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30. Make the BOSS™ Shift for Daily Down Time with La'Vista Jones
8 Plays6 months ago
“I'm done glorifying busyness.” You should be, too!
In this episode, we delve into the intersection of entrepreneurship, self-care, and effectiveness with La’Vista Jones, a seasoned coach, author, and founder of 31 Marketplace.
She shares deeply personal stories, like having a doctor prescribe short-term disability for stress. Then she teaches us how to create a more sustainable work-life balance, set healthy boundaries, and prioritize self-care—without compromising your bottom line.
In this episode, you’ll learn how to:
- Work ON your business more than IN your business.
- Stop chronic overfunctioning to fuel sustainable business growth.
- Select "selfish" self-care activities based on your Love Languages.
- Stop pledging allegiance to the hustle.
- Integrate self-care into your routine with S.P.A. days.
For more inspiration, subscribe to Unbound Turnarounds on Apple Podcasts or Spotify!
LINKS:
- Connect with Nicole
- Connect with Mallory
- Connect with La'Vista: https://www.thirtyonemarketplace.com/
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Unbound Turnarounds
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to Unbound Turnarounds, a podcast all about the challenges women business owners think about constantly, but rarely voice. We're Nicole and Mallory, entrepreneurs, friends, and co-founders of Business Unbound, a community helping women alleviate the headaches, heartaches, and backaches so work actually works for life. This is your safe space for the ups, downs, and the turnarounds.
00:00:32
Speaker
Welcome back, everybody. Thank you for joining us for another week on Unbound Turnarounds.
Meet Libista Jones
00:00:38
Speaker
We are here today with our first guest of season three. Alrighty. How did that happen, Nicole? I don't know, but I love it. I love it that we're still here.
00:00:48
Speaker
Me too. Okay, so season three, if you guys listen to the first two episodes with Nicole and I for this season, season three is all about different aspects of time management, specifically with, you know, of course an entrepreneurial lens. So today we're going to be getting into how self-care ties into time management.
00:01:08
Speaker
And I am really excited about that. Actually, we'll probably also talk about what happens when they don't because we are the ups downs and the turnarounds.
00:01:19
Speaker
Yeah. So who do we have with us as our guest today? Yes. So our guest today is Libista Jones. She is a certified coach. She's a six-time author, humble brag. Love it. And the host of the Boss Talk podcast, which you should also run right over to and subscribe. She's also a professional speaker. So this is what gets my heart. She is a corporate dropout, like someone else I know.
00:01:45
Speaker
Add a burnout survivor turned entrepreneur so she is a lot of good things to share with us she spearheads thirty one marketplace which is an agency that's passionate about helping ambitious visionaries amplify their impact without sacrificing themselves to do it and that's the baby.
00:02:03
Speaker
Through their initiative, the Amplify Effect, she is also now helping change agents bridge the gap between innovation and influence through sustainable podcasting, something that we are also very into right now. So if you prefer, Paige to podcast her latest book, The Boss Shift, is a blueprint for fusing systemization and self-care.
00:02:24
Speaker
And although she is a proud Ohio Buckeye, me also, by the way, she, yeah, she currently lives in Arizona with her husband, Stewart, their son, AKA the cub, and their bull mastiff puppy, Atlas, adorable. Thank you so much for being on the show. I am so excited to be on the show. I mean, before we go any further, OH. I don't. Kettering right here. Here I am. Yes, I love it. I know. Kettering turned Montana. I don't know.
00:02:55
Speaker
I don't know. Yes. And Mallory used to be Arizona, so we've got the full spectrum here. That's true. Interesting. That is so interesting. Nice. So it's meant to be. We have you covered. All right. Well, to get us started, LaVista, okay, let's make sure everyone is actually clear on this distinction before we go any further.
Working on vs. in the Business
00:03:16
Speaker
Tell us your take between working on your business versus working in your business. Yeah, that's something I think that comes up in entrepreneurial talks all the time. So working in your business is the execution of tasks in your business, whatever those tasks are, to actually get things done in the business. Working on your business
00:03:38
Speaker
is the strategy, right? It's the, let me cast the vision for this XYZ thing, you know, this initiative that we're trying and figuring out how are we actually going to like make this come to life and how is this going to affect the finances? How is this going to affect the bottom line? What is marketing potentially look like? Those kinds of things.
00:04:00
Speaker
And if you can tell by my voice, right? Like I feel like I even just like light up when I think about the working on the business versus the working in because working in is, you know, that's the stuff that keeps you busy. And that's the stuff that you're like, Oh my God, if somebody else could do this, I would be so happy. Like that's usually not the stuff that lights you up, but the stuff working on it definitely does.
00:04:22
Speaker
Your voice absolutely changed when you were talking about them. And I think there isn't anyone listening who wasn't like, oh, all those execution of tasks, I would love to get rid of every single one of them. Right? Like, that's, that's just where your time goes and your day goes by and you're like, did I even do anything?
