The 30-Minute Connection Strategy That Built My Business With Chronic Illness

Episode Transcript
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(01:22):
Foreign.
Welcome to Business withChronic Illness, the globally ranked
podcast for women living withchronic illness who want to start
and grow a business online.I'm your host, Nikita Williams and
I went from living a normallife to all of a sudden being in
constant pain with no answersto being diagnosed with multiple

(01:43):
chronic illnesses and tryingto make a livable income. I faced
the challenge of adaptingtraditional business advice to fit
my unique circumstances withchronic illness. Feeling frustrated
and more burned out than Ialready was. While managing my chronic
illness to becoming an awardwinning coach with a flexible, sustainable
online coaching business, Ifound the surprisingly simple steps

(02:06):
to starting and growing aprofitable business without compromising
my health or my peace. Sincethen, I've helped dozens of women
just like you learn how to dothe same. If you're ready to create
a thriving business thataligns with your lifestyle and well
being, you're in the rightplace. Together, we're shifting the
narrative of what's possiblefor women with chronic illness and

(02:26):
how we make a living. This isBusiness with Chronic Illness.
Welcome to episode one of anew series here on the Business with
Chronic Illness podcast. Andthis series is called the Business
Safety Net series. Okay. Icreated this because one of the biggest

(02:50):
fears I hear from my clientsand I have even felt myself, is what
happens to my business when Ican't show up. However, that looks
like it could be with chronicillness. When you're busy with client
delivery, when you're onvacation, when you're burnt out,
when life is just lifing andhappening. And this is such a crucial

(03:11):
point. I think a lot of usknow we need systems for automate
automating our clientdelivery, like getting people onboarded
in a lot of different ways.But what about the most important
piece of it all, which ismarketing and sales? How do you do
that? So most of us don'tstructure our businesses around to
hold us to carry us for thosetimes, especially when it comes to

(03:35):
marketing and sales. And thatmeans our business feels fragile
or even worse, it stops makingmoney. So this series is all about
building your business safetynet. The systems that create peace,
ease and yes, revenue. Evenwhen you're not in the capacity or
your capacity is limited orsomething has changed in your world.

(03:58):
And this first episode iswhere we're going to be focusing
on a bit about podcasting,about long form content, about marketing
that creates the vehicle ofsales. Right? So because podcasting
has been such a safety net forboth marketing and sales in my business,
I'm going to share that withyou in this series. Okay. Today I'm

(04:20):
sharing with you what I callthe 30 minute a day connection strategy.
And this is something that Ihave kind of configured and worked
with with my clients. It usedto be called the five minute rule,
where five minutes twice aday, every day gives you two hours
a week to create thisstrategy. And for a lot of my clients
and a lot of people that Italk to, they're like, Nikita, I

(04:41):
can find 30 minutes a day tocreate the strategy that will last
you for a lifetime. You won'thave to do this every single time.
But this is really thefoundation of what we're talking
about. This is the approach Iuse when I had almost no capacity
but still needed to grow mybusiness. And this is exactly how

(05:01):
my podcast actually began andstarted to grow and bringing me clients
and why I still believepodcasting continues to work as a
safety net for me and forthose of you who decide to do it
as a strategy. A lot of peopleare talking about podcasting starting
one, but nobody's talkingabout the strategy around making
it sustainable for soloentrepreneur, service based entrepreneurs.

(05:24):
I'm going to teach you how todo that in this series. So first,
let me tell you a little bitabout why this 30 minute connection
strategy is going to help youbuild a business safety net in your
business. When I first startedmy business as a coach, I transitioned
from a digital marketer to acoach. I was in a season of life
where I had very limitedcapacity, mentally, physically, emotionally,

(05:48):
emotionally, spiritually even.And I was living with chronic illness
every day. At this time of myjourney, I was at a time I knew that
I had endometriosis, I knew Ihad fibromyalgia. And I was dealing
with the complications of whatthat looked like in real life. And
after advocating for years tofinally get a surgery that I knew
would help me with my qualityof life, I finally found a doctor

(06:11):
that said yes in a wholenother state than I currently was.
And so we had moved to Floridaat that time, and I knew I was going
to need time after thesurgery. But at the same time, I
knew I needed to figure out away to continue to sell market my
business. So after my surgery,I had a few hiccups and I truly realized

(06:32):
then that my brain and my bodyonly had a very small window of energy
and maybe five minutes or 30minutes and sometimes an hour, even
a week is what I couldactually focus or give attention
to. And now the reason why Ishare this part with you in the story
is that oftentimes when I talkto My clients about building a business

(06:54):
safety net. They think thatthey have to stop everything in order
to create the safety net. Theyalso feel that they don't have it
in place is going to takeforever to do it. And so I just wanted
to give, you know, story andconcrete evidence around why that's
not necessarily necessarilythe case. Because of where I started
this process. You might be ina great place to actually start implementing

