I can hardly believe I’m writing this, but this is the last episode of The Driven Woman Entrepreneur Podcast for 2022, and if you are anything like me, and the rest of the self-employed women I know, you are tired.  You may even be somewhere closer to exhausted or even burned out.  I talk with many, many women business owners, and this seems to be the year that many of us expected would be our bounce-back but have found it to be a year of busting our butts with far too little ROI. 

I am a driven woman entrepreneur, like you, and wanted to end this year with something more than platitudes and positive thinking.  Instead, I want to stimulate conversation about why we are all feeling so fatigued and offer an alternative to the extremes of manifestation and hustle.  Some of the biggest names in the coaching industry have learned everything they know from male mentors and then turned around and sold them to other women, without disclosing their own privilege and what it actually takes to run their business.  Maybe we need a different approach altogether, one that resonates with most women, women like you and me. 

So, what better way to end this year than with the anti-hustle alternative, who better to have as my guest to describe it, than Jadah Sellner, who published a brand new best-selling book on the topic, called ‘She Builds: The Anti-Hustle Guide to Grow Your Business & Nourish Your Life”?  If you don’t yet know Jadah, she is a bestselling author, business coach, international keynote speaker, TEDx presenter, poet, and host of the Lead with Love® podcast. She has been featured in Forbes, O, The Oprah Magazine, and The Wall Street Journal. 

Learn more at jadahsellner.com or follow her on social media at @jadahsellner.  

If you want to grab your copy of her book after listening to our conversation,  shebuilds.com 

It’s the end of the 4th Quarter, ladies.  Is there a gap between where you are and where you expected to be?  What’s going to make things different in 2023?  

You can only get so far listening to podcasts (even excellent ones like this…) so if this is the right time for you to take action and invest in a better outcome,  get on my calendar and let’s talk. 

Here is the link to schedule your free, no-obligation consultation:  https://bit.ly/3qrJ9YQ

If you love and look forward to each episode of The Driven Woman Podcast,  let me know by leaving a review! I’m not a mind reader and podcast reviews really do motivate me to keep creating content and connecting with incredible guests, like Jadah. 

H: So Jadah, so glad that you are here today to talk about the book that is on everyone's lips, and if it isn't, it should be. You burned out, you opted out, you found a way to recover from that and live and work in a better way and then you wrote a book about it so others can do the same. The book is called She Builds: The Anti-Hussle Guide to Grow Your Business and Nourish Your Life, and can I just tell you your sense of timing is impeccable because burnout seems to be the conversation that every woman I know is having right now. So thank you, thank you for writing this book and for being my guest.

H: Especially for self-employed women, because we both know a lot of women were sort of forced into entrepreneurship as a result of the pandemic. They lost their job or they realized, you know, when it was time to go back to the office they just didn't want to anymore. So a lot of women have jumped into the pond and like in most areas of our life, we tend to follow the role models that seem to be crushing it and the ones who seem to be crushing it, and I use that word very deliberately, tend to be the male role models. I love that you start right from the beginning of the book, chapter one, talking about the patriarchy, talking about the fact that most successful male entrepreneurs have the equivalent of a fifties housewife handling all the things that they're not good at or they don't wanna do, and most women don't have that.

G: Yeah and even if we do have that, if we do extend to have the extra support, there is still a level of guilt that is felt no matter what, because there is a societal expectation that we are the primary caregivers. And caregivers can be, you know, young kids at home, it can also be aging parents or elders in your life, or caregiving for yourself, a chronic illness or even a heartbreak or divorce or big transition. So, we don't take into account our whole lives when we're building businesses and being self-employed and then, you know, go through the ringer of a pandemic and needing to pivot more than typical. That can become very exhausting, overwhelming, and being forced to work more, being forced to work double duty in your business and at home.

H: I think you also made a really excellent point in chapter one where you talked toxic productivity, but that it's not simply that we are following the role models that seem to be doing it. So, okay, I've never been an entrepreneur before, this is the way it seems to be done, this is what the big names are doing so this is what I need to do too. We're not measuring our bandwidth, we are not trying to burn out proof our business. We are not taking our age stage of life, other obligations and responsibilities into account, we’re just trying to do it, but one of the more subtle points that you made that I really appreciated was this is our new peer group. We want to identify with other entrepreneurs, we wanna fit in, we wanna belong, we wanna be one of them. So of course, we are going to hold ourself to our perception of what the standard is and because the standard seems to be, you know, hustle, hustle, hustle, go, go, go or you are gonna be left behind, that's what we aspire to without even realizing. It's not only not healthy and sustainable, it actually isn't even necessary, but it usually takes a burnout until we figure that out right?

