In this episode of The One Small Change Podcast, host Yvonne McCoy welcomes guest Preethi Balasubramanian, who shares her deeply personal inspiration for helping solopreneurs avoid burnout and find balance. Preethi Balasubramanian tells the story of witnessing her father’s entrepreneurial struggles and physical collapse, which catalyzed her passion for supporting business owners. Together, they discuss actionable strategies to prevent overwhelm, create supportive systems, and build meaningful communities that foster both success and well-being. You’ll discover practical tools, the importance of letting go to grow, and the power of making yourself a priority—especially for women—and learn that success can coexist with calm.

Guest Bio:

Preethi Balasubramanian is a business strategist and mentor dedicated to helping solopreneurs and small business owners simplify operations, find clarity, and thrive without burning out. Drawing from her childhood experiences observing her father’s solopreneur journey and her own multifaceted roles as an entrepreneur, mom, and children’s book author, she brings a grounded, human approach to business growth. Preethi’s signature methods focus on the mental load of entrepreneurship, systemizing processes, and building strong circles of support. She also leads the Calm Business Reset Room, a free monthly community space for entrepreneurs.

Chapters:

00:00 "Lessons from Dad's Solopreneurship"

04:42 Letting Go to Grow

08:56 "Prioritize Health and Time Wisely"

10:18 "15-Minute CEO Reset Guide"

13:11 Calm Business Reset Room

16:36 Overcome Self-Doubt, Embrace Ease

22:05 Redefining Women Leadership Narratives

23:32 "Learn to Say No"

28:23 "Author, Mom, and Businessowner"

30:19 "Values and Lessons for Kids"

33:22 "Change Takes Courage and Curiosity"

Quote from the Guest:

"I concentrate more on how people feel, how they connect with me, rather than what all things I'm doing for them or what am I buying for them."

Links:

Get your 15-min CEO Reset: https://dl.bookfunnel.com/53ghfokq22

Website: https://wond3r.online/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/preethi-balasubramanian/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@preethi-wond3r

Welcome to The One Small Change. I can't believe it's been another week, and

I am thrilled to embark on this journey of exploration and transformation with

you. I'm your host, Yvonne McCoy, and I bring almost 30 years of

entrepreneurial experience, and I have a passion for

discovering growth through the power of seemingly small change. And I

want to thank you for spending time with me because you could spend your time

anywhere. But one of the things that I try to do is bring

you somebody interesting that can help you grow your business. And this

week we're going to be talking with with Preethi, preeth,

Preethi. All right, you know, young brain damage,

guys. Okay, balasubramanian.

Let me try it again, just one more time. Okay,

Preethi balasubramanian.

Better, right? Yes. So,

so, so the, the first lesson that you're gonna, you're gonna learn is you

don't have to be perfect. You just have to improve.

And so I demonstrated that for you today. Anyway,

so she's going to share with us her story

of an unexpected or insignificant thing that happened that makes

her really good at what she does, that helps her.

You know, it's helped her and formed her unique power. So,

Preeti, tell us your story and what happened.

Okay, so to start with, like, so

I grew up in a house where my dad was an entrepreneur or a

solopreneur, uh, before we used that word

even. Like, that was— nobody called it a solopreneur back then.

And I grew up seeing him do,

do it all, right? Like, from the— and he had a

home office, so it was from home. So you— I've seen him doing the

administration, the manufacturing side of things, the finance side

of things, the taxation And so he was the one who was doing

it all in the business. And, um, probably when

I was around grade 4 or 5, I did,

uh, witness something that kind of impacted me, and I still remember

that day today, uh, as he returned home

after he had like one huge order that took him all over the country in

India, and he was away for like more than a month delivering the

order, and when he came back, instead of it being

a joyful thing to celebrate and the success to celebrate,

he instead physically collapsed at the entrance of our house

with a slipped disc. And had like, we

needed to get help to physically bring him in. So

back then, I did not know what it was. It was just a scary thing

for a little girl. But then, now thinking back

to it, that I could— I understand the amount

of both physical, mental kind of

pressure that a founder or solopreneur does by

doing those 80-hour weeks or doing all the work

yourself. And it doesn't just affect you,

your health, you as a person. It affects your business, it affects your family.

