Ep 131. Grow your personal brand and create a life of freedom with Guest Dovile Sinke
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Sara Mayer: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Bold Goal Crusher Podcast. For anyone looking to stop letting life get in the way and start crushing bold goals. I'm your host, Sara Mayer, and I'm thrilled to navigate this journey with you because it's time to start boldly achieving without working double time. So let's dive in.
Sara Mayer: Hello, bold goal crushers. I am so excited about this episode today and my guest, I think you're really going to gain some interesting perspective from somebody who has truly been crushing. Her goals. So without further ado, let me introduce you to my guest today. After leaving a successful corporate career in Switzerland at a fortune 500 at fortune 500 companies like UBS.
Sara Mayer: And AccuDenture, [00:01:00] Dovila started building her own online empire. And today she has co founded not one, not two, but three successful online companies, including an affiliate marketing site, working with the biggest brands in the industry, an SEO agency. And a membership platform for entrepreneur moms in Lithuania.
Sara Mayer: After the past several years, she's built a personal brand for herself from zero. And supported hundreds of female entrepreneurs seeking to shift their lives and build online income sources. Her signature method combines personal development. Success mindset, innovative marketing and business strategies to help clients achieve results.
Sara Mayer: She's a world traveler currently escaping cold European winters to being in Bali with her. Two and a half year old daughter, and she's passionate about helping more [00:02:00] women reach true financial time and lifestyle freedom. I am so excited to have you on the show today. I know that so many things that you've done will apply to our listeners and I can't wait to dive in.
Dovile Sinke: Thank you, Sara, for this nice introduction. And Hello, everyone. That's listening. I'm excited to be here. Excited to share my story and inspire at least one of you. Yeah. I love it. You
Sara Mayer: know, so many of our listeners are sitting in their cubes. They want to do something different or they might be sitting at home now post COVID, but they're not really enjoying what they're doing and they want to live a completely different life.
Sara Mayer: And it seems that you have done that. So tell me a little bit about your journey. How did you end up where you're out in Bali now?
Dovile Sinke: Yeah, exactly. I was just chatting that it's morning in Bali. And [00:03:00] five years ago, I think I was in my corporate career. I was in Switzerland. I had a successful job. I, the usual I studied that I thought I went to good university.
Dovile Sinke: I. And I got into corporate and I thought, okay, that's all what I wanted. That's my dream. But for some reasons I was sitting there not in a cubicle, it was more like open space, but still, and I was thinking, is that it? Is my life supposed to be like this? Then I would speak to my colleagues and none of them actually seem entirely happy being in banking, being in consulting.
Dovile Sinke: And I was lucky probably cause my husband was in entrepreneurship. He was in a startup, so I would see him living a completely different lifestyle. And I would always come home tired after work and just living that Monday to Friday and, you shut off your computer on Friday, but still you have all these deadlines [00:04:00] coming up, all the big projects and you just feel like you're just living on an autopilot.
Dovile Sinke: And I would feel a little bit jealous of my husband having more freedom being in a more entrepreneurial environment. So we would talk, but I always thought that I'm not an entrepreneur. That's how I grew up. I thought I would never do it. I will be happy just working for somebody else. And I didn't even consider that as an option for me.
Dovile Sinke: But, after after years and years, I actually wanted to quit initially after four years in corporate, but I didn't have the guts, probably, I was like thinking what that could be, I didn't know. So I just changed the job. I went from one company to another, but it still, it didn't change the fact that I didn't really enjoy working in an office or being probably in a financial sector.
Dovile Sinke: And then, yeah, long story short [00:05:00] one day we made a decision with my husband to, both of us to actually, complete the jobs that we had and start something new. And
Sara Mayer: wow, that's a bold move.
Dovile Sinke: Yeah. We didn't actually know what it's going to be. So that was a bit frightening because we thought, okay.
Dovile Sinke: Let's just start something we were listening and Gary V a lot at that point. So that was five years ago and he would always say, just do something and document. So that's how we started with that. Okay, let's maybe try to find how we can work online. And we started doing that. And one thing led to another.
Dovile Sinke: We packed our bags. We went to Bali first for the first time for six months because we thought, first of all, We need to save on costs living in Switzerland is pretty expensive. So I imagine, yeah, if you don't get, income coming in. So similar as in us. So we said, okay, we need [00:06:00] to somehow save the costs, go to a nice place and entrepreneurial faith place.
Dovile Sinke: We heard of Bali. We've been there for holiday. We knew there were a couple of towns that were more entrepreneurial with full working spaces, with a lot of events happening. With a lot of digital moment living there. So that's what we started.
