Podcast Transcript
Welcome back to another episode of Thriver's Ed. I am actually recording this on Christmas Eve, which is really appropriate for today's topic, which is about slowing down around the holidays. And I think I have kind of an unpopular opinion around this one because that's not exactly what I would suggest.
I can't tell you how many emails I've gotten in the last couple weeks from business gurus and experts saying that this is the time of the year to slow down, to not feel guilty about wanting to take a step back from your business, that it is important to give ourselves this time to recharge, that we're ready to come back all systems blazing in January. And of course, I think they also use this time as an opportunity to give themselves permission to not respond to you. Right. They're setting expectations with these emails that if you're emailing them between the Christmas holidays and New Year's, you're probably not going to get a response, or at least not a swift response, because as they themselves are taking a step back and I want to kind of call BS on the need to step back during the holidays.
It's not that I'm against taking a break. I am anti-hustle. That is the entire purpose of the systems that I set up for my clients is so that you don't have to have your hands on your business all the time. It's not that I think you constantly need to be working and that you can't allow yourself a chance to rest, but rather it's this expectation that this is the time of the year that we have this collective pause, that we all have to step away from our computers or our laptops or our projects and rest because this is what we do. These are the expectations of people. If not you're a workaholic, I think it's quite common that people would see me recording a podcast or working on Christmas Eve as being a workaholic or obsessed with my business or unable to take a break. And I am, of course, obsessed with my business, but that's just because I truly love it. It is so much fun for me to be in it. It's not a need to prove myself.
The reason I take issue with deciding that this is the time of year that everybody should be taking a break is that it ignores the uniqueness of our energy, our moods, our desires, our passions. Not everybody wants to slow down during the Christmas season. For me, Christmas isn't my favorite time of year, which I know is quite upsetting to some people. But it's not that I'm a Grinch, and I hate Christmas. It's just not my favorite time of year. I hate the cold. I hate all of the crowds and the terrible drivers that are out there around this time of year. I hate the gigantic bill that comes to me and January for all of the purchases that I made the season before. It's just a lot of pressure, a lot of stress, and it's just not my favorite time of the year. So instead, I love to take big breaks in the fall. My birthday is in September. I'm obsessed with Halloween and Thanksgiving. And so a lot of the fall, I'm not gonna lie, I'm pretty useless because I intentionally set breaks up in my business to respect the times of year that I really want to pull back. It's not about never pulling back. It's about pulling back in the times of year that match your rhythms.
So today, what I'm hoping that you'll take away from this is that you can let go of any guilt you might feel, of working when other people are resting or even resting when other people are working. Maybe you're the complete opposite of me. Maybe you're just counting down the days until you can hit pause or the Christmas time and just completely unplug from your comp computer. But if you're like me, you're itching to get started on 2025. I have so many big goals that I'm so excited about. I've mapped out my year already, which is something that I always do towards the end of the year or at the very beginning of the year, as well as at, each quarter. And so I'm just really excited. I don't want to take this time to pause. I want to take this time to make sure that I am completely set up so that 2025 kicks off exactly the way I want it to. Or at least that I'm best prepared for 2025 to kick off the way I wanted to.
But regardless of whether you love pausing around the holidays or if you're like me and you're just gung ho to do what's next, the whole point is that we need to stop trying to put productivity and rest into these little boxes that are perfect for everybody and that are tied specifically to the calendar because you should be able to take a break when you need it, not when you get that email reminding you that it's time to step away from the computer. But how do you actually take a break and not burn out? Even if you're working through the holidays or really at any other time that you're working. And that is through systems. I have systems in my business that keeps pieces moving even when I'm sitting there with a good Netflix binge. And so I don't feel guilty if I have to step away from my business because I know things are in the background supporting me.
I also don't feel guilty for working when I'm inspired because that's the best opportunity for me to take advantage of the seasonality of my energy, which is honestly really tied to the calendar. I don't know about you, but when it starts to get a little dark and gray, it really affects my mood and my interest. And so I, at this time of year I might not have that same, chipmunk style energy where I'm kind of running around frantic, but I get really introspective. I start to think a lot more, I start to reflect a lot more and come up with a lot of ideas. So my working this time of year is matched to my energy levels. It doesn't mean that I'm frantically putting things together. That's not the kind of energy that I can get this time of year when it's so dark and dreary. But instead it is matching that excitement, that slow, calm excitement about all of the opportunity that next year affords and everything that I foresee putting in place and seeing how that's going to support me build the business that I love.
