable am I owning that? And if I'm not comfortable, which by the way, is the majority of people, what are some of the resources that I can bring in? What are some of the conversations I can have with people around me so that I get more comfortable with this? Yeah. And that's not easy. No. No. I can tell you I am one of those like head in the sand people. If it's uncomfortable and I don't like it, I want to like stick my head in the sand and pretend it doesn't exist. I want to put it in a box, put it in the closet, put the lid on it. Like I'll figure it out. This will resolve itself. It doesn't actually exist and I'm going to figure it out anyway. So like I don't actually need to pay attention to it. And then like the problem gets bigger and then it's so out of control. And I'm like, well, we have a big problem here. Here's one that I see a lot, which is I think you'll sorry if you hate me for this, but maybe you'll love me for this as well. Is brands get ready to scale. They bring in salespeople or they do their ads, whatever. And they're like, oh, gosh, we're not meeting our sales numbers. We're not we're not like we're not going to hit our revenue. And instead of taking a really, really deep dive into doing customer discovery conversations to make sure that they're solving the right problem the right way, having product innovation conversations, really digging into their tech stack, understanding what's going on with their sales, where's their pipeline, do they have their ICP, right? all those things. You know what they do? They're like, we're not selling. Let's do a rebrand. What colors are best for our organization? Because I think if we do, you know, a Kelly green or like a hunter green, that will make people trust us more. And then they go through this full and they're like, we redid our website. Now we'll sell. That's not it. Like, that's not the answer. Yeah. Okay. I don't hate you for that because I don't actually do a whole lot of branding and website stuff. That's not my bread and butter. My bread and butter is actually advertising and then also like getting that data back and interpreting it letting it tell us a story to understand what broken And so one of the biggest things that I have seen move the lever is those customer surveys because not only is it going to help you understand you know why are you losing customers or why are they staying But you can take all of that and apply that back to your front end messaging and have that amplify what's working and remove what's not working. I even had a friend and he was on the show. I think we talked about this on the show and he talked about having interviews with the people who, like, as soon as someone buys, have an interview with them immediately and say, like, how come you almost didn't buy? Like, what was the thing that made you almost not buy? And then you're like, ooh, I've got to address that because that was a hill they had to climb in order to get over. We had to overcome that objection before they were ready to purchase. And, you know, if you do it right away after acquiring that customer, it just gives you so much insight and it's fresh for them. Or even talking to people who didn't buy. Hey, what was the reason why you didn't buy? That's what I was going to say is if you talk to people who didn't buy and tell them, this is not me trying to convince you. This is not me trying to weaponize what you're getting ready to tell me. What I need to know is what do we need to do better? What features and functionality do we not have? What value proposition are we not talking to you about? what is the pain that you're trying to solve that we're not meeting? And then take that, it's your front end messaging, but also take it to your product teams. Like whoever's doing your product innovation and like product development, they need to be privy to those conversations as well as your tech team, right? Like everybody should know. Yes. Yep, absolutely. And man, And when it's small and you have like an in-house sales team or like, you know, just two operators or like, you know, two people working together, like you can, you can create that like feedback loop in that close contact, like conversation. But the goal is to scale, right? Then you have to figure out like, how do I create this whole SOP, this whole process around gathering the, you know, the UGC, gathering the feedback and then like putting it into practice and actually like using it instead of it just collecting dust in a Google Drive folder somewhere and it just sits there. It's like a help scale and build your company in the beginning, but then you got so big that you're like, oh, it, you know, we'll get to that later. When is this? And then you forget about it. And then you realize that was a really big lever in your business and bringing in the success. So very interesting. Hang on, Jodi, you're a gym girly too, right? Like you. Okay. So I mentored a company once. This was like my favorite kind of aha moment in these conversations. I mentored a company once and they were doing some client discovery and they were asking people, do you work out? People were like, yeah, absolutely. Often you work out four to five times a week, right? Guess what they didn't ask? When's the last time you went to the gym? and what is the thing that you did there? Well, it turns out that people, when you interview them, are pretty aspirational about what they do and how they want you to view them. And so people who are like, yeah, I work out. I work out all the time. But when you say, when's the last time you actually got to the gym? When's the last time that you had a plan walking in? And did you