Sara Mayer: My gosh. I love it. And who would think that Bali would be less expensive, but you always hear about it and it sounds like such a luxury, but it sounds like it was a perfect place for you to move to.
Sara Mayer: Huh?
Dovile Sinke: Yeah, exactly. I always say that Bali has everything. You can live very luxurious in a super nice villa, go to the best restaurants, the best experiences, and really spend maybe even more money than investor worth, but you can also live on a budget. And we were living on a really strict budget back then.
Dovile Sinke: So that's possible as well.
Sara Mayer: Oh, I love it. So how have [00:07:00] things changed though, since you moved from the corporate environment to working for yourself, how did you develop? That rhythm to be successful and now found three businesses.
Dovile Sinke: So I guess the first thing that I normally say it's, and what I'm still working on and I see a lot of people, entrepreneurs still working on that escapes corporate, that we still are stuck a little bit to that corporate mindset where we feel like, Oh, I have to work, as it's nine to five, or actually maybe even more because you're running your own business and you never give yourself time to rest.
Dovile Sinke: So this is something that I'm still working on very hard to implement because that's the main reason like the freedom right time freedom that I chose this path, so it's okay if I'm in the middle of the day I need to go to kindergarten pick up my daughter or maybe I just want to take a break and go for a massage.
Dovile Sinke: That's [00:08:00] fine, but it's still something that is quite difficult to do. Yeah.
Sara Mayer: Yeah. I had that. I had that experience too. I felt guilty. Like I went to get my nail center in the day one time I was like, my gosh, I feel so guilty. It's like, why? I'm the boss. Who cares?
Dovile Sinke: Exactly. We should embrace that we have this opportunity, and maybe it's even, I don't know, maybe it's even cheaper for going on a weekday rather than going on a weekend.
Dovile Sinke: It's easier to find a spot that's really good for you, whereas on weekend or maybe evenings, you want to do something else. Yeah but it's something we have to keep reminding ourselves. So for me in the beginning I just said, okay, I'm going to explore everything I'm going to do. And of course I was working really hard and I'm still working hard.
Dovile Sinke: Yet the past couple of months I had a few changes. I exited two businesses, so I'm giving myself some freedom. Time to explore maybe new opportunities. [00:09:00]
Sara Mayer: I love it. And so how did you decide what you guys were going to do when you said you didn't know what you were going to do, but you took the leap of faith.
Dovile Sinke: Yeah. So I've always been into healthy lifestyle, personal development. So firstly, we thought we will do a blog. We'll just document. Yeah, we'll just document our journey. So we looked into trying to find different ways to earn money online. And but the first thing was really blogging and that we blogged maybe for three, three weeks.
Dovile Sinke: That was it. But in the beginning he said, okay, we need an angle. So we thought Let's maybe do challenges. So basically we started doing challenges ourselves, like no sugar challenge, three weeks, no sugar. And that kind of led to us developing a platform, a place where people would come and they would do challenges together with us.[00:10:00]
Dovile Sinke: And we started with having a bunch of different challenges from weight loss to meditation, to reading a book 20 minute a day. But we started noticing that a lot of people would find us online because we did pretty well in marketing and we did pretty well in search engine optimization. So people would come to us for intermittent fasting.
Dovile Sinke: And but the funny fact here, and it's also take away for anyone that's listening is that I was saying no to that. I was really saying, okay, people come for intermittent fasting, but let's give them meditation. Let's give them this and let's give them that. And I wasn't really listening to the customer and only actually after half a year, I decided to, I said that, okay, that's it, what's let's just focus on intermittent fasting only.
Dovile Sinke: So it came so long story short we just, I just started by doing something [00:11:00] that I felt, okay, I have my passion for this. I hear this is possible to do, blogging, maybe trying to do some challenges so that people can join you and then really listening to what people are responding, why are they coming to you, what feedback they're giving and trying to create a product or service around that.
Dovile Sinke: Yeah.
Sara Mayer: And I love it. I love that you gave your yourselves permission to really experiment because I think so many times this happened to me. Like when I first got in business, people are like you need to do this and that's it. I tried some of those things on, like you tried on the blog, you tried on other things and they just really didn't work for me or they were successful, but I just didn't like doing it every day.
Sara Mayer: And so I think it's so important, especially when you're just starting out to try different things and to see what works until you hit that [00:12:00] group.
Dovile Sinke: Yes, but I know how difficult it is. Yeah, to actually just experiment and you have on one way you have so many opportunities and on the other hand You just don't know what to start Because you you know, there's a lot but you don't really know it's out there.
Dovile Sinke: Yeah, but It's really, just start doing something that you maybe know how to do today and expand on that. Expand on that. Yeah.
