Anita Swetman

[00:05:19] Was it gonna be lost for good? We just didn’t know did we? and it was when I’d watched, a documentary called Secret on Netflix and okay, it made me realize that I was living my dream, the business. I worked so hard to build up cuz I finally went full time in 2018 and I left my corporate career behind for good.

[00:05:44] Anita Swetman: And I saw that documentary and it made me realize that I need to tell my story. I need to help and inspire people in this world. it doesn’t matter what your background is, where you come from, you can change your life. You can start up a business a. or whatever, or start another career.

[00:06:04] Anita Swetman: You’re not stuck where you are. And that’s how my book came about. So I just told the story of where I started, a little bit of background on myself. It does touch on some quite intimate parts, but they are only points have got me to where I am today.

[00:06:22] Audra: That’s awesome. that’s a super important point to make.

[00:06:27] Audra: With Covid, a lot of things had to change. It’s not business as usual and if you had a product or service that you were able to pivot or to evolve it to get through that, probably a good solid two [00:06:40] years of where things were pretty chaotic. I know you guys were locked down a little bit more than we were, but it’s still changed the way people thought consumers thought.

[00:06:50] Audra: There was so much fear and anxiety wrapped around everything. we weren’t acting normal. We weren’t acting, our buying habits were different. Our, just socializing and everything else that goes along with it were super challenging. And from a business perspective, you don’t know what it’s gonna look like.

[00:07:05] Audra: On the other side of that, we could try to forecast, like you said, Is my business gonna survive at all? there’s not really anything to pivot from massage, unless you started doing meditation online or self techniques that you could teach online, but without physically touching somebody, there’s no real business there.

[00:07:27] that’s right. We’re in 2022 now. has your business recovered?

[00:07:31] Anita Swetman: It has, yes stronger than ever. Cause in the first lockdown in 2020, I turned, obviously turned all my business head and I spoke to my skincare company about doing online skin consultations and product sales.

[00:07:48] Anita Swetman: A company had something emotion because literally overnight, as soon as we knew we were going into lockdown, they’d had a whole program of continual professional develop. Set up for us and how we could sell online to our clients with their skin. So I was able to obviously, sell products and gain some new clients from that as well.

[00:08:10] Anita Swetman: And obviously I’d be delivering the skin care to my clients cuz we were allowed to do that. The government had allowed us. To do that, thank goodness. So [00:08:20] that kept my head above water until we were able to get back to normal. And I also started doing network marketing as well. One of my friends Okay, was doing a network marketing and she was looking for people to join her team and I thought, oh, I’ve got nothing to lose.

[00:08:34] Anita Swetman: I’m gonna go for this. And yeah, I started doing quite well doing network marketing, selling the products and building up a little team cuz that was booming cuz we were selling. Online and delivering to customers . yeah. yeah, and I just kept in touch with my clients as much as possible, making sure they was all, all okay.

[00:08:53] Anita Swetman: And it was so wonderful. All the heartfelt messages that came in from them. they cared for me as much as I did for them. We have, we’ve got like a little family, which is really nice with my lovely little regulars. And I say now, being back to normal or the new normal. I’m working before, I was working at nearly a hundred percent capacity, obviously with the hours that I do.

[00:09:14] cause I work on my own, but now I’m about 80% capacity. But to me that is a good thing because it gives me a breather cuz. I was working a bit stupid beforehand. I was just working constantly back to back. I was eating from the fridge. I wasn’t eating healthily. So now I have a day a week where I can prepare meals, and I can practice what I preach with a healthy lifestyle and making sure I’ve got a gap in between each client properly.

[00:09:42] Anita Swetman: So I just actually feel a lot better in my career. Plus it gives me more time to, hone my craft of writing. Now that I’ve just published, another book obviously alongside a collaborated alongside 16 other authors. So we’ve created a self book, right? With all, we’ve all got a chapter [00:10:00] where we’ve shared all our journeys of adversity, to help and inspire others.

[00:10:03] Anita Swetman: And also now writing my third book, which is my very first novel. Which all came about from writing my story.

[00:10:13] Audra: That is awesome. So all kinds of questions come up for me for that. So between the massage business dying down and then you doing the skin care, plus getting into an mlm, that is evolved. What made you say, I’m at this place where I need to write a book?

[00:10:31] what was that transition?

