Peaceful Profits Podcast Ep. 79 - The Curse of Genius (& How To Meet People Where They Are)
Synopsis:
In this episode of the Peaceful Profits Podcast, Chanelle interviews Rachel Duffy, a former divorce attorney turned trauma-informed conscious parenting coach. Rachel opens up about her journey from burnout to breakthrough—both in parenting and business. She shares how her own parenting struggles led her to work with Dr. Shefali (Oprah’s favorite parenting expert), which ultimately changed the trajectory of her life and career.
Rachel dives deep into the marketing trap she calls “the curse of genius,” where business owners speak from their advanced awareness instead of meeting clients where they are. She explains how Peaceful Profits helped her shift her messaging, refine her funnel, and consistently generate $10k+ months by solving urgent problems with clarity and empathy.
This is a must-listen for purpose-driven entrepreneurs and parents alike—especially those who want to grow a business that aligns with their mission and values.
Transcript:
Peaceful Profits Review: The Curse of Genius (& How To Meet People Where They Are)
[00:00:00] Chanelle: Hello, Peaceful Profits Nation. Chanelle here with an exciting client Spotlight episode for you today. So today we're talking to our client, Rachel Duffy. Rachel, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah. Rachel is a former divorce attorney turned trauma-informed, certified conscious parenting coach who has dedicated over two decades to helping parents and kids improve their relationship.
[00:00:24] Chanelle: Rachel works with parents to help them raise well-adjusted, skilled, and emotionally sound kids without [00:00:30] yelling or saying things they regret. Her deeper purpose is to help kids grow up with a sturdy emotional foundation, not having to one day remember who they are, because they will not have forgotten it in the first place.
[00:00:42] Chanelle: Rachel uses a proprietary combination of psychology and brain-based practical tools alongside personal spiritual growth and a good dose of wisdom. Unlike traditional parenting solutions that rely on quick fixes to put out fires, Rachel helps you create life lasting change by showing you how to quickly [00:01:00] identify and address the root causes of draining relationships in your family.
[00:01:04] Chanelle: Okay. This is so interesting. As many listeners probably know, I am a mom of five, so this is very. Fun for me to talk about this element of parenting, but the first thing I wanna dive into is a divorce attorney turned, parenting coach. How did you make that leap?
[00:01:24] Rachel: Not overnight. So I'll start with saying.
[00:01:27] Rachel: I think the family dynamic [00:01:30] between parents and children, but also between, husband and wife has always been a source of interest for me. I've always been really interested in relationships. I've thought it was really important to understand ourselves in order and our relationships, and I think that's what got me into family law to begin with.
[00:01:47] Rachel: However, what I quickly found out as a litigator and a mediator was that even though I had the legal skills, what I did not have were the deeper kind of the [00:02:00] psychology behind relationships. I didn't have that understanding, and to be quite frank, I didn't have the life experience or the maturity to understand the family dynamic on a deeper level the way I do now.
[00:02:12] Rachel: When I have my own family, so I think I was just not fully equipped to thrive in that environment. So it left me frustrated and about 20 years ago, I moved to California and I decided that was gonna be the line in the sand for me [00:02:30] that I would not pursue renewing my license in California.
[00:02:34] Rachel: So I transitioned into business, which is. Has always been a passion of mine and a love of mine, and I'm good at it and I spent some time doing that. And when I became a mother, I naively thought I chuckle as I think about this now, but I naively thought that all the skills and the experience I had, I became a mom in my, when I was 39 and then again at 40.
[00:02:57] Rachel: So I thought all the [00:03:00] experience I have. All the skills I've built would help me in motherhood that it would be, that I would nail it. And I got, I was brought down to my knees so quickly Chanelle that I really had to eat a huge slice of humble pie, and that's probably a good thing that.
[00:03:18] Rachel: That made me seek out help for myself. So the person I mentored with is Dr. Shefali, who's a New York Times, multiple New York Times bestseller, Oprah's favorite parenting coach. [00:03:30] And she is the founder of Conscious Parenting here in the United States. And I learned from her what it meant to be a conscious parent and how to completely look at parenthood.