So the compounding effect that can have— I've seen it firsthand.

So That's kind of why I'm in a business

of helping solopreneurs and entrepreneurs now,

helping them with that clarity, helping them figure out the systems,

helping them have their circle of support so that

they don't have to go through the kind of pressure or go

through a situation like my dad did. This

is like such a timely talk. And

before, you know, before we, we actually started recording, for those of

you who, who don't know me, I have just suffered a concussion,

um, and one of the ways to

make it heal better is to slow down,

which is so counterintuitive.

It's affecting my speech, it, it, you know, but it's really hard.

And the thing is, you don't have to have a concussion

to not take care of yourself and have it come back and bite you.

I mean, and the thing that I'm— the message that I'm

giving myself is resting and

doing less means that I can be better when I am

doing things, that I can be more present and more energetic. And

it's a hard lesson to learn. It's not something we do naturally.

So tell us more about how, you know, the situations

entrepreneurs find themselves in and the ways that you can help them.

And, and to what you just said, I also do talk about

letting go to grow, uh, because like I

said, I find a lot of these entrepreneurs that I work with

are amazing founders, amazing entrepreneurs.

They've started their big business because they have a passion, they have something they want

to deliver, or they are passionate about what they do, and that's why they

get into business in the first place. But then As

it grows and the business grows to a certain level, which is good— growth

is good, that's why you want it— and then, but then it comes to a

point where your day-to-day activities, your day-to-day

administration, you're doing everything and everything

lives in your head. It gets to a point where

every single task on your task list requires you

to remember because it's not a written process

anywhere, it's in your head. You're remembering, every,

every small thing has decision-making in it involved,

and then your actual time spent doing the task.

So even when your task list is quite small, every

individual task takes so much more of your mental

capacity, which drains you both mentally and physically.

And at the end of the day, your day-to-day becomes so

much that It kind of takes you away from the main

business or the main purpose why you started the business in the first place.

So, so this is one of the first ways

that, that I kind of heard this. When everything is on your

to-do list, it has the same importance,

right? Because you have to go through the same process. It's got to go on

the list. You have to figure out how to do it. You got to think

through it. And so the tiny things take up

far more energy than they should, and the big things

don't get as much energy as they should. And

here's the other thing that, that I was thinking about as I'm looking

at, you know, how do I simplify my own stuff with my limited

abilities? You know, the big thing

for entrepreneurs is consistency. How do I be

consistent? Consistent in what I do, consistent in my message,

consistent in the level of service I deliver.

And the more you have the less

consistent you are. And so streamlining

actually allows you to do better with

smaller things. And I, I said this in a post, people

have to see you more than 12 times. So every time you add something, you're

now going from 12 things to 24 to 36 to

48, as opposed to staying in a narrow range.

And so you I think there are a couple of things

that we hit on. One is doing more

doesn't mean you're getting better results because you're not giving

it the best. And doing more

is making you— giving you less energy to

focus on, on, on the important things. If I've missed anything, I mean,

add another one to that. I mean, no, yeah, like

that's, that's my point. Like when you're— and As a founder

or as a CEO, that's also something that we should think of, like, in terms

of your ROI also, right? Like, one is the time that you're

spending towards it, but two is also, like you said, you're not

putting in— giving it enough time and value for the things that actually need to

have more time and value. And if,

as a CEO, you should be the one maybe doing that

front-facing with your clients or doing those networking or

speaking more about your business, that's something you— only you can do. That's your area

of and only you can do it, so you can't delegate it to somebody else.

