Hi, I'm Becky Ekins, business Mindset and Lifestyle coach for occupational therapists. I focus on creating a freedom-based online business, helping OTs to package up their skills in unique and exciting offers that feel so good that they sell with ease in the online space. Since leaving the profession of ot, I have now worked with hundreds of clients online, helping them to create a life they feel inspired by.
In this podcast, I will talk about the lifestyle goals, mindset, and strategy you need to create your own life of freedom.
Hello and welcome to a very. Special episode of the OT of Freedom podcast, and today I'm excited. I'm very excited because it's our hundredth episode, so totally feeling night celebrating today. So really excited. So that's 100 conversations, big conversations that we've had. About freedom, about business, about alignment, and really what's possible when OTs stop following the old fashioned traditional rule book and start writing their own.
And when I pressed record on the very. Episode I had no idea what was going to happen, what it would be like to run a podcast. I just knew that I had a lot to say and I enjoy talking and inspiring others, and I just had a big message to share and it's been such a fun journey. Like I can't believe it's still going on and actually still lighting me up.
Like it's one of the things that I enjoy doing the most. Which is fantastic and I really still feel very inspired to help OTs across the world. Who've just been trading time for money, working in systems that are ineffective, not allowing them to be the best OT that they want to be, and they're not financially paid.
Paid their worth. As well, and they're just feeling trapped. And I really do just want to continue this message. My personal belief, we do not need to be burnt out. We don't have to be a martyr to the system. And so here we are four years later after I first started my own business and probably around.
Six to seven years after I started trying to start businesses. 'cause that was a whole fun part of my life before we even before I even had any success. So we are 100 episodes in we have a thriving business supporting OTs across the world. We've helped hundreds of OTs who've created their own version of freedom.
And I've got a team of brilliant people by my side and OTs are not OTs who work for me. And this still feels like we're at the start. Like I have this big sense that there's so much more to come. This is definitely just the beginning for us. So let's just go back a little bit and talk about where it all started.
So if we rewind to December, 2021, that was when I actually started a coaching business and not really knowing where it was going to go. I had fast success doubled my OT wage virtually straight away and quickly reached kind of 10 K cash months within my business within a relatively short period of time.
And at that stage as an ot, I was earning. A very low wage 'cause I only worked a few hours. I was on a bun six here in the uk it's not a lot of money. So suddenly it was very different. And I wasn't having to work that many hours to achieve that either. Roll on to 2022. So many OTs asking me how I did it.
Eventually I realized that my true passion wasn't in what I was actually delivering. It's actually I was obsessed about business. I always have been quite interested. I've invested a lot of money into learning and growth. All about how to do business, and I'm still fascinated now, if you ever see me reading a book which is very often actually it's always going to be on how to bring the best out in people, how to achieve better results for my clients and just improving business knowledge.
That's just. My obsession. And so that's what I clicked into and I started helping OTs to create their own version of freedom and just the life that they wanted, whether it was about travel, whether it was more time and whether they just wanted to free up life. And do something fulfilling in the process.
But what I realized very quickly was that OTs just don't know how to package up their services and they don't know how to market and sell themselves. So there was so many pieces that they were missing, and yet they had so many fantastic pieces that they were just really good at.
I just wanted to take a moment to share how I help occupational therapists to create their own version of freedom. I help OTs all around the world to design, launch, and scale their online business. You will learn how to tap into a deeper understanding of your purpose, your mission, and how to turn that into an exciting offer to sell online.
I have clients who've hit three K, 5K, 10 K, and 15 K months. Anything is possible. If it sounds like a good fit, then contact me via the link on the show notes. And so I did. I could see that my journey of collecting all these. Skills had got me to where I was and it's quite easy really to package up that learning 'cause there was quite a few clear steps that people needed to know.
We've not changed the process a lot since the start of the business because it works. But we have tightened things up made it stronger and continuously improved it. But the actual core of what we do has stayed the same, which is basically teaching alignment. So making sure that we get the first piece of understanding your purpose, getting everything in sync, creating the right offer to start with.
Business strategy, which is always going to be the laziest business strategy because why make things hard and they can be easy. Like why? So that's what we teach and the mindset and energetics and you just can't do any of this without having an up level in mindset and energetics. So we've not changed that core, it's just some of the strategies have obviously changed and things have been updated.
