the bossbabe podcast - 33. How to Manage Your Time and Energy to Work Less and Make More Money with Kate Northrup

Episode Date: September 6, 2019

In this incredible episode, Co-Founder Natalie Ellis is joined by Kate Northrup. Kate is an entrepreneur, best-selling author, speaker who has built a multimedia digital empire. She is committed to supporting ambitious women to light up the world without burning themselves out in the process. Kate teaches data-driven and soul-driven time and energy management practices that results in saving time, making more money and experiencing less stress. Together they have an open discussion around self-awareness, energy management, avoiding burnout and how to set yourself up for success in a constant state of happiness and fulfilment despite your never-ending to-do list. They dive into the mindset shift around the Do Less methodology to teach you how to take control over your time and increase your revenue whilst working significantly less. Natalie and Kate break down the misconception that our culture has indoctrinated us all to believe that if we’re busy, we’re valuable. They share why by expanding your capacity to take up space and time, you will inevitably be able to do more, create more and be fulfilled in the present moment as opposed to having the “I’ll be happy when” mentality. Get your ticket for the Success & Soul Live Event in Los Angeles: http://bit.ly/2lqGIbv This episode is sponsored by the Insta Growth Accelerator. A 12-week accelerator designed to show you how to grow and monetize your Instagram account. www.instagrowthaccelerator.com.

Body first, business second, to me means feeling as good in my body as I can possibly feel because I know my body is the source of fuel for my business. I'm grounded in the truth of who I am, so your opinion of me or what you're doing is not going to affect what I'm doing because I'm sourcing what I'm doing from inside instead of from outside. Welcome to the Boss Babe podcast, a place where we share with you the real behind the scenes of building successful businesses, achieving peak performance, and learning how to balance it all. I'm Natalie Ellis, co-founder and co-CEO of Boss Babe, and your host for this week's podcast episode. This week, I am so excited to interview Kate Northrup, and we are diving into all things energy management, aka my favorite topic like ever. As ambitious women, energy

management needs to be a top priority in my opinion. I am so against burnout. I've been there before and I really don't ever plan to go back. And I do believe that we can build successful businesses or careers in a way that feels good as opposed to feels draining. And I'm so excited to hear Kate's take on how we do this. As an entrepreneur, bestselling author, speaker, and mother, Kate has built a multimedia digital empire with her husband that reaches hundreds of thousands globally. They are committed to supporting ambitious women to light up the world without burning themselves out in the process.

You guys already know how passionate I am about this. Kate teaches data-driven and soul-driven time and energy management practices that result in saving time, making more money, and experiencing less stress. So if you're ready to dive straight in, let's just get to it. Remember, screenshot yourself listening to this podcast and share it on your stories along with your biggest takeaway. Tag me at IamNatalie, tag Boss Babe at BossBabe.inc and tag Kate at Kate Northrup. And I'll be sharing them on my Instagram and we just love seeing what resonates. A boss babe is unapologetically ambitious and paves the way for herself and other women to rise,

keep going and fighting on. She you. So thrilled to be here. I am so excited to dive into this with you. You know, this topic I think needs to be talked about more. I think people have seen the hustle culture and burnout being glorified and kind of where adrenal fatigue, like a badge of honor. And so where did this all come from and start for you, this idea of doing things differently? Well, I mean, I think the seeds were planted a very long time ago when I was a little girl. I was raised by two doctors and my mom in particular was also a speaker and an author. Well, she still is. And so she traveled a lot and it was kind of, you know, one of my childhood heartbreaks that I didn't get to spend as much time with her as I

would have liked to. And it just always felt like she was on the go. And I made a commitment to myself actually when I was in high school that I wanted to be a business owner so that I could have control over my own time and my own schedule and being really present with my family someday. But then I became an entrepreneur and sort of got swept up into the more is more is more. And it wasn't until I got pregnant with my first child that my body forced me to slow down in a way that I had never experienced. Up until that point, if I had ever had an obstacle, I could always just push harder to get past it. And when I was pregnant, my body just said no so loudly. I cut my work hours in half about because I was so exhausted and there was nothing I could do that would make it better because it turns out growing a human is a lot of work,

even if it doesn't look like you're doing anything. And so it was during that pregnancy and then the first year of motherhood when our first daughter Penelope was really sick. She didn't sleep, and I struggled with postpartum anxiety and postpartum depression and insomnia. And we only had about 10 hours of childcare a week during that first year. And it was an incredibly difficult year on a lot of levels. And my husband and I didn't have a backup financial plan. We run our own company. And so there was no maternity or paternity leave in the United States. There is no paid family leave. So we needed to get the same results while working significantly less. And the year after our daughter was born, we sat down,

looked at our numbers and realized, despite working less than half the amount we had ever worked before as adults, we had made the same amount of revenue, which was great and also shocking and also sobering because I thought, well, if I could have gotten the same results this whole time working half as much, what have I been doing all these years? So that was really where the do less methodology was born. I love that. So how do you do that? How do you do less and earn more?