G: Absolutely. Absolutely, that for me, I had to re-shift and explore to say burnout is not an option. That that becomes a non-negotiable in how I build, and it doesn't mean that there's not going to be micro seasons of burnout, but being able to recognize the signals and the symptoms of something's not working, I'm feeling tired, I'm exhausted. I'm ignoring my health, I'm ignoring my family to make those changes and adjustments a lot sooner before what happens, you start to resent your own business or resent the caregiving responsibilities that you have, and so, I really want to share these tools and I know you've read the book and they're very practical, core fundamental business strategies. I think a lot of people are actually really shocked about this even my own clients who are reading through their book and they're like, this is building a business in a book like it's all here.

So I'm very strategic and practical, but also pairing that with intentionality, spaciousness, giving ourselves permission to slow down and let things simmer. You know, I talk about the permission to be a slow cooker instead of, you know, the pressure cooker and just allowing things to take a little bit more time. I say that don't put a timeline on your dreams, put a timeline on your actions, and when we do that, we create some spaciousness in how we pursue our goals cuz I'm not telling people to stop their ambition. I'm a very ambitious woman. I've accomplished a lot you know, I co-founded a company, Simple Green Smoothies, growing to over a million followers across social media platforms and all of those pieces. It's so important that we have to learn how to pace our ambition so that we can have a full and fulfilling life while we are building something meaningful and also something profitable.

H: I first heard about you, when you were still with Simple Green Smoothies. You were one of the examples that Pat Flynn was using on his podcast number of years back, and yet, I think one of my questions, Jadah, is do you believe, looking back, that you needed to learn these lessons the hard way and do you think most women do because I absolutely identify and agree with you. High achieving, high ability, I'm an accomplished, educated woman. I'm used to being successful, so when I started my own business, I expected I would be as successful as I was in my previous career. I had no idea what I was in for, because the level of responsibility, when you literally wear all the hats, and I know you're a hat lover. You wear all the hats, you're so much more extended, coupled with the fact that most women don't come home to a comfy couch and a remote control. They come home to their second shift and all their caregiving and homemaking responsibilities. So we have to have different standards for ourself so do you think that you kind of had to go through the experience of learning the hard way, or do you think that it's possible to prevent this from happening.

G: Yeah, so I do believe that it's possible to not let it be so extreme when you have models of inspiration. So again, when I was coming up as an entrepreneur, my models, you know, we're male dominated models and so that was the definition of success that I was subscribing to cuz there was no other channel to tune into. So, because I had that same question as I was building, like hmmm did these people have to work with this type of effort and speed in order to get to where they are. And so I don't think we have the answer yet because this conversation is just finally rising to the top. So I would love to believe that we can prevent it for the next generation and I actually believe that. Because I coach a lot of founders who run companies and they have teens and they have a younger generation of folks that are speaking about burnout, they're like, I'm not available for this. They will quit so they've got more boundaries and it's very frustrating for founders that people, the younger generation that are entering the workforce actually are like, I'm not okay with this.

I'm not okay with just doing this for the bottom line with there's no meaning or purpose or vision connected to what I'm doing. Working these wild hours where I don't have time, they're just like, I'm not gonna work for you. So I believe that founders actually have to shift the way that they run their companies to honor the whole human that's working for them to appreciate and acknowledge them and not just let them be a cog in the machine to make more money as fast as possible because the turnover is just going to increase. So I believe that this next generation is actually is going to subscribe to burnout is not an option, I won't work for a company. I won't build a company like this. I won't become my own worst boss, but there's some tension in this transition mode. So I don't know for sure, I had that question when I was building too, is there another way. So I'm hopeful that we can prevent it or see it a little bit sooner so people don't go all the way to where they tap out, they close their business down because we actually need women to be successful in business. We need them to stay in the game and to do it in a different way, to build differently and to build with love.

H: This is such a fantastic and also very astute point, many of the conversations that I find myself leaning into and choosing to have are conversations across generation lines. You and I are from different generations, and what I hear is a lot of people in my generation throwing shade, talking shit about younger generations because the work ethic is not the same. Because they're so much of the identity of, let's say baby boomers, so much of the identity was, is wrapped up in the work ethic and so along come the millennials and younger and say, I'm not going to do what you think it takes because your definition of success does not resonate with me. So of course they're thinking, these people are lazy, these people are entitled, they don't care. Of course, now we have the great resignation, we have quiet quitting so this is not going away. This is a cultural phenomenon and I think I'm one of the few people in my age group who thinks this is a good thing because everything I've learned in the last 20 years, certainly in the last 12 years of being self-employed, I wouldn't do it again. I wouldn't buy in to the mindset that I held for years was a big part of my identity and I was quite proud of because I now recognize it is the epitome of toxic productivity. And why do you think so many people over 50 are physically and emotionally ill? There's a connection, right, this is not a mystery.