And yeah, so it, it grew fast. It grew very fast.
I started Becky's program and I moved quickly. It was fantastic. It was amazing. Doors opened. She was able to work with me by halfway through the program. I'd made all the money that I'd invested with Becky, and I've made, oh nearly $30,000 now and I have payments. Coming in and my clients are growing month by month, and I continue to learn.
I continue to learn and it's just gonna get better and better. My sense of freedom has increased, my stress has decreased, my ability to be flexible with my time and spend time with my family. It's all increased. I am so different now than I was then. I could not fit back in the box that I was in.
The normal trap that we set ourselves for, I don't fit anymore. My life is happy. My life is free. So my business has just continued to evolve, and now I have figured out how to mix my OT background with who I am and how I basically operate in my general life. How I keep myself centered is all through regulation, regulating my nervousness.
Battling overstimulation. I travel a lot. I'm in different spaces. It can be very o overwhelming culture shock, all of that. I started realizing as I spoke to more and more of my clients that the burnout that they were feeling was actually just overstimulation and dysregulation, and it's been amazing. I have definitely made my money for the course back, which was not something I thought I'd be able to do so quickly at the start of my business when I started working with her.
So I went from having a side hustle that I was embarrassed about because like it was a business, but it wasn't really a business 'cause I wasn't earning anything. And that's how it felt to me to being super confident about my business and super confident about the kinds of people I wanna work with.
And being able to show up authentically on social media and be like, this is who I am. And I don't have to be scared about putting people off because the only people I'm putting off. It's people that I probably don't want to work with anyway.
I actually had a big intention right from the start. I just had this inner voice that was like, this isn't going to be a small thing. This is it. You're going big. I think as a child I always wanted to be the Prime Minister. It just. Makes me laugh that because I'm not interested in politics one bit.
But for some reason I think I've always had that drive. If I'm doing something, I want to be the best, I want to go big. And I just want to keep growing. I knew that right from the start, by month three. In the business. I hired my first team member. I knew that I was going to need staff. I knew that I wasn't going to continue doing social media on my own, and that somebody was going to be running that side of it for me.
And since then, I've nearly always had one or two people managing social media for me. At the minute I, I have. Two members of staff that work 40 hours each. And they do my social media basically. That to me is the essence of freedom that I don't have to be bogged down with the nitty gritty of these things.
Now, in the early days, I built the business while I was traveling. That wasn't always easy. I think I've talked about that on previous podcasts episodes. Sometimes there was a challenge but, we stumbled through, we made it work. And having stuff then was very helpful.
But we had. Bigger growth. So roll on December, 2023. I make decisions based on emotion a lot of the time to form man manifesta in human design and emotional manifesta, I should say. And I just had a feeling I had this feeling for a while that I wanted somebody to help with human design. It's something that had been you know how you get a little rumble.
And I was like, people are creating a business and they're trying to copy what I've done, but that doesn't work for people. That tires some people out. It's not the right strategy for other people. I could see that, but I wanted to have a stronger way. Of encouraging my clients to find their own path, and the answer really lies in the uniqueness of human design.
And I'd been learning more and more about it over the years, but not. Really doing a deep dive, and it was always at the back of my mind at some point, I want to bring on somebody who can help with human design and business, and then I just happened to see Meg online. Hobie and goatee and something about what she said just grabbed my attention.
I commented on one of her posts, and that was it. Like I, I almost instantly knew that she was the right person to work with me and being the manifester, I initiated it all. I shared my idea, invited her to come and talk to me and just felt. So much warmth. Really just, she's a very special person and I could feel this alignment in our message and what we were doing.
And she came on board. So it was December 23. We had a big launch. It was very successful. We brought in lots of clients and their energy was fantastic. And the client. We're all saying it's life changing. This is a life changing process because working with Meg and myself it just meant that the business was really created in a way that fit their energy.
So we had very good feedback. And yeah, I just find that clients. Can activate the natural magnetism when they understand the human design. So they're working with it instead of trying to create a business that's working against it. And Meg's just got this way of bringing out the depth of a person and that can really help the confidence in so many areas.