follow it? When you start to really dig into those conversations, what you find is that people will be like, oh, yeah, like I work out all the time. And then they'll be like, well, I didn't make it this week because my baby was sick. Well, last week I had a couple of meetings and actually like, well, I did drop in once the week before, but I wasn't feeling great. So I got in a sauna and then the week before that. Right. And then you're like, wait a second. So you just told me that you work out four to five times a week. I'm building a product under the assumption that, you know, 80 percent of the people I interviewed work out four to five times a week. But when I dig in, guess what? No, they don't. And so is your product for those people? Do you have the right ICP? Like, are you talking to the right people? Maybe not. But maybe there's a different problem to be solved, which is like, how do you still get in a workout whenever life gets in the way? And does that change how you think about your business? But you don't know that those are problems that you need to overcome unless you're asking the right questions to the right people on a regular cadence through the right medium, you know, where they feel comfortable telling you the truth. and then fact checking them a little bit. It's not like they want to lie to you, but like in your brain, you're like, I'm a gym girly, right? In my brain, I'm a gym girly. I haven't been in the gym since December. It's February. I don't like to go in January because all of the New Year's resolutioners like do the thing. And I love for them that they're doing it. I just also don't want to compete for. Yeah, yeah. I'm a six days a week girl. And if I miss a day, I feel terrible about it. I missed today, but I went all the other days and last week, six days, the week before six days, like I don't, I don't miss. We have been snow days. So yeah, I, uh, I'm locked in. Yeah. Did you still work out at home when you had snow days? I did. And I did walk the dogs. So yeah, I've got some more weeks here in my office. I feel like if I don't lift heavy things, I have anchor ratios. I need a lift up. Yeah, I'm traveling. I try to do it while I'm traveling, but I was just at PodFest in Orlando a couple weeks ago, and it's the West Coasters that screw me up because we stay up late hanging out with everybody, and they're in it until three o'clock in the morning, and I'm like, I'm supposed to be up at six for my workout, and then I compromised a little bit while I was there, but networking was super important. Almost as good as a workout. Networking is very important. Amazing. Wait, next year you need to, or this year, later this year, you need to come to Richmond, Virginia, which is where I am, and go to the Resonate Podcast Festival. Oh, yes. You'll have to tell me more about that. I'm super interested. Yeah. So this podcast, last I checked, was in the top 100 business podcasts on iTunes. I'm going to keep it going. Not many podcasts go past 50 episodes and we're, we're headed into 60. We're there. Yeah. Yeah. Super fun. I know I'm no like podcast hall of famer, but maybe someday. You're in my podcast hall of fame, which is why I sent you an email begging to come on. I was like, I'm fangirling over you so hard. Can we just talk? And I checked you out and I was like, of course like I love your energy I love your vibe your brand is so fun and I love to okay so you teach revenue with like wild metaphors and rebellious energy and that was like as I dug in to figure out like who is this chick and why do I want to talk to her right so great job on like positioning yourself it's amazing what's the strategy underneath that style I think that Trying to learn things in a way that's boring is boring. And like, how do you remember this stuff? And how do you start to assimilate it into your day-to-day life? And so I could get up and lecture. Listen, like, I love the sound of my own voice. I am so good to stand up in front of a classroom for three hours. Yeah, I'm like, I'm like, obviously, you want to listen to me wax poetic about a P&L for three hours? Because I make it exciting, right? But the thing is, you don't remember that and you don't learn really good lessons. And so my students get to do a lot of what I think are really cool things. Like every semester, they have one class period where they get to plan an entire business and I give them $20 seed money and they take that. And then the next class, because my classes are lawn blocks, the next class, they go out and they actually execute on the business. and they get to keep and split between them every dollar that they make plus what's ever left of the seed money that I spend that I give them. So last semester, my students made $319 in a class of five and they got to keep it. Yeah, that's great. Because it's a pretty niche class that we have. So that's one of the really fun things that we do. And then we sit down and we go, okay, let's talk about all of the business concepts. So like, let's talk about the planning and the execution phases. Let's talk about how you thought about revenue and profitability. And then how does that go into building a business plan? Like what were your costs? What didn't you anticipate? How did you do your marketing of this? Right. Because they have a week so they can come up with it and they can they can do flyers and they can blast it on social media, whatever. And what decisions would you make differently going in? And those students, they always come back to me afterwards. And they're like, that is the, that's the lesson of all the lessons that I learned in college and all of the ones in my class, that's