Because I feel like, especially as entrepreneurs, there's shiny object syndrome. There's always so many things you feel like you could be doing. And almost your work feels like it's never done. Yeah. Well, your work is never done. So let's just be honest about that. I think this is number one. It's a mindset shift.

And I know you speak a lot about mindset, that if we are operating under the illusion that someday in the future, we'll check off all the items on the list and we'll get it all done and then we can enjoy our lives and then we can feel successful, we are going to feel like failures and exhausted failures our entire lives because none of us will ever get it all done. So that's really important. Your work will never be done. Let's just all agree. So then we get to say, all right, well, given that my work will never get done, how much do I want to actually do today? And then how much do I want to enjoy my life? And how much of each of those things is possible

at the same time? Because none of us is going to lie on our deathbed wishing we had gotten more done. There's a great book called The Five Top Regrets of the Dying written by Bronnie Ware, who was a hospice nurse. And she outlines what the top five regrets of the dying are. And one of them is, I wish I hadn't worked so hard. Other one's really interesting. I wish I had given myself more permission to be happy. So how many of us are delaying our experience of joy and happiness because we think we need to get more done in order to earn the right to have joy or happiness.

Yeah, you're so right. It's this mentality of I'll be happy when or I can relax when I can take time off when. So how do you manage that feeling where you're like, okay, I'm gonna end the day now, but there's so much going on and you feel like you're just caught up in this whirlwind of to do's and deadlines and you can't switch off. Yeah, I absolutely know that one. I will say for myself, we actually as a company made seven figures for the first time after having children and being forced to work significantly less because we just couldn't just like keep on working past regular work hours because our kids were home. And so the great news is any of us can transfer that regardless of whether we have kids or

not by creating structure and boundaries in our lives. And so I know it's easier said than done, but having clear times when you are working and when you are not working and communicating clearly to your team, to your customers, even to friends and family about when you're available and when you're not available will significantly decrease that feeling of, oh my gosh, I have to be on and checking and able to be reached at all times and doing something at all times. Because if you've communicated clearly, if you first have sat down and taken the time to say, what do I actually really want? What really is my ideal day? And I recommend doing this based on how you actually feel throughout the day. So are you somebody who jumps out of bed in the morning and is super, super focused and ready to go, but then maybe around one or two in the afternoon,

things sort of start to dial back. And then by nine o'clock at night, you're a total pumpkin. That's me. I'm just dysfunctional after basically seven at night. And I've always been that way. It actually doesn't even have to do with being a mother. I could make an excuse, but the truth is like I just turned into a pumpkin. And so I know for me, my ideal day gives me space and time to create and to be my most focused self in the morning. And then towards the afternoon, I'm expecting less of myself. And I'm not beating myself up about it because I know I have paid myself first with my time by front-loading the day with my most important activities. And of course, I can talk to you about how to identify those.

And that's really applying the 80-20 rule directly to your workflow. I love that. Yeah, I'm a big believer in applying the 80-20 because it's crazy how we get sucked into doing all these things we think have a return but actually don't. It's so important within your team at work, your company, if you run your own business, to have some kind of metric for being able to decide if things are working or not. Because our culture has indoctrinated us all to believe that if we're busy, we're valuable. And so our assessment of whether or not we should be doing things ends at, well, do I look busy? Then it must be good, right? And that's so not true. There are so many things

that we can do. If you stand in one place and wave your arms around, you look busy, but you're not getting anything done. And so we have this obsession with just looking like we're in action, even if those action steps aren't getting a result. And so I think it's really important. You could do this right now to write out three key results that you're looking to get. So those results could be an increase in revenue. They could be a growth of your list size. They could be a certain number of downloads you want on your podcast, whatever it is. And I'm sure you have great episodes about, you know, setting goals and that kind of thing

that somebody could go back for. But setting some kind of key results that you're looking for and then deciding on three to five metrics that you're going to track every week to see if you're getting towards those results. So here's from our company. Here's what we look at. We look at list growth. So email list growth.

So new subscribers versus unsubscribed. So we're looking for that upward trend. We look at our open rates for emails. We look at new Instagram followers plus Instagram engagement, so which posts got the most engagement and which story got the most engagement. We look at Facebook reach and engagement. And then we also are looking at podcast downloads, and we're looking for an increase in all of those things. Now, what happened is we used to have this whole process in our company of this is just like a mini example of something that seemed like the thing we should be doing and made us look very busy and important, but didn't get us the results when we started tracking. So we used to have this whole process for making social media graphics where I would come up with what the graphic was going to say. So I would write the copy and then our designer would design it and then I would need to approve it. And sometimes that went back and forth several times

