Chill & Prosper
If you are a woman in business for yourself and you haven’t come across Denise Duffield-Thomas’s work, then you are in for a real treat with the book Chill and Prosper! I came across Denise (or DDT as she is known to her followers) back in 2017 when I took my first step into working for myself in business. I joined her Money Bootcamp, which is designed to help women running their own business with their money mindset. Its designed to help women stop under-charging, working for free, over-delivering and generally switch from a scarcity to an abundant mindset.
Let’s Dive in…
This book is an updated version of a book she wrote a couple of years back called ‘Chillpreneur’, and in it, she refers to many of the techniques she shares with us ‘lucky bees’ (as she calls her clients) and shares loads more resources. This includes scripts to help you increase your fees with existing clients or transition a freebie client into a paying client. Her philosophy around money is that it creates more opportunities in your business. The more money you earn, the more people you can help. However, unlike her other books, this one isn’t all focused on money. There are loads of great tips about how to create more ease and flow in your business.
Although she is a multi-millionaire entrepreneur, Denise is a native Aussie and her style is super laid back and chilled out. Hence the ‘chill’ in the title. She shares all the ways she has made her business work for her, and role models how readers can do the same. For instance, she talks about looking for shortcuts in your business. Rather than reinventing the wheel, she discusses looking for ways you can achieve a ‘keyless life’. That might be through creating passive income products or hiring people in your business rather than trying to be the ‘Chief Everything Officer’ (Denise reminds us that is not what CEO stands for!).
A Refreshing Outlook
The thing that is refreshing about Denise is that she is also a Mum to three young children. This means that rather than ignoring the home stuff (which a lot of business books written by men do), she talks about practical things you can do to help you free up time to work on your business. Whether that is outsourcing cleaning and laundry in your home or outsourcing things you don’t enjoy or find tricky in your business. Setting up a home team and a business team can help you to create more ease and flow in your life generally. Freeing you up to focus on more income-generating streams.
The key with this, she says, is to start small but start before you feel ready. Many of us (and I count myself in this) say we will hire more help around the house, with our kids, or in our business when we can afford to, when our businesses are earning more money. Denise advises that is the wrong way round.
A lot of Denise’s brilliance is in her no-nonsense and humorous approach to business. She recommends treating it like a game. Sometimes you win, other times you don’t, and you can choose to roll the dice anytime you want. The key is not to take things personally, to celebrate your failures, learn from them and move on. Denise teaches that you are allowed to charge whatever prices you want because awkward money conversations won’t kill you. She teaches that you can choose for business to be easier. Her affirmation is that ‘there are easier ways to make money’.
A Big Lesson
The biggest lesson I have personally gained from reading this book is to honour your capacity as an entrepreneur. I am always keen to learn more, do more, and grow more – both as a person and in my business. Denise also reminds readers of the story of the Golden Goose. The story of a man who has a goose which lays golden eggs every day. The goose him rich very quickly but he’s impatient to get even richer as fast as possible. So, he kills the golden goose to get all the eggs he thinks are inside.
Of course, all he finds are goose guts and he realises in his greed that he has killed the source of his wealth. We must think of ourselves as the Golden Goose. You can profit for a long time if you take care of yourself. But you won’t if you kill (or in this case overwork) yourself.
The book is jam-packed full of these and many more pieces of advice. There’s a whole chapter on marketing your business but it isn’t your usual jargony approach. In fact, she shares how her approach to marketing is like her approach to internet dating before she met her husband!
Conclusion of Chill and Prosper
All in all, if you are looking for a refreshing style of business advice, don’t take yourself or others too seriously, and want to work less and earn more – this is the book for you. I also recommend giving Denise’s podcast of the same name – Chill and Prosper – a listen to. Her target audience is women in business – a fact she is unapologetic about. This is another refreshing change to other generic business books I am sure we have all read). Having said this, there is for men to learn from in here too. I would give this a 10/10 review for anyone who runs a very lean business or is currently in a job and thinking about starting a business or side-hustle in the near future.
Read Denise’s book and go forth and prosper in a super chill way!