So how exactly do systems support me in taking a break whenever that happens to be during the year, whenever I feel that need for rest? Well, there are a bunch of different things. For one, I have an evergreen funnel set up that is meant to drive people through my value letter. So if someone is introduced to me either through a lead magnet or through a low ticket offer, or even just finding me on the web if they've requested essentially to hear from me or to learn more from me, I've set up sequences to nurture them and hopefully drive them up my value ladder without me having to manually go in and remember to send them an email or to point them in a specific direction. I also batch out my plans. I have a content schedule written out that is based on my plan like a CEO playbook. So I've already thought about what I want to promote in certain times of the year and I make sure that my content reflects that.
So if, for example, I want to talk about the shortcut in Q1, hint, hint, I will make sure that the content that's going around in that time, whether that is blog posts, social media, for some of you, not for me, I've taken a step back from that. But blog posts, Pinterest pins, podcast topics, anything that I'm doing and promoting out there, I want them to support my bigger goals, which I've taken the time to think about now. And so that content is scheduled out. I don't have to remember to go in every single, you know, day or week to accomplish these tasks. I've batched them when I had the energy and the strength to do this, because I'm thinking about future mercy and what future mercy is going to need. And she's going to need some time to relax. So having these set up lets me let go of some of that guilt when I do decide to take a step back.
Another thing that I use for keeping everything in place and running when I'm not there are automations. I am obsessed with automations in my business. The less that I have to manually do in order to get one thing to the next step or the next level or whatever that is, the better for me. So I don't want to have to manually send out thank you emails, welcome emails, reminders, requests for feedback, testimonial forms. Like all of these things can be set up so that they happen without you going in there. There is a limit though, to what we can do through automations and systems. And actually the biggest help in systems are having standard operating procedures or SOPs. And essentially what this is is laying out each of the steps that you take in a particular process in very specific detail and so that it is easier to repeat it.
So if there's a task that you do in your business, and especially tasks that you don't do that often, we can waste a lot of time and mental energy trying to remember what was next or what we had to do next, as well as fixing the things that we forgot to do. Because it's just not a process that we're super familiar with. And even if it is a process that we do all the time, and we can do it, you know, we know it like the back of our hand. Having SOPs already prepared and saved in our workspace makes things so much easier. So if down the line, in order to help us take even more breaks, if we have the system set up and we've exhausted everything that we can automate and all the systems that we can put into place, it might be time for us to take on a team member or some other level of support that way.
And when you have these SOPs that are written in great detail and are really well planned and thought through, you can simply hand these off without having to spend hours and hours training someone. You've already given them, the exact steps that you would be taking in order to make something happen. And so they're just replicating the process based on your instructions. Now, of course, this depends on the quality of your instructions, but that's something that can be improved over time.
The point is, having this process in place, having these sops behind you, makes it so much easier that when you need to take a break and your business simply can't run without you, having someone there to support you, having a team member or a freelancer or somebody there to kind of take some of that stuff off of your plate is just so much easier when you can just simply hand them instructions versus having to train them from scratch when you're already strapped for time. So if you're excited to work on your business right now, I want to give you the full permission to do it anyway. If you're getting emails saying that you should be resting or you should be taking this time away, I would like you to ignore it if that doesn't resonate with you. Because working during the holidays doesn't make you a workaholic. It makes you passionate. And on the other hand, if you're ready to unplug, like, do it, take the time back.
You don't need to feel guilt one way or the other. It just needs to be based on your decision, not someone else's judgment. If you are working over the holidays, please remember that this is about balance. If you think about balance, the first picture that comes to mind for me is like a seesaw or those scales, you know, those like, weighing scales to make sure that things balance out. That's not necessarily what balance means. It's about alignment. So you don't have to take off as much time as you work, but hopefully, you're able to adjust your working schedule to your energy and to honor the times that you need rest. Like, for me, the other day, I watched Hallmark movies in the morning, and then I started training custom GPTs in the afternoon because my body was telling me that it didn't want to put in a full eight hours. But after watching a movie on the couch, I was ready to do something. I was ready to create, I was ready to improve. I was ready to dive back in and see what other support that I can offer people. And it felt really good to do that.
So I hope that you take a little moment to tune into your body and understand what it is that you want this time of year. Whether that's resting, working or a little mix of both. Because guilt has no place in entrepreneurship. That's not sustainable. Instead we're trying to build a business and a life that works for you. If you're trying to balance some downtime this time of year, I would say to set some realistic expectations. Like even for me, like I said, I'm working, but I am not working a 40-hour week. I can't when it gets this dark and gray during the year. Like my body is screaming at me at certain times of day to just go sit on the couch and read. And I am absolutely honoring that. And if you do want to stay productive, then try some like light lift projects, some smaller things, maybe brainstorming a new offer, maybe you're planning out some blog content or some other pieces of writing if you really like writing. Like just something that helps you feel productive without being super strenuous.