(07:18):
this. You may not be. And thisis why there's a 30 minute process
or a 5 minute, twice a day oronce a day process to make this work.
Everything I looked at when itcame to growing my business and marketing
my business at the time when Iwas recovering from my surgery and
the things that led up to thatwas show up multiple times on social

(07:40):
media, network events, allthose things. And I used to do those
things in my digital marketingbusiness before I had my coaching
business. But at this time inmy life I couldn't and I didn't know
how long I would be able to dothat. So I couldn't do these coffee
dates in person. I couldn't dothis endless content creation everywhere.
But what I did know, that hasalways worked in no matter what industries

(08:05):
I've been in, in real estate,in corporate, in photography, having
a wedding photographybusiness, having my husband work
full time, me working parttime, and having a business every,
no matter what kind of thingI've done, trunk shows, events, all
of that is that connectioncreates sales. I'm gonna say that
again. No matter whatconnection, which means people that

(08:30):
have that connection createssales. That's something I had learned
from all of the years that Ihad in real estate, sales, marketing,
administrative, evenreception, all of that. I knew that
if I could connect withpeople, I could build trust. And
if I built trust, I couldbuild a business. I knew that. And

(08:50):
so instead of trying to keepup with the hustle and do all the
advice everybody told me to, Igave myself permission to be okay
with five minutes a week, fiveminutes a day, or 30 minutes a day.
That was my goal. 30 minutes,five minutes where I could focus
on connection. Connection. Andsometimes that meant commenting on

(09:11):
someone else's Instagram postsin a meaningful way. Sometimes that
meant sending a helpful orthoughtful dm. Sometimes that meant
sending a writing a shortemail or handwritten note to mail.
Oh my gosh, faux pas in 2025.And later then I started my podcast
which led to having morepeople inviting people to have more

(09:33):
conversations with me on theshow when I had the capacity to do
that. So it wasn't that I wastrying to be everywhere. It wasn't
from being perfectlyconsistent on these social media
platforms. It was beingconsistent with connection. And that
became the foundation for mybusiness safety net that I'm teaching

(09:53):
you today. Now, I did thisback in 2017 and I've done this throughout
my whole career as a businesscoach, and it's even easier to do
now. So here is the strategyand here's what it's going to look
like. Commenting on Instagramposts. I know it sounds weird, like,
Nikita, you don't want me topost reels. You don't want me to
post all this stuff. No, Iwant you to create conversations

(10:16):
with your fingers or voicenotes. Right. So back in the day,
that for me was Instagram, butnow you have threads, which is awesome
for this. Now you have TikTok,which is great for this because not
a lot of people are actuallydoing this part on TikTok, which
is commenting and engagingwith them. And LinkedIn perfect places
to try this strategy. Sendingthoughtful DMs based on people's

(10:40):
content or questions. Don'tjust randomly send people a dm. Like,
create the connection thatleads to having a conversation on
a dm. Writing short emails. Ifyou have people that you know in
previous industries orbackgrounds like I did. So I had
people that I had connectedwith through multiple different ways
because I had a digitalmarketing business, so I knew a lot

(11:01):
of people. I would send shortemails of just connecting and checking
in with them and seeing what'sgoing on. Okay. And then inviting
people. When I started mypodcast that I thought would be amazing
to share and get their storyout in the world to be on my podcast,
to share their story. If youdon't have a podcast and you're not

(11:21):
ready for that yet, which I'mgoing to teach you in this series,
how easy it can start and whyit's so important. But you can have
them write an email to youremail list. If you don't have an
email list, you can have themwrite a post for your content. You
can send, sponsor them, if youwill. You can do a Instagram live
or a TikTok live or a LinkedInlive or something like that. You

(11:43):
can find ways to connect withthese people and share the room and
the stage with them andelevate them. Elevate them. And you
don't have to do this byposting notice. A lot of the stuff
I'm saying is just aboutcreating conversations. It's not
about having all of thiscontent figured out quite yet. Right.

(12:04):
That comes with the podcast.If you just start having conversations,
you have started creatingopportunities for sales long term.
Why is this the foundation ofbusiness safety nets? Why is this
the foundation? Because whenyou later on in your life, in your
business life happened orwhatever, you have a network of people

(12:26):
who you can connect with andsay, hey, I'm out of pocket, I'm
busy, I'm looking for this. Iwould love help with this. You need
to send one email. You don'tneed to create 7,000 posts on social
media. You might be able tojust create one podcast episode or
one voice note in an email toyour list. You don't need to do all

(12:47):
of the things right. So thisis why. This is the foundation of
your safety net. Here's thething I want you to know. I want
you to realize it's not aboutshowing up everywhere. It's about
showing up with intention.Even in the small windows that you
currently have. So many of usare like, I can wait till I'm like

(13:07):
less busy. I can wait till I'mnot as in pain. That might be true
for you might need to wait forthat. But a lot of us are like just
waiting to the perfect time tocreate this foundation that if you
didn't start your businesswith, is not there. It takes less
than two minutes to pick upyour phone and text or comment on
someone's comment or answer aquestion in someone's thread or on