Sara Mayer: And so now what have you found that you're really doing on a consistent basis? What is that morphed into?
Dovile Sinke: So today as I said, like I'm in this period when I'm exploring opportunities and I actually Gave myself this permission just a couple of weeks ago. I posted on my social media that, Hey, I'm looking for new opportunities. So my doors are open. If you have something just come up or if you're looking for a partner to, for a new project, [00:13:00] so I'm allowing myself more time, probably.
Dovile Sinke: But what I'm really doing, of course, what, and what I've always done and what has helped me is working on your personal brand. So that is not finding a channel where you have followers. And for me, that's always been Instagram. I just loved it. And just trying to be consistent there. Also newsletter. If you start growing your subscribers, even if it's just a couple of.
Dovile Sinke: I know a couple of people, just consistently find a channel where you can grow your personal brand. So I think personal brand is key at the moment and it will be with you, whatever you do. So maybe you start blogging and I still have people coming to me and even like signing up to be my clients that they say I [00:14:00] found you there and there because you were sharing something about.
Dovile Sinke: I don't know, maybe yoga that I was, or sports that I was following and they liked me for who I am, so they followed my journey and maybe my offer that I had back then, something related to weight loss didn't appear to them, but now I can help them start a business and they sign up to work for me because they have that trust.
Dovile Sinke: We've built it over years. So if you don't know what to start with, I always say my client starts with your personal brand. And we all have a brand. I love saying that and how people sometimes think, but I don't have a brand. Yes, we all have a brand. We just need to strengthen it. Pick up a couple of topics that you are about, right?
Dovile Sinke: Be it personal development, be it entrepreneurship, be it healthy lifestyle, be it sport. And expand on those.
Sara Mayer: What's really interesting is that some [00:15:00] people who say Oh I don't have a personal brand. Like people know you for certain things. And I think what's interesting is that sometimes people are reluctant to step into that.
Sara Mayer: They're reluctant to be like, I am about this. So how would somebody go about doing that? If they've never had experience building a personal brand?
Dovile Sinke: I always say, start with, of course, a little bit of brainstorming. Sit down, find your, I recommend finding your four to five pillars, like the main topics that I mentioned earlier that you are about that may be like you, Sarah said that people come to you asking for questions, topics that you like sharing about, write them down and underneath each of the pillar, write down topics that you could share.
Dovile Sinke: Why is it helpful? Because it will allow you. To have a proof that you actually know a lot about the topic that you can share about the topic and at the same time it will allow [00:16:00] you, it will serve as a content plan, when you lack of ideas when you sit there. Oh, I want to start sharing something, but I don't know what you go back to that document.
Dovile Sinke: You have a look and you have a loads of ideas to talk about. So that's the first thing. Okay. The second thing is, of course, trying, because even me I noticed that if I'm away from social media, be it just a couple of days, it's already very difficult to pick it up and start sharing. I'm talking stories in particular, because it feels oh, but.
Dovile Sinke: When you're sharing every day, it's it just keeps continuing. It's a habit. It's also like you're telling a story as soon as you stop, you're like, Oh, where do I start? So we all have that. I have that. A lot of my clients have that, so you just need to start. And people would say, Oh, but I don't have any followers, but that's great.
Dovile Sinke: That's actually amazing. That's where you want to be because this is a [00:17:00] perfect place for you to experiment. And once you then get a lot of followers, people that will convert to your clients. That's when you're already into habit of sharing. That's when you learn what people like and you found your own voice.
Sara Mayer: Yeah. Yeah. I think it's so pivotal, like so critical actually, that you become authentic in your own voice rather than try and, duplicate what other people are doing. And I think that's hard to do when you first start off with in business. So you work with a lot of entrepreneur moms how do you help them?
Sara Mayer: To balance all the things, the kids, the groceries, the everything that goes along with running a household and all that stuff and run a business.
Dovile Sinke: I tell them to give yourself permission to not be perfect to not to try be perfect or pick up all the toys [00:18:00] everywhere because after five minutes, they're going to be there again.
Dovile Sinke: And Ask for support. That's crucial from your partners, from your family, or maybe you can hire support. So especially, cause I work with a lot of women that are still in the corporate job. Usually what we end up doing as moms in particular or if you have families, you're a little bit more afraid to, leave your corporate, the safety of that, the salary and go on and start something new because you don't have really that.