G: And I love that you said, would I do that again, would I opt into that type of work because if people were able to ask that question, they would say no. But what happens is, well, I had to go through it, I had to, you know, get my badge of honor and just work myself to the bone to rise up the ladder and so we have to make that shift. And I think that's a great question to ask yourself of, would you do that? You know, would you work for a company like that for a boss like that, for a manager like that and if you wouldn't, to earn your stripes and to move up in your company, then something has to shift.

H: And talk about resentment, I think the uncomfortable truth behind the resentment that older adults in the working world oftentimes have towards the younger generations is that a part of them is still very attached to that narrative, but they've lived long enough to recognize the consequences and it doesn't seem fair to them that someone else should be able to enjoy. I don't like the term work-life balance, I'm thinking work-life integration, of course there are seasons where it looks very differently, but why should they have it easier than we did because the world has changed and they better options. Do you want your kids to be divorced? Do you want your grandchildren to beat latchkey kids like, do you actually want that? I think not. I think you gotta be honest with yourself about that stuff.

Now, one of the things that you also talk about, which I think also flies in the face of not only the baby boomers, but also what a lot of people think of as natural born entrepreneurs, is something I call stubborn self-reliance. So it's this, you know, I did it, I bootstrapped it, I worked outta my garage, blah, blah, blah. We've all heard it, and there's a great sense of identification with that and a lot of pride about the sacrifices made and stuff. But other people have a different way and now stubborn self-reliance is actually gonna mean you're gonna be trying to build something out of your own blind spot. Your version is you need to recruit a support squad, not just to prevent burnout, but to actually help foster success, tell me more about that.

G: Yeah, so I have a chapter in my book called Gather Your Support Squad, and I also have a chapter in my book called, To Build Your Dream Team. So I wanna talk about, there's a distinction between having logistical support where people are taking tasks and activities off your plate so that you have more time. Whether that's more time to take care of yourself, more time to focus on revenue generating activities. But something that we don't talk about, especially if you're wanting to decrease the possibility of leaning into burnout and tapping all the way out, is having your support squad and I look at this in three different categories. And this is really looking at the emotional, the spiritual, the intellectual, the social connection in being held and people talk about this, right? You are the five people you surround yourself with at those type of conversations and it really does make a difference on who you are surrounding yourself with.

So the three kind of pockets of the support squad we have our peers and colleagues and this is people who we mastermind with. There are parallel playmates, you know, we are on very similar seasons of life, similar seasons in business, and really supporting each other, encouraging each other, sharing resources, that type of thing. And then we have mentors and advisors and these are the people that are really stimulating you intellectually, helping you create that strategy, like you said, the blind spot. So, there's this saying you can't see the label from inside the jar so being able to have someone who is a few steps, or a few years, or a lot of years ahead of you to save you some time and energy to not have to do all the research and figure it all out on your own. And then the third piece is one that I don't think people talk about enough often, but in being an entrepreneur is a wild rollercoaster. There are highs, there are lows, there are seasons where you don't pay yourself payroll, but you make sure that your team gets paid. So many different things and you need the safe space to be seen and heard by having a therapist or a life coach or for me, I have both.

They were actually both at my book release party which I was just like best person in that person and I was crying and all of those things. But being able to have someone that can hold you the emotional world, the interiority of what's happening inside, and that is even deeper than what you might even share with a friend because also, we can't expect everyone to be everything. We can't expect our partners to be our strategist, our, you know, our mastermind partners, our coaches. We need to spread that out so that we can actually have sustainable growth in our businesses. So we also can't just share and air all of our problems out to our friends, cuz there's just gonna be like, Jadah's always talking about blah, blah, blah. So we just really have to spread it out to have a holistic support squad that's really holding you through these seasons of ups and downs, of a lot of money and abundance, and people to celebrate you and also people to encourage you on hose dip moments when things are not going so great.

H: And I agree with you that, this is not something that enough people talk about and I think another thing they don't talk about enough, we hear a ton about fear of failure. Everybody wants to talk about fear of failure and imposter syndrome and all of that goes with it but I don't think there are enough people who are talking about the fear of success. About those kind of raising your own personal glass ceiling and reaching the point where you actually have succeeded beyond where you expected to be. Either ever, or that it came much quicker and that can be so destabilizing to your identity, your sense of self, your ability to feel grounded in sync with other people around you. I'm gonna suspect that in your previous business, you succeeded at that more quickly than you expected would that be accurate?

