Podcast S1:E2 The Road to The Capable Collective
Show notes:
Today, I want to talk to you about the road to the Capable Collective or what I'm calling the road to the Capable Collective. A lot has brought me here. A lot has made me want to invest my time and money and energy into creating the Capable Collective. Because I think it's really important.
So let's dive in.
Let's start with who the hell am I?
So my name is Ellie McBride. I am originally from Oregon. And I have been living in Belfast for the last three and a half years. So here in Northern Ireland.
I'm dog obsessed. I have only had one dog of my own, but I always grew up with about three. I worked in a doggy daycare when I was in university. I dog sat throughout university to help pay for life to be able to afford a university and housing and everything. Much to my roommates chagrin. I don't think they were always super pleased with having random dogs terrorizing our house. But they were kind and let me do it and it helped me pay the rent.
I love a good bourbon. And I'm really loud. Extroverted. I love swearing. So, beware on the podcast because if you have little kiddos present or something, there might be occasional F-bombs or such.
I am working towards sustainability and kind of a minimalist lifestyle or minimalist ish. And what that means is things like. You know, we make what we can. We reuse what we can. I haven't bought new clothes other than like undies. And well over a year. I buy everything that I can second hand.
And we try not to have too much stuff. Our long-term goal is to design, and probably refurbish a tiny house. And live on a small piece of land somewhere back in Oregon. And have, a tiny farmstead and some chickens and work remotely like we do now. And that's sort of the goal - it's going to be really cool.
There's also the potential that we'll have a tiny house here in Northern Ireland as well. There's a movement to create a tiny village. And I'm really excited to hopefully be a part of that.
So growing up, I was raised in a really messy, but extremely loving family. We were a blended family. We had two kids from one marriage, two kids from another marriage, and then a kid between my dad and my step mom's remarried. So there are five kids and it felt like it was pure chaos all the time.
I think with my personality, that is what led me to become such an organized person. I am probably the most organized person you will ever meet. It was my way of controlling the loving chaos that was my childhood. And I think also was one of many, many, many factors, that I am child-free by choice.
I love being an auntie. I love being a godmother. I was an au pair. I don't have anything against kids as a whole, but I personally just, they're not for me.
So a little bit about what experiences that have led me here.
Actually let's backtrack for a second and talk about like, so that is who I am. Right? There's so much more to me. But I want to talk about the experiences that have led me here to creating this podcast, to sharing these ideas with the world, these insights, and these people with the world.
So I started my first business, which is Calibrated Concepts as a way to be remote. I had no other intention with the business. I didn't care how I did it, who I helped, whatever. When I first started, I just knew that I wanted to work from my laptop. But I wanted to be able to go back to Oregon a hell of a lot more that I wanted to be able to go for an extended period of time, or if there was an emergency and still be able to afford life.
So I decided to start as a virtual assistant. I had several years of admin experience in property management, dental, physical therapy, law and more. So I knew that I knew my shit in that area and I knew that I would be great at it. I wasn't actually super thrilled about the idea because in my head a virtual assistant did admin.
And did emails and calendars. And that's not really what I wanted to do. But what I learned over time by just throwing myself into it is that I could specialize. And so I ended up specializing in helping solopreneur women with tech and systems.
So I did implementation, and organization for things like setting up accounting softwares and, product tracking, softwares doing scheduling and making all those thing talk to each other and all those integrations. So that people could save a lot of time by having their tools do a lot of the work for them.
Through that I've been behind the scenes and dozens and dozens of businesses. I've seen how they work. I've seen what works and what doesn't work.
I know what makes it easier for women running small businesses. As far as the nitty gritty. mechanical side of things.
I loved helping women in this way. I actually learned that through specializing, I loved what I did, but what I found is that when I took my business full time, I was really, really overwhelmed. The people I love to help most were small solopreneur businesses. And that meant that I had a lot of small clients.
And so even being as organized as I am I found myself having to do a lot of task shifting and I found my inbox every day was really full. And I found that really overwhelming. So through, some coaching. That I paid for a six month accelerator with the best coach. And I realized that I needed a simpler business model. So I pivoted and I decided that I was going to specialize in large projects over short periods of time and when I did that, I landed on building and designing, custom Squarespace websites. And that's all I do now.
I get to help the same small businesses and help them get the right tools and systems and message across consistently in their businesses in a way that's really setting them up for success. Especially in COVID, especially in the climate that we're in at the minute, helping people be online and be online in a way that actually really looks nice, gets their message across helps their audience to learn from them, grow from them and trust them - is just the most important thing.