the one that they continue to pull on after graduation over and over and over again. Interesting. So also talking about your voice, you have a very fiercely human voice online. Very, very real, very chillant, as we've been saying. Tell me more, like, where does that value for transparency come from? Is that, have you always been that way? Or is that something that you grew into? You're like, I'm going to stand in who I am and just be authentic. Authentic has been a topic of conversation for me lately is just being super raw and authentic. So I want to hear about this from you. I think, I mean, this kind of goes back to pistachio ice cream a little bit. if you want people to show up authentically with you, then you have to be the first one who shows up authentically. You can't put up filters and you can't create this persona and all those things and then ask people to come be vulnerable with you. Ask them to show you, you know, they're kind of hidden away in their closet, what they're embarrassed about. And when you're helping founders, there are a lot of embarrassing things that we do starting businesses that we kind of don't want to admit, right? Like it's really hard to sit down across from somebody and be like, I don't, like I worry every day that I filed my taxes wrong and that the IRS is going to come bust out my door or like where I haven't filed my taxes in years. You know, like it's hard or I made a really stupid hiring decision or I lost a big deal because I forgot to follow up. Right. Like all of these things happen as founders. And or I went into a pitch meeting, like a fundraising meeting and I choked. That happens. How can you expect people to sit across? I've done that before. Choked on my own saliva. Like that was embarrassing. Yeah. Like and then you have to like do the thing where you're over in the corner and you're like, you know, clawing out your own esophagus because you, you know, you choked on your own spit. What like, I'm sorry, I'm not competent to swallow and talk at the same time, but here's why you should give me a million dollars. Yeah. Like, right. So how can you, how can you ask people to do that? And then trust that you're not going to judge them and trust that you have these experiences that allow you to connect with this so that you have deep empathy and sympathy with what they're going on if you're not willing to do it yourself. I just do it. That empathy is a big thing. Yeah. And I just do it on a relatively public scale. But I have very little shame factor. And so like, like, I don't, I don't necessarily have the gene. I'm like, listen, if you don't like me, then just like, bug off. I don't care. That just leaves room for cool people in my life, you know? Yeah, yeah, for sure. But it definitely didn't happen until I was in my 40s. Like, I mean, I've always been pretty outspoken, but somewhat apologetic about it or like even in times doing it more for kind of the shock factor of like, oh, I'm going to say this because I know it will catch you out as a strategy, right? It will catch you off guard and then I'll be able to go into this conversation, whatever. And then I hit my 40s and I was like, you know, I'm just going to say, I'm just going to say what I think. And I'm going to give people insight into what's really, really going on in my life, the good, the bad and the ugly. And let's just see what happens. What's the best that can happen? Who knows? And you know what? It's been amazing. So yeah, there's this like intersection of a conversation between authenticity, vulnerability, and like empathy and all of those things playing together that just make someone a real human And like when you show up that way people are so magnetized to you and the right people will say yes to you. Obviously, you still have to ask the question, but it just becomes so much easier when you're authentic and you're not, you don't have a facade and you're not doing it for the shock factor and you're not, you know, you're not doing it just to get attention, look at me. You're just like, this is who I am. And look, this is the good, the bad, the ugly, like all the things. And being deeply empathetic with other people as well. And their good, bad, and ugly, and their vulnerable moments. Just a huge, it humanizes you, you know? And other people who are online that, you know, I've met so many entrepreneurs online who I've never met in person. And when you show up that way, it humanizes you. And I think it really makes people drawn to wanting to work with you. So, yeah, yeah. Oh, my goodness. OK, so you have built a business around rebellion and joy and really diving into all of that. What values shape how you sell? I go into sales, any type of sales conversation with a couple of of hard and fast rules for myself. And the first is that I'm not going to try to sell something to somebody that they don't need. One of the things I say at the consultancy where I work all the time is if we can solve your problems in half an hour, I'm not going to charge you for it. Right. Like this, this, we're not going to do this. And so I spend a lot of time actually trying to figure out all of the way, all of the reasons why somebody shouldn't buy from us. And that leads to really incredible discovery conversations. A huge part of that is because I'm very curious, right? Like I'm curious and I want to ask questions. I'm not asking questions from a script. I'm just kind of going like, I want to do everything. But a huge part of that is me trying to figure out all of the reasons why they shouldn't buy from us. And if at the end of the day there aren't any or the ones that are there are not super