But that is truly for me the essential secret to my success always having that support squad in my corner, even when I didn't have any money you know, just having a friend to mastermind with once a week and sharing in that way until I could invest in a mentor from afar could be just from a book or a course, and then it's like, oh, got a little money, and I will reinvest that into mentorship instead of trying to hold all the money in my pocket. I actually look at the profit that comes in and reinvest it into more growth, into more support and I think a lot of people get scared to make that investment, that risk, to have people that are in your corner while you're going through this. And I say that leaders need to be held too and that's very hard, especially as a woman of color. I'm black, Chinese, and white, I grew up, I've been homeless before. I know what it's like, the ups and downs and all of those different struggles, and so it's easy for me to lean on my resilience and my resourcefulness and be scrappy. But you can't move to that next level of success unless you are willing to receive to be held as well and not always hold everything together like, I got it. I'll fix this. I'll solve that. We have to allow ourselves to soften and be supported too.

H: That is so much a part of the hustle culture that we have been sold and the patriarchy that if we think we need to follow male role models. If we think we need to behave like men in order to be successful, then we are going to disavow our emotional life, we're gonna disavow our relationships. We are just gonna think it's all about me and then that's the mindset. We're not only not going to be aware that we need support, we will actively deflect it and not receive when it is right there available to us. One of the things that I think is most damaging about the hustle culture is that it pits women in competition with each other instead of being a potential source of collaboration, community and shared strength. And I think that's an area that you speak very clearly to in everything that you say about the support squad. Do you ever find that some women are really, really resistant to that because they have trust issues because of past trauma or because maybe they've been burned or ripped through off through previous collaborations, all of the above.

G: All of the above yes, of course, and I have some really good friends in my support squad who have healed that relationship with trust being broken through friendships. I didn't actually have any really deep friendships with women until I became an entrepreneur, and it has been the best gift that I have ever received to be able to be so deep and so vulnerable, not just in my business, but also in my family life, my marriage, those pieces. And that's something that I think is not happening in the male dominated culture, and especially in, you know, masterminds and business, it's all about business and metrics and growth and scale. And I think that's really important to look at when you're looking at your support squad. Does the coach or the mentor or the people that do their values align with your values and do they get your vision and your heart? Because I would sign up for, you know, paid masterminds, paid coaches investing tens of thousands of dollars. And I'm like, they don't get me and actually what they take a stand for violates my core primary values. So I would start to question, am I even a real entrepreneur if I care about these things? And so that is something that we have to be looking at even the books that we read, does this person have a similar value set that aligns with mine so that you aren't making decisions that compromise what you truly believe and what you truly care about, what really matters to you. So for me, I had to start looking for mentors who had kids who were in long-term partnerships that got the trade off, that has to be made, and building a business while also wanting to be present with your family and your loved ones too.

H: No, I think that's absolutely essential and I personally believe Jadah, that we are at a point in the development of the internet and online business and social media where more and more people are recognizing this and realizing there is no one business model that works for everybody. It's not like religion where every religion is claiming this is the way, don't listen to those other guys. Like there's as many paths to a successful business as there are women who choose to start them, but we can't give up our agency. We can't give up our autonomy. We can't just crowdsource everything about us. It needs to be in alignment with our values, we need to show up in an authentic way, and we need to continuously develop our self-awareness about who we actually are and not be focusing so much on fitting in. I love what Brene Brown says about the difference between fitting in and belonging because in order to fit in, you kind of have to disown the parts of you that are not like everyone else in the room, but belonging allows you to bring all of you into the room.

G: And I love that you said that around the self-awareness, it's actually how I structured my book through the love framework. L O V E, lead, optimize, visualize, expand, and that lead part is about leading from the inside out so you actually have to connect to your own vision, own intention and really being able to define your vision of success, your version of success, by defining what is enough. So that's one of the things that I think is really important especially when going into business, because I'm all about love over metrics and leading with love and putting people first. But if you want a successful business, you do have to look at the numbers but the numbers don't have to be wild. You just need to be clear, what does it cost to run my business, to deliver a service or create a product, offer that, and then what does it cost to afford my lifestyle? How do I sustain myself and my day-to-day living and get clear on what your enough number is so you're not hustling just for the sake of hustling. It's like, oh okay, this is enough, I can chill out. I can calm down, I don't have to go to that next level. You know, it's like you continually move the goalpost, right it's like, okay, I want a business that replaces my corporate income and that's enough. And then you get there and then all of a sudden it's well, now I want six figures. Now I wanna double and I want multiple six figures. Now I want seven figures, now I want eight.