Dovile Sinke: It's difficult to allow yourself to do that because you have a lot of responsibility. So then we usually calculate and we say, okay, look now, if you're working on your own business, maybe you can allocate one day or a couple of hours every day. And think of, okay, how much would it cost you to get help? Of course.[00:19:00]
Dovile Sinke: You have to cut on something, but just look, okay, maybe you can get help like a nanny or help with your kids or somebody else. And it will cost you less money than cutting off your job, right? Because how much you earn an hour is higher and then have a look. Okay, where can you put those hours? So don't think that you have to do everything that you can get support.
Dovile Sinke: And we all should get support. And actually what I noticed is that, so I work with both moms and. Women that don't have kids yet. So the main difference is actually that moms, they know the time pressure. So actually most cases, they even more effective when they get to work. The two hours for them could mean four hours for somebody else because we're just so focused.
Dovile Sinke: We know, okay, now we have to do this and that and we don't waste the [00:20:00] time. Yeah. But also it's People that come to my world that just got babies and in the beginning, they think, Oh, now I have this opportunity to start something new. What they don't realize that it is really challenging for you in the beginning when you get a baby and you don't have that much time. So what I tell them at that point is use this time, when you breastfeeding, when you're going for a walk, just listen to podcasts, just.
Dovile Sinke: Start surrounding yourself with more entrepreneurial people, be it in real life or through podcasts, just like with you, right? Or following certain people, listening to different courses, just like passively learning. And that already will open your eyes. It will give you more opportunities. You will start seeing, okay, what is it that I can do?
Dovile Sinke: And then once after a year or two, when it gets easier with the baby, You will already have [00:21:00] so much baggage that's when, you can start. Yeah. So that's at least the model that I've seen has been working a lot for most of the new moms. Yeah,
Sara Mayer: I love it. And I think one of the things that happens is that we think that we need to have everything all figured out before we start.
Sara Mayer: So I love that you guys took this leap of courage. How did you did you give yourself a safety net? Like, how did you decide like now's the time to do it?
Dovile Sinke: Yeah. So with with me, we looked into, okay, we had a savings for six months, but that's also the time we took and I did take a safe, I had a safety net in terms of, I.
Dovile Sinke: Gave my job. I worked at Accenture. So that's like a consulting firm at that time. And I took a leave of absence. That was six months. That meant [00:22:00] that in six months. I can come back and I will have my job. So that gave me safety though. Remember the last couple of months we went Bali and actually the we were running really low on money and I knew I have to come back to my job in January.
Dovile Sinke: And that maybe was November. And I was thinking, and I was crying. I don't want to come back. I don't want to go back to that life. What are we going to do? And we have no money because, in the beginning, the first six months we were just investing a lot and we were not making anything. We're still like finding ourselves.
Dovile Sinke: And even though we started getting a lot of traffic to our sites, I was like it was still not monetized. So it's like really crying but I did come back to my job in January, but then I made a decision that I'm just going to come back and in Switzerland we have, I know it's a luxury not, but we have notice period that is two months.
Dovile Sinke: So basically I came back and I gave [00:23:00] my notice immediately. So that gave me another two months to earn some salary and you already, I'm leaving. So it was easier on me. My company also knew I'm leaving, so it wouldn't give me probably that much job. It worked out fine. And in that those months, what we started doing is I said, like our affiliate marketing sites.
Dovile Sinke: That it turned into now and the whole intermittent fasting platform, it was not monetized. We were getting a lot of followers, a lot of followers, a lot of people into our site, but we didn't charge them anything. But we realized, okay, we did quite well with search engine optimization. We got a lot of people here through our doors.
Dovile Sinke: And I believe a lot of other people could benefit from this service. So then we said, okay, let's in the meantime, while we figure out, let's start selling it as a service. So that's how our agency was born because we love it. [00:24:00] Yeah. And we really need, we in the point, we back to Switzerland, January, Switzerland is expensive, and we said we need to make money fast.
Dovile Sinke: How do we do that? What do we know? That worked as c o marketing. Yeah. And so with the agency, basically I looked up all the coworking spaces in Switzerland and I just pitched myself. I said, guys, I'm gonna, we're gonna give you a free workshop for your community. You just have to give us like one hour and space.
Dovile Sinke: And many of them said, Yes, we were able to do that for free for their communities. And that's how we started spreading the word that we are SEO people.
Sara Mayer: Oh, I love it. And then you've done quite well
Dovile Sinke: since then. Yeah. Then it started rolling, I always say, but always I say in the beginning, it's important to turn to your network, to turn to real people, not as in real life connections.
Dovile Sinke: And then from there you can start growing and expanding.
Sara Mayer: I love it. [00:25:00] And I love your story, how you tried on a lot of different things. You took that leap of faith. You tried on different things and it worked out in the end, but it may not have worked out the way you initially thought it was going to work out.