[00:10:33] Anita Swetman: I didn’t realize how creative I was. I honestly didn’t. So it’s opened up another avenue. And also it made me realize I was keeping all my eggs in one basket with just my business and how quickly it got taken away from me, literally overnight like everybody else.

[00:10:52] so I needed to look into something that I could do that wouldn’t be affected by anything that I could do for the future.

[00:10:59] Audra: That’s great. Have you always wanted to publish a book?

[00:11:04] Anita Swetman: No, but cars back many years ago when I was in between pharmacy careers back in 1996, it’s a long time ago. I actually.

[00:11:15] Anita Swetman: Went to the job, obviously the job center, looking for jobs for another career cuz I was ending my pharmacy career and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to carry on with pharmacy cuz it wasn’t my calling, it wasn’t what I wanted to do. I somehow, I just got into it, which is a long story. And I filled out all my interests, what I like to do.

[00:11:35] Anita Swetman: And the computer kept coming back saying my ideal career should have [00:11:40] been a librarian. Interesting. Okay. Very interesting, isn’t it? So I think you

[00:11:44] Audra: found writing a book, so subconsciously something was planted in there that your bigger, purpose.

[00:11:51] Anita Swetman: Yes. Yeah. And also with the second book that we’d all written, I was, I just feel like it’s like a calling to be able to help and inspire other people, if we can just help one person with our stories, you, you can just change someone’s life and that’s what’s important.

[00:12:07] Audra: Absolutely. The stories are huge. Okay. Your business. I think some important takeaways from what you just shared is one, many people start with jobs. We’re living much older than, two generations did or three generations back did. So we’ve got the opportunity to pivot or to explore what’s next for us.

[00:12:30] Audra: We should never feel like, I went to college, I loaded up on a bunch of debt. I have to stay in this industry forever. This has gotta be my commitment. It shouldn’t be thought of that way. . if I look back at mine, just my entrepreneurial side on that, this is my fourth business, so I had coffee shops in California and I had a title company in Maryland.

[00:12:53] Audra: So I did real estate for about 10 years. Actually, this is my third slash fourth, and then I started a digital marketing agency in 2009. When the real estate market here was tanking, it just wasn’t any fun. And somebody introduced me to Dan Kennedy, which he’s the godfather of direct response marketing.

[00:13:16] Audra: And I’ve been doing that since, and now I’m pivoting into what’s [00:13:20] next, which is the marketplace that I’m building for small business. every school, every skill that we learn or every job that we have pushes us and hopefully evolves us to whatever’s next for us. I finally had to get okay with being unsettled and look at change as an opportunity to evolve into what’s next.

[00:13:41] who is the next phase of Audra and what is she gonna be about and what does business look like in that perspective. the woman that I was, that I am today is very different than the woman I was even five years ago. does that include a book? I’m about 180 pages into one,

[00:14:00] Anita Swetman: so it’s almost finished.

[00:14:01] Anita Swetman: Amazing. Wow.

[00:14:03] Audra: Yeah. So I’ve got two different ones that I wanna do. The first one that’s almost finished, it’s called Marketing Reset. . And it goes through all the different things when your marketing’s not working, you need to reset it, here’s the foundation stuff to go back to. That sounds, I think that’s super important for people in my community.

[00:14:22] Audra: And then the other one talks about strategy and the importance of how, important strategy is with stuff like this. But,just for anybody that’s listening, if you feel like you’re making a pivot, even, post covid, if you feel like you’re not in the right place, move!. Start exploring something else.

[00:14:39] keep your job if you have a job until you can afford to do something different. But the important thing to take away is life is short and it is fast, and you know it’s more important to be present and working on the things that you love than going home every day and waking up 10 years later and you can’t get that life.

[00:14:59] Anita has [00:15:00] figured out how to bridge each one of these steps to evolve it where, where you’re at now. Now looking back, do you feel like, what kind of emotions were you experiencing? oh, the sky is falling in, or, that’s okay. I just need to do something else. what helped you get through that transit?

[00:15:18] it started for me when I had a wake up call back in 2003 when I collapsed at work. and that was the best thing that happened to me cuz it made me realize if I carried on in a career that wasn’t serving me, then I would be doing it for the rest of my life.

[00:15:34] Anita Swetman: And it took a very long time for me to realize that the only person that could change my life was me. Nobody else.