Like those these are really big jumps and also, people don't take into account that as their business grows, they need more support, which costs money and a different type of cost, which is management and leadership. You have to be aware, is that the role that I wanna take on, do I wanna move away from being the one that's delivering the product or the service to actually growing and nurturing a team? It's a different job that you're taking on completely, so you just have to be really clear what is enough for you. How do you wanna be spending your time in your day-to-day and I am constantly observing my own way of how I show up in my work is this how I wanna spend my hours. I'm like, I don't really, I'm not a content creator. I'm like, I am an O P P, like other people's platforms. I wanna be on other people's podcasts. I wanna be on other people's stages. I wanna be in built-in communities and being able to show up in that way. I actually don't wanna spend my time creating content all the time, but I have friends who run seven figure companies with millions of followers on social media, and I'm like, I don't wanna edit images and reels and videos. That's not how I wanna spend my time in this season of my business so we have to pay attention to how do you wanna spend your time in your business and are you doing that or do you need to shift and reorient and also defining what is your enough number.

H: And this is absolutely the most effective way that female business owners and leaders can smash the patriarchy. Because everything about that is teaching us in every possible way that we're not enough which renders us fearful of other women in competition with other women, shameful of our ambition, but also shameful for our lack of ambition at times and it's like everybody is thinking, uh, am I enough? Is this enough? I better find out someone better tell me because we are socially conditioned to be told what is enough and to ask permission. I cannot tell you how many women have said, well, I don't really know what I want. And at first, when I first started in this role, I thought, wow, it seems like an awful lot of women don't really know what they want but as time went by, I started challenging that Jadah, and I said that may be so, but what if you did? What if you did know what you wanted? Okay, so if you did know what you wanted, what do you think it would be? Oh, well, if I did know and then it comes out and I'm like, okay so this is so fascinating because my theory now and it's always evolving, is that a lot of women actually do know what they want, they do know what is enough. They do know what is right for them, but they might need a little help to give themselves permission and that's one of the other things that you talk about in the book is giving yourself permission. Other people can encourage you to do that, you can encourage them. I can encourage them, but it really is an inside job, don't you think?

G: Oh, absolutely, it's an inside job and I love that curiosity of what if you did know or also thinking about what if you didn't have any kids, what would you want? What if you weren't in a partnership then what would you want? What if your parents, you know, weren't around to know what you were doing or what you were up to? So it's like thinking of what are the societal pressures, the relational pressures that we feel like, oh, because I'm in this dynamic, I can't have that or when I’m this, when I'm that, then I can do that. There's a lot of if then scenarios that will come in so we put a lot of roadblocks or things that we need to climb over to get to the thing that we want, but sometimes we can just scoot those things out of the way and just go direct to right where you want to be. So it's so essential for us to really get to the core of if you could have it your way, and no one else's opinion mattered and money and all of those things, where would you go directly to and start building towards that bridge versus building a bunch of blocks and buildings in front that you have to like move and maneuver around to get to the thing that you actually want.

H: And I think you are speaking to what so many of us have heard that entrepreneurship is the ultimate personal growth path because to actually figure out who you are, what you want, to face your fears, to dance with failure, to experiment, to embrace things that are new and you actually don't know how to do to let things go that you're very good at simply because you choose to do something else that requires so much continuous personal evolution and like you said, it's a rocky ride. Just because you're evolving in that direction doesn't mean that it's going to work out in the way that you think that it will, but you only get better at it provided you don't give up. I wanna ask you a question about first aid, because we're talking about anti-hussle, we're talking about burnout being a burnout proof business and lifestyle.

We're talking giving ourselves permission to own our life, own our business, own our reality, fashion it to fit who we are, where we are, what we are but sometimes we overshoot. You talk a lot in the book about overcommitting, overextending ourselves, perfectionism, people pleasing all the stuff that females are especially prone to. Sometimes, even though we try to pull back, we try to pace, we try to do less we still end up stressed out, anxious, exhausted, and overwhelmed. I know you have some strategies for how to apply emotional first aid when you've gone that far, and I think at the time that this episode is being released, I'm just going out on a limb there's gonna be a lot of people that are gonna be really interested in this information.