and then I would need to write the caption under it and then it got scheduled. And so that was a whole process. It was back and forth and it involved a few people on our team. What we found when we actually started to track the impact of our actions is in a specific way is that the social media graphics where I just took random selfies or miscellaneous pictures around the house or the neighborhood performed so much better. Also the ones that I like wrote the caption on the fly. And that took me two seconds versus the back and forth and the paying of the graphic designer

and the paying of the VA and the whole thing. So even though culturally we have this cultural belief that the busier we are, the more hours we put in, the more value we are creating. But this was a direct example where that was not the case. And we wouldn't have known that unless we had backed up and we're actually looking at the impact of our actions. So that's what I would have you do is come up with those key things that you're looking

for, those three key goals, and then look at a few things that you're going to track. And it will make it so much easier to see what's working versus what's not working. And it's very easy to then weed out action steps that aren't getting the desired result. Let's take a quick pause to talk about my new favorite all-in-one platform, Kajabi. You know I've been singing their praises lately because they have helped our business run so much smoother and with way less complexity complexity which I love. Not to mention our team couldn't be happier because now everything is in one place so it makes collecting data, creating pages, collecting payment, all the things so much simpler. One of our mottos at Boss Babe is

simplify to amplify and Kajabi has really helped us do that this year. So of course I needed to share it here with you. It's the perfect time of year to do a bit of spring cleaning in your business, you know, get rid of the complexity and instead really focus on getting organized and making things as smooth as possible. I definitely recommend Kajabi to all of my clients and students. So if you're listening and haven't checked out Kajabi yet, now is the perfect time to do so because they are offering Boss Babe listeners a 30-day free trial. Go to kajabi.com slash boss babe to claim your 30-day free trial. That's kajabi.com slash boss babe. I love that so much and it just goes to show sometimes we get into

almost like this automated state where we're just doing something because we're used to doing it and so actually coming in and just examining that and we're used to doing it. And so actually coming in and just examining that and starting to look at whether it's actually having an impact, I think is such a powerful way of looking at it and relatively simple as well. I loved what you said about setting boundaries and having that structure and also just bringing in, you know, you're not going to regret not getting that to-do list done on your deathbed. But how do you get rid of that feeling of guilt of like, you're feeling guilty that you're maybe working less or, you know, you think you could be accomplishing more if you were doing more or looking on social media

and seeing people hustling seven days a week. Not me. I definitely don't believe in that. Other people. Yeah. I see people literally Monday to Sunday on Instagram they're working working working and yeah they look like they're killing it we don't see behind the scenes but how do you like go over that guilt I know for me it's definitely crept in as like wait if I don't work weekends am I going to end up being less successful or people are going to overtake me are people going to achieve things faster? So how do you let go of caring so much about that? What a good question. So I think this is a process. One of the things that I teach is a process called self-sourced scheduling. So as

women, our brains tend to be estrogen dominant and the estrogen dominant brain developmentally is wired to check outside itself for what's working, meaning if we are wanting to see if we're okay, we look at everyone else. And so that's part of how our brain is because the estrogen dominant brain prioritizes connection and belonging. We know in order to create connection and belonging, we do have to be aware of other people and connect with them. But I think it's something that we can train ourselves to keep doing that because it's good for community. It's good for survival. It's good for oxytocin levels. It's good for a lot of things. It's certainly good for your business to have create community and belonging.

But I think that we've overdone that as women. And part of it's probably biological. Part of it is probably cultural. So the way that we can begin to come back to ourselves and stop checking on social media, stop comparing ourselves to other people is through this process of self-source scheduling. And it's more complex than we can get into today. But the basic premise is coming back to what is our internal experience and tending to our internal experience every time we think that we should be doing more or that we should be doing it like Sally, the seven-figure business owner down the street, or we should be doing more or that we should be doing it like, you know, Sally, the seven-figure

business owner down the street, or we should be comparing ourselves to the other women out there who seem like they're hustling and killing and whatever and working seven days a week. And so that's the time I think that we need to check back in and be like, okay, well, that's fine. But what's happening in my life? What's happening in my body? What's happening with my relationship with myself? And there's a couple of things that we can do to strengthen that sense, that inner sense of I'm okay. Because if you have an inner sense that's very strong of I'm okay, you won't actually care what other people are doing. And so you can strengthen that in many different ways. One of them is a meditation practice. I never thought I would be

somebody espousing the benefits of meditation. I was always that person rolling their eyes when someone would talk about it. And then I started meditating and I was like, oh, it turns out this is amazing. And it could be five minutes. I meditate not even every day, but probably five days out of the week. I meditate in my closet because I have two small children and I close my closet door and I go in there. It's five minutes. It's not even a big deal. I just set a timer on my phone and I breathe.