[00:15:41] Audra: You had some work to do, huh? ?

[00:15:43] Anita Swetman: I had a lot of work to do. A lot of work to do, yeah. But I’d had a vision about setting up my own business. but I just kept dismissing it and I thought, no, not me.

[00:15:53] I’m a pharmacy technician. This is all I know. This is all I’ve studied. I can’t do this, I can’t do this. and then I’d had another wake up call with when a friend lost her daughter suddenly. And I thought, you need to do something about this. You need to do, you need to do something. and that’s when I looked at what it would entail to go back to college.

[00:16:12] Anita Swetman: But I was more scared of asking my boss if I could have some time off to go to college. Than I was of actually jumping out of my comfort zone, which is really sad really, isn’t it? But I’m sure there’s so many people that do feel like that. for sure. Yeah. Yeah. But my boss was very supportive cuz he knew after my accident that, I knew I wanted to change my life.

[00:16:33] Anita Swetman: So he did support me and I always gave a hundred percent of work. Cuz you have a choice if you’re, and in [00:16:40] your career, you either give a hundred percent or you leave. and I did, I enjoyed my colleagues who I work with, but I just didn’t, what I can’t say, what I didn’t enjoy was the. The workload, the stress of the workload.

[00:16:56] Anita Swetman: And I would be going home every day with headaches and I would be in sleepless nights and things like that, and I’d be just be worrying about it and have my day planned out how it was gonna be. And then it would literally change just like that, and it would be completely beyond your control. Didn’t feel in control of anything.

[00:17:12] Yet, things needed to change, but it wasn’t until I’d qualified in 2009 I’d done all my qualifications. So all I had was college experience and I kept putting me off. I thought, no, just stay where you are. Just stay where you are. And then eventually when I had another wake up call, I eventually started up my business.

[00:17:34] Anita Swetman: My boss allowed me to go part-time cuz they knew that I wanted to move forward, so they allowed me to reduce my hours to three days a week. Which was brilliant. So then I could work my business two days a week, one week, and then three days the following week. but then eventually when I started working morning and night, I was working three, full days in my fancy career, coming home, having quick bites to eat, have a shower, and then I’d be working till late at night.

[00:18:00] Anita Swetman: And I really literally like this every day. That’s not good. Not a good look for a beauty therapist. So that was it. So keeping the job way longer than we need to. I don’t know if you guys have a term for it, but here we call it golden handcuffs I’ve had a few jobs where I’ve made so much money. I didn’t wanna leave cuz it [00:18:20] was so easy and it was just like, having your own printing machine.

[00:18:23] Audra: But at the same time I felt like a prisoner because I wasn’t doing what I should have been doing. And at some point those implode, something happens and it forces you to make the decision And I think maybe Tony Robbins or somebody said, we only move to get to.

[00:18:40] Audra: Pleasure or get out of pain. And sometimes when you’re in that vanilla space where, eh, it’s not that bad, it’s tolerable. So I’m not really suffering, but I’m not really happy. And then 10 years pass. Yeah. And you’re like, oh my gosh. Until something dramatic happens. or you get so excited about something else that you make that pivot.

[00:19:03] Audra: It’s unfortunate, but that’s, I think just human nature in itself. And I think the other big takeaway for me is I went through, I, so I’m a paper person. I love to write stuff down. It’s another way that I learn and retain memories. Yeah, me too. And as I’m You too. Yes. as I’m working to launch this new business, If I go back and try to remap, like when did I originally start thinking about this?

[00:19:31] Audra: And I think conceptually, I had this idea probably 10 years ago, but I wasn’t the person I needed to be able to pull off something this big. So little by little every year, I think I’ve worked a little bit towards that, but I couldn’t really conceptually put my head around how to make it. So it doesn’t get finished.

[00:19:53] Audra: And I think that’s where that overnight success comes from, right? We work on it for years and years. Nobody knows anything about it. [00:20:00] And then once you’ve got it to that place where you, the business owner is actually able to. Grow or grow into a business that size. Then everybody sees it and they’re like, oh my gosh, you’re an overnight success.