G: Yeah, so something that I really believe is looking at self care even as a business strategy and being able to build your self-care menu. So when you're at those seasons of, at capacity, when you're on the verge of burnout, when you're just like, I can't do one more thing, those are the seasons that we actually need to double down on self-care. And to they say, you know, you can't pour an empty cup but women, we are holding so much and to me, it's like we need to fill our well in order to sustain the type of work that we're doing, that double duty at home and in our work. So for me, it's being able to build that list of things, those micro sips of air that sustain you for the long term and not just getting the like, okay, I burn out, I crash and then I need like a five year sabbatical. So we want to learn these micro sips of self-care and really taking care of yourself when things do go at capacity and also pacing your ambition, extending the timeline. That's a form of self-care, asking for more time is a form of that emotional first aid to be able to communicate and articulate to somebody else to actually disappoint, upset someone else when it's like, I can't turn it in when you ask for it at that. I did that with my book, this book She Builds, I really embodied the anti-hussle way and I'm so thankful that my publishers were very supportive, but I'm like, I wouldn't be in integrity if I just try to push through. Which was what I did with my book, Simple Green Smoothies, a health and wellness business of you know, up for over 24 hours to make the deadline right by any means necessary at the cost of my health at the cost you know, I'm caffeine up and all of the things still in my yoga pants from the day before my…

H: Running, running a health and wellness business so it's like so ironic.

So it's just being able to extend just a little bit longer, that's what sustainability looks like. It's the same thing, internally inside your company is being able to pace that of, with my team, I'm like, Hey, I know we're running late on this thing, or if we wanna hit this date, we're gonna have to kind of do a push or, I'm just very compassionate. I'm like, hey, if you can get it done by Friday, awesome, if we need to wait till Monday, that's okay too. We're just gonna be a little late so being able to not hold so tightly to everything and not everyone has this option, right? But if you do run a small business and you're able to make some of those decisions and gain time decisions in real time to make some adjustments to your timeline, I think it's worthy not only for yourself, but also for your team and your community and your customers are going to feel that you are taking care of yourself and modeling that so that they could do it for themselves too but it's about being transparent about your needs.

H: And it really absolutely flips on its head how most successful women have achieved their success up to that point, we put ourselves last.

G: We keep putting ourselves on the bottom of the to-do list.

H: If we're even on the list, if we even make it onto the list, I guarantee you it's gonna be in the very last slot, the very last line on the bottom of the page and that means it's the first thing that's gonna fall off when other obligations are pressing. I know a lot of what you talked about and one of the things I love so much about She Builds is that you have all these wonderful tools in the back. So cuz a lot of times it would be very easy for someone to say, oh, that's nice for her to say she's Jadah Sellner. Like, but I, this doesn't apply to me like, I don't even know how to do this and you literally, like you said, it's a business in a this isn't a motivational book, this is not an inspirational book. It's not a, oh, it's nice to be me, don't you wish you were kind of book, which we've seen those too. You're literally like, you can do this. You can build your support squad. You can start to implement these things. I think it starts with permission, like just choosing to believe that you deserve to feel and function better, just practice that thought cuz it's not gonna come naturally start implementing some of the things in the back. But you also have a lot to say in She Builds about how you use your time and energy in a more efficient way because lots of us don't really realize that there's a lot of energy we can gain simply by being more efficient because we haven't been taught to do things that way. Do you have some strategies you wanna share on that.

G: Yeah and I think tgere's this blend of productivity and it's really just being intentional with your time and knowing, they say, you know, you have the same 24 hours as Beyonce, and I'm just like, no, we don't, we don't have the same support squad. We don't have the same dream team so we have to be very honest about how much time we have. So for me, you reclaim your time and energy chapter in chapter five there are a couple of key strategies to do, and these are are typical things that you might read in any other business book or any other productivity hack, but the thing that they're not talking about is energy. So the first step is being able to track your time and just consciously be aware of how are you spending your time in a day and doing that gives you so much insight of how scattered and fragmented and bouncing from here to there you are. So you start to see patterns of, oh, okay, these are all the things I'm doing and then the next step is to move into an energy audit where you start to assess what is actually working in my day that energizing me and making me feel excited and expansive and I can't wait for that day to come. And then what are some of the things that are draining your energy and then there's a neutral where it's kinda like doesn't give me energy, but it also doesn't drain my energy and then we can move into the weekly workflow plan.

It's my favorite thing to do with my clients, I walk them through this process. I open up a Googledoc and really help them because, sometimes, we need to verbally process all of the pieces and someone who can catch the patterns. And so I really help people try to theme out their days you know, they call this time blocking or time batching. But doing it in a way that is very integrated with your personal life too cuz I would say 99% of my clients are also parents and they're navigating those different things and so starting to create some spaciousness on how are you spending each day. So, for example for me, my Tuesdays and Thursdays are talk days. Those are when I'm doing my interviews, those are when I'm doing my client calls, those are like show up days. I'm on and I'm a social introvert so I also need a lot of rest time. And so I have my Wednesday, which I call W I N S day and that's when I'm focusing on my bigger picture projects. So often we don't make time for the things that will actually grow our business or move us closer to our dreams of what is it that we really wanna be doing. So actually carving out that time in your week really holding it sacred allows you to know I have time to work on it.