00:04:40
Speaker
Well, but they have to happen. They have to happen. They have to happen. So that's why it's so hard. That's why
Balancing Execution and Vision
00:04:46
Speaker
it's so hard. Well, that's the struggle I think that solopreneurs have so much, right? Because they typically have gotten into business because they're good at doing the thing that brings them money. But because they're doing it on their own and wearing all the hats, like they have to do all of the execution of things, at least at the beginning.
00:05:08
Speaker
And it's just like you said, it's like it's this time suck, like where'd all my time go? And I haven't actually done the thing that I love to do that brings money into the business. Yeah. Yeah. It's a time suck and it's like a joy suck as well. Right? Where you're just like, why did I got into this for it to feel a different kind of way?
00:05:29
Speaker
Uh, so I'm, I'm hesitant to ask this next question because I feel it is about me, but I want to know how this relates to the term over functioning. And what are some of the consequences of this in life and business? Cause I feel seen by this.
00:05:47
Speaker
Yeah.
The Trap of Over-functioning
00:05:48
Speaker
Yeah. Over-functioning, you know, that should be included in my bio too, that not only am I a burnout survivor, I am a recovering over-functioner. I think we should have meetings just like AA. Yes. Because I think it's something you have to commit to over and over again, not to actually be an over-functioner. But really in its simplest terms, over-functioning is doing more than is necessary.
00:06:09
Speaker
doing more than what is appropriate and doing more than what is healthy. And if we're consistently doing that, you know, some of the side effects, right, are us experiencing anxiety in business and in our personal life, even potentially resentment, resentment towards doing this thing that you love, right? Like when I talk about my burnout experience, I talk about my relationship with work being complicated. I loved my work. I loved everything about
00:06:38
Speaker
what i did i just didn't have good boundaries around how i use my time or take care of myself right and so it cost me harm and one of the other potentials you know that i'm talking about is burnout if we're always in this case you know this state of over functioning and taking on more than what's required or asked of us are needed from us honestly.
00:07:01
Speaker
I think a lot of us get into that. I've had discussions with this with other entrepreneur friends where you make your statement of work and you deliver it and you price that out and you get the deal. Then you go ahead and deliver 40% more that you aren't being paid for.
00:07:19
Speaker
And it's that same tendency also on the back end of your business, being like, OK, that was entirely unnecessary. That's not what is needed from me. And that 40% comes from somewhere. And it's probably coming from my personal life, my rest, my ability to move my body, my ability to connect with family and friends. That comes from somewhere. But like you said, when you're a solopreneur, it's so easy to be like,
00:07:48
Speaker
You know what? I'm just going to, I'm going to do one more thing. I'm just going to get one more quick thing done and then I'll pause. The pause never comes. The pause never happens. The promise you keep telling yourself, like the pause doesn't come. The rest doesn't come when you say you're going to, I'll just, I'll do it later. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. So let's, let's actually go into that burnout element. So we're saying over functioning can lead to anxiety and burnout.
00:08:17
Speaker
What was that experience like if you're open to sharing? What was that burnout experience like for you? And how did you get out of it?
Burnout and Self-care
00:08:25
Speaker
The actual physical part of it, again, I'll reiterate, I loved my work. And in fact, the position that I was in, I was an assistant vice president and the actual
00:08:40
Speaker
job that I did was created for me, for me, for my skillset, for my business acumen. Nobody could just go in and apply for it. Like my senior VPs put this together and was like, Hey, here is your new function in this line of business.
00:08:53
Speaker
No extra pressure there. No pressure at all, right? You're fine. But one of the things is things for me started off, like I call them whispers that my body was whispering to me. I found that, you know, I was just kind of tired all the time at first.
00:09:11
Speaker
And it really didn't matter what I did. You know, if I had extra coffee, if I did, you know, whatever, I really couldn't get over this just feeling tired. And I kind of just chalked it up to maybe jet lag because I did a lot of traveling with work. You know, one day I'd be in California, the next day I'd be in South Carolina. So
00:09:27
Speaker
I'm in tons of different time zones, not sleeping in my own bed, those kind of things, but then a headache would set in and I couldn't shake it. It didn't matter how much Tylenol I threw out it or whatever the case may be, I couldn't get rid of this headache.
00:09:42
Speaker
And then there would be times where I would find myself emotional at work and not because like somebody was like malicious and mean to me. It would be going over a project with my my boss and he'd be like, Oh, well, why don't we
00:09:58
Speaker
look at this trend in this way. And I'd be like, okay, in the office and then have to go outside the building. And I'd be bawling crying. And I would even say to myself, kind of like that Tom Hanks movie, like there's no crying in business. Like what is going on with you? Right? What is happening? Why am I sobbing with this? I'll say the caveat. I am an emotional person, but not when it comes to work, like him telling me to show this trend on a spreadsheet differently. That shouldn't have hurt my feelings.