But then if, for

example, your rate as a CEO for your 1 hour

is, say, $500, but you are spending that 1 hour

sitting and doing backend stuff, invoicing, or

your administration, is that 1 hour really worth

$500? Are you spending your,

like, both your time, effort, money, are you spending it in the right

place? I jokingly say if you're

doing, you know, like the things that you just talked about, you are

basically paying a high-skilled surgeon, you

know, to trim your toenails. I mean, you know, it

just— it doesn't make any sense. And I just— before we— before we go

into some other things, I just want to add this because, you know, again, this

is something I'm taking a look at. And when it takes

you longer to do the things that are not important, that's also

taking you away from your personal life. I mean, I mean,

we're really bad at making time for our personal life anyway because

it's like, I'm going to do this one more thing or I'm going to take

this opportunity. And so when it's taking you longer,

you actually are less present for the people that you're

doing this for. I mean, we're— yes, we're in business to help our audience

and, and our clients and stuff, but we're also there to improve the

life that we have with our family. So if you are sick,

if you're exhausted, you know, you are

not going to do creative and good things in your business, and you're also not

going to be there for your family. So I think it's really important that

we don't, we don't forget that. Okay. So tell

me, tell me, you've got a gift. So I don't know which order you want

to do it in. You want to tell us 3 things as entrepreneurs we can

do and then talk about your gift? Um, sure. And,

and I think I would probably say they are kind of linked, so I can

maybe talk about them together. Is,

um, and I actually have two gifts, so I'm going to be sending you

a small, uh, document kind of thing, but it's more

of a— I call it a 15-minute CEO reset. It only

takes 15 minutes, uh, but then it helps you

like at the beginning of the week You

start with basically just writing down all

the things that's taking your mental space, not your time, not the task list,

but all the things that are taking up your mental space. And from

there, you identify one thing, one thing that you

think shouldn't be on that list, and just

work on that one thing. And

this document kind of walk you through questions and things on

how to get that one thing out of your list. So

that will one, give you a certain amount of more clarity,

give you more space, and would let you

get that much more time also. So it's a very small

activity. It just takes you 15 minutes, but it can

save you hours during that one week. All right. So, so this is

where I'm not totally clear. Could you give me an example of something that

would be on that list? Uh, okay, yeah. So for

example, if you say,

um, lists in your— when I say mental space, it could be that

there are tasks, so there are important things on your list which you are like

having it on the list and postponing it every week because you haven't gotten

enough time to get it done yet. But it's kind of

taking up your mental space because you know that's priority, it has to be done,

but it's not done. It's still sitting there. It could be

decisions that you need to make that week. So make a list of all

the decisions you think you might have to make. I got it. Things that you

feel are urgent, but you, but you

just feel they're urgent. They're really not urgent. They're urgent, but they're not important.

Yeah. So make a list of things like that. And

then once you put them and list them, you

would see clearly, like, basically I also believe in that

writing for retention and teaching for retention kind of thing. So when you

write it in black and white, then you start seeing, oh, okay, these are

the things I have, and there is this thing that's taking up space,

but this isn't even something I should be doing.

So then you can be like, okay, I'm deleting this, this

part I'm delegating it to somebody or to a system. And

this is the space that I need to put my mental

value in this week. So it helps you with that clarity.

Got it. Got it. So what's the other gift?

And the other one, like I said, is I

do a monthly session, which is a, which I call a

Calm Business Reset Room. So it is free to attend.

And it's for basically mostly solopreneurs and small

entrepreneurs, because We all know in business when it's just

you doing everything, it can get lonely. And

this is more like a— I call it more like an

advisory space or just a space to come be

yourself. You can share your business problems or things, and

there may be me or other people in the room who have

some kind of a solution that can help you. Or in some cases, it is

even just an empathetic ear to listen to your problems, because

sometimes And when you see that, okay, you're

not the only one going through it and you have a community of people who

are also facing the same problems, then

like you start or you reduce that self-doubt or,

oh, am I doing it right? Is this my problem? No, everybody has the

same problem, right? So it helps you connect better. So it's more of

a safe space and advisory space where entrepreneurs can come

together. This is— I have to say, this is such a valuable

gift. I mean, because you hit on a couple of reasons. One is

just community, knowing that you're going through the journey with other

people. I mean, I think that that is one of the things that

is most amazing, you know,

because for whatever reason, the way we've been

educated or taught or whatever, our first reaction to any

obstacle or problem is What's wrong with me?

What am I not doing wrong? And so you get stuck in

this self-doubt and, and, and honest to God,

we talk to ourselves worse than we would ever talk to anybody

else. And so when you get into a room and

somebody else has got the same

problem, suddenly it's not just a you problem, it's a

universal problem. And, you know, it's like, right. The other

thing is everybody has something to give.