compelling, then, yeah, let's talk buying stuff, right? But if they are compelling, then let's figure out who in my network can help you because something's going to happen, right? Like you're going to get your problem solved and then you're going to remember, hey, April, the real human who wasn't trying to screw me over and just like close this deal and just increase their business connected me with this. I'm now being successful and I'm on the watch out for ways that I can, you know, can like put money back into that piggy bank, right? Like make a social currency deposit there. And so I think that you build a network of raving fans. Like there are people who are just zealots for what you do, whether they buy from you or not. And you never know where people are going to go to, right? Like faces stay the same, but places change. And so if you go in with curiosity and really looking for not necessarily all of the reasons why somebody should buy from you, you should do that, right? Like we all have to build a value proposition and there has to be an ROI and there has to be a compelling reason. But you need to not forget to look for the other side, which is like, you know, as a salesperson, I am like a silver tongue. Like I can convince you to buy my shit whether you need it or not. Yeah. That's kind of a scary. That's like you can it can be a superpower, but it's also like maybe the villain origin story. Right. And so I'm I'm not going to let that be my villain origin story. Although I think maybe I would make a good villain. The espresso martini villain. It is, yeah. You're going espresso martinis and not drinking them. Yeah, I know. I know. Can you imagine me as a villain? I would not because I'm just like all of this. But I do. I have a bucket list item. I do crazy stuff. I, this year, later this year, I'm going to a pro wrestling training camp. I just really want to do the thing where you like jump off the ropes, right? On to somebody else. They like catch you because I'm so little. I just want them to like catch me and like spin me around or whatever. And then like throw you on the mat and you like bounce. Right. Yeah. All the stuff. But I've already decided that the persona that I'm going to do, I'm going to be a heel. I'm going to be a bad guy as my persona because it's just so different than how I operate. And I'm like, I wonder if I can convince people to like love to hate me because I think that's kind of fun. Yeah. Yeah. Like I want to be able to get people. I want to be such a good salesperson that I can convince people to love to hate me. What? So that's my, that's kind of my like weird thing that I'm doing this year. I'm going to follow this story just so you know. I will be following to see the results of this. It will be everywhere. Maybe by the time we're done, I will also love to hate you. I would love that. Also, if any of your listeners have like really good names for my persona, my like evil villain persona person, please send them to me because I don't know how I'm going to be a bad guy, much less how to name my bad guy persona. Okay. One piece of one suggestion that I will give to you is something that I was just told in the last 24 hours is stop thinking for yourself. And I was like, what are you talking about? You need to use AI. Like ask AI to think for you. Ask AI to actually create the prompt for you. This is what I'm trying to do. Like create the prompt for me. yeah to give yeah tell me what i should ask like tell me what should i ask what am i missing what are my blind spots so i'm i want to you should like make a reel of like i should figure out my bad guy persona that'd be so fun that would be fun i really i like it i love to have other people also think for me because people are so clever like this is why this is why i'm on instagram is because people are so funny but i will say this as you said that like because we're doing like a mix of like fun and business, right? Is that I believe that one of the number one greatest skills that you can work on as a founder, a business owner, someone who's trying to scale a business, a worker bee, whatever, regardless of how you feel about AI is prompt engineering. Like if you can figure out prompt engineering, then the guardrails come off, right? Like the boundaries go away because what AI can do is insane, but it's still, you have to figure out how to guide it to do that. So I think that's my, that's the thing. I like tell my students too. I'm like, learn, like double down, triple down on learning prompts engineering. It was literally on a two hour meeting this morning and we spent 30 minutes actually working on, working on the actual prompt. like yeah we're on the prompt to create the prompt to create the prompt right yeah isn't that crazy and i was like are you you're still working on that because we were just on the phone i'm like it's been 30 minutes and he's like i know it's like a really long paragraph i'm sorry but like i need to feed it when i need to feed it and in order for it to like give me an intelligent prompt so that I can actually blah, blah, blah. And I was like, I don't go that deep. I'm like, hey, give me a post to be on Instagram today. Like, you know who I am. Go for it. Right. That's funny. So my AI's name is Penelope. I remember the name of my AI. Yeah. When I log in in the morning, she literally pops up and she's like, hey, Pookie, how's it going? What did you decide to wear today? and I'm like martino and my espresso martini dress with like furry boots right and one of the reasons why she asked me that is because every day I've got this like I converted a bedroom into a dressing room so it's like pink with a