00:10:32
Speaker
I remember also one day being in the office that I all of a sudden became very aware of my heart beating. It was beating like really fast. I happened to work in a building that had a nurses station
00:10:47
Speaker
in it. And so I go over, I said, you know, can somebody check me out? And she sat me down and checked my blood pressure and it was like sky high. And she's like, darling, are you under any pressure? And I'm like, no. No. I don't know. It's just my normal workload or whatever. And she's like, well, something is triggering something. And I'm like, I don't even know what that could be. And
00:11:10
Speaker
I found myself also starting to negotiate with my husband. I can't really explain it, but if I don't go to work today and I can go get a massage or something instead, I promise I'll go to work tomorrow. I became a little kid bartering trying to not go to school. He's just like,
00:11:29
Speaker
I don't know what's up with you. Like, cause I couldn't explain what was, it was just like, I just can't go to work today. And he's like, well, the way her mortgage is set up, you got to go somewhere. And I think that the, the, the thing like once these whispers, you know, kept happening. And I'll say that this wasn't like, Oh, a couple of months I was living and working at this pace for seven years.
00:11:54
Speaker
of not really sleeping, not really eating well, not really pausing, taking time off, traveling all over the country, seven years of running like this and ignoring all of these whispers to lay down, go to sleep, feed yourself, those kinds of things. And I found myself on the 202 going into work,
00:12:15
Speaker
Heart racing, palms sweating, I'm bawling, crying. My mind is racing. I have no clue what is going on with me. I don't even know how I got to my office, but I was able to navigate there, park, find my way to my office, and I made two phone calls and I called my husband and I was like, I'm coming home because I think I'm losing my mind.
00:12:34
Speaker
And I called a psychologist whose number I could just get ahold of and was like, I need an appointment today because I think I'm losing my mind. And I got in, talked to the doctor and maybe 10 minutes into our conversation, she's like, yeah, so I'm taking you off work because you are overwhelmed and you're stressed out.
00:12:55
Speaker
in your experiencing burnout. And I'm like, how could that be? Like, I love what I do. And she's like, yeah, she's like, get a clue chick, right? Because the way that you're doing it is not working for you. And so I ended up being taken
00:13:12
Speaker
off of work on short-term disability and had to go see my therapist. I had to start taking prescriptions and things like that just to get myself accustomed to not being on the go, go, go and being okay
00:13:29
Speaker
Taking a pause and it was a huge adjustment and when I was able to go back to work and just kind of putting myself right back into that routine in that environment of doing more with less and doing the work really of like three four or five people putting in 14 15 16-hour days if I slept it, you know at all it was just like oh I can't keep doing this and so I
00:13:55
Speaker
it was time for me to resign. And so I resigned in 2014, and that's when I started working for myself. So I feel incredibly seen by this. I am going to be emailing you after. I'm the same girl because I did it for 10 years, almost the exact same thing where you would just like, all you did was work, was driving downtown in the office every day. And I literally also got to the point where I was like, I can't go.
00:14:25
Speaker
I physically cannot go today. I didn't have a husband at home, so it was just me being like, I can't go. I would start just working from home even though no one else in my company was working from home at that time. I'm not saying I can't do the job, I'm saying I can't get myself downtown right now. Just trying to keep pushing through that.
00:14:51
Speaker
not enough sleep, no life outside of work, and just the stress level building. I did not listen to a single one of those whispers. That was not happening. I also had jobs made for me. I wrote my own roles. It was very, very similar.
00:15:10
Speaker
to your experience. So I have also been there and your, wow, your body is eventually like, you're done. We're not doing, it's like, I told you, yeah, like I told you a hundred times and I'm, yeah, I am not doing this with you. I, as you were talking, I was having flashes of Nicole's wellness episode and this is a very, you guys have bare, but
00:15:31
Speaker
You've had similar paths, but you're not the only ones. There's many people listening and people who are corporate dropouts or are still in that headspace and who are in that realm. Now, what I have found interesting, what I was taking away when you were talking though, is the tie-in to time.
00:15:50
Speaker
Because you're saying I'm not sleeping, so there's no time for sleep. You're saying that I'm not eating, so there's no time for eating. There's all these pieces. When we look at it through a time lens, which is the spirit of the season, how do you think time plays into, or lack of time really, what you experienced? Oh, a major role, right? Being able to look back through a fresh set of eyes,
00:16:19
Speaker
I'm very aware now that work will expand to the time that you give it. So if you give it 16 hours a day, work is going to show up with you every single minute of those 16 hours. If you put some boundaries around it and you say, well, I'm not going to start until nine and I'm for sure going to stop doing this at four.
00:16:43
Speaker
and you contain it, work will say, okay, I'll meet you back up tomorrow at nine, right? And so like seeing how I just kind of let work seep into every aspect of like my life, I saw how problematic that was just for my overall wellbeing for my marriage. Like I was married for four years during that,
00:17:08
Speaker
season of my life in that position and my husband during the time would joke that my salary was his spousal support because he would only see me on the weekends when I would come home from a trip and then Monday morning, he's taking me right back to the airport.
00:17:23
Speaker
you know, not leveraging my time to best serve me really was a detriment to me in that season of my life. And then when I started working for myself, I actually started to bring some of those habits over with me until I kind of checked myself like, well, wait a second. I remember having and it just popped up on my Facebook memories the other day.