What may be your strong suit may be something that somebody else is

absolutely struggling with. Yes. You know, we all have

natural ways to deal with it, and you can say, this is how I did

it. You know, what do you— you know, probably one day I

was talking to somebody in this kind of a group like this, and I

was like, I'm not doing social media, blah blah blah blah blah. Right. And

she said to me, what do you like to do? Because I had

spent all my time going, I'm not doing this. I don't like this. I was

like, oh, I've done this for 3 years. And she's like, well, why

can't we take that and just move it to social media? I'm like, duh,

you know? But apparently I couldn't come up with that by myself. So

everybody has value to give. And again, part

of that value could just be somebody to listen to somebody else.

So that is a wonderful gift unto itself. So

what else would you think that people should do? So if I was saying, give

us 3 things, well, we've got, we've got your, you know, the

reset and we've got this wonderful opportunity to come

to this group. What else would you say? What other actions,

practical actions can entrepreneurs take?

I think one main thing I would start with is, like I said,

the get rid of that self-doubt thing and

the things in your head that keeps telling us,

right, that we aren't enough or we aren't doing

enough. So I think that's, that self-doubting is

something we should all get rid of, is one thing everybody should do.

And the other thing I would say again is

always make sure that, and when When we talk of

business and, and talk of words like calm and ease,

people always think like they don't coexist, but they do.

Like, if you plan your day or plan your business

in such a way that you have the correct kind

of support, whether it's system or the human circle of support

for yourself, your business can become— it

can be easy, and you can still be successful without burning

out. Yourself. All right. So I have kind of an odd question

to ask you. I actually have two. One

is when you say planning, you know, your

week, this is one of the things that I find

my clients struggle with, and that is

because they put— all right, there's so much we don't have control

of. And because we put too much on our

list of things we need to get done, if something comes

up then the whole house of cards

tumble. Mm-hmm. Right. What I find is

I basically give myself like 5 things,

3 that I absolutely have to get done and 2 if I

have time, it's great, you know. And so instead of

giving myself 5 things and saying, well, I only did 4, so I didn't get

everything done, it's like I did my 3 and look, I did an extra thing.

So You know, can you speak to that

a little bit? You know how as entrepreneurs we have lots of

interruptions and lots of distractions.

Do you have a tip for that? So I think one thing

which you said is like reminded me of another friend of mine who also says

like her dad used to tell her, like whenever you have

anything that's piled up to do, like even if it's dishes in your sink,

He used to tell her, just do 5 dishes for now.

And sometimes when you've done those 5 dishes, and if you have

the time and you're on the flow, you keep going, you actually finish the whole

thing. Yeah. And you'd be surprised. So I think it's like,

like you, you said, and when I mentioned, like,

even on my, the document that I'm sharing, I think

it's prioritize one, And two,

like, have reasonable standards for your own

self. Like, we are all overachievers. We all set super high

standards for ourselves than we would do for anybody else.

So like you said, pick those small wins. Pick like, okay, these

are the 3 things, or these are the 5 things I want to do, and

the other things can come later if you have time. That

way, give yourself grace. So it—

yeah. So and then when those 3 things are done and you've ticked off, it

gives you that sense of satisfaction and accomplishment also. And

you can add on more if you have the time and the bandwidth to do

it. And I think the other thing is build buffers into

your day, you know, so that if things run over or

whatever, you are not, you know, constantly scrambling or being

late. I mean, that's my own strategy. Yeah. So like, that's what

I do too. Like mostly my Friday afternoons every week

is typically free, or I leave it open. I don't

have any scheduled calls or things to do. And usually

I would go through what I've done during the week, what are the things that

I— and it's more like my planning time for the next week. Next week I'm

like, okay, so what are the things I want to do? And which— and then

I prioritize it and do that and have things ready to go for

the next week. But Friday afternoons. Otherwise, I don't take

on or start any new, new thing on a Friday afternoon. But I think

you need to build buffer, short buffers in every single

day. And, you know, like I said, because I have the concussion, I

can only work so many hours. So I've actually put them on my calendar now,

not made them. They are no longer a nice to do. They are

a have to do. But the other thing that

can work really well and keep your energy going is doing these My

doctor calls them exercise snacks where you

do a mini exercise like, you know, I do my

rebounder for a couple of minutes. There are some really good

videos, seated, seated exercises that are only

10 or 15 minutes that you can fit in during your day to

shift your focus and stuff. And the last thing

before we run out of time is I

think— all right, so I should do this as

tell me your opinion. Do you think that women

suffer sometimes more with this because we tend to

put ourselves at the bottom of any list that, you know, of to-dos?