(13:28):
someone's Instagram, or tocompliment someone truthfully, like
genuinely, it takes fiveminutes. Okay. Why this works. Business
isn't built on algorithms.It's built on relationships, Period.
You can't have a business ifyou don't have relationships. You
can't have a business if youdon't have people, if you don't connect

(13:49):
with people. So those littlewindows of connection stacked over
time will bring youopportunities to sell and clients
long term. Okay. These littlesteps that I'm sharing with you are
the steps that led me tohaving podcast guests and having
people still to this day sendme referrals or send me people to

(14:11):
my podcast to be on my show.And when you layer this in into a
long form content strategylike podcasting, it can easily become
a stronger safety net for yourbusiness. Episodes that I record,
whether with an interview orsolo episodes like this one will
keep working because they arecreating connection. They're creating

(14:32):
conversations with that personwith themselves or with the ones
that want to make a decision,which we will talk about in the next
episode. Here's your challengefor this week. Pick 30 minutes, maybe
five minutes. If that's allyou have, two or three times this
week. And use it to connect,not create content to connect. Comment,

(14:54):
dm, compliment, email. If youhave a podcast, invite someone into
a conversation about aspecific problem you know that they
can help your audience serve,or a story that you think that will
benefit your audience andtheirs. Notice how much more powerful
this feels than trying to keepup with algorithms, right? If you

(15:17):
are watching this in 2025 ofSeptember 25th, Instagram just rolled
out something brand new wherenow audiences can choose who is going
to be in their algorithm, whothey're going to listen and watch
and listen for. So even moreso, is it important that you take
the initiative to createconversations? Now, for all my six

(15:40):
and seven figure businessowners, you might have people doing
this for you. You mightdecide, I'm going to create an SOP
or a place for someone to dothis for you. And I think that's,
that's kind of helpful. But tome, as a CEO, your job is to create
marketing and to create sales.That is the main thing you do, right?

(16:01):
And if you cannot find fiveminutes a day to have a conversation
with someone that couldpotentially be a customer or a client
or someone you can partnerwith, you have other issues we need
to talk about. We have otherissues we need to talk about. So
even you, the CEO, can findfive or ten minutes a day to communicate

(16:21):
and conversate with youraudience. Okay, all right. You don't
need hours of contentcreation, okay? You just need conversations.
You need five minutes ofconversations to create opportunities
to sell. You don't needperfect consistency to do this either.
It doesn't have to be everyday at the same time. All of the

(16:43):
time. Doesn't need to be that.It needs to be an intentional decision
that today, if I have fiveminutes, I'm going to spend that
five minutes communicating andconnecting period with strangers
or people I know on socialmedia, or connecting with people
I haven't connected with in along time. You can build a business
safety net for marketing andsales when you do small, persistent

(17:06):
actions. And you can leveragea podcast on this because it helps
you do all of this. Helps youliterally do all of this. So when
I started this process, it waswith the intention of growing my
podcast and creating marketingand sales. And so when I would reach
out to people, I would commentand talk with them and share with
them and connect with them andall of that. And then it ultimately

(17:27):
ended in, hey, I'd love tohave you on a podcast, or I Would
love to feature you on mypodcast. And that led to multiple
conversations, right? And thena conversation that lives on the
Internet forever and ever thateven I now to this day is using that
brings people to me. That ispart of my marketing and sales foundation,

(17:48):
period. So find a vehicle thatyou doing these little steps of connection
makes it even easier. And forme and for a lot of my clients that
is through podcasting. Okay?So you can build a safety net with
small persistent actions. Andmy choice of doing that is through
using the vehicle ofpodcasting. So you can turn those

(18:09):
micro actions into actionevergreen assets that keep working
for you well beyond that thatDM comment, that episode you recorded,
that Instagram live, or thatemail. Okay? So if you're ready to
build a business safety netthrough podcasting and through rooted
sales and conversations, thisis exactly what I help my clients

(18:31):
do instead of chronically youand profitable and through my one
on one coaching privatecontainer. If you want to join cyp,
which is my course, you can goto the link in the show Notes and
purchase. But if you wouldlike to figure out is the course
for me or do I need hands onsupport in doing this, you can book
a sales call in the link inthe show notes as well. And in the

(18:53):
next episode of the BusinessSafety Net series, I'll show you
how to turn a small audienceinto a mighty audience that turns
into profits. And whydownloads and likes and follows don't
really matter when you have asmall audience that makes decisions.
All right, see you in the nextepisode. That's a wrap for this episode

(19:16):
of.
Business with Chronic Illness.
If you would like to start and.
Grow an online coachingbusiness with me, head to the Show
Notes to click.
A link to book a sales call.
And learn how to make moneywith chronic illness. You can also
check out ourwebsite@ww.CraftedToThrive.com for
this episode's Show Notes andjoin our email list to get exclusive
exclusive content where Icoach you on how to chronically grow

(19:37):
a profitable business whileliving with chronic illness. Until
next time, remember yes, youare crafted to thrive.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The 30-Minute Connection Strategy That Built My Business With Chronic Illness