II can't work on it every day. I remember building my personal brand business, it was like my cash project with Simple Green Smoothies and my heart project was this personal brand coaching consulting business on the side that I didn't know what it was gonna turn into. But I gave it two hours on a Monday afternoon from 2 to 4:00 PM that was like dedicated time that I wouldn't schedule any other appointments to interrupt in that. So we have to be able to have time where we're thinking about the big picture, and then there's also the deliverables and being able to show up and deliver your product and thinking about money and all of those pieces that are maybe not as sexy to think about in business. So being able to give everything that needs to get done a home and knowing what happens is my clients will realize, oh I don't have time to do it all. And so that's when we have to make some shifts and adjustments and that's when someone's like, oh I need to hire someone. If I want to go in this direction, I actually need support because I truly, when I look at the hours in a day, my capacity and my commitments, I can't do this next thing without shifting something, either releasing, letting go of something or getting the support in order to help you move it forward.

H: What do you think is the biggest challenge women face when they reach that point where, oh no wonder half the items on the to-do list show up the next day and the next day and the next cuz I literally cannot get everything done that I am expecting to. And you show them, okay, you're absolutely right, so you're gonna need to make some choices, right or you're going to need to get some support. What do you think is the biggest obstacle, and it may not, may be more than one at that point that makes it difficult for them to implement that.

G: So there's a couple things, one is, money. If they think they don't have enough money to invest in that next level of support, they can get really scared around that. So the one of the solutions that my clients will do is that they will start to save money that like, oh, this is what it would cost to hire that person so let me start building that. I would have like some runway with that and start putting the money aside to like, okay, I can trust that that money is there to hold onto that person. Another thing is, many women entrepreneurs who run small businesses, they didn't go to business school and so they actually are like, I don't know what I'm doing, so there's a lack of confidence and self-doubt and I have that same, my inner mean girl is the one that's like, you're doing it wrong and so if you're doing it wrong, then you don't wanna do it because you don't wanna do it wrong.

And so that's where you do need that coach or support or read a book or resource to build that confidence to kind of navigate those tricky waters. But the self-doubt creeps up a lot, almost every step of the way and so that being able to have someone hold your hand through that process and then once you get through it one round, then you're like okay like, now I know how to do this. So those, the fear of hiring, just having not done it before or not wanting to do it wrong, money not being able to make that investment and so being able to be resourceful and make those big risks where it's like, I don't know if this is gonna pay off, but if I don't do this, then what? Then you stay right where you are so you do have to make some choices around that. But I would say the money and the, I don't know what I'm doing and I don't wanna mess it up, are probably the two biggest things that will stop people, but then they'll just keep repeating that cycle unless they get the support to move forward on that just because you have the clarity doesn't always mean that you have the courage.

H: Exactly and every single thing you've ever done, every single thing I've ever done, we did it for the first time without knowing how to do it, like everything. I mean, all the way back to sitting up and learning how to walk and going to school and getting married and having your first baby and all of that, every single thing we have ever done we did for the first time, and I don't care how many books you read, how many podcasts you listened to, how many other people explained their experience. When you are doing it for the first time, you're terrified because you literally don't know what you're doing, but that's such the norm of our human existence. Even if you weren't a business owner, either that or you're just gonna only do what you've already done, which, you're not only not growing, you're actually stagnating because the world is going on without you. That's more terrifying to me, to be stuck right where I am and not able to move forward.

The other thing that I think comes back again and again and again, so many women are caught up in anxiety and perfectionism. You talk about a lot, in She Builds high functioning anxiety, and we think that we can think our way through before we take action. It's like, oh, I'm getting ready like I'm almost there. I'm just like getting ready. I'm thinking it through, and then I'm planning and it's like, Hey, listen, I pissed away two years before I launched this podcast because I was getting ready. I literally had everything I needed, but I wasn't taking action because I thought, I don't know, what did I think was gonna change, I was gonna feel more ready? I never felt more ready. I just had to pull the and that's like the biggest secret of all right?

G: Yes, you just have to do it but what helped you pull the trigger to, you know, after the two years, I'm just curious.

H: I'm gonna let you take a guess cuz I have a feeling you will probably guess the right thing. What do you think I did differently to finally make it happen?

G: Did you hire support?

