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Nicola Cairncross is breathing life into a brand she’s had on ice for a while now – SwaggerAndSoul.com. What is it all about? Why is she doing it and what’s in it for you?

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Okay, well here we are, welcome everybody, it’s Nicola Cairncross here, and I am going to talk to you today about why Swagger and Soul, what is it. What is it? Is it a new brand, is it a new initiative? Is it a new podcast? What exactly is it?

I’ve made some notes so I don’t go off-topic, so if you see me looking down occasionally that’s what I’m doing, looking at my bullet points. The other thing I want to do is just set a timer because I want to keep this under 10 minutes, so let’s do that. Okay, let’s say nine minutes, shall we?

I might carry on burbling after that but I want to get the main points in under that, and then we can do Q&A at the end, okay?

So I won’t be saying hello to everybody as they arrive, that’s very distracting for everyone anyway, and it will make for a blooming nightmare when it comes to editing.

Judith, my podcast partner, ex-business partner asked me over the weekend, what is all this Swagger and Soul business then? What are you doing with that?

I thought it’d be a really good idea to just kick off activities on this page really, with a live broadcast because I want to be doing more lives, and I’ll tell you why I haven’t later on in this 10-minute slot.

So what is Swagger and Soul?

It’s a website that my sister and I started when we first moved to Greece in October 2016. It was a joint podcast, joint website initially and then Sarah decided she wanted to work on other projects. So she moved on.

I kept it because I really like the name, and the name actually came from Gary Vaynerchuk who talked about living with more soul and swagger. I thought that’s a really good name for a URL stroke website straight podcast. So obviously, it wasn’t available, somebody nabbed it before me, got there quicker. Little fringe, fringe alert.

Hang on, can’t stand it when my fringe does this. There we go. Nope. No, it’s all going that way it should be going that way right. Excuse that, I’ve got a bit of a fringe fetish.

I turned it around and got the domain name swaggerandsoul.com. And funny enough, I was lying on this, it’s been languishing, it’s not been doing much, I’m not been doing much with it.

It started as a personal blog where I could put stuff that I didn’t want to put my or more business orientated nicolacairncross.com and it’s been languishing.

Now I was lying on the sunbed about two weeks ago and I thought, if ever I want to do anything with that, I really need to make sure that the domain name doesn’t lapse.

So I went over to Namecheap, only to find the horror that I had, in fact, let the domain name lapse. So I had to rescue it by a dent of paying about $130.00, that was painful but it was rescue-able, it was still in the timeframe that you could rescue domain names before they went out in the open market again.

It was such a good domain name I thought it’s bound to get snapped up if it goes out in the open market. So, I paid the money, a painful though it was. And snapped it up again.

Why am I doing this?

What happened was I went to Vegas. I went to Vegas to a mastermind group with about 120 other people and all heavily involved in the personal development industry, and as always it opened my eyes to what a big market that is.

And how much bigger that market is that the one I was playing in at the moment, which is women over 40 who are freelance or specialist consultants and people who wanted to start a business online from their specialty hobby, passion, expertise, and knowledge which is quite a small market. It’s quite hard to get traction in that and that was really, you know, I’ve been flogging that horse for 20 odd years now. It’s really quite difficult.

So I thought I’d really like to try working in a market that was much bigger, that was more open, that was more open-minded, new ideas et cetera, et cetera. Because it’s quite hard to get passionate about, although I am passionate about digital marketing and its potential for everyone’s business, it’s very difficult to get passionate about something constantly when everybody else seems not to be interested.

You know the people in that market they are reluctant to invest, especially the smaller players reluctant to invest in themselves, reluctant to invest in their businesses. It’s quite an uphill slog.

I tend to get my clients for my business over in the digital marketing space through lots of different methods, but it’s not by using Facebook ads or Google ads, because they are often normally expensive for this kind of marketplace.

But in the personal development space, a much bigger market, much more passionate people, people who are willing to spend to go on retreats and workshops, and weekends, and things like that.

So, that ties in very nicely with my other game, which is as a motivational inspirational speaker. I’ve just started doing that again. I used to be doing it a lot and I really love it, and I want to do more of it whether it’s on Facebook Lives like this, whether it’s on stage, or whether it’s on peoples podcasts, I just love, love, love doing that stuff cause I’m not scared of being spontaneous as you can see.