Sara Mayer: And I think that takes such bold action, but also courage along the way to change it up and to really figure out what's going to work for you. And ultimately to give you that freedom that you're looking for.
Dovile Sinke: Yeah. I think it's important just to have, and even today, I don't know, because I said, I'm looking for new opportunities.
Dovile Sinke: I'm still mentoring a client to, to start their own business and working on the agency, but I'm also looking for something new, something different and here, I don't know. So it's important to have a bigger goal okay, what kind of lifestyle do you want to live? Where do you want to be in five years?
Dovile Sinke: Don't say that. Okay. I want to be leading this and this company, or I want to [00:26:00] be a coach. I want to be I want to have a brand that sells glasses, that's really difficult to know today, but just Start thinking with, okay, where do you want to live? Do you want to live in Bali or do you want to, have a house in Chicago and just be able to support your family?
Dovile Sinke: How is that lifestyle that you want to have? Do you want to work every day? Do you want to just work part time? Start with little things like that and then, you have a vision, you have something to look forward, you have something to manifest forward and then things and just trust that things will fall into its own places.
Sara Mayer: And I think it's so important to remember your why and where you're going because it's easy to get frustrated when you're not there. But like you just mentioned, if you have all that written down and you have all that you're where [00:27:00] your path, where you want it to go, it makes it easier to keep going when there are bumps in the road.
Dovile Sinke: Yes. The why is very important and maybe you start to know yourself as well. And that exercise that we, I do this exercise with each of my clients when we start working together as you're understanding your deep why. So basically say, okay, so why do you start this? They tell me you something, then I said, okay, but why is that important for you?
Dovile Sinke: And you just go you keep going seven layers, eight layers. Why is that important for you? So you say, Oh, when I have more money, why is that important for you? I want to support my family. Why do you want to support your family? Maybe it's something, that you were not able to do as a kid and now it's important for you to really dig down, go many layers deep down into what it is.
Dovile Sinke: And you might find amazing things. That will be your deep why and will always be there. When you have those moments, I had those [00:28:00] moments. I remember when I launched my membership platform in Lithuania and the beginning, it didn't went well. It didn't go well. I I thought, okay, I'm going to launch it.
Dovile Sinke: I'll have so many subscribers. And yes, that was not the case. And I had so many moments. I just wanted to hide under my blanket. And we want to disappear. But these were the moments where I was thinking, okay, I'm not doing this for myself. I'm doing it for others because my deep why is to show other women that it's possible.
Dovile Sinke: We can be independent. We can also create a meaningful business that generates money. It's not just. men that can, and because somehow in my world, it's always used to be that, oh, women, yes, they can create a business, but it's more, they're playing a business. It can't be really successful. And I said, no, it's bigger than me, so I have to get [00:29:00] back to the world, even if I only have I don't know, 15 subscribers today my goal was to have 30, it's okay.
Dovile Sinke: I'm helping already 15 people.
Sara Mayer: Yeah, I love it. I really appreciate you sharing your story today. If somebody wanted to work with you or reach out, how could they do that? And then what could they
Dovile Sinke: expect?
Dovile Sinke: So the best way to find me as probably an Instagram, I share my stories daily from my life, my ups and downs. And that is on Dovele Cinque, it's pretty, pretty difficult to pronounce. So I guess I'll
Sara Mayer: link it in the show notes. Yeah,
Dovile Sinke: for sure. You can also find me, I have a website and there you will find links to my mentoring program that I offer and also to my agency.
Dovile Sinke: If you want more support on getting, being visible on Google. So that's what [00:30:00] my agency do. And personally, I do coach women that want to start a business or they want to grow their service based business. So I mainly work with coaches or people that are starting agencies, just like I did myself.
Dovile Sinke: I
Sara Mayer: love it. I absolutely love your story. And I want to thank you for being so candid and honest that it wasn't. All roses and butterflies and an easy path, because I think we need to know when we're going out and doing something new that it's not always easy. And other people do struggle when we make everything look so perfect on Instagram.
Sara Mayer: It doesn't help the rest of us. So I appreciate you being so candid and
Dovile Sinke: honest. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I think we always think that there's an overnight success and that person made it. But if you dig deeper, it's only the tip of the iceberg, right? There's so much underneath it and we usually tend to [00:31:00] forget it.
Dovile Sinke: Yeah.
Sara Mayer: Yeah. I love it. So thank you for the reminder and All right, bold, gold crushers. It is time to get out there and crush your goals and everything that gets in the way so you don't have to work double time. Have a good one.
Sara Mayer: Thank you for tuning into the bold goal crusher podcast where we crush goals and everything that gets in the way. I always love to support my community. Thanks for tuning in.