So I'm going to leave you today with your thrive in 5. The first is to just ignore societal pressures. Ignore the emails telling you that you're a bad person if you're working during the holidays, ignore all of those expectations that everybody else has set up around you and just do what it is that you want to do. If that's take a break, great. If that's dive into your business, great. Like make sure that you are doing what it is that you want to do, not what it feels like you have to do or what you should be doing. Because the reason you started your business if you have a business is because you wanted to do things your own way. So do them. Do them your way.
Number two is to make sure that you have systems set up in place to create that freedom and flexibility year-round. So like I've mentioned before, I'm not taking a break now, but I do have breaks built throughout my year through, through my weeks, I have breaks through my months and seasonally I have a lot of time scheduled out for me to take a step back from my business and to really rest and recharge. So make sure you have some systems in place that are going to allow you the ability to take a step back without everything crumbling to the ground.
These don't have to be super complicated. It can be really simple like setting up a welcome sequence for your emails or perhaps creating an SOP for a process that you either do all the time or one that you'd really like to eventually offload. So that way, when that opportunity arises, you're able to easily hand off that task and get it off your plate quickly. So go ahead and spend maybe 15 minutes mapping out one small system or even a break that you want to plan out for next year to kind of get a jump start on any future stress that's going to build up.
Number four is if your business cannot run without you, please reach out for help. This is what I do best. I work with my clients in the shortcut to make sure that they have systems and processes in place so that they're not required to be at their computer 24/7. I think a lot of us get out of corporate life because there's just such a massive workload and we're constantly being asked to do more and less time. And then if we become an entrepreneur, we're actually working even more. Like, it's very easy to get tied to your laptop or your computer when you're an entrepreneur because there's always something else to do. There's always some other project that you can be working on. The to-do list never gets shorter, but that doesn't mean that you actually have to be tied to the computer. There are a lot of ways that you can step back and still have a very profitable business and still make sure that you're delivering, you know, the fantastic customer service experience that your clients come to you for or that expect from you. It just means having smart systems set up in place that can take off a lot of that manual workload that is currently being required of you.
And if you have no idea what I'm talking about, please reach out to me. I would love to help you see some ways that you actually step back in your business and still get things done. A very, very quick example of this is I have trained a chat GPT, a custom GPT to help me with my podcast. So what's going to happen after this podcast is done is I'm going to upload it in a particular software that's going to give me the full transcript of it. I'm going to paste that transcript into my custom GPT and it's going to give me a title that optimized for SEO. It's going to give me complete show notes for the episode. And so I literally just have to take those two things, plus, of course, this recording, upload it into Buzzsprout, and then my podcast is done. So I don't have to sit there and manually think of what a good title, catchy title should be. Or write out the show notes or try to remember, you know, the different links or things that I said I was going to put down in the show notes in the episode. It's already there for me and I trained the chat GPT to do it exactly the way that I would.
It's a small system that can really support taking off some of that workload. It, of course, doesn't take a million hours to write a title and show notes for a podcast. But if it's something I do every single week, if it saves me an hour, then over the year I've saved 52 hours of time. That's 52 hours that I can devote to something else. And I am certain that you can accomplish some amazing things. If you had 52 hours and goodness, if it takes you longer than that, then that just compounds, right? If you're interested in something like this, or if you are interested in just finding even simpler systems that you can set up in your business, please reach out to me. You can actually text the show that is in the show notes and my chat GPTT is going to make sure you know exactly where to find that.
And your fifth tip for your thriving five today is just have a happy holiday season. If, you know, however you choose to spend it. My parents are actually on the beach right now. That is probably one of my favorite Christmas memories. One year my husband and I went to Malaga in Spain and it was just incredible to have the sun on your face. And I think it was maybe like 75 degrees. 70, 75 degrees. You're on the beach, your feet are in the sand. Like, it was absolutely incredible. And I highly recommend if you are able to ever swing spending Christmas on the beach. It is super fantastic. The one thing I would not recommend is trying to choke down 12 grapes, with seeds in them in a minute. It sounds kind of easy. The seeds are terrible and bitter and it's just almost impossible. I don't know how Spanish people do it, but we were really excited to try. Had an absolutely wonderful Christmas and I hope you and yours have a fantastic holiday season as well. I will see you in 2025 and until then, keep thriving.