And it's amazing how that connecting with myself, when I come out of the closet in that moment, I just, and all day long, I just care far less what's going on with anybody else. Not in a selfish, I don't care how you're feeling kind of way, just in a, I'm grounded in the truth of who I am. So your opinion of me or what you're doing is not going to affect what I'm doing because I'm sourcing what I'm doing from inside instead of from outside. So much gold in that. And I can totally relate to everything you said. I think it's so true as women. We do look outside of ourselves a lot of the time. And it was funny when I first moved in with my husband, he would just be working like crazy. And me seeing him doing that, I started mirroring and I'd start working like so many crazy hours. And in the end, I had to be

like, you know what, we're just different people. And that is not for me. And it was so empowering. And I'm also with you on the meditation. Well, it is so empowering to say, like, because I love what you just said. You weren't saying what he's doing is wrong. You were saying we are different people and I'm going to be over here doing this for me and how empowering that is, right? Making a choice that's right for you in the face of somebody else making a different choice, it really gives you such a major shot of confidence. And for me, that makes me feel like a superhero. If I can make a dramatically different choice than my family or than the culture at large or whatever, because it's right for me, not because

they're wrong, but just because it's right for me, then that sources so many other beautiful choices that are then based in the truth of who we are as opposed to the truth of who the culture is, which I think if we are basing our lives on the truth of the culture, it gets very dangerous because we lose track of ourselves. And as business owners, we end up looking like everyone else, which is actually the kiss of death for your business. Yeah, I love that. And yeah, you're so right about not making other people wrong. And I've had it with my husband in so many different ways. He wants to sleep less than me. He wants to work less than me. And I'm like, you know what?

You need to figure out a silent alarm because I'm getting my eight hours of sleep. And it's been great just being able to see that actually neither of us is wrong, but we just have such different needs. And I love everything you said, but it was so nice how you explained it in terms of the female brain. I'm such a nerd around that stuff. So I loved it. Can we talk a little bit about energy management as women? Because I know you are an absolute pro when it comes to managing energy,

being focused, productive, all the things. Yeah. So I love this topic. I think that the time management conversation, my work would definitely fit in the time management category, but the truth is I think time management is actually a waste of our time. We can't actually really manage time. Time is completely relative. Einstein proved, I think it was in 1915, the theory of relativity, which is that time is in fact relative. So our experience of time is going to be different depending on various things. Now his is having to do with physics, and it has to do with how fast an object is moving in space and its mass and whatever. But when we extrapolate that to our experience as human beings, we know that there are two different types of time. And so these were identified by the ancient Greeks

as chronos. And chronos is the linear time that had us show up at this podcast recording on time. And it says that every hour is equal to every other hour. So it's just very linear time. And it's a very helpful concept of time. However, there's this other type of time called kairos. And kairos is timeless, suspended time. So the way I like to think about the difference is the five minutes that you spent in line at the coffee shop this morning, swiping through your Instagram, waiting for your latte, felt very different than the five minutes you spent holding your baby niece for the first time, for example, or your own child for the first time, or standing at the altar with your soon-to-be husband. It doesn't feel like five minutes. It feels like an instant and five years all at the same time. It's timeless because you're fully there. You're totally present. You're not thinking

about what's next. You're not thinking about what's next. You're not thinking about what you're going to make for dinner or who's going to fold the laundry. There's this timeless quality. And when we get into operating in Kairos more often, we are our best selves because we expand our capacity to take up really space and time by being fully there and not distracted. We also, we know we do our best work when we're focused on the present and we actually get way more done in less time because when you're not distracted, you just get stuff done. Am I allowed to swear on your phone? Yeah, you can say whatever you want. You just get shit done. And it's amazing to me, like I'll work with people, I'll be in a meeting with somebody and their text message notifications are going off.

And then there's these little blinking things on their phone and then on their computer, they've got Slack going and Facebook messages and all this stuff. And I'm like, no wonder you're struggling and feeling exhausted and feeling guilty at the end of the day, because you have not been focused for even one second with all this stuff going on. So there's a lot of different ways that we can begin to get into timeless time as opposed to being in chronos time while still showing up for appointments on time and like getting your kids at school at the right time, because it's both.

And so one of the things that I really want women to know is that men experience time and are cyclical on a 24-hour cycle. Women are cyclical on a 28-day cycle. The world is set up, of course, on a 24-hour cycle. This is not surprising. And so as women, as we're trying to implement the time

management systems that have been created for men, we really need to know those have not been created for us. And so if they feel off, it's because they are not designed for the lived experience of living in a female body. And so what we can do to change our experience of time is begin to understand how our energy ebbs and flows throughout the month and begin to tap into that as a source of power, as opposed to something that should be medicated away or that should be ignored or something that makes us weak, right? Because that's been the cultural narrative that women are unpredictable and that we're crazy and we're hysterical and we're not the same every day. So that means we're wrong. And it turns out we are actually incredibly predictable, just not every 24 hours. We are