And so do you have anything since, you know, my client— my audience

has a lot of women in it. What would be the one thing you would

say to them? Yes. So, um,

and I'm— I also do actually have another

program which I do around women leadership. So to your point, I

think we've all grown up or with the thought

process that women are supposed to be doing

the family, the caregiving, the work, the employment, whatever you do, all of

it together and still keep it together and stay strong. That's

the Narrative we have all grown up with. And

even today, like, you would see even family or

people outside who would be like, oh, this person does all of this,

so she's like that Superwoman, Wonder Woman person. And

we all strive to be that Wonder Woman, but I think

we should let that go. We should let that persona go. And it's—

and in terms of the general leadership,

when they speak The general leadership is always

very masculine-driven, very linear, doesn't fit a

woman who has like 5 different roles that they are juggling in their life.

So being willing to accept

that, and I would say

set your boundaries, be willing to say no when you have to say no,

and And also

be willing and open to asking for help and getting help

when it's offered to you. You just

said two of my favorite things. I mean, one is

I think no is the hardest word for women to say,

do you know? And so what I say to my clients is before you

say yes, if you can't say no, say let me think

about that a little bit. So that you can actually step away

and see whether it's something that's going to serve you.

If you're, you know, I mean, if we were to

drop dead, somebody else would do it, right?

And I think the other thing is

what you said about— you said

setting boundaries, but I think, you know, I think the other thing

that I was going to say that has to do with that is

That's hard to do because

it requires that we make ourselves more important, which sounds— that's

a weird way to explain it. But a real fast story was when I went

to Weight Watchers many, many moons ago, the leader said,

all right, I want you to make yourself the most important person. And

almost every woman in there almost had a heart attack.

And I mean, you could see the groan and the faces.

They were like, you know, And she said, well, if you can't

make yourself the most important person, make yourself at least

as important as everybody else. And that lesson

really stuck with me. And then it got reinforced when

I took my daughter, who was very young and who is now an adult— so

this is like decades ago— to get sneakers. And I said, this is how

much money you have, and you could— but you need to get 2 pair of

sneakers. So let's just say I— you could get 2 pair of

sneakers for $100. That tells you how long ago it was. And

She— so she picked out a pair that she really liked that were really fashiony

for $80. And I'm like, you still need to get 2 pair of sneakers.

And so she went over to the clearance rack and found another pair.

Meanwhile, I was trying to learn, you know, be able to exercise at being

over 400 pounds. And I was looking at the

cheapest sneakers and I'm like, she's wearing fashion sneakers for $80.

I actually need real support sneakers, and I'm still

trying to get them for $20. So you have to— in order,

in order to be your best, you have to

be— give yourself at least as much care

as everybody else. And probably the hidden

message is you are setting an example.

You were setting an example for your kids. You're setting your example

for the people that you work with. That your time and

your, you know, expertise is important, that you're taking care

of yourself. They need to take care of themselves. I

mean, I think that there's so much that has to do with this. And this

is the last thing I'm going to say, so I should ask this as a

question because, you know, this is supposed to be a conversation.

I think a lot of these lessons we never learned as

kids. Like you said, we were conditioned to something else.

And we carry them over into our business. Is

there a way, besides hearing the message over

and over again, is there a way that we can

signal ourselves to stop doing it the old way?

I think I would say it's a very

conscious effort for you to take to do that because

And I think some— I think you can initially start

with more of, like you said, small bite-sized

pieces, right? Like scheduling in some time for yourself,

scheduling in time for self-care, or scheduling in time to

say, okay, this, this, this is my, like, my me time. I will do what

I like to do, or my hobby time, or my reading time, or whatever it

is that helps you calm down, or like gives you that

that peace of mind. So I think it initially, it's small

steps where you take effort and

schedule it in into your day so that you're doing those things.