00:17:46
Speaker
But it was this picture of me in this coffee cup and it was like maybe five o'clock in the morning and I was just like, oh, I hate like 5 a.m. like sales calls. Right. And after that call, I was just like.
00:18:01
Speaker
wait a second, why am I doing this? Like I had conditioned myself that, you know, I was living in Arizona, but I'm from Ohio, so I had East Coast partners still. So, you know, I'm showering literally with my Blackberry on speaker on mute and I can listen and like, okay, like I can take care of that when I get in the office, right? And then put myself back on mute.
00:18:22
Speaker
But then because I'm in the West Coast, I'm having calls at six and seven o'clock at night. And so I just thought, well, people need to have access to me even though this is my own company. And so if they need to have a sales call at five, that's where we're going to have it. And then I realized, who told me that? I don't have to talk to somebody at five o'clock in the morning if I don't want to. And I immediately changed my scheduler. And it was like, nobody can schedule anything with me before 9 a.m.
00:18:50
Speaker
It's like, I don't even want to talk to the little person I co-created at five o'clock in the morning. So why would I have a sales call at five? But then I realized it wasn't just me that I was seeing other entrepreneurs doing the exact same thing, like having these habits and going through these routines and like this hustle and this busyness, the way that they did when they were in corporate or
00:19:14
Speaker
other things that they see and emulate in the entrepreneurial world, and it was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. We've got to do something different here if we want this success to be sustainable for these businesses that we have spent all of our time and energy and resources into for us to not resent.
00:19:34
Speaker
what we've built because I don't think that when we launch, that's any of our goals to say, you know what, three years from now, I want to hate doing what I'm doing because it's driving me crazy and it's taking all of my time and sleepless like nobody goes out like you go into entrepreneurship usually because you want time freedom.
00:19:55
Speaker
Exactly. This is the perfect segue because I was going to say as you were talking about corporate, I was like, I brought so much of that into my own business. I bring a lot of habits as does everyone, but there were a few things I did differently after I would say the first six months. I was like, no more client calls. I'm just not doing them.
00:20:15
Speaker
I'm going to arrange this business in a way that's like, we don't do these. We're all virtual. And if I need to market it that way, that's great. But no calls, no meetings, not doing it. And that was one of the best things I ever did. But the flip side of that, of being able to say, OK, well, I'm just not going to do meetings anymore. The flip side is, you're like, oh, my time is my own. It's so flexible. And I can put work wherever I want in my days.
00:20:41
Speaker
Well, yeah, except then you're like, well, I should probably get on at nine o'clock at night just to check in because I've been riding horses during the day. You get this little guilt factor going on where you're like, okay, well, I set up my life this way to be able to go, but somehow it still feels wrong that I'm able to do this. So maybe I should mess up my evenings. Would that be better?
00:21:04
Speaker
Right? So it's just this like mental little circus act of being like, I want this flexibility and freedom. And I also feel like I need to make sure that I'm paying for it. Right? Do you find that people's that's just how I felt about it? Yeah, yeah.
Flexible Schedules and Personal Guilt
00:21:22
Speaker
And I kind of go like back and forth with it, right? You know, I, I happen to also be a mother. And so there are times where
00:21:32
Speaker
you know, the flexibility is needed because like my kid is sick and nobody was expecting him to be home from school today. Even though he's eight and he's pretty independent, he still needs his mama, especially when he feels icky. And so it's like, okay, I have things set up in a way that I can rearrange some stuff, have this day off. I wasn't expecting it like whatever.
00:21:54
Speaker
And then there are other days, you know, where I'm like, um, today is a purposeful, hooky day. It has been planned for weeks. I'm going to be sitting poolside and not doing anything. And so I think that one of the things I kind of have to hold on to, like when it looked, when I'm looking at my time and what I'm focused on is,
00:22:14
Speaker
For the most part, I have a work schedule and I focus on it. When I say I'm gonna be in the office working on something, that's what I'm doing. One of the tools I use, I have what I call like a work candle that I write about in the book and I ritually kind of go into my office, light the candle, start working, and then blow that candle out when the work is done and I leave the office. And then that way, when my son is home, I can focus on being a mom and we can play and we can do like whatever.
00:22:42
Speaker
And that helps me to release the guilt, right? Of being able to kind of like work when I want to work or when it fits into my schedule, because when I said I was going to work, then that's what I focused on. And then when I said that I wasn't, I was able to be present as a wife, as a mother, as a friend, as a whatever. And then if, you know, a day just needs to pop up where it's like, I woke up and I'm like, I really need a mental health day today, or, you know, I need to,
00:23:08
Speaker
really lean into being mom today. It's not the end of the world because I've focused where I said I was going to focus the rest of the time. Yeah, I have a non-work candle. It's the one that I'll light in the evening once work is done and be like, it's time to make dinner now and not do this. But it's just like a little mental trigger to set up a ritual for yourself that says, OK, I'm either working or I'm not working.