incredibly predictable over 28 days, give or take. And so we can use that to capitalize on our energy, get more done in less time, and also manage our energy so we feel more fulfilled, we feel more joyful, and we don't have that sense of guilt at the end of the day because we're using our energy properly. Oh, you're so right. I love what you said about women experiencing time differently, because it's so true. And a lot of the methods for productivity that I've looked into, they all differ, but sometimes it's, you know, work for 50 minutes and get up and take a break and come back. And it doesn't always work for me because sometimes I'm in a space where I could work for hours and I feel so in flow and I don't feel like I have to stop and rejig around and get

back. And other times I'm like, I just want to be in a really comfy, cozy place and just do very little and get creative. And so it always feels completely different. And so what parts of our cycle should we be focusing on doing? I've had a podcast with Dr. Jolene Brighton and she really dove into the scientific parts of the cycle and different things we can be doing in business. But from an energy management point of view, how can we be managing our time based on our cycle? This is great. So I loved that episode with Dr. Jolene Brighton. I'm just going to give it a second plug. So great. And so this is a great follow-up. So basically, there's four seasons of your cycle, and they are the exact same that

you'll go through every month. They're the exact same seasons as the seasons. And so it's easy to remember. They're named different, but they coincide. So there is the winter time of your cycle, which is when you're bleeding. So that's the menstrual phase. There's the spring time of your cycle, which is the follicular phase. That's the week after your period. There's the summer time of your cycle, which is ovulation. And that's kind of like, you know, there's the day that you ovulate, but that energy is kind of the two days before and the two days after. And then there's the autumn of your cycle, which is the luteal phase, which is actually 10 to 14 days before your period, you know, and your actual period will last

anywhere from three to six days, depending on who you are. So each one of these is a little different. I do really recommend tracking your own cycle because it's gonna vary from woman to woman and you need to get to know yourself. There's a really great book called Wild, oh, geez, what is it called? Wild Power. Thank you, Wild Power. So Wild Power is a great book

and I love that they give a rule, which is that, yes, you might listen to an expert, whether they're a hormonal expert, a time management expert, a period expert, whatever. And they may tell you X, Y, and Z about how you should feel during that phase. But what wins is how you actually feel. And the only way you'll know that is by tracking your own cyclical experience. You know, there's, of course, some wonderful apps out there where you can track. I have a daily energy tracker in my book that you can download if you're a pen and paper type of person. But basically how I experience my cycle, which is fairly normal.

I'll share that. But just again, I'm giving you permission to have your own experience. You'll only know if you track it. So basically during that springtime follicular energy time is a time where I'm highly energized. I feel like starting things. I feel like doing things. It's a great time for planning and initiating projects. So I'll do like editorial planning during that time. I will really be thinking about initiating my next project or my next phase of the project I'm currently working on, because I'm a big believer in only working on one to three projects at any given time.

So it's not like every time I'm in my follicular phase, I'm starting a new project, because if I did that, I would run our company into the ground. And then during the ovulation phase is when most women, most of the time, will feel the most communicative, social, outward, magnetic. Waitresses report getting their highest tips during ovulation. So it really is this magnetic time where you're really open to receiving and you're also very verbally fluent. So the ovulation phase is a really great time to batch podcasts, batch videos, show up at live events, do workshops, do speaking if possible, doing sales calls. During my book launch, I was doing a lot of PR outreach during ovulation because I felt like it.

And I was able to get it done really quickly, efficiently. It was powered by my cycle. And so it was very effective also, because I do believe I'm a little woo. And I do believe there's an energetic component that I was more attractive over Instagram DMs during that time, because it's a magnetic time. So then during the luteal phase is, I would say, the least understood phase of our cycle, because if you have hormonal imbalance, you might experience PMS during this time.

And so I think our culture just like gives the whole thing a bad rap and it's like, oh, women are crazy or you should just take the pill to get rid of all of your symptoms. And the truth is, and I know you talked to Dr. Brightman about this, but just real quick,

if you are just using hormonal contraceptives to get rid of symptoms, it's like putting a Band-Aid over the indicator light on your car telling you that the car needs service. It doesn't actually fix the thing itself. It's just that you can't see the indicator light anymore. Does that analogy make sense? Makes lots of sense. And for anyone listening to really take note of that, because I think in our culture, women have been trained to put band-aids over things. And I love sharing the message that actually, if you dive into your own cycle and your own

body, I think your body has its own innate knowledge. So everything you're sharing, you know, listening to your body is so powerful. Yeah, it really is. And there's a recent article that came out in The Guardian, which really pissed me off saying that essentially having a menstrual cycle is unnecessary. Oh my God. Yeah. I will tell you what, like if you are getting rid of your cycle on purpose, now I understand there's many circumstances why you may not have a cycle. So I'm not shaming any woman for having their own experience. But if you are on purpose trying to get rid of it because you believe it's unnecessary, you are on purpose

disconnecting yourself from the cyclical wisdom that makes you a creative superhero that I'm describing. Because every month you go through these four key phases. And if you actually did the thing you felt like doing during that phase, you'll get so much more done because we all know like, if I try to write late at night while I'm having my period, what I write is terrible. I'm super unfocused. I can't get a thought out.

