Heather Porter
Introduction
Hello there! Kylie here. Welcome to the very first episode of the AMLBD podcast. If you were previously a listener to Land Your Dream Job with Inspired Careers, welcome to my newest podcast! Or, if you were simply inspired to check out what this meaningful life gig is, then also a huge welcome to you too. I am beyond excited to bring you this new podcast where I interview inspiring Thought Leaders that have intentionally created incredible lives and careers. I have been very fortunate throughout my life to have met and worked with some truly amazing individuals and some of these incredible people will be featured on my podcast.
As an Entrepreneur and Coach, I used to get pretty excited about sharing my life and career insights, my growth on the spiritual path and my hacks to building a career and life that I loved, and though I don’t doubt I have some very useful information and insights to share, really I am a jack of all trades. There are people far wiser and more talented in their specific careers and/or Thought Leaders in their respective spaces. So rather than listen to me bang on, on a Facebook live or on this platform, I thought my talents are much better put to use by interviewing all these brilliant people that have either come into my life or that I’ve sought out. The A Meaningful Life by Design podcast was born!
About the Guest
My very first interview on this new podcast is with the talented Heather Porter. Heather kicked off her early career in a big way, working with Tony Robbins, managing events globally. She then went on to co-found the Billionaire Adventure Club, where she brought entrepreneurs to work with the Richard Branson School of Entrepreneurship in South Africa, and other social enterprises globally. Heather is an #1 best selling author, co-author of 4 business books, and host of ‘That Social Media Show’ on the Bizversity business app used in over 100 countries. She now runs Website Love, a website development and social media agency. Heather is a regular speaker on the circuit, speaking about growing your business online for audiences.
Recently she became the first of eight Facebook Community Trainers in Australia and New Zealand. In short, she is an incredible Entrepreneur and a queen of online business development. Heather works with her fiancé and is a step mum to two teenage boys. Originally from the US, she now lives with her family in the northern beaches of Sydney, when she’s not jet-setting domestically and internationally for work.
What I love about Heather’s career and life is how she has built a fulfilling career with awareness and clear intention. At each step of her career, at each juncture, she looked at her circumstances, considered everything and make conscious decisions, aligned to her values, on how she wanted to live her life and make a meaningful impact on the world. This podcast is a must-listen if you’d like to understand how to intentionally chart a career course that embraces opportunity and know when to change course in order to fulfil your potential and add value to the lives of others. Anyway, I won’t give any more away, I’ll let Heather tell you her amazing story herself.
Podcast Summary
- Heather Porter worked with Tony Robbins by managing events globally. She co-founded Billionaire Adventure Club where she brought entrepreneurs to work with Richard Branson School of Entrepreneurship in South Africa. Heather is a number one best-selling author, co-author of four business books and host of That Social Media show. She runs Website Love, a website development and social media agency. She is a regular speaker about growing business online for audiences. In short, she’s an incredible entrepreneur and a queen of online business development. Originally from the US, she now lives with a family in the Northern Beaches of Sydney when she’s not jet-setting domestically and internationally for work.
- As a young girl, Heather had three big ideas for her career. Firstly, she wanted to be a veterinarian because she loves animals. Secondly, an artist because she always loved doing art, painting, and drawing. And lastly, to be an actress. Heather was really shy growing up. As a family, they moved around a lot so she developed a kind of pattern of not easily opening up with anybody. Despite that, the constant moving made a huge impact on her life by making her incredibly resilient. Also, she developed a fascination for travelling and appreciation with people from a wide variety of backgrounds.
- In University, Heather started out as an Art Degree major. However, she realized that her chosen degree most likely wouldn’t make her much of a living. She then shifted to International Business. After graduating, she found her first job in a newspaper ad for Tony Robbins. She always felt that people in her life were kind of leading her via books or educational programs towards personal development. What’s fascinating about her job with Tony is that she actually had no idea who Tony was, and she’s the only person in the history of the company at that time, that got hired without even knowing who he was.
- Heather traced back her direction from two paths early one. She gained part of her direction from her younger and wilder party self. The other was her internal compass.
- The most profound moment of her life happened when she was working for Tony Robbins as her day job and also running a business alongside her boyfriend. Her business was an art, fashion and music events business based in San Diego. Heather and her boyfriend basically ran different events where they brought in fashion shows, artists and DJs. During her day job, Heather was hanging out with a very interesting crew, while with the party life, it was completely the other way around.