[00:03:39] Rachel: And the relationship with my children through a completely different lens than I had been, and that we've all been brought up to view parents and children through a very traditional paradigm. And she completely turned that paradigm on its head for me. And what that did was it changed. It changed the [00:04:00] trajectory of my life.
[00:04:00] Rachel: It changed my relationships with my children, with my husband, with myself. So when she opened her coaching institute, I was one of the first people in the door because I truly believe that this is how we change the world. This is how we impact the world for the better. The parent-child relationship for me, is the most important relationship of our lives as it sets the blueprint for everything that is to follow.
[00:04:26] Rachel: So if I want to have. A good impact on the [00:04:30] world. If I wanna see change in the world, this is where it begins. So I began in my own home with my own children, and now I help other parents do the same with their children. I.
[00:04:41] Chanelle: I love it. Okay. That is such a great story and experience. I thank you for sharing and I think that most people would be brought to their knees.
[00:04:50] Chanelle: You didn't mention that you had three kids in 13 months, three kids in 13 months. That is a lot. And and I think, [00:05:00] we're grateful and your clients are grateful that you had that experience so that then you can help others. So I would love to dive into, you've been, you said you've been at this for a while.
[00:05:11] Chanelle: And one of your recent successes was understanding the type of content that you need to create and the funnel you need to build to have predictable and consistent lead generation that turns into sales. Now, I'm sure for our listeners, everyone who's listening is probably yeah, I want that too.
[00:05:27] Chanelle: Definitely. So fill us [00:05:30] in on all of the things, so why that's even a success. And then walk us through the content you're creating versus what you were doing before.
[00:05:40] Rachel: Yeah, so that's a really great question. And I think, let me maybe start with the end. What I was doing to begin with, which I think many of us are taught how to do in, when it comes to marketing ourselves or our services, is I was speaking a, I was speaking only to the solution [00:06:00] that I provide for people and the benefits that I can give them.
[00:06:03] Rachel: B, I was speaking from my level of awareness. For what it is that they are actually struggling with versus meeting people where they're at. So for me, the whole, and I am I have been fortunate enough to be a student inside of Peaceful Profits, and that experience for me was so helpful in clarifying because.
[00:06:28] Rachel: Through the [00:06:30] process that you guys lead your students through, I was able to clarify for myself. What is it that I actually help people do? What are the problems I solve? Not from my level of awareness, which is, as someone who's been doing this for a long time. I have a different level of awareness, right?
[00:06:46] Rachel: I understand the root cause of problems that people are experiencing. I understand the mistakes they're making that not only don't fix the problem, but actually make their problems worse. And instead of speaking to [00:07:00] that, which really goes over people's heads doesn't meet them where they're at. I had to shift into understanding how do I speak to the experience, the suffering, the problems that my people are experiencing in their everyday lives?
[00:07:17] Rachel: How does this impact them in their everyday lives? How does it show up for them? And then over time, and as they go deeper and deeper into my work, into my content, into my funnels. [00:07:30] How do I bridge help them bridge from their level of awareness to the level of awareness that I would like them to be at in order to then make a decision going forward for themselves if they want help solving these problems, if they want my help solving these problems or whatever is the right next step for them.
[00:07:50] Chanelle: That's so good. So I'm sure in theory okay, I can, I want you to bring this down to a granular level because in theory okay, yeah, meet them where they [00:08:00] are. I think that we get that and yet when it comes to a blank page and we're there to write our social media post or put copy on a sales funnel.
[00:08:08] Chanelle: We, we can often go blank and think, okay, but where are they and how do I meet them where they are? So talk to us about the process you went through to understand that psyche and then what that looked like in actual content form.
[00:08:23] Rachel: So I had to start asking myself. So I started with saying, okay, what are the problems I solve?
[00:08:28] Rachel: Let me just write down [00:08:30] five, 10 problems that I solve. That's where I started. Then I have to, then I started asking myself, okay, of these problems that I solve, does my audience know they have these problems or do I know they have these problems? So I immediately crossed out the ones that my audience doesn't even know they have, because they're not gonna, they're not gonna think this applies to me.