I could spend three hours to get a paragraph and the paragraph would be shitty. So I'd have to go back and spend all this extra time versus if I spend 20 minutes first thing in the morning when I'm in my follicular phase or ovulation phase to get that done, it's done. And I've saved so much time because it would actually be so much better than if I did it at that other time. So timing is everything. But I wanted to say about the luteal phase, what's so genius about your body, I mean, this is just one of the bazillion reasons why having a menstrual cycle is awesome, is that your body is designed so that

it's 10 to 14 days, you have this detail-oriented energy that's ideal for wrapping things up and completion because your body knows that it takes more time to finish things than it does to start things. So you have kind of that starter energy, that springtime energy for about five days during your follicular phase. And then your body gives you 10 to 14 days of this more inward nose to the grindstone, getter done energy at the end of your cycle for 10 to 14 days. So it's just one example of how genius you already are if you would just listen.

I love that. And I love just using our menstrual cycle to our advantage instead of thinking, well, I have a few days where I just feel off and guys can instead of, you know, thinking, well, I have a few days where I just feel off and guys can work through it. It's like, well, actually, and it goes for a lot of things. Like if you're not feeling into something, like you're saying, it's going to take you way longer to get it done than if you just do it when you're feeling into it. And I'm a big believer in that with all things. Like if I start my day with all of these things lined up and I'm just not feeling it, I'm not productive, I'm more likely to close a book, go outside and take some time. And I kind of believe that with the food you eat too, like I very intuitively eat. I don't have a specific diet.

I feel into what my body needs. And I think that kind of thing as women is so powerful. That's great. I love that. I've gotten a little bit more into intuitive eating during pregnancy and nursing and after babies. And it's been very powerful as someone who's recovered from years of dieting and restriction and all, you know, that's like a whole other conversation, but I love that you do that. So you mentioned a couple of things which are really powerful and I want to share my experience. So I actually took Slack off my phone when I was going

on vacation a while back and I never reinstalled it. And oh my God, it has been a game changer. So I did that. And then I moved my mail app to like the last screen on my phone. So I don't see it right away. I don't see the notification and what a game changer. I thought if I wasn't on Slack, I would be less productive. My team would get blocked. And it's been the opposite. My team will actually solve problems themselves. And yeah, I really advocate for that. We don't need to be getting pinged 24-7. It's so unproductive. And we end up just working on other people's agendas and other people's tasks as opposed to ours. Yeah. And it's actually very disempowering for them. So I think about this a lot in the context of children because I have a four-year-old and a 16-month-old. Let's pretend that I never would let Pen one there to pick her outfit and get her dressed. And she would be atrophied in this whole really important life skill. And we do the same thing,

whether we are doing too much for our kids, doing too much for our spouse, doing too much for our team, we prevent them from stepping into their greatness. And we are disempowering them and it harms them. It is harmful to do too much for other people, not just to you, but it's harmful for them. I so agree with that. So true. So you mentioned projects and like believing that you shouldn't really be working on more than one to three projects at one time. But like we were saying at the beginning, you know, shiny object syndrome is a real thing. And there's always so many projects coming our way as entrepreneurs. So do you have a process of deciding or some questions that you ask yourself when it comes to deciding if you take a new project on? I do. I do. I'm so glad you asked.

We have in our company a list of filtering questions. And we did this because I am the ultimate enthusiast. I'm a total seven on the Enneagram. I want to say yes to everything. So I am my worst enemy when it comes to this. I had to come to this the hard way. And it's still, I will say, this is still a real growth edge for me. It's very hard for me to say no to things, but I always think about the Steve Jobs quote, I'm more proud of the things we said no to than the things we said yes to. And so that's been very powerful for me just to like, oh wow, like, okay, yes. And so every day I just really encourage myself to say no to something. But our questions as a company have really come down to what, and each person can do this individually too, but what do you stand for?

Like, what's your mission? What's your overall purpose? Now, that's a big question and entire books have been written on it. And, you know, people have very long courses. There is a great book that I recommend called The Great Work of Your Life by Stephen Cope, which is wonderful. Have you read that one? I second it. Yeah. It's so good, right? It's great.