So, you know me as digital bod, you might know me from The Money Gym. The Money Gym is one of my other passions. I spent a good 10 years as a wealth coach when I first got started with coaching and wrote the book called The Money Gym, which you can get a copy of free just by emailing me. I’ll give you one and you can also get it on Amazon if you prefer a hard copy, and it sells steadily.

What I decided to do when I came back from Vegas was to get the audible version onto audible and that’s proving a bit harder than I thought just because I keep recording the intro and the outro, and they can hear the birdies singing because it’s very hot here in Greece. That’s why I’m dressed like this cause I go to the beach every day and the birdies are pretty loud, so I’m trying to get The Money Gym onto audible.

I still am passionate about financial intelligence, helping people to get rid of debt, get out of debt, manage their debt, make more money from their passions, or their hobbies, or their interests, or their existing business, and so you know The Money Gym is very much something that I’m still passionate about and interested in.

So, finally, the other thing was that you might know me as someone who is very keen on the law of attraction and gratitude and paying it forward, and all of that stuff but I’m a bit of an atheist. I don’t really believe in a God as such, and I don’t really believe – at all – in organised religion.

So, I think there’s a place in the world of the law of attraction for someone like me who is very science orientated, who’s very interested in what could be happening that I don’t know about, and I’m very open-minded around that. But, I need proof of how things work.

So the kind of stuff I’m going to be sharing with you on this page, Swagger and Soul, is going to be the kind of stuff that works for me or has worked for other people that I know well, and I like and respect.

So, I won’t be bringing any old rubbish. I’ll be bringing only things that have been proven to work by me or people I like and respect. What else?

So you might know me as digital marketer or you might know me as The Money Gym, you might know me as a business speaker. I’ve spoken at lots of different events. Recent ones were an Amazon store owners event in Australia. There was, how many people there, was about 200 odd, 250 people there and I’ve also spoken at internet marketing events, up to 1,000 people.

So, absolutely I love to speak, absolutely I love to be interviewed on podcasts. If you go onto iTunes and search my name you’ll find lots of interviews with lots of different people and people always tell me how well they’ve been received. So you know check that out if you want to check me out, and what I stand for and stuff like that.

So, in Vegas, I got to this incredible community of people and very, very privileged to be there. And the prevailing theme was of overwhelming success because they all were lots of very successful people, I mean for normally successful.

But the other attitude that came across was humbleness. People were very humble. And people were very grateful, and they were very willing to share their stories, and all of them had stories of overcoming hardship and issues, and a lot of them have been homeless, a lot of them have been on drugs or alcohol, a lot of people had pulled themselves through by sheer will power, and by applying some of the things that I’m going to be sharing on Swagger and Soul with you.

So I came away from that thinking, there’s a much bigger playground that I could play in here. I could become a bigger player in the personal development space and my story is so authentic because I’ve had a lot of ups and downs in my life.

I was born into a really ordinary, average, quite poor working-class family in Durrington, West Sussex (in Worthing) and I have by sheer grit and determination taught myself through reading books. Everything that I’ve needed to know to become more successful and it’s been a hard old ride.

10 minutes, wow, it goes so quick. I’m going to keep going, and then I’m going to try and edit afterward and I have managed to do it. And I have managed to become successful twice now because I lost everything the first time, in the last big crash of 2010. And I spent two years wallowing in self-pity and lack of confidence.

And I really wanted to, I always knew deep down I’d come back, I always knew deep down that I’d make it again. I just had to find the way. I had to find the vehicle that was right for me. I had to find the way, my way, and nobody else could tell me how to do it.

But believe me, I asked a lot of very successful people who were my mentors, you know, what should I do now? And they said I can’t tell you, you have to find what’s right for you but you have to have the grit and determination to keep going. I’ve got that in spades.

What else? It’s going to be a great case study. This is a brand new brand. Its got a brand new Instagram account. Its got a brand new page that’s got hardly anyone liking it at the beginning.

I’ve just started running Facebook ads to get more likes because if you can get more likes, you get more attention when you do Facebook Lives and eventually the longer your Facebook Lives go on, by the way, the more attention you get from outside your own community.

So, I’m going to be using this as a case study for how well Facebook Lives work. And whether they build up gradually as you go on. Some people say they do, Frank Hern is one, go on over and look at what Frank Hern’s do with his Facebook Lives, absolutely inspirational stuff there. And lots of other people are doing Facebook Live very well. Cheryl Wesmond does them very well from her house every morning I think.

