Thats Audacious

In a recent episode of the That's Audacious podcast, host Lauren Clemett interviewed digital marketing coach and trainer Sarah Thomson, founder of Online Social Butterfly, to unpack what it takes to build a resilient business and an authentic personal profile.

Sarah Thomson spent years working in high-pressure corporate marketing and communications roles before making a sudden exit. Balancing demanding corporate hours - often working past 11:00 PM while managing two young children - eventually reached a breaking point. Realising the toll it was taking on her family and health, Sarah resigned without a backup plan, determined to establish herself as a marketing consultant.

Upon stepping into entrepreneurship in Perth, Sarah quickly recognised that standard corporate consulting opportunities were far more limited in a smaller local market compared to major hubs like London or Sydney. Rather than giving up, she adapted. Landing her first social media management client fifteen years ago marked the beginning of a major shift. She pivoted from dry LinkedIn training to the rapidly growing landscape of Facebook marketing, turning a lucky break into a sustained career.

Through her business, Online Social Butterfly, Sarah now coaches female entrepreneurs to scale their operations using digital products, masterminds, and online courses. Her mission stems from a widespread issue in the small business sector: entrepreneurs trading hours for dollars, getting trapped by technical overwhelm, and relying single-mindedly on one service or marketing channel.

Building Resilience, Mastering AI, and Harnessing Award Leverage

Early in her entrepreneurial journey, Sarah received crucial financial advice from her accountant: single-platform dependency leaves a business vulnerable. After watching peers lose their entire livelihoods overnight because of social media algorithm changes and policy shifts, she deliberately diversified her revenue streams into coaching, corporate workshops, and digital training.

Sarah’s approach to modern digital strategy balances technological adoption with authentic human connection:

• Demystifying Technical Barriers: While free resources and AI tools abound, small business owners often stall due to mindset blocks and fear of technology. Sarah’s coaching model focuses on guiding clients past small technical hurdles to build true confidence.
• Embracing Modern AI Tools: Rather than fearing technological disruption, Sarah launched AI training workshops immediately after ChatGPT’s emergence. She uses AI platforms like Claude to manage complex back-end advertising tasks - such as conversion tracking - while advising clients to keep creative content, images, and brand voice strictly human and personal.
• Integrating Paid Advertising: Recognising that organic social media reach is no longer sufficient on its own, Sarah advocates for combining organic posts with targeted Meta ads to ensure predictable audience growth.
• Exploring Independent Platforms: To reduce reliance on mainstream social networks, Sarah established a strong presence on Substack, leveraging long-form writing to build direct, monetisable relationships with readers outside algorithm-driven feeds.
• Maximising Profile Building Through Awards: Sarah highlights the strategic value of entering business awards, emphasising that the process itself serves as a powerful marketing engine. Rather than keeping submissions secret for fear of losing, Sarah argues that sharing the entry journey builds strong audience support and market credibility, regardless of the final outcome.

Key Achievements and Professional Milestones

• Fifteen years of continuous business operations and revenue diversification in digital marketing.
• National Award Finalist / Second-Place Winner in the competitive Podcast Category (leveraged extensively to reposition her show as an award-winning platform).
• Founder and Lead Digital Marketing Coach at Online Social Butterfly.
• Creator and Author of two distinct Substack publications: Digital Queens Dispatch and My Year of Intentional Living.
• Early adopter and keynote trainer delivering weekly AI and digital marketing workshops for state government organisations and corporate bodies.

Insights, Authenticity, and Lessons Learned

Throughout the interview, Sarah offered candid reflections on perfectionism, personal growth, and profile building, delivering key takeaways for entrepreneurs hesitant to put themselves forward.

On overcoming imposter syndrome and technical perfectionism, Sarah shared her philosophy on delivering immediate value:

"I just needed to be one step ahead of all of you in the room. I didn't need to be an expert. I don't need to be a technical expert. I just need to be able to give you value and you can go away and do something."

Addressing the reluctance many business owners feel when considering awards or social media promotion, Sarah highlighted how overthinking holds people back:

"Nobody's paying as much attention as we think they are on social media... The fact that you go for awards is enough of a success because most people don't. Heck yes, you put yourself out there."

Reflecting on the deeper personal benefits of going through an award submission process, Sarah noted how rare and essential self-recognition is for business owners:

"Awards make me sit down, and when I've written ones... I actually cried at some of the stuff that I'd achieved, and I hadn't even paused and acknowledged that."

Finally, on maintaining vulnerability and enjoying the entrepreneurial path, Sarah advised business owners to drop the pressure of perfection:

"I'm an imperfect human being and that's what makes us amazing... I would just say let go and have fun because it's all going to be okay."

Contact

To learn more about Sarah Thomson’s coaching programs, digital workshops, or content publications, connect via the following platforms:

• Website: Online Social Butterfly
  
  
• Email: sarah@onlinesocialbutterfly.com.au
• Substack Publications: Digital Queens Dispatch and My Year of Intentional Living

Libby Harris is the founder of Strategic Book Advisors, an international book publishing strategist, certified mental toughness coach, and former Division 1 sports performance consultant. With a rich background in exercise science and education, Libby spent nearly two decades sitting on her own book concept before finally stepping over the hurdle of fear to publish her first work. Having gone on to author seven books and coach thousands of aspiring writers, she recognised a critical flaw in the traditional publishing pipeline: subject-matter experts consistently mistake book creation for an immediate business solution.