00:23:37
Speaker
And I think that's almost a piece of self-compassion and self-care, to do those little things, those little rituals that help your brain shift between
00:23:48
Speaker
work or not. That is self-care. But I think the hard thing when we talk about self-care is that marketing really got ahold of that term. It is everywhere. And sometimes that makes it hard. It seems frivolous or it always has to just be a mani-pedi. And you're like, that's not what I mean.
00:24:12
Speaker
So what do you think about the term self-compassion, self-care? What should they mean? Not just what is society telling us that they are? Yeah.
Practicing Self-compassion
00:24:22
Speaker
When we're looking at self-compassion, it really, at the core of it, is being kind and understanding towards ourselves when we're dealing with something difficult.
00:24:33
Speaker
I sit on a board, I'm the vice president on this particular board, and our president is dealing with a health issue with a parent of hers. And we talked about it during our last board meeting, and she was crying and upset, not only because of what she's dealing with, but also because she felt like she was letting the board down and she wasn't gonna be there to do X, Y, and Z. And I remember telling her, I said,
00:25:01
Speaker
this is the time for you to be compassionate with yourself. I said, if any of us were going through the exact same thing, what you would tell us is, don't worry about it. We'll take care of it. We'll be able to jump in, spread the work around and execute on the things that we need to get done. Things are not going to fall by the wayside. I was like, and now you need to be able to give yourself permission to allow us
00:25:32
Speaker
to do that for you, right? That I think is the example of self-compassion, that what would you do for a friend that was going through a hard time or dealing with something difficult and give yourself permission to treat yourself with the same kindness and gentleness and grace while you're going through it? So it's not, you know, burying your head in the sand and like, oh, this isn't happening.
00:25:56
Speaker
I'm not going to beat myself up because this is going on or this is something that I'm experiencing.
00:26:06
Speaker
allowing yourself to kind of lean into vulnerable leadership and say, hey, I need some help with this. I need someone to, you know, carry some of this weight or clear some of this off of my plate for a while so that I can continue functioning and deal with this thing that I'm dealing with in life right now.
00:26:27
Speaker
And it's tough as a solopreneur or even someone with a small team, I find to give yourself permission to do that because it almost feels like, well, I'm not going to a nine to five. Like I already have it way easier than so many other people struggling. So I don't think I should have permission to be overwhelmed or ask for help. And that's just such, that's just not true. It's just not true. That's what I call some B and some S.
00:27:00
Speaker
Yeah, I write about and I call it boss shame in the book, right? Like, because that's what it is. It's, I'm the boss.
00:27:08
Speaker
I'm the leader of this group, this team. Like I should have the answers for everything. I should know how to do everything. I should know how to solve everything. And it's like, that's just not realistic. Like you're a person and you're not like this all knowing perfect, you know, being you've got flaws, you've got shortcomings, and there actually should be people on your team that have strengths that are different than yours, right? For them to be able to do things and execute stuff.
00:27:33
Speaker
better than you can. And so it's just like, you've got to, you've got to have like the mindset shifts to kind of get over that and get over yourself and share to a point that's comfortable, right? You don't have to like go into like a team meeting and be like, my life is in shambles and this is all the things that are going wrong. But is it okay for your team to know that you're a bit preoccupied because life is lifing? Sure.
00:28:00
Speaker
So they can step up and support you in different ways and make sure that the business is still running smoothly. Absolutely. I think that's great because you've given examples about using like our human experience in leadership, right? And, and by doing that, you're giving permission to others in your team to be that way as well.
00:28:25
Speaker
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Speaker
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00:29:14
Speaker
I'd like to tie it back to the time management piece though. So how do you see the self-care and the self-compassion being a part of effective time management? Well, I think that one of the ways that those two work together is it allows you
00:29:36
Speaker
like white space in your calendar, right? To be able to recharge, to rest. Like I, when I think of myself, I am the stereotypical type A personality, like a thousand percent. And I was joking with somebody that even when my son was an infant, if like nursing wasn't on my calendar, I wasn't sure he was going to get fed.
00:30:00
Speaker
I don't know. This is supposed to be happening at three kids. Hey, I don't know what to tell you. You're going to hold on. You're going to need to hold on. For me, with the time management, I have to have time for myself literally on my calendar. One of the things that I do
00:30:18
Speaker
You know, my, my day typically starts at nine o'clock, like work wise, but on my calendar, there's a time from dropping my kid off to getting back to my office. And it's that eight 30 to nine 30 buffer that I have on my calendar. And it literally says me time. My team can't talk to me. They don't need to email me. Like there's nothing happening in the outside world in that moment that I care about. And so like, I'm using that time to either like sit on the couch, maybe take a quick nap.
00:30:46
Speaker
binge a little bit of Netflix. I might have coffee. I might just sit like in complete silence because it's been a rough day getting my son ready for school or whatever the case may be. But it's time that I purposely have on the calendar as an appointment with myself to do nothing. Like I'm not obligated to anybody during that time.
00:31:07
Speaker
I block out lunch. When I remember what my corporate life was like, I never ate. I sustained myself on coffee and honey roasted peanuts at my desk. Now, there is a solid lunch break on my calendar every single day. I'm not taking a call during my lunch break. That's non-negotiable for me. Having my calendar set up in a way
00:31:31
Speaker
where I've got white space where I can just like think and just be and not just constantly being present in a meeting or a presentation or working on this keynote or working through this strategy. Like there are just chunks of time that are out there where it's just like, I just get to be with me.