[00:20:15] Audra: You’re like, dude, I’ve been working on this for so many years, but what I found was a few days ago, I found some of my notebooks from 2017, and I was like, where was it that I was starting to map all this stuff out? I found my notes that all my original concept stuff for Zindo and company, for the whole marketplace

[00:20:35] Audra: who my audience was, what my message was, what I stood for. Everything was all mapped out, and I’m like, it’s been five years. Why didn’t I listen to my earlier self? so my subconscious mind to go back and, validate what you just said. My subconscious mind knew what I needed to do. My ego would not allow me, cause my ego couldn’t see it.

[00:20:58] Audra: My ego couldn’t control it or build it, or whatever reason. I conceptually couldn’t get it. But I already had this idea five years ago. The whole thing was mapped down. I’m like, oh my God, I should have just shut my mouth and did what I wrote down and I would already be finished. It’s crazy how that stuff goes.

[00:21:17] a huge lesson to take away from this. We all have our journey we have to go through right where we’re supposed to be. We’re, the universe has us, God has us who, your higher power we’re. If we’re present and we’re actually honest about that, we are where we’re supposed to be, and we don’t get to go to that next level until we’ve, accept the lessons [00:21:40] that we got, learn from them, and then evolve to what’s next.

[00:21:43] Audra: Yeah, I

[00:21:44] Anita Swetman: really do agree with that because the universe provides us in different directions and it’s whether we listen to it or whether we get wiped out with a boulder.

[00:21:55] Audra: Exactly. I think I said, no, II got this. ,

[00:21:57] Anita Swetman: definitely. Yeah. Pick myself, . when I was writing my story, I, when I look back over it, Because I was like you say about being an overnight success.

[00:22:07] Anita Swetman: When you look back and you think about what you went through and then you write it all down, it’s amazing how much you have grown and you have developed. Cuz I was shy, I was introverted, and. I started my business. I went on to win Multi Gold Awards. I won small find the small business of the year back in 2020 just before lockdown.

[00:22:31] I went on to massage celebrities and I did not believe that I could have done any of those things if someone had said to me back. That I would’ve achieved all those things in my little professional home business, I would’ve said that no, no way. you’re telling lies. it’s not possible.

[00:22:50] Anita Swetman: But you, if you believe it’s possible and you put in that work to achieve it, then anything is possible. And then if it doesn’t work, you just keep trying again. if things aren’t working, you try again. I had a lot of challenges obviously with getting my business up and started. and I found for myself, obviously getting myself out there into the world in with the people.

[00:23:13] Anita Swetman: Cuz when you work from home, nobody knows that you are there. So apart from social, because social media posts and [00:23:20] things like that, but we’re all saturated with social media posts. So I got myself out there in my village doing events, stores, charity events. I did charity, pamper events, things like that.

[00:23:31] Anita Swetman: and even now, 10 years later, I do, a lovely event at the, local church every year. Obviously I have a little stool where I promote myself each year. Cuz you’ve gotta keep getting yourself out there. You should never get complacent and the amount of people now that say, oh, I didn’t know you were there even after 10 years.

[00:23:48] but it’s lovely. it’s really nice, obviously seeing new people coming and people that have been with me since the beginning as well, that have been on my journey. yeah, so very proud. Very proud. So stand tall, be proud of who you are. And if you think about starting just a small business, you just don’t know where it’s gonna lead you look at Apple.

[00:24:09] Anita Swetman: Where did they all start their businesses from, obviously from their garages in the garage.

[00:24:13] Audra: Yeah. so let me ask you, what kept you focused to build through that? I’m like you where I can do a lot of things at one time when I set my mind to achieving something. What was it that you focused on to get through that?

[00:24:28] Audra: So you’re working a full-time job, you cut it back to part-time, you’re going to school, now you’re trying to build this business. Where was your mindset during that time?

[00:24:37] Anita Swetman: Oh my goodness. My mindset was all over the place. Really was it was really challenging cuz I’d have to switch from pharmacy and then obviously over to beauty therapy.

[00:24:47] Anita Swetman: But back, go back 1990. Oh goodness. back in the early nineties, my elder brother had introduced me to network marketing back then. And the concept [00:25:00] of changing your mindset, positive thinking, affirmations, and it was. self-motivate help books and things like that. , so subconsciously that was all going around.