They were all reporting. It was. It was helping the whole life, not just the business. So that was fantastic. By March, 2024, things were still going fast and I knew I needed another support. Within my team. Now I had been watching a client a very special client, Lindsey who's UK based. And I'd been watching her go through my program and just realized that we were very aligned in our message.
But there were some key things that Lindsay brought to the table that I didn't, and I approached Lindsay she'd had great results within our program. She'd had a really. Good experience. When I say a good experience, everyone who goes through the program will have a difficult time.
There's challenges that come up. And Lindsay was the same, but. She was able to work through it, which this is part of being in business. And so I knew that she'd experienced the whole program and she'd experienced business for years. She's had her own business for years before that.
And they were just, and she just loves ot, so passionate. So Lindsay famously says that if you cut her in half, like a. Stick of rock. She'd have OT written all the way through her, which is perfect because I am more of the rebel ot. I dropped my registration in 2019 and I really wanted somebody who could passionately keep the core values of OT within the business.
So Lindsay's there really to help support clients with growth and mindset, but also to be that, that OT that brings the passion and allows you to retain your passion and your heart for what you want to. Do yeah, and Lindsay being a clinical supervisor, very experienced pediatric OT, is just a lot of skills that she brings in and tends to be a little bit more sensitive than my straightforward manifesto style way of communication.
And then we also bought Robin at one stage, so Rob's a sales expert. And we just bring him as a problem shooter really. If there's a client who's struggling with sales, 'cause not every client does then they can have sessions with Rob. And quite honestly, that's been really transformational. So those clients that aren't making sales wouldn't say, receive that one-to-one training and feedback.
Sales just become so much easier. So that's been fantastic. So the team grew quite quickly. Mega on alignment, human design, Lindsay, on mindset and strategy, Rob on sales and then wrap, that really eased the load. So I was leading teaching, but also able to take breaks, which is fantastic. And so my latest break was just a two week trip to Kenya on Safari with my teens and I.
Decided to not work at all. I couldn't work at all because we were so full on with the travel of the safari. Oh. And it was just wonderful. And the business kept running and the clients fed back to me after that. They've had a really good experience. With all the staff looking after them.
So I just feel so much gratitude for having an amazing team that are helping to run this business.
I'm Lindsay, I'm an OT supervisor in the UK and I'm part of the OT collective. And it has been an honor to be part of the team since March, 2024 after I completed my coaching through Becky's program. I love the fact that we work with a, such a variety of clients and Becky is drawn together a team that just brings such variety of skills.
Which is fantastic. So I'm an OT through and I think one of the things that, that I bring that clients like to come and talk about is the occupational therapy part of this journey. So everybody is coming with their own business idea with amazing, fascinating ideas that they bring and they want to go forward and develop.
But we all have OT at our core. Now for some that is deeper rooted than it is for others, and that's absolutely okay. We love that. We love the variety that comes in, but I love watching the growth of our clients, the success of their business. Yes, that's fantastic, but the growth of themselves. Is just spectacular.
Nobody goes through this program without growing. We all do this in different ways, and sometimes it feels a little bit challenging and a little bit tricky, and that's why you need the team around to help you navigate those times and the community. So it's really important that the community that Becky's created helps bring together.
Everybody, when we have those slightly challenging times of growth, because we cannot grow without it being slightly uncomfortable. And that's a good thing. We don't wanna shy away from that. We wanna celebrate it. And I think that's one of the things that I love about the OT collective and the way that we are able to support everybody, bring different skills.
I love watching people grow. I love watching people have those aha moments when something just clicks for them or something starts to feel more aligned to them. And that really is key because this isn't a kooky cutter style business. This is where people are creating something that's unique and authentic to them, and I love supporting that.
I think that's the best part for me about being part of this experience is supporting every individual to find what is unique to them. And let's face it, that's ot, right? So congratulations, Becky, on a hundred episodes of the podcast. It's fantastic and I'm sure there are many more there to come. It is an honor to be part of the OT Collective team, and I love working alongside everybody, and I'm enjoying the celebrations and the growth that your clients achieve.
Hello, this is Meg and I'm absolutely over the moon To celebrate the 100th episode of the podcast and to be a part of the OT Freedom Collective, it has been a joy the past two years nearly to. Watch clients go from being confused, uncertain, scattered on where they wanna go with building a business to feeling extremely confident in the direction that they're going and the purpose that they're living.