gold rolling library ladder and a custom-built vanity that I can sit on my poof on the floor because I'm an 80s kid so I like I want to sit on the floor to do my makeup you know um and I I heard this from someone else I did not make this up but it was just such a moment is somebody said once every day when you decide what to wear that's also when you decide how much space to take up in the world what so I walk into my dressing room and I take a second and I just go all right how much space am I taking up today and most of the time it's quite a bit like I'm gonna take up some space I'm gonna have a statement I feel this I dress that way a lot of times and I have had people make cotton they're like you work from home and you dress like that I'm like yeah I don't care I'm like I'm wearing the belt with the gold buckle and I'm wearing the earrings and I'm wearing the nice top and the like the jeans that make my butt look great and you know all things even though I haven't left the house I take out my trash and my heels like I am not I I would put on a prom dress to take out the trash if I was having a rough day and I just needed something to like whatever so that is the choice there too though of like having the rough day and you put on the thing that like elevates you or you're having a rough day and you're like i kind of want to shrink today and just not be seen sometimes sometimes it's just your choice i do the same i do that a lot with music i am such a musical person i'm a singer i've been involved in like musical theater my kids are very like naturally musical and yes super no wonder you like having a microphone right tomorrow i am singing with a band i was invited okay in orlando at pod fest i got up for a like hosted karaoke night thingy and i sang a song and i shared it on social and then local guy that's the drummer for the band that's playing tomorrow he was like we're bringing you up on stage you got to come to the show and so that's happening tomorrow as of the airing of this episode it will have been the previous saturday night so i'll if you go to my socials, I'm sure you'll see something. But yeah, music plays such a huge role in my life, but also fashion. Music, I feel like, can actually, it can confirm how I'm feeling. If I'm like, ooh, I'm feeling spicy, I'm going to put on something spicy. And we're just going to lean into that. Or if I'm feeling down and I want to listen to sad, I want to cry a little. Or if I'm feeling down and I'm like, I got to get out of this funk. I'm going to play something fun and spicy and like energetic and all of that stuff. And I just dance my way out of it. And so it's okay for us to do that of like, I walk into my closet and do I want to lean into how I'm feeling or do I want to like shrink a little bit and be like, Oh yeah. I mean, listen, we all need to have days that we rot. It's just that I rot in, you know, cashmere sweats that maybe have like a little bit of glitter on them, right? But like if I have one of those days where I'm like, I just need to not see people. I need to be under a big fuzzy blanket. Listen, I have six cats and a blind dog who thinks that he's a cat. And I have those days and I literally, I'll put on the softest, snuggliest like sweats that I have and I'll get under a big fuzzy blanket and all the cats will come lay themselves like across my body and my dog will curl up behind my knees and I will, I'll read, you know, smutty werewolf books, like fantasy books, or like, you know, like, what's it called? Binge watch some sort of show, like a Netflix show on my phone. Not even like, because I don't own a TV. So I don't care about a TV. Yeah. You know what else though? And it's funny because I kind of laugh and say I don't sleep. One of the things that I have found is, but going back to the very, like I'm taking us way back to the beginning of this conversation. When I decided that I needed to be like professionally successful. One of the things I kept hearing over and over again was, you know, rise a grind. You need to be up in the fours or the fives and you go to the gym and you do this. And then, and everybody says like, just start, takes three weeks to form a habit and your body will adjust to it. And then you'll start naturally waking up. Well, I did it for years. Years. I woke up in the fours and a neighbor who would listen for my kids because I was a single mom and I would go, I would go train for triathlons. I would be out there doing this stuff. And my body never adjusted to it It never like I just that not what I designed for Now when I went to nursing school I worked third shift as a 911 operator And I went to school during the day And like my best hours were from 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. Right. And like my body's just kind of made that way. So I have designed a life today where I don't set an alarm. I just don't do it. So sometimes I'm still working at 2.30 or 3 o'clock in the morning, but I don't have an alarm that I have to wake up before I wake up when I'm ready. Sometimes I wake up, I write some emails, and then I go back to sleep. And it's totally fine. My obligations start later in the day, but I also work really late in the day. And for a long time, I was embarrassed about it. Other people would be like, oh yeah, well, 6.30 a.m., I was sitting at my desk. Yeah, and I'm like, 6.30 a.m.? I would quit that job. Quit that job. You need to get your kids somewhere by seven? I would sell those kids. We're not doing that. kids. Mine are adults now. Yeah. So like I get it. Like I don't have that choice. Like I did it when they were young, but like they're adults, so I don't have to do