[00:25:11] Anita Swetman: In my mind what I’d learn back then, and then obviously when I’d started up my business, when I was leaving pharmacy, I was listening to Jim Rohn more, Tony Robbins on his YouTubes podcast, things like that. Jay Shetty. Jay Shetty’s, obviously full of love. Lovely words and wisdom as well, and I remember listening to Jim Rohn and I thought, I’ve heard this before.

[00:25:33] Anita Swetman: It was in my subconscious. I’d heard him obviously at an event that I’d been to when I was doing network marketing back in the nineties, but I didn’t carry on with network marketing back then because I didn’t believe in myself. I didn’t believe I could achieve things. I didn’t feel worthy of success, even though I was starting to get a little bit of success.

[00:25:53] Anita Swetman: I would talk myself outta that. so yeah, it’s, I look back now and I think, did I really do that? Yes, I did. I really did do that. And it’s all because I put in the work to do it. It’s all, when a good telling yourself you can do something, but if you don’t back it of action, then nothing’s gonna happen.

[00:26:12] Audra: That is such a great story, and it fits right into the whole point of this podcast to begin with this mess in the middle. think about the story you just shared. You went up, you went down, you doubted yourself. You kept at it. that’s what this journey is about, and the mindset plays such a huge role in.

[00:26:31] Audra: If you don’t have the right mindset to stay the course in your business, you have to allow yourself to get some outside help. [00:26:40] Watch YouTube. Jay Shetty’s a great one. Tony Robins, Jim Rohn. Jim Rohn is like the founder of this, and many generations, probably today or not many, but the younger generation today probably does not know the value of what he can deliver.

[00:26:55] Audra: But go back and listen to Napoleon Hill. In the 19, what was the 1930s when all his stuff? Maybe? Yeah, late thirties, right? Early forties when all his stuff started coming out. The value of what it is, it’s all on YouTube. There’s no excuse that people are not learning more and evolving as human beings because all that kind of information is available for free for all of us.

[00:27:22] Audra: So if you choose to stay stuck, then that’s on you and you can’t blame outside situations. People come from very challenging times today and still are able to evolve into something better. And we all have that opportunity. So if things are challenging for you right now, put your head down, put your earphones in, and learn something.

[00:27:44] Audra: Set aside 15 minutes a day to help advance yourself, because if you don’t rewire this thing, it’s gonna trip you up the rest of your life. And you’re, it’s very challenging to grow a business. businesses in themselves are very challenging, let alone throw in a mindset that has not evolved yet to handle what’s gonna come with a business.

[00:28:06] that’s definitely a recipe for disaster. It really is. So I wanna wrap all this together with a bow. Where are you going? So we know where you came from and what you know personally, where you’re at right now. what is the next [00:28:20] six months or next two years for look like for you?

[00:28:24] Anita Swetman: Yeah, the next. obviously I’m looking long term at the moment, so over the next couple years I’m focusing on just keeping my regular clients hell and keeping that ticking over, and then obviously I’m writing further books so that then I can eventually replace that income for the future for when I can no longer, okay, when I can no longer massage anymore.

[00:28:46] Anita Swetman: I’ve got that other career coming. Other money coming in, I should say. and that’s it mostly. And obviously getting on podcasts and inspiring other people that they can, they, they’re not stuck where they are. They can become the person they dream of becoming. They can set up a new business, they can change their career.

[00:29:03] Anita Swetman: You’re not a tree, you’re not stuck. . and you. And that was what I heard many years ago when I was learning, positive motivation and changing your mindset. Mostly find that daily gratitude every day. it’s just the smallest things. finding what you are grateful for. it might even make you feel that you want to, you are actually happy where you are, but you just need to change your mindset.

[00:29:25] Anita Swetman: You might not need to change. To another career, but there is no such thing as a job for life anymore. And we should never ever be complacent where we are. And obviously Covid really did, shake the world up with that.

[00:29:41] what I do as an a regular exercise for myself is, so I like to run.

[00:29:46] getting back to it cuz I broke my ankle in April. I’m walking more than I’m running right now. Okay. But the point is I still get out there and I’m in Florida so it’s always sunny and I will put [00:30:00] on different kinds of energy music and listen to and just allow myself to escape and be present and think about if I could do anything in the world, if I could create anything or meet anybody or experience anything, what does that look like for me?