So I really want to use something that I find easy, and I felt it was some fun, which is talking directly to the camera or talking directly to people, and Facebook Live is a fantastic venue for that.

So, I’m going to use my own Be Everywhere Online system to build this brand, and if I do it from starting from scratch which I am, then it will help attract people into my Clicks and Leads Academy.

I’ve got a membership site, a fantastic membership site. The Money Gym stuff is in there, the Be Everywhere Online stuff’s in here, all my personal development stuff I’ve learned to date is in there, and I’m thinking I might need to rebrand it, but I’m putting off that decision right now.

So, I’m going to be talking on this page about mindset, marketing, and money. I’m going to try and go live three times a week. I’m going to try and interview the best cool people that I meet and I know, who’ve overcome adversity.

Now, focusing very much on the loss. Overcoming loss. Because I lost my partner Steve in March 2016. And funny ain’t it, I feel fine about it most of the time, now I’ve grown around that loss and better every time I mention it I still get a lump in my throat. All right.

But, other people have lost other things. Other people have lost their health, other people have lost their partners, other people who have lost their marriages, other people have lost jobs or careers and loss is a huge thing.

I actually think it has a traumatic effect on our brains, chemically speaking, and as someone who’s just lived through it, I think nothing can prepare you for the thing that happens to your brain when you experience a big loss of some kind.

And I think that you just have to grit your teeth and get through it, and it does get easier with time but doesn’t feel like it when you’re in it. Still, come on Nicola you can do it.

I think it’s going to be much more fun and much easier for me to go live and talk about and share the things I’ve learned if I have a full range of topics to cover more than just digital marketing. So, we’ll see. It might bomb, it might not. It might be boring for me over the long term, but I doubt it.

You know, I’m going to try and do Facebook Lives from various places around Stoupa, and Brighton and Shoreham By Sea, which are the main places I live, I also go to Australia and America, and I’m hoping to travel more this year generally.

So, I think it’ll be a bit more interesting for you guys if I do it from lots of different places. All though let’s face it, the internet connection and the phone mobile connection, not so great in certain places. I’ll do my best though.

So what is it going to contain?

There’s going to be weekly thoughts, there’s going to be random lives, there’s going to be regular interviews perhaps weekly if I can get that going. I’m going to go back through all the interviews I’ve ever done and I’m going to try to find the most inspirational and powerful people to talk to.

If you go to the working abroad section on swaggerandsoul.com, you’ll find there is already a set of 18 very inspirational interviews that you could buy. I think it’s about $49.00 at the moment for the whole set, well they used to sell for $179.00 to $249.00. So you are getting a real bargain if you go over there and snap those up now.

That’s 18 incredible people who have chosen to make their living and make their money, and live while working abroad, or traveling, or being digital nomads. They range in ages from young to older people too. So, you’ll find that very inspirational.

The first person I’m going to be interviewing live on Facebook Live, he hasn’t said yes yet, but I know he will, is Matthew Toman, who has created the most incredible film. He’s an award-winning filmmaker from Dubin and he’s also got his own fantastically successful digital marketing agency over there. I met him in Vegas and we just got on like a house on fire.

He’s an incredible guy, and he’s made the most beautiful, amazing follow-up film to the Secret, and it is not just about the Secret as such it’s about the practical steps you can take to make your life turn around starting tomorrow it’s mind-blowingly good. He hasn’t even released it yet officially. So it will be really cool to hear about how that came about.

And he again, overcame tremendous hardships and difficulties to get to the place where he is now. So I think he’ll be an amazing person to kick off the interview series with.

Where’s it going to be?

It’s going to be on swaggerandsoul.com, it’s going to be on the Facebook page, it’s going to be on the private group, we’re going to be sharing and discussing everything there. It’s going to be on the Instagram account, and it’s going to be on the YouTube channel.

So just go to your favourite place, there’ll obviously be a Twitter account as well, which will just fire out from one of these, I think probably the blog.

Like the page, if you like what you hear. If you think it’ll be interesting to follow along with the project even if it’s only for the marketing point of view of using my tried and trusted Be Everywhere Online system to build this brand from nothing.

I hope I haven’t waffled on too long. I wonder how many, I can’t even see how many viewers I’ve got, so I might just knock it on the head there and then I’ll answer any questions in the comments below. I’ll try and be back very soon for the next Swagger and Soul Live, and do let me know what you want me to cover but it will be mainly mindset, marketing, and money.

If you got any questions around those topics, fire them at me.

See ya later, I’m off down the beach.