So if you're wanting to really tap into that purpose conversation, I highly recommend it. And I will say I was somebody who resisted this conversation until a couple of months ago. I was like, oh, purpose, that's not real. But I have to tell you, ever since doing the work to identify my purpose and my mission, it has made making decisions so much easier because it's so obvious what's not part of our mission. And it's just like, oh yeah, well that could make us a lot of money or yeah, that looks fancy. But if it's not on mission, then no, I'm not gonna do that

because it actually is taking away from the people who need us the most. Because if I've identified that I am the best in this one area, then anything that's not that is really stealing from the people who need me most. And it's dimming my light. So that's one question. And then the next question is really, who do we serve? And will this opportunity allow us to either get in front of more of those people or serve

the people we already have in that category in a deeper way? So for example, I might get paid my full speaking fee to go speak at a conference of men who sell tractors, but that's not my ideal customer. And so it wouldn't be a good use of my time. So that's a helpful filtering question as well. The next one is really just like has to do with our particular offerings and what we are focused on growing any particular year. And so will this opportunity or will this method we're thinking about, or will this marketing strategy help us to grow this particular area of our business right now? For example, it's our origin membership, which is for female entrepreneurs who want to grow their businesses while doing less.

And so if something comes across my plate and it's on mission, it will serve our customer and it will help us grow Origin. And it feels good to me. That's also a really important one. Does this feel exciting? If it doesn't feel exciting, even if it looks really good, I just don't do it. I've said no to a lot of things that look super fancy and shiny because I just, for whatever reason, it's a little like, wah, wah. I love all of that. And I love how you talked about the idea of leaving money on the table

if it isn't your ideal client or it doesn't light you up. And I think that's something that can be a struggle. Like, oh yeah, they are all interested in tractors and I'm getting paid, but it's just not for me. And I think we need to be okay with doing that. I know for me, just like wrestling with, but if I don't say yes, then I'm not going to get the exposure. I'm going to let people down. Just letting go of that and being like, you know what? It doesn't feel good has been great. So I got asked to do kind of a fancy speaking gig. And I got asked like a month after I'd given birth to my second child. And that was a very difficult time in my life for a variety of reasons. But I just like, I got the invite and I was like, oh, but it was in Palm Springs. And it's really hard to get there

from where I live in Maine. It's just like far. And I was imagining, okay, I'd have a six month old. I'd have a three and a half year old. It's like a lot and anyway, blah, blah, blah. So I say no. And then a couple of months later, I start seeing the other women who had said yes, promoting the event. And I was just having such a regret hangover. Like I was just like, Ooh, I want to be there with them. I'm having total FOMO. Like, I can't believe I said no to this. I feel irrelevant. And I had a really icky thought, which is I still kind of want to have said no, but I want the other people to know that I turned it down.

That was like not a proud thought, but I did have that go on. And I called a girlfriend of mine and she was like, this is all great. Like, this is all true. And also if you really project yourself out, do you want to be there? Like still, do you really want to have gotten on three airplanes, been pumping in all the airport bathrooms, like all the things that would have been required? And they said, no, at the end of the day, no, I don't. And so it was really helpful. But then when the event was actually happening, so about three months after that, that particular weekend, some things were going down in my life. My husband got extremely ill and there were all these things happening that would have made it

so that I would have had to cancel the gig. And so it was such a good reminder for me. There was no way I could have known when I was asked that basically my life would have been falling apart during that live event. I feel like sometimes our inner knowing knows and we just need to trust it. And then we need to have some friends to remind us that our instincts are correct when we doubt ourselves, which we inevitably will. I love that. It just goes to show whatever your gut's telling you, it's there for a reason and just to really trust it and go with it. Even if you feel like you're letting people down or you're not getting ahead, I think inner peace is more important. So speaking of that, do you have any

rituals and routines, maybe your morning routines that you're really religious with? I do not. But I will tell you, I have something called a bliss list. And so I have a mantra in business, which is body first, business second. Now, I tell this to people and a lot of them assume that I mean exercising every day, which is really interesting culturally that anytime we mention body, we automatically must assume that we're talking about exercise. And I do love to exercise. And that's part of what I do sometimes when I feel like it.

But body first, business second to me means feeling as good in my body as I can possibly feel because I know my body is the source of fuel for my business. It's my source of creativity. It's my source of inner knowing. It's my source of energy. It's my source of focus. And if something's off physically and I am not cultivating pleasure and joy and good feelings in my body, I know I can't perform my best in business.

So I have this bliss list and I just challenged myself to pick something every day, at least one thing. So it could be yesterday. It was putting on a Lizzo song and dancing around in my office when I started to feel a little lag of energy. Last night, it was going to a dancing in high heels class. So did I want to curl up on the couch and watch Queer Eye with my husband? Yes. But I knew that if I went to this 90-minute dance class and danced around in heels with a bunch of women, that I would feel even better. And so meditation is on my bliss list. Eating lunch outside is on my bliss list. Taking a nap, doing a yoga nidra, having sex with my husband. So I challenge myself to pick one thing every day because my automated belief, my automated thinking that I'm trying to overpower is I don't have time to feel good, which is ridiculous.

And so I'm just proving myself wrong every day and it's really helpful. I love that. Is that in your book? No, that's new. Okay. So everyone's going to be running out and doing a bliss list. Yeah. Just write your own, write your own bliss list and tag me at Kate Northrup. I'd love to see your ideas. Yeah. I really want to see these bliss lists. I'm totally going to do one and stick it up in my office and start doing it. I feel like the dance party is going to be what I pick every single day. I love that. It was not meant as a workout, but afterwards I was like, oh my gosh, my thighs are burning.