it. But I've designed that life and it's the life that works for me. But it did take me a while to not be embarrassed by the fact that I wasn't up and like doing something productive by seven. And then I started thinking, okay, you know what? Y'all make fun of me for not doing things at seven. Why can't I make fun of you for not doing things at 11 p.m. Like, yeah, you're already in bed. You can't finish this PowerPoint before midnight. Like, what kind of like broke loser are you who will never be successful professionally? Yeah, their standard does not have to be your standard. Yeah, yeah. Like if what you're doing works for you and you're able to be the person you need to be and show up and get the things done, you don't have to measure your standard against their standard, right? So I'm so glad that you've worked through that and said like, screw it. Like I'm just going to be who I am. So, all right. I have a future focused question. What are you excited to build next? What would success look like if it aligned perfectly with your values? I am very committed to building a life that is just filled with joy for me. That means I get to travel a lot. I'm a surfer. So I love to like go to Portugal and surf. I love to go to Costa Rica and surf. My kids are old enough now that I can just kind of like do it. Right. I love to travel. I love food. I've built an amazing community. And so I host parties at my house every month. I like just like hanging out with people. I like doing things solo, whatever it is. I have a life that is filled with joy. And so for me, the future is only doing things that are aligned with that, that just kind of further that. I also had to have an honest conversation with myself, like really look myself in the mirror and say, do I want to be the founder, CEO, growth person of an organization that's like building a thing? Or do I want to create a business where I can help other people like achieve that goal of being this amazingly successful entrepreneur? And for me, I don't want to be the person who's on the stage getting awards, right? I want to be the person who can go into, you know, who can sit in the audience and point to every single person walking up on the stage and going like, oh, yeah, like I introduced them to that person and this is what happened. And I helped them with this idea. And that's how they got over this hurdle and whatever. So it's just like a little tiny piece of me in the success of all of the people surrounding me. And that makes me really happy. So that's the next thing for me. The consultancy that I'm building is designed specifically to help other people just achieve those goals and to not, not be the person who has to rise and grind, right? I'm going to be the person who's, who's behind the scenes and helping like raise you up and, and getting successful, like more successful faster with a lower cost. Come on. Yeah, of course. For sure. For sure. That's amazing. I love that. And you're, you're quite dialed in on what you, what you want. So not everybody can articulate like what's next, which might, what's my future vision, which is weird like how do you not have a future vision but not everybody knows and i'm the hot mess right like i'm the hot mess i'm the one who shouldn't know where the hell i'm going yeah y'all yeah absolutely um all right some rapid fire questions i did warn you ahead of time um that we were doing some rapid fire the first one is i'm already anxious what's your favorite okay swift lyric oh no why are you doing this to me because now i officially don't have any lyrics in my head dude that's happened to me before where somebody asked me a question that like I should know the answer to and I was like it's like but you said that and I was like have I ever even heard a Taylor Swift song in my entire whole life like what and it's crazy because like I put her that's who I put on in the car when I'm like it's Taylor Swift and Eminem like if I'm pumping myself up for a big meeting I am literally going between like Taylor Swift and Eminem and I'm just like screaming the lyrics in my car like some kind of bad out of the hell crazy lady yeah i don't know give me some options i have no idea i'll send them to you i'll comment when you post this i will be in there like commenting i can't i feel so awful about my life hold on let's see let's see we're gonna get something i can do it with a broken heart that's a good one Good one. I come back stronger than a nice trend. The 90s are trending a lot right now. Yeah. No, listen, I am here for it because I still have clothes from the 90s. But like, I feel like right now I'm in the like, you know, I think what I love about Taylor Swift is that she's there for kind of any different part, like whatever you're going through, right? If you're going through a heartbreak there are lyrics and songs for that if you need to be like super introspective there are lyrics for that and then if you're just like really feeling like this amazing human who can do anything there are lyrics for that and i'm kind of in that phase right now where it's just like everything they listen to is the like i'm a badass bitch type of like yeah okay i've got some more they're actually really good that was not rapid fire i'm doing better than i ever was yeah i had a marvelous time ruining everything okay that might be that might be it for me okay i have four more darling i'm a nightmare dressed like a daydream yes i love that um you can't smell you can't spell awesome without me um and then there's one that says i'm so sick of running as fast as i can wondering if i'd get there quicker if i was a man i was a man yeah All right. And