00:31:54
Speaker
Just me, right? And like my calendar allows for that and allows for me to also block out time to still hit my deadlines, right? Because I mean, we can't just be completely like engrossed in leisure, you know, 24 seven as a business owner because we're not going to make money. We're not going to do the thing. We're not going to make the impact that we need to make.
00:32:16
Speaker
But we also can't be work work work all the time either and so that's for me is how I have used time management especially schedule blocking to Fit that time in to fit me into the schedule to fit You know my son's accurate curricular stuff into the schedule and so like my team knows like hey if they see that there is a
00:32:39
Speaker
you know, baseball practice on Tuesday, even if this looks like an amazing networking opportunity, well, this is not going to go to it because she's not going to miss going to practice with her son. And so I've kind of used my calendar as kind of my
00:32:56
Speaker
blueprint if you will for like how our days and everything else run and if it can't fit within the parameters that I've given it, we either need to say no to it or we need to like push it back or whatever because we're only allotting so much time to work so that we have time for our whole team to actually live our lives.
00:33:16
Speaker
And it's those bumper rails. Yeah. Yeah. So the boundaries in place. But what I love about it, Nicole, I was thinking back to our flow episode at the end of season two. Yeah. Because what you're saying, Levisa, what you're saying really is that by taking those white spaces and that self-care,
00:33:34
Speaker
is it makes those times when you are working more effective. Because you aren't burned out, because you're rested, because you're recovered, you have set yourself up for a chance to become in flow state, to be more creative, to be more innovative, and be more effective in those times when you are working. So really, I think the conclusion of what you're saying is like, self-care is really everything to being effective in your time. I mean, really, it ties together so much. You can't separate it.
00:34:04
Speaker
Yeah, it really does. It really does. It really is getting in touch with, you know, what it is that you need and then starting to make those accommodations with how you're doing the work, right? Like I think that we can either adhere to this like hustle culture of like the busyness and like all this other stuff, or we can figure out, okay, there's a way for me to really do both.
00:34:31
Speaker
to enjoy the work and enjoy my life simultaneously. Like I don't have to wait until I'm 60 to enjoy life. I'm going to enjoy it today, every single day and incorporating those little small things that bring me joy. Cause I think that, you know, part of the conversation we were having is like, what even is self care? You know, is it, it's not just bubble baths and pedicures. And in fact, there's a way to do self care in a harmful way. If you don't do it,
00:34:59
Speaker
in a way that is deeply resonant to you with how you define it. Like I, when I'm coaching with clients, I typically take them through like their love languages, right? And I remember working with a client and she was, we were talking about her self care and she's like, you know, I'm getting a massage every three weeks and I'm getting regular pedicures. And she's like, I still feel like crap and I don't understand why. So we looked at her love languages and her physical touch was a two.
00:35:25
Speaker
which is about the lowest rating you can get on the scale of doing that assessment. And so I said, so why are you getting massages and pedicures? Because it doesn't really seem like you want people to touch you. And I was like, how do you feel when you get off the massage table? She's like, I feel more tense when I get off than I was when I got there. And I said, because this,
00:35:48
Speaker
Is it the thing for you? I love massages. If I could get rubins every day, I definitely would, but I'm a physical touch person. We realized that she wanted and needed an artistic outlet for her self-care.
00:36:05
Speaker
So all that money she was spending on massages, she went out and bought an easel, some canvases, some paint brushes. And so those massage appointments now became art appointments. And so she'd set things up in her living room and she'd just sit and she'd paint for the time that she would be on the massage table. And she felt a thousand percent different because she was actually giving herself something that she needed instead of doing self-care the way they say it's supposed to be done.
00:36:34
Speaker
Yes, because it's not everyone doesn't want to go to yoga class. That's not it for everyone, right? Like you have to do the self care that I think really moves the needle on how you feel internally. And what you're saying is if, if your version of self care is not doing that, there are other versions of self care out there that will, and they will make a bigger impact. Huge. Yeah. Yeah. Not that you shouldn't go to yoga.
00:37:00
Speaker
also go to yoga if you want to. If yoga is your thing, yoga it up. But if yoga is not your thing, don't beat yourself up that you don't like yoga. Find something else that does bring you joy, that does bring a smile to your face when you do it.
00:37:18
Speaker
Okay, so you, I'm guessing in your coaching and in your world, you hear this a lot, but I'm too busy. I'm too busy for that. I'm too busy to take care of myself, whatever, fill in the blank, right? But you do have this beautiful quote that really resonates with me. And you said, busyness, overwhelm and exhaustion are not business goals.
00:37:40
Speaker
Yet so many entrepreneurs work as though those conditions are an inevitable part of business. Can you tell us about that?
Redefining Success: Beyond Busyness
00:37:50
Speaker
Yeah. So often people ask why I wrote the book. And I have to explain to them that the quote that you just shared is actually from my boss manifesto. And I wrote that about two years before I ever sat down to start pinning the book.