I am the innovative, quirky mental health OT on the team who specializes in human design. And this really unique system helps you capitalize on your unique strengths to build a lifestyle and a business that's going to thrive and feel. Useful, not cookie cutter and not like anybody else that you have seen.
So seeing clients go from having a hard time to absolutely thriving is one of the biggest blessings about being a part of this community. I just had a client the other day talk about how the human design piece was something that they never would've expected and has been the missing piece of the puzzle for them in this whole system, getting to know themselves and has brought so many aha moments.
To their business and entrepreneurship journey. So thank you for being here. We are so honored to have your ears, and we would love to support you if you feel called to do so in the future.
So if we talk about. Client results, the kind of stories that we are able to present the, quite honestly, it's some shivers down my spine as to what OTs can achieve. I'm always excited about it. And we've got so much more, like we could go so much further. We've seen clients hit their first 5K, 10 K, 15 month.
We even. Had one recently who hit a 30 5K month, which is really exciting. And we've had multiple people make their first sale of thousands within just three weeks of starting. They're the fast people. And I always like to point out not everybody is going to achieve those results. So some of those people that are getting the.
Fast results, they might have got some skills already. They might have got, the business partly designed, et cetera, et cetera. So just to be realistic, that's the fastest that people are achieving it. But more realistic, in six to nine months being able to double your income or hand in your notice and replace your OT job.
That's more common. And it's not just about money. The fulfillment factor is so important and creating something that energizes you, makes you feel alive, it really does, and that's the thing I love seeing most in clients when their eyes are sparkling and they've got that energy and they're so passionately talking about this thing and really starting to gain confidence in it.
So that's fantastic. And then of course, we can't forget the. Freedom that comes with it. So we've seen clients immigrate. We've seen clients who've just been able to go on long holidays, pack their job or stay home with the children. Just it gives you choice. Freedom will just give you choice. And so that's fantastic.
And of course energy is everything. And when we are walking the right path for us, we really do increase our energy. So work doesn't have to be draining. For example, if you don't like reports, just stop doing them. Like, why are we doing these things that we don't like? If you don't like them? I am aware some people love reports, but probably often I hear the opposite.
I can remember a client first saying to me for the first time in years, I feel like myself again. And that's the crux of this. When you find the thing that you really want to be doing in life, it's all about identity and purpose. It gives you energy. And then when you've got freedom and choice to be able to move your whole life into alignment.
You're gonna have time for personal care again, you're gonna have time for exercise. All the things that people really wish they had a bit more time for are possible. Yeah, that one thing that's commonly said is after they've worked with us, it's changed the trajectory of their business and their life.
And I, there's nothing more that I love than receiving messages from clients. Who years later have continued to move forwards. And it's really interesting listening to the stories. I know we've got one former client who's just moved to Costa Rica for a year and I've got another client. Who is actually moving into creating face-to-face businesses now.
She didn't feel the need for online anymore. She had so much success with it and was just quite happily and confidently creating something else and. Story after story we hear just make us so happy to know that people are just continuing. 'cause the things you learn when they work with us, they just keep on applying.
I'm still using most of the same strategies as when the started. You just build on them. And once you've learn them it is just a case of life can just. Keep getting better and better, which is exciting. 'cause one of the things that happened with me, and this is I am so different than it was six months ago, was to say where is your true passion?
And it could be, and very well could be different than what you are doing right now. What you think that you're doing Well, one of the things that I had done is when I started my own clinic, yeah. I want to see. Some of the types of kids that I've worked with before, sensory processing and autism. But I am the local expert.
I'm the, I'm in pediatric incontinence and I set up my clinic as a, you know what? I'm gonna be doing pediatric incontinence with some of this other stuff on the side because they enjoy it. And then when I first got into the program, I was like, okay, yeah. Yeah. The program that I had started before trying to do these classes, a lot of it was focused on pediatric in incontinence.
That's not what I'm doing. And that's not what I should be, that's what I thought that I was gonna be doing, but that's not what I should be doing. And yeah, it makes a huge difference. Very often the case. Yeah. I am going to have freedom to do more with my family and to say, Hey, you know what, let's take off this weekend and let's go camping and let's go exploring.