[00:08:51] Chanelle: Yeah.
[00:08:52] Rachel: So then, so if I said, so I'll give you an example to make this more tangible. If you have a [00:09:00] headache and I'm the expert, I know why you have a headache and all you know is that you have a headache and you're just looking for someone to solve your headache, and I'll come to you and I'll say, Chanelle, I have the most amazing solution for dehydration.
[00:09:18] Rachel: You're gonna say that's great. I don't care. 'cause I don't have dehydration. I have a headache. So that's an example of how I was talking about dehydration, the whole. Time and people were not [00:09:30] realizing that it applies to them because I wasn't talking about the headache. I was already jumping to the solution or the root cause, rather, not the solution even, but just the root cause of their problem.
[00:09:42] Rachel: And that doesn't connect, it doesn't work because people don't, if they knew what the source of their problems were, they would be addressing that.
[00:09:52] Chanelle: Yeah. Okay. That's so good. So what does your content look like now, knowing [00:10:00] this?
[00:10:01] Rachel: So for me, first of all, just to give the listeners some context I am also a host of a podcast.
[00:10:07] Rachel: It's called The Unscrew You Podcast, and I have an Instagram account, so those are like my social media accounts, if you will. And that is really the, where people get introduced to my work usually. On those platforms. So obviously I'm creating audio and on Instagram I'm creating graphics and reels, video.
[00:10:29] Rachel: [00:10:30] I and it doesn't matter what your content looks like what the format of your content is, written, spoken, video, whatever it is. I had to change the way I communicate that. That was really, for me, the thing, the key that I had to unlock is I had to change the way I communicate. So first I had to get clear on, like I said earlier, the problems I solve for people from their perspectives.
[00:10:57] Chanelle: Yeah,
[00:10:58] Rachel: number one, number two [00:11:00] of those problems, which are urgent 'cause there's 5 million problems that I can actually solve for you, but they're not all urgent enough. To make you say, listen, I will pay you anything if you can solve this problem for me. So we have to be discerning when we pick the problems that we talk about.
[00:11:18] Rachel: We have to understand that some problems are really complex and difficult to solve and some are not. So if you're talking about problems that are not major problems, it's just something for you to be aware of [00:11:30] that the by definition. The urgency, the inner urgency to solve those problems not gonna be super high, versus if you're solving a problem that is really a thorn in someone's side where they're not sleeping at night, this is sitting, weighing on them all day, every day, and they have tried everything and they can't figure out what to do.
[00:11:50] Rachel: Okay, now you have a problem that people are intrinsically motivated to solve. That they are motivated [00:12:00] and understand, I'm going to have to pay someone to, to help me solve this because I've already tried everything. And you've created some automatic built in demand for your services. Then once I have that, now I have to understand how to say it right.
[00:12:16] Rachel: Because it's one thing to know, okay, what do I talk about? And then it's a different thing to know. How do I say it?
[00:12:20] Chanelle: Yeah. Because
[00:12:21] Rachel: I can say, I can talk about a topic in lots of different ways, but they're not all gonna resonate in the same way. So there's a lot of trial and [00:12:30] error there. For me, how I did that is I tested, I adopted the mindset of I'm running experiments.
[00:12:37] Rachel: I'm a scientist. I'm not an entrepreneur, I'm not a parenting coach. I'm not a former divorce attorney. I'm a scientist. Turns out, and I'm just going to the lab, to my social media lab every day and I'm experimenting, and I paid attention to people's behavior. So not just what they were saying to me, but also their behavior.
[00:12:56] Rachel: Were they sharing? Were they commenting? That [00:13:00] takes some effort for someone to do that more than just alike, for example. Yeah. And I looked at that and I tracked it, and that, that's another key piece is I just tracked numbers and tracked data metrics every single day and I looked at it. This was something that I, this is another shift for me that happened inside of Peaceful profits because I didn't really wanna look at the numbers, to be honest with you.