- While working with Tony, she travelled from Australia to the Gold Coast to run some events. At the end of the event, she ended up going out in a boat with some of the staff, volunteers and other people that had attended the event. Suddenly, out at sea, she has a moment of complete clarity, a loud calling that said to her if she doesn’t change her peer group right now, she’s not going to like where she’s going to end up. The boat was spinning at that moment. She described it as one of those weird movie scenes where you’re in the middle and the camera is spinning around. She looked at the people on the boat – random, amazing people. Then, she remembered her peer group in San Diego and realized she was not going to get anywhere with her peers back home. In the late 20s at the time, she decided it was time to make a big shift.
- Straight after the trip, upon returning the US, Heather broke up with her boyfriend of 7 years, moved out from her apartment and move to Australia. While in Australia, her goal initially was to stay for one year. She went out and meet people and eventually ended up meeting somebody that was graduating from a life coaching school. This person asked her to meet the company’s Director, soon to be her work sponsor. After a gruelling six months of eating noodles because she had no money, she eventually got a good job. For a short amount of time, she had the job as the Head of Operations for life coach training company but the company didn’t work out and the directors ended up moving overseas. She had 30 days to leave the country or find work. Gratefully, she had been dating a man for quite a while and he asked her for her hand in marriage.
- Heather started pursuing her goals. Funnily enough, the personal development industry had chased her around for most of her life. There was a speaker in Australia that was flourishing. The speaker’s promoter approached her and invited her to run the crew program for their speaker. She accepted the offer then transitioned into a freelance position.
- As for Heather’s roles, she had been in a leadership role, speaker role and performance role where she’d be speaking and training a group of people. For a while, Heather ran a travel club called The Billionaire’s Club. They would take entrepreneurs all over the world to do projects like social entrepreneur in countries like Cambodia. They worked with the Richard Branson School of Entrepreneurship, South Africa and ran training for their students.
- Suddenly, the club was shut down. From that moment, Heather was presented with major life questions. She had to ask herself, “Where’s my next pay-check going to come from?” and “Who am I? What’s my identity? Up until that point, her identity had been “the girl behind the speaker. She doesn’t have any idea what to do with her life.
- This is where her business then came to play. While dabbling into her adventure club, she ended up stepping into online marketing through Facebook. Heather, together with her co-founder, decided to create a membership site where people can log-in from all over the world. She self-taught herself with another developer to build the site.
- Today, she’s running a website development and social media marketing company. It’s a small team and she kept it small on purpose. Her team is composed of a web developer, graphic artist, project manager and social media manager. For Heather, success is freedom. It’s the freedom to travel, work anywhere she wants, and make enough money to have experiences. She’s learning how to grow and stabilize. She’s at this stage in her business where she’s looking at growth and scalability but still keeping it very tight and close to her heart because she doesn’t want to get out of control this time like it in her first business ownership/partnership venture.
- Heather pays attention to her emotions now. She believes that emotions are little triggers that help us align with ourselves to where we want to go. She takes a moment to check her thoughts before and/or after each moment to see if something has changed. One of the themes she lives by is searching for simplicity. It’s about simplifying things in her life like her social network or belongings. Another theme is, being with nature. She’ll always go outside whenever she can and has some control over her day. For her, even if it’s just to eat lunch outside, sit under the sunshine, or sit next to a tree, it’s already beneficial. Lastly, making herself a priority. Giving herself more freedom, flexibility and self-care despite her busy schedule every day.
- Heather shared that the quality of questions you ask will directly determine the quality of your life. If you’re with an incredible person, ask them really interesting questions to learn more about them and their expertise. The same goes to yourself and your own self-talk. She also imparted the value of looking at things that keep you productive rather than busy. The last point she highlighted was to not wait until you find your passion to get moving. Finding and knowing our passion is not necessarily a given. It’s more of a journey to find what we are truly passionate about. She advises “Do the job. Start the business to get moving, then work towards something that you like and on the way, you’ll develop and find your passion.”
Podcast Conclusion
Thanks for joining us on the first episode of AMLBD. Ensure you subscribe to the podcast on your favourite app and head across to the site at AMLBD for free inspiring content. We’ll also keep you updated on free courses, retreats, and lots of cool stuff.
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