Let's go here. Let's go see that and not feel guilty about taking time away from the business or how much time I'm away to be able to just go and just be present with them. Yeah, I was very thankful to find Becky because as she says, OTs burn out very easily. And so the fact that I can do things, I can go to the toilet when I want to.
I can have a cup of coffee when I want to, that's like a dream. It sounds mad, but it still is. The fact that I can absolutely. And working remotely means I can help people around the world. So you've got this freedom of time, of flexibility and that freedom in your mind to think well. If I've got something on, I can just build my business around the things that I need to.
So I work part-time hours and get a full-time income because my family is very important to me. So it allows me to focus on my family, to focus on me if I want to go, like you. If we want time in the day, which both of us often do, I can have that time in the day and I can go down to the beach. I can connect with the beach, I can meet friends.
I can take my mom out When I first was getting started, even as a solopreneur and a solo provider with a part-time space. I was still making five figures just on my own, and I have really good connections and I think the networking piece and the relational piece of this business is so important. Now I feel.
That I have a better kind of like energy audit, I would say of, okay, here are my bare necessities for the days that I wake up and I don't have that much capacity. And I know what needs to get done. I have my priorities for the day. And then there's other days where I wake up and I'm like, okay, we could, we can take on a little bit more.
So I can pull something off of my priority list that I've been meaning to tackle. And it's much easier to time block now that I have a little bit more of an even keel rather than these really high peaks and then a crash after I. Love, OT and the, I really believe there's so much value in what we do and not enough people know what we do as we all know, but being able to share that whether you're in dementia care or pediatrics or whatever realm, just being able to share the power of OT because I think we undersell ourselves way too often.
And and if we continue to do that our profession loses. Loses its power. So we really need to be able to get out there and profess what we can do and because we're doing it every day. Since doing the coaching program with Becky, I have found that the shift in my mindset has enabled me to power on with building a product and a business, build my own coaching program as well.
Work in the field of burnout, recovery, as well as do contract and consultancy work with other people, and having a coach that inspires you and encourages you and reminds you of what you are capable of and helps you shift. Your thinking has been you can't, there is. It's priceless. It's amazing. So I highly recommend it and I am so thankful.
So four years in, what are my main learnings? And of course number one is alignment is everything. That's why we teach. So much. If you're fully aligned with your business, you've got flow you become magnetic. And that's the exciting thing. Sales flow business feels easy. And that's why we start off every client with the alignment piece.
Number two is energy is everything. And as the business owner, my energy ripples out into the whole business. If I'm rested, if I've decluttered, if I've meditated, taken a holiday, all of those things that don't look anything like work my. Improve. And not only that, my energy impacts on client results.
So I, if I can see clients struggling, not getting results, what energy do I need to put in to help them? And it makes such a massive difference. So keeping myself tiktoks really important. Number three, this was one of the biggest learning points. I've talked about it before. On podcasts, but things are happening for me and not to me.
So every bump in the road as an entrepreneur has carried a lesson and sometimes it's a painful moment. But looking back, I wouldn't change any of it because it's all helped me to grow. So when you start to come from the energy that actually these things are happening. For you. It helps you take the learnings and move on super fast.
And that is a much better energy than getting bogged down with it all. And then of course, number four, burnout is outdated. You do not need to sacrifice yourself for success. Watching clients dig out what's on their heart, finding their passions and turning it into something that gives them energy is the exact opposite of burnout.
Reigniting your passion. That is freedom. So they're my big learnings. Now, a little bit of honesty. Of course no business runs perfectly and ours has had its sort. Up and downs. So it has been a wild journey, but of course it's not been perfect all the time. And very often we are really experimenting and growing.
We're very experienced in our experimenting 'cause we've been doing it for years. But we're always testing new things and some of them work and some of them don't. And in the early days, client results, there were more of a mixed bag than they are now. So some people would have fantastic results and the person next to them not so good.
And that really caused me to do a deep dive into all parts of psychology. And just looking at what makes. One client's successful and the other not. And that was part of the drive to really get that human design piece built in. But it's something that I study a lot because I find it. Very interesting to see how I also like to predict it a little bit.
When I'm on sales calls and I meet people, I like to give them more of an honest feedback of how fast I think they will get their, so the more I understand about people, the better. Emotional resilience is one of the biggest pieces here and I've spoken about it before on a podcast. Those successful clients they've not necessarily got more skill, more time any of that.