00:38:06
Speaker
I'll tell you that it came from a moment of scrolling on Facebook and a colleague of mine had posted something. It was early in the morning, it was a pot of coffee and so many of my examples evolve around coffee and I don't really know what that's about, but you know what, hey.
00:38:21
Speaker
Yeah, it was a it was a picture of a fairly empty coffee pot and The caption was something along the lines of it was like 5 a.m And she had already had like four calls in that she had X amount of calls still left to do and in the comments people are like Yeah, you're killing it sleep when you're dead like get the hustle do and I'm just like I
00:38:47
Speaker
I like just start like, you know, keyboard warrior just responding to this like, why? And then I realized
00:38:57
Speaker
nobody's going to care what I wrote here in response to this post. It's just going to get lost in the noise of everybody else basically cheering her on and giving her all of these kudos for this busyness, right? And you know, kind of subscribing to the hustle that it's like so prevalent in our culture. And so I copied what I was going to post and I put it like in a Google doc and just kind of sat with it for a little while and kind of massaged it.
00:39:26
Speaker
and it became the manifesto and so I put it out in a more broad way.
00:39:32
Speaker
as more of like a statement and it starts off with like, I am done glorifying busyness. Because I think that too often, especially us as entrepreneurs, whether we have just always been an entrepreneur or we've come from corporate or whatever, for some reason we have kind of pledged allegiance to this hustle mentality that somehow if I'm not hustling, if I'm not busy, if I'm not always doing or on the go,
00:40:00
Speaker
I'm not doing it right. And I think a lot of that is we tie our productivity to our worth, right? And so if I'm not producing something all the time, how am I going to prove that I'm worthy?
00:40:17
Speaker
And I talk a lot about mindset shifts like in the book and just like when I speak in general, but like we've got to let go of that expectation that being exhausted and tired and overwhelmed and stressed out and busy all the time is the only way that we can be successful because it just is not true. It's actually the opposite, right? You may be momentarily
00:40:47
Speaker
earning more or feeling more successful, but long-term, it just, it cannot last, right? We're walking around in these bodies with these brains and it doesn't work, right? But how do you get rid of that kind of
00:41:04
Speaker
selfishness that pops up when you're like, you know what, I'm going to do, I'm going to take a day for myself. And then your brain's like, I don't know. Should you? Well, I think that's one of those objections, the selfishness that
00:41:20
Speaker
I think we need to relook at the word, if you will, right? Because, you know, like we hear it a lot that like, Oh, I don't want to, or I don't practice self care because like, I don't want to feel selfish or I don't want to be selfish. And I really look at it as though, you know, your self care is selfish and it should be because it's the care of yourself, right?
00:41:42
Speaker
Like I'm a big Joanna Gaines fan, right? And so I think that the word selfish could really use some wordsmithing shiplap if you will. Yeah, take it down to the studs, take away the abrasiveness of like the definition and like remove the idea that prioritizing yourself is coming at the price or the neglect of somebody else. And I think that if we do that and we think of like this selfish
00:42:11
Speaker
like living, like I describe it as a lifestyle in the book and I describe it as compassionate concern for oneself, focus on one's pleasure and wellbeing arising from a thoughtful interest in one's own welfare. And I think that if you start to adopt that reimagined definition of selfish, it's something you can actually get behind. It's
00:42:36
Speaker
Okay, I can prioritize myself because I just need to be okay. One of the ways that I like illustrate it is like, you know, if you've ever flown, you've heard the oxygen mask analogy and it's like, okay, you're supposed to put this on and then you can assist other people. And it's just like, you know what?
00:42:56
Speaker
Your self-care can't be focused on other people in your life like your children, your spouse, you know, your partner, your friends, your ministry, whatever the case may be. It's got to be about you being okay, right? So like if we go back to that example of the oxygen mask, you got to put your mask on first because you need to breathe, period. And then when you're okay, yeah, you show up as a better mom as a byproduct of you being well and okay.
00:43:26
Speaker
and good and revived and refreshed and all of those things and nurtured. You show up as a better spouse, as a byproduct of you being okay. You show up as a better leader, as a better business owner, as a better, you know, colleague, as a better networker, as a better community leader because you are okay first. And so I think that that's one of the bigger mindset shifts we have to have of I don't want to feel selfish. Well,
00:43:53
Speaker
Actually, you do. And it's OK because it's OK for you to be a priority for yourself. And when you look at your own calendar, too, going back to, like you said, how you block out your calendar, if your calendar, if you go look at it and you're like, everything on here is for someone else, right? Everything on here is someone else's call, someone else's meeting, someone else's activity.
00:44:22
Speaker
there should be you showing up on that calendar, right? And that's a really easy way to just take a quick check and say, am I making time for myself? Or is everything on this schedule about somebody else? And if it is, then it's time to rethink it.
00:44:38
Speaker
And with the blocking that I was sharing about, that blocking comes with color coding too. So that it's easy for me to just kind of visually see I'm spending this much time working on the business, doing business development or networking or doing this. This is what I've got going on with my son. But to your point, if I don't see the color that represents me on there, it's like, well, wait a second.