And, and then I think over time it then becomes a habit. So it

takes that programming to undo the programming that's happened

and redo what we, what we want to do. I think even just

starting today, just every day saying to yourself, what am

I doing for myself today that's going to make make, you know, my life and

my business better and my family life better, you

know, um, is a good way to start. Okay, we, we

could obviously keep talking about this forever, um, so

let's switch gears just a little bit. And so I

want to ask you, when was the last time you did something new for the

first time? Fun, fun question. Um,

I would say this year, uh, or the big— or kind of the end of

last year, beginning of this year, is I have another

persona. I'm also a children's book author.

Oh, and until— and I've been doing that

for like a couple of years now, but then until late

last year, that was more like a,

like a hobby or a secret that I had just for myself.

So only like friends and family and a very few

select people knew that I was even doing that. I wouldn't

really go out and talk about it. But then

now this year, I'm kind of taking more of

an intention of bringing all my

worlds together. So basically, when I'm even as a

business owner or anywhere that I go speak, I'm like, I'm

a mom of two, I'm an author, I am also a business owner.

So I'm kind of bringing them all together. And initially

I did think they're all like totally different worlds and they don't

really coexist and may not make sense sharing

it out together like that. But, um, I'm

starting to feel that that's a good thing that I've started doing because

now even with my current clients or people I speak to,

they look at me as my authentic

self, all my different versions of me. And I feel

that that gives them a more grounded

message that, okay, she's human, she's grounded, she does

all these other things. Like me, she also wears multiple

hats and different roles that she does. So I think it has kind

of made me more relatable now. So give us a title.

Uh, so I have one series of books which is called The Mystic

India for Kids. And that's—

they are— it's a series of 6 books, and it's basically based out of

Indian Hindu mythology, but teaches children

values and lessons and has like

reflection questions. Some have coloring pages, some have puzzles. So

basically it's for kids probably 10 years and under. So it's a

very interactive kind of books and

Another new series which I recently started is called the Everyday

Superpowers, and that is

also more value-based. So the first one's more about

patience. It's a book called Arya's Patience Project,

where the girl— where a 7-year-old girl— so inspired

by my own daughter and me and the way we deal with things

and the patience I am learning in the process and teaching her in the

process. To. So it's a book about that little girl

who doesn't have patience to start with and how

she gradually learns from things that happen in school

and at home and misunderstandings with friends and things, how

patience can actually be a superpower and why it's required.

I'm so glad you said that, because I have a, I have a children's book

that's been in my head that I said this year I'm going to get it

out. All right, that'll be a different podcast interview.

All right, so as always, we didn't have nearly

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mistakes and learnings. And it's my way of giving back. And I hope that

again, it will fuel your growth and your impact. And I hope you will

join me, continue to join me on the One Small Change as

we go on this journey where even the smallest shift can yield a

monumental transformation. And if you haven't listened to some of my

solo episodes, you should do that too. But I really

want you to, for your world to be A

world of bold visions and innovative possibilities.

So what is your— give us your last words of wisdom,

your favorite quote or, you know, your favorite last thought.

I think I would say like my favorite quote or what I use all

the time is from Maya Angelou where she talks about

'How people will forget what you did but will not forget how you made

them feel.' And I think that's something

that's more like a, like a life motto kind of thing for me, where

I, it's— I concentrate more on how people feel,

how they connect with me, rather than what all things

I'm doing for them or what am I buying for them. And that,

it's a great quote, you know, it's a great way to live.

All right, everybody, remember, change is simple, but it's not always easy.

It takes courage, resilience, and a willingness to step out of your comfort

zone. I always say if I don't have, you know, butterflies in my stomach,

that means I don't care enough about what I'm doing. So I hope that you

are willing to be courageous and willing to step out of your comfort zone,

and you will join me again for the One Small Change and

find those bold— that bold vision and those innovative possibilities.

And until the next time, be very, very curious.

Pre— pre— I goofed it.

Pre-C? Yes. I'm so

sorry. Um, a year from now, hopefully the brain will be working and

we will do much better. Thank you so much for giving us of your time

and, and your, and your thoughts and stuff, because they're so

needed. Thank you. Uh, thank you for having me,

and Uh, just in case, I've also put the links

to those free gifts that I said in the chat. All right, thank

you. Thank you. Bye-bye.