H: I got accountability. Yeah, I got accountability because to your point about the support squad. I would probably, I'm now at episode 140 something, I would still be getting ready if I hadn't finally thought, well, this clearly is not working, I'm like, readier than 99% of the people who ever started a podcast still not happening. So I am going to put myself in a situation where I am accountable to taking action along with other people who made themselves accountable to taking action. I'm going to publicly state my intentions and there will be deadlines and benchmarks along the way that has become my de facto way of working whenever I'm resisting, procrastinating or avoiding that because I know it works and because I know it works for other people too. Otherwise, we're just secretly pissing away our opportunity while other people are carrying on with taking action and having it suck a little bit in the beginning.

G: Yeah, and I think it's really important to observe your path out of resistance some, cuz we will forget each time it's almost like, you know, pregnancy and being able to, you know, oh, I forgot. I forgot. I forgot. And so, just always kind of coming back to that place of how did I move through resistance in the past where I was stuck and so close, like, so ready logistically, but not from, you know, inside there's that fear and resistance. So I think that's great of knowing what that is that gets you to the other side for me I know, I'm like, I need my life coach on tap. Like we are moving through the emotional blocks cuz I have all the steps, I have all the strategies, I know all the things, you know what to do. So truly, it's what is the emotional thing that's holding me back? What is the decision that I'm kind of wavering on that's allowing me to be in this indecision and not move forward. So I think it's really important for us to pay attention and look back where in the past, how we've gotten unstuck and moved forward, and see if there are clues and a recipe because you have your own manual and it's not gonna be the same as everyone else's.

Sometimes I need a friend, same thing with my podcast. I was, you know, inviting my friend and mentor Jonathan Fields to be a guest on my podcast and I was so scared. I had the email drafted for weeks, and I was like, I need to start getting people on my podcast if I'm gonna have them and my friend was in a coffee shop with me and she's like, you have the email, like, just open it up right now. I'm just gonna stand here right behind you and you're just gonna hit send and I was like, okay. And then I hit send and then five minutes later he responded and said, yes, but I was hemming and hawing and just like, oh my gosh, but what if he says no then my whole podcast will fall apart like very catastrophic, right? That's some of that anxious thinking that we get into that spiral and I also wanna say that there is mental burnout, the overthinking is a mental burnout. So we can have physical exhaustion and overwhelm, but there's also the mental burnout, and I truly believe embracing the anti-hussle mindset is the antidote to burnout, whether it's physical or emotional or mental.

H: Because everybody experiences things differently and my daughter's really into the Enneagram, and so the Enneagram breaks up into three. There's the more mental types, the more emotional types, and the more physical types. Everyone is going to experience it differently, but something that you talk about a lot, and I think it's a really keen thing to pay attention to is resentment. I was first sort of learning that this is the emotion to pay attention to as a business owner from Cate Donovan who has Fried the Burnout podcast, she said, this is the emotion to pay attention to. We all say I'm annoyed, I'm frustrated, I'm whatever. It's resentment, just acknowledge it. Own it, pay attention to it, get curious about it, follow where it leads. It will point to exactly how you're neglecting yourself, how you are setting unrealistic expectations of yourself and what you can uncouple from to start having a healthier relationship with your business and more in touch with yourself. Resentment, and you know, that's not a nice word for girls because we're not supposed to think or feel that way.

G: Yeah, absolutely.

H: This has been a treat, a pleasure, something I have been looking forward to. I'm most of the way through the book and I'm really, really excited to finish it, share it, and we will make sure that the show notes have links for people who want to get the book and listen to your podcast, visit your website, possibly work with you, and all the roads that lead back to you. What is the one thing that you would like to share as we're saying goodbye, Jadah, for all female solopreneurs who are listening right now when it comes to health and the anti-hussle mentality.

G: Yeah, I would just come back to really thinking about what is enough, just sitting with that of what is enough and then in answering that, remembering that you are enough. You are doing enough. You are not too much. You're not like, we really have to honor that we are worthy. We are worthy to be building what we're building. We are worthy of our time and energy and our resources and to feel filled up so that we have the time for our projects, that we have time for, the people that we love, and just also time to play and experience pleasure in our lives, I think that is so important. You are a human and really honor all parts of yourself and bring your whole self into everything that you do.

H: That is the perfect place to finish. I love that so much and by the way, I'm sure people tell you this all the time, Jadah, you have the nicest voice for sharing on audio. Just I could, it's almost like hypnotic, I could listen and listen and listen. It makes it very easy to take in everything that you're saying, even the things that we might have a little resistance to so yeah, thank you so much for being my guest and for writing this book and sharing this message because now more than ever, women really need to know there's a better way.

G: Yeah, thank you. It was an honor to be on the show.

H: Thank you.