00:45:03
Speaker
What happened? How did the schedule get this way? And so every once in a while, I'll have one of those conversations with my assistant, like, who scheduled this? Who scheduled it this way? Because I'm not here. And it's not OK. Because I know that that can't be sustainable for me.
00:45:20
Speaker
I've got to just make sure that I'm okay. You know, everybody has stuff, right? Like, you know, I've mentioned that I'm a mom. I, you know, am married to my college sweetheart. We've been together. I always joke since Jesus left, but it's been decades that we have been together.
00:45:36
Speaker
And, you know, I have, well, we both have aging parents that are 2000 miles away from it. So it's like, there's always something or somebody jockeying for your time. But in fact, while we're recording this, I'm in Ohio now because my father isn't well.
00:45:51
Speaker
And, you know, my whole crew is just like, well, make sure that you're eating, make sure you're taking care of yourself. I'm like, I know because there's no point of me being here trying to be support to anyone else if I'm laid up sick because I've worn myself out in a caregiving role. And it's like, I'm here. I love my father, but I love myself too.
00:46:13
Speaker
I love
00:46:30
Speaker
What would be the advice you'd give a busy entrepreneur who's like still going to say to you, I just can't, I, the time, I just can't make the time. Are there any strategies you'd say to start with that's maybe some low hanging fruit that would help them kind of see the light at the end of the tunnel?
SPA: A Self-care Guide
00:46:49
Speaker
Yeah. One of the things that I would advise them to do is have what I call a spa day, try to have a spa day every day.
00:46:57
Speaker
And spa is an acronym for one doing something smart. That's the S, doing something smart. So if that's listening to a podcast, maybe on your commute or, you know, reading a chapter of a book while you're in the bathroom, and that might be a little crew, but I mean, that's time, right? That you could potentially be using to do, you know, something to stimulate your mind, something that interests you. The P is to do something physical. Try and do something physical for yourself every day. And I'm not saying like go to a yoga class,
00:47:27
Speaker
But do something that supports your body on a daily basis. Maybe it is a walk. Maybe it's going outside and getting some sunshine. Maybe it's trying that smoothie recipe that you pinned on Pinterest six weeks ago and have never ever tried. Maybe it's signing up for one of the food delivery boxes so you're not overwhelmed with meal prep every day this week. But doing something physical that supports and takes care of your body every day. And then the A is doing something affirming.
00:47:54
Speaker
And so, you know, for me, we talked about love languages. I'm a physical touch and words of affirmation girl. So in my office, I'm surrounded by words that resonate with me and bring me joy. I keep a dry erase marker in my bathroom. So as a quote or something pops up into my mind, I write that stuff on my mirror so that as I'm brushing my teeth or doing my makeup.
00:48:15
Speaker
I can say those things back to myself and fill myself up during the day. For you, it might look like journaling. It might look like reading scripture. It could be reciting a mantra. But I think that if we can do at least like those three things every day and start just kind of incorporating those things in your life, you'll start taking care of yourself in ways and recognizing and celebrating things that you're doing for yourself along the way.
00:48:41
Speaker
that you might not have even realized like, oh, this is how I'm taking care of myself and this is how I'm showing up for myself. But if you're struggling, it's also going to kind of challenge you to think of
00:48:51
Speaker
what can I do today to stimulate my mind? What can I do today to physically take care of myself? What can I do today to affirm myself? And the more and more you do it, the more and more it becomes second nature. And then you're like, okay, well, what else can I do? What else can I shift? What else can I tweak to better position me as the priority as I go about my day to day so that I'm good?
00:49:18
Speaker
Yes. And I love that you mentioned celebrating your own successes in that way and using self-care as a measure of success so that it's not just what have I earned? How many clients did I get? How big is this deal?
00:49:32
Speaker
It is, you know what, I took four spa days this week and I am killing it, right? Like recognizing and acknowledging the small steps that you're taking, whether it was five minutes or an hour, or you took a half day on Friday, whatever, but really pausing and saying, you know what, that was worth it. And I'm glad I did that for myself. Yep.
00:49:51
Speaker
Yes. I love this conversation. This is all the things that I think can make entrepreneurship feel different than corporate life and should. Often, it's easy to get tied into these little traps and these little habits that we had before when we worked for someone else, but you've given us a lot of great ways to think about
00:50:14
Speaker
re-prioritizing yourself and celebrating that and allowing yourself to be okay before you are taking care of everyone else. So, love to this conversation. Thank you for sharing all your wisdom with us. And we really enjoyed it. Oh, thank you. I appreciate being a guest and being able to just have this conversation with the both of you. Loved it. We will see everyone next week. Same place, same time.
00:50:42
Speaker
Thanks for listening. Hop over to UnboundBoss.com to join our community and leave us a voice memo. We absolutely love hearing from you. If you like the podcast, please subscribe, leave us an Apple review and share your favorite episodes with other women entrepreneurs. Talk to you soon.