[00:13:26] Rachel: I didn't want to it's okay. I more or less know in my head, but turns out [00:13:30] you don't actually know in your head and the numbers do surprise you. In both directions, right? For better and for worse. Sometimes I had to make the mindset shift of these are just numbers. This is just information. It's my job to take this information and make a decision based off of that information.
[00:13:49] Rachel: And if I don't know what decision to make, then I go to a coach and I get coached on that and I, present it and say what do you think this means? I don't know what to make of this.
[00:13:58] Chanelle: Yeah.
[00:13:58] Rachel: So that is [00:14:00] how, just. Step by step. I did my best to those blinders they put on horses in races so they don't get distracted.
[00:14:08] Rachel: I did my very best to embody that rather than constantly being in the cycle of, let me create a new course, let me create a new thing. Lemme create a new, lead magnet. It's so easy, I think, for entrepreneurs to, to go that route because we are very creative. We do have a lot of ideas. We, I do understand that, and it's a shiny object, so [00:14:30] I had to always bring myself back to just put your nose down to the ground and focus on this one thing. Figure out this place, this constraint in the funnel, this place where it's not working. Figure that out, and then move on to the next step.
[00:14:46] Chanelle: That's so good.
[00:14:47] Chanelle: I love this idea of seeing yourself as a scientist and just really testing everything out. It's hard to do because as entrepreneurs, yes, we're creative, but also [00:15:00] we're attached. Sometimes it becomes our baby. It's. Like something, we've put so much time and effort and heart into that. It can be hard to detach emotionally from that.
[00:15:14] Chanelle: So how were you able to take that step back and take the emotion out of it enough to do what you've done? I.
[00:15:20] Rachel: That's a great question, and I actually think that doing what I do, being a conscious parent and specifically a conscious parenting coach, really helped me [00:15:30] there because that's also one of the shifts I had to make inside of parenting.
[00:15:35] Rachel: Not that I'm not attached to my children, obviously I'm super attached to my children, but what I'm not attached to is their achievements. And their behaviors and how they show up in any given moment. So to me, if a child shows up, completely off the rails, melting down epic tantrum, like in public, in front of my parents, right?
[00:15:59] Rachel: Like the [00:16:00] worst, most embarrassing scenarios we go through as parents. To me that is just as fine as. If and when they show up at their very best. So I've learned how to understand their behavior as data. It's information about them and about their state and about their thoughts and their beliefs and their emotions, and it's my job as a parent to decipher that information and help them.[00:16:30]
[00:16:30] Rachel: Understand how to process their emotions and help them move forward and make decisions based off of that. So to me, I realized in my business it's actually the same thing. 'cause my business is not my baby. Yeah. I don't actually have that kind of attachment to owning my business much like I don't have the attachment to my children being my children like.
[00:16:54] Rachel: They are not a reflection of me. In fact, they're their own people. And my business is also not a [00:17:00] reflection of me. It's a business and it's my job to take care of that business, grow that business, and do all the things that we need to do as business owners. But it isn't my baby.
[00:17:13] Chanelle: Oh, so good.
[00:17:14] Chanelle: I think there's so many gems in there, both as business owners and as parents that you touched on that little piece. I think there are lots that we can pull from that is so needed. Now I wanna shift gears a little bit here and talk about one [00:17:30] of the things, another business success that you've had is doing consistent 10 KA month.
[00:17:36] Chanelle: Months in your business. And so first, congratulations on that because that's a big achievement and I would love to talk about some of the key things that you feel like have gotten you to that level.
[00:17:48] Rachel: So I think there's a few things. First of all, there was, I needed clarity on the strategy of the acquisition funnel.
[00:17:55] Rachel: Like why am I building a funnel? Why am I building this funnel? [00:18:00] What are all the pieces that have to go inside this funnel, not just in terms of the tech. That to me is a relatively small piece of it. More in terms of what is the purpose of every stage of the funnel, right? What is the purpose of social media as part of the funnel?
[00:18:16] Rachel: What is the purpose of the lead magnet? What is the purpose of the opt-in page? What is the purpose of the nurture sequence? What's the purpose of the order bump or the upsells, or the downsells, right? I had to understand from a 30,000 foot [00:18:30] view, what is the quote unquote machine I'm trying to build?