[00:30:17] when you’re trying to build a business and provide for your family and learn and grow and find new customers. Iwe’re wearing a lot of different hats. But if you don’t take that break to get out and allow yourself to be creative and reconnect to why you started on this sometimes painful journey, it’s hard to stick to it for the long haul.

[00:30:38] times are gonna get challenging. and it’s not our goal as business owners are not to get to a place where we control everything. So challenges don’t come up. They’re gonna come up. It doesn’t matter how good you are, how experienced you are, how much money you have, the problems are still gonna be there.

[00:30:57] Audra: What your goal should be as a business owner is to learn how to handle them better so you don’t spend so much time in that space. I don’t care if you’re brand new and starting your start up with a hundred bucks. Or your Grant Cardone that’s on his way to the billionaire Mark.

[00:31:16] Audra: He still has challenges. He just has different kinds of challenges and the challenges he have are not the same ones that he would’ve had when he was younger. We evolved through. And I think that’s so important to take away from it. Just like Anita has evolved through these different things, the challenges that she’ll run into now are not gonna be the same challenges she had when she started.

[00:31:38] Audra: You said that. , you could be [00:31:40] an introvert and now look at you, you’re on podcasts. and not that everybody has to change, but whatever that is for them. Can you look back and say, you know what, I’m a different Audra than I was a year. and I’m gonna keep challenge myself to find new things to help me evolve to whatever’s the next step.

[00:31:59] . So with the goals of evolving the massage business. And writing more books. Do you forecast that or, let me ask, are you still doing the MLM thing or no, that was just during

[00:32:13] Anita Swetman: that time? No, I just did it through lockdown because it’s too much for me working on my own to maintain that business as well.

[00:32:22] I’m still there if my team members need any help, but no, I decided that it wasn’t the path that I wanted to go down. no, I’ll stop doing that. And I find that I can write when I’m not working with my clients, cuz I do shift work each week. So I work all around, my husband’s work patterns so that when they come around they don’t feel like they’re imposing on any personal space.

[00:32:45] Anita Swetman: So I’ve got plenty of time, obviously when I’m not working that I can do, that’s not going to impact on

[00:32:53] Audra: anything. That’s nice. that’s a great thing to accomplish where you can still work from home and have some kind of work life balance, that’s very challenging for many people that work at home.

[00:33:05] Anita Swetman: Yeah. Yes, it is very challenging and obviously in covid, like I said earlier, I needed to look at a different way of working so that I could maintain my own health long term, whereas I could make

[00:33:18] Audra: anybody. that’s [00:33:20] awesome. What a great story. Thank you for sharing that. Oh,

[00:33:23] Anita Swetman: thank you. So if I can just help just one person, then my job is done

[00:33:28] Yeah. We always hope that whoever we come across or listens to our content or read their books, if we can help them move one step closer to what they’re trying to achieve, then it did what we set out for it to. absolutely. That’s awesome. So what would be one last thing that you would leave our audience with as far as maybe lessons you’ve learned or important things that kind of you live by daily?

[00:33:54] as soon as you said that, a quote that’s in, I’ve got lots of quotes in my books, positive affirmations. Okay. But it just popped in my head immediately, and it’s a quote by Lou Mandela and it’s, don’t let your past dictate who you are, but let it be part of who you will become. And I live. Oh, that’s beautiful.

[00:34:11] Anita Swetman: That gave me chilled . Oh, there’s lots of different quotes in my book that I’ve chosen specifically. and one at the very beginning, my publisher decided to keep it as a standalone quote. and which is by Bear Grills, to read it now. Cause I get tongue tied with it.

[00:34:26] Audra: Bear grills.

[00:34:28] Anita Swetman: Bear grills. Yeah.

[00:34:30] Anita Swetman: Being brave. He’s very insightful. He’s very insightful. Being brave isn’t the absence of fear. Being brave is having that fear, but finding a way

[00:34:39] Audra: through it. Yes. beautiful. That is a great way to wrap this up. Thank you so much for being here. I look forward to, seeing your journey of what comes.

[00:34:49] Anita Swetman: Yes, I’ll be looking forward to speaking. It’s a podcast with you and the, and readers further. Listeners and viewers further.

[00:34:58] Audra: Good. Good. All right, [00:35:00] Anita, have an awesome day. Thank you

[00:35:01] Anita Swetman: again. Lovely. Thanks so much, Audra.

[00:35:03]