They really got into it. So I also know that I got like the secondary benefit of a caloric burn. I love it. Anyone listening to this podcast, the second it's over, just turn your music up and go for it. Just dance it all out. Okay. So tell me about the book. I mean, one thing that I love, I'm just going to put this out there about the book is when I first seen it, I was like, oh, this sounds and looks great, but I haven't got time to start implementing all of this stuff. Like immediately felt that. And so I started really digging into it and realized it's something you do small steps over two weeks, which instantly is such a game changer. Just these small tasks that you can do over a specific period of time. It's not like you need to read it and then you go and overhaul and Marie Kondo your entire life,

which is great. But it's also the reason that I won't watch Marie Kondo on Netflix because I'm like an all in or nothing person. Like if I see that I'm going to block out a week and start Marie Kondo-ing everything. So tell me a bit about the book and how people can really make it manageable and start to actually see themselves doing less and achieving more in two weeks. don't have time. That's totally perfect. I would have been that person as well. So I wrote it for you and you could read the book certainly cover to cover, but you could also use it kind of like an Oracle, right? You could grab the book and you could flip open to one of the experiments and just decide to try that one. And they are simple. They're all designed to take something off of your plate and give you more time as opposed to take time out of your schedule to have to implement it. So I am somebody who

my default setting is to think I don't have enough time, which is why I do this work. So if you are somebody who always thinks you don't have enough time, I've got you. I understand you. I am you. And I wrote this book with you in mind. And it's really simple shifts that make the biggest difference, right? So it's kind of like the butterfly effect where you just do this one little thing and then everything changes. And a lot of it is, especially the chapters on receiving help and asking for help, these are big for women, that when we implement those things,

it actually, we're stopping doing certain things. So we just automatically have more time and energy because the book gives you permission to stop doing all this stuff that you're doing right now that is causing you to think you don't have time. Yeah. Asking for help can actually be really, really hard. Sometimes we need to be given a script to be told how to ask for help. So I feel you on that. I massively recommend all of you listening, go out and get it. And I like the idea of using it like an Oracle. I didn't think of that. And it really ensures you implement because I think sometimes we can just be in this achievement mentality where we'll try and read a book cover to cover, but actually we're not implementing. And so it doesn't end up giving us the result that we're going after. And so I'd also like to say for

anyone listening to this, screenshot the podcast, tag us, and then go and rate and review the podcast, leave an honest review. And we're going to pick someone in seven days and give away a free book too, because it's just such powerful work. And I think it really needs to be in the hands of more women. I think we all need to be doing less. So on that, where can people find out more about you, more about the book, and also more about the membership? I know we didn't dive into it, but I think it's such an interesting concept. And I know it's such a massive membership and it's already supporting over a thousand women. So tell me a little bit about all of the things. To connect with me, the best place is just on my website, katenorthrup.com.

If you want to learn about the book and get some bonuses along with it, go over to katenorthrup.com forward slash book. And then the membership, I'm going to give you a little secret link. It's actually closed right now. But if you go to origincollective.com forward slash do less, that link should be open if you do want to learn more and actually join. So that's kind of like our secret backdoor link just for super special podcasters. And then I'm on Instagram. That's like my main online space interacting with people at Kate Northrup. I love it. Thank you so much for this. I feel so inspired to go and delegate,

delete, clean out my life. It's been amazing. So thank you so, for this. I feel so inspired to go and delegate, delete, clean out my life. It's been amazing. So thank you so, so much. If you love this episode, please subscribe and be sure to leave us a review. We want to hear what you enjoyed, what your main takeaways were, and also really want to know who you want to see on the show. And speaking of reviews, I've also got a little something on my sleeve for you. So I want to send you a copy of the Boss Babe 25. This is a brand new resource that we've created and trust me, you are going to love it. So the Boss Babe 25 is the 25 essential resources you need for personal and professional growth. Seriously, this little resource is like a little Boss Babe holy grail. You are going to love it. It covers everything from must-have products, our favorite books, rituals that we do daily, and little hacks to help you grow.

So if you want a copy, it's really easy. Just leave us a review, screenshot that review, and email it to podcast at bossbabe.com. That is podcast at bossbabe.com and we'll send you a free copy over within 24 hours. We love bringing you experts and interviews from other successful business owners so they can talk about their experiences and share information tips and what has worked for them. However, remember that the opinions or advice of our guests and as the hosts should not be taken as personal actionable advice and is given as general information and education only please always remember to consult a qualified professional before implementing any medical financial legal or other business advice to ensure it will work for you or your business boss babe is not responsible nor liable for your decision to implement anything you hear on the podcast please listen and act responsibly the opinions of our guests do not represent the

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