[00:18:34] Rachel: Once I had that clarity, then I had to also dive into the messaging of. Like we said earlier, the earlier the problems I solve for people and carry that messaging throughout every stage of the funnel, including into the sales calls. For me in my business, the way I my sales mechanism is a sales call, so I get on an actual one-on-one call with a [00:19:00] prospect, and then we either move forward or not, but the messaging piece of how to run that sales call.
[00:19:07] Rachel: What is, what are the sales skills I needed to develop some skill and how do I make all of these pieces work together in a way that is synergistic and cohesive so that no matter where you came into my funnel, you're going to be experiencing my content from different angles that are all, that all work [00:19:30] together, if you will, to create an effect where a.
[00:19:35] Rachel: I can solve the problems. Like I, I establish authority. I establish hopefully, connection, rapport, trust in who I am as a human being and a mother, and then also help you shift your perspective on where you are, because I think all of us. If we're coaches, one of the main things we do for our clients is help them shift out of their [00:20:00] limiting beliefs and out of the perspectives that keep them stuck in whatever problem they're stuck in.
[00:20:06] Rachel: So when it comes to how do I bring all of this together? Yes, there was the strategy piece, but I think a lot of it was also the messaging piece. The messaging to me is the glue that makes all the strategy work.
[00:20:20] Chanelle: Yeah. Does that make
[00:20:21] Rachel: sense?
[00:20:22] Chanelle: Yeah, it really does. And it speaks to something we were talking about before we hit record today, which was the, [00:20:30] I had looked ahead of time at Rachel's sales page and the first part of her funnel, and I hope she'll share that with us later as I got to that and read through it, I was really impressed with your copy and.
[00:20:43] Chanelle: The things that you wrote and being in your target audience, being a parent of kids in the home, it spoke to the actual things that I'm dealing with on a day-to-day basis. And so that messaging piece is [00:21:00] coming through and I love how you've tied it into. You needed to see the bigger strategy in order to get that messaging.
[00:21:08] Chanelle: I think so often it's easy to try the opposite way. Yeah. Let me just get my words right. Let me just get my messaging right and then it will all just somehow magically come together. Whereas what I hear you saying is you understood first how does it need to come together and that informed your messaging.
[00:21:24] Rachel: And actually, that's a really interesting point you bring up because I think what we often [00:21:30] do as entrepreneurs, the mistake many of us make is we do one or the other. Either, either we only do messaging and we have no strategy. Yeah. Or we think no, the only thing I need is the strategy. What's the tip?
[00:21:42] Rachel: The trick, the hack, the, like what's the upsell? How do I, manipulate this sales funnel. But it's neither. It's both. You have to have both. Yeah. Yeah. And they both have to come together in order for you to really create this kind of community, if you will, [00:22:00] that's how I look at it. My content creates community.
[00:22:03] Rachel: That's really, honestly, if I look back at why am I an online entrepreneur rather than, I could have been just a local business owner. I knew firsthand. The isolating experience that motherhood could be, and certainly those of us who are looking to parent maybe different than how we were raised, even if we were raised by good parents.
[00:22:25] Rachel: I have two very loving, very good parents. I had a good [00:22:30] childhood and I knew I had to do something different. I knew something wasn't clicking. I knew something wasn't working in the skills that I had. So even as. Our parents may, they did the best they could, and we can still change because, there's things we know today about the brain and about the nervous system that we simply didn't know decades ago when we were kids, our parents didn't know.
[00:22:56] Rachel: That's just the simple truth. So for me, why [00:23:00] I started this to begin with was to create that sense of community so people knew. Nothing's broken with you. Nothing's broken with your child, and you're not alone. And there is another way. There is a way for you to quote unquote, have it all to, be a working parent if you're a working parent children in a way that I.