• Libby founded Strategic Book Advisors and successfully guided thousands of experts through book creation and market positioning.
• She’s authored seven published books on mental toughness, coaching, and athlete development herself, and has helped hundreds of authors launch thousands of books.
• She established an end-to-end publishing system incorporating 12 months of post-launch email marketing, podcast feature opportunities, and structured launch teams.
• Formed a strategic partnership with The Audacious Agency to offer the Authors Awards Package, helping client authors earn sector, niche, national and international awards, advocacy and thought-leadership recognition, podcast appearances, media articles and speaking opportunities.

Marty Wilson, a Certified Speaking Professional and former Australian Comedian of the Year, and Michael Arnot, founder of Encore Speakers with decades of experience booking thousands of keynotes, are the founders of the Mainstage Academy. Together, they assist experts, authors, and industry leaders in building commercially sustainable professional speaking businesses.

Following their attendance at the National Speakers Association (NSA) Influence conference in Austin, Texas - an event gathering nearly 900 international speakers - Marty and Michael reviewed the state of the global speaking market on the That’s Audacious podcast with Lauren Clemett, who is one of the Mainstage on-faculty coaches. Their observations highlighted a profound disconnect between how speakers view the industry and how the corporate speaker booking market actually operates.

The initial situation across the speaking landscape reveals widespread confusion. Many speakers mistake their peer groups - associations, speaker networks, and annual conventions - for the actual industry. In reality, the true industry consists entirely of the paying clients: corporate event planners, executive committees, and business operators who invest in event talent.

Through his organisation, I Love Coaching Co., Adam developed the REAL Coach Blueprint - a structured framework designed to help leaders codify their unique lived experiences into proprietary intellectual property. By addressing the widespread issue of professional isolation in the coaching industry, Adam established a collaborative community model where leaders can candidly share challenges and celebrate achievements without reservation.

A core breakthrough in Adam’s approach to profile elevation centres on his Trust Ledger concept. Many business owners make the mistake of requesting client conversions or referrals before establishing adequate trust deposits. Adam categorises audience engagement through distinct trust channels, demonstrating that low-engagement tools like digital ads or static social media posts yield minimal trust. Conversely, high-touch channels - specifically live stage speaking and strategic profile association - generate the deepest authority.

Adam’s insights align directly with the primary objectives of profile building and award recognition. Aligning a brand with prestigious industry awards, such as the Stevie Awards, creates immediate credibility through association. Standing on a stage, whether to deliver a keynote or accept an industry honour, places an individual at the highest tier of the trust spectrum. By stepping onto authority-building platforms and sharing proprietary IP, leaders fast-track market trust that would otherwise take months of digital outreach to establish.

The impact of this methodology has been far-reaching. Adam has expanded his coaching footprint across four continents, guiding high-performing leaders to escape rigid "how-to" models and build ownable, scalable frameworks. Unplanned positive outcomes include mentoring clients onto global TEDx stages, facilitating major strategic partnerships within his peer community, and proving that authentic authority generates far higher conversion than traditional advertising spend.

Ben Popplestone is a corporate leadership specialist, the founder of Adventure Mentors, and the innovator behind the Adventure Mindset framework. His unique professional expertise is built upon two distinct, parallel lives: more than two decades of senior corporate leadership within the high-pressure, fast-growth global technology sector, and a lifetime spent pursuing extreme outdoor endurance challenges, including high-altitude mountaineering, ultra-trail marathons, and spearfishing in shark-populated waters.

Despite his substantial internal experience leading global teams and executing corporate strategies, his initial position presented a distinct visibility deficiency. Historically, he had operated primarily in the background, focusing his efforts on internal corporate execution, standard presentations, and workshops. Having navigated severe shyness during his childhood, he found the prospect of stepping directly into the public limelight and intentionally building a personal brand intensely uncomfortable.

A major turning point occurred during a recent transitional gap in his career. While reflecting on the factors that underpinned his greatest corporate successes, he realised that the exact preservation and survival mechanics required to endure at 4,000 metres on a mountain summit were precisely the tools contemporary corporate leaders needed to survive market uncertainty. He identified a critical need within modern businesses: organisations were consistently struggling to build high-performing teams without causing widespread employee burnout. Armed with this insight, he recognised that to scale his impact, he needed to overcome his discomfort, step out of the background, and build a prominent public profile as a professional keynote speaker and executive consultant.

Ben Popplestone intentionally stepped into the limelight and launched his specialised consulting framework, successfully bridging the gap between outdoor wilderness survival and corporate leadership & culture. Through his workshops and executive coaching engagements, he helps leaders to reframe uncertainty, moving teams away from survival toward sustainable growth.

Contact

To learn more about Ben Popplestone's corporate workshops, executive coaching programs, or to book him for an upcoming keynote presentation, connect via the channels below:

https://www.adventurementors.com

Ben.Popplestone@brimbravo.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/benpopplestone/