It is literally how fast. They bounce back when they come across challenges. So that was a real key learning during that stage. And of course when Meg joined the team, that really helped that. And sometimes you have experiences. In business where maybe somebody complains or things go wrong, and we always use it as a business to do a deep dive into how we're working, how we're presenting things.
And we are constantly improving and my goal really is to get clients getting bigger and bigger results and faster as well. That's always my goal, so anything we can do to improve that. Is is what we're working on. And so where are we going next, really? So personally I have just stopped being a home educating or a homeschooling mom.
So for the last 15 years I've had two children who are very kind of key to the way my whole day runs. It's a bit like being on school holidays all the time. And so I've navigated life around that kind of calendar. So I've built my business early in the morning, late at night. And yeah, it was, so now my son is starting school.
He's 13 and my daughter started last year. We've actually ended our world schooling and homeschooling experience and it was so beautiful just to end that with an African safari, which felt like a real full circle moment. So right now I'm gonna have more time than I've ever had before. More energy.
More drive, and I've got big visions for really diving into this business in an even bigger way. So I've only been able to work 12 hours a week because I'm only able to work 12 hours a week because solo parenting and home educating, it just. It's just not been possible to work more. And the business has not just survived, but it's thrived on that amount of time.
So I'm quite excited. I am planning to work more like 20 hours a week to get some new systems, some new things set up to really do a deep dive. Into making sure that this global brand is the leader in OTs creating freedom. So I'm quite excited as to all the extra things that we're going to be doing.
And I know there's people listening. Today, who will be ones who are making 10 K months, 30 K months in the future. It's so exciting what we can achieve. And this is really why this podcast was made so that we can continue to keep inspiring you as OTs. To actually believe and realize how much potential you have.
So you'll notice on the podcast, I'm always trying to interview people, OTs, who are, people actually, 'cause they're not always OTs, but who have. Achieved freedom or who have started on their journey to so that you get this kind of like realistic expectation of what is possible.
Because I really want the best for every ot. I'd love to say we can just. End burnout. Like we don't need to be in a situation where we're having to feel burnt out and working for a system that's not working anymore. We can just create our own thing. It's not for every ot but it is for those OTs who are feeling ready to break free.
So the more. OTs I meet the more I realize what a valuable and life-changing profession we are. I have this beautiful position now where I've chatted some more OTs than I thought was even humanly possible at one stage of life. In the past, when I left the NHS, I felt jaded with the system.
I thought it was OT that I'd fallen out with. I couldn't wait to get rid of my registration. I hated it. I was angry. And it's just so ironic how I've ended up with more love. For the profession than ever before. Because I get to sit and listen and interview guests so regularly who are changing the world.
These OTs they're changing lives. They're just like, the value of what we have to give is incredible. So I hope as listeners of the podcast that you are picking up on all of these possibilities. I hope the podcast is supporting you. Certainly. We get a lot of good feedback on it. And so thank you for that.
Thank you for being supporters and thank you for listening and we would appreciate it if you want to continue sharing our podcast so that it can be our message can be heard by more OTs across the world. And if you leave feedback and yeah, just keep sharing with others, that would be very helpful.
To my team, Meg, Lindsay, Rob and my social media team. Jan and Grace thank you so much for sharing this journey with us and thank you to the clients. Like I meet the most. Incredible clients and feel so privileged to hear their stories and to see what beautiful businesses they're creating.
And thank you for all that trust that you've put with us to help you on your journey. And yeah. How exciting for our hundred. Podcast episode, and I wonder where we'll be for our second hundred.
If you are an OT with three to 10 hours per week spare, then the OT yourself to Freedom membership is best for you. It will teach you how to create a business, an online freedom style business, but in an affordable way. And this is best for those of you who haven't got the time to really go for it. If you have the time to go for it and you want to achieve.
Bigger results in a short space of time. What you're looking for is the OT Freedom Collective. This is for OTs who've got 10 hours a week or more, and you're just really keen to get big results. That's where you're going to be closely supported by our team for a six month period. It will be intensive.
You'll learn everything you need to create this freedom style business. And the biggest word that people say about it is that it's life changing.