[00:23:19] Rachel: Feels good to you without having to compromise on structure or boundaries when needed, or skill building. Lord knows our children need a [00:23:30] lot of skills. Yeah. If they're going to one day become well adjusted adults. We know that. So you can have it all. It isn't, I think for me at least, it was a, in my mind, my own limiting belief was that it's either or, either I am bad cop or good cop, and I didn't like either one of those options, to be honest.
[00:23:47] Chanelle: Yeah. Yeah. Who does? That's not where we want to be as parents. So I, you've given us so much good information today. I, one of the things that you've talked a lot about is this [00:24:00] idea of really getting your messaging and your content, for others who are looking to have similar success with what they put out into the world, what is the number one piece of advice that you would share with them?
[00:24:13] Rachel: Honestly, find a mentor. Find, invest in a mentor who has done what you want to do and has a proven track record. Ask for help and get coached. Because the truth is we're all smart enough. And if we could have figured this out on our own, we already [00:24:30] would. And I don't know about other people.
[00:24:33] Rachel: For me personally, I have a touch of impatience, meaning. I don't want to do trial and error for 15 years to try and figure it out on my own. Maybe I can, maybe I'm smart enough, probably. But I'm not interested in that. Rather, what I would prefer is to invest in a mentor who can get me there and, collapse that timeline for me, because what I really want is to help people, and I don't want to have to wait [00:25:00] 15 years before I've figured this out enough.
[00:25:04] Rachel: To actually make an impact on families, I wanna make an impact on families today, and between you and me, I wanna make an impact on children. That's really my motivation as you mentioned in the beginning of our recording, why I'm doing this is because I want children to grow up in a world where.
[00:25:22] Rachel: They know their voice. They know who they are. They know they matter. They are very connected within themselves. So if [00:25:30] I'm gonna help that effect happen in the world, I have to start with their parents.
[00:25:34] Chanelle: Yeah, I love that mission. I think that's so powerful what you're doing, and to see how it all comes together.
[00:25:43] Chanelle: That it's not just about, a mom losing her mind in the moment. It's about teaching her to connect so that the kids then have the lives that they're meant to have. And so that's a really powerful thing that you're doing. I also love this idea of [00:26:00] finding a mentor to collapse the timeline.
[00:26:03] Chanelle: I think that's really powerful because yeah, we can struggle through and do it on our own, but it's gonna take a lot longer. And so that's a really good point that mentors speed up the process. So I think that's true both in business and in parenting. So if people are looking for help in their parenting, where can they get more information about your work?
[00:26:27] Rachel: Thank you. I just on that point of [00:26:30] connection that you mentioned earlier, I say this all the time to my clients connection is both the short term and the long-term goal for us as parents.
[00:26:38] Chanelle: Yeah.
[00:26:39] Rachel: So when we're coming from that place and asking ourselves, okay, how do I. Connect both in the short term and in the long term, and constantly have that kind of macro micro vision.
[00:26:54] Rachel: I think that is a mindset shift that is super helpful for us. Again, both in [00:27:00] parenting and in business. Right?
[00:27:01] Chanelle: Yeah, for sure.
[00:27:03] Rachel: That's so good. I'm in three places. One is Instagram. You can find me at Rachel Duffy here on Instagram. The other is, you can check out my podcast, the Unscrew You Podcast, which is available anywhere you listen to podcasts.
[00:27:17] Rachel: And if you wanna go a little bit deeper with things that we talked about today, I would be more than happy and I would feel privileged if you would check out. My secret podcast, which is called For the Last [00:27:30] Time, and it specifically dives into how we can. Stop reacting in ways that we later regret as parents.
[00:27:39] Rachel: How do we remain patient with our children, even when they melt down in public or they ignore us or they talk back to us. So it's a simple step-by-step process that I walk people through. And I would be I'm gonna share the link with you, hopefully in the show notes and, perfect. Yes. Check that out.
[00:27:59] Chanelle: [00:28:00] Okay. We'll make sure to share that. Rachel, thank you so much for being here today.
[00:28:04] Rachel: Thank you so much for having me. It's been an honor.
[00:28:06] Chanelle: Yeah, this has been great. I have learned so many things. Thank you all for listening, and we'll see you next time here at Peaceful Profits. I.