So I do that with Squarespace websites and I have streamlined my business in such a way that if I wanted, I could work pretty much three days a week and I wouldn't have any other work that I needed to do, but especially because of we're in a pandemic and because I'm a bit of a busy body and I can't sit still.
It's really freed up the time for me to educate and train and help women to be capable with technology. Which is something I'd been working on before, because obviously when I was a virtual assistant, I was helping people understand the tech that I was implementing for them.
And I chose Squarespace to do the websites that I do for people because people are capable of doing it themselves. So I train them through our sessions. As I'm editing the website, they get to see what I'm doing and how I'm doing it and every one of my clients also gets a course, that they get to keep for life, to show them how to edit their website on their own going forward.
Really it's been about growing this community and helping women with the nitty-gritty. It's been something that I'm really passionate about. It kind of came out of a six month coaching program that I did - a group coaching program. And I knew that it was important. It just was sitting with me and growing with me and I didn't know exactly how it was going to be shaped in the end. I'm still not 100% sure how this is all going to be shaped in the end.
But what I do know is that it's, it is important.
I get really fired up, talking about how women are more than fucking capable of handling their own tech. I get really fired up when I think about how women are so damn good at supporting each other. I get really fired up thinking about how there should not be some curtain that all these answers for really simple systems in business are hidden behind.
You shouldn't have to figure it out on your own. And women are so good at doing things together, and we're so good at lifting each other up. And I really want to leverage that to make business easier.
I really want to challenge this narrative that has been out there that we all need to hustle. Hustling in business is not something that we should do. Like it's okay for a really brief period of time especially when you're just getting started. But overall, you should have a process in place to make business feel easy.
That doesn't always mean that every single day is easy, but that you're working from a place of ease overall.
So I've always been really drawn to organizing people. In university, I was an executive member of the student government. I was the president of the Greek Council and later the president of my sorority. I've been drawn to community. I've always been the one setting up parties. I threw all the parties in university. I throw still throw parties, not in the pandemic, but otherwise, I'm still the one hosting most the Halloween parties and such in our friend groups. And I'm currently planning a virtual Zoom friendsgiving. So. That is just who I am.
And there's been something missing in my business and that's been a community. And the reason I'm so passionate about that is that the communities I've been a part of, both the paid ones in the free ones, have really helped me grow my business. They've helped me to feel sure of myself, to trust my gut, to trust what I know. That my expertise is truly valuable. They've helped cheerlead me through some of the tougher times of business.
This is so important because of women are fucking awesome. Right? And when women are awesome. And when women are in business. Good things happen.
Women with money, invest in their communities. They support causes that truly matter. They are examples to our future generations, to their children, to their nieces or nephews. They're showing what can be done.
Have you ever noticed how incredibly supportive small business friends are on Instagram? How they share your posts and they buy from you and they support your giveaways and they are always, always on for you cheerleading. I have people that I can name off the top of my head that like every single one of my Instagram posts and comment on most of them. And that are always making sure that I feel like I am not alone in this business thing. And then I do the same for them.
Women are so good at supporting themselves. And I want to see more women and non-binary folks feeling like they're confident, not only in their ideas, but the mechanisms behind the scenes of running a business.
I truly believe that all women can build their own websites, email lists, social media followings, product lines, communities, systems, processes and more.
But it shouldn't have to be done by going down a Google or a YouTube rabbit hole. We don't need to reinvent the wheel. We just need to talk to each other. And trust in the wisdom of the women who've come before us.
I have seen so many amazing resources for women in business to come together to solve problems. But I haven't seen one for the fiddly behind the scene stuff. For the day to day mechanisms of business.
So I want to create it. With you.
You can join our free Facebook group. That has one training every single month from a guest expert. We also do twice a month Tech Tuesday calls, one during the day here in the UK and one in the evening here in the UK. And each of them has a mini training. On a topic that has been voted on by the community.
So it could be email marketing, how to create a freebie, social media scheduling, website tips and tricks. Those kinds of topics. And also people can submit questions for me to help them solve. And they can do that for the Tech Tuesdays and they can also do that just in the Facebook group.
It is like having your own personal group, helping you troubleshoot the techie tricky part of business. And I cannot wait to see you in there. It's free and you better be there. 📍
So now that you know all about the road to the Capable Collective. I hope you'll join us.
I would be over the fricking moon if you would subscribe to this podcast, leave a review and share this episode or any episode with a friend! It makes a world of difference for new podcasts, just getting started.
And I really hope you found some value in this and have a great and fantastic fricking day.