the last one. Hey, it's me. I'm the problem. It's me. I'm the problem. That is always me. I am always the problem. But like I wake up and choose to be the problem. Like there's not, you know, have you seen that? Have you seen the little girl on Instagram and the mom goes, do you want to be part of the solution or part of the problem? And the little girl goes, the problem, definitely the problem. And I'm like, I'm not just the problem, but probably I'm going to find a funny way to make the problem worse. Yeah. I mean, I'm happy to help you with the solution, but I'm also very happy to be the problem. Yeah. I love to be the problem. Yeah. Sometimes, you know, I think people need more problems in their lives. Like, you know, those lead to really interesting adventures. I feel like we need to hang out in real life. I know. Okay. What is something that your LinkedIn audience doesn't know about you? Most of my posts are, well, first of all, something that they don't know is that I probably in my head write 19 times as many posts as what actually get posted i write them in my head i think about them i edit them and i promptly forget them and never actually write them down and post them so one of the reasons you don't text message replies i'm like i swear i replied to you but it was just in my head i'm sorry yeah and then most of the rest of my posts are probably written voice to text as I'm like doing sweet other things at the same time. And then I like copy it and I'll pop it into Penelope and just be like, Hey, this does make sense. And then Penelope will come back and be like, Oh yes, you brilliant, beautiful, like badass woman. Um, but you might want to change this. And then, and I post it, but almost every single post that I have is me like with this little earbud on, hitting record and like just doing voice to text of whatever is in my head at the moment. There is the only strategy for my LinkedIn is that there really isn't a strategy. I just post what I want to post and I don't post when I write a post and I forget to do it. Yeah. Interesting. Okay. If chaos is a tool, when should founders put it down? When do we actually need to dial it in? I think that sometimes we hide behind chaos when we're afraid of execution and launching. And so we come up with reasons why we need to make things better and do this again and look at it again and run the numbers again and all of those things instead of just launching and going like, it's probably not perfect, but we have to do it. And I think that is when you have to be able to kind of put the chaos, like set it down, step away from it and say, OK, now I need to have a plan to launch this, even if it's not ready or whatever that next step is. But that's where you need a plan like you actually and that's where you should have someone if you're not an executive function person like me, you should have someone on your team or someone in your life who can then take that chaos and say, OK, now we're going to put this into an executable plan. So it's not just like an absolute like disaster whenever you actually get it out to the public or to your clients or whoever you're doing it with. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. This has been a crazy episode. Long. Everything I hoped it would be. I try to keep things like 40 minutes or less. So I think I don't even know where my timer is. Oh, we're at 50. Okay. It's totally fine. Anyways, I loved it. It was unfiltered. It was hilarious. It was actually useful conversation and information. And we also got a little personal too, which is great. So huge thanks to you, April, for bringing in the chaos and the clarity and the kind of truth telling that this show is actually built for. I love this. So if there's one thing for my listeners, if there's one thing that you are walking away with it that I want you to walk away with, it's this. I want you to be yourself in business. It's actually necessary, but it's not enough. The next level is not just about working harder or showing up louder. It's about becoming the version of you who can hold the business that you want. And that is the million dollar standard. So April, really quick before I do our final little call out, can you tell people where they can connect with you, how they can learn about you and just go a little bit deeper if that's what they want? Sure. I mean, Hot Mess Boss is my handle on LinkedIn and Instagram. So on LinkedIn is at linkedin.com forward slash and forward slash Hot Mess Boss. If you come find me, please let me know that you're one of Jodi's podcast friends. And so like I know to thank her for bringing beautiful, amazing people into my life. Instagram is also hot mess boss. They are both, you know, unhinged in a way that makes me feel comfortable and good. And hopefully it makes you all feel uncomfortable and good as well. But yeah, hit me up. Like slide into my DMs. I want to know about you. I will ask you deeply personal, inappropriate and random questions, but not like inappropriate, like inappropriate, just like off the wall. Yes. Yep. We had some conversation about that before we hit record. So I got to know you a little bit before this show. And I'm so glad for that opportunity. So all right, guys, if this episode hit home, screenshot it, tag it, tag us on LinkedIn, throw it on Instagram in your stories. Tell us what part you're taking with you into the next stage of your business. And if you're in the season where you're ready to bring clarity into your marketing and scale without chaos, you know where to find me. So until next time, keep your standards high, keep your